Sea Ocean
Life began in the sea, at the depths. Our blood is salt in the same degree as the ancient sea, and thus we have an inner sea. In your dreams it represents the universal and fundamental processes of life in you.
Awareness of these processes are not easily accessible to your conscious mind, but are nevertheless constantly influencing you and what you do. When you do at times have some consciousness of this level of yourself, it is often experienced as a huge ocean of mind, the collective unconscious as Jung called it. It feels like nature’s memory, where all experience is stored. So in your dreams about the sea, you may be accessing some aspect of this immensity, stretching from today to the primeval depths of your existence.
Most of the activities that underlie our physical and mental life are beyond our awareness. For an immensely important period of development your being existed in a pre-conscious, pre-verbal state as it grew from the single cells of sperm and ovum to the foetus and new born child. But even after birth there was a timeless period before speech and self-awareness were achieved. Therefore a great deal of your experience and drives lie outside of, or underneath, the clear conceptualisations gained with speech, and your sense of self. Occasionally something – an ache in the chest, a strange emotion that unsettles you – may emerge into consciousness, then disappear. See Wild Side
The sea, with its surface and hidden depths, lends itself to depicting this human experience of known and unknown regarding yourself. The enormity of the sea is also a visible image of the enormity of your own inner world – much of it unknown and lying in pre-birth or pre-speech – and also the relationship you have with the processes underlying your existence, that you exist by yet know so little about. The sea holds vast treasures, curiosities, and your history. Not simply because life emerged from the sea, or your blood is as salt as the ancient sea, but because so many ships and shorelines are now beneath the waves. Sometimes these can be recovered, and this too is an image reflecting your relationship with your own deeps.
Therefore the sea may depict a strange environment in which you might have no skill in surviving; something new or strange that confronts you; the boundary between unconscious and conscious; the processes and the origins of your life; the wisdom, still unverbalised because locked in process rather than insight, of your existence; source of the huge life drives, such as that urging you toward independence, mating and parenthood; a symbol of infinite energy, potential or consciousness, in which human existence is only a tiny part; The waves of experience we face in life, some acceptable, some threatening.
Although some writers say the sea may represent one’s mother, and the situation one meets in becoming independent of her, it is probably better to think of the sea representing the state of being and awareness we emerged from in our mother’s womb. That is, a non striving, non demanding existence in which our needs were usually met without a personal struggle or without any defined sense of self. Therefore a sinking into the sea could be seen as a sinking back into this loss of personality or personal striving and independence. A struggle to survive could be partly a difficulty with existing by one’s personal effort and work – the difficulty of ‘keeping one’s head above water’ in life and being independent. See Individuation
Going under the sea: Remember we were conceived and grew in the waters of our mother’s womb, and amount of salt in our blood is the same as that in the ancient sea at the time life began as single celled creatures. So, it suggests bringing internal contents to consciousness; remembering the womb experience; letting our ego surrender a little; looking at death.
Also it shows that we, our conscious self, has entered more deeply into the enormous depths of our consciousness; we have literally dipped below the level of our conscious self. See My Body is a Moving Sea
If there is a sense of hugeness or depth: Going beyond the boundaries of experience usually set up by our conscious self or ego. See Our Reaction to meeting the Huge that we Are
Learning to swim: Learning to survive in a new environment, such as happens when we emerge from childhood into adult sexual drives, or the school or work environment. At such times anxiety or uncertainty may threaten to engulf us just as it does when we learn to swim. Dealing with life needs us to be able to meet such feelings without turning back. See: swimming.
Rescued from the sea: See: air sea rescue.
Sea shore: This is similar to beach if you are on the shoreline, the border between everyday life and your unconscious sources of motivation energy and life. But if you are looking at the beach from a distance, it could suggest a different way of life, somewhere you haven’t reached yet, or are leaving behind. So it could depict change or somewhere you are trying to get to or reach.
Example: I dreamt I am standing on a steep hillside that slopes into the sea. I look across the sea, and the air is so clear I can see the far coast twenty miles away with amazing clarity. In fact, it is so clear it seems to me I can see every detail of a rocky cove across the water. The clarity amazes me and it seems the cove is only a few hundred yards away. It stands out with all its many colours. I find it so impressive I want to run back to get my camera. I hesitate from doing this though because I wonder if the scene will disappear.
I explored this dream many times but I could not get a clear insight into what the beach arose from in my experience. Then, with the help of a friend, I reached it. When I came to exploring the beach again, at first it seemed as subtle and unreachable as ever. Then I began to define what I was as the beach – a meeting place for water, earth, air and sun – earth, air, fire and water. But the beach is not any one of them. It changes with the seasons and with the action of storms, of erosion and temperature. It isn’t the air, or the sea or the earth. It changes yet stays the same – the beach. Suddenly I felt this in myself, saying, “I am not anything. I change yet am unchanged. I am all things but nothing.” This gave me a very powerful sense of my own eternal spirit underlying all the changes of my body and personality. Robert.
The shore/beach can therefore also depict the spirit that underlies all things. This is because if you were to say what a beach is, you could not say the sea was the beach, or the sky, or the land. None of them separately is the beach. The beach is the indefinable amalgam of them all. In just that way the spirit is the indefinable everything that underlies the particulars of life.
Tide: Rising and falling of feelings such as love, pleasure or sexuality; may refer to ageing when going out; tide in our affairs. See: beach; fish; water.
Tidal wave: Any release of emotional or sexual energy. The reason this image is used is that when we feel enormous release of emotions such as might happen when we fall in love, have a baby, or are publicly condemned, our ego often feels carried along by the experience rather than in control.
But huge waves cause many people enormous fear or terror. Often this is because of a past experience such as attack or rape. But dreams are not simply replays of the awful emotions, but are ways you can meet and transform them into healing. See Tsunami; Life’s Little Secrets; Secrets of Power Dreaming; Summing Up
We may have learned how to ride such waves as surfers do. This requires confidence, daring and balance. If we can do it we can open ourselves to much greater range of feeling or change than if we felt threatened. Even happiness may be repressed due to feeling threatened. Anxiety or depression is one of these enormous waves that may threaten to engulf us, and so is one of the human conditions the tidal wave represents. Yet if we face it and meet it can be an enormously transformative influence. See Yoga in Dreaming.
As a tsunami it is saying that some tremendous change has happened deep in you and in the world. Tsunamis are caused by earthquakes on the sea bed, or massive earh changes. So many people are dreaming about them at the moment because of the enormous change going on around us and within us. So learn to face them without fear and be ready to meet change in your life and in your family.
Example: I could see in the distance a Tsunami coming towards us. I found Collette to tell her, and we went to see if we could find a way out for everyone. At the back of the building there was an open area that had an opening with big rocks like a gully, Collette and I agreed it was a way out. Collette went to get the others but as she did my arm went over the boundary and my hand felt water and I knew it was too late. I went to tell Collette. I felt fear and acceptance that there was nothing I could do.
Working on this dream with Tony who invited me to be the Tsunami, which I did.
As the Tsunami I felt expansions in myself wider higher boundless, full of charged energy. Staying with what I was sensing I felt my attention was drawn to something pushing from behind me. I followed that sensation of what was pushing me and it went down my body and continued to go down deep into the earth like a root. As this continued the image came to mind of being in an umbilical cord. I was it and in it and I felt sick between my throat and belly.
Staying with what was happening I felt a black tar like substance, it felt like it lined part if the inside of the cord and it was thick and dense. I felt it was something I had been dealing with all my life and it felt like it came from my mother, but as I became aware of that thought I knew that it went a long way back, ancestral or beyond. I felt emotional, staying with the image the dense heavy blackness, something started to move in my belly, a bubble type ball of energy came out from the blackness into my hands and it felt like I was like a baby inside.
Holding the energy bringing it out up my body, then it was taken back in through my mouth, like eating my own tail, a complete circle moving slowing down my body transforming the blackness as it went.
I became the Tsunami again and it I saw that it was like an LSD trip, levels of attachments of what you identify with; like being in a room but you are not a room. Having things in the room, but they are not you having emotional attachment to them, but you are not those emotions and it washed away what we/I am attached to, letting go of stories of my self, because I am not the story, but have lived through it. I am the energy of the Tsunami, the energy of everything. As I made my way home I felt very much in the moment, with waves of people of all colours, cultures, shapes and sizes. On the bus the conversations, behaviours I noticed, I could see myself in it all buildings cars traffic lights all connected.
Waves: Impulses, feelings and emotions, such as sexuality, anxiety, anger. Waves can also indicate an impulse such as life in one that has its beginnings from a mysterious source.
Example: ‘My husband, and I were standing looking at the sea’s surface. It was just falling night. I saw a mass of dark shapes, thought it would be a school of fish. Then we were looking at water birds, maybe ducks, again dark shapes as the light had almost gone. Then there was a hole in the sea, like a belly button, I was wondering what it was, how was it being made, was there something under the water? Something very big was coming up to the surface very close to me. It shot me to wake.’ Ginny Q.
Ginny and her husband had been exploring the content of their dreams. The image of the sea shows Ginny sensing there are enormous depths to her own being, and something big – a previously unconscious complex of insights and feelings – is becoming conscious.
Example: ‘A small speed boat was at sea. But the sea dissolved anybody who fell in. One man fell in but held himself together as a blob of water and jumped back to the speedboat. I remember the words ‘The sea is a great solvent’.’ Tim P.
Tim is aware of his unconscious sense of being a part of the huge ocean of life or energy. In it one might lose sense of identity. In the end, identity is ‘held together’ by one’s own belief in oneself.
Example: ‘I am either standing at the edge of the sea or near, when suddenly enormous tidal waves appear in the distance and are coming closer. I know they will engulf me, I turn and run away. Sometimes they do overtake me, other times I wake up.’ Mrs A. V.
We can run from pleasure and wider insight, just as much as from pain or fear.
On the first night I slept with my present wife when she fell asleep I noticed she struggled with her breathing. While she was still asleep I spoke to her suggesting she would relax and allow her breathing to be easy. Within moments she responded. This encouraged me and I suggested her whole body would relax, and the barriers within her dissolve, allowing healing and well-being to be experienced. Within ten minutes she suddenly awoke and told me a dream.
She was at the rear of a house sunbathing with her family, feeling very relaxed and happy. As she sank into the enjoyment waves, like a tidal waves began to roll up her body. The pleasure was so intense she couldn’t take any more and woke up.
Idioms: All at sea; plenty more fish in the sea; lost at sea; stranger things happen at sea; between the devil and the deep blue sea.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Does the sea represent the great collective unconscious and all the information we have at hand for the asking?
Is this about potential for creativity?
The emotions felt in in dreams are the real stuff underlying the images, what do they portray?
See Quick way to understand dreams – Life’s Little Secrets – Street Wisdom – People’s Experience of LifeStream
Comments
I dreamed I was walking on shore in the shallow of the oceanalong with my son and husband and as we were walking we were surrended by huge Dolphins or whales I don’t remember exactly what they were. They were gray and big . Can you tell me what this dream means?
Millie – This shows how Life is reaching out to you and you family, like great blessing.
It also says that you have opened yourself to the wonderful and mysterious forces that give us life and inspiration. Keep the dream in mind and meditate on it.
Tony
I have had several health issues and now have a terminal lung disease that the only cure is transplant. I had a dream today that involved me flying over the ocean and looking down at the deep areas and then seeing the shallow spots as well. It was a very peaceful feeling. I then came to a long pier that led out to the ocean. When I came to the beginning of the pier I was walking, but as I went further onto it I started to run and by the time I got to the end of the pier I was running full blast and leaped by full force into the ocean. I sunk deep into the ocean but then I started to swim up to the surface. That was such a peaceful and emotional feeling of happiness and love. I then started to fear the unknown of the seas on my way up. Then as I was almost to the top ( I can see the sun rays and almost break the surface), then I woke up. Once I sat and thought about the dream I became very emotional and started to cry. The feelings were of happiness like 100 wonderful Christmas’ all rolled into one. I believe that this was a positive experience but I don’t want to read too much into it. Can you help me?
BJ – This truly a blessed dream. I believe it was given to you because you are facing death more fully than many others.
It shows you looking at the deep and the shallows of your life – your inner life. See http://dreamhawk.com/inner-life/inner-world/
This overview of your life then goes even deeper into you, into levels of yourself you had not been before. It shows you life after death in your swim under the sea. For the sea is the great ocean of consciousness, and under it is what we are usually unaware of. You felt it deeply because it is a wonderful thing to experience. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/death/
As you get nearer the surface, which is the surface of your awareness – your everyday waking life – you begin to fear the enormity of the experience. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/what-we-need-to-remember-about-us-3/#Reaction
So you are blessed to have had such a dream. Please go even deeper into the dream by using http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/practical-techniques-for-understanding-your-dreams/
Tony
Hi Tony,
I had dream of sea where I jumped suddenly but i feared of sinking. As I was struggling to swim with fear, i came to know that I’m actually floating without effort. I became relaxed. I’m daily meditating. Can you please explain what it is?
i dreamed last night that i was walking along the sea. the water was clear and calm and i was so amazed to it’s beautiful view. it was low tide and there is a bridge in the middle of the sea. i walked to the bridge when the water started to rise. i felt afraid so i run as fast as i can. i went to another place, it was in a mountain.. it has also beautiful view, the wind was fresh and it’s peaceful. please reply, i am really puzzled what it means.
Hello,
I’m glad I found your website. I dreamed that I was standing on a concrete pavement on the shoreline looking at many long, green leaves floating on the ocean water. The water is very calm. There were many people around. Some we’re guarding the leaves in the water. I watched them while they wade along the green leaves away from me and realize that I am holding a handful of those green leaves as I watch them disappear in the vast ocean.
I have been meditating a lot more now and I have been asking to meet with all my angels and spirit guides. Could this dream be them?
Last night I dreamt of me swimming at the top of the water. I was happy and with someone I couldn’t see clearly in my dream. I was skimming the ocean floor, and I saw all sorts of corals and fish. I don’t know what this represents. I’ve been struggling ally lately physically and mentally.. I’ve been also having some really bad nightmares but this dream really stood out to me because of how vivid it was.
I always dream of the ocean coming towards me and I am scared something will happen like last night I dreamt of the ocean coming and it seemed life was coming to an end I started praying to God one of my relative said to me do I think if I pray God will help me and I carried on praying and after that was calm
If you can please interprete the dream for me because I dream of the ocean mostly these days
Pamella – The Ocean is an expression of your deepest self. It is life which is the force that keeps you alive.
Of course the Ocean of Life is enormous and very deep, so when it comes to you and shows itself in dreams one tends to fear what it will do to you. You fear it because you hold onto the idea that you are separate and alone. A completely false idea, for you are constantly kept alive by Life beating your heart, digesting your food, healing wounds and all the other things it does. But we are taught that the process of life is almost a mechanical thing, despite the fact it created you – your mother didn’t create you, she was just a vehicle that Life formed a baby in and through. Life is not a mindless thing.
Your praying to God was a way to stop you feeling afraid. Of course you will die if you let Life continue to grow you. You died to the baby when you became a youth. You died as the youth when you entered adolescence. Dreams show such major changes as death. So the ocean is trying to grow you into a more mature person, who is no longer afraid of Life.
Tony
My dream start a beautiful day at a ship, many families and friends, all of the sudden funnels were created in the ocean and people and boats drain down, I was able to be safe and start helping others; including my daughter, my husband, my decease father, my decease grandfather my mother and many more friends. I couldn’t safe my father and my grandfather and for some time during the dream I thought that my mother was also dead. I saw many people being swallow by the ocean. I still feel really scary and sad when I remember the dream. During the dream the sky was blue and sunny and the ocean were blue and beautiful. Never dark or ugly, but the feelings were that I didn’t have any control of the outcome.
Hermas – We are all in the middle of being in control and having no control. Even the control we have is limited. You were faced by a view and experience of death – going down the plughole. A good old view that we are all going down the plug hole of death.
But you did have some control because you saved your family from being swallowed by the ocean – another image of death, but one with a lot of meaning. For in dreams being swallowed by the ocean doesn’t mean death in the sense of the end of existence. For in the inner world of dreams the ocean is the source of life and when we go under it shows an entrance into the unconscious world we are in when we sleep.
That is why the ocean and sky were blue and beautiful. So you dream is a mixture of you ideas of death being the end, and also realisation that what seemed so awful was actually an entrance into the beautiful. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/questions/#TalkingDead
Tony
I’ve had a lot of dreams lately,
been asking for them.
some of them i KNOW mean something, but… i’m clueless.
just to be sure i know what i’m doing, i’ll ask you if you will give me an interpretation here.
Dear Tony,
Below is a description of a very vivid dream I had some four months ago. I wonder what it might mean. Could you help, please?
I was in a beach and somehow I new it was in Tel Aviv. It must have been the end of day because the air had that orangey colour of the setting sun. The sea was quiet. I went in the water standing on a board – could have been a long surf boar, a windsurf board or a paddle surf board. I see a pair of metallic burgundy whales in the distance, swimming left to right, given my position, in an almost parallel line to the shore. Next, I see a pair of metallic burgundy dolphins, swimming side by side, diagonally towards the shore, from my right to my left, with the colours of the Union Jack as their skin colours from the neck to the dorsal fin. All this I saw on my way out to sea. A dolphin, I do not know if any of the pair above mentioned, pushes me from the stern towards a killer whale, now in the direction of the shore, which I never lost sight of. The push did not feel intentional and neither was strong otherwise I probably would have lost my balance and fall backwards. This killer whale is all black, missing the characteristic white spots and is placed in a perpendicular position to myself (I am sailing towards the shore and the killer whale is parallel to the shore). I sail helpless towards the killer whale in the direction of its head which is dead ahead of me; the rest of the whale’s body is to the left of my field of vision, half-submerged. The killer whale has its mouth open, so I can see the characteristic set of teeth of the species. As I approach the whale, it opens its mouth further and I can sail between its jaws, the lower one being under water, unharmed.
I had a dream that involved me flirting with young men at the beach. I then had sex with one of them and proceeded to swim in the sea. I then realised that the man i had sex with was after me and was trying to kill everyone else in the sea in an attempt to find me. I was trying to hide while swimming around. I cannot remember what happened to me but I somehow remember the image of snakes on the rocks near the sea.
dear tony,
i had a dreamed of a water rising and while it gradually raising i also struggling to climb at the cliff not to reach the water kept on rising. and when i reached on top of the first hill, i saw the water kept on rising until it reached on top of the hill where i stand so i started to climb again another cliff of a hill just to get away the water rising. and to my amazed at last, i reached on the second hill (much higher than the first one hill) and the water just reached level on the lid of the second hill. it was then, i saw my families who also there who did the same struggling as i did, and the one i remember n my dreams that i keep on looking my nephew who was 1yr & 8mos old. i don’t know what it means so please enlighten my mind on these. thank you, mitzi
I’ve been going through a difficult period recently and, unusually for me, I’ve been struggling to remember dreams in much detail if at all. However, as of late I often feel quite depressed upon waking up as if I’ve experienced an unpleasant dream, even if I remember nothing. I didn’t remember this particular dream until hours after waking up the next day, but a couple of nights ago I dreamt that I was on a beach, walking towards a receding sea at evening time. I don’t remember a beautiful sunset, just that it was dim and dull though not dark enough for it to be night-time. The sea eventually receded past a building with red lettering on the sign of the shop front (if it was a shop, it sort of looked like one), although I can’t remember what the lettering read. All the while, I was walking with someone else – I don’t remember who, I just know it was a male and someone I felt I knew, but a friend rather than a lover. This is all I could remember but it struck me as somehow significant.
Mel – Your dream has the mark of a low level depressive feeling. Depression is like a lump of gunk on a projector lens; the picture projected on the screen has big dark area where the gunk was. The darkness you feel in caused by a lump of feeling you need to get rid of.
Maybe you can dislodge the lump of gunk by dancing and shouting and making a hell of a noise.
Tony
Dear Tony,
I am here to seek explanation to a dream I had yesterday, which involves sea. I and some others are at beach and i jump into sea, only way too far and am scared the waves will wash me off, but luckily no waves came and i safely got to a fence. i was relieved and then i again do the same thing, to be lucky this time as well, but this time i had not gone that too far like the first one. what i see next is me floating on water and i don’t think am doing something extraordinary, i was going about it like our normal daily activities and nothing extraordinary.. rest i cant remember. can u help interpret?
Priya – The seas is like the great unseen, the great force of life that mostly we are not aware of. This mystery is what most religions are about. This force is best described as follows:
In life and sleep we have two powerful actions working in us. The first is our waking experience based on having a body, its limitations, vulnerabilities and a particular gender. Our second is the power that gave us life and continues to express as dreams.
While we sleep our conscious self is largely or totally unconscious, and while we sleep our voluntary muscles are paralysed – so another will or motivating force moves our body. So we have a Conscious Will, and what I will call a Life Will. The first one we have experience of as we can move our arm or speak; but the second will takes over when we sleep.
This Life will can move us to speak, to move our body, and in fact do things that we cannot do with our Conscious Will. As Freud pointed out this inner will has full access to our memories. It can do so many other things that are described elsewhere – See ESP in Dreams; Edgar Cayce.
This Life Will or motivator has been active for millions of years and we see it working all the time in animals. We are partly split in half because we are often opposed to what our Life Will in us wants. So the only way to express what is good for us is in dreams when our conscious will is largely passive.
Life Will created your body and pre-existed you as a person you know today. It was working in you prior to your ability to speak or know in the way you do now. But of course it has fantastic wisdom and skills, as can be seen in animals.
Life, if you look around you at Life’s creatures, can take any form. So Life itself is without form. In fact the recent advances in quantum physics suggest that what gives us existence is beyond space and time – beyond understanding.
You jump into the sea and it is frightening, as it usually is when we open to this great force. And because you do not panic the sea is not dangerous and so eventually you float. This means that you are learning to trust the forces of Life and you will slowly learn from them and go deeper into the mystery. See http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/lifes-little-secrets/ and http://dreamhawk.com/body-and-mind/peoples-experiences-of-lifestream/
Tony
Dear Tony, Thanks for the reply. I have been trying to meditate and has been reading a lot of spiritual books of late. Perhaps, this was what the dream was referring to. I again dreamt of sea yesterday. This time, I dont jump into sea, but walks on a pavement near the shore and as i walk and reach an entrance of some sort, an invisible force “bundles” me up gently and carries me away. I am again frightened that I will not be able to see any of my loved ones again and start chanting the name of God believing that will help me. Then I open my eyes.
Priya – You are progressing in your spiritual journey, and have an opportunity to go further – the entrance.
The invisible force is the action of the highest upon you. Of course you feel frightened because it is a new experience. But if you persist you will go much further. In opening yourself to God’s influence you are led and moved in strange ways, and if you actually trust then you will grow and learn.
But as that happens it will be that nothing will be taken away from you but so much will be added. So your love for others will never be taken away. God is love. So you do not need to chant the name of God when you are being moved, because that is interfering and a way you are dealing with fear.
Tony
Really appreciate the reply, Tony. I do not know how to get rid of that fear. Please also see a post I had put in under “flying.” thanks once again.
Regards – Priya
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