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Author Topic: My dead friend  (Read 7911 times)

Midlander

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My dead friend
« on: February 21, 2012, 04:43:40 PM »
Hi Tony
I wonder whether you can help me with a dream I had a couple of nights ago which was about a very dear friend who died last August.

In my dream, we had all been told Chris was dead but, in fact, he was missing and had been in hospital after an accident in a vehicle. He came to my house and he had a prosthetic hand - which looked rather like a hand on a doll - it was joined to his arm in such a way that there was a join line above his wrist. He explained that he'd been in his car and there had been a crash.......as he explained the incident, it ran like a movie scene; some petrol had spilt on his arm and as the car engine caught fire, his arm was burnt - he quickly removed the petrol soaked clothes and got out of the car.
He then told me that he'd spent the months between last August and now in hospital but had returned to let people know he was still alive.
There was someone else in my living room with us and I as I brought cups of coffee into the room for us, this person (female but I'm not sure who) was sitting in my chair and I told her to move and sit in another chair. We all sat down and began to chat and drink our coffee.

Apart from expressing a wish that Chris weren't dead; there seem to be some strong images in there and I'd value your thoughts and insights.

The day before, I dreamt I had a little, sick lizard and I had entrusted some people to its care and they told me it was dead but when I looked in its box, it was alive and I became angry with them and took it away and nurtured it. The little lizard licked my face (like a little dog) gratefully and affectionately. It felt as though this was something to do with a part of myself needing nurture and I wonder whether I then dreamt about Chris because of his significance and loss...

Thanks in anticipation!!

Midlander

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Re: My dead friend
« Reply #1 on: February 21, 2012, 06:44:56 PM »
I forgot to say it was his left hand - may be significant!

Tony Crisp

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Re: My dead friend
« Reply #2 on: February 22, 2012, 02:06:48 PM »
Hi Midlander – I think this dream, to be understood properly, needs a bit of explanation. I have come across a few like this recently and it helps to understand how dreams form their imagery. So it can help if you realise that just as your eyes do not directly allow you to see, but nerve impulses are sent to the brain where they are translated into living pictures, so also thoughts are also translated into images as in our dreams. Nothing we sense in the world is directly known, but it is all impressions that are translated into a sense of smell, sight, hearing, etc. So the eye receives reflected light from an object, which is translated into nervous impulses, which is then received by the brain which translates what are formless nerve impulses into what we feel we see. So with dreams of the dead we are picking their thoughts and these use our own imagery in an attempt to give us an idea of the communication.

And of course dreams reflect our beliefs and convictions in such imagery. So I see your dream as a mixture of what you believe or are convinced about, and what may be an actual communication with him, in its imagery.

So my feelings about it are that the car crash was his sense of his death. And it wasn’t a ‘death’ but a loss of his body, which for someone who identified with his body, must have been a bad shock. As I say in the section (http://dreamhawk.com/interesting-people/rudolph-steiners-philosophy-of-life-and-death/) “However, we have built into our soul nature, many longings and desires that can only be fulfilled through the body, which are out of harmony with the spirit. There is thus experienced a period of burning desires; as these longings consume themselves in their own fire;” which might explain his burnign episode; especially if we take in the translation of imager mentioned above.

Another interesting thing is his statement that he had been in hospital and had returned only now to let people know he was still alive. Many people cannot relate to a world without a physical body, and so because of the burning, which he probably experienced in what is his dream world, felt he had only just come out of it. You could perhaps explain to him and say he doesn't need a prosthetic hand, as his is still there.

The left hand is often the support for the action of the right hand – so its loss could mean his loss of body. Literally it was no longer his body. I am not sure what the other woman represents, but it could be an aspect of you that was not acknowledged – just a guess.

The lovely and loving lizard is almost certainly a deeply instinctive part of your nature.
See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/brain-levels-and-dreams/#reptilebrain As such it underlies all of your conscious actions and it is a very necessary part of your life. Without it we would not exist.

Tony

Midlander

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Re: My dead friend
« Reply #3 on: February 22, 2012, 04:36:55 PM »
Thank you so much Tony - that's really helpful. I want to ponder it; let it sink in and then, perhaps I may come back and respond and if necessary, ask further questions?


Midlander

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Re: My dead friend
« Reply #4 on: February 23, 2012, 09:43:26 PM »
Back after some reflection!
I thought that was what the lizard was about; I looked on your dictionary but thought it worth asking because sometimes you see things differently when they're in context. I think my 'lizard' is anxious about my basic needs being met if I change direction with my career and I need to listen to that!

With regard to Chris, it's really interesting; it's quite hard to see him as feeling lost or unsure in the other world and that's because he was such a guide to me and so many others in this world. He was sure of life after death and whilst he loved life so very much and lived it to the full (particularly after his cancer diagnosis) he didn't make death the enemy; I remember him saying he was determined not to do that but rather to live life in quality and not count length of days as what was significant. I think that, perhaps, I want to preserve him as that strong figure, even though I really know he could be vulnerable like all the rest of us! He died young - way too young - and what you say about his loss of his body, I can understand because he was someone who really did enjoy life and live it to the full and would have done so much more, had he not died too soon.

I have often said similar things about perceiving and communicating with those in different dimensions - that our brain has to interpret this into a format that our senses can understand but I've always thought of it from our dimension; that it's us who have to become accustomed to relating to the person who no longer has a physical body. I suppose my sense of death being the final healing and purifying, leads me to hope that the journey, the transition is easy - but what you're saying makes me ponder about the necessity to adjust; the retaining of an earthly sense of identity and the rehabilitation of the spirit to that life without a body. I wonder what it is, though, that leads you to think that some of this dream is definitely about Chris, rather than about the way I feel about Chris, if I may ask further clarification?
« Last Edit: February 23, 2012, 09:49:20 PM by Midlander »

Tony Crisp

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Re: My dead friend
« Reply #5 on: February 26, 2012, 11:48:42 AM »
Hi Midlander - Thinking about your reply, I realise that saying 'life without a body' needs to be understood from several viewpoints. This was bright home to me on the 20th by a dream I had, which follows.


The dream was lucid. The quality of the dream changed and I felt lost. This was because I had been following Hyone and had no sense of where to go back to, as if I didn’t have anywhere to live or had no home. I stayed in that state for quite a time, and then went into a meditative condition. As I had nowhere to go and nothing to do I sat and felt I should do nothing. So sat and tried to drop all thoughts. It developed into a struggle to drop the idea of myself as a body. What I mean is that we are so thoroughly locked into seeing our own self image in the image of having a body. It was really hard to get rid of the feeling of the body as me. But eventually I managed it. I realised as this was happening that this only applied to my inner life, and that the body had its own needs.

So it is not simply the body, but out self image of being the same shape, gender and person we were. I had an experience of this once. Here is a piece quoted from The House of the Ancestors. It was a conversation I had with a dead friend.

"This communication was unlike any other I had experienced with Shaun previously.  I started by asking my usual question as to what he was meeting now in his after death life.  He told me that the process of losing himself had continued and he was now on a boundary, which if he passed over, he would no longer be the Shaun I had known.

I was trying to understand this and asking questions when suddenly Shaun was a woman, and engulfed me in wonderful female love.  This was so unexpected and beautiful I wept.  To be loved in that way by somebody I had known as a very masculine male was an extraordinary experience and very moving.

Gradually I recovered from the surprise and the feelings, and saw that Shaun was now male and female at the same time.  He had not switched to becoming a female, but had enlarged to being both male and female.  The losing of himself as he had been, and the adding of things that he could not experience while in the body, had led him to become this fuller very loving being.  Now, he/she was a whole person.

As I experience this I wondered what the border was that he/she was now ready to cross, so asked him/her if she/he knew what was over the other side.  She/he replied that it was very simple.  “It is a life without boundaries.”

Although those were the only words spoken, I received a flow of impressions or insights helping me to grasp something of a dimension of experience.  And as this was happening Shaun said something in a manner typical of him in life.  “And you, you bugger, have already been there before me.”

I could sense the smile and love in this, and understood what was implied and stated in the words.  Shaun was saying that during his life, and even since his death, I had been like a guide to him, making it easier for him to find his way in life and death.  He was also directly referring to a dream I had experienced".

Tony


Midlander

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Re: My dead friend
« Reply #6 on: February 26, 2012, 01:31:19 PM »
Thank you Tony! I realise that I have wanted the crossing to be swift & complete at once and not a process. And yet, I know that I, 'me' as 'spirit', am unable to be constant in experiencing completeness whilst I'm living in this body; the distractions are too great and my identity is so tied up in being physically - so it becomes inevitable that there will be an adjustment process when the body is gone!

Last night, my dream self visited a range of mountains and the tallest, slenderest peak where an erie was circled by two eagles and I was anxious to protect the eggs in their nest from intruders.......... the landscape was another continent - or another world, even and yet I was there with the eagles.........

'Such stuff as dreams are made on'.............


Tony Crisp

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Re: My dead friend
« Reply #7 on: February 26, 2012, 01:50:45 PM »
Great 'stuff'.

Tony