Posts Tagged ‘dream analysis’

Cream

If cream from milk, it suggests the best of life, luxury, special treatment, affection, or even feelings of indulgence. It is sometimes used in a dream to suggest allowing oneself pleasure, and that might be in a relationship, in sex.

Example: A woman throws herself over the cliff to where the beasties are. One breaks her neck, the other lives. She’s a floozy and she wants the beasties, who are also gay men, to make her. One guy is chosen to do it as “punishment,” to cream her pussy. He has white makeup on and is very French and gay. Meanwhile, a man comes through the window and sits with us. He wants Tyler. to teach for him. Tyler introduces me and says I’m an excellent teacher as well. He looks me over. He might be interested.

Cream may be linked with dieting, and depict the conflict between sensory and passing pleasure such as ice cream or cream, and your desire to move toward greater health or weight loss.

Ice cream, especially for young people, often has the association of being with friends, sociability and sharing relaxed pleasure, maybe family time. Ice cream can depict childlike desires for sweet things. Young girls especially seem to crave such things, and as adults sometimes we still return to those feelings.

Ice-cream can occasionally be word play meaning ‘I scream’. Because ice cream is frozen but sensually pleasurable, it very occasionally points to feelings that were frozen, perhaps repressed, that are now being released or melted.

If cream you use for your skin, this depends on whether it is an antiseptic or medicine, or beauty preparation. So a beauty cream would be about your feelings or worries regarding your appearance, age, etc; an antiseptic cream would connect with concerns you have about that part of your body, your self image, or health. It might suggest a healing process for instance.

Cream as a colour See: cream under colours.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Is this dream showing pleasure, and if so is it about pleasure with one person or several?

Am I showing signs of conflict about the cream or ice cream, and does this tell me anything about my waking feelings?

Am I expressing very young feelings in the dream?

See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Characters and People in Dreams – Life’s Little Secrets

Creatures

Sometimes we dream about creatures which are not like any animal we know – perhaps ancient, or mixtures of plants and animals. These can represent our fear of things like bacteria, or illness due to micro-organisms. Occasionally they may even represent what such an illness is doing in the body. But frequently the point to the wonderful cellular activity and processes in your body, or the unconscious activities of mind.

Example: As I looked around I found a small creature on a rock. It looked like cellophane as I could see right through it. It was about three inches across, shaped slightly like a starfish, and was mobile. I found other creatures also, bigger and looking more solid, maybe nine inches across, also mobile, with a texture like thick seaweed, and with many ‘legs’ from a central body or nucleus. I hadn’t seen creatures like this before.

Suddenly I felt one of the larger creatures moving up my leg, inside my trousers. It climbed to my left shoulder, and I was aware of others also on my body, about three or four. I was not frightened, but a little tense, wondering what to do. I realised I should have tucked my trousers in my socks so they would not have been able to crawl up my legs. I thought of taking my clothes off to remove the creatures, but thought others would then be able to jump on me easily. At this point the dream ended or I woke. T.

Some creatures appearing in dreams are big and perhaps scary, but not always. Dreams create these because the creatures you know already do not have the right associations to exactly portray what is being presented. The creature may be a lovable cartoon type, prehistoric, or even a creature of darkness. What you feel about it is a clue to what it depicts, but you need to see this as something you are feeling or facing in your life. For help doing this see Standing in Roles.

Example: A small animal was clinging to my chest. It gave me the strong feeling of its animal nature, and was like a small bulging eyed monkey or lemur. As it clung it had one of my hands held firmly in its mouth using it as a teat. Its teeth were slightly painful. I knew it did this account of being frightened, and I, with others, was taking its back to the zoo from where it had escaped.

The above dream shows very clearly what this creature depicts – the animal anxiety we all face when out of our usual surroundings and environment, or when our instinctive flight or fight pattern gets stimulated. As humans we are naturally gregarious creatures needing to be recognised and part of a community. This is so often not what we face in life that stress results from. Our dreams not only portray this, but the process behind dreams seeks a solution in its reservoir of resources. See: collective unconscious.

Martin dreamt of seeing ancient creatures arise from the muddy water that had gathered where foundations had been dug for new buildings. A prehistoric creature emerges from the swampy ground and followed him. He is frightened and runs away, but the creature talks to him. In entering his dream and allowing his feelings to respond he experienced the following.

I understood in a flash the meaning of the creatures in the swamp dream. I am life – ancient, prehistoric life, meeting the demands of today’s world, today’s social scene, today’s conscious decisions. It is the ancient self my inner exploring has uncovered in its dealings, yet I have been running away. That is because my feeling self has been so hurt and in pain. Yes, I understood, the beast in me has a healthy fear of much that goes on in today’s world. Fear is a guardian that protected ancient beast from uncountable dangers for millions of years. Yes, there were so many real dangers that fear gave as the strength to run from. The healthy beast still feels fear as it looks out of its eyes as modern man. It must not be crushed or repressed. Gradually it will grow and fear less. Give it time, let it grow slowly beyond its fear.

The creature in our dream often depicts some aspect of these primal and fundamental processes or instinctive urges and drives in us. As in Martin’s dream, the way you relate to it is usually shown in the dream action, and with some openness you can usually get in touch with the forces or feelings within you and around you that it portrays.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What is the creature doing in my dream and how am I responding to it?

If I am frightened what am I feeling anxious about in waking life?

If I imagine touching the creature what do I feel?

See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Mammal Brain – Inner World

Creeper

This could indicate doubts, insinuations, stagnancy, vegetating, or something inhibiting your growth, depending upon the feelings in the dream. But if it is positive feelings, it could indicate processes of growth and movement. In either case it is something that is growing. The question is whether the growth is overwhelming or encroaching on other things, or whether it enhances something.

The word or image might also sometimes represent someone who is a ‘creeper’ – A person who does weird things, like stares at you while you sleep, or looks at you for hours through a window. It is also a part of a computer game – a hostile mob.

Occasionally the vine or creeper represents the spine and the flow of life up the body. If there are flowers on it, then it shows the opening of potentials. So cutting back a creeper or vine can suggest controlling or stopping urges and emotions that have been growing, perhaps even overwhelming you, such as happens sometimes in love.

In some dreams a vine or creeper links the earth with heaven or the sky. This suggests the rising spinal energy that lights up areas of the brain that are usually dormant, thus arousing altered states of consciousness. See ASC

Creepers and vines are also resilient and can cover areas, so may link with something hidden or tough. See: vine.

If it is a small creeper, then you are looking at the beginnings of something growing, a new expression of your potential for good or ill. Is it a directed activity, or a leaking of energy?

Useful Questions and Hints:

Is my dream creeper an expression of growth or encroachment and what part is either of those playing in my present situation?

Do I connect this with my spine in any way, and is so what is emerging in my life that is a new perception or experience?

Are emotions or worries encroaching on my good feelings and smothering my ability to function well?

See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Individuation – You are More than You Realise

Crescent

Femininity; the vagina; the process of feminine creativity.

The the changing pattern of dreaming during the menstrual cycle by either women or men is important. Just as the moon goes through phases when it appears to be full and bright but gradually diminishes to a narrow crescent shape only to return again to its state of illuminated wholeness, so too does a woman manifest a waxing and waning of her personality during her lunar-cycle dreams. The crescent shape in dreams sometimes depicts a woman’s sexuality and openness to mating, so receptiveness.

Jo Jean Boushahla in the book Dream Dictionary says ‘A new moon or a crescent moon show a time of feeling at one with our internal spiritual self. It is a time for deep inner reflection’.

Crescent moon: The beginning or ending of something to do with ones feelings or inner life.

Example: One morning I was allowed to go with my mother to the baker’s shop and there I received a crescent roll from the baker’s wife. I did not eat the roll but carried it proudly in my hand. Only my mother and the baker’s wife were present, so I was the only man.”  Such crescents are popularly called “moon-teeth,” and this symbolic allusion to the moon underlines the dominating power of the feminine-a power to which the little boy may have felt exposed and which, as the “only man,” he was proud of being able to confront. Quoted from Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung.

Idioms: Go round in circles; come full circle; vicious circle; circle of influence/friends.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What were my feelings in the dream with the crescent?

What associations do I have with a crescent shape?

As I think about the dreamt of crescent what images or thoughts occur?

See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Questions – Life’s Little Secrets

Credit Card

This links with the feelings you have about money; the opportunities power and pleasures it brings, or the stress and uncertainty involved with it. The card can indicate the ability to get what you want, or to feel secure. Or if you have problems dealing with cards, then the difficult feelings and situations it involves.

Having or getting a credit card: A sense of gaining greater ease and opportunity with money; finding an easier feeling about relating to the world and having the power to move around in it.

Loss or destruction of credit card: Uncertainty about your financial future; feeling of stress or struggle to get your needs in life; loss of power. See: money.

Stolen card: This might also suggest someone has got hold of your desires and spending power, as might some advertising or fashions. In some ways this could suggest stolen identity.

Giving or given a credit card: This involves trust and generosity in some way, perhaps even love.

Example: I had a young puppy dog. It was full of life and exuberance. I came in and found it had got hold of my wallet and chewed it so badly there was only a shred of my wallet and American Express card left. I was so angry I punched the dog hard several times, but couldn’t feel satisfied. Cliff.

Cliff explored his feelings and associations regarding the dream and realised that because he was hoping to semi-retire on income from investments, and the investments had dropped in value because of a falling market, his enthusiasm, the dog, had taken a beating. In fact he had begun to feel he must struggle on to survive financially again. See: Money.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Are there feelings of pleasure or distress in the dream – and where am I meeting those feelings?

What issue is being met in the dream – i.e. relationship, travel, pleasure – and where does that arise in my life and how is it connected with money?

What am I feeling about money or security at the moment and what is the dream commenting on that?

See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Avoid Being Victims – Secrets of Power Dreaming

Cricket

See: Games

Cripple

Difficulty in fulfilling ones potential. The parts of your body usually represent the psychological functions they play. So a leg would represent your ability to stand up for yourself, to be independent, etc. Therefore being crippled suggests psychological hurt to whatever limb or part of body is crippled. See: Body; Legs; Right; Left.

 The children one hears about who are maltreated by their family or by war, might well mature with a crippled capacity to trust other people, or the stunted growth of their love. All of us have some of our potential hurt or crippled, and the above dream is graphically portraying this.  This less developed part of John has needs, but also something to offer. This less dominant side of his personality only ‘comes out’ when he relaxes, and will have talents he can use if he gets to know it.

There is a world beyond suffering and even the very sick can be a helper.

“Not a lost soul is helped because those who look upward give themselves up for lost.

In the small open space of the temple burnt a flickering oil lamp at the feet of a tall man who sat there with imperturbable serenity in the dirty room. He, too, was sunk deep in meditation. His broad chest was still, no motion of the breath disturbed it. But the hands that hay in his lap were crippled humps of flesh, and the skin of his well—built body was as though covered with shining lacquer —- the skin of a leper. Around him- and deep in the shadows sat other dark, silent figures, their eyes raised to the empty sockets of the holy man, whose features were composed in an expression of infinite joy.

An oppressive silence lay over the scene.

In the dirty corners lay human bundles, sleeping. By them and between them squatted men with staring eyes as though lost in a dream. Those who were close to the Holy Man seemed to be listening intently, and the nearer they were to his feet the more serene and enlightened seemed their worn features. He himself seemed to be the radiant centre of some invisible light He was a cripple, as they all were. He was a leper, as they all were. A beggar, as they all were. But in him their nameless misery seemed to find its culmination and its divine transfiguration. Inwardly I was buffeted here and there by my impressions. Around me was time lowest depth of human suffering, and yet that was not so. In one creature I sensed the highest degree of bliss amid wish less inner peace. Should I be compassionate or envious?

The features of the leprous Holy Man expressed that felicity whose unapproachable sublimity enforces veneration. Had he forgotten his sufferings? Is that which we feel as suffering really no suffering at all? Is that which seems more dreadful to us than death just a part of the world for which we are struggling; we who are blinder than that beggar with the empty eye-sockets? Is our compassion here merely arrogance? In fact is it we perhaps who deserve the compassion of those on the other side?” See Quoted from Beggar Among the Dead – Mountain of Love

Human beings has evolved through huge periods of time to have self awareness, a truly amazing thing, but for many it is a state of constant pain and suffering leading many to commit suicide. But Dr. Maurice Bucke, who himself lived in constant physical pain tells of how him and many others were able to evolve to a new state in which their suicidal pains no longer were active in them. He called it Cosmic Consciousness, but it has been known for ages under different names such as Enlightenment and Liberation. Those who evolved to this level of awareness often say, “That we could all be experiencing this, if only we could stop being typical suffering humans. Regardless of what hell one might fall into an enlightened one is an ordinary person who acts like a true adult.” All the major faiths recognise this and so have left records of how to reach this evolution of self.

Here are some – Ox Herding Pictures  – The Many Ways To A New Life – Psychological Vomiting – Communicating With Your Inner Guide

Useful Questions and Hints:

What part of me or another person is shown as crippled, and what does that suggest about my own condition? Look up body parts to define this.

If I imagine myself as the crippled person, or as myself with this disability what do I feel or observe. For help doing this see – Stand in Role.

In what way do I hold myself back, or fail to express love or creativity, and how does this dream relate to that?

See Associations Working With – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Learning to Love

 

Crocodile

See: Alligator or crocodile.

Cross

Difficulties or tribulations we carry, perhaps unnecessarily. It can also indicate human life and its whole spectrum of physical experience, sexual, mental emotional, cosmic – painful and delightful. The body, upon which consciousness is nailed or fixed during life.

The cross can also point to meeting death as an initiation into a new awareness and a spiritual life – the death being a psychological one, followed by rebirth or resurrection. See Ronnie Laing – archetype of rebirth.

In Christianity the cross also has many meanings. It represents the religion as a whole; Christ’s willing suffering; man’s suffering in the name of his religious beliefs; the strength of his beliefs; a sign of spiritual goodness and power to ward off evil. It also means the agony and wonder faced in surrendering individual will to the will of the community/communion, in exposing oneself, the sacred heart, to all emotion, pain, pleasure to transform it. See archetype of crucifixion

Lastly, it can symbolise perfect union, balance, equality and atonement of the the different parts of your being. Dreaming about the cross can be a sign of a personal destiny led by the best in us, Christ or a sense of the Divine. So a turning point in ones life. See Archetype of the Christ

A cross can also indicate wrongness as with tick being correct, cross being wrong or forbidden, or completion as when crossed off list.

If cross upright as + : Being upright; correct; self assertion; balanced.

If cross as X : The four extremities; reaching out; crossing out. Like the square, it can also represent wholeness, solidity, especially if the arms are equal length. See: crossing.

Idioms: cross my heart and hope to die; cross over Jordan; cross over to the other side; cross paths; cross someone; cross that bridge when I come to it; cross your fingers; paths will cross.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Does the dream cross have any religious significance/feelings for me?

Have I met great change or even depression that I am passing through?

What feelings are evident in the dream?

See Associations Working With – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Life’s Little Secrets

Crossing

As with a road or river. This usually depicts change, but sometimes with difficulties, depending on the dream. For instance if the river or bridge is difficult to cross, then it suggest you have fears or other problems to contend with in the change.

Sometimes the change is a major one, such as leaving childhood and entering adolescence, or the entering into old age. Marriage or parenthood could be such a change. Obviously, death also is frequently depicted as the crossing of a river or a threshold. See archetype of death

What you are crossing points to an obstacle you are meeting, often of a feeling nature to overcome. Maybe fear or uncertainty causes you to be unable to make the change, so you dream of a bridge giving way. Such changes often are to do with major life junctures, such as from youth to adulthood; pre-puberty to adolescent; single to married; young to middle age.

Crossing also suggests meeting the things that you do in everyday life. A busy road would indicate this, the traffic representing the many factors in life, other people’s decisions and activities, that could impact with you in one way or another. Making such crossings sometimes brings strength, or develops strength.

Something like a cable or tree trunk crossing something like a river or chasm depicts connection of some sort, something that has risk involved or needs courage to make the change.

Crossing oneself-making the sign of the cross on ones body: Most people have little understanding of this, doing it with clumsy movement high up on their chest. The cross signifies the human body which is the temple of the soul and is seen as holy by the Bible. So the sign should have a long bottom and a wide cross on one’s body. Also it should be done with some sense of its meaning and of the holy places of ones body.

Example: The coins, or really, medallions, were shining silver, depicting Christian or ancient saints and martyrs. It was, I knew in the dream, like a rosary, which one could use in prayer. But instead of just the Ave Maria’s, and the Our Father’s, all the other saints were included. Thus it was a very comprehensive guide to prayer. Some of the silvered chains between the coins were missing, but these had been mended with something else. The shape of it suggests the sign of the cross people make on their body. But it shows the right way to do this is first touching the brow then down to the genitals then to the two breasts,  – the real sources of power. Richard.

Sometimes: A trial or test such as initiation.

Crossing a river or chasm: Often depicts feelings about death. See: bridge; river; road; individuation.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

What is it I am crossing, and what challenges or dangers are involved?

Am I making changes in my life at the moment, crossing from one situation to another?

If I manage to cross, what is on the other side that I wanted to reach?

See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Life’s Little Secrets – Every 7 Years You Change

Crossroad

You may be confronting a time of decision in your life. This may be caused by a convergence of events, different desires or interests, and the need to choose a direction. The crossroads often appears in dreams when there is a turning point in life, a time of change, taking another direction in life. Or it may represent a sense of indecision, a fear of not doing the right thing. Cross-roads often have a certain amount of anxiety or vulnerability involved, as with crossing; Decision; North; East; South; West.

In the past people were sometimes buried at crossroads and in some dreams there may still be this link with death in some way. And in folklore the crossroad was a place where this world linked with the unseen world, so a doorway to the unconscious.

Example: ‘I keep in touch with an old boyfriend who I have not seen since I was eighteen, which is fourteen years ago. In my dream I was on holiday on a coach which stopped at a cross-roads. I met my old boy friend who had come from the other direction and we walked together. I felt enormous pleasure being in his company again. A hearse passed us slowly with a child’s coffin.’ Mrs R.

In trying to decide what direction to take, Mrs R. still finds emotions tie her to the past, but the dead child shows she really knows the relationship has ended.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What are you facing at the moment that is causing indecision or questioning?

If you can’t decide which way to go, ask for a further dream to help clarify what is involved.

Imagine walking in each of the possible directions and see how each direction feels. When you find one that feels right, ask what that direction in your waking life.

See: carry the dream forward – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – What we need to remember about us

Crow Raven

Being carrion birds, and so often seen near corpses or roadside kill, so they are often linked with death or feelings about death; bad news; fear; unconscious feelings. Some people see them as associated with personal death, mostly because that is how they are used in films. But more often they are simply your own dark thoughts, probably about your own future, that you are doomed and on the slippery slope. So for goodness sake, realise that thoughts are creative, and you are creating an awful feeling and so you can escape from it. See Being the Person or Thing

It can at times depict the negative aspect of father. The dark intelligence in underhanded people or animals; forces in life that seem to have intelligent direction yet are not outwardly visible. Sometimes seen as a messenger between heaven and earth, an omen of death, and a seer of the hidden truth in the unconscious.

Crows also make their sound in flight, and then it is about telling their fellows where they are; a sort of positioning. Crows are a group bird and are supportive of their fellows. See Birds

Crows can sometimes mean that they are messengers from the dark or unconscious side of you. In such a role they can act as a protector – maybe even a male protector. But also they are seen in some dreams as showing anxiety and darkness in a persons life.

Example: In some ways, it felt like a death of whatever phase connected me with those who were holding me back through falsehood and imposing their ego-driven will upon me. In others, I felt the message was still to continue my work and ethic, regardless, and let these people carry on to their own kingdoms. I felt the dream in some ways reasserted this role I played in life.

Example: The other woman was also left where we slept and I saw again the same thing under her on my left. Two dead and drenched crows, either side of me as I still laid there. It also seemed/felt as if whilst both crows were under the women more than under me, the beaks of these crows had been touching, only just, my arms while I slept. I wasn’t entirely indifferent in the dream itself to this sight… the contrast, of elevated sisterly bonding before we slept, to the sight of this suffocated/drowned crows when we woke obviously created meaning..

A day that has death in it, for to go further in the road you are travelling you need to meet and experience death – psychologically – and that is part of life. I get the impression that to some extent you were partly suffocated by the love and care you received – as shown by the dead birds. That is not a bad thing, but it is now that it will leave you to develop independence. Independence is strange thing, because it is a lifelong journey, and yet we are never actually independent. But that is what the death is about and it is like an initiation into a new chapter of your life. Remember to keep the faith in our divine prosperity, and that we shall all secure it.

Idioms: as the crow flies; eat crow; Something to crow about; crow’s feet; old crow.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Did the bird impress me with any feeling reaction?

What was the background of the dream suggesting?

If I imagine myself back in the dream what feelings arise?

See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Simple Truths – Inner World

Crowd

In many dreams being in the crowd shows your response to socialising. The crowd may indicate social pressure or what you feel is the common direction or response – as when we say ‘follow the crowd’. Feeling crowded out, pushed out by competition or pressure from others. A crowd can also indicate public opinion, what you feel others are feeling about you or doing to you. You might also feel anonymous in a crowd, camouflaged or lost.

A crowd in a dream may mean it is an important dream. This is because it involves many aspects of your nature, many parts of yourself. This is especially so when the crowd is in an arena, a theatre or a public event.

Lost in a crowd: Feeling without personal direction; confusion on meeting many opinions; desire not to stand out, or swayed by general opinions.

Attacked by crowd: Fear of public opinion or response to you; feeling your own anger or irrational urges as threatening.

Talking to, leading, or part of crowd at a central event: An impulse or idea which unifies many parts of your nature – as the many aspects of our own being, such as visual impressions; sensuality; thoughts; musical sense; religious feelings; sexual drive; intuition; fear; ambition; hunger; our desire for acclaim; the sadist in us and so on, constitute a crowd.

How we relate to the crowd: Suggests our relationship with our own inner community and the external public. Being unable to tolerate parts of oneself leads to intolerance toward external people with those traits. See: Group under people.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Am I happily part of the crowd or am I ill at ease – and what do my feelings indicate?

What is my relationship with the crowd, and does that reflect in any way on the way I feel about socialising?

Am I a follower or leader in this dream?

See Characters and People in Dreams – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – LifeStream

Crown

This usually denotes importance, power or authority – either as you feel it in yourself or in someone else. It can also depict rulership – what rules you or controls you – or what you have dominion over and responsibility for, but also what demands respect because of its power.

In some dreams it points to success, either desired or achieved, or realisation of expanded awareness. In the latter case it suggests self mastership in some degree, and an opening of the higher possibilities in you or the person you see it on. In Western symbolism it is the equivalent to what in the East is called the Crown Chakra – the symbol of realised personal potential, the redirected fundamental instinctive drives, leading to the opening of higher brain functions. See: Spiritual Life In Dreams.

It may also refer to your father if on the head of a man, or your mother if on the head of a woman.

Relinquishing the crown would suggest giving up power or domination, perhaps out of love or surrender.

Being crowned suggests the receiving of a new state of being, entering into a new relationship with life and others. It is also the recognition of your quality or qualities or enlightenment.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What are my ruling passions or fears at the moment and how do I  relate to them?

What feelings were experienced in this dream, and what do they relate to in my life?

In the dream, what is connected with the crown, and how does that apply to me?

See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – What is the main action in the dream? – Enlightenment

Crucible

The centre of our turmoil, tension or spiritual life. In it our nature is changed.

Crucifixion

Depending on the context in the dream, this can indicate either that you are facing a life situation in which you feel nailed to the physical needs of life, perhaps torn apart by desires, fears or conflicts. Or it can show you are surrendering or sacrificing your physical and ego needs to what you sense as the essential or spiritual you.

The symbolism in the New Testament shows the crucifixion taking place on a hill, and this represents the top of the head and the sexual, emotional, mental nature being opened to a wider and less object and self centred life. Due to the fact the Self dies to its divine realm during crucifixion, and is nailed to matter – the body, suffering the loss of awareness of existence in the divine, life after life, that our soul may achieve eternal life, it has a Christ like love, patience and gentleness. Here too, in passing through the experience of crucifixion, we meet those great beings of all nations, religions and times who have trod the path before us. If we remain conscious at this stage, the wisdom and experience of these saints and masters, comes to us as fully as we can receive it.

Crucifixion also suggest self sacrifice, the giving of self in service or surrender to the community or family. But it can also mean a sort of masochism where you kill out your own needs in a foolish way. This killing of ones own love, ones own sexual and tender feelings, ones own living self, is shown as crucifixion because it kills the wonderful Life in oneself, the living, loving, growing and creative core of oneself.

Example: Crucifixion is allowing oneself to be buffeted, torn by all the fears, angers, hates, prejudices human beings are heir to. There’s no creator we are told by our pundits. We are only physical maggots who live mate and die. There is no life after death. Crucifixion is the meeting of the fears and darkness this leads to. It is to meet the death that all ones inner life cries out for.

As I went through this it really did feel as if I had at last understood the meaning of that cry for father from the cross, and the taunts of the mob. The mob are all our own inbuilt doubts, fears, angst, cynicism that lash out at our life process. Our fears have to hit us to test the strength and validity of our belief. Also they need to not just believe that experience, they have to really meet it. So they shout, “Crucify him. Crucify him!” They need an actual experience of testing death to discover what the truth is; what lies beyond. And the cry from the cross is meeting the reality of the human condition. We meet our conviction that we are not divine; that there is no father to help us. We are alone. Death confronts us. We reach rock bottom. We fully accept our humanity. We have lost any awareness of a separate God and stand alone in Life – we are it. Then comes death.

Occasionally crucifixion can link with guilt or feelings of being a scapegoat. People undergoing depth psychotherapy often experience crucifixion as connected with their pains of being born.

Parts of us may have been ‘killed’ through pain or difficult life situations, and if they are coming alive again – being felt once more – the pain of their emergence is sometimes shown as crucifixion. See: Religion and Dreams; archetype of crucifixion; Cross.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

Do I feel wrongly crucified like a martyr – if so why am I in that role at the moment?

What is being sacrificed or surrendered in my life?

Am I killing or sacrificing myself in some way?

See Meetings with Christ – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Methods of Awakening – inner path of christ