Posts Tagged ‘dream analysis’

Dentist

Depends on your relationship with dentists – fear of being hurt. The courage and ability to deal with painful areas of experience. See: Teeth.

Sometimes this indicates father’s distressing sexual attentions – or rape feelings.

It may also suggest need for care of what comes out of our mouth, such as things we say, opinions, criticism – and of course any dental problems that may be indicated.

Dreaming that you need dental treatment might also suggest there is something needing attention in your life or health. A missing tooth links with this as something is missing that you need help fixing or you need to give it attention.

Example: One morning I awoke from an unusual dream which I found difficult to understand. In the dream I was sitting silently in a Quaker meeting. A man entered the room and sat down on my right. Almost immediately he seemed to be moved from within to come over to me: he put his hand just in front of my right ear and said, ‘Did you know you have an ear condition?’ I told him I had not even thought of such a thing, which was true. He then said ‘Well, there is something wrong with your ear. It is caused by two things. Firstly you have an infection arising from a tooth, and you are also eating too much.’ There the dream ended.

I noticed I had a slightly dry throat, but such things usually disappeared working outdoors. But as I worked the dryness spread to my left ear that began to ache slightly in the cold wind. This disappeared and spread to my right ear, which now persistently ached. I naturally began to see the dream in a new light, I couldn’t believe there was anything wrong with my teeth as I had only recently visited the dentist, and he had said that my teeth were okay. However, it was only after many weeks that the earache eventually disappeared. During this time I felt lethargic and bloated after meals, and I experimented with smaller more frequent meals, which left me feeling cleaner and happier inside.

I made an appointment with another dentist who found several cavities needing attention. One in particular just under the right ear, was the source of the problem, and as soon as it was dealt with, the earache disappeared.

For some people the dentist is linked with the experience of anesthetic. So you might have feelings about someone doing things against your will, or even being pushed into strange worlds.

Dentists chair: Depends how you feel about dentists, but suggests stressful feelings or facing something that is difficult.

Example: I had a two hour session in the dentist chair again, today, and my head is not my own…….went shopping afterwards and couldn’t remember my plastic card number…..felt very stupid and wondered if Alzheimer’s was showing it’s ugly head or just that my nerves were shot to bits!  Must say the dentist is very good with me……one day it got too much emotionally for me and I had to tell him I was feeling very vulnerable and could cry at any moment. (I didn’t tell him that at one point I felt very angry and had a big urge to bite his hand and scream for blue murder; but under that was the vulnerablity….he took it all in his stride and now watches for the white knuckles and checks that I’m OK. He said that I hide my vulnerability very well and that he was glad I told him.

Useful questions:

How do I feel about going to the dentist?

Is this about fear of pain?

Should I be taking care of how I express my opinions or emotion?

Do I feel there is something needing attention in my life?

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

Depart Departed Departing

This suggests a leaving of an old way of life, or a relationship. It might also depict a search for something new, or desire for a change. Such a departing may reflect becoming more independent of parents or lover. If you find work or a relationship difficult, the departing might show you wanting to run away from responsibility or demands. See Abandoned

In some dreams this can refer to death, perhaps when we see a spouse walking away from us, or departing on a journey. This is not necessarily a prediction, but a confrontation with what we feel is likely to happen.

A breaking away from, or leaving behind, old or habitual patterns of behaviour. Leaving a situation, such as a relationship, a financial set-up or work; the struggle to become independent as in leaving home. It can also indicating you are making a change.

Example: ‘I was leaving some people, like at a junior school. Some of the children tried to detain me, with the attitude that I was defying teacher’s authority, and they restrained me with the rules they restrained themselves with. I broke free and walked off.’ Timothy.

Idioms: New departure; the departed dead; leave in the lurch; leave someone to it; left holding the baby.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

What are you departing from or who?

Do you feel a loss or difficult feelings about the departure?

Have you recently experienced leaving or being left?

See The Dream as a Code – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Questions

Depth

See: Deep.

Derelict

Parts of yourself long unused, or that you have not taken care of, or not needed, or have been used badly. Sometimes this refers to outgrown beliefs or a way of life you have left behind.

This might reflect a feeling you have about yourself, and considering that in dreams you can create any feeling or situation – that in fact you are incredibly creative – you need to ask yourself out of what beliefs or life situations you have created this feeling – why not something else?

Useful questions:

Do situations in my life lead me to feel like a derelict – if so what is holding me in that state?  Am I acting and carrying on doing and thinking things that do not work or produce satisfaction, yet carry on?

What have I outgrown and ready to tear down and start building something new?

See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Resistances – Secrets of Power Dreaming

Descend Descending Descent

To regress into earlier, more youthful ways of looking at things, or behaviour. This may mean you are meeting the effects of a childhood hurt or betrayal. It can indicate a period of depression, or feeling low. In some dreams where there is intense fear, it can show a fear of falling or descending from favour, power or authority. Coming down to earth from a more idealistic, fanciful, or visionary viewpoint.

Things can descend on us from above, and this can be frightening if we are afraid of change and the new; but it is often something of benefit like the descent of Grace, a big bird, or even the descent from a long line of forebears. So what is it descending and what do you feel about it?

Also we can descend into the ‘underworld’, the forces of Life within us.

In most cases an 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, and rebirth. Christianity tends to speak of a one time resurrection however, whereas the ancient beliefs saw it as a continuing cycle.

Descent, going down stairs or in a lift: Getting more down to earth or practical; a return to difficulties after living in our fantasies or escapism; depression; sexual restraint; a return from meta conception. In many dreams this appears to link either with a lowering of sexual excitement, or to coming down to earth. If it is stairs there may be some anxiety about falling involved – falling in love, failing to keep balance.

Descending into cave, cellar or hole: Meeting unconscious content such as repressed fears or wisdom carried unconsciously from family or culture.; experience of womb existence.

Going down a hill: Can mean loss of status, ageing, failure or death, but is also as shown in the second example, a positive sense of life within us. The life process within us is ever aware of the experience of living. This includes birth, change and death. This sometimes refers to the ending of youth, the beginning of old age. But it also can mean losing a wider view of things, getting back to everyday life.

Something below us: As in Rita’s dream below, where there is fear, can depict past trauma which is not being faced. Literally run away from. Something we have left behind or we now feel ‘above’.

Idioms: Feel down; down and out; down in the dumps; down to earth.

Example: ‘I look down and the stairs and banister rail are swarming alive with a black moving wave of crawling things, like some awful insects; and in the hallway is a swamp with crocodiles and other hideous things. My terror is terrible and I cry out to stop dreaming this nightmare. The person who actually lived in this part of the house was the owners mother. She treated me badly but no one knew as she was artful in her abuse. She pulled me along by my hair, locked me in a cupboard, and once locked me in the orchard – four high walls and a hidden door.’ Rita.

Example: ‘Then I was climbing down a steep hill. Arriving at the foot I found rippling sparkling water. I stopped and looked around and found everything incredibly beautiful – the green fields and the pebbles in the water, the soft fresh air; then I looked up and the sky was a glorious picture, the sun so warm and the clouds fluffy and soft and pretty. I felt at peace and so happy, and thanked God with all my heart for giving us so much beauty.’ Mrs R. E.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What was I descending into or what was I seeing descending?

Did I feel any particular feelings?

Was it a feeling of wonder or remorse, even fear?

See The Slow Breath – Characters and People in Dreams – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

Desecrate

To belittle or scoff at our deepest intuitions about the purpose of our life, our spiritual directions, our deepest feelings and needs. It is to deny ourselves things for which we may deeply hunger in an inner sense.

Desert Wilderness

Loneliness – literally being deserted. It can also point to feelings you have of that you lack emotion or satisfaction, that there is no creativity or growth in your life; or you are a dry intellectual. Dry intellectualism; social isolation or sexual barrenness.

In some dreams it shows you feeling social isolation. In some women’s dreams it indicates whether the fear or reality of sexual barrenness. But the desert can be a warm and quiet place for a retreat from the ‘noise’ of work and society.

Occasionally, as the image in the bible of wandering in the wilderness suggests, it depicts both the sense of having no real meaning or direction and of being a wanderer in the infinity of time and decision. It shows the difficulty of being self responsible and making decisions in the infinity of choices, and of honouring your core feelings in such decisions.

Example: One day I was investigating a troublesome anxiety. As I followed it, the emotion grew and intensified until it finally became almost intolerable. Suddenly I found myself standing on a desert of white sand and ashen rocks. The sky was burned to a metallic gray by the, blinding sun. The dusty cactus, the lifeless sage, the very air seemed to wither at its touch. The stillness itself was a horror. No leaf would ever stir; no rain would fall; no scream of anguish would change that pitiless silence of heat and shimmering light. I seemed to face a doom of slow attrition, of agonized waiting for something that would never occur. I realized then that the much-touted eternity of the experience is a dubious blessing.

The dreamer, W. V. Caldwell, on exploring his dream eventually saw that all his life he had been taught not to complain, not to indulge in self-pity and not to cry out in pain. With wonderful feelings he saw that his desert was the death of his feeling in non-expression. A passage from the Bible came to him, “I will make a loud noise unto my Maker.” Then, as if a dam had broken, he was crying, not as loudly and vociferously as he felt, but loudly and vociferously enough for a male of twentieth-century America. There was joy in the wash of bitter hot tears, joy in the voice raised in outrage and anguish at the pain of life, joy in announcing to my fellow men, whether they liked it or not, that he hurt.

Now there appeared before me a baby. Face and eyes red, his cheeks stained with tears, his little mouth contorted in sublime release, he bellowed and howled. Instead of the distress and anger I usually felt when my own children did this, I looked at him with sympathy and enthusiasm “Yell, you little beggar,” I howled.  And yell he did! He screamed and bellowed. He would not stop. Gradually my exultation subsided to annoyance and then distress as his angry screams sank into sobs and then into silent heaves and snuffies. Finally, anguished silence reigned and the anxiety I thought I had conquered returned again, more intense than before.

The child stood in the timeless desert of anxiety—about him the white sands and burning rocks, above him the blinding sun. Nothing stirred. It would go on that way forever.

Slowly, like the imperceptible movement of stifling desert air, the anxiety enclosed and smothered me also. I could not speak, I could not scream; I was paralyzed by it. Just as slowly, like the subtle dissolution of forms in a shimmering mirage, the child and I fused into one being; and the giant cactus before us, stretching its long arms upward, melted and reformed into the slats of a baby bed. Only the sun remained, casting its merciless light on my face. I was standing in a crib, waiting in helpless anxiety for a bottle that might never come.  Here was the core of the trauma. As understanding dawned and the ghostly anxiety gradually vanished I realized I had carried this painful memory from my childhood wherever I went. Moments of peak anxiety triggered not only the anguish associated with the trauma but the infantile orientation which had made it so terrifying. As a baby l had not yet developed a sense of time. I had not learned  to break into days, hours, and minutes the unqualified eternity of my infant mind. “Now” for me was “forever,” and I could conceive of no end to my agony until mother ended it. Whatever the reason for the delay in feeding, I had no idea why or how long I would wait. If my mother had notions of schedules and four-hour periods, I had none.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

Was the desert a friendly place or a place of loneliness and desertion?

Were there any emotions in the dream – if so what?

Have you live in or near a desert – what do you feel about it?

Do I feel there is nothing alive and growing in my life?

Have I been wandering in uncertainty and lack of direction?

Have I a real or felt situation of being infertile?

See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Secrets of Power Dreaming – Associations Working With

 

 

 

 

Desk

This suggests work of some sort. It might also indicate authority or discipline – the discipline of a task or work to be done. A deask can be about a centre of mental activity, of study, concentration, or computing. Maybe you are contemplating something, or creativity in writing something. Are you involved in bringing your accounts up to date? Are you at a desk to figure out problems? Or are you there as an authority or to confront and authority?

A desk is also often a place where you communicate either by telephone, computer or writing. It could be a project you are dealing with, or refer to the sort of ‘office work’ necessary to run your life or home well.

A check-in desk could mean a change you are making or a new opportunity; perhaps a break or time away, even a love affair. Registration desk is slightly different to a check-in desk. It suggests something you are aiming for or hope to be involved in; may be a test to see if you would like the direction.

School desk could have many associations with it – school, teachers, study, feelings of success. See Associations Working With to explore you own associations.

Flight desk can indicate a big change of scene or of life you are considering. Is it for business,work or pleasure?

The following example points out issues of change, work, being judged and also presentation.

Example: I am very busy working at someone else’s desk.  We are in the process of moving our desks to another area.  Once the desks are moved we are interviewed or have to present our desks.  There are two other desks on either side of mine.  The woman who interviews us judges us on how well we’ve personalised or decorated our desks and wants to know what we’ve named them.  I believe there are others with her.  The other two women go first.  When it’s my turn I explain that I haven’t had time to name my desk because I’ve been filling in for someone in addition to doing my own job.  However, I suppose I’ll give it some type of pet name.  The woman can’t hear me very well and misunderstands.  She thinks I’ve named my desk “Pet.”  I explain that what I meant was I would give it the type of name one would give a pet.  The desk arrangement looks like an inverted L with my desk at the point of the angle.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

Do you work at a desk – if so what does it involve?

Have been in front of any type of desk recently?

Do I need to be paying more attention to the mundane tasks of life?

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

Destination

Your unconscious is able to summarise your abilities and desires, and present them as a destination you are moving toward, or hoping for.

Detective

The search for clues as to ones own identity and meaning in life. The techniques or skill you use to follow information and clues to discover insight or meaning. Suspicion as to your own actions and motives.

Example: I am a detective following clues regarding some sort of crime. They lead me in a large cellar, and within the cellar I come across the entrances of two tunnels. These are nearly the size of underground train tunnels, and are side by side leading away into pitch blackness. I decide to explore the tunnels and start to walk into one. I was overwhelmed by terror, as if the very darkness of the tunnel was a living force of fear that entered and consumed me. I screamed and screamed, writhing in uncontrollable fit like contractions. Nevertheless a part of me was observing what was happening and was amazed, realising I had found something of great importance. Andrew P.

Because Andrew explored this dream with me, I know the darkness was depicting fear he experienced while a 9 year old in hospital. He was given a rectal anaesthetic because he was about to have a nose operation. He fought and begged for the nurses to stop, but to no avail. This led to a very real feeling that humans were terrifyingly dangerous animals who would not respond even if you were on your knees begging. So trauma was the fear in the darkness.

It can also indicate your curiosity or persistence in trying to understand something or questions you ask about your past, your guilt over your guilt over dream murders, or the truth in what you are meeting.

There is an aspect of ones unconscious that is always following clues as to the origins of the pains and hesitations we feel, and this is often shown as a detective.  “Dreams also pinpointed exactly where I was in my growth process. Sometimes, the dreams would uncover unconscious fears and intuitions. Often, they also held important clues and offered solutions to my problems. It was like doing detective’s work – arduous at times, but rewarding beyond belief.” Quoted from Meeting Shiva by Tiziana Stupia.

Being questioned by a detective is about feelings you might have about guilt, or also a pinpointed search into your self.

Useful questions:

What is the detective investigating and what do I feel and think about that?

Are there issues in my life that I consciously seek to understand?

If no resolution occurs in the dream what happens if I imagine it forward?

See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Secrets of Power Dreaming – Associations Working With

Devil Demon Lucifer

The devil or demon in our dreams usually represents the parts of our own urges and emotions we have repressed or do not feel in control of. The angers, fears or urges may even feel to us as if they are strong enough to control us, so we represent them as an external force pushing us to some sort of evil. In each of us there is also the potential for creativity or destruction. This is especially noticeable in connection with our fears, such as fear of illness. Such a fear, if based on imagination rather than a real cause, can still cause illness. In this sense our own mind can turn against us. The enemy of our own undirected fear may be pictured as the devil or an evil entity. See: archetype of the devil under ; demons; evil; aboriginal. See also: active/passive.

“The succubus, a female demon who seduced male dreamers. References to seductive demons, such as Lilith, had appeared in the Talmud but had not previously appeared in Christian writings. The Commentary – by Macrobius – became an extremely influential book and thirty-seven printed editions appeared before 1700. It was the most important and well-known dream book in medieval Europe. Its inclusion of the fear-inspiring sexual demons was to play a role in supporting the paranoia about evil spirits that developed during the later centuries.”  Quoted from Our Dreaming Mind by Robert van de Castle.

Example: I’m 18 and recurrently dream my house is haunted or possessed by the devil. I am not religious, but in the dreams with the devil I try to remember prayers to scare him away. In every dream my family and I have to pack our bags and move back to the old house I lived in as a baby until seven. The dreams really frighten me and I can’t sleep. E. F. Teletext.

The struggle with something that appears exterior can be clearly seen in this dream. The influence of religion in giving ready made symbols to suggest there is an exterior evil that is invisible, but can powerfully influence one, is also clearly shown. And in actually facing the devil in ones dreams it turns out to be ones own emotions and desires that are not allowed or tuned back on themselves – thus devil spelt backwards is lived. It is the unlived or repressed urges that take on the image of a devil. “All you may know of heaven or hell is within your own self.” EC

Example: I was going mad. I was crawling around on my hands and knees and wailing and behaving in a most peculiar manner. I actually felt mad. But inside my head a tiny voice kept saying, ‘You aren’t completely insane yet – there’s still a chance.’ People around me kept saying to each other, ‘We think she’s possessed by devils.’ My sane voice then said ‘Make the sign of the cross, cast out the evil spirit.’ I kept trying to do that but my hands wouldn’t or couldn’t complete the sign. I woke still feeling disturbed. Margaret F.

The power and sense of being out of control is dramatised here, along with the resulting fear arising from feeling the controlling force as alien. If you take the images away and simply look at the situation, what is apparent is a huge conflict that Margaret is facing. The conflict clothes itself in imagery of the Devil because Margaret is afraid of whatever it is that is trying to express. This is a powerful internal conflict that is simply a struggle between the conscious self and the person’s own unexpressed potential.

Example: I was walking toward a house. It was quite dark, but not night. As I neared the house a number of demons or devils came at me menacingly, trying to stop me getting near the house. Although they made all the ghostly noises I wasn’t at all afraid of them. I felt they were a damned nuisance, and to show them I meant business I grabbed one and with my right hand I gripped its flesh and squeezed. It started to squeak in pain and I squeezed harder. At that point I was woken by my wife. I had hold of her belly and was squeezing madly with my right hand. Ben. C.

In this dream Ben shows a completely different response to the stereotype of fear. He is not afraid of his own anxieties or internal urges, but he hasn’t actually transformed them.

Example: Tell me where was the Devil? I do not understand. Jesus, why have we not been tempted?  There is no answer – at least, not from outside. But something within me speaks. It . . – says – – . wait, I begin to hear. It says. . – You . . . were . . . the Devil. It was. . . you – – . who tempted me. Your fear, your loneliness, your dependence on things of the world, on people’s opinion, on wealth as a means of self-respect, on hate as a means to love – all these you tempted me with. Now you have left me for a season, for with God’s wider view given with the descent of the Dove, I showed you the illusion of your gods – the emptiness of your fears, the powerlessness of your determinations. The shadow cast by the knots tied in your heart, your head and your belly, was the Devil. Like children’s hands held between a candle and the wall, your pains, desolation’s, and terrors have cast grotesque shadows upon your consciousness, which you took to be real, and you lived according to their demands. By these shadows men are led to war, murder, theft, terrible ambition, lust, even madness. All mankind is possessed by these shadows – by this absence of the Light, the Life and the Love. I come, not to condemn them but to redeem. For you are your own devil, and your own angel. But my hour is not yet come; when it does I will redeem.

Example: Devil Snivel Havel – They are just words to describe human fears, fears put into us by a church thousands of years ago speaking of things it only had primitive words to describe what it saw. I have met the devil myself several times, sometimes in great fear, and then slowly in wonder and direct insight. In such meeting I saw and realise that devil was ‘lived’ spelt backwards. In other word it is the Light we are all born with that through fear or ignorance we have turned back on ourselves. In doing so we have created great chunks of stuff blocking the light causing depression, suicidal impulses, and all the many human pains and suffering. But it is not some evil person ‘doing it to us’ it is our own misguided actions that can be undone by understanding them.

Such feelings, such entrance of foreign and destructive forces, is seen by our unconscious as the devil, demons or even a vampire. They suck away the life force and create illness in your body. Recognising them is very important for your health and person wholeness. This is called a dybbuk in Jewish folklore. Remember that devil is lived spelled backwards, and evil is live backwards. They both suggest the turning of your life force back on itself.

Example: The Devil attacked a woman. He was invisible. The woman turned black as he raped her. She didn’t die. At this point I woke and went to the toilet. On returning to bed I continued the dream, particularly wondering what I was in conflict with in the image of the Devil. I found it disturbing and frightening to be confronted by such a powerful opponent. Partly because of the rape, I realised it was held back sexuality. I then approached the ‘black’ woman with tenderness and this transformed the Devil into available energy, sexual or emotional. I tried this again and again. Each time it worked, and I could observe the connection between the Devil and how they were repressed sexual feelings.

Fears of dream devils and demons are completely unfounded. That is because the dream is only a virtual reality that are self created images that can be changed. The following example shows how lack of fear changes the way we relate to our dreams – and of course how fear creates our awful images.

Example: Had a very unusual dream last night. I was in an outdoor environment. It seemed a bit dark, or maybe morbid is the right word. I was with other people but none of them stood out to remain in memory. There was a definite awareness though of being near to a place that was haunted, and that a man was in trouble in the haunted place.

I decided to go and see if I could sort out the problem. I walked down a slope to where the centre of the haunting existed. It was an open space with an old double-decker bus in it. The only person on the bus was a middle-aged man who was sitting on the top deck leaning out of a window on the right hand side of the bus. I stood beneath him and looked up. He was staring in a glazed way and didn’t see me. I could see and feel that he was being hit by fantasies or hallucinations by whatever was the source of the haunting. This invasion of his mind was grabbing his attention so fully that he wasn’t aware of his surrounding or of me. I was sure that if he went any deeper into this mind stuff he wouldn’t be able to pull out. I waved my hand in his line of vision and banged my hand on the bus to make a noise and get his attention. At first it didn’t seem as if I would bring him out of it, but after a while he looked at me.

I shouted at him to pull out. I said that he had a wife and some more years of his life to live, so why lose himself into this entrancement. This didn’t seem to grab him so I shouted again and said that he would eventually slip into this empty mind world anyway – at death – so why not live with his wife the remaining years of his life. I was sure that if he lost awareness he would let himself starve.

I was aware that what he desired was to slip away into the void, into the awareness of the one life in which he lost any awareness of self. But I banged and shouted and he became more ‘present’. I then felt I had to confront whatever was the source of the powerful ‘haunting’ that was pulling him into the inner mind. I turned away from the man and saw just to my right a short distance from the bus an animal that was the ‘haunter’. It was a mammal of no particular type – a bit like a mixture of dog, rat and guinea pig. It seemed very ordinary and tame, and stood looking at me. I walked toward it and stretched out my hand. It was a tan colour with short fur and gave a feeling of being okay to approach, so I touched it to stroke. This was okay and I was thinking there was no problem when the creature leapt at my throat in a flash of movement and ripped my throat out.

This sounds disturbing but I simply observed this and thought to myself that stroking and trying to be friendly was no way of dealing with this thing. It was as if I was in command of the imagery in that I simply formed another body. The only way that felt as if I might deal with the creature was to have the meditative state of holding on to the nothingness that was my centre, and not feeling panic at it’s attacks. In fact apart from the gory imagery, there was nothing to be frightened of, as the creature was only attacking my dream image of myself. As I wasn’t identified with this, it couldn’t hurt me. That was the end of the dream.

Here a woman comes face to face with the devil –

Recently I sat with a woman, Beth, while she explored her usually unconscious feelings and beliefs. Our unconscious dream action often portrays such inner feelings as an object or person, and in her exploration Beth met the Devil. When we dared to face and closely look at this image of evil, what she discovered was that her ancestors had lived in times of great persecution. Being people who had questioning minds, they wondered whether the persecution was in fact justified. Maybe there was something about them that was inferior and detestable. Those self doubts, and the negative feelings that arose from them, created an open door for what has been called the Devil – destructive emotions and urges, negative comparisons, and feelings of being an outsider. Once this is understood it is easy to see other things that leave a door open for evil to enter. They are childhood trauma or abuse, the attitudes and standards we often pick up – rather like infections – from others around us, and the cultural attitudes we live amidst. When this ‘devil’ enters us it can lead to self criticism, the denial of ones own talents and ‘light’, and in bad cases, crime, murder and the infliction of child abuse and trauma.

Knowing this, we can see that much advertising attempts to call these demons into action – Are wrinkles making you look old? – Can you no longer make love like you used to? – Lacking energy, zest, confidence, take this fantastic new formula – What will happen if you die leaving your loved ones uncared for? – What is holding you back – why not completely change your life by signing on to this $2000 guaranteed three day course? Defeat ageing, get rich, have fantastic sex, leave failure behind – you know the story. But what the adverts are reaching are the beliefs, fears or feelings that you are ageing, you no longer or never did have fantastic sex, you are childless or a failure. They are grabbing hold of the imagination already working in us that tells us we are doomed, failures, unloved and lonely. See Integration – Meeting yourself

Useful questions:

What relationship do I have with my own natural urges such as sex or eating?

Have I turned my own urges back on themselves, transforming ‘lived’ into ‘devil’ by a reverse process?

Can I dare to meet this devil and release the repressed energy as living flows of personal life and love?

See – Masters of Nightmares – Dreams are Virtual Realities – Take Everything into You – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – The Secret of Time and Satan 

 

Devour Devoured Devouring

If you are being eaten by a creature of some sort, this shows you being deeply influenced by urges that you feel will rob you of your will or direction. In English we often use the phrase devoured by worries, and your dream will use just this imagery to show what is harming you. Being swallowed by something huge may be something quite different. We all have a sense of universal life around us. This is so huge that when we become aware of it we sometimes feel threatened, as if it will take away our personal identity.

If you are devouring something or someone, it suggests you are being possessive, overbearing, or deeply insensitive to another being’s needs. You might, of course, be absorbing something very fully.

To exist, living forms devour each other. We are predators like every other life form. We live on other life, and are part and parcel of the whole critur eat critur. I remembered a friend Pauline apologising about feeding meat to her cats. She was trying to avoid recognising she was in no way different to a cat, killing its food, scavenging – what is shopping? What is devouring and shitting? It is no excuse to say we are a vegan or vegetarian. All life arose from the same source, whether a plant or tree or fish. Everything has a right to live, but Life itself is the giver of itself so all life forms can live together – unless we are greedy.

Conversely, experiencing the effect of the devouring mother, a woman might hold fast to her children, using every bonding and binding force she can.

A baby often seizes upon its mother’s breast with this feeling, so it may represent the desire to posses or devour others.

Any emotion or desire that devours the strength or purpose of your life. Fear is such a feeling, and so many people have irrational fears about them.  Devoured by jealousy.

Example: S is trying to integrate A through sexual intercourse, but that is not the way this unification can come about. As A, that kind of union is no longer there for me to give and as A I am not honest in even this attempt to give her what she keeps hounding me for, so my anger takes over and I am not entering her in a loving way. This is not who I am, so as A I am violently ill with the contact of our bodies and souls, and this horrible green jealousy and envy of S grabs me and attacks me. I recoil violently as it wants to consume me, but I am an old soul and very strong and experienced, so I am able to wretch and expel it from my body. Now I have been able to get this horrible thing out of S, and out of me, so, while the dream ended I can take it further and have us both lie together hand in hand, resting peacefully. P no longer needs to devour A, to smother him and make him her own, we can hold hands and simply be friends, be brother and sister and share a more innocent and less selfish love.  We fall asleep and rest in a garden of lovely, healing dreams. There is an integration that does not require possession or control, but an acceptance of the way things are.

Being eaten by dogs or creatures: Losing your sense of identity, or what you think or want, in meeting other people’s will, anger or ideas; being ‘consumed’ by fear, emotion or a drive; fear of death.

Swallowed by large creature or fish: Opening to awareness of unconscious content. See Archetype of the Search for Self

Devouring: Being possessive; hungering for something.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What strong feelings are expressed or suggested in the drama of this dream?

What am I consumed by at times?

Were you devoured or th devourer?

If I am attacked, what am I trying to avoid feeling at the moment?

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

Diamond – Body

This is the hardest known material. It lasts forever, so the advertisements tell us. It represents the eternity of spirit, the gem or jewel at the centre of being, your Spiritual consciousness. It can also represent human greed, hardness, cold as ice, anything for power. But is not often used as such in dreams. See: Jewels.

Diamonds in dreams can indicate success, also wealth and happiness. They can represent the power of care and love that hold men and women together in marriage.

They can also indicate clear ideas and sometimes beauty of the soul. The jewel if is worn near the throat in a dream can suggest the ability to speak truly or sing with beauty. It acts as an amplification of the abilities of whatever part of the body of the wearer. So worn on the ear can indicate the possibility of psychic hearing.

Diamond Body: Is a more permanent body or identity which is formed by the transformation of sensory experience into a body or identity that has connections with the unchanging and eternal aspect of oneself. Buddhism calls this the diamond body, the imperishable self.

It shows that the person has the ability to perceive beyond the physical body and is capable of experiencing bodiless awareness. See Bodyless Awareness

It is also known in other different spiritual traditions: “the most sacred body” (wujud al-aqdas) and “true and genuine body” (jism asli haqiqi) in Sufism, “the diamond body” in Taoism and Vajrayana, “the light body” or “rainbow body” in Tibetan Buddhism, “the body of bliss” in Kriya Yoga, and “the immortal body” (soma athanaton) in Hermeticism.^[2] The various attributes of the subtle body are frequently described in terms of often obscure symbolism: Tantra features references to the sun and moon as well as various Indian rivers and deities, while Taoist alchemy speaks of cauldrons and cinnabar fields. See – Opening to Life

The caterpillar, while changing into a butterfly, closes the delicate fluids of its within, inside a hard crust, but the hard crust drops away as the butterfly emerges. So, in a sense, one’s outer disciplines, even if imperfect, protects, and gives a receptacle within which our formless nature shapes itself. Within us the imperishable diamond body is taking form. This is the eternal of our nature realising itself in common life, in time. For as Blake says, “The Eternal is in love with the creations of Time.” Our diamond body is our personal awareness, now conscious of the self beyond form, time and space. Thus, our individual self is deathless for it has found union with the core self.

The spiritual exercises/practices then, are there as a womb about the infant body of the divine child within us. Without them we could not face and bring to consciousness, our own fears, ambitions, sins, passions, without being carried away by them.

Example: In a lucid semi sleep state, I felt as if I had died, not the death of my body, but a blotting out of my waking personality. A memory arose of another similar experience where a beautiful slightly see through woman came to me and told me she was the spirit of my whole life, my female counterpart. She took me into her to form the essence of both my male and female self to form a baby uniting us both in its being.

Then I wondered, because the memory was of an event some time previous, where the child was, what was it like? Then it appeared before me as a small child covered by diamonds, as if the gems clothed it. But I could not see any body behind the gems, and it arose in me that I was looking at the diamond body, which was invisible to our eyes.

Example: My friend burned sage and asked the spirit of his wife to move on. (After 7 years of her presence). That night he dreamt that she was with him in a room looking so grand, the way that he liked her to dress and look. They talked and then she took off a ring (a big diamond), placed it on the night-stand…then she left. They really loved each other in life.

It is said there is no marriage or giving in marriage after death, so the dead wife was saying there is no longer marriage after death and here is the ring you gave. That was not a rejection of their years of marriage but a way of showing she had successfully moved on.

Example: I had a dream I have a diamond ring with 3 stone’s. This is not engagement or wedding ring. Sitting in a group, suddenly I noticed I have lost one stone. I and my husband searched and I found the stone on the table. Later we went to someplace and I found that I had forgotten to take the diamond. We went back, but could not find it. We found something but it turned out to be not diamond – something white, but stretchable thing – not very hard. What does this mean?

I have an intuition that the ring with the three diamonds actually represent the three aspect of love, one of which is loving without possessing. But the one that was lost was about a tragic thing that you forgot – a hurt to your love that you tried to forget. But you have met more of yourself as you have grown and the memory of the loss has come back.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What was the diamond used for in the dream?

Does the diamond or the jewellery have any memories of associations for you?

Were there any emotions in the dream – if so what about?

See Associations Working With – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Questions

Diary

Memories; insights into yourself; looking within and discovering things you might not otherwise know, remember, not otherwise know or have forgotten.

Also a diary or journal can also be a wonderful way of seeing how the future developed out of thoughts, failures and decisions taken years before. Maybe even an exposure of your secrets.

A diary can also be a trail, a pathway taken by a beautiful mind and its investigation into life, oneself or even the universe.

Example: I say haughtily, “I’ll read my diary, if he was there, it will be in my diary.” I realize my diary and journal could be an embarrassment to me if people read it. I walk past a field of corn, touching the plants as I walk by.

Useful Questions and Hints:

If I keep a diary, what do I associate with it – what of me is in it?

Do I find insights or understanding in the diary – is so what?

What of myself or my past are revealed?

See Inner World – Associations Working With – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

Dice

Fate, chance, luck, or a gamble. There might be a suggestion here that you are ready to take chances, or that you are gambling a situation on spontaneous events rather than planning.

Sometimes people might use dice to make a decision – high number yes, low no.

Example: At the shopping center they are selling trick stuff – magic – false poop, that sort of thing and there is gambling – dice are thrown and the crowd shifts with the throw of the dice as if to see it better or to make it look as if they are really not participating in this gambling. The young man seems fascinated and seems to fall further and further behind me in the crowd of people that is here.

Idioms: The die is cast; it’s in the dice; no dice.

Useful questions and hints:

What am I taking a chance on?

Do the dice in the dream represent chance or luck or even a decision?

Is there a win or lose situation in my life?

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

Die Died Dying

See: Death.