East
The indefinable but felt source of your personal awareness. The mystery of birth and existence. Sometimes represents what you know unconsciously but have never made conscious.
The four major directions such as North, East, South and West have unconscious significance, but this must depend upon whether you grew up in the northern or southern hemisphere. What is said is for the northern hemisphere, reverse it for the southern hemisphere. There are polarities in your nature. Two obvious ones are your physical body, that gives the appearance of solidity and is obvious to others, and your thoughts, that are not visible or apparent to others.
Beginings starts in the east – from where the sun rises we begin a new dawn. Each day is a good new day with a fresh beginning, a new start. East is the direction of the physical body and newness including children and newborns. It is the time of change for all is a new beginning. New ideas and seeing the light. It represent change in all its ways. Also Spring is the season when all things begin to grow and awaken. Yellow is the path of Life, to begin the walk as a warrior, to shine in all that you do. The sun rising in the east empowers each of us. The energy to do and to begin the action of the mind and heart is there.
The East represents one polarity, that opposite to individual personal awareness. Every night in sleep you slip into a condition in which you lose personal awareness. Your sense of self is lost in what you call unconsciousness, but which is, if you enter it with some awareness – lucidity – a great ocean of consciousness, a universal mind in which you exist as a part of all life. Sometimes we bring back some insight, some wisdom from this ocean. We stand on the shore of it and understand something. This is the Wisdom of the East so to speak. So the East links with the mystery of life. It also connects with rebirth due to the Sun rising; resurrection from ignorance or darkness. It is the source of the teachings concerning your immortal self. See: Answer to Critics – Directions.
In symbolism it is what in the East is called the Crown Chakra – the symbol of realised personal potential, the redirected fundamental instinctive drives, leading to the opening of higher brain functions. For many Westerners, the East and its mysticism is a balancing influence to the often dry and sterilizing effect of Western intellectualism.
Example: I look to the east and I see a bridge, and a few industrial buildings with lights and smokestacks, and I feel relieved as I think I may find some people here. As I look towards the city a single skyscraper pops up straight out of the ground, fully formed. Then another building pops up, and another off in the distance. A whole gleaming, ultra modern skyline appears like Oz, all glistening and brand new, a complete cobalt city arose in the distance, shining through the deep purple night miles from where I stood by the river bank. I realize that this is a most amazing thing, and I see that this is now a time far, far in the future from the place of the beautiful cranes and the human rains, and even in the future compared to our present era.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What have I brought back from the ocean of sleep?
Do I have personal associations with the East?
What does my dream suggest about this?
See Reaction to the unconscious – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Secrets of Power Dreaming