Mud
In some dreams, as in a muddy road, or swamp, the mud is simply the retarding aspect of your hesitations and fears. In other dreams, people search through, or dig in the mud, which represents the cleansing of emotions caused by outer circumstances, the looking through the experience or muck of your life for its treasure, for often a flower or jewel may be found in the mud. IT is the primordial substance or life energy, sensuality, even blood.
Mud is like clay, it is a substance that can be moulded, and so may present the idea of your basic memories and emotions that were shaped. Mud may also symbolise healing, as it contains all the elements of the past, which we need for completeness.
The fundamental primordial, sensual, slimy basis of life and how we relate to it; emotions which cause us to feel bogged down; past experience which may hold us back, but has enormous growth potential in it; the healing possibilities of our body and its minerals.
Our mind is a fantastic and multidimensional area. It holds all that you have even been – most of it unconscious. You still hold the original primeval slime in your testicles or the wonderful eggs that are part of the flow of blood that was the start of life. You are still a cellular creature. You still have within you all the levels of being, the reptilian brain, the mammalian brain and the human brain. See Levels of the Brain
Apart from the millions of bacteria you need to digest your food, what about the ones that actually make your food into a smelly decaying mess in your bowel? We are all part of the process so living and dying. Also to reproduce and to have a child you revert to the very beginnings of evolution, the mud and the slime of sex. Yet that is the very wonder of Life. And from that slime of the beginning of life, you went through the whole process of evolution in your mother’s womb. From a tiny seed you became a vegetative process where cell divided into other cells. Then you became a fish-like creature with gills, and finally a body that had the possibility to become a human child. See Programmed
Body dirty with mud: Ill health; ones life needs ‘cleaning up’ morally. But mud can also be a healing thing – mud baths.
Sinking into mud: Sexual difficulties; feelings of hopelessness or despair.
Idioms: Mud slinging; drag somebody through the mud; ones name is mud; stick in the mud.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Do I feel like I am stuck in the mud?
Can I accept that mud is the basic stuff of life?
What is my dream telling me?
See Martial Art of the Mind – stuck in life – accept – Your Core Self
Comments
Hey Tony, your writings on mud has really resonated with me. I am currently an art student and am currently making a video where mud, along with pine cones, plays an important symbolic role. Thanks a lot!
Thanks John – Here are a couple of examples.
Example: The therapist encouraged him in the fantasy, and soon he was joyously lost in the slime-and the mussels had turned to excrement. No longer repelled, he abandoned himself to a search for a treasure he felt must lie within the darkness. When he came up he held in his hand a pink pearl that glowed like the clouds of dawn. Then he remembered how he and his brother had fought over a pink pearl which was to be given to their mother. The pearl stood for her. Those children, wallowing in the mud beside the willows in the hot summer sun, had been performing an ancient and sacred rite, returning to the source of life and their beginnings under the sun.
These things help to explain the great importance of the anus to the psyche, and why the sexual fantasies of most children center on the anus rather than the vagina or the penis. Later, with more specific knowledge of their origins, children replace the image with the vagina and penis, and a new series of sexual theories appears.
Example: I had an extraordinary dream. I was carrying a crippled man around in a box, open at one end like a cat basket without a grill at its front. We stopped frequently and he hopped out to relax in the sun. He was perfectly happy except that his small and twisted feet were bare. Each time we stopped I had to pick small stone’s and mud off his flesh. John
Tony often tells the story of how as a child of three living in London just before the last war, he sat in his pedal car fascinatedly watching a drain cleaner. In those days the man carried various rods and ladles to clean the street drains. As Tony watched him probing the damp mud and bringing up money and other objects washed there by the rain, an enormous feeling of revelation came over him. He was going to be a drain cleaner when he grew up. Tony feels the drain symbolised his desire to probe into the unknown area of the mind – the unconscious – for what treasures might be found.
TONY
Any help appreciated. I dream almost every night.
Was in a slightly muddy backyard prob late afternoon to dusk timing. Snakes were all on the ground. I feel as if I was carrying something with me at first, either a weapon or an animal to help me with the snakes. But as I walked on the grounds I noticed the snakes were all dead. Probably at least a few hundred to thousand snakes. I was almost tiptoing using some sort of stick or crutch or something to help me not have to squish my feet on dead bodies of snakes. Noticed the ground was slightly muddy. It occurred to me there could still be more snakes in holes in the grounds. At one point my left foot started to sink a bit more in the mud than I was comfortable with and so I started to leave. I came across one bigger hole though and saw an octopus and a snake in it. The snake was a vibrant color but couldn’t hang on to what color for sure. Struck me as a more deadly snake so I started to leave. The octopus started to come out of the hole. It was magenta or purple ish hue.
I have had a previous dream with snakes on the floor in my bedroom. They were eating other small snakes. And worms also.
Aware of water relating to emotion. Octopus with 8 legs. Snakes being related to sexual things or shedding old habits. But not 100% on interpretation.
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
Elisa – Snakes in dreams represent your life force, which if you are scared of allowing it becomes anxiety or even sickness. For whenever we dream its images are not like real life, because a dream is nothing like outer life where things could hurt you, but is an image like on a cinema screen that even if a gun is pointed at you and fired it can do no damage – except if you run in fear; so all the things that scare you are simply your own fears projected onto the screen of your sleeping mind.
Example: Last night I dreamt I was outdoors walking through open ground, maybe at times gardens. I was with others – not sure who, and we frequently came across large snakes which we reacted to as if they were venomous. Then I came across a lot of them and they swarmed onto me. I froze, terrified that if I made a move I would be fatally bitten. But they just swarmed over my body and got under my clothes without harming me. Gradually I relaxed and slowly began to move about with the snakes still on me. They started to feel like a built in defence system which would attack anyone who was aggressive to me. At one point several large and aggressive dogs walked past me. They turned as if thinking about attacking, then appeared to sense the snakes and ran off cowed. As time passed the snakes felt like part of my body.
Of course the dreamer was right, they are part of your body, for a part of your brain is called ‘The Reptilain Brain’. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/brain-levels-and-dreams/
will you please interpret this dream of mine I had recently : I dreamt my boyfriend being chased by a mob accusing him of rape, he was covered in mud and as I got close to him comforting him were he stood with his friend, I placed my arms around him . Just at that moment he cried .