Posts Tagged ‘dream analysis’

The energy of your life is an expression of life itself. It is the stuff of creation or destruction. So it can be a way you move toward satisfaction and well being, or toward self destruction and illness. therefore it is incredibly important to know how to use your energy in a way that brings happiness to yourself and others. This is not always easy, because some self-destructive urges or dispositions have been deeply etched into us by early childhood events and examples.

But as you lie sleeping, your dream actions reveal whether you are using your potential toward self-destructive behaviour, toward illness, or toward unfolding your possibilities and connection with others.

As an extreme example of this, a man dreamt he was watching a man who insisted on living in a small stable like room that was foul with his own faeces and urine. He wouldn’t go out or clean the room, and his clothes too were filthy. He wouldn’t be helped, but blamed his condition on anything and anyone but himself.

This dream was a turning point for the dreamer because it showed so clearly how he was making excuses for the attitudes of despair, of helplessness, of being disadvantaged, that he had lived in all the time. Realising this he had a big internal clean-up of the feelings and thoughts he had accepted as true.

Other common actions such as standing, running sitting, can have profound meaning in your dreams. For instance are you really standing in your life and expressing the positive and confident potential that you have? Are you running away from yourself in some way? Are you sitting waiting for life to happen, or are you up on the stage of your life expressing what is in you? And remember that there is always creative action. If you fought the establishment head on you might get knocked down – but a singer can do the same and be acclaimed.

The meaning depends entirely on what the action is, so it is helpful to get at the root of the action. For instance are you active or passive; are you creative or destructive; are you going somewhere or coming from somewhere? After defining the action go to the entry describing this. Suggestions are: active/passive; movements; positions; postures movements and body language; running; struggle.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What am I trying to achieve through my action?

Am I involved with someone else in this, and in what way?

What does this action express?

How does this involve me with anybody else?

Am I active or passive?

What feelings are involved in this?

Is there a theme I am expressing.

Try Processing Dreams; Dream Visualisation and What do You bring to Your Dreams?

Black Person

Depends which skin colour the dreamer has.

If white: I you dream of a black person it suggests one’s natural drives, urges, longings and emotions uncluttered by intricate social taboos; whatever feelings you have about coloured or black people; or if person is known, what you feel about them. It could also represent your unexpressed or repressed self – a ‘shadow’ figure – therefore it sometimes depicts a depressed or unaccepted area of oneself; feeling downtrodden or underhanded. But often it is the joy of expressing a part of you usually buried under social conditioning.

If black or brown: Your own cultural feelings; same as any ‘person’ dream. See: people; archetype of the outsider.

Black man: Strength; masculinity; wisdom about the unconscious or about meeting the contents of ones unconscious. In many dreams it is often felt as threatening. See Nothing Can Hurt You in Your Dreams.

Black woman: Femininity; womanhood and motherhood; wisdom about relationships, sexuality and birth.

Example: ‘ I was in a cubicle or small toilet with a very black woman. She told me there was something wrong with her vagina. She was undressed. I rubbed her vagina and we both felt enormous passion. I then awoke but couldn’t at first remember the dream. I have refrained from sexual intercourse for some weeks, as I always feel shattered/tired after ejaculation. Anyway I awoke very wet yet couldn’t remember any orgasm. I could remember some question of sex as I awoke. Then I remembered the dream and continued it in fantasy. I experienced powerful urges to find a woman to have a non committed sexual relationship with. But in the end I wanted to share my feelings with my wife, but she seemed deep asleep and unresponsive. When I slept again I dreamt I was in London, had got off one bus, but was not at my destination. I was standing about not making a move to find my direction. Then I began to look.’ Fred C.

To understand the above dream in some depth it is helpful to think of the sexual and emotional drives as a flow, like a river. As such they can be blocked, in which case they will seek an alternative route. The dream is not simply about sexual sensation, but also passion. The flow of passion and sexual energy are not simply mechanical things, they are also deeply feeling in their connection with the most profound sides of human life such as parenthood and the caring and providing for young, and our social contact with the people around us. In the history of white people a great deal of frustration has arisen out of the ideas of sin and guilt in their religion. A view arose for the white race that the black races had an easier and less frustrating relationship with the NATURAL. So when Fred dreams of the black woman, he is meeting what is natural and flowing in himself, but which he has blocked by his will because of his struggle with his feelings and sexuality. This is why the black woman has a problem with her vagina. The part about the bus shows Fred trying to find a direction in which his sexual feelings could move satisfyingly in connection with other people. The conflict he has is also shown in waking by his desire to find a woman to have uncomplicated sex with – thus his unsuccessful attempt to share his sexual flow with his wife.

Example: Dream references were made to a black man, a black-tie tuxedo, and a black light. The group was puzzled over what to make of this reference to “blackness.” Jean revealed that during her early adolescent years she was referred to as “Blacky” by her family and that this name was always uttered in a context of extremely negative evaluation regarding her. Further consideration of how extensively the negative “Blacky” self-image had been incorporated by Jean caused her to re-examine how some of her own inputs may have been contributing to the marital tension. Extract from The Dream Journey by Marie Fay, a feature which appeared in Sundance magazine, Summer 1979.

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

The importance of dreams such as Fred’s is that it shows the passionate relationship between his personality and the primitive and natural. A black person born and bred in a modern setting, would most likely dream of a black bushman to depict their own natural drives. See: identity and dreams; Africa; sex in dreams.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What are my feelings about and impressions of this black man/woman? For help doing this see Talking As.

Are sexual feelings in the dream, and if so what do they suggest about the way I relate to sex?

How am I relating to the black person and can this be improved?

Try using Easy Dream Interpretation.

Acoustics

An inner condition allowing you to either be clearly aware of delicate inner feelings, or disrupting your awareness, depending on dream circumstances.

Because sound is a factor, see sound.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Can I define what it is I am aware of and what that suggests about me?

Is there an element of great awareness here? If so what am I sensing?

How am I responding in the situation and can I connect that with waking life?

You can define more of the dream by using Dream Processing.

Gas Pedal

See Accelerator

Context Theme

Understanding dreams is in many ways similar to understanding language. Important to both is context. The events, people and environments of dreams are multidimensional, just like words in a sentence. Morton Hunt, in his book The Universe Within illustrates how words have an unusual dimension. For instance, what do you make of the following sentence? “Mary heard the ice-cream truck coming down the street. She remembered her birthday money and ran into the house.”

You have probably already have an image of Mary, her age, skin colour, an approximation of what she is dressed in, and what she is doing. You believe she is going to buy an ice cream and she is young. Ask yourself what hair colour she has for instance. But where does it say this in the sentence?

However, if you change any of the words – say truck for bus or money for gun, an entirely new image of Mary arises.

The factors relating to how we extract meaning out of words and images is crucial when considering your dreams. In your dreams any one factor – such as teeth or boat, alters enormously the meaning because of its context with the other dream factors, such as objects, people, setting and plot or theme. Get a sense of this overall connection when looking at the various parts of your dream. Get a view of the various parts of your dream then put them together like sentences in a paragraph.

Also context explains meaning. For instance in this following quote from Leslie Weatherhead’s book Psychology in Service of the Soul, context is very important.

“For instance, in Mesopotamia you might have an officer who had blue blood in his veins and who at Oxford had been a blue. Rarely would he be a blue after dark when the whiskey went round, unless of course he went out on the blue on some stunt or other. Then he might be in a blue funk, and the air would be blue with his language. But in time he would recover from his fit of the blues, get his leave and pay, and blue the whole of the latter in a single day of the former, and he wouldn’t spend it on blue stockings either.”

So when interpreting, although we have to understand each individual symbol, we also have to see that symbol in context with the rest of the dream. Only in this way can we understand it properly.

See: Key words – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Secrets of Power Dreaming

Winning Money

Many of us have the desire to have more ability to get what we want, and this can often produce a dream of winning a lot of money. Usually there is no fulfilment of these dream, but those dreamers who take it seriously can often produce results. The following examples show how you need to be sure of yourself, that you are a winner.

I remember from -my experiences as an eleven-year old that I won at games and contests when I had a clear sense I would win; you might say when I had an aura of –‘Winning’. My dreams offered me this perspective too.

On waking I stretched my new title to Catalytic Betting and Wining. Then I practised, made bets, won and lost, honing my re-emerging skills. My dreams voiced their approval: From that rebirth comes the decision not just to win, but to take responsibility for being a winner. Having won, there is no longer any challenge — except that my prize has also become my responsibility.

It seems that having the sense of being a winner is vital. The next examples are all from Shirley G. a well known media cook. Because of space, only three of the dreams are quoted.

‘I set out to dream the winner of a horse race each day for a week.

Was driving down a country road and suddenly saw a glimpse of Emmerdale Farm down a side road. Following day: chosen horse ‘Emmerdale Farm’ came in first.
Was working in a room when a man popped his head around the door and shouted excitedly ‘John, John, your uncle’s here’ and disappeared. I carried on working. Chosen horse: Uncle John. Came in first.
Was walking down a road, called into a house by a friend to have a chat. On the way out she opened the door and I saw a completely empty room except for a huge black fireplace. Door closed and I left the house. Chosen horse: Black Fire – which I insisted would only be placed – due to ‘fireplace’. Came in 2nd.’

Sewer

The most direct associations are to do with feelings of repulsion or disgust. The sewer is also an indication of what you have let go of as worn out, without life, or not needed in your living process of mind and body. It might also be associated with decay, disease or death. However, in modern mythology – films – the sewers are often shown as hidden ways to enter places or to escape, so might be used to suggest such in your dream. They are also frequently shown as a place where we meet the strange or alien within us – our unconscious.

In some powerful dreams the sewers are expressions of the wonder and strangeness of the subterranean world that is your unconscious. In this sense, the internal unconscious sewers were built by humans thousands of years ago. They are the level of awareness that at one time was mankind’s waking awareness. But as with the surface of the earth, further levels of growth covered and buried the old. Because these sewers are our psychological and spiritual history, you may find in them much that explains humanity’s, or your own, present condition. Some of what you find will be things you yourself left there in the far past. Exposing them and bringing what they reveal to awareness is a task many people are engaged in today. Some dreamer’s believe that the reason this level of the unconscious is shown as sewers, is because in the past humans acted as the means for tremendous cosmic forces to flow down into the earth. This faculty was desecrated and now what is represented as the sewers acts in man as the means by which, through which, destructive thoughts, energies, are released, lest they destroy humanity.

The strength you will find in exploring the sewers is that of being able to face the worst in human beings, and also to see within it what was once holy and divine. See Toilet.

But if you are new to entering the sewer, your unconscious, you will need to know that the first level you meet is the traumas, thoughts, impulses, all the stuff you have avoided experiencing consciously. Not being used to meeting the raw you it migiht make you back off. That is a mistake. See Masters of Nightmares

Bathtub

See Bath

Exit

A way out of a situation; a way to escape or moving toward death. See: door.

An exit such as on a freeway/motorway suggests either branching off from a main flow in the direction you were taking in life, or perhaps a nearness to a goal you have been ‘driving’ toward.

An exit from a subway/underground is an emergence from being involved in unconscious habits and directions toward more awareness of what you are doing and where you are going. Above ground you can look around and choose direction – below ground you going to wherever the train is headed.

An exit can also be an entrance as in the example, or an exit from one situation into another

Example: I have come across a cave dug into a rocky cliff. A track sloped down from a hill or a mountain past the tunnel entrance, which was on my left. I saw a few men emerging from the tunnel. Small broken rock covered the exit to the cave forming a level surface to walk on. I knew the men had found treasure in the cave. I saw bits of gold, like chunks of rock, on the ground near the exit. I knew also that there was still a great treasure in the tunnel.

Example: Whilst walking home with a boy we reached the end of the path. However there was an exit leading to an empty dark fairground. My friend ran off, leaving me frightened. I ran away and found a church. Inside a service was underway and I sat down. I realised though that everyone around me were zombies. A man pointed a gun at me and I somehow escaped.

It seems the dreamer may have had a difficulty with a boyfriend leaving her, or the fear of it. This has made her doubt the ready made images about love and marriage. The dark fairground has in it the sense of looking behind the bright lights to see the reality back of the glamour of things. I don’t know what age she is, but she is wondering what life has to offer you without a male. Because of those feelings she wonders if there is comfort in traditional religion. But the people she sees using this approach are, in her mind, doing things automatically without questioning. But the end of the dream is important though. It suggests the whole dream arose out of her hidden fears of being hurt in a relationship.

Useful questions and hints:

What am I exiting from and what to?

Do I manage to find and make an exit?

Where am I heading when I take the exit?

Am I trying to escape from someone of something?

See The Dream as a Code – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Secrets of Power Dreaming

Next >

< Previous