Drowning
This is such a common dream and has been answered hundreds of times, we first ask you to look through the many answers given in Drowning – Many Replies Hopefully you will find an answer to your own drowning dream
Because of the water, drowning depicts fear of being overwhelmed by difficult emotions or anxieties, so it often points to struggles – conflicts – or fighting for survival you may have in your life. But this might apply not to dangerous emotions or urges, but to natural urges such as eating, loving or sex, that some people have enormous conflicts with. Drowning in a dream is also about struggling to survive as a person, so it applies to your identity as it is dealing with relationship with other people, but also with your own internal world of instincts, body activities and needs.
But the feelings of being overwhelmed can be caused by fear or anxiety. But if we can, we can meet and dissolve these. For whenever we dream its images are not like real life, because a dream is nothing like outer life where things could hurt you, but is an image like on a cinema screen that even if a gun is pointed at you and fired it can do no damage – except if you run in fear. So all the things that scare you are simply your own fears projected onto the screen of your sleeping mind.
So in dreams you cannot drown, but fear takes away your confidence, so then you go through the agonised emotions of drowning.
This is about being or feeling overwhelmed by something. One can ‘drown’ in sorrow for instance. So you need to look at your waking life to see what you are feeling threatened or burdened by and see if there are ways you can deal with it. If someone else actually drowns in the dream it may mean some of your feelings, your creativity and responsiveness are no longer ‘alive’. But they can be brought back to life if you care for that side of yourself. Sometimes it is simply anxiety we drown in, and much of anxiety is about situations we imagine. Separating what is imagined from what is real can help this. See Characters and People in Dreams
But such fear can be caused because if un-dealt with traumas from childhood are not faced, or by being exposed to awful film images that you believe are real. Read and Martial Art of the Mind
If you feel you are struggling to you ‘keep your head above water’ in a dream, do not give in for it is only emotions you are facing, not reality.
Water and drowning often indicates you are facing the unknown changes and so are afraid. But in dreams we can never die or even be hurt, for we wake without real hurt except for our feelings.
Going under water in a dream depicts you are going deeper into your awareness, so you are beginning to explore your unconscious. That is a major step in your development and is an evolutionary advance. It can lead to many major new abilities such as a wider awareness of life around you. A person describes one of the possible changes, “Unexpectedly everything changed and my fundamental self was something that existed throughout all time. It didn’t have a beginning or end. There was no goal to achieve. I am.”
Dreamt about someone else: May occasionally show Your apprehension about their health or well being, having the suggestion of death or breakdown.
Example: ‘I fell into a pond. My brother was frightened to be by himself so he jumped in. We were both drowning in the water and we shouted out for Mum. My brother drowned.’ Poppy S.
Poppy dreamt this while feeling insecure and anxious due to her father being seriously ill.
Example: I had been dreaming about sitting on a sofa with my friends – well watching horror movies, when suddenly everything comes to live. I was afraid of the ghost that had been drowning with her husband in the movie, and it comes to haunt me. I asked the ghost’s sister to help and she passes me a necklace with can protect me. And suddenly the ghost appears and tells my friend she was pretty. What does this means?
It means that you need to understand how your mind works. It means that you have nothing to fear about ghosts. As the ghost that appeared showed you, there was no harm in it. Dream images are like images on cinema screens – harmless unless you are haunted by your own fears. But the dream also shows you that whatever you believe in becomes a fact and alive in our dreams. It mean that the necklace gave you confidence, and in fact the necklace is only a crutch for your confidence. But we need such things until we can deal with our own emotions. See Facing Fear
Idioms: drown your sorrow; if you’re born to hang, you won’t drown.
Useful questions:
What powerful emotions or changes am I dealing with?
Am I feeling overwhelmed by something?
Can I define the strengths and ways I use to deal with threatening feelings?
Do I feel as if I am ‘drowning’ in a situation or relationship?
What is it I am feeling overwhelmed by recently?
Is this someone else drowning – if so what facet of me do they represent?
What resource or person could help me survive in this situation?
Another person or animal drowning still suggests it is an aspect of your own personality you need to care for.
Whoever or whatever it is, imagine yourself back in the dream and save them. If necessary imagine rescue services coming to your aid. In doing this you are using imagery to shift your feelings and anxieties.
All water in some way signifies your own inner world of feelings, but the sea often suggests meeting urges and wisdom lying beyond the boundary of your conscious mind. What is it you feel in the sea or river? Try putting it into words.
See Associations Working With; Techniques for Exploring your Dreams; Avoid Being Victims; Secrets of Power Dreaming
Comments
Last night i had a very long dream. Actually only about half of the dream was about drowning, but i hope that i can still get an answer.
I dreamt it was the future and that i once had a husband that i really really loved, everything was perfect. Well in the dream, that was a couple of years ago, because he died. I dont know why, and i remember absoloutely nothing about him, only that we were happy. This is where the dream actually starts, and what i just mentioned is memories for the me in the dream. I am with my family and the family of my dead husband on a tour to an amusement park i have been to in real life (really fun place actually) There is this kind of helicopter, the most creepy thing in the whole park. Half of the time you are upside down and spiraling around in weird patterns while being very far from the ground. I dont know but maybe about 100 meters. It also goes so fast that you can’t move at all. Well, i finally got my guts together and tried it this winter. In the dream my grandma who normally hates that kind of stuff offers to go with me and i gladly accept because i’ve tried it lots of times before and ain’t scared. I should maybe mention that the reason that we are on the trip is to forget about my dead husband and try to finally have fun again. Well, when we get to the helicopters and sit in the seats i realize i forgot something and get off. When i get back the helicopters already started and when my grandma comes down she is to my surprise completely unaffected by the tour, but calmly refuses to go again with me. I decide to get on alone. When i sit in the seat i realize that i have my bag on me, and that i should hand it to my family. I get back on the seat, and before i get the belt on it starts. I panic and my hands won’t do as i want them to. I realize it is too late and that i should grab something, so i cling to a iron bar an hope for survival. I was really scared, it felt so real, the gravity shifting places and the knot in my stomach. I wear this wierd dress kind of looking like a wedding dress with real roses in pink and violet sewn on various places on the skirt. When i turn upside down i get the skirt in my head evrything whitens and when i come to my senses i lay on the ground, everyone is worried and looking at me. Some days pass, and i am constantly scared of everything. Then we go on this fishing trip on a long boat in a lake. The boat is way too big for the lake now that i think about it… well the weather is amazing, no wind, sunny and a blue sky. Im wearing the same dress again. I suddenly panic, thinking i am at the helicopter again. I try to calm myself down, but when i look down i dont sit in the boat but in a little canoe. In my panic i dont really understand what happens, but i think big wawes tilts the boat and i fall into the water. It is not icy and not warm, just a little cold. My sense of direction totally leaves me and i try to swim up, but i hit the bottom. I try to get up but its useless. It feels like my lungs burns and then i give up. I sink to the bottom and lay there for a second. But then i get this crazy idea, i start to listen. I hear birds, and start to swim against the sound. In that tiny period of time i felt calm, strangely. The same thing happens, everything whitens and when i come to my senses i an laying near the lake on the ground and everyone is looking worried. I dont really remember the next part clearly, just that i get home and the days seem to “circle” with the same things happening, and me getting constantly scared of everything. I also remember looking in my old diary from when i was a kid. Its filled with colours and when i look at it, i feel like i was someone elses diary, not mine. Even though it was me who wrote it. Well the days just continue to circle and then i wake up.
Sorry if my english is incorrect, it is not my native language. I have dreamt of drowning many times before, but not like this. I really cant figure what the dream means, and i would appreciate a interpretation
Hi – It would help you to understand your dreams, if you would read – http://dreamhawk.com/news/summing-up/ and also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/features-found-on-site/ which has so much information in.
Nothing can replace your own ability to understand your dream. With a little effort you can do this by practising what is described in – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson or http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/
Tony
Bine – Facing scary funfair rides in dreams shows that you are not backing off from scary situations. That your Grandmother also did the ride suggests you come from a long line of tough or courageous women. WOW.
However you have to face the test/tour alone. In dreams you are being tested to see if you can pass on to deeper experiences. It is like when as a child you were dependent on your mother, and as you grew in confidence you became a little more independent; so in a way not a test.
Of course you really faced your fears and became frightened of everything. But dreams are about homeostasis/self regulation and growth. For each of us are immersed in a ‘river’ of constant change. If you think about it you have been carried, pushed, impelled by this current as you were moved through babyhood, childhood, teenage and adulthood. And as we passed through these changes we died to our old self in order to change to the new. It is the current of Life. This current then carries us on through old age and through the gates of death. All the time we are faced by decisions, and each decision directs us on a different path, helping to create our future.
The life process behind dreams constantly wants you to grow, so your dream was pushing you to face the next stage of growth. But of course, those who cannot face the challenges life and dreams confront them with cannot take the next step.
For you the next step was going on the boat, then the canoe, a definite move toward fuller independence. You managed that, but past memories made you feel insecure. Most of us have heard of Post Traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), it is a condition where memories that are now old are still influencing one to cause emotional upset. They are deeply buried memories that are stored in our body. Such memories are frequently revealed by dreams. But they are often prevented to be able to express their passionate content, because most of us are scared of deep emotions or passions. But somehow you went on into the deep water despite your fears. Amazing!
By ‘giving up’ your struggle to survive drowning – something in dreams that is no danger at all – you passed onto a huge realisation, you entered another dimension of your consciousness. To deepen what you learned – a trick dreams do in case we missed learning it – you cycled through it again and again. Control and letting go of control also relate very fully to what we know about ourselves. This is because with too tight a control on what we allow ourselves to feel or experience we build a barrier against the re-experiencing and healing of old painful events, and also for the arising of new aspects of our potential to emerge.
To save a lot of writing I would like you to read and consider http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/the-long-memory-of-existence/ – http://dreamhawk.com/inner-life/clicking-on/ – http://dreamhawk.com/news/summing-up/ – http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/opening-to-life/
Dreamt I was taken over by a large wave that I could not escape and knew that it was the end. I next found that I was traveling through my life as a person that was present but never seen, I would try to communicate but no one could hear or see me. I would leave each situation and pass through a door never to be able to return to that exact person or situation again and it was if I were a ghost and could not escape to Nirvana, as if I was trapped in the cycle of being stuck here with people but couldn’t communicate with them. I watched as my life went on without me, but I was still there. No one knew, and I knew that I had died. I couldn’t wake myself as normally I can say “this is a dream, it’s not real”, this time I could not. And I really did wonder if I’d wake up to find the dream was reality. Clearly I woke, but still shakes me to my core that my mind went there. I’ve never died before or been unable to shake a dream. ?? Fear? Yea, ya think.
Last night I had an awful nightmare. I dreamed that I was under what appeared to be a raft and was downing. My chest was beating so fast that it woke me up. It’s been three hours and oom still jumpy yet exhausted.
Ok this is a weird but terrifying dream. Was with my family on a road trip came to the ocean and the ocean had platform’s so that the car could dive trough the ocean. The problem was that they were broken so we had to jump between then everyone jumped tge first perfect then the second platform came. Everyone again jumped perfect then I jumped. I fell trough the crack and started to sink. My father tried to grab my hand and successfully caught it but then let it go. Woke up hyperventilating and my feet felt like thwy had been pulled down. Weird right wonder what it means?
Hi – It would help you to understand your dreams, if you would read – http://dreamhawk.com/news/summing-up/ and also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/features-found-on-site/ which has so much information in.
Nothing can replace your own ability to understand your dream. With a little effort you can do this by practising what is described in – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson or http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/
Tony
PoppyLizz – It seems to me that as a family you have a tendency to have some awareness of the psychic or inner worlds.
As you have jumped in your growth – from teenage to maturity – you have, in the dream, dropped through the cracks of every day life into the deeps of yourself. So you became aware of the ocean of consciousness, but because you have no information about it you are terrified – of drowning. But dreams take place in a totally different world than your waking life. In the dream world you cannot be hurt; you cannot drown, you can’t die in a dream, no tiger or other animal can harm you. Of course you can feel feelings of dying, or being hurt, or drowning, but they are all images you create because you feel afraid and you haven’t be able to meet the fact that the awful tings in your dream are all created by your fears.
You are also experiencing the growth of your awareness of the inner life. The You that you call yourself, with a name, is only a tiny thing. No plant or tree grows from a dead seed, and each living seed carries within it all the past gathered from all its forebears. So, the seed in your mother’s womb is as old and even older than human kind, and you carry that wisdom or memory in you.
This suggests that in fact your personality is only a small part of a huge memory, memory people call the unconscious. In fact you were not born with a personality already in you, but it develop out of the new memories and experiences gathered by the new brain in you new body, but beneath that were influences gathered by a long line of seeds, which gave rise to the miracle of your body, the memories of which are only available if you dig deep into your mind or through dreams, and that is what is happening to you.
So please take time to read http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/masters-of-nightmares/ – http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/opening-to-life/ – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/life-will-and-conscious-will/
In my dream, I was walking with my younger cousin(by a pool), he is 4 and he asked me if he could jump into the pool and if I could watch him, I agreed and he jumped in then he was under water for a long time so I ran in to the stairs to go in the pool and then I was next to him, he was deep under water, I couldn’t find him for some reason to ensure me he was dead my dream and an almost translucent font pop up in the air and say when he was born when he died and his picture. I couldn’t save him.
Hi – It would help you to understand your dreams, if you would read – http://dreamhawk.com/news/summing-up/ and also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/features-found-on-site/ which has so much information in.
Nothing can replace your own ability to understand your dream. With a little effort you can do this by practising what is described in – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson or http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/
Tony
Sharon – First of all, you need to realise that when you think about a baby, a friend or a person you know, you are only taking in your thoughts, impressions and feelings about them. So many people do not realise that they have an inner person equally as powerful as the external person you know. You have taken in millions of bits of memory, lessons learnt, and life experiences along with all the feelings or problems met by meeting or living with them, so you create a dream image of them representing what you feel about them.
So your young cousin is a part of you – so you need to see what you think about his character. For it is that that is going into the pool – going into your level of mind you are not usually aware of – literally below your level of awareness, below the surface you.
This younger and maybe daring part of you seems okay with this level of awareness, but it worries you because of your associations with every day life – completely different to waking life. Because you cannot die or be hurt in the dream world, but of course you can carry your worries in your dream.
In the dream world we die many times without dieing, for as we mature the child dies to allow the adult to emerge, the young adult dies as they get older, and so on. So to emerge from being a part of the inner world below the surface, I feel he had to die to be born into the waking world of childhood. Is something like that happening to you?
I had a dream i was on a beach by myself, I got caught in a current and it seemed like the person saving me from drowning was also myself. I tried giving myself CPR, I tried everything and I eventually even cut a hole in my own lung to get the water to come out. It came out and I was rushed to the ‘hospital I was given two IVs in two arms each of the bags had a cartoon character on it, said it was going to help. I had lots of IVS to go though so once one was finished I got another. I had a nurse come up to me and say things aren’t looking good. It looked like I had died twice in my life and the drowning was only for a second. She said I wasn’t going to live for long. I wss upset and just kept thinking of my death breathing got harder and harder. I eventually woke up.
Ash – Your dream is about anxiety about death. The end where it is difficult to breath is an example. Difficult breathing is often a sign of great fear or anxiety. I wonder what has triggered this dream, for often we have experienced something that ones imagination then takes hold of and brings on an anxiety or panic attack.
It might be worth while to read http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/eight-step-method-to-manage-intense-emotion/
But here is an example of fear of death.
Example: Dreamt I was alone in a house and asleep in bed. Something materialised or landed on the foot of the bed. It woke me a little and I felt afraid. I had the feeling it was some sort of entity materialising and coming for me in some way. It moved up the bed a little. I felt paralysed, partly by fear but also as if the ‘thing’ was influencing me. This made me more afraid of it. Then it moved up higher, not on my body but on the bed. I was very afraid and struggling against the paralysing influence. I managed to shout at it – I will destroy you. I will destroy you.
When I explored the dream gradually I began to feel tense throughout my body, with difficulty in breathing. Then it slowly grew in intensity and I realised the ‘thing’ was death. Recently it is obvious from the mirror that my body is going through another period of rapid ageing. The dream was a dramatic representation of my feelings about this. Death was gradually creeping up on me, gradually overwhelming me and I was fighting it. As the session deepened I saw that in my feelings I felt that death had put its finger on me. The touch of death was like a disease though. Once touched the disease was incurable and gradually took over ones body. I could hardly breathe as I experienced this, and I understood the sort of emotions that might lie beneath asthma attacks.
I began to wonder what to do about the situation. The feeling was that death was claiming me. So I wanted to face the truth about death, whatever it was. I wanted to walk right up to it and look it in the face and know whether death meant a final end. If it did I would rather know. As I approached death it – my feelings – went through an amazing transformation. All the tension left me. I felt good, positive and with a sense of hope about life and death. This was so surprising and sudden I wondered what had produced it. I needed to be aware of how this change had occurred. So I retraced my steps to look at death and try to understand why it had lost its power of fear.
At first I saw that my tension and sense of death being or giving a disease was due to a view I had of it. When we look at the world only through my senses, death is obviously a terminal sickness which claims everyone. Someone said on TV the other day – Life is a sexually transmitted disease which produces 100% mortality. Seen in this way death is the rotting corpse, the skeleton. The path to it is disease or breakdown. But in looking it in the face I saw another view of it. I saw the dead body, the corpse, the skeleton, as a form left behind by the process of life. It is like the shells on the beach, wonderful forms life crates as it moves on. When I looked at myself to see what ‘I’ am – I cannot separate myself from the process of life. That process leaves behind shells, bodies, tree trunks, but it goes on creating other forms. That was exactly the message I had experienced, where the invisible Life process created all forms – forms which were then discarded, only to create more.
I recently had this dream and I really cant shake it off. I’ve been thinking about what it means and what to do with that meaning.
In this dream my family, boyfriend and I were having dinner. We all knew a dustater was coming, but we didn’t know what yet. Moments later there was a knock on the door. It was an officer telling us to evacuate as soon as possible because a flood was coming. we all rushed out of the house and started walking to the end of the block. it wasn’t till we reached the end that I realized i had forgotten my phone and it was necessary for me to have it because i needed to tell my friend the flood was near and she needed to leave immediately. my boyfriend voluntary said he’s get it because he was a fast runner. As we were waiting we saw the flood come our way. My boyfriend hadn’t returned and i was extremely worried because i knew i was going to die. mainly because i couldn’t swim. i knew my time was up, and all i wanted was to die with him, but he was nowhere near. the flood took me and my family wasn’t near me anymore either. i was
I recently had this dream and I really cant shake it off. I’ve been thinking about what it means and what to do with that meaning.
In this dream my family, boyfriend and I were having dinner. We all knew a dustater was coming, but we didn’t know what yet. Moments later there was a knock on the door. It was an officer telling us to evacuate as soon as possible because a flood was coming. we all rushed out of the house and started walking to the end of the block. it wasn’t till we reached the end that I realized i had forgotten my phone and it was necessary for me to have it because i needed to tell my friend the flood was near and she needed to leave immediately. my boyfriend voluntary said he’s get it because he was a fast runner. As we were waiting we saw the flood come our way. My boyfriend hadn’t returned and i was extremely worried because i knew i was going to die. mainly because i couldn’t swim. i knew my time was up, and all i wanted was to die with him, but he was nowhere near. the flood took me and my family wasn’t near me anymore either. i was alone and then my location changed and i was in a big solid box filled with water. I was unable to survive because there were no air hole or even a little are above with air. it was completely filled with water,but i wasn’t alone. I was with 3 other spread out people. And that’s when i saw my boyfriend again. I tried to reach out to him and call him but i couldn’t because he was too far for me to reach. I wasn’t sure if he saw me or chose to ignore me but he swam past me and i had drowned.
Hi – It would help you to understand your dreams, if you would read – http://dreamhawk.com/news/summing-up/ — http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/features-found-on-site/ — http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPersonor — http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/
Tony
Emily – The disaster coming was the feelings you are trying to work out about your boyfriend. The dream paints an awful picture of you being left in the lurch by him – leaving you to drown.
That might be so, but dreams often are just showing what you feel is happening, but when you think about a lover, a friend or a person you know, you are only taking in your thoughts, impressions and feelings about them. So many people do not realise that they have an inner person equally as powerful as the external person you know. You have taken in millions of bits of memory, lessons learnt, life experiences along with all the feelings or problems met by meeting or living with them, and they change you and make you the person you are. The memories and experience we gather unconsciously change us and are not lost. It is part of you and is symbolised in dreams as a person or event. Such an inner person can appear in dreams because you still carry the memories or impressions of them, and so they influenced what you hold within you.
But your dream shows you ‘going under’ emotionally, which is bad news. If that is so you are caught in a bad position, largely because we are born as mammals, and mammals are prone to react with immense emotions when any threatening situation occurs. But as human mammals we are in an even worse situation, because wild mammals quickly lose their intense reaction, but as humans we hold on to it for ages because we think about it, which triggers the awful emotions again and again and again. Please read http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/avoiding-being-my-own-victim/
I don’t remember how it started but the water was frozen and i was trying to get to my boat which looked to only be about 20 feet or so from the shore in a river. So i started walking across the ice and then when I was one little step away from the boat the ice breaks and i was being sucked down. I tried and tried to swim back up but the more i fought the deeper i went. Then suddenly it just stopped pulling once i gave up and I resurfaced and jumped on my boat. I could feel the pain in my chest from not breathing. It felt so real. But I’m not sure what it means.
Ranae – To quote the entry ‘Boat’ – This depicts your journey through the seas of life and how we meet the rough and smooth experiences. In many dreams boats and ships appear to depict a situation, environment or relationship the dreamer is in.
For example, you were trying to get to the means to really connect with your real life journey. But to get to it you had to walk over the ice. This often appears as skating or walking on thin ice.
I have to see this in context with the rest of the dream. I see it as you were making a move in life and you took your everyday experience as reality – but you had some doubts. To put it another way you believed that your approach to life was one you could trust – your reality. But your attempt to reach your boat – your real life journey – uncovers a fault in that view.
In essence, it led you to fall into another reality or dimension of experience, one that was actively drawing you into it. In dreams, going under the water depicts your awareness going deeper into your own mind or awareness. In a real way, you were aware of parts of you were not used to existing in. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/what-is-the-unconscious/ and http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/dimensions-of-human-experience/
Many people as their awareness reaches beyond what they feel is their normal self feel scared. Such resistances cause us to create awful dreams and fears as a means of avoiding our own inner world and its wonders. So you felt that you would drown, die if you stayed in the experience. But when you ‘gave up’ you returned to the waking world having gained a necessary lesson – that in fact in the dream world you do not need to breath for you have no physical body, just a dream image of a body. So you took the inner world of dreams to have the same rules as in the physical world so you had a chest pain through holding your breath.
But when we dream its images are not like real life, because a dream is nothing like outer life where things could hurt you, but is an image like on a cinema screen that even if a gun is pointed at you and fired it can do no damage – except if you run in fear. So all the things that scare you are simply your own fears projected onto the screen of your sleeping mind.
So please learn the lesson, that all your beliefs, fears, ideas and even genius, are all mirrored in your dreams and turned into living people and events as dream images. As such you have no need to fear them. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/masters-of-nightmares/
Tony
I had a dream about a child I barely know drowning in a river when he was younger (before I knew him). When he was being saved by his father, a word “reborn” was formed by leaves and twigs in the water. After he was saved, it was discovered that he was a demon and the father had one eye that was completely black. The father panicked and tried to kill himself. I managed to stop the father, and was looking into the child more when I woke from the dream. I understand that drowning can mean being overwhelmed, but the rest of the dream is confusing.
Hi – The answers I give arise not out of me thinking up things to say, but from fifty years of exploring dreams in depth. So some of what I write may seem wild. This may be because dreams arise and are experienced by a level of your mind or awareness that very few people have any concept or experience of – usually called the unconscious. So their view of dreams arise from their thinking mind, a very different creature than the thing giving you Life. Life dreamt millions of years before even humankind awoke and developed self awareness – a very young and precocious child. So I try to describe what takes place in the deeps of you.
But it would help you to understand your dreams, if you would read – http://dreamhawk.com/news/summing-up/ and also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/features-found-on-site/ which has so much information in.
Nothing can replace your own ability to understand your dream. With a little effort you can do this by practising what is described in – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPersonor http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/
Tony
Jennifer – A child you barely know can indicate any child, because most of us cannot remember our childhood and its traumas, because pain is a great resistance. So the child is most likely you. It doesn’t matter that it was a boy, unless you had younger brother. Even then it usually depicts your thoughts and feelings. See http://dreamhawk.com/health-and-healing/inner-baby-and-child/
When you think about a child, a friend or a person you know, you are only taking in your thoughts, impressions and feelings about them. So many people do not realise that they have an inner person equally as powerful as the external person you know. You have taken in millions of bits of memory, lessons learnt, life experiences along with all the feelings or problems met by meeting or living with them, and they change you and make you the person you are. The memories and experience we gather unconsciously change us and are not lost. It is part of you and is symbolised in dreams as a person or event. Such an inner person can appear in dreams because you still carry the memories or impressions of them, and so they influenced what you hold within you.
Also dreams have a different view of us other than that dictated by the view of our bodies. It sees us as dual in nature, female and male, light and darkness. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/archetype-of-the-animus-jungs-view-of-the-male-in-the-female/
The demon aspect is most likely a repressed aspect of your childhood, probably linked with the father and difficulties it caused. If I am correct, if you examine any memories of being hurt or restricted in some way, you may unfold the story of you further. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/devil-demon/
I dreamed that I was riding a motorbike on ice with my sisters and a man who is helping us. We have some sort of task but we only talk about how difficult it will be. There is a break in the ice and water is gushing through it very fast so I know the current is strong. Someome is in the water and one of my sisters reaches across the gap to help. I shout to the man helping us to grab her legs and not let her fall in while I run to the other side to help too. The person has managed to catch themselves and climb out but my sister has fallen in and is flailing. The man shouts to me to grab her before she goes beneath the ice with the current but I don’t get there on time and I watch as she slips under the ice, panic in her face and shouting for help. I spent a split second scrabbling towards her through the ice but she moves so fast in the water, and I don’t know how to save her. The man shouts “how did you miss her?” and I wake up.
Hi – The answers I give arise not out of me thinking up things to say, but from fifty years of exploring dreams in depth. So some of what I write may seem wild. But it would help you to understand your dreams, if you would read – http://dreamhawk.com/news/summing-up/ and also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/features-found-on-site/ which has so much information in.
Nothing can replace your own ability to understand your dream. With a little effort you can do this by practising what is described in – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson or http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/
Tony
Dawn – Riding a motorbike on ice, in dream means that your attitudes or approaches to daily life are not good. Not only is it dangerous for your mental health but you are on thin ice.
But a large part of your dangerous attitudes are that you are very confused about the difference between their waking life and their dream life. They believe that what they dream is the same as what they meet in waking life. In waking life we may be drowned or frozen, but in dreams we cannot die or be hurt. For whenever we dream its images are not like real life, because a dream is nothing like outer life where things could hurt you, but is an image like on a cinema screen that even if a gun is pointed at you and fired it can do no damage – except if you run in fear. So all the things that scare you are simply your own fears projected onto the screen of your sleeping mind.
So your dream is a dramatic example of your fears that you might be carried away and die, despite all your scrambling in everyday life. Because when you think about a family member, a friend or a person you know, you are only taking in your thoughts, impressions and feelings about them. You have taken in millions of bits of memory, lessons learnt, life experiences along with all the feelings or problems met by meeting or living with them, and the memories change you and make you the person you are. The memories and experience we gather unconsciously change us and are not lost. It is part of you and is symbolised in dreams as a person or event. Such an inner person can appear in dreams because you still carry the memories or impressions of them, and so they influenced what you hold within you – thus your sister.
The ice suggests that the part that breaks through is a part that has not been frozen, and has actually entered the river of Life. For each of us are immersed in a ‘river’ of constant change. If you think about it you have been carried, pushed, impelled by this current as you were moved through babyhood, childhood, teenage and adulthood. And as we passed through these changes we died to our old self in order to change to the new. It is the current of Life. This current then carries us on through old age and through the gates of death. All the time we are faced by decisions, and each decision directs us on a different path, helping to create our future. And this is a force of growth and change; and is fought like hell by many as we are afraid of such changes, especially getting old and facing death.
So why not jump into the Life Stream? http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/opening-to-life/
My dreams of myself in deep water struggling to get out and I’m looking for my partner! I’m currently heavily pregnant also! I can’t remeber all of the dream just wake sweating and upset! I manage to get out of the deep water look for my phone to call my other half doesn’t work, there’s a gap in my dream from there to being in a car with my fella, this girl I was once friends with seems to always be there but doesn’t speak just looks at me and my partner! This girl has in real life told people she has been with in a sexual way my partner says it’s not true! I have done damage to other car etc I feel hurt and panic when I wake up I can’t remeber all i wake dripping with sweat if I fall back to sleep I’ll dream something else but her and him still there and my cradling my bump :/ help
I’m not really sure how it began but a friend and I were teaching someone else how to swim in an Olympic pool but you could not see the bottom, like the ocean because it was so deep. I walked around the edge of the pool, teaching the person how to swim while my friend was in the pool also, I could see something swimming in the bottom, fish, or penguins or soemthing. I dived in but it was as if I had weights on my feet and I was paralyzed, I watched as my friend tried to grab my arms and I slipped through their fingers and into the deep, I woke up hyperventilating but I couldn’t breathe still ? My arms were stuck and I couldn’t open my eyes. I’m too scared to go to sleep, this has never happened before.
Hi – It would help you to understand your dreams, if you would read – http://dreamhawk.com/news/summing-up/ and also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/features-found-on-site/ which has so much information in.
Nothing can replace your own ability to understand your dream. With a little effort you can do this by practising what is described in – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson or http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/
Tony
Annika – You forget or have never been taught that you are a dual being. You live a waking life, but that is a small part of you, for you have also a ‘sleeping’ life that most people are totally unaware of.
In life and sleep we have two powerful actions working in us. The first is our waking experience based on having a body, its limitations, vulnerabilities and a particular gender. Our second is the power that gave us life and continues to express as dreams, in our breathing and heartbeat – our life. This I have given the description as the Life Will.
While we sleep our conscious self is largely or totally unconscious, and while we dream our voluntary muscles are paralysed – therefore another will or motivating force moves our body. So we have a Conscious Will, and what I will call a Life Will. The first one we have experience of as we can move our arm or speak in everyday activities; but the second will takes over when we sleep. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/sleep-paralysis/
This Life will can move us to speak, to move our body, and in fact do things that we cannot do with our Conscious Will. As Freud pointed out this inner will has full access to our memories. If enough self awareness arises in the dream state, then awareness of the inability to move may occur, along with the anxiety this can arouse. In fact this is probably only a problem to people who are frightened of the paralysis.
So your dream describes what happened. Teaching people to swim in very deep pool, in dream terms means learning how to cope with the wider awareness occurring in the sleep state. In other words, when you dived in you went beyond the boundaries of your known world and entered a different dimension. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/lucidity/#TonysEx
Unfortunately you tried to stop breathing, but in this other dimension you have no body so you do not need to breath. But your fear caused you to be too scared to go to sleep. Whenever we dream its images are not like real life, because a dream is nothing like outer life where things could hurt you, but is an image like on a cinema screen that even if a gun is pointed at you and fired it can do no damage – except if you run in fear. So all the things that scare you are simply your own fears projected onto the screen of your sleeping mind.
We all live by an immense ocean in dreams. It is not a water filled ocean, though our dreams often use it to depict the massive ocean of consciousness or mind – the vastness of we are usually unaware of. We are all like islands in a great ocean. Where the ocean meets the shore of our island is the limit of our senses and so we feel we are isolated and alone. But under the surface of the ocean – our unconscious – the land slips away into the depths and connects with all the other islands. So in fact we are not alone, but are unconscious of our connection with all life.
You are on the verge of growing beyond the normal world most people think is normal – your dream shows it. But most people are scared when the go beyond what they have known.
Example: My friend asked if I could enter the pool, which I did with ease, diving deeper and deeper into it. As I did this I suddenly felt there were others in the water, and that suddenly had no sense of having body nor did I need one. I was ‘It’, and the wisdom and It was me. I could ask any question from this place where thousands of others existed. For we all were merged together and yet have separate identities, and because of this I shared all their collected wisdom.
See http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/opening-to-life/
in my dream i was at a swimming pool,i jumped of a diving board into the water but when i got into the water i couldnt get back up. i was wafting my arms up and down but that didnt do anything i even put my hands out of water next to some one but they didnt care.
Hi – It would help you to understand your dreams, if you would read – http://dreamhawk.com/news/summing-up/ and also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/features-found-on-site/ which has so much information in.
Nothing can replace your own ability to understand your dream. With a little effort you can do this by practising what is described in – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson or http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/
Tony
Lewis – I am not sure whether you meant you were under the surface of the water, or that you couldn’t get out of the pool?
If it was that you were under the water – in dreams it mean you have gone under the surface of your conscious mind, into your unconscious. I mean y this it is an area of ourselves that for one reason or another we cannot easily be aware of or see. This is understandable in that from an evolutionary standpoint self-awareness is a very new and quite fragile thing. It is very vulnerable and in our times and culture breaks down very easily. If we look around immense numbers of people need anti depressant or alcohol to survive.
Also most people are not aware of their unconscious, so wouldn’t be aware of your struggles. Many people as their awareness reaches beyond what they feel is their normal self feel scared. Such resistances cause us to create awful dreams and fears as a means of avoiding our own inner world and its wonders. We feel that we will be swallowed up and we will die. It is important to say that when we meet the experience of powerlessness through becoming aware of the hugeness of your Life, which we are usually unaware if, it feels like something alien or attacking and it is a shock. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/waking-awareness-versus-unconscious/
In my dream, I was with my friends at the beach and we were all swimming and fishing. I was talking to one of my friends when suddenly I was the only one by the water. Then the rest of my friends were saying it was time to move but I asked them why before suddenly I was just sucked into the ocean. I remember vividly trying to reach for someone and they were trying to reach back. Someone grabbed me but then we were both sucked out and I was trying to swim back before water just collapsed over me. I was trying to kick to the surface but it was like I inhaled water in my panic and instead I blacked out (in my dream). I ‘woke up’ to my friends on the beach and there was apparently a storm coming and we needed to get out. When I really woke up, I realized I had been moving around like I was trying to swim to the surface of the water.
Hi – It would help you to understand your dreams, if you would read – http://dreamhawk.com/news/summing-up/ and also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/features-found-on-site/ which has so much information in.
Nothing can replace your own ability to understand your dream. With a little effort you can do this by practising what is described in – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson or http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/
Tony
Kassandra – Several things were happening to you at once, and you need to understand them. For you had a panic attack in the dream when you were scared of drowning.
First though you need to realise that whenever we dream its images are not like real life, because a dream is nothing like outer life where things could hurt you, but is an image like on a cinema screen that even if a gun is pointed at you and fired it can do no damage – except if you run in fear. So all the things that scare you are simply your own fears projected onto the screen of your sleeping mind.
Also we often to carry into our dreams the same fears that apply to outer life, but in dreams we cannot die, drown, be shot or hurt in any way. But we can terrify ourselves with great fears. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/masters-of-nightmares/
You need also, to understand your dream, that your personality is a tiny thing which has always upheld by the process of Life that keeps you alive. Whenever we dream all our voluntary muscles are paralysed. That is fine while we are dreaming, but if we become slightly awake or lucid we or often scared that we have lost control. Such fear of being in control shows how out of touch with our unconscious or sleep self, so we fight for control. Yet our sleep or core self is what keeps us alive, and because of the often ridiculous things we tend to believe or live by, our core self has to regularly – whenever we sleep – takes full control to balance our life again. So, we have two levels of will, our Awake Self Aware Will, and our Life Will which is huge and often scares people when they begin to be aware of it.
Well, the sea in our dream is the huge ocean of awareness I have called Life Will – the force that created you from the tiny cell in you mothers womb. Individual human consciousness is like an island in a huge ocean in which there are countless other islands. Above the surface of the water, is like individual waking self-awareness. In this there is a sense of separate existence, with definite boundaries where the shore meets the sea. Beneath the surface however, one island is connected to all other islands. The land stretches away under the waves and rises here and there into other islands. So, it is thought, personal awareness, beneath our everyday consciousness, shades off into a connection with a collective unconscious we all share. Through this connection we may be able to arrive at insights into other people otherwise denied to us.
Being sucked into the ocean is the force of growth which I mentioned above – from the tiny cell in you mothers womb – it grew you and wants to help you to become aware of more. Taking you under the surface was exactly that, for you were taken beneath the surface of your mind into the depths that exist within you. When we begin to meet the Hugeness that we are, we often react to it in our dreams or in waking with fear or panic. So we dream of being attacked by aliens or frightening creatures; or being swallowed by the sea or a whale or something huge, a tsunami, or even possessed by evil entities. If we realise that they are things we have created through our own fear we will pass on.
The coming storm is a massive release of energy within you which is a way of discharging emotions or energy that was pent up and leads to further growth.