Flesh

If this is human flesh it suggest the vital life, or processes that keep you alive. It is something that is essentially an expression of the person whose flesh it is. It might in some dreams suggest a part of yourself so linked with another person, that if they go, that part of you feels as if it is torn out. Flesh is the most sensitive part of you, so your feelings. It is also bodily life, so the urges of the body. See: Body; Meat.

Example: as I do so notice there is a hole in the back of my hand, in and out of which wasps are flying. With great shock I look in the hole and see wasps eating my flesh away, so my hand is almost hollow. I awake with the feeling of being old and decrepit.

The dreamer explored his dream and said about it: In looking at my hand I realised there was a hole in my life. Just prior to the dream I had experienced a lot of anxiety about whether my marriage was breaking up. The dream made me realise that niggling thoughts and emotions were eating away at my self confidence leading me to feelings of being near to the scrap heap, having outlived my usefulness.

Example: Have I known you? Then I have known Death. Have I betrayed any? Then I have betrayed Death. And its face is beauty for it is all things – naked, udressed of flesh, leafless, exposed, unclad Life – without the garment that our selfhood is. Bathing me in regret that I had to often forgotten my love for the Naked Beauty.

The message of the above is that at death we take of our flesh like clothes we have worn and are now naked and pristine. The Naked Beauty.

Example: I wonder whether you grew up in a rather orthodox or religious environment, because you seem to be still having a battle with it. You are trying to become independent from it, but that is difficult because it is the past pattern that is difficult to get out of your flesh. I put it in that language because past environments are in some way built into our body, and to change them takes work.

I have seen in several dreams that if we are born from parents who for generations have lived in a particular religious or political belief, it becomes a part of their structure. I liken it to the way that wasps were at one point in evolution independent creatures, but gradually became a colony and their bodies changed. So to some extent our bodies/flesh change through being exposed to certain beliefs or environments.

Example: Now the imagery gets more specific and I watch/experience an exquisite Japanese ritual of meeting, touch, massage, that is leading to sex. Several young women are with me in a large bath. They are not trying to be directly sexual, but are getting close, touching me, massaging, allowing me to feel their flesh near me. The beauty of it is in understanding how wise and artistic the whole approach is. I see it is to lead my awareness out of being bound by everyday affairs. It diffuses concentration on particulars of external life and gradually opens my senses to feel and allow pleasure. It helps the mind to drop fixation on externals and allow it to drop boundaries until one senses oneself as in a semi dream state. This allows sex to be not just a particular thing; not just a physical penetration or being entered, but something that connects you emotionally and mysteriously with another person, and to the huge mystery that is that person and oneself. Ones partner is not simply a human being, but the very essence of the female principle, merging with the male principle.

Example: I remember a dream told me by a friend who had been fasting for two weeks. She dreamt that she was eating the flesh of her thighs.

Condition of the flesh: We know a lot about a person by seeing their skin. So the flesh in your dream can suggest health or sickness, male or female, warm or cold, healthy or sicketc

Marks on the flesh: Because the flesh is what your life has created, your fate, or karma, any marks suggest something that you carry with you as your history, fate, or destiny. Some experience has marked you. The story of Cain and Able illustrates this.

Flesh eaten away: Feeling that life is draining you, or you are under great stress.

Bloody flesh: Sometimes during menstruatioin one dreams of seeing bloody flesh – not necessarily ones own.

Idioms: flesh out; in the flesh; pound of flesh

Useful questions and hints:

What does the flesh communicate to me – desire – repugnance – health?

Is there a particular sensation or desire connected to the flesh – is so what?

If the flesh is hut or injured, in what way and how does that refer to me?

See Emotions and Mood in Dreams –  Life’s Little Secrets – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams