Ogre

Feelings developed in relationship with ones father or mother; lack of sympathy or understanding; being inconsiderate; feelings about authority. A criticizing, reprimanding and ignoring parent or person – is it a picture of you? In fact is there a situation or event in your life in your life that was felt as overwhelming, even terrifying?  The ogre can also show how you feel about people in authority, your boss?

Ogres can represent a destructive, oppressive force that threatens to devour individuality. They often appear in dreams in relation to discipline problems. They may concern father-child relationships or may be about self-discipline issues. Dreaming of slaying an ogre can be about getting rid of a hated father.

 Example: If we learned to solve our problems in our lucid dreams by magically changing things we don’t like, we might mistakenly hope to do the same in our waking lives. For example, I once had a lucid dream about a frightening ogre, whom I confronted by projecting feelings of love and acceptance, leading to a pleasurable, peaceful, and empowering resolution in my dream. Suppose I had chosen to turn my adversary into a toad, and get rid of him that way. How would that help me if I were to find myself in conflict with my boss or another authority figure whom I might see as an ogre, in spite of my being awake? Turning him into a toad would hardly be practical! However, a change in attitude might indeed resolve the situation.  Quoted from Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by LaBerge & H. Rheingold.

However, I see it as a better solution to actually understand the roots of the dream or become the ogre, for the image is simply a cover for the real feelings you are trying to flee from. Here is a much better way that enables the dreamer to realise his own human feelings and deal with them.

 Example: I thought about the dream that I had about L., the dream was that L. had a very red face when she told me that she was pregnant. But I didn’t think that I could have made her pregnant and I told her so. She then changed her mind and said, ‘OK then I’m not pregnant’.

In working on the dream I imagined becoming L. I entered into her pregnant body and felt her sexuality and understood the dream. She had offered herself to me, her sexuality and her body but I didn’t recognise it, I couldn’t see it and so she withdrew. L. wants another child and she had offered herself to me but I couldn’t give myself to her. I have never given myself before. In the dream I felt I was not responsible for her pregnancy which represents the denial of my own sexuality and of all that results from it.

This is when I entered into the house of God. At first I saw the image of a huge cathedral or church with a magnificent domed roof and I knew that I was in the house of God. I felt the utopia, I felt like I have never felt before, so very good, so excellent. I knew all things. I didn’t have to read the bible or any kind of teachings because the answers are all here in the presence of God. In this state I could ask any question and know the answer. I knew God, yet I was God because there was no separation. Neal

Useful Questions and Hints:

Did I run in fear or cower when facing the ogre?

When have I faced such feelings in my actual life?

If I faced the ogre and defeated him what was the result for me?

See Being the Person or Thing – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Summing Up