So i had a dream of large toads hopping around in my room. I got so scared of them all i couldn’t even touch one.so i asked my brother to carry them outside and so he did. The large toads then hopped into a khoi fish pond.I was then afraid the toads would eat the fishes and then I woke up feeling so confused and i could remember my dream this clearly.. please help ..

Hi Tony – just wondering whether you can help me with this dream. I dreamt that I was in the garden in Africa where I grew up – but not the original house where I had spent my childhood. I was with one of our old African workers. A very bright yellow toad with big brown eyes (almost false, toy like in its appearance) was jumping around. Because of its colour I assumed it was one of those poisonous toads and I was really worried that it was going to get to the man who was near me and poison him- I thought he would not realise it was dangerous. It did land near him after jumping energetically all over the place. It landed near his hand and he was sitting on the floor and I thought ‘that’s it now.’ The man took something out of the toad’s mouth like a piece of false teeth or something like the toy teeth we used to get in lucky bags. It was covered in some sort of transparent film. I was worries that he had put his hand in the toad’s mouth therefore he would be poisoned. The dream ended. There is such a contrast between the toy element in the dream and the worry about poison. I would appreciate a few thoughts. Many thanks. Liz

-Tony Crisp 2011-12-13 10:32:45

Liz – I have been probing away at your dream, and there are areas of it that are eluding me. But I think I have now found something that makes sense, so if I am not on the right track give me some more feedback – especially about the toy toad and teeth.

You start of in the memories of your childhood experiences, ones that are usually very fixed in you, a give rise to habits of reaction. You were with an African man, a worker, who was also a big part of your experience of childhood. But he represents something that is important to you and you feel may be threatened. To quote from my big dream dictionary – Ultimate – “If you are aware of particular associations, such as having lived in Africa or studied it, then it would probably refer to those associations. In dreams we still use native or tribal Africans to represent our own natural inner life, the feeling urges or intuitions which guide or beset us.”

So I feel it indicates you less guarded feelings, your more felt responses and intuitions, your more immediate responses to your everyday life. And it is this that is threatened by what might be a coloured toy, and poisoned. Yet as an African he must have been aware of the danger having grown up there. So it is your feelings that are in danger of being poisoned – by a toy?

So I feel it is something that you carry in you from the past, from childhood; a very bad experience or memory that is now getting in the way of your relationship with the ‘native’ and natural part of you. Do you have any clues?

Tony

-Tony Crisp 2011-12-13 10:34:13

Liz – I have been probing away at your dream, and there are areas of it that are eluding me. But I think I have now found something that makes sense, so if I am not on the right track give me some more feedback – especially about the toy toad and teeth.

You start of in the memories of your childhood experiences, ones that are usually very fixed in you, a give rise to habits of reaction. You were with an African man, a worker, who was also a big part of your experience of childhood. But he represents something that is important to you and you feel may be threatened. To quote from my big dream dictionary – Ultimate – “If you are aware of particular associations, such as having lived in Africa or studied it, then it would probably refer to those associations. In dreams we still use native or tribal Africans to represent our own natural inner life, the feeling urges or intuitions which guide or beset us.”

So I feel it indicates you less guarded feelings, your more felt responses and intuitions, your more immediate responses to your everyday life. And it is this that is threatened by what might be a coloured toy, and poisoned. Yet as an African he must have been aware of the danger having grown up there. So it is your feelings that are in danger of being poisoned – by a toy?

So I feel it is something that you carry in your from the past, from childhood; a very bad experience or memory that is now getting in the way of your relationship with the ‘native’ and natural part of you. Do you have any clues?

Tony

-Liz Farren 2011-12-16 11:25:46

Thanks Tony for your considered response – much appreciated. I guess, for me, the African man, particularly in this dream has a combination of vulnerability and wisdom and perhaps I am the one who is ‘synthetic’ – and perhaps not mature enough to really take on board that he is truly the wise one – even if vulnerable – and I am not – and yet the ‘real’ I identifying with him desires so much to be natural, wise, unpoisoned. Yes my background was extremely tough and I have had help to get through a lot – at 51 I am still resisting the deepest change from within. I have a deep deep yearning to be that natural self and let all the falsity go – afraid still to do that – but everything in the last year is pointing to that – physical illness, walking away form a poisonous job, seeing old fixed ideas beginning to crumble – it just feels like some sort of change – very difficult to describe but yes I can see from the dream a number of pointers to that. Thanks again. Liz

-Liz Farren 2011-12-16 11:42:42

Hi Tony – many thanks for your response. Yes there were bad experiences growing up and I have had help to work through much of it. The African man does stand for wisdom and a kind of gentle vulnerability and in some sense I was trying to protect him but he didn’t really need protecting. He was the wise man – I, perhaps, rather ‘synthetic’. Much has happened over the past year in particular which is bringing a great deal of change – from physical illness to leaving a rather negative work situation to old fixed notions crumbling to a new sense that life is something other than the way I have always seen it – and I include myself in that and the way I’ve perceived identity etc. It’s all change – so much is falling away – the African man is a beautiful figure of quiet wisdom, gentleness and natural living – far away from the plastic life I simply no longer want. I guess I so desire what he is! Many thanks .Liz