Electricity Electrocuted Electrified

Energy and emotions; anger; potential; power. The drama in the dream will suggest whether the energy or emotion is being met or used constructively or destructively. For instance in some conditions of anxiety or excitement one can ‘burn oneself out’. It is this power of our feelings and drives that electricity in dreams refers to.

Just as we are all enmeshed in an intricate chemical environment, in which detergents, fertilisers and hormones are now part of our food chain, so we are enmeshed in a massive electronic environment. Our dreams may give us insight into how we relate to this and it to us. We are constantly shifting our relationship with this life-power through our thoughts, attitudes and physical health. It has enormous potential but we tend to reduce it through fearful feelings, shame, guilt or disgust. These all lower the current so to speak. Also we can turn it into destructive energy through those feelings. So electricity can indicate the power of life and death.

Example: We came to a hill sloping down. Somehow we were then airborne and rushed downwards and across the valley. Then we became frightened because we were hurtling towards the opposite hillside at the wrong angle. We would hit it instead of gliding along above the ground until we landed like planes touching down. A power cable was crossing the valley. For a while I held it to guide our glide, but was frightened of the current, and it was the wrong angle anyway. But somehow we managed to land okay.

The dreamer explored his dream and said that gliding down is the descent into experiencing the problem I have of holding on to people because of the security they give me. The flying is me being carried along by the inner forces to facing or experiencing the fear of the problem. The power line is the descending life energies. I let go because I am involved in fear of failure, of being hurt. The power line is also the humility before life, realising how much we depend on Life for our existence. So I turn toward that help. The turning and the descending power are one. See: snake; emotions and mood.

Electricity can be the source for so many things such as sound, images, hospital treatments, computers and power as for a vacuum cleaner. So your life energy can also flow in many different ways, depending on how you direct it. It can be the power behind movement and work; the energy or sex, the power behind emotions and thoughts, and even the energy behind an enlightening experience.

A great deal of mystery has surrounded the word kundalini, the Sanskrit word for life energy. Basically it means the potential that resides within us, probably because it was not clearly understood, but in practical terms the serpent power is the psychobiological energy that expresses in you as the many processes and functions of your body and mind. It is like the electricity that flows into a house that while it is not the picture on the television screen, or the movement of the cooling fan, is the power underlying all the many things arising from electricity.

Your psychobiological energy is at the same time the energy underlying your physical movements, your digestion, heartbeat, your emotions, awareness and thinking; and also a potential that has not yet been expressed or manifest. Very often a person’s sexual expression or social expression is not flowing easily. All that energy backs up like water behind a dam. It creates a pressure that will seek to flow somewhere. In many cases it moves into neurosis. In other words, because it is not flowing outwardly and satisfyingly into social and sexual relationships, it may turn inwards, enlivening the usually unconscious and disturbed patterns of feeling. Then the person lives out neurotic ways of expressing sexually and socially. They may for instance express anti social behaviour in violence or destruction. They may express in destructive sexual behaviour, or be even more introverted into deep depression.

But the normal human behaviour is simply one of the ways we as mammals can express. The life process itself can be expressed in an infinite number of ways, as we see in the different creatures on the earth. The fact that we are as we are is simply the result of the global, environmental and social changes we have faced. What some of the ancient outcasts found was that there are possibilities beyond the normal and beyond the neurotic. They drew out of the potential in the power – shown in dreams as electricity or water – the possibility of what we call enlightenment, a life beyond the limitations of the ‘normal’, beyond the pain of everyday living. That is how the practices of yoga, Tai chi, and many of the other personal disciplines of mind and body arose – as methods of expanding the potential of the serpent power. See Archetype of the self

Example: I was kneeling on the floor in a house. I have worked as an electrician so was probably working in the house, but in some way I had hold of, or was connected with, a large electric cable. The cable was live with electricity, and it touched my right shoulder. The effect was excruciating and shocking pain. The most intense memory is of struggling to pull the cable away from myself, fighting to stay conscious against the terrible current lashing through me. I screamed out for my mother, who I was sure was in the building somewhere, to switch off the electricity. I knew I only had a little time because I could not survive that current long. I have a vague sense that the current stopped, then the current and struggle started again. T.B.

In exploring his dream T.B. first of all met feelings of great pleasure and strength about his ability to work, and that work and helping people with practical needs was the main way he shared love, the main way he expressed his energy, the main way he earned a wage. He says, “So the dream is not simply saying I am working, but that work, as an expression of myself, connects me with others and the world. In other words, this is an important part of my communication, socialising, and loving others.”

He goes on to say, “The electricity is the energy of my life. It is the energy of my emotions, of my connection with others. This had been, as it were, short-circuited by what I felt to be the criticism, the rejection, and non-understanding by my last two female partners. I felt that I had tried and tried, while preserving my own integrity, to live in the way they wanted me to. But this felt as if it was an enormous self-denial at times. It was a self-denial that created this almost death dealing introversion of energy. The anger I felt about this had in it the sense that there might even be an inherent attempt to kill out my manhood, my flow of positive male energy. That is how I felt, anyway. As I summarised this I felt I could stand up and smile, and say I’m not going to be killed.” See: example under blindness in dreams; energy sex dreams.

Body being electrocuted or given electric shock: This suggests emotional pain such as one might get on hearing ‘shocking news’ or perhaps a painful way of experiencing change. It can also depict any sort of shock or startling response to internal or external events, and may also be a dramatic way of symbolising the pain you feel physically from repressed emotions such as anger or desire. These may cause such psychosomatic but real suffering as lower back or chest pain.

The electrocution could also be a response to something happening to the body while asleep, such as lack of circulation in a limb causing pins and needles. In some dreams though it is clearly a response you have to your own enormous energy – i.e. you may be frightened of the enormity of your potential energy, or you may be relate to it in a painful way because of past experience. Such energy can of course be creative or destructive, as are most great natural energies such as fire or electricity.

Useful questions and hints:

What sudden shock have I experienced recently?

Am I aware of the enormous potential energy I have?

Is the dream depicting the way my energy is expressing or being held back – and is this creative or self destructive?

Has something really shocked or shaken me recently?

Is this about the way I relate to my own potential – if so what is indicated?

Does the dream show me relating to the electricity in a destructive way – if so what can I learn form that?

See Secrets of Power Dreaming – Processing Dreams –  Life’s Little Secrets – Avoid Being Victims