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Author Topic: family in dreams  (Read 5294 times)

warriorqueen

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family in dreams
« on: April 04, 2012, 02:34:02 PM »
I dream I'm sitting outside my family's house in a car (driver's seat).  I hear yelling inside.  Shira comes out (she's my sister in law, and a very loving mother). She's distressed.  I ask her if I can take her away.  She nods.  Gets in.  I back out.  My car is then moving forward, but the engine is either silent, or not working.  It's as if another power is making the car move.  I see everyone in my family come out of the house.  Especially my dad.  They're all looking.  I'm afraid they're going to say something mean, blame me (yet again) for something else.

Shira says that she heard someone in my family say something mean to her boy.  She asks me, "Could it be true? Could Lynn (my mother, her mother in law) have said to my boy that "your mother is going away to leave you?  Could she say anything so mean?"  Yes, I say.  I'm thinking of both my mom and sis and their mean, hurtful tones of voice.  "If they're hurt, they could say anything" I tell Shira.  I wake up.

I consider this a very important dream in that I think it shows the influences in my family that I have internalized.  It is difficult for me to believe though, that the characters are not my family on the outside.  For me, the most important thing is the boy.  And the way being told that his mother has left him might impact his emerging "ability to act in outer action"  in the world.   I also asked myself, if I imagine myself as this boy (who never actually appears in the dream) what would I be feeling from being told this:frightened and distressed.  It is my feeling that the good mother in me wants to get that boy away from such frightening ideas.  And also, there is some level at which that boy actually has not been abandoned by his mother--but has been tricked into thinking she is gone.

The part about the car, where I don't realize that I am moving myself forward, taking care of myself.  But that I think some "outside" force is powering the car it seems to me relates to the last dream I posted, where Tony wrote that I don't have confidence in myself.  Clearly, on some level, this is true.  The dream also shows that I indeed am in charge and taking protective, saving action.

I'm not sure yet what the part about my family coming out means.  I certainly am often poised for yet another way they will attempt to hurt me, and it is for this reason that I am estranged from them.

Any ideas regarding deeper delving would be appreciated.  As I'm not sure whether the energies that are my family--and how they truly behave--refer to internalized aspects of me or are actually them.


Thanks.

Tony Crisp

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Re: family in dreams
« Reply #1 on: April 05, 2012, 02:49:35 PM »
WarriorQueen – I know it is difficult for us to see our dream characters as anything other than outside of us, but think for while. All the negative feelings you are expressing about your family are real and move you, and continue to move you as powerfully as any outside influence.

From our family we learn most of the positive and negative patterns of relationship and attitudes towards living, which we carry into daily events. Father’s uncertainty in dealing with people, or his anxiety in meeting change, may be the roots of our own difficulties in those areas. If our mother is unable to develop a feeling contact with us, we will lack the experience of being able to love unless we learn it in other relationships.

Our maturing process calls us to in some way meet and integrate our childhood desire, which includes sexual desire, for our parent of the opposite sex, and rivalry mingled with dependence, with parent of the same sex. Even a missing parent, the mother or father who died or left, is a potent figure internally. An absence of a father or mother’s love or presence can be as traumatic as any powerfully injuring event. Our parents in our dreams are an image, full of power and feeling, of the formative forces and experiences that created our identity. They are the ground, the soil, the bloody carnage, out of which our sense of self emerged. But our identity cannot gain any real independence while still dominated by these internal forces of our creation. Heraclitus said we cannot swim in the same river twice. Attempting to repeat or compete with the virtues of a parent is a misapprehension of the true nature of our own personality. See: individuation.

So, your dream! Sitting in your car as the driver is a sign that you are not being led by other people’s will. But the care moving by itself is a very powerful message. In a sense non of move ourselves. I cannot quote all the research on that, but a quick look at yourself will give you an idea. Almost all of you is unconscious. I know we dismiss it with our modern medical view of our body being a sort of unconscious factory that does its thing – and the important part is what we call ourselves. But that isn’t so, and our little self is almost powerless, unless it works well with the massive powers of the unconscious – which is not at all unconscious but is a world largely hidden from our conscious selves.

So, as I have said elsewhere - In life and sleep we have two powerful actions working in us. The first is our waking experience based on having a body, its limitations, vulnerabilities and a particular gender. Our second is the power that gave us life and continues to express as dreams.
While we sleep our conscious self is largely or totally unconscious, and while we sleep our voluntary muscles are paralysed – so another will or motivating force moves our body. So we have a Conscious Will, and what I will call a Life Will. The first one we have experience of as we can move our arm or speak; but the second will takes over when we sleep.
This Life will can move us to speak, to move our body, and in fact do things that we cannot do with our Conscious Will. As Freud pointed out this inner will has full access to our memories. It can do so many other things that are described else where – See ESP in Dreams; Edgar Cayce.
So I feel your enquiry into your dreams is showing that you are being moved by your Life Will to some extent. The scene with you and your sister in law is about wanting to get the loving influence away from the family influence. And the fact they all came out was also the influence of the Life Will showing you the influence they had on you. Don’t forget that such influences become habits. This is why it says that you should honour your father and mother. It says this because they are so much a part of you, that to not sort it out you will be left crippled. So it isn’t accepting their weakness but almost like digesting it so what is healthy can be built into you, and what is not can be passed out.

I believe the threat to leave was another way for you to see what was done. I had it done to me and it influenced me for years. The after effects are not to trust anyone entirely.

I know I say such things over and over, but it is important to live ‘as if’. It is a way of gradually restructuring your life – to live as if you are loved and happy. A hard one but every little pays off.

What would you say as the invisible boy – perhaps that though you are never seen, you are a powerful influence?

Tony

warriorqueen

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Re: family in dreams
« Reply #2 on: April 06, 2012, 01:15:46 AM »
Tony-
Thank you so much for your thoughts.  It has been many years, and a lot of work and care for myself to make up for the injuries that were done in my family of origin, and I appreciate your mentioning your own background, even briefly, as it is not something i like to discuss openly.  My feeling in the dream was of myself consciously removing the "good mother" in me from being hurt anymore by my family.  This may refer to my now refraining from any contact with my parents due to their unfortunately very current attempts at abuse.  I maintain loose ties with my siblings. 

I felt I WAS driving the car, I felt the power of helping her, and then suddenly I couldn't hear the engine, which made me doubt my own power.  I think this may refer to my self doubt during the times I lose touch with the sensation of moving forward, of breaking free. What do you think is the particular significance of not "hearing" the "engine"?  in my life, I had lost touch with my sense of power for some months after my sister made a point of telling me that I was not welcome in my parent's home, and it hit me hard in the gut and I felt myself weaken.

To the boy.  The boy maybe is what got kicked--what I feel now in my gut, where I actually have some twisted muscular fascia.    When I look up boy in your dictionary, what resonated was "growing ability to express myself creatively in the world"--I do have several important creative projects in the works, but I think what you mean is more general--the aspect of self that would shape my life the way it feels true to me.

When you ask in the dictionary what I would be feeling as the boy--I imagined, as did my sister in law, how fearful it would make her son to be told "your mother is going away"--and my own feeling is that the fear of abandonment would somehow affect his emerging sense of being able to make his ideas real.  And I do struggle with certain changes I would like to make, fearful that I will be isolated.

Initially I was looking for my dreams to give me a sense of direction, or a power I felt I had lost since December due to that kick in the stomach from family.  Somehow, when I began to make effort to make certain steps toward some of the situations t I want, I had this dream.   I feel that it is my actions that then change some internal constructs in my mind.

Again, thank you for your thoughts, I will continue to digest them.  And if anything comes to you about the boy, in terms of a link to what the mean mother said,   i'd be interested to hear your ideas.

WQ


Tony Crisp

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Re: family in dreams
« Reply #3 on: April 08, 2012, 12:06:07 PM »
WarriorQueen - Look, these are all thoughts that may or may not be helpful

The mother that has and has not gone I see as you - you are his mother now, and at times your feelings of abandonment trick him into believing he is without a parent. You have to remember that you are alone in your dreams with a world of past experience and memories, and finding a way to meet it all is the big task of our life - a lifetime.

I still feel that the engine not making a sound was a way that you were being moved by the force that moves you all the time - Life. But it is usually the way that we cannot believe there is any guiding influence in our life that can actually MOVE us. So please read http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/lifes-little-secrets/

Tony