Posts Tagged ‘dream analysis’

Debt

You may be feeling you owe something to someone, or to society. We are all, in fact, in debt for our life. Do you have a feeling that you have not given to others what they, in their life, have given to you? Have you promised something that you have not taken care of?

Some dreams show the recognition of your deep links with your culture, and the enormous debt you have to it for language and the formation of your identity. Recognition of your cultural inheritance is the gaining of a new life, and is an access to a wider awareness.

Dreaming of financial debt probably shows you in a state of anxiety or tension that needs to be dealt with. Often if we explore the dream it shows a way out if the difficulty.

Debt also suggests actions in the past, either performed by you or someone else. This means there are things to deal with in the present arising from that past. Strangely dreams sometimes suggest paying off a debt is involved in the difficulties of your life. Living through difficulties is paying off your debt.

Example: ‘I am sitting in a high window box facing outwards, with my son and a friend of his on my left. I feel very scared of falling and asked my son and his friend to climb back into the building. I feel too scared to move until they shift.’ Trevor N.

At the time of the dream, for the first time in his life, Trevor was working as a full time freelance journalist. His wife was out of work and his frequency of sales low enough to cause them to be running out of money. The building behind felt like a place he had worked in on a nine to five basis, so associated it with security. Falling was fear of failure, getting in debt, dropping into the feelings of self doubt and being incapable and feeling inadequate.

It can sometimes express the idea of not living up to the mark; a sin or trespass; not giving to others what they, in their life, have given to you. “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”

Useful questions:

What influence from the past am I facing at the moment?

Is there something I owe someone or to society, that I need to pay?

What do I feel indebted to or what given that I have not been rewarded for?

Why do I feel in debt?

Who do I feel in debt to?

See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – The power of Habits – Secrets of Power Dreaming

Decay Decayed Decaying

This suggest a sense of something in your life not being alive and expressive. Possibly it is something you are not proud of, or you feel ‘rotten’ about. Occasionally this could indicate something not working well in your body or feelings.

Rotten might mean ‘bad’ emotions felt in a relationship; a hunch or feelings about something, such as memories.

Example: I look at the trunk of the thistle examining it. At this point it seems like a giant hardwood tree. I snap a twig and it smells very nice – a perfumed wood. Other branches are going rotten. Walking around to the back of the tree to see if the bark is rotten I notice a hole where bees or wasps have a colony. I put my left hand up to touch the bark and as I do so notice there is also a hole in the back of my hand, in and out of which wasps are flying. With great shock I look in the hole and see wasps eating my flesh away, so my hand is almost hollow. I awake with the feeling of being old and decrepit.

In exploring the dreamer the man in looking at his hand and realises there was a hole in his life. He took note of what he felt. Just prior to the dream he had experienced a lot of anxiety about whether his marriage was breaking up. The dream made him realise that niggling thoughts and emotions were eating away at his self confidence leading him to feelings of being near to the scrap heap, having outlived his usefulness. The dream had depicted these emotions and thoughts as wasps.

This enabled him to see that if he entertained such feelings, they would certainly eat away his grasp of life. He could see that as a person he only entertained thoughts and emotions. They were simply what he thought and felt about reality, not reality itself. It was up to him as to what he wanted reality to be. Did he want to entertain the reality of the tired ageing man who could no longer satisfy his wife’s need for love and companionship, having nothing worthwhile to contribute to others? That could certainly become reality if he allowed such feelings to dominate him. He had thought that his life was like a giant thistle, but on closer inspection he saw it was a giant hardwood. It did have branches which needed pruning, but the rest of the tree was good and perfumed – giving off good feelings to others. So he decided to put love and care into his life and marriage instead of self doubt and a sense of defeat.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What do I feel is decaying of rotten in my life?

How do I meet these feelings of something decaying?

Is it about ageing?

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

Decision

Whatever decision you make in your dream, it is wise to look at the drama and details of the dream to understand why the decisions was made, or out of what influences or needs. The dream process often brings to your awareness insights that help you to choose your way or direction, and these should be considered. But dreams should not be seen as totally saying what you must do, only as wise advisors.

But many decisions arise out of old angers, hurts or fears, so make sure you are not acting out of those. Unconditional and detached love and insight are the best attitudes to act from.

There are also life decisions we make that are not always made by clear thinking or as an adult. Even as a baby we can experience enormous feeling reaction to some situations we are confronted by. These reactions constitute a decision, even though not made consciously. From that point onwards we, as the baby or child, will respond to a similar situation in a given way. For instance a baby may have found so little love and warmth from it mother, and so much care from someone else, it alters its responses to its mother, and transfers it bonding and warmth to someone else. Such decisions have enormous influence on adult life, and are often not recognised for what they are, and so are not re-evaluated.

We are all the time deciding, although most of the time we do it unconsciously. We do it as habits of response, as habitual attitudes and feelings; even our habitual fears and beliefs are building blocks of our decisions and faculty of deciding.

Imagine a woman or man who constantly feels they are a failure; not only that they feel fear that they will never change and to find it they will have to die. Their fear and their beliefs turn them away from making or trying any new approach. As they say, “I cannot let myself express my feelings because I am frightened I will not survive”.

Of course we have met such people. They suffer crippling depression, and are convinced that what they suffer is incurable. And it is such etched in convictions that are the things that imprison them. See Life’s Little Secrets

Out of such things we create the decisions we make. But of course there is another route, and this person feels certain, from looking around at life in the plants, trees and animals. That Life is a process which constantly tries to heal any wound. It does it best to do this in vomiting up what we have taken in, or as a boil creating a situation to get rid of a poison. And as unpleasant as that is it is the way we are healed physically and psychologically.

It is not a case of thinking positively, but of being aware the direction our thoughts or decisions take us. So our decisions are important as the second example explains.

Example: “I had woke that morning with a headache.  This was very unusual so I knew another lump of pain was ready to come up.   For some weeks my sessions had all been centred around being a tiny baby left to cry.  As that baby I had hungered for my mother with every ounce of my being.  I don’t suppose many adults can conceive of a condition where any feeling or desire is totally engulfing.  We are used to thinking of that sort of being swallowed up and possessed by a feeling as madness.  Because of the pain most of us feel when we really begin to experience our deep yearning we do relate to our deepest feelings in a sick mad way.  Yet a baby is neither sick nor mad, but it is totally engulfed in its feelings. See LifeStream

I had been experiencing this in the sessions in which I opened to LifeStream (LS), and how as a baby I had killed my longing when nobody came.  And because of that I had not as an adult been able to really let myself feel deeply in relationships.  Or when I did begin to go deep into a feeling relationship with someone it brought great pain.  So I thought the thing coming up was another lump of baby pain.

As soon as I had an opportunity I had a session.  I had been sitting in with a friend while she had a session, and now we swapped roles.  As I lay down the pain in the head increased. I felt sick and dizzy.  My body began to jerk and it was like words being forcefully squeezed out of my body.  It feels as if those words, and the emotions pouring out with them, were literally in the body, like juice is in an apple, and the process of LS, squeezes out this painful juice.

At first the words were just a jumble of noise being pushed out as my body cramped up and squeezed.  Then I was shouting out ‘I’ve got VD  I’ve got VD’  Then every so often I would gasp out ‘A father…s father…’

I didn’t understand at this point what it was meaning, but I knew from the past it would explain itself if I let it come, and there was no need to analyse or think it out.

Now the body contractions became deeper and I could feel some real deep emotion in my chest just beginning to come up. ‘Dirty,  I’m dirty,’ I was shouting.  ‘I’m a father and I’m dirty’.  Then my body just gave a big heave like I was having a baby or something, or a tooth out, and I was just one frozen block of pain, and a great moan of pain came out.  I was sobbing and moaning about my children.  Hardly able to say it because of the pain and sobbing, nevertheless the words squeezed out of me ‘D…. Duh …Does.. a… Does a father…’  I just couldn’t go on for a while.  My body contorted up with this inner emotional pain again, and a sort of bellow of it came up from deep down.  Then the words came again.  ‘Does a father…Does a father kill his children?’

I couldn’t take it.  I just wept.  I knew that’s what I had been doing for years.  That’s what most of us are doing, only we can’t and won’t see it. We kill the bright hopes and joys of our children. We forced education upon them, and education thought up by people themselves with a hurt amounts of pain in them. But even though we hide from it, the pain of it is there like poison juice in our body.  Now mine was being squeezed out and the words were like pips forcing out of my mouth.

Example: Somehow I had managed to enter what people call the unconscious – yet I was far from being asleep or unaware. Instead I was wandering through the vastness of my own inner world and I could also see my waking self and everyday life. My outer life seemed to me to be like the surface of the earth, where things like plants and people sprout from seeds and grow. Whereas where I was I knew as the creator, the Source which gave all things life.

But as I wandered and was amazed at what I was experiencing I realised that I was looking for a way out, an escape from the awful depression and pain I was lost in. Knowing that I was in the very foundations of my being I thought there was a doorway out, a release; or else I could manipulate it to find some escape.

So I looked and sought, but all I saw was a world I had created, and as such a world I could not escape from. It was such a crushing realisation that every thing I had decided to do was my own work in creating a hell. It wasn’t a hell that was a punishment because I saw I had created it. And any release could only come through starting to create a new me. It was all so clear – no escape from myself.

In that clarity I saw that all the woes of my life, the terrible things I had met, the afflictions we apparently have as an accident, were all my own awful creativeness. As Kipling says, “And lose, and start again at your beginnings.” Fortunately the lesson was so well impressed on me that I could not blame my fortune on fate, God, others, my mother or the people around me – it was all my own work. And fortunately too I had time and strength to start again.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Am I aware that I constantly shape my life through my decision?

What is the driving force of my decisions – fear, depression, hopelessness or love?

Can I accept the responsibility of my life situation and not blame it on God or other people?

See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – The power of Habits – You Are a Dual Being

Decoy

Means you lead others to believe something you really do not feel, or think. A self deception of what you feel. For instance a man, because a job offers a high wage, may lead him to believe he likes the work, but inwardly hates it.

This could also be the warning, either of a trap you have created to trick someone, or else you sense it is put out to catch you.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Am I being led into or leading another into a deception?

Am I deceiving my self or even lying?

What is the decoy about or for?

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

Deep Deeper

Most of the processes of our body and mind take place without our having any awareness of them. Going deep underground or into water usually shows you becoming more aware of what is taking place in these usually unconscious parts of yourself.

It can also mean you are becoming more aware of the past strands of influence from family and culture, out of which your present personality was or is woven.

Another meaning is that it can link with experience of life in the womb.

You can be deeply troubled, experiencing deep peace or relaxation, deep emotions,  deeply in love, or in deep trouble.

Usually we live on the surface of our mind. In sleep we dive down deeper but lose sense of self. If we maintain some awareness in these ‘deeps’ of the mind, it is somewhat like snorkelling in a deep sea. We realise what immense and unbelievable depths lie beneath us. Dreams often portray this as depth – a hole; deep water; a chasm; space.

It can also indicate our non verbal life in the womb, or early childhood, which is remembered as patterns of feeling reaction rather than verbal utterance. In the depths we may find gems, skeletons, archaeological objects, and these relate to the memory of our evolutionary past, family influences we carry within us unknown.

Deep cuts: Suggests a hurt which penetrates us; or emotions which affect us powerfully.

Idioms: In deep water; in the deep end; deeply troubled; deeply hurt.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What am I experiencing as deep – water , sleep, peace, despair?

How am I dealing with the depth?

Am I anxious about it to is it a revelation?

See Abyss – Hole – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

Deer

The soul, the gentle harmless self that is often hurt or wounded by our aggressiveness and cynicism, or by other people’s criticism; vulnerability; the unsocialised or wild, but gentle side of our instincts; love-sickness.

In Greek mythology the deer was associated with the virginal huntress Artemis. So the female deer in a dream suggests the qualities of female gentleness and the connection with nature and the hidden world of the unconscious with all its strange wisdom. While the stag often links with bold and powerful masculinity and sexuality in a natural and potent form.

The Core Self often appears as a deer, or woodland creature in dreams. Below is a quote from Carl Jung’s book Man and His Symbols.

Example: “I am your child and your mother. They call me the ‘connecting animal’ because I connect people, animals, and even stones with one another if I enter them. I am your fate or the ‘objective I.’ When I appear, I redeem you from the meaningless hazards of life. The fire burning inside me burns in the whole of nature. If a man loses it, he becomes egocentric, lonely, disoriented, and weak.”

Example: As I walked the meadow my dog was running free. I felt I must call him to heal, as there were grazing animals about. I called him and saw him coming, almost wraith like, or like a spirit form, shadowy and powerful looking. He was running behind a wonderful looking beast – a mixture between a sheep a gazelle and a deer. The remarkable thing about it was its colouring. There were bright blues on its hindquarters, and radiant almost transparent colours elsewhere, perhaps on its head. I shouted to stop my dog frightening the creature. It ran towards me and jumped into my arms, very fearful, but relaxing and feeling safe as I held it. I could sense its emotions of terror. I seemed to feel what it was feeling inside. It was a creature without any means of defence except to run. So it was frightened for its life. This sense of its inner condition was impressive as I knew what it was like to be that creature when hunted. I also could feel how it could feel safe in my arms because somehow it was like handing over its defence to a sort of mother, as a baby might.

Then I seemed to look at the creature anew and saw that it had a much bigger body than I had first thought. In fact it must have been different because when in my arms it was small, but now it seemed to be about the size of a fallow deer.

In the above dream the man actually feels the quality of his inner condition represented by the deer.

Deer are sometimes used to indicate a sexual longing for a woman – the hunter and hunted. The sexual implication of the deer hunt is underlined by a medieval English folk song called “The Keeper”:  The first doe that he shot at he missed, And the second doe he trimmed he kissed, And the third ran away in a young man’s heart, She’s amongst the leaves of the green O”.

In a man’s dream: The deer may depict a young woman the man is in pursuit of, or a daughter if you have one.

In a woman’s dream: The deer may link with you as a young woman, or to a daughter if you have one.

Killing a deer: It can suggest many things depending upon the rest of the dream – the killing of the feminine, feelings self; a willing sacrifice such as crucifixion; male conquest of the feminine.

Because animals, plants and all creatures are expressions of the One Life, and so have the divine spark of life in them the same a humans, and because animals and deer are seen as examples of the Creator of the one Life’s awareness. the deer often represent the ability to know both the hidden worlds and the world of the known body.

		It took Hercules a full year to capture this magical creature alive – the hind of  Ceryneia which was the goddess Diana’s pet. This is of course a symbolic story and says that often we have to kill the very thing we seek, and suffer the remorse in order to become sensitive to the wild beauty that we hold within us – the goddess Diana – and through that we find healing and entrance to the union of human life with the life of the creatures of the forest and moorlands. Then love flowers between you.
The man raised the tiger and had to leave it for a long time, and when he returned the wonderful creature poured out its love for him

Useful Questions and Hints:

What are the qualities of the deer in your dream?

Does it link in any way with a feeling of entering the magical realm of nature or the unknown?

Are you feeling about it as you would with a female?

If a stag, are there symbols linking it with sexuality, such as its horns or its attraction to you?

See Animal – Animal Children – Being the Person or Thing – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

Defecate

Self expression; release of tension; getting rid of negative experience or emotions; creative expression; permitting the natural in oneself. See: excrement ; Faeces.

Example: After seeing my woman and daughter off I felt so angry that I give so much and yet when I try to speak to those I have known so well all I get as a response is lies or shit. These past few days have seen my kids putting me down, Nan in many ways doing the same, my lover is not being truthful. I give them my home, time, money, and love and feel, they just want to keep harping on about the past or, if you don’t do it my way attitude, then your a bastard. Any way I kicked fuck out of the settee, it’s like being left alone again. I sense what they are feeling yet when I ask and they don’t confirm I go back into insecurity.

Idioms: sometimes life is a bucket of shit and the handle is inside; a pinch of coon shit; up shit creek; that’s a crock (of shit); in deep shit; dump on; take a dump; the shit hit the fan; wouldn’t say shit if her mouth was full of it; get your shit together; shit or get off the pot; happy as a pig in shit; shitting bricks; shit list.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What do I feel shitty about?

Have you released it or do you still need to?

Do you identify with any of the idioms?

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

Defence Defend Defended Defending

Any sort of defence system such as a castle, a shield, weapons, fighting, may depict one of the basic ways of dealing with life – being defensive. Defensiveness means that in some way one wards off the impact of life experiences. In this way the influence of these experiences negative or positive, are kept from being taken in and absorbed or integrated.

For instance a person may have very rigid religious beliefs and defend themselves from hearing anything which enlarges or questions these beliefs. They may do this by arguing away any other ideas or experiences, or by holding a sense of righteousness and difference between themselves and other people. Similarly one can defend using clever intellectual argument which yet has no open doors to allow new ideas, feelings or new experience. See: castle; defence mechanisms; anima under archetypes.

The most ancient part of our brain, one we share with reptiles and birds is called the R complex – R for reptilian. This part of your brain deals with deeply instinctive behaviour such as flight, fight, procreation, swallowing, automatic reflexes, inbuilt mating behaviour, territorial defence and aggression. This R complex developed about 200 million years ago and is still an underpinning part of what influences your behaviour today. Dreams often portray these urges in you as snakes or lizards and are part of our defence system – or, if it is mot dealt with well it becomes inturned and destructive. See Levels of the Brain

Example: William massaged at the area and discovered a pea sized nodule. It was like a concentrated lump of pain. When he pressed I started moaning, crying, and at one point, laughing. I realised that not being influenced by anyone was a defence I had used for most of my life. Underneath that was the laughing. As William continued words started coming up by themselves. The cries of pain were real, but without linking with feelings. I felt this massage method could release the pain, but it would be like a dry labour, long and unnecessarily painful.

Later I found quite few of these nodules of pain on my back, and then I learnt how to really express anger from my past by beating hell out of cushions with a stick. Then slowly the nodules disappeared.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

What am I defending against?

Can I recognise ways I defend myself with very rigid beliefs?

Do I ever get aggressive when faced with some idea or belief?

See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Nothing Can Hurt You in Your Dreams – Dreams are a reflection of your inner world

 

Deformity

Part of your nature, that due to fear, repression or ignorance has not been able to grow in its natural beauty. This often happens from traumatic childhood experience. Or it could be something you do not like about yourself.

The deformity also can say that whatever is affected does not work well, so you cannot express fully because of it. Often this deformed part of you, often shown as someone else or child, needs love to help it grow into it full form in your life.  See abnormal; dwarf

Useful questions:

Do I in some way feel inadequate?

Have I been traumatized in the past and now need to develop my potential?

What does the deformity suggest is not functioning well in me?

See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Questions – The power of Habits

Degenerate Degenerating

There is a feeling of sliding back, of not living up to what you hope and desire. It occasionally refers to some process in the body that needs caring for, or is degenerating through misuse or misunderstanding. Sometimes refers to ageing, or the prelude to a rebirth where degeneration heightens prior to regeneration.

Parts of our nature, through lack of self worth or feelings of guilt, often prompt us to do things or live in ways that slide right back from our best. This might be indicated by someone or something that is degenerate or degenerating. Our beliefs can also degenerate and this can lead to conditions of uncertainty or feelings of lostness or even apathy.

In dreams we can often dream of a degenerate alcoholic or a degenerate woman, and these can sometimes point to things that are not admitted by the dreamer. For instance a man who constantly irritates people by his holy than you attitude might dream of the alcoholic passedout in a street, in order to aid him to balance his opinion of himself. The man dreaming of a degenerate woman, in a similat way, might be helped to see that his female self is not a nice person and needs some work being done on his nature.

Also degeneration is part of our natural processes, as in our digestive system, and the decay and eath of thousand of cells each day. We die to be born again; and because of this it represents life as well as death, growth and renewal, as well as degeneration and decomposition. So it can in fact be a way of perfect union, balance, equality and atonement of the different parts of our being.

Our culture, government and our way of life can also sometimes be seen as degenerate or degenerating. Things that do not have a good foundation, things that are degenerate, diseased or weak, do in a way shake themselves to bits through their own internal energy because of the energy playing upon it.

Useful Questions and Hints:

In what way is the dream showing degeneration?

Do I feel or see any signs of this in myself?

Is it parts of my nature or body that are shown as degenerate in the dream?

See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Avoid Being Victims – Resistances

Delay

Frustration. Putting things off. Unwillingness to make a decision, or confront or acknowledge that which is symbolised in dream.

But delay can point to delayed development, delay in speaking to someome, delau in getting on with what you intended, with a relationship, with life.

It might link with an unexpected delay in some area of your life, with frustration or irritation, or even lack of energy to move or be sexual.

The end of the world was only delayed by the efforts of the devout in some religious beliefs. Peoples living in the uncertainty of seasonal changes and unreliable harvests, may have expressed their deep fears and hopes through such rituals and beliefs.

Example: I dream that once at the doctor’s, after some delay, I am given the serum for the snake bite after first being ‘branded’ with some initials – imprinted on my arm, supposedly so they will immediately know what killed me  if I die which is very likely!

Useful Questions and Hints:

Does this indicate that I have been putting things off?

Am I have difficulty making a decision about something?

Is there something important I should be remembering about a situation?

See Resistances – Active Passive – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

Dell

A quiet retreat within yourself. A way you have found of creating inner quiet. Female sexual organs. Sometimes the dell is shown as a magical place where you are in touch with the usually hidden life beyond your usual senses.

The part of yourself that is not unconscious but out of the way of general awareness, and so hidden attitudes or desires can take place there. It can also be the place the refuse of your life gathers.

Example Dreamt that there was a green and beautiful place on top of the world. It had crags and cliffs and vales and hills, and all was covered with bright green grass and moss. In a deep dell, more green and beautiful than the rest of the place, a young girl met a young man, and married him; for what reason I cannot tell, except perhaps that the place was beautiful. Now the young man was an alien from another planet, but he did not tell the young girl in case she would not marry him.

‘As time passed the young girl and man drifted apart and slept in separate rooms, still on top of the world, and the young girl grew to hate the young man, although he seemed unaware of it and quite content.

‘This then was their state when I arrived. I immediately leapt and skipped over the hills to the place where they had met, but found it no different in appearance to the rest of the hills: no more beautiful, no less. I then went to see the young man and talked to him. I explained to him the feelings of the young girl, and that it was because she did not understand him that she felt the way she did. Whereupon he immediately went to her and confessed to being an alien, and she accepted him as he was. Then they grew together again and slept in beds side by side and peace filled their nights and beautiful children one after the other were born to the young girl. And the young man was surprised and amazed beyond his comprehension.’

Useful Questions and Hints:

What is taking place in the dell and what is that in my life?

Am I experiencing something that is usually out of sight here?

What magic or unusual am I finding here?

See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Characters and People in Dreams – carry the dream forward

Deluge

A release of emotions that you feel as overwhelming, as might be experienced in breakdown or shock. The deluge is also often a sign of release and a cleaning of withheld emotions or problems. As such it probably signifies a time of change, usually brought about spontaneously rather than by your conscious acts. Defenses you have used to prevent this are washed away. In fact any emotional pain felt in connection with this may be a struggle between your will and the forces of nature within you. See: Water.

Dreams about water, rain, floods, deluges sometimes indicate situations of the mucous or excessive water in the body. In such cases it might be wise to take less salt, and more brweres yeast tablets and vitamin C, which helps the body deal with such illnesess.

As with Noah, it symbolises in some dreams a cleansing of mind and body.

In some cases one can have a deluge of raging emotions – or in a dream a deluge might indicate that.

Example: I see to my left a picture flash, like a vision, of ocean water or some sort of rushing water coming from a distance. A deluge? Earthquake? Terrible storms? All I know is that some natural calamity of terrible magnitude is coming and will wipe out the people. It is coming much sooner than anticipated and it is almost upon us. Many people will die and they don’t even realise what is coming.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What was the deluge doing in my dream?

Was I involved or  just a witness to it?

Did I feel any feelings, fear, hope?

See  Tsunami – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Emotions and Mood in Dreams

Delve

To explore memories, past experiences, inner contents, underlying feelings. See: digging.

The dreamer of the example was starting to delve into himself and the dream shows him ready to give his life to dealing with his internal conflicts. It also shows the love and courage necessary to make this journey.

Imagine, if you have not already made the journey into dreams, delving into the level of yourself where your eyes no longer see, your body sense of form or size and touch have disappeared. There is no hearing of the external world. You are sinking into the country of what we call the mind or consciousness, the world of sleep, death and dreams, in which the usual boundaries of experience are taken away. Here you meet – given form by your fears and cultural symbols, as if with real bodies – your own fears, the pains buried deep in your past, the residues of all past actions so far unredeemed and of course the wonder of yourself.

Example: ‘I entered a neglected garden adjoining a house I had formerly lived in. I was astonished that I had never noticed this garden before. I took a spade and hoe and began to vigorously work in order to put things right, digging like a navy. But wherever I put my spade I turned up live shells and hand grenades – highly explosive and very dangerous. I was terrified I would be blown to pieces and hurried away.’ From Organism of The Mind, G. R. Heyer, Kegan Paul, 1933.

That is an example of someone who knows nothing of his inner world and was not prepared to meet it. In fact one cannot be hurt by dream images.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What was I delving for – and did you find anything?

What you find has tremendous significance?

What did I feel about whatever was found?

See Inner World – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Levels of Awareness

Demolish Demolished Demolition

The breakdown of ideas, philosophies, emotional attitudes, or ways of life in which you have been established. The threat to hopes you have cherished. The feeling that some other person is undermining us by criticism, arrogance, antagonism or aggressiveness.

Major changes in your inner or outer life have been, or are being, undertaken. This often shows the breakdown of old attitudes and approaches. This may threaten the hopes you have cherished.

Or the dream might indicate that another person is undermining you by criticism, arrogance, antagonism or aggressiveness.  Demolition is the state of breakdown of the past, so look for signs of new development.

Useful questions:

What is it that is being broken down in myself or in my situation?

Is this an internal process or arising from my life situation?

What do I feel this is leading to?

See Martial Art of the Mind – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Questions

Demon

Expression of things in life and yourself that you feel threatened by. You may feel an urge is sinful, so you repress it. Your dream then presents it as a demon or devil, not necessarily because it is, but because that’s how you see it. Thus, a person who has terrible feelings of guilt about sexual urges, may represent them as a demon threatening to possess them. Therefore a demon may represent guilt, hatred, feelings of uncleanness, aggressiveness or desire for love, and so on. See: Devil; Satan.

Although many dreams about demons are probably reflecting anxiety feelings and struggles we have with moral issues or sex, sometimes the battle with demons can be about our body fighting a virus or bacterial infection. See: devilunder archetypes.

Example: We were trying to cross the hall diagonally toward the exit, but were constantly attacked or haunted by black demons or ghosts. I was fighting them off, but the struggle went on and on as they came back. Then toward the end I had a large pole and I was smashing them aside shouting, “By the power of God within me, I dismiss you” – or words to that effect.

The dreamer says of this dream, “I felt a slightly sore throat as I became semi awake wondering about the dream. I remembered that yesterday I had a flu injection, and what I arrived at was that the blackness depicted serious illness that I had been fighting off. As I was looking at this the black demons became very real for me and I felt I could not really dismiss them as an influence. I struggled and struggled with this, as I had in the dream, but now semi awake. But gradually I became aware of peace, a solid unmovable peace – a steadiness of consciousness – and the steady peace seemed to dissolve any threat I felt. Also the sore throat went.”

This suggests how we can deeply influence our health and recovery by our attitudes.

Example: I had a weird dream last night. I dreamt that someone I know (an old family friend of my parents) had purchased a new house, which was not yet furnished. But the house is apparently possessed by the Devil. We, some friends and I, have been called into the house to analyze the situation. Each time I speak the word Devil or Satan, the lights of the house switch off automatically on their own.

Well, I decide in consultation with the people and in my thoughts in the dream to perform an exorcism on the house. I chant some prayers for the house to be cleansed. (These are Hindu prayers, and parts of Psalm 99 from the Bible). I find myself standing with some friends in front of a life-size rectangular mirror which has been kept against the wall, facing us upright on the floor. When I stand in front of the mirror, I cast no reflection on it. But my friends do.
Throughout the dream, I was not afraid even one bit of trying to challenge the devil or in my entire thought process.

Here is an interpretation of the dream’s meaning: I think here is the answer: “When I stand in front of the mirror, I cast no reflection on it. But my friends do. So I hear myself say that “The devil is doing this to the mirror cos I am fighting to get rid of him.””

In the best of Hindu and Christian traditions, you are the Devil because at your Core you are everything. In Hindu there is the saying, “You are That” – or “I am That.” THAT being the Divine. In Christian belief we are told, to quote: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them”.

As an image of God you are everything. And that is why your dream did the little trick of showing you without reflection in the mirror. Once you realise that dreams create an external reality of our inner world, then an aspect of you become exteriorised. As in past ages this was a world that people lived in, they made the devil and God as exterior to themselves instead of realising the truth about themselves. That we are all, in our core, the divine.

Having watched a person meet the devil in their dream exploration, what they arrived at is very helpful in understanding your dream devil. She saw that her lack of self esteem, her self doubts and depression were like an open door that allowed destructive feelings and fears to enter. These attitudes or feelings may have been inherited from ones recent or ancestral family. She saw these as portrayed as the Devil.

The words demons or evil spirits in the past really meant, ‘invisible but powerful influences that can make you ill in mind or body’. They are what today would be called viruses, bacteria, or trauma we that we are unconscious of.

 

Useful questions:

If I think of the demon as the difficult feeling in the dream, what (feeling) am I actually afraid of?

Have I been raised to believe certain things were sinful or evil – if so that?

Am I haunted by guilt or something I am ashamed of?

See Dreams are a reflection of your inner world – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – The Con About Evil – Martial Art of the Mind