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
Had a very strange dream last night. Was at sea on a small boat with my husband and 2 infant babies and suddenly the boat tipped and the babies fell into the deep water and drowned, we tried to save them but it was too late…later on, we were clinging onto a rope that was hovering over the sea waiting to be rescued but I felt so calm and at peace…
Kakriko – Your dream suggests that something you experienced upset you lives for a while. It could either have been slightly life threatening or at least a brush with the unconscious. The incident also led either to a miscarriage or mean that the babies where not in a condition to be healthy.
Another possibility is that plans you had or have for projects where upset and were lost due to unplanned events.
The peace you felt was because in the dream state you could see the wisdom of it.
Tony
I had a dream in which I was traveling in a train on a bridge above the biggest sea with smile on my face what does it means plzz give rply here or on my email I’d Amit889868@gmail.com
Mit – Traveling in a train suggests the direction or events you are involved in with others, a train of events’ in fact. Also the aspect of your journey through life that has connections with other people and has a predetermined end unless you change trains.
The huge ocean is your inner life, the huge force of Life which you are travelling with. You are smiling because you are at peace with life and the journey promises happiness and good fortune. See http://dreamhawk.com/inner-life/inner-world/ and http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/questions-2/#Summing
Tony
HELP… I woke up after the dream with a huge pressure in my chest and my face was wet crying in sleep.
I dreamt that my sister, who never surfed, we were at the beach, lots of people and she was far away but I knew everyone screamed when she took a yellow surfboard with a life jacket on and jumped in. Helicopters were following her. I saw how they reported, I saw her from close, in my mind, in the HUGE tidal waves who were coming all very close together, that she had disappeared and they cant find her. Im crying now just thinking of it. I woke up and went to sleep again, and she did the same thing, only this time I was inside a building on a beach and I saw on TV that she took 7 life vests and still fell with the surfboard and broke her neck and her head fell away. And that an orca (in the dream the species was called Oscar) pushed her away ay sea and took her underwater and ate her. I think I screamed in my sleep.
We dont know any Oscar. I just felt in the dream that she wore something from an ex-boyfriend whom she loved very much and suffered a lot. I remember seeing a close-up in y dream, when she fell from up top the tidal wave, her head broke off but a ring on her finger stayed on. I cant stop crying, what is this???
Diana – It seems that you are having rough time with your emotions and responses to your life. I say this because nearly always when people dream about someone they know they automatically believe the dream is about that person. But when we think of our friend or partner our thoughts are not them – just our thoughts and feelings about them. So your sister is not in danger, but are showing how the vulnerable and loved part of you is doing daring things and getting incredibly anxious and emotional.
Also 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. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/questions-2/#Summing
So the orca/oscar are ways your dream is telling you a very important message. You, the vulnerable daring part of you, is showing you that you are in fact meeting important and life changing inner and outer events that if understood can radically change your life for the better. The orca/oscar is both the threat of death and the opportunity to win an Oscar, a reward for excellence.
We are the hero/ine of our own life. We brave great dangers, face monsters, pass through difficult initiations. Fundamental to the whole drama of the hero/ine is the evolution of our own identity from the depths of unconsciousness in the physical process of conception, through to developing self awareness as an adult. From the great ocean of collective culture, language and society we struggle toward the emergence of ourselves as a mature individual. It is such an incredible journey, so heroic, so impossible of achievement, so fraught with dangers and triumphs. It is the greatest story in the world, and each of us live it. Perhaps some of us fall on the way, or get lost in the intricacies and challenges, dangers and pleasures of a certain part of the journey, as stories like the odyssey portray.
The hero/ine is the one who dares even though they feel afraid and in pain, who makes the journey despite being encumbered by the chains and parasitic creatures of childhood trauma, of habitual and instinctive fears, of cultural ignorance. So you, like the heroine of other stories is swallowed by a whale – is threatened with drowning in a massive flood. These stories are not about the world outside you, but are about the wonderful struggles we all face in becoming a full and wonderful human. Like all heroes we face fear and danger, and we can come through. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/myths-legends-and-fairy-tales-in-dreams/ also http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/lifes-little-secrets/ –
Tony
Last night i had a dream about high tide. I was in the beach with other people and everything was fine. But slowing the high tide appears a it starts with small waves and then a bit bigger ones (medium) and it floods the beach. I was´t afraid of the waves but i was surprised. It swallowed us but i felt no fear. I also remember that i had big rocks behind me when i was swallowed by the medium wave.After that, i felt that nothing happened and when i look at the sand i saw and grab a clam or two. What does this dream mean? Thanks!
i dreamed i was in a beach with some family members when the water quickly receded to a vast extent indicative of a forthcoming tsunami. I fled tagging along my elderly mother and eventually found ourselves in a vessel which immediately set to sail. The vessel is full of passengers that the we can actually touch the sea. the dream went on on but I can recall the rest. You thoughts on this please. Thanks.
I was floating in the middle of an ocean or sea on some wooden raft or on some sort of inflatable water bed which was not to big. And all my friends were on the raft as well.
It was like a normal situation for us, we were all like – this is okey. But the water was deep. (I always get that feeling in deep water when I start to think about it, I feel a little uncomfortable because of the unknown, you have no idea what’s underneath).
But for us it was like something we do, something normal. We knew we are okey but I was feeling a little uncomfortable in the water. We were all trying to stay on the raft and not in the water, and as the raft wasn’t big enough we were falling in the sea. So someone would always end up in the sea. Someone would push me of the raft and then I would push someone to get back on it again.
And the water was calm 🙂
Thanks!
hi, i had a dream last night that i found “something” on the sea. I was just near the seashore with the water on my knee level. I looked closely at that something and it turned out to be lots of coins. I can’t distinguish that much if they are silver coins or nickel because it’s under water but they are shining. The weather was sunny and the water on the beach was so clear that’s why I could see them sparkling. I happily picked them up and put it inside a tupperware. I duno why from all of the containers I could use it happened to be a tupperware. All of a sudden, I found that the tupperware has bills. It was like it just appeared all of a sudden. Then, my mother appeared in front of me, too. I closed the lid but before closing it, I estimated that the amount reached 1000 including the bills. What was that all about?
Ewax – The dream is telling you that if you keep open to what you find within you – under the sea – you will begin to live something very precious, something of great value to you. It may not be money as the images suggest, but it will be of value.
Also because a dream is like a seed, it is something that comes from a deep part of you; it is something that is working upwards toward being conscious. As such it often, like a seed, takes time to break through to the surface, and then it has to grow. So often dreams are not recognised for their full meaning until later – sometimes months or even longer.
Tony
Tony,
A couple of nights ago, I had this odd dream: I dreamt of two words “HELVE TIEN”; even though I am portuguese, I somehow was provided with a translation, in english; and the translation was: “Sweet and new testicules” (!!!). And yes, “testicules” was written in French, not like “testicles” if it was english; still in my dream I realised that “HELVE TIEN” actually means “HELVETIEN”, which, as you might guess, means Switzerland. So, I realised, still in my dream, that the definition of Switzerland is Sweet and New Testicules! (I need to add that recently I met this swiss woman that doesn’t leave my thoughts, like she has put a spell on me). Any ideas? thanks
I dream of this before and i dream again last night.
i was working in the sea. in my dream i moved my computer in a dock and plug in somewhere, thinking what will happen if the hightide comes. I even saw my supervisor there.
Tony my sister recently passes following surgery for a brain anyersym she never woke up and was removed from life support
After returning home I had a dream that the ocean reached out and grabbed me into it then put me back on shore. I felt confused and lost as I looked out to the ocean I saw my deceased mother and deceased sister walking peacefully out of the ocean wet and dripping but smiling they looked shimmery and beautiful
Last Night i dreamed that i shifted my house to some high class flat or appartment in between a Sea. I had Top floor of that appartment along with my friend and the view from windows were incrediblely outstanding. I had to take boats whenever i had to travel to City.
What does a Dream like this mean?
Please reply.
I had a dream that I was hanging on to some kind of rubber hose or rope along with my husband and 3 other people. There were 3 ropes but 5 people 2 women and 3 men. I was alone on my rope. They were more like flexible black rubber though. I was alone on mine. The plane was flying like it was rescuing us. We were just hanging out in the open flying through the air over the ocean and land. It was night. At one point over the ocean it was very still and I comment to my husband that it reminded me of the ocean when we were on our first cruise. At other times it’s like we are being whipped through the sky and hanging on for dear life. Another time we are so low and trying to avoid running into vehicles. And then I woke up.
Hi i m 20. I dream a huge huge sea. Wave of sea is so fast that make my leg wet. Sea is scary. That huge. I was gone wid my cousin sister. But in dream i feel like i visit this place before. When i woke up still remember and know that same dream i had before. Dont know when. In dream many people over there. I was like 10-15 yr old. And when wave came we all teens started to run and hold any net or rode which planted over their. I m scared. But hving fun. What does that mean. Ohh yes yesterday in afternoon i dream a lots of blueberry fallen on ground. And lots of its tree over there. I was eating it with my dad. Blueberry had so less fruit. More its seed. Please give me reply.
Priyanka – I am sorry I cannot keep up with answering your dreams in detail – I am five pages behind!!! So please see http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/questions-2/#Summing
Tony
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.
Jorge – It seems to me that you are used to floating on the surface of a huge and unknown part of yourself – the unconscious/sea. Obviously you have seen glimpses of the immensity within you, show as the whales and the dolphins – both symbols of the unconscious becoming known.
But the killer whale is a wonderful indication or what we feel when we face the huge unconscious. We feel that it will swallow us and we will die. It is important to say that when we meet the experience of powerlessness through becoming aware of the hugeness of their Life, which they are usually unaware if, it feels like something alien or attacking, it is a shock. When we begin to meet the Hugeness that we are, we often react to it in our dreams or in waking with fear or panic. So we dream of being attacked by aliens or frightening creatures; or being swallowed by a whale or something huge, or even possessed by evil entities. If we realise that they are things we have created through our own fear we will pass on. But otherwise it will continue to haunt us as something that will get you; or you feel uncertain even lost in facing it! But it is only our small self image, our ego that reacts because it feels powerless, even though in reality the Hugeness is part of our totality. It is the enormous potential you have within you, it is Life you are frightened of or have been ignoring.
So please see http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/entering-the-silence – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/levels-of-awareness-in-waking-and-dreaming/
Tony
Thank you Tony. I believe it important to point out that I did not fell frightened either when dreaming or after waking up. I rushed to a piece o paper and wrote it down. The colors were so vivid (and still are) on those dolphins and the orangey sunset was also beautiful. I wish I would have that dream again …
Jorge – Sorry, I often use pieces and quote from them to save typing them all again, so the piece about being frightened was only partly for you. Many other people read your dream, and as the killer whale is for many people terrifying, I put in some information that there is no need to be frightened.
Tony
I had a dream about 5 months ago really strange. I dreamed that I was on the beach in a hotel and a Strike of white lightning hit the sky. When it hit in the same spot a large white glowing cross appeard. the clouds kind of got grayer and a large dragon came out of the same spot. The ocean waves got really big and the sea started to seperate and you could see the sand the sand in the middle where it seperated. What does this dream mean
Lacy – Your dream is about a very big change going on within you. The glowing cross and the dragon are indicating that you are taking a spiritual path and the dragon is the life force within you that protects and guides you. When the sea separates it means that the difficulties and problems on the path will be removed.
But remember a dream is like a seed, it is something that comes from a deep part of you; it is something that is working upwards toward being conscious. As such it often, like a seed, takes time to break through to the surface, and then it has to grow. So often dreams are not recognised for their full meaning until later – sometimes months or even longer. The dream images are attempts to communicate something that has probably never been thought about or even been consciously thought about, so has never been put into common conscious thinking before. It is a communication from the depths, from beyond thought, and so any interpretations that are given by thinking may completely miss the point. See http://dreamhawk.com/interesting-people/edgar-cayce-and-the-cosmic-mind-superminds/
Tony