Posts Tagged ‘dream analysis’
Squint Squinting
Difficulty in understanding. See: Eye.
Stab Stabbed Stabbing
Either refers to aggressive activities, hurtful words, feeling hurt, or aggressive sexuality.
If we are stabbing someone, especially if it is a parent or someone we have linked with emotionally or sexually, there may sometimes exist behind the action the need to sever or kill any dependence upon or bonding with, that person. Any anger being felt in this case is about the depth of our need or dependence, and the pain at having to sever the connection. Such severance and angry killing of our feelings for someone else, usually gives rise to guilt. See: weapons.
Stag
Male aspect of the personality.
Masculinity; male sexual drive; in a female dream it might depict her response to male sexuality; the joy of life; courage; the life energy; virility; healing energy.
EXAMPLE: The three of us were on our way to a lively night out and I suggested a short cut through Richmond Park. Suddenly this old man stepped out and advised us not to do so as stags were rutting. I thanked him and replied they would be too busy to care about us. As we walked through, trying to ignore the fact the stags seemed to be stuck together, we felt relieved. Suddenly an enormously big stag with tremendous horns and a leering and vicious expression came swaying toward us after breaking free of a female deer. Jasmine C.
EXAMPLE: The following comes from the notes of a man exploring a dream about a bull: As the bull, when I put my nose into the grass the earth tells me what has lived and died in this field. I hear the earth tell me things. I hear this voice in me calling out ‘ME! ME! ME!’ There is that one voice calling out from deep in me saying everything. It is the bull calling a mate. It is the stag saying – I AM – I will fight – I will kill – I will care – I live – I die – I lust – I want. It is saying I am alive. I’ve got something – LOOK . I have this precious gift of the seeds of life. I am Life. I am the baby crying for the mother. I am the death cry. It is sex which turns this energy on. It is the female which calls it. When I see the cow wonderful things happen. In the erection the blood pressure alters, the guts change. But I believe that can be redirected. It can create a new life at another level. It can leave its old path of reproduction of the body, and create a new life in the eternal – waking up in eternity. The bull or stag must come of its own accord – but the direction must be indicated for it.
Useful questions are:
Is my dream in any way referring to sex, and if so what is it commenting about my own sexual feelings and activities?
Am I in any way feeling that joy and lust for life the proud stage displays?
Is my dream stag healthy or injured, and how does that relate to my life energy?
What is my dream stag displaying in its actions?
Stage
This can refer to your life in general; your stage of development; the inner self and what drama is being enacted therein; a desire to be in the limelight; or the centre of present interest or activity. Conscious activities. The play of your own dramatic passions and drives within yourself. The theme being dramatised is often important to understand, as it reflects concerns in your own life that are of concern to you. See: Actor.
Stagnant
Blocked emotions or energies. See: River.
Stairs Staircase
As a baby, stairs presented a huge challenge. To deal with them we had to develop several major abilities, such as steady balance, confidence, control of fear of falling, strength of purpose. Therefore, stairs represent many feelings in connection with achievement, failure, climbing and falling. When these feelings also connect with work, relationship, social standing or sex, then we use stairs as a symbol of what we are feeling.
Taking steps toward something; going up or down in life in your own estimation; moving from one environment to another, so a shift in some way; gaining a new skill, or facing a challenge – stairs are difficult and dangerous when we are children, and so probably remain as a symbol of challenge, danger and achievement in adulthood. Many dreams of climbing stairs include feelings of high anxiety. This is either to do with avoiding a danger at the foot of the stairs, or arriving at something threatening or dangerous at the top. But the difficult feelings might not be due to danger, but to finding or realising things that radically change the way you see yourself or the world. The following example illustrates this.
Example: We move into a house and nobody but myself has really taken any notice of the stairs. Nobody has been up. In one dream I try to go up but the children are scared for me. They plead, “don’t go up Mum, just forget them.” Then I wake. In the next dream I wait till they are asleep. Half way up I can see there is a glass roof, the wooden frames painted green. I am terrified but have to go on. Then I wake. Next dream I got up there. It smells very musty. Lots of draw sheets
covering things. See Nothing Can Hurt You in Your Dreams
Going down stairs: This is a controlled fall. The ease or difficulty with which you manage the descent, shows how well you manage the fear of falling, or the measure of your confidence.
If you are going down into a basement or cellar it can mean that in the cellar or basement one is near to the earth, the primordial forces of nature, what moves beneath ones ‘street level’ personality. So if you feel anxious as you go down it suggests you have not explored this level of your mind yet. This is because many people as their awareness reaches beyond what they feel is their normal self feel scared. Such resistances cause us to create awful dreams and fears as a means of avoiding our own inner world and its wonders. We feel that we will be swallowed up and we will die. It is important to say that when we meet the experience of powerlessness through becoming aware of the hugeness of your Life, which we are usually unaware if, it feels like something alien or attacking, and it is a shock.
Going down may mean you are going down in life, but sometimes it links with loss of good feelings, of health or even like the following dream.
Example: “I dreamed that I was awakened by the sound of a horse’s hooves in the street. I saw a white horse, with no rider, stopping at midnight in front of our house. I knew it came for my younger sister. I went to the door and opened it to call her, when suddenly I saw her coming down the stairs, all dressed in white. She did not say a word to me, but walked with stately steps down the stairs, through the hall, and out of the door. She mounted the horse and rode away. I woke up crying.” The woman’s sister died a month later.
Going up stairs: Again, this is about a change of situation or environment, but going up frequently depicts greater excitement, awareness or discovery of new experience.
Going up shows you leaving the everyday, ground level or ordinary world of experience.
So it can be an escape from involvement with others or events, or also an ascent into greater vulnerability.
The example below shows how going upstairs can be an opening or widening of awareness to include areas of experience usually avoided. In fact Mrs. H. takes her awareness down to more everyday levels to escape meeting the light. This shows how we not only avoid unpleasantness, but also something wonderful or out of the ordinary.
Running up: Escaping from urges arising from lower down in the body – so a movement of attention towards the abstract or mental away from fears arising from unconscious or sexuality; lack of confidence, a fear of failing or not being capable is also a common feeling in connection with stairs; if running up with pleasure, then it suggests exuberance producing a change in your feelings and situation.
Walking down: Going down stairs, apart from a descent from a higher place, a more inclusive view, is also a controlled fall. This might suggest being in control of a changing situation.
Skimming down: This is a dream often experienced by children. It is almost like flying down the stairs, the feet just touching the edge of the stairs every so often, creating an exhilarating sense of pleasure. The reason for the dream is most likely that going down stairs as a young child is a difficult and dangerous skill. Most of us have fallen at some point. As we gain greater physical control and can run down stairs, a sense of greater achievement arises. Not only stairs, but other areas of our environment that were dangerous, are now a source of pleasure. The dream translates this feeling into the image of skimming the stairs.
Example: I would stand at the top of the stairs and instead of walking down the stairs I used to fly. This dream lasted for a number of years and as I got older I sometimes dreamed that boys or men were chasing me. I would suddenly take off like a helicopter and fly away. Sometimes narrowly escaping from my pursuer.
Here the stairs represent confidence in dealing with difficulties. But when she got to puberty she faced a new difficulty, her desire for a partner and her sexual feelings, flying away into the air often shows how we can escape difficult feelings by living in a fantasy, reading a book or watching a film as an escape.
Example: ‘I was in a building with a group of people. I was being chased and suddenly fly up in the air to escape my pursuers.’ Michael O.
Spiral staircase: The spiral staircase usually indicates – if going up – your personal evolution and positive change, and the change is one involving greater insight or wider view of yourself and life. It also involves the continuous repeating of experience, going around daily activities, facing the same again and again, but each cycle brings positive change.
The spiral staircase hints at a view of life you have, that you are in a process of continual growth, the spiral staircase of Life. So perhaps the change is part of your growth. The feeling of the house is usually a way of telling you something – probably that the house/you that you live in at the moment is not a good place to be – or the reverse. It is probably referring to your attitudes in life.
In most cases the ascent is, like the rising sun during the day or the summer, linked completely with the descent in the evening, night, or winter. Ascent is therefore part of a spiral which also descends, the cycle of birth, death, rebirth. Christianity tends to speak of a one time resurrection, whereas the ancients saw it as a continuing cycle.
Example: ‘I go up the first flight of stairs, then the next, and there is my ex husband’s Nan who is dead and whom I have never met. I don’t see her face but I know it’s her. She is a blinding white light and I run down the stairs.’ Mrs. H.
Stallion
See: Horse.
Stammer
Internal struggle or conflict of some sort. Perhaps a sub vocalisation is going on at the same time. See: Speak.
Star
A hope, a wish, an ambition. An intuition or subtle sense of the cosmos and your relationship with it. Subtle influences that shape and direct you.
Station
See: Railway.
Starvation
Hungering for something such as love, self expression, recognition, self realisation. See: Fasting.
Statue
Unfeeling, like a stone. Unresponsiveness.
Steam
Emotions expressed under pressure, as words spoken in anger; or things done after a shock or fright.
Steal Stealing Stolen
Feeling that something is taken from you, or you are taking something, without agreement. Feelings of being unloved might enter into this, as you will feel you are stealing what is not willingly given.
Steel
See: Iron.
Steps
Usually the different steps taken in any undertaking. The first step towards marriage is courtship, the next engagement, and so on. See: Walking.