Posts Tagged ‘dream analysis’

Skate Skating

Sense of balance and proportion in life. Skill in keeping balanced in a difficult circumstance. See: Ice.

Skeleton

Death, fear of, desire for. Hidden fears. The past. Secret annoyance.

This is often evoking feelings about death, but it can be about your own ability or basic strength – your bones. If it is about death it is a way that helps us find a fuller relationship with this fact of life. Look around, death is everywhere – people, dead leaves, withered flowers, and dead wood, even suns die – and at the same time life is everywhere as well in growing things, living people, animals and plants. The two are inseparable, and constantly revolving around each other. Death follows life and life follows death. Where do you fit into that?

Sometimes it indicates feelings or talents you have ‘killed off’ or allowed to die, or secrets you have tried to bury – skeleton in the cupboard. Or we often carry fears of illness or negative feelings about death within us, and these are active forces of the mind and emotions that undermine our health and a dream might present them as a skeleton or charnel pit.

Look around, death is everywhere – people, dead leaves, withered flowers, and dead wood, even suns die – and at the same time life is everywhere as well in growing things, living people, animals and plants. The two are inseparable, and constantly revolving around each other. Death follows life and life follows death. Where do you fit into that?

No plant or tree grows from a dead seed, and each living seed carries within it all the past gathered from all its forebears. So, the seed in your mother’s womb is as old, and even older than human kind, and you carry that wisdom in you. To explore it see Opening to Life

A seed is a return to the source of life and it/our beginnings under the sun. Consciousness on our planet started in the slime of creation, the slime we return to, to procreate. And from that slime which is a vehicle for our seed to exist in, our awareness goes through the whole process of evolution, the dividing of cells, the forming of structure and organs, the creation of a creature with gills, and on to a human type form ready to breathe air, carrying our seed onwards. See Wild Side

None of us was made from scratch. Every human being develops from the fusion of two cells, an egg and a sperm, that are the descendants of other cells. The lineage of cells that joins one generation to the next — called the germline — is, in a sense, immortal for we still have all that past in us, but our personality is formed from memories in our brain, which is new, to remember the whole you you need to dive into the unconscious. See https://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/opening-to-life/

Skin

This is often shown in dreams as the quality you display to others, or your awareness of someone else’s quality. This means things such as skin colour, condition of skin, whether rough or smooth, young, old, thick, thin, spots or scars, healthy or injured.

It is also your contact with the world. Through it you feel warmth or cold, wet or dry, and all the subtle interaction with other people and your environment. So to understand the dream consider what impression you have of the skin, then ask yourself how this connects with your self image, or your sense of your own quality. See Your Amazing Circle

The skin may also relate to what tactics we use to deal with others; our strength or vulnerability in feeling the impact of other people, their remarks and actions. It is our protection against the huge forces we deal with every day; for our skin deals with and destroys thousands of bacteria every day. You also may be sensitive to remarks which is known as being ‘thin skinned’, or if you are not  influenced that is called ‘having a thick skin’.

Skin is a window on your emotions also – so any disturbance can show in your dreams as spots, boils, pus or maggots erupting or other things. So what emotions – strong ones have you felt recently? It could make you feel uncertain of what people think of you, especially if you have met a new girl/boy friend.

Example: All I remember is seeing red bubbles appearing all over my skin and being scared and then one huge one bursting on my chest. R.

When it was pointed out about skin as a window on his emotions, R. replied – Well I have met a lot of new people recently and am often insecure about what I think they really think about me; also I have met a girl here but it is still early days. I have also been worried about work and think the change in location has taken me longer to adjust to than I thought it would.

A skin can also be a disguise, a cover, underneath which another you, or another person exists. In these cases the skin might suggest something you have taken on that is not really expressing your real feelings or potential. So the dream might show you pulling the skin off or even tearing it off. See Potential

Animal skin: The spontaneous level of yourself such as instincts, flight and fight, and so your animal wisdom and survival drives. If the animal is being skinned, See: skinned animal.

Rough skin: A surface impression. If this is a dream about yourself, it suggest either that you have been through difficult times and so are well worn with a rough exterior, or you feel that is how others see you.

Burnt skin: A hurt you have suffered in relationship with the outside world or people.

Maggots breaking through the skin: It shows a possibly unhealthy condition occurring in that body area. But remember dreams use the body to often represent something other than the organ or arm – see Body

Seeing through the skin: An insight into what is going on under the surface of your mind or body.

Shed skin: Like a snake, changing your old way of life, or shedding old protective attitudes. This might refer to outgrowing a stage of your life, like a spider or snake shedding its skin because it has outgrown the last one.. So a move from youth to adulthood might be shown as this in a dream. This usually leaves you feeling vulnerable for a while as you adjust to the change.

Spots, blemishes, moles: Feelings about personal failings or some sense of not being as good or acceptable as other people. Maybe a feeling that other people see you as unattractive or can see failings in you. Often links with shyness or difficulties about facing or being in the company of people. See Victim – Avoiding Being My Own 

Occasionally it could indicate that you have inner disturbances that need to be dealt with. See: Acting on your dream.

Something or Stuff on the skin: If this is a liquid or substance it could mean you have been in contact with something. As the skin absorbs all that is on it, there might be a suggestion you are taking something in that is either harmful or healing.

If it is a thing or a creature on your skin this shows you sensing an influence. What it is depends on the dream. See  Animals

Things escaping from under the skin: This usually refers to powerful emotions that you have contained for some time and an event or circumstances are now allowing to surface. This means you will be aware of them in some measure in waking.

Depending upon what it is that is escaping, it can also refer to a physical condition. For instance the following dream refers to a virus the dreamer has.

I have had the same dream as I fall asleep for several years. I have it nearly every night just once, sometimes, rarely, twice as I fall asleep. I dream that I find a dried piece of skin or scab somewhere on my body, usually my foot or my hand, though it has varied over the years. I begin to pick at the skin/scab and scratch it until it comes off. When it comes off it unleashes a flood of seed spiders that engulf me. Another variation is I find some odd black hairs growing out of my body and when I examine them more closely they are regular sized spiders crawling out of me and they begin to engulf me.

Idioms: beauty is only skin deep; by the skin of your teeth; get under my skin; jump out of your skin; more than one way to skin a cat; no skin off my nose; skin alive; thick skin;.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Is the skin shown as protective – if so what against, and how well is it working?

Does my dream show the skin as an expression of who I am or the person is – if so what is the impression it is giving?

What qualities or racial type does the skin show – and what do I associate with that?

Try Being the Person or Thing and Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

 

Skirt

Very often refers to sexual feelings, sexual desire, or what of those feelings you are covering up. How you express your sexuality or femininity socially. See: Clothes

More particularly sexual than dress. Colours and length say a lot about what is being done with sexuality in a social sense.

The skirt is also to do with your social presentation, as is dress, and shows how you deal with your female qualities. Is the dress one that emphasises your female characteristics, or hides them? Is it black or colourful, one to avoid notice or to attract attention? See: dress.

In male dreams the skirt is frequently about the availability or otherwise of the woman sexually.

Example: I was in a building with a number of people. Winnie, a woman I worked with many years ago was there, sitting cross legged on the floor. I went to her and kissed her. She responded and I put my hand down on her thigh under her skirt, and gently moved it under her knickers to touch her vagina. It was moist and wet with excitement and I pushed my fingers into the slippery crevice. As I did so my feelings rose in a beautiful soft and satisfying orgasm. I thought I had ejaculated, but had not.

Then I was in a street and met a dark haired young woman. We embraced and kissed. The feeling of mutual pleasure was intense. So much so I felt what she was feeling as if we did not have separate bodies. I felt an orgasm grow inside her pelvis and reach its pitch, flowing into the rest of her body. It was her orgasm but it felt as if it were mine also. It was a beautiful melting experience with no harshness or disappointment anywhere. Damon.

For a child, mother’s skirt or dress is about the only thing you can hold onto if you feel insecure or need to ‘hold on’ to your mother. It might therefore represent the feelings of insecurity or need for love in some dreams.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What does this skirt express in the way of other people’s response – is it serious, long, short, forbidding, attractive, colourful, etc?

What do I feel about this skirt, and where do those feelings appear in my waking life?

If there is any sexual feelings in this dream, what attitude do they express?

See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Secrets of Power Dreaming

Skunk

A skunk is fine unless you get in its way or anger it. So it can represent a ‘skunk’ around in your life. Someone or something that you feel or think could be a real stinker. But sometimes the skunk is simply there to remind you to be at peace with your neighbours or friends.

Sky

This represent your mind and the unexpected things that can come from it. It also implies moods by its brightness or dull quality. Things in the sky that are threatening or strange depict the things on your mind that distress you or stimulate anxiety.

The sky is also huge and can show what an immense potential you have.

In some dreams things come from the sky, or there are beings in the sky who influence us or offer something. This may depict the subtle influences that play in our life. For instance our ancestors influence us unconsciously through the genes they passed on to us, but also in other ways such as behaviour passed down through the generations, and also in actual physical surroundings. After all, in general our ancestors, whether personal or national, build the framework and superstructure of the world we live in today. See: Ancestors.

Sled Sledge

Letting go of control, pleasurable risk, exhilaration, childhood pleasure, or even going downhill.

Sleep

Sleep is best described as a return to the most basic level of awareness. As such it can be seen as the creative fount of all evolution, the source of all the fantastic changes and amazing variety of living creatures. We often feel we are unconscious in sleep, and without any awareness of having identity or personality. That is only partly true because some people have managed to carry awareness into the depths of sleep. See You Are a Dual Being – Deep in Sleep – Criticism –  Answers To

If you can understand that we always get back to our core self in sleep, and that dreams are a half way house between our core self and our personal self, we can see that dreams are a communication between the two. Also, seeing that our core self is fundamental to our existence, it suggests that while we sleep we experience death – the loss of personal awareness – and so the experience of death or near death experiences are a form of dreaming, still clinging onto the image usually of the old body we call ‘me’.

To dream of being asleep, is to be unaware of something. It is literally saying there is something you are asleep to, something you are not aware of.

Sleep is one of the most mysterious of human experiences. It is the polar opposite to waking awareness, with its focused sense of personal existence and external sensory impressions. From this point of view, there are several levels of conscious life. The first is waking awareness; the second is dreaming sleep – immersion in symbolic representation and the acceptance of these as real; the third is lucidity within a dream – the awareness of dream imagery as symbols and recognition of the symbols being personal creations and not external reality; the fourth is dreamless sleep, or awareness beyond ego, symbols, thoughts or emotion.

American sleep research laboratories in recent years have pointed out that the invention of the electric light bulb has disoriented normal sleep patterns. Millions of people suffer sleep disorders or sleep starvation. According to the National Commission On Sleep Disorders Research, the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska was the result of the third mate falling asleep while piloting the ship. Similarly, the melt down at the Three Mile Island atomic power plant in Pennsylvania in 1979 almost led to a massive nuclear explosion, and was due to a technician being asleep and failing to hear an alarm.

40 million Americans are estimated to be chronically ill with sleep disorders. Few people recognise their condition and its cause however. Signs of it are chronic tiredness needing constant stimulants to keep going during the day; constant falling asleep during work, talks, driving, inability to wake easily in the morning. As sleep plays an equally important part in healthy long life as nutrition and exercise, it is important to assure its quality. If our pattern and quality of sleep is disturbed, we may fail to notice the influence of such drinks as coffee, chocolate and alcohol, all of which disturb sleep.

The Daily Express reported that “a nap can be spoiled by a nightcap” and that “a wee dram before bedtime…causes insomnia and robs a night’s rest of its restorative powers”. This research evaluated the impact of drinking before going to bed on heart rate and sleep. The study involved 10 university students, who were given low levels, high levels or no alcohol to drink before bed. Drinking higher doses of alcohol was found to reduce the amount of REM sleep, and resulted in a shallower sleep during the latter half of the night. It also appeared to adversely affect the part of the brain that usually controls the body during sleep. From this, the researchers concluded that the alcohol had disturbed the restorative effects of sleep.

So of course does tea or coffee, or any form of caffeine such as chocolate. People often complain of inability to sleep and yet drink many cups of tea or coffee during the day, or eve drink cocoa (cocoa is high in caffeine) type drinks as a night time sleep inducer. My findings are yet drinking several sups of tea, and particularly coffee, lessens the depth of sleep or causes massive insomnia. Taking sleeping pills to enable one to become unconscious increases the dangers.

One of the major sleep disorders is called sleep apnea. This condition causes the sufferer to stop breathing for periods of ten seconds to a minute or more. The person is therefore aroused to waking state, or near it, over and over during the night. This may underlie the recurrent nightmare some people have of feeling suffocated. This condition, if suspected, needs a doctor’s help.

Insomnia is the largest sleep disorder, and of course it covers all causes. Psychologist Peter Hauri director of the Mayo Clinic’s insomnia program and co-author, with Shirley Linde, of No More Sleepless Nights (John Wiley and Sons) says about 60% of all cases of chronic insomnia stem from mental or physical ailments. These include depression, sleep apnea and periodic limb movements (which usually involve leg jerks, repeated every few seconds for hours on end). Sleepers may awaken numerous times, but so briefly, awakenings go unremembered in the morning.

Example: Since I’ve learnt to die, living has become a different experience. I realised this while I was listening to a friend tell me how difficult it was for him to sleep. Gradually we uncovered that he has difficulty falling in love too, and also in trusting his own spontaneous feelings. In fact any area of experience which calls upon him to let go of his own self-control, his feelings or his certainty, was seen to cause him difficulties. I recognised the common factor as `death’. Lots of us, for example, call sleep “the little death”. Maybe this is because we cannot fall into sleep unless we let go of what we are thinking, of what we will, and even of the way we experience our `self’ during waking. See Opening to Life

To help oneself get a better quality of sleep if you suffer insomnia, use the following suggestions.

Keep a 24 hour record showing good and bad nights of sleep. Closely observe connections between events and sleep. Hauri says one woman suspected her insomnia was triggered by phone calls in the evening, her supervisor’s foul moods and ‘times I felt like speaking up but didn’t.’ Her log showed, however, that she slept badly only after phone calls from her fault-finding mother. No other daytime events, no matter how irritating, wrecked her nights. Develop your own insights or theories about what is causing you to sleep badly from the observations you make. Check how much coffee you drink during the day.

Hauri says chronic insomniacs sabotage their own sleep by constant fretting. The more they worry, the more they toss and turn. The worse they sleep, the more they tend to worry. Some people say their minds start to race as soon as they turn off the lights. ‘It’s not that you worry too much,’ Hauri tells them, ‘but that you do it at the wrong time.’ He suggests scheduling 30 minutes earlier in the day as worry time. Sit in a quiet place. Write each worry on a separate 3 x 5 in. card. Sort the cards into categories. Take each in turn and think about it until you decide what to do. Write that plan of action down.

A period of vigorous exercise or soaking in a hot bath also helps. Both raise core body temperature. Recent research shows that cooling down afterward helps induce and deepen sleep. The timing is important. Exercise three to six hour before bedtime. Take your bath two to three hours before; keep adding hot water as necessary to keep your temperature up.

Reserve bed just for sleep. Do not watch TV, eat or drink in bed. These hinder the habit of associating bed with sleep.

Sex is okay in bed if it leaves you feeling relaxed.

Don’t drink any caffeine or alcohol after 2pm.

Avoid napping during the day. Save sleep for bed unless you find it improves your night-time sleep.

Go to bed and get up at the same time each day. The body is like an animal that loves regular activities. Something I found helped to go to sleep was a breath exercise –

If you are involved in highly demanding creative work, sailing a boat single-handed across the Atlantic, or fighting a forest fire, break your sleep in to short chunks. Even fifteen minutes at a time can keep you going. Do not attempt complete sleep avoidance, tests have shown the drive for sleep becomes compulsive and dangerous.

See: sleep – need for; science and sleep and dreams; Breath Control the 1-4-2 Method

 

Smell

This is rather like colours, depicting special feelings or moods. But smells often link more fully with memories of some past event, or a person. They can also suggest the goodness or badness of something or situation. So this point to how you are reacting to something or someone. See: Odour.

Smoke

Smoke in a dream may suggest an intuition of danger, or intuitions about something – something in the wind. It can also suggest passions that are ready to burst into flame.

Smoking

Often this relates to attitudes or habits, or the drug itself, that you use to deal with anxiety. It can indicate that something other than your conscious decision is controlling you.

Some smoking dreams connect with hidden sexual desires, with a comforting friend or a change in mood, such as might occur when we meet a friend. In some cultures and situations it would show connection with others and a special time of togetherness, such as the smoked pipe in the Native American ritual, or when smoking a joint in company. When there are two or three people smoking it could also suggest a clique atmosphere, a togetherness that excludes others on in which, perhaps because you are allaying anxiety by smoking, you feel included.

Defining smoking dreams, Christopher Evans, in his book Landscapes of the Night, says typical dreams are of puffing away in a crowded place such as a party, showing how linked smoking is with anxiety about dealing with being sociable. If they give up smoking, the programming is so deeply etched that they frequently dream of smoking, perhaps without meaning to, but this gradually lessens as time goes by.

Snack Snack Bar

Urges wanting satisfaction. A hunger for something. It might also link with sociability or need for contact if you use the snack bar for meeting people or escaping from somewhere else..

Snail Slug

If touched a snail withdraws quickly into its shell, and sometimes represents great sensitivity that makes us withdraw from life. So it can suggest such a vulnerability , or that you are hiding in a protective shell of feelings. withdrawal from reality, or from social or sensual contacts; or a ‘defence mechanism’.

The term ‘snails pace’ may also be used in dreams because of our associations as we watch it move. So it may suggests your slow moving progress.

	In France, Portugal and Spain, snails are used as food.

Vulnerability – its shell depicting defence against being hurt. For some people the snail would indicate feelings of repulsion. Probably repulsion regarding ‘squirmy’ feelings regarding your body or sexuality.

The snail is sometimes seen in dreams connected with babies. This is because in the womb they are so vulnerable and without a  protective ‘shell’. Also maybe because of the feelings of squishyness associated with birth.

Example: I dreamed that the baby I was carrying had come out of me (minus the blood) but in the shape of a slug (snail) and it was alive and moving. All of a sudden it started changing into a very small thin snake like form. It was so wild. And when I went to inspect it closer it wrapped itself around my neck to strangle me. Then I woke up in another dream right after in my bed and realized I had fallen asleep with my necklace wrapped around my neck. I was dreaming within another dream.

You interpretations about the snail and snake are right on because my husband and I are going through a miscarriage and I dont think I have come to terms with it yet. I just feel numb and detached. Thank you for your thoughts/means, now I can really work on these issues.

 

 

Snake

Snakes in dreams often represent the energy keeping us alive at a basic level. But we can express this energy in many ways such as kindness, love, anger, killing things, creativity and so on. See Levels of the Brain and Dreams – Snake Dreams

Example: Dreamt that a snake – a huge python – had raised me. I had the sense that it had cradled me in its coils when I was a baby, and that it had taught me without words how to survive. This was a sort of jungle/life wisdom.

It is usually depicting the fight or flight instinct. It is also an image connected with the force, purpose or energy behind that power of growth and unfolding. It is the force of life, the latent energy or potential within us, particularly the primal urge to survive. It leads us both to growth and death, along with the passionate emotions and urges that drive us so powerfully. The ancient civilisation of the South Americas, saw the snake as a messenger of the gods. And it can be if we relate to it well, because it represents the force of Life in us – surely worth listening to!

The snake can bite you, and its venom may flow throughout your being and kill you. Most of us are very frightened of this. The reason being that the venom will certainly cause death- it does this by the power of growth, which will be the death of your old self as you outgrow it. It replaces the old personal interests and fears with a self that is part of the one great life. So the fear of the snake is not because its venom is deadly, but because it transforms. It turns you into a being who is part of the whole. It robs one of the artificial walls placed between self and the collective pool of life consciousness.

Moses saw the energy of this inner snake in the form of the burning bush. During the exodus the Israelite’s lost faith and were smitten by fiery serpents, so God told Moses, “Make thee a serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that everyone that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it on a pole, and it came to pass, that if a fiery serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived” An apt description of the healing qualities of the awakened snake energy. Some of the Israelite’s even began to worship this symbol, and the practice of worshipping the brazen serpent on the pole as a god was either passed on, or was revived later. Bronze and stone serpent artifacts have been found in excavations in Canaan, Gezer and other parts of Israel!

That energy, like electricity in a house, can be heat, power, sound or vision, and lies behind all our functions. So in some dreams the snake represents our sexuality; in others the rising of that energy up our body to express as digestion – the intestinal snake – or as the creative or poisonous energy of our emotions and thoughts, even disease. In the throat it becomes the destructive or constructive speech and language – expressed or repressed feelings and speech. In the head it becomes thinking, perception and higher cognition.

The ancient civilisation of the South Americas, saw the snake as a messenger of the gods. And it can be if we relate to it well, because it represents the force of Life in us – is surely worth listening to!

The snake can represent many different things, but usually the energy that expresses as our life processes. If we think of a person’s life from conception to death, we see a flowing moving event, similar in many ways to the speeded-up films of a seed growing into a plant, flowering and dying. The snake depicts the force, purpose or energy behind that movement. It is the force of life, the latent energy or potential within us – that leads us both to growth and death, along with the passionate emotions and urges that drive us so powerfully

In the destructive aspect the snake represents the poisonous thoughts and emotions that can destroy you; the awful things we do to ourselves, to Life in us. We tend to depict this facet of the snake as biting or attacking us, even though we have ourselves given rise to such poisonous emotions as hate and guilt. Because our thinking and emotions are an expression of our life energy, you are capable of directing the creative force of life toward self destruction. As an example of this, a dreamer exploring her snake dream saw that it represented her flight or fight instincts. This linked with her aggressive and protective feelings in connection with the way men had acted with her. The problem was that the snake was in a poisonous, strangling and killing mode. This, she realised, showed how she had withheld, strangled, her anger about what had happened, and that anger was turned inward, poisoning or strangling her flow of full life.

The opposite is also true. The power of life and death can be directed creatively. Then the snake is seen in its healing role in dreams, and in ancient times was shown in the form of the staff with two snakes coiling up it – caduceus – still used today as a symbol of the medical profession. See: Energy Sex and Dreams

Example: Dreamt I was on the side of a very steep hill. So steep I could only just hold on. It was very rounded and grassy. I was near the top clinging to the grass. There seemed to be many snakes, lizards  about. Occasionally one would leap at me and bounce of my coat. I took care to keep my hands covered. There was a woman, who seemed to be something like a secretary, who was advising me. I was then in a wood. There seemed to be a lot of apprehension and fear. Some robbers had stolen my pony. The fear went when I realised that there was no need to walk through a swampy area of the wood. Only the robbers, or rough types knew the way through. I turned to the right out of the wood.

In exploring his dream this is what he received – The dream shows you bringing your love to the crown. The dream was the way of sorting out your problems over sinking or rising. You can reach the highest either way. Sinking is the way of letting go. This was represented by the swamp. The way of bringing love to the crown is the way of rising. The hill represents your present situation. The clinging means you try too hard. There is no need to bring so much effort. The snakes represents your lower powers trying to break into consciousness. These must be directed to the crown. These are the forces which help you break through. They stimulate you to rise. The woman is love giving you advice. Love will direct your efforts. The part where you walk through the wood means you look for life through delving within. The swamp is swamping my consciousness. Your consciousness must live, not drown, in the deep waters of life. This can be achieved only by bringing unification to those urges seen as the brigands. These and the snakes are much the same. Your soul must live without division. When the soul brings union within itself, so it achieved union in the whole. This way is a way of love.

It doesn’t matter that your dream snake bites you – after all it is an aspect of you, and the only poison you will meet is the poisonous emotions you have been injecting into yourself – and they need to be felt to clear them out. See Our Reptilian Brain

The snake can shed its skin, and so symbolises self transcendence, rebirth.

The alchemists put a gold crown on its head, symbolising expanded or spiritual consciousness arising from the same energy as sexuality. Often a diadem, gem, or light is at its brow symbolising the possibility of expanded consciousness, or awareness of the eternal nature, and life in eternity. Christ is sometimes depicted as a crucified serpent, suggesting the mystery of Life nailed to physical awareness of the senses. See: Reptile.

Example: I just woke up from a bad dream. I saw that I was in a car without a driver and I was sitting on a snake which I could not see but only slightly feel under me. I was afraid that the snake might bite me because of the bumps during the car drive. And then it does bite me. It was painless but I felt blood oozing out of my tummy. Then suddenly I saw a stranger in the driver’s seat who was a lady whom I don’t know. And I am just praying her to drive me to the hospital and she refuses to drive. I was spooked big time and I am on the internet now. Came across your website. I hope I can find an answer. Please help me.

The snake is your dream snake and should not be confuse with an actual snake. It is your basic energy, like electricity in your house, and as such can be expressed in any number of ways. This links with the car, another form of energy, expressed as a way of getting where you want. But the snake energy you are sitting on, not knowing how to direct it, yet you can feel it wriggling at the base of your trunk. You are scared of what this energy will express as if you allow it, but sitting on it is not good, because your thoughts and feelings, your imagination are the way we direct this energy. And what did you do, you felt fear it would bite you, and that is where you directed it. Fortunately you were not scared enough to direct it to inject you with the poison of your own fear. But it did cause an energy leak that you realised you needed help with.

The Hebrew word for the serpent in the Garden of Eden is Nahash. And to be understood we have to understand that Hebrew is a sign language, one that each letter of the alphabet had a particular meaning. And there  is no indication in the ancient  Hebrew that this was a snake. It has been translated as snake because the  original meaning was lost. It can be seen as a divine force that expressed in seven levels or ways – so much like the ancient symbol as it was understood by older  cultures. For full explanation see Hebrew Translation.

Example: A dream told me by a woman I met in Mexico. She said that she dreamt a large snake was crawling up the bed and then bit her on her left breast. She said she then tried to suck out the poison.In the destructive aspect the snake represents the poisonous thoughts and emotions that can destroy us. We tend to depict this snake biting or attacking us, even though we have ourselves given rise to such poisonous emotions as hate and guilt. Because our life energy flows into thinking and emotions, we are in this way directing the creative force of life. Directing it negatively has the power to bring illness and death, for we are dealing with the power of life and death itself.

I asked her to explore the dream by imaging herself as the snake, feeling it biting her. The result was that a story unfolded. She had felt, rightly or wrongly, that her husband had been unfaithful, and she had felt bitter and revengeful. But instead of expressing those feelings they had turned inwards and poisoned her, leaving her depressed. So the snake was an image of her poison biting her and poisoning her life. So do not be afraid of a snake biting you. It is not dangerous. The dangerous part is avoiding the bite, because the poison stays in you unmet.

The opposite is also true. The power of life and death can be directed creatively. Then the snake is seen in its healing role in dreams, and in ancient times was shown in the form of the staff with two snakes coiling up it – caduceus – still used today as a symbol of the medical profession.

Example: ‘A small snake about a foot long had dropped down my shirt neck. I could feel it on the left side of my neck. Fearing it was poisonous and might bite me I moved very slowly. At one point I put my head on the ground, hoping the snake would wish to crawl away. It did not. Then I was near an elephant I loved, and hoped it would remove the snake. It did not. Even as I slept I felt the snake was an expression of the attitude of not sharing myself with anybody except family.’ David T.

For months prior to the above dream David had experienced a great deal of neck pain. After discussing the dream with his wife, and realising much of his thinking and feeling was in-turned, the pain disappeared. So the snake was both ‘poisoner’ and ‘healer’ representing the power of David’s negative and introverted emotions and thoughts on his body. This may be why snakes are used as a symbol of the medical profession.

Example: ‘I was in a huge cathedral, the mother church. I wanted to go to the toilet/gents. As I held my penis to urinate it became a snake and reached down to the urinal to drink. It was thirsty. I struggled with it, pulling it away from the unclean liquid. Still holding it I walked to a basin and gave it pure water to drink.’ Bill A.

Here the connection between snake and sexuality is obvious. But the snake is not just Bill’s penis. It is the direction his sexual urges take him that he is struggling with. Out of his sense of love and connection with Life – the cathedral – he wants to lift his drive toward something that will not leave him with a sense of uncleanness. In this sense a snake might be something one wrestled with, depicting the wrestle one has with inner drives and hungers, especially sexuality or anger. The Mother Church was a form of initiation into a much wider view of spiritual beliefs. It came about because his sexual drive was directed more upwards rather than out of his genitals.

Example: “Tony taught me a process in which a dream could be interpreted and understood by assuming that everything, people and objects alike, in a dream represented aspects of the Self. Sitting cross-legged on the squishy, old-fashioned sofa in the living room of my sadhu’s cave opposite Tony, I’d close my eyes and mentally return to a dream I had the previous night.

So if I dreamt about a tree, I would ‘become’ the tree, assume its personality and respond from its viewpoint. He’d ask ‘So what kind of tree are you? Are you big or small, old or young? What do you look like? Where are you growing? Why are you in Tiziana’s dream?’  This sounded like a silly exercise at first, but I was soon enough convinced of its validity.

Other dreams taught me about my psychological and emotional processes, such as in one dream, in which I was in a dark forest with a female friend. We hid behind a felled tree. From our path towards the left, we saw a big black snake approaching. It was absolutely enormous and had no head. We were exhilarated and scared. Next, a badger walked past. Then, to our wonder, a gang of wolves came by. In my consequent interpretation I saw that the headless snake stood for `my sexuality and my often ‘headless’, raw desires. The badger signified my illusions that needed to be ‘killed’ and transformed by the pack of wolves, who represented my growth and evolution. Although painful, my intuition – symbolized by the female friend – knew that I had to go through the fear and ‘be killed’ in order to grow.

Overall, together with the practice of LifeStream the dream work helped me to retrieve and untangle many clues and memories that were buried deep in my unconscious.” See Life’s Little Secrets

The Africans believed the dream of a snake round the leg signified slavery, while the dream of a dragon round the body is a symbol of bondage in Artemidorus.

A crowned or light encircled snake: When our blind impulses our instinctive or unconscious urges and functions are in some measure integrated with our conscious will and insight, this is seen as the crowned snake or even winged snake. It shows real self awareness and maturity.

Unfortunately, as Jung points out in Man and His Symbols, people in modern society, whether black, yellow, brown or white, have lost their sense of nature and the cosmos as being anything other than processes without consciousness or living feeling. Jung says, ‘No river contains a spirit, no tree is the life principle of a man, no snake the embodiment of wisdom…No voice now speaks to man from stones, plants, and animals, nor does he speak to them believing they can hear.’

Black King Cobra: The king title shows the important role the snake will have in the life of the dreamer. That it is black indicates that it is only just becoming a part of their conscious life.

In coils of snake: Feeling bound in the blind impulses or habitual drives and feeling responses. Instincts and habits can be redirected, as illustrated by Hercules labours.

Sitting on snake: Mastery of the instinctive nature and transformation and the making conscious of the wisdom and power resident in the unconscious.

Snake biting you: Unconscious worries about our health, frustrated sexual impulse, our emotions turned against ourselves as when internalised aggression poisons us causing very real illness, so may be shown as the biting snake. It may also suggest an influence in ones life – the venom – that takes away ones identity and perhaps opens one to a life beyond self, the spirit.

Example: I realised as I explored my dream of being bitten by the snake I had thought about this a lot already and that losing ones identity meant in this case not being tied to ones family so rigidly, no longer relating to people as if from a single fixed gender, also there is the possibility of getting insight into the person you are meeting more fully, because the artificial barriers of gender, family ties, nationality and creed have been dropped. These barriers prevent us from actually knowing each other very fully in everyday life, and are operative in most of us without our realising it.

As I think about this I wonder whether this is part of the way we create identity. It appears to be made from many sources. For instance the family physical – DNA – inheritance plays a very great part, as does the information of behaviour repertoire handed to us when young. The cultural patterning given with language shapes our mind, and the chemical importance is also being seen lately. All of these produce the person we call I. Yet the ‘I’ is capable of being radically shifted, simply by taking a drug or medicine. This often reshapes the way we see ourselves, so an evolution in the process of identity building has occurred. Identity in the end is not a set of beliefs or behaviours. The I is not limited to these. See Programmed

So as I faced this part of the session I wondered what I would be saying goodbye to if I allowed myself to be bitten by the serpent and its poison transform me. I felt that although I would lose my old connection with my family I would bring them a lot more than in the past because my being would itself be much larger and connected. I saw this as if I were living in a courtyard, and that courtyard was my family life, my work life, and was made up of my sympathetic connections with my children and the powerful bonds that led me to favour them over others. If these bonds dissolved they would no longer be favoured above others out of the same powerful ties. The ties would dissolve, but of course they would still be people I had a lot of connections with because of friendship and common goals, etc. So I would relate to them out of something other than family feelings. We would be drawn together or pushed apart out of the same influences that attracted or repulsed in general.

I felt then that I did want to be bitten by the snake. I trusted the larger life. I want my life to have connections with it and my actions to flow out of these wider connections.

At one point it was like being shown something. On my computer I have a small program to do my accounts on. I take a lot of time putting information into this program to keep my accounts straight. It was as if the wider life said to me, “You don’t need to all the time look after your own affairs in this individual way. There is a wider life in which the ‘accounts’ program is built-in. Every action you do, every interaction is recorded automatically, and so you no longer need a personal piece of software”.

Snake biting others: Biting remarks; a poisonous tongue; emotional energy turned against oneself or someone else.

Snake coiling up tree, pole, cross: The blind instinctive forces of life emerging into conscious experience – in other words the essence of human experience with its involvement in pain, pleasure, time and eternity; the process of personal growth or evolution; healing because personal growth often moves us beyond old attitudes or situations that led to inner tension or even sickness.

Snake coiled around you crushing you: The way you are caught up and constricted in your own or other peoples emotions. Being crushed by emotions, fears; struggling with powerful emotions and urges.

Snake Colours – Green: Our internal life process directed – perhaps through satisfied feelings, love and creativity – into a healing process or one that leads to our personal growth and positive change. White: Eternal aspect of our life process, or becoming conscious of it. Blue: Religious feelings or coldness in relations.

Snake in connection with any hole: Sexual relatedness.

Snake in the grass: Sense or intuition of talk behind your back; danger; sneakiness.

Example: I dreamt I was outdoors walking through open ground, maybe at times gardens. I was with others – not sure who, and we frequently came across large snakes which we reacted to as if they were venomous. Then I came across a lot of them and they swarmed onto me. I froze, terrified that if I made a move I would be fatally bitten. But they just swarmed over my body and got under my clothes without harming me. Gradually I relaxed and slowly began to move about with the snakes still on me. They started to feel like a built in defense system which would attack anyone who was aggressive to me. At one point several large and aggressive dogs walked past me. They turned as if thinking about attacking, then appeared to sense the snakes and ran off cowed. As time passed the snakes felt like part of my body.

Snake with tail in its mouth: Sense of the circle of life – birth, growth, reproduction, ageing, death, rebirth; the eternal.

Useful questions and hints:

What is happening with my dream snake, and what is the significance to me personally?

What does this indicate about the way I am direction my life energy?

Is this depicting my life energy expressing some positive potential or healing

Snare

Seemingly appealing idea or plan that is basically wrong. A situation you can get trapped in. See Trap

Sneeze

Spontaneous cleansing of self, caused by the inner self rather than conscious intention. For further information see Yawn