Maze

The maze is an ancient symbol often used in mythology. It can depict the difficulties of finding your way out of the entanglement of dependence upon your mother and cultural norms.

Also we are often lost in the confusion of ideas and feelings, conflicting urges and opinions and the difficulty in finding your way through the mass of apparently irrational emotions and images arising from within, or the variety of opinions and authoritative sources of information outside.

This area of self is sometimes an area of seeming chaos. It needs some other level of yourself, the intuitive faculty, in relationship with the rational mind, to guide you through. Sometimes you need to admit you are lost and need help.

This dream of someone is an example or this – Before waking this morning I had an extraordinary lucid experience that involved me in what felt like a real place. The clearest part of this was of me in a maze. The walls of the maze were made of hedges, as the whole thing was outdoors. But I realised, because I was lucid, that I had purposely created the maze as an experiment. The point of the experiment was that the maze was complicated enough to make it difficult for me to find my way out. So, confronted by the difficulty of emerging from this dream maze, because of the lucidity, I could understand that this was a dream image, a reflection of the actual world I live in, and in doing so I simply realised that I was not actually in a maze, but only lost in feelings of being trapped in my own mind, and was thereby free of the maze.

I then experimented again and again with this, moving to exist beyond the images I had been, or could be, lost in. This was such an extraordinary experience and realisation it is difficult to put into words with enough impact to make it real. What it led me to see was that all dreams involve us in an environment or situation of one sort or another. Usually we feel the dream to be so real, and the feelings we experience because we are immersed in them, to also be real, that in a very real way we are trapped. But we are trapped in the feelings, ideas and beliefs, not the dream. So if we were in a prison cell in a dream, then there would be no way out of that cell without a key. But realising oneself as being the awareness behind the feelings and images means there is no prison; there is no entrapment; there are no walls to hold you. The apparent reality of the dream is then seen as simply pictures and feelings – stuff of the mind that we have conjured and become identified with and lost or trapped in. Even imagery with positive feelings is a form of trap if we identify with them. The more I look at the experience the more I realise that virtually everybody on our planet is trapped in a prison of their own emotions, thoughts and ideas. To recognise this in any reasonable degree leads to an extraordinary sense of freedom. To see that we live our life trapped in the world of thoughts, of emotions, of sexual drives, of fears or beliefs, is astonishing.

Example: If we place you in the centre of a circle and put all our dream characters, animals and objects around you in a circle, and if add to this all the many things that impact upon us such as peoples influence on you; your thoughts and emotions and how you are swayed by them; your physical urges such as hunger and sex, and of course pain and pleasure; your desires such as ambitions, your sense of being a success or failure, and the hundred and one other things that hit you as you stand in the middle, as well as your intuition, social pressure, hormonal influences, fears, ideas and images from media or people, your instinctive drives etc., we would see what a diverse mass of influences we stand in the middle of.

So the maze can represent the circuitous and often confusing route you take to greater maturity. In this sense the maze represent an attempt to find your way through conscious thoughts, opinions, doubts and childhood traumas fantasies and beliefs, to an experience of your fundamental nature. At the centre of the maze however, instead of a treasure you may find emptiness. What is at the centre – you are – reality – the unconscious – Life. We need to realise that we all live in a very real inner world that we mistake as us – you – me – I. This world is created by your thoughts, beliefs and opinions and it seems impossible to find ones way out of it. But the secret is to realise that it is really a creation of our own mind and so we can dissolve it by seeing the opinions as opinions, the thoughts as simply thoughts, and your beliefs as simply beliefs.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Do I realise the enormous power of my inner world?

Do I feel lost in the welter of ideas and impressions that impact within me?

How do I find my way when confused?

See Inner World –  Secrets of Power Dreaming – Autonomous Complex – Individuation

Comments

-Brandon 2017-10-30 13:43:05

I had this dream that I was being chased through this never ending building. Every door led to another door and every room led to a hallway filled with doors. The rooms were often smaller, but sometimes larger (like walking into a full movie theater or a seminar, and there was only ever one space open and it was right at the front). I would be encouraged by a crowd to sit, and then part way through a gunman would come in and try to kill me. I escape every time, but I end up in a similar situation after running through all the doors and hallways.

    -Tony Crisp 2017-10-31 14:25:30

    Hi – The answers I give arise not out of me thinking up things to say, but from fifty years of exploring dreams in depth. So some of what I write may seem wild. But it would help you to understand your dreams, if you would read – http://dreamhawk.com/news/summing-up/ and also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/features-found-on-site/ which has so much information in.

    Nothing can replace your own ability to understand your dream. With a little effort you can do this by practising what is described in – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson or http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/

    Tony

    Brandon – Your dream seems to describe the attitude that, “life’s a bitch and then you die.”

    It also describes the life that many people live, without being aware of their situation.

    The doors are decisions you could make, they are what you create as your future, and every decision you take in the dream leads to the same future. But in fact you take the way that leads back upon itself.

    In fact each of us are immersed in a ‘river’ of constant change. If you think about it you have been carried, pushed, impelled by this current as you were moved through babyhood, childhood, teenage and adulthood. And as we passed through these changes we died to our old self in order to change to the new. It is the current of Life. This current then carries us on through old age and through the gates of death. All the time we are faced by decisions, and each decision directs us on a different path, helping to create our future. And this is a force of growth and change; and is fought like hell by many as we are afraid of such changes, especially getting old and facing death.

    So ask yourself what attitudes to life do you have? Do you feel you have no future, no way of escaping?

    But the energy of life and change can be met by realising something. It is that the energy does not lead anywhere. There was nothing to it or beyond it to reach. There was nowhere else to go. That realisation is repeated over and over. There is no divine purpose, higher world, meaning, or future evolution to escape into. There is only me, here, now. I have to be self responsible and self creative or be unconscious, driftwood on the sea of life. You must create yourself, not be pushed by innate attitudes and hungers.

    A start might be by using http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/opening-to-life/

-oleyia 2017-08-06 10:57:55

I had a dream of going to a maze with our class and another class which is the same grade, this dream occurred twice. We were running from something as we had a “princess” with us. It was a huge enchanted leafy maze. We separated to each groups and our group found an airplane. I felt that I knew how to drive it, but my other friend wanted to, and we crashed to this magical pond that everyone was there cheering. We were gonna jump in until I woke up. What does this mean?

    -Tony Crisp 2017-08-06 13:51:49

    Hi – It would help you to understand your dreams, if you would read – http://dreamhawk.com/news/summing-up/ and also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/features-found-on-site/ which has so much information in.

    Nothing can replace your own ability to understand your dream. With a little effort you can do this by practising what is described in – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson or http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/

    Tony

    Oleyia – I can’t do better than to quote from some of the Princess entry – The princess in a woman’s dream can depict her strength to search for meaning and ways to positively deal with difficulties and personal problems. The best aspect of the dreamer.

    So your dream suggests you are immersed in the strange maze of life experiences and are trying to protect the best of what you are. But life is often difficult to find the meaning, the right approach that can lead you to finding the answer.

    It was enchanted, because most people do not even know they are in a maze. For the maze can represents the circuitous and often confusing route you take to greater maturity. In this sense the maze represent an attempt to find your way through conscious thoughts, opinions, doubts and childhood traumas fantasies and beliefs, to an experience of your fundamental nature.

    You try to get an overall view of the maze/life, but you hadn’t learnt to fly yet. But you crashed into a magical pond. Everyone was cheering because in fact you are on the verge of discovering the entrance to Wonderland. You woke up before you made the jump.

    The pond is truly a magical place in dreams, for above the water is everyday life, but if jump in then we go below the surface of everyday life, and we can begin to discover the roots of the world – the place from where everything is emerging from, the understanding of your own life. It will still take time, but you have begun the journey; it will continue.

    See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/mountain-path/ – http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/opening-to-life/

-Clara 2017-04-25 12:29:22

What does it mean if you left something behind in a maze and went to get it with three young family members. Fighting someone in a black morphs suit wearing a blue shirt. By yelling “ki-ya!!” And after retrieving the content you find it difficult to get out the same way you got in.

-Serena 2016-07-08 17:34:04

What does it mean if I have a maze dream but every dead end is a devastating past memory. Like memories I want to forget and have haunted me most of my life. It’s like the memory is re playing itself. And I go different directions to escape it but then another dead end will haunt me with another memory I want to escape from. During all this I’m pleading for a way out and sobbing and frantically running through the maze. I’ve had this dream many times. What does it mean?

-Camryn 2016-03-06 17:08:35

What does it mean if I have a dream about I’m being chased by someone in an indoor maze with walls, floors, and ceiling painted with clowns like a funhouse. It’s a reoccurring dream that I don’t quite understand. Can someone help me?

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