Housework

The cleaning out of non functional – negative – attitudes, thoughts and experience; keeping our internal house in order, perhaps by taking time to clarify or define motives, opinions and feelings about others.

Dreams are one of the major ways our inner process tries to do this old housework of cleaning up our inner problems or conflicts. But because we resist it the process cannot complete itself even though we are asleep. Think of nightmares for instance. They are the major way the dream tries to present us with things that have really disturbed us, and most people wake trying to distance themselves from such feelings as fast as they can.

The earliest dreams we may recall are usually dealing with the housework of the present – the tangles and pains of childhood and infancy. Piece by piece they emerge into awareness to be known and integrated.

But sometimes such a dream may connect us to a long past during which our forebears did such tasks and left in us the heritage and urge to keep our living place clean and healthy. When found these are wonderful things to find is us – the urge to prepare good food; the urge to look after the life around us in our garden and help it grow to beauty; the urge to care for and love all the children in our care, even the wonderful companions of our life – the cats and dogs of our existence.

 Example: I’m carrying two heavy bags home from school. A teacher doesn’t help me. I am at home, now a mother with children moaning for their tea. I can’t go to bed unless I complete my housework. I’m on a sinking ship like Titanic, jump overboard, divers helping others avoid me. I cry out for help, but they ignore me. I’m a disabled single parent with 2 teenage children.

I am hearing your cry for help Elizabeth. The sinking ship tells me you are near to emotional collapse. However, at a distance I am wondering if – a) From your schooldays you felt nobody supported you so you got into a victim role. b) You consistently take on too much and push yourself too hard. c) You have asked for help but have found no response.  Do any of these apply?

The two bags are your children, who you have no help to carry. The dreams describe the man in your life as apparently strong, but in fact doing nothing to help. What can you do though? Certainly stop pushing yourself so hard – or learn to relax the feeling of constant pressure. Make a long term plan to gain help from your children, to share the load. As a mother you are an important person and no mother should live in a society that makes a mother feel such stress. So be like a tigress and stand up for you rights.

 Example: Sometimes we dream about balking at doing housework. This usually (if not factual) indicates a refusal to clean one’s spiritual house, for we are often unwilling to face the fact that we have fallen short of living up to our ideals, or what we know to be right and good. A good case in point is the woman who said she used to have beautiful dreams until she began to ask for guidance. After that her dreams became so ugly and frightening that she decided she didn’t want guidance! She had begun to discover some of these hidden rooms of her own mind and soul and she didn’t like what she saw. So she stopped looking. Quoted from Dreams Your Magic Mirror by Elsie Sechrist

Useful Questions and Hints:

In what way does the dream show you involved in housework?

Most animal keep their ‘house’ clean, even pigs. Do you have trouble with housework?

What does the plot of your dream depict?

See Plot of the Dream – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Habits – Edgar Cayce