Guru – Dalai Lama – Sensei
Represents your connection with the whole of life, with collective wisdom, or the collective unconscious, as it relates to your life. Beside a guru, the dream figure can be any person you feel is in contact with the mystery of Life, so is not concerned with physical welfare, but is very linked to the realisation of your eternal nature and life as it connects with the whole. Thus the guru in dreams will usually guide you towards greater self understanding, deeper relationships with him/her/self, and instruct you in any necessary disciplines of mind and body.
There will be an unfolding to you of the inner meanings, where necessary, of ancient scriptures. The guru really represents your own awareness in the wider awareness beyond the physical senses. Thus, as a dream series develops, if you reach the stage of illumination, you will wake up as the guru, or merge into her/him, or be absorbed in his/her consciousness. This may be frightening, due to fear of losing individuality or ego. But in fact, the guru is your own self. See: Yoga and Dreams – God; Goddess – archetype of the self
Example: ‘Dreamt that J.A.’s Guru was coming to see me. I was waiting in some kind of reception hall. Suddenly he came with his followers. He gave the impression of being Eastern. He wore a long white gown and his arms were full of harvest produce, fruit and vegetables. He explained that he ate once a day and ate everything at the one meal. He then put down the food and took both my hands, palms upwards. He examined them for a minute and then pointing to a place on each hand told me I was capable of being very efficient; also something else I can’t remember. He then looked at me and told me there was something I should have done but didn’t, but again I cannot remember. He then told me to look at his forehead and see what was written there. I looked and saw the lines on his forehead were placed so that they spelt out a word explaining what he was. It was something like MEEK. He then told me to look again and I would see my own self written there. Again I looked, and this time saw the word BITTER. The other people there could not see the writing, and he told me everyone had what they were written on their forehead. He then pointed into the audience and said, “But you will do the thing you came to do. You will do it!” He pointed beyond me, but I felt the words were for me.’
This particular dream is really more of a prelude to initiation, but it does explain many things. First of all, what we have called ones ‘potential’ is often symbolised in dreams as a holy man, guru, yogi, master, saint; or as Jesus, Mohammed, Krishna, or some great person. His arms are full of harvest because this part of our being holds all the fruits of our experience, as well as the future possibilities of self. It is therefore very important what this being tells us in our dreams. In this case, the man found that after the dream repressed bitterness poured out of him for some months. In the next dream by another person, initiation is taken a step further.
Example: ‘I was walking along a street in London, and my wife came hurrying up to me. She looked very excited and said, “I have found a Master” (a saint or holy man). I was very sceptical and told her so. Nevertheless she insisted, and asked me to come and see for myself. We walked to a printing firm nearby, where a few people were already waiting for the master. I reviewed my scepticism, thinking that this was probably a man who was very clever and spoke much occult nonsense, and so everybody thought he was godlike; or at least, all those who desperately wanted to find a god-like man. Just then a man walked down some stairs from the building and said quietly to those waiting outside, “He’s coming.” Outside the building was a loading bay a few feet high. On to this walked a slim man of middle height, in his thirties. He seemed very ordinary and was bald except for the sides of his head, where his hair was a sandy ginger colour. He appeared a very passive man, and began to talk quietly, with little emphasis, his gaze above our heads, as if looking beyond us.
As he talked I thought to myself that I had heard all this before. I had read it in the Bible and a number of other books, but it hadn’t done me any good. Neither could I see myself even beginning to live up to it. In fact I dismissed the man as a dreamer. He didn’t talk for long, however, but soon finished and came down from the bay. We all walked slowly along the street, some of the people asking him questions. When we neared the end of the street he stopped. We also stopped, and were facing him in a small irregular semi-circle, there being about six of us. He didn’t speak, but looked at the person on the extreme left for a few moments. Nobody said anything, and he then looked at the next person. I watched him but had no idea what he was doing until his gaze turned to me. Suddenly it was as if a bolt had struck me and pierced me to my inmost being. I knew this man understood every fragment of my life – more than that – he loved me as I have never been loved before. A floodgate opened in me and a torrent of emotion and love swept over me. I stumbled forward impelled by the current of my feelings, and embraced this stranger with a fervent love. As he held me the turbidity smoothed and became a calm love, and I stepped back. His gaze turned to my wife and I saw her expression change under the impact of his eyes. Now I had no doubt – he was a master.’
The dreamt of guru can open the floodgates to our ability to feel love, to realise what is in the way of our own growth, and to catch a glimpse of our own infinite potential. One of the ways a master confers his grace, or initiation, on his pupil is by ‘look’, by ‘touch’, by instruction or pointing out things, or by being lifted up as if to a great height so seeing a vast view of life.
Worshipping an external guru: Suggest you have missed the point of meeting your own Self, your own spirit or centre. It shows a form of dependence upon another instead of finding ones own holy centre.
Here is a dream telling the story.
“In my dream I had the definite sense it was a yoga or Eastern seminar inside the room. I watched a man as he was pausing, he stood in front of the open door and with feet fairly wide apart, bowed his head right to the floor, with hands held in a salute. This presented his bare behind to my view. His clean and hairless rectum was very evident. In writing this down though, I realise there was no view of genitals.
In exploring the dream I first felt the posture to be one of surrender or acknowledgement of a teacher. But it was also a very powerful stance, and had in it the bums up sign. I imagined going into the room as the man. As him I felt intelligent, confident, willing to reserve my opinions to learn. In the room an Eastern man in robes and regalia sat on a stage, a guru. Many people sat on the floor as if meditating. The guru figure was not saying anything. I had the sense of people trying to get wisdom from him, even if he were not speaking – as if his silence held wisdom. I sat and opened to learn what this personage was communicating. As I looked he winked at me. I felt this was a communication, as was his silence. He simply sat and looked around the room. Occasionally he ate something, then got up and left.
I felt as if I got the message. It was that he was not the goal. He was not something to look toward as if he were an answer. He was simply saying – you are the goal. Living your own life is the path and the goal. There is nothing to find, only your self to live. You need someone to look at to learn this presumably, so I will sit here until you learn not to look at me.”
Useful Questions and Hints:
Did the guru give me a new experience of yourself?
Was I uplifted in some way?
Were there things about my attitude such as bitternes or scepticism that held back my own wonder?
See Jesse Watkins Enlightenment – Edgar Cayce – Enlightenment – Methods of Awakening – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Comments
Well I dreamed about a huge dildo white with all but 1 inch in my pussy then I dreamed about while having that in my pussy I dreamed about a skinny dildo in my ass and I was on the verge of cuming when I woke up to a strange deep guys voice yelling horray help
Hi – I am going to halt from answering your posts – the reason is that in so many of your post I give the same information to. That is because most posts do not realise the difference between dreaming and waking life. It makes a great difference.
So, most of what I put in answers is my attempt at explaining what dreams are really about. It would help you to understand your dreams, if you would read – http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/questions-2/#Summing it would help me, and hopefully you too.
Tony
In dreams about sex we do not have to live by the same small moral world often necessary in waking life. In dreams, we experiment emotionally and sexually, so dreams often stand in place of actual experience. In doing so we expand our mental and emotional life without any danger or consequences. Through dreams we may experiment with new experience or practice things we have not yet done externally.
Hello Tony,
I dreamt that I went to visit a holy man. We sat together at a table and he explained to me that many things were happening in this world and though I may be striving to become a positive force of spirituality and love, I had many things to learn. He held out his arm and asked me to hold it and when I touched him I felt almost weightless. He explained that it was the combination of the feeling true spiritual positivity can give and the fact that he had burdened, albeit for a moment, the last negative emotions I had. He also explained that those last ones were there as they were the hardest and most deep rooted.
He instructed that I visit with the seamstress and come back to him.
In a rundown market, similar to slums in India or Bolivia, I looked for the seamstress. All sorts of wears were offered but I kindly declined and asked about until someone pointed me in her direction. It was almost a maze to get through but I found her. She kept working while we spoke measuring large swaths of fabric and having a sort of organized chaos about it all. She insisted I eat something and offered me a plate of food. It was comforting food, nothing fancy. I discovered however, it was riddled with sowing pins. I looked over and her glare explained that I had better eat it and that she knew exactly what she had served me. The pins stung my lips terribly but once the bite was in my mouth there was nothing harmful about them. I finished my food and said thank you and she smiled at me and hurried me away for I had spent the time needed she said.
I came back to the holy man and he asked what I had learnt. It was sadly at that moment that I woke up.
Now in my mind the dream is quite self explanatory. I admit that dream meanings and reflections of consciousness can be different though. I go about it logically and not symbolically. I am slightly confused about what the food meant. Perhaps taking the good with the bad? I do not know.
Here is the real kicker however. The holy man, who’s exact face is hard to recollect like most dream details, reminded me of the actor David Carradine. Mind you I had to look that up after racking my brain for hours at work to remember who I was trying to think of. This evening I googled the meaning of the seamstress and the holy man in dreams and eventually I stumbled across your sight. And the picture in the top right corner hit me like a ton of bricks. It is almost identical. Like the way you remember something you had completely forgotten until you get the right hint and it all comes flooding in. The only big difference was that the holy man had a braided, long, grey ponytail. Other than that I couldn’t say, even in my utterly logical brain, that the two of you looked any different.
I assume you have fans and wannabes on this site and you need not believe me but I have never been on your site or had any idea who you were let alone know what you look like. I apologize if that sounds rude but I need to be clear on that for anyone reading this including yourself.
I mostly decided on writing this post as it was a profound moment in my life and because maybe, you have been trying to dream surf or project yourself in dreams of open minded, spiritual people across the globe. And maybe, just maybe, if you were, my dream is proof that you succeeded.
Thank you for reading.
Hello, I have had a couple of dreams in recent months with a Tibetan teacher, the Karmapa. I was involved with a Yogic path from 2007-2012 and received Shaktipat. It’s hard to believe but I perceived the path as a therapy due to my earlier alignment with a therapist and teacher who was a devotee of this yogic Guru path.
I stepped away due to a back injury that hurt worse whenever I went to the meditation center or used the mantra etc. Once I stepped away I began to realize that my involvement was a spiritual bypass due to early life abuse and receiving faulty information from the devotee therapist I entrusted my heart to.
I’v realized that my personal nature before the wrong kind of therapy was not aligned with a fiery Yogic Shaktipat path. The dreams with the Karmapa I find interesting, as he is a living teacher of a Buddhist path that focuses more on the “Middle Way”, not focusing on being established in the transcendental states of the Yoga I was involved with. I find that the Buddhist perspective of not getting attached to any state of consciousness brings me peace and brings me a feeling of compassion for human suffering.
Yet, these are all ideas. I am yet to undertake the practices of this Tibetan Buddhist path. Frankly, I am scared for my mental health to undertake another path after having used a Yogic mantra and having received Shaktipat from a Hindu tradition.
But, the dreams leave me with a feeling of peace and an intellectual thought that the Karmapa is a teacher for the current time, as he is a young man, and that perhaps he will understand the Western mind and culture and how to integrate the Eastern and Western lifestyles.
I’m wondering if the dream can be viewed as a visitation, as a message, or as just a processing within my own psyche?
Thank you.
Dear Mike – Thank you for sharing so much of yourself in this post; it helps me to look at the other dream you posted from a different perspective.
I cannot answer your question about how to view your dreams about the Karmapa, because you do not describe any of these dreams.
I believe that the way we make sense of our past will influence our ideas about future possibilities.
Perhaps it helps to give you my perspective?
The cerebral cortex consists of two halves – the right and the left hemisphere – and meditation activates and develops the right hemisphere.
So I would perceive your Yogic path as preparing yourself so that you can process your early life abuse in a balanced way.
To merely simplify it all; the left hemisphere is the rational and logical side of the brain. It is concerned with analysing, planning, evaluating and judging the world around you and the right hemisphere is the feeling side of the brain.
In the other dream you have posted you become aware of both sides; “Which I interpreted as we talk about “Elohim”, but we don’t become that energy. We intellectualize vs experience if felt like.”
In this post you share that what you would like to focus on now is the middle way.
To help you look at this from another angle I suggest you read the book “Mindsight”, written by Daniel Siegel.
Looked at the middle way from his perspective is about integrating the right and the left side of the brain; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPjhfUVgvOQ
His book is full of examples of how this approach works.
I can also see your experiencing so called “transcendental states” as a way to learn to not identify with your body, your emotional pains, your thoughts etc. which is also a wonderful foundation from which you can start processing your past; http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/identification-and-identity/
I do not share your fear for your mental health.
When you decide to not deny the inner work you have done so far and when you do not deny/block the right side of your brain, you can work on integrating it with the left side.
Life as I perceive it is in many ways allowing yourself to be your own experiment and if you feel good about undertaking the practices of this Tibetan Buddhist path then by all means explore it.
See also http://dreamhawk.com/inner-life/enlightenment-being-or-becoming/
Anna 🙂
I love my dreams and remember most of them on waking. Often they follow a theme – houses, men or something which relates to how I’ve been feeling. Last night I dreamt about someone new. Someone had introduced me to a guru. He didn’t really want to see me but gave in. He asked to see the underside of my hand and after visually scanning it, he plucked something from inside my head saying ‘you don’t need that’. Unfortunately there was nothing to indicate what the ‘that’ was which is frustrating as it feels important. I went on to dream about a couple of other things but I think these were separate dreams rather than part of this this one. One was about trying to escape from an alien invasion and in the other I was talking to my dad about sexual abuse. Do I trust that the ‘that’ will be revealed in subsequent dreams or that any changes might just take place internally or is there a way of uncovering what the ‘that’ is? I was thinking of meditation perhaps?