into the jaws of a tiger

[artitina]

Hi Mr Crisp!

My name is tina and last night i had a dream about a place where they kept tigers and maybe one or 2 lions.
It was in a cellarlike place with wodden cages. Several cages like in a storage for furnitures and chicken wires covering them. I didn´t see anything but the people working there nothing outside the storage. At some point we had to let the animals back in , but not all of them were locked up properly. So I found myself blocking the door from the inside, we were in the storage with the locked up animals... Tigers kept pushing the door but i had help from a big guy. Later in the dream I was attacked by maybe a lion or a tiger. I was into the jaws of a tiger and it had a grip around my backhead.    I tried to bend away the teeths, i felt how strong it was and knew i couldn´t win and now i don´t remember how it ended....
Maybe you  have some interpretations for me...

Best regards Tina from Sweden.

[Tony Crisp]

Well Tina from Sweden, it is good to hear from you. But there are some things I want to explain about dreams.

In dreams you cannot control everything, but you can realise there is no harm for you and others if you give the dream characters and animals freedom. There is nothing in any dream that can hurt you, unless you run away from something. Running away is leaving yourself open to being a victim of whatever frightens you.

Every image and person in your dreams is an expression of your own life process. As such it is alive and intelligent and is something sent to help you. A dream is like a projection from a movie projector, except that you are the projector. Everything you see as outside you is coming from you, your emotions, your fears, your beliefs, your joys and explorations are all you, clothed in the dream images and drama.

So Tina the Lions and Tigers are actually your enormous animal strength, your instinctive nature. Many people are frightened of this enormous strength, its fierceness and directness. That is why you see the animals kept in cages because you haven’t yet found a way of being with them. I believe that we have to find a similar strength to meet them – an ego strength. This is a strength that comes from realising that you are more than a body.

But you have some of that strength when you ‘had help from a big guy’. That is your strength to control the massive energy that the animals are. But you need to take it on yourself, take it into you and feel it.

I know this sounds mad, but there is no harm in letting the tiger bite you. All you will feel are emotions, and if you can feel them and feel okay, then you are the master of dreams.

The animals were in the cellar because that represent the unconscious, the place where we keep things shut away from really knowing them. It is okay to let yourself know them. That is what your dream is actually about, the struggle to hold them back. If you watch your feelings you will already know they want to be released.

Tony

[artitina]

Hi Tony!

Many thanks for your reply!
It was very interesting to read and helpful to getting to know my unconscious...
I don´t quite understand the meaning of " ego strenght"..
Because the ego for me is mostly negative and means that you´re driven by your emotions, urges.

I know that we´re more than our flesh and bone but maybe i don´t fully believe it in my heart...
I believe in reincarnation it makes sense, but i guess there are always two sides fighting within you..

Last dream I had a dream whose theme was very familiar to me...somehow I´m lost in a town/building
and trying to get home. I didn´t have any money or warm clothes. So I found a store where they had very old second-hand clothes for free.. Many times I try to hide/rest in the bathroom but there are always people who can see me and use the toilet or the shower while I´m in there- a little weird dream.
And I try to get a place for my self but there is none. I often don´t remember the way home, which train or bus to get, and have no money or very little...I´ve had this kind of a dream
for years-

-have a happy easter!
With best regards Tina. 

[Tony Crisp]

Artitina – Thanks for writing again in a very open way.

Ego strength is a term I use to express something that I had to learn over years. I need to quote some stuff I wrote years ago about it.

What we often tend to forget is that we did not consciously create our ego or personality. Life, through unimaginable ages, gradually brought about our sense of identity and individuality. Yet one hears and reads so much foolishness about killing the ego - breaking down the personality to find enlightenment. ‘Crush the sexual urges, discipline the instincts, deny the passions.’ They say. Yet Life has taken millennia to build these very things. People are like children, they repeat almost anything they hear, even if they do not understand it. And despite the claims to the contrary, most spiritual disciplines of meditation, prayer, yoga, fasting, and surrender, far from crushing the ego, actually are means of strengthening it. After all, what can be more egoistic and self-protective than extreme asceticism? The man or woman who says he or she is denying self by refusing food, shelter, clothing, goods and comfort, is really building a fantastically strong ego: so strong that it can resist the usual evaporation of self into objects, directions, food, and so on. And this contradiction exists in the other disciplines. They sometimes require tremendous effort - or else great perseverance or patience; and this builds strengths into the ego to a degree often not found in the man in the street. It literally takes more ego strength to do these things; certainly it does not demolish the ego.

In the taking of drugs, almost anybody can have a beautiful experience. In fact, the large majority of people on hallucinogens start off with an experience of delightful colours, visions or sense distortions. It is interesting to note that out of these, few can face and redeem their psychological or soul problems, their ‘bad trips’. Those who do are those with a strong ego, which has been to some extent centred or reinforced with either deeply-felt religious belief - self-confidence - or great strength. Even the self-confidence and strength are found to be ultimately based on a contact with Life. If an ego is scattered and lacks strength, it cannot face its own problems, or its own annihilation. Gradually the ego is strengthened through the discipline of surrender and inner birth. It reaches a peak of strength and denial in the wilderness, and delight in transfiguration. Only then it is ready for the work of meeting the hugeness of the unconscious and all the past we confront there. Without this strength there is not enough hold on itself to reach this depth of surrender. One needs to be able to been in command of the ego before you can let go of it. And in all my experience I have found it is not destroyed, but massively enlarged, but without our silly ideas of being important.

The theme of finding our way home is something dreamt by many people who are seeking who they are. They realise very fully that they are lost. And that is a part of really waking up and finding ones own experience of the wonder of who we are. I was in that state for ages – the wilderness. I was writing and teaching but inside I knew that it wasn’t backed by any certainty. Then wave after tremendous waves of experience hit me and now I have a core of certainty. So you are on the journey, just keep on.

Tony