Trap Trapped Trapping

The trap is often made up, or rather was built, from a way of life you lived when you were a baby and child. You were trained to behave in particular ways, to respond as was thought fit, and in a manner dictated by the culture or religious beliefs in which you were raised. And yet as a natural human animal those attitude, behaviours and restrictions may have been completely against your nature. Yet that is the life you have lived since then, and it seems as it is who you are. The only signs of your entrapment are your your body tensions and pains, your mental and emotional agony, your dreams of being trapped,  at times as the natural human animal you are trying to find its way out of, or trying to break out of, the trap.

We are all trapped in old ideas, habits that may have been applicable at one time, but are now detrimental, and are hurts and responses that linger on. These traps are often depicted by prisons, snares, impassable barriers, ropes, threatening people or animals. Finding your way through them is the great adventure of life. Out of this arises your strength, your waking up to who you are, your emergence into real life and identity. See: Snare; Opening to Life.

You are trapped because you cannot break free of old fears, attitudes or relationships. You are held prisoner by beliefs or religious views not conducive to you as a living being.

‘I am trapped in a small brick room with no way out. I shout for someone to help me. Then either a huge bird or creature with arms tries to catch me and I scream myself awake.’ Karen S.

Karen had lived through a divorce, unhappy love affair, and the loss of a baby. In the dream the figure who comes after she has called for help might save her, but her fears make her reject it. (Big birds often appear in dreams and the huge bird in the house means contact with a lesser used ability you have, one of being able to have a wider view of who you are and the world you live in.) Perhaps Karen’s feelings about her carers or partners paint them as monsters. Whatever her past carers or partners may have been like, with such feelings, it is Karen herself who is the prisoner and suffers loneliness or great anxiety. Trapped dreams can also depict feelings we have about work, about lack of opportunity, and so on. It must be remembered that the dream puts into images your feelings about the situation, not the external thing itself. If you are lucky it also suggests ways out of the situation. See: Healing Experience; Stuck in life – unable to move or grow; Dream visualisation; Imprisoned; Cage or cell; Escape; Holding.

 Example: One day as I stood raging at the bars of the prison I had been in for years and I suddenly realised that my years of shouting had availed nothing. The only person who was upset by it was me. I was the victim of my own anger and turmoil. It was as if I had been haunted all my life by ghosts of anger and passion. I dropped the attitudes or ‘ghosts’ and was free of them. Years went by and one by one I recognised and dropped other habits of emotion and thought that had trapped and tortured me. I realised I could be totally free within myself.

Then one morning I woke and sat up on the mattress on the floor that was my bed. The last ghost of inner entrapment fell away. A fountain of joy opened in my body, pouring upwards through me. It was so intense I cried out. My cell mates called a warden because they thought I had gone mad. They stood looking at me as I experienced radiance so strong, I felt as if I must be shining. I was aware my joy poured into them, although they thought I was possibly insane. I could sense the enormous change in me influencing them, and I knew it couldn’t help but change them also. I realised that I might never be released from the prison, but it didn’t matter as I had found a fuller release than simply walking the streets. Even though remaining behind prison bars, I would still be touching people’s lives deeply. Nothing would ever be the same again.

The dream enabled me to experience what it would be like if all the angers, beliefs, justifications, thoughts and emotions that usually possess my life were dropped away. The freedom and bliss were extraordinary. I practised what the dream showed me and my pains dropped away as I learned.