Posts Tagged ‘dream analysis’
Fleas Lice Parasites Worms
These can depict thoughts or sexual habits which are purely selfish or carry a health risk. In some dreams if you catch the parasites from another person they indicate a feeling your relationship with someone is parasitic.
Fleas can also suggest thoughts or feelings that sap resolves, energy, or ambition, and that detract from your sociability. Or they can be attitudes or beliefs or worries that draw strength from you, or even cause illness. They may be attitudes or feelings you have ‘caught’ from someone else through relationship of one form or another – perhaps in childhood or through watching films with negative messages.
A parasite can also be a fear, such as anxiety about illness that saps your health and well-being. Or it can point to weakness in you that leads to dependence in connection with sex, drugs or alcohol.
Dreaming of fleas or lice on the body can also suggest unclean habits, or parasitical relationships.
Lice, fleas, bugs, worms: Things said, thought or things done that make you feel uncomfortable or ashamed, or feelings that one is, or someone else is a parasite in a relationship.
While relaxing, a man saw a dark and frightening shape leave the region of his heart. The man had suffered an illness, and now felt a fear of weakness concerning his heart. The dark shape was the way his unconscious made a graphic image of his fear, and showed it sapping his energies like a parasite. Such fears can appear in dreams as a demon or incubus, and represent your own terrors, fears, thoughts and desires that are out of harmony with your own well-being. See: Fleas.
Example: ‘I was practising relaxation and went into a dream state. I saw a dark shape attached to my body near my heart. I felt very frightened as I saw it. But as I watched it broke away and left me.’ John W.
John had experienced a heart attack, and the dark shape was an embodiment of his fears about his heart, sucking at his energy and wellbeing. In relaxing he was able to let go of these feelings. Because the dream process shows such internal processes in imagery, the fears are shown as an incubus or dark parasite, which falls away.
Large parasites such as worms are something that has got into you somehow, and is living on your energy. It helps to get rid of them by recognising what it is.
Example: Now the whole pointless maggot situation arose again. It didn’t disturb me as it did in past sessions, but it was, if anything, stronger than before. Humans are just another eating, growing, dying, life form. Their intelligence doesn’t alter one whit the fact that they are simply a big germ, a parasite living on other life forms. We are predators like every other life form. We live on other life, and are part and parcel of the whole critter eat critter. I remembered 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? Okay I accept that, but I needed to accept it more deeply.
Hey, that is hard to accept, but I’ve got to let it come, actually say it and admit it – I am a parasite. Not just a predator but a fucking parasite. I felt low and mean. I am a parasite. How, in what way? The view of mankind seen in Bideford came back. Men and women hiding from their own pointlessness, their own featureless existences, their life without any real meaning. They lived and ate, fucked, slept, and died. They laughed wept, but all without any overall direction or point to life. It was like my wife and I talking about working towards something. If one is not working together for something, even if it is to school the children, or go on a cruise, life can feel like an empty drudge.
A parasite? What sort of parasite? Ah yes, by continually destroying my body so I can be looked after. A parasite. If I keep failing, being in pain, then I will be cared for. And anyway, look at the parasitic way humans relate. They have compulsive built in sexual, social and physical needs that they satisfy wherever they can. They take from each other what they want. If they didn’t have those needs they wouldn’t live together as man and wife, child and parent, boss man and employee. Maggots – Parasite. I am a parasite. Something started to come up that I didn’t want to see. To secure my ends as a parasite in my relationship with my wife I was surreptitiously setting her against her children. Weren’t we all sucking like baby blind animals, pushing each other out of the way to get what we need? I could see it. I could feel it in myself and all around me. Suck, suck, push, push, and shove out of the way. Blindly, stealthily seek one’s own interests. Some babies died, some are pushed out of the nest. Its survival isn’t it?
That is a very clear explanation of what some maggot or parasite dreams are about.
Useful questions and hints:
What is it I feel sapping my energy and resolve?
What attitudes that are depleting me have I picked up from someone else?
Am I in some way being like a parasite in taking all and giving nothing back in life?
See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – The power of Habits – Secrets of Power Dreaming
Pink
This indicates softness, femininity, a baby girl, or babyhood in general, or perhaps tender love rather than passionate love, the sort one might have for a child. It can also suggest happiness, or having a joyful optimistic view of life. See: red .
Pink is the colour of healthy flesh, and suggests glowing feelings or warmth, something alive and with emotions. Because the inside of the mouth and vagina are pink occasionally the colour is linked with deeply sensual sexual feelings. Pinks are also part of sunrise and sunset, and in some dreams suggest a new dawning of something, a resurrection and so a new life – or the glorious ending. It sometimes appears in dreams of ecstasy or religious wonder.
Example: I was standing in a very beautifully carved chapel or religious place. There seemed to be shadowy nun or monk like figures around. But it was the exquisite colouring of the place which filled me with a sort of ecstasy. Everything was in the most delicate shell pink. JAS.
Example: Jesus was looking at me. There was a light all around him, beautiful colours of cream, pink and gold. I could hear the most wonderful music and singing. I said to a young couple standing near, “Look at the Heavenly Choir, Oh! just listen to them”. Tears streamed down my face as I watched and listened. Doris.
Pink and white: Suggests cleanliness and warmth.
Pink and red: Sometimes this includes in the dream, feelings about love and passion, love or pain, or love and real hurt.
Idioms: In the pink; tickled pink; rose coloured glasses.
Useful questions:
Are there clues in the rest of the dream as to what feelings this depicts?
Am I feeling gentle love for someone, or is this about just feeling good?
Are there any signs of spiritual wonder in my dream, if so what is it I am experiencing?
Brown
As a mood this can depict gloominess, dullness or even depression. But it depends what is brown in the dream so it can refer to the earth or earthiness and processes of the body. A muddy brown can suggest unclear or selfish emotions and thoughts.
Brown is in some ways black that has become more light, and so might refer to things that your bringing to awareness, or facets of yourself you have enabled to grow and express after being unconscious and unexpressed. So in some dreams brown transforms into other radiant colours, perhaps in a way a plant draws something from brown soil and transforms it into the colour of its flowers.
Excrement is brown and in some dreams the feelings show this depicting things that need to be left behind, recognised as not needed, or like manure something that is rich and needed for or holding in it the potential for growth.
Brown in regard to objects can show them as being old or worn, as leaves are that have served their purpose and are now ending their life. But brown can also relate to parts of you from the long past, or containing much experience – but also perhaps to do with feelings about ageing.
Brown animal: Your natural urges that you are probably comfortable with.
Brown clothes: Middle of the road and perhaps feelings that are a bit dull or conformist, but are easy to live with.
Brown eyes: Perhaps relates to feelings you have for someone you know with brown eyes.
Brown skin: Feelings about health and perhaps attractiveness. However, brown marks on the skin suggest either feelings about ageing, or that there is something wrong, or something has hurt your hand. See: hand.
Idioms: Brown study; browned off.
Useful questions:
Am I experiencing or moving from feelings lacking colour, vibrancy or life?
Do I seek a comfortable situation that allows me to relax and avoid the energetic processes of life?
Does my dream relate to feelings of ageing?
Is this an old thing – and if so what do I feel it contains in terms of past experience or information?
Indigo
Indicates the deep peace of the night.
Useful questions:
What are my immediate feelings and associations with this colour?
What feelings were linked with this colour in the dream, and what do I gather from those feelings?
Have I been thinking on or feeling things to do with the spiritual dimension of life – if so what?
Spring of Water
Free flowing feeling and rejuvenating energy. It often refers to your source of life and consciousness – the life that enlivens you that arises from unknown depths. This is especially so if the spring is in a cave or underground. It then suggests you are becoming more aware of your connection with universal life as in the following dream. See: Water
I and a number of other people were in a chapel or church. There was a holy spring arising in a basin such as are found containing holy water outside Catholic churches. I drank some of this water, only a small medicine glassful. It was powerfully healing. Most of the people there drank some water, seeking to be healed. A man came and told me not to be too frugal with the water, as, although there was only a basin full, you could never empty it. The spring was perpetually replenishing it. I believe I filled containers to give to other people who could not get to the spring. I then partially awoke from this dream, and was aware of a vibratory force acting on my body. My feet were actually trembling, not through tension, but through the passage of this force.
Is enlightenment a state of mind I can develop?
Enlightenment Part 2
Tony Crisp
R. D. Laing, the psychiatrist, in describing the search for ones fundamental self said, ‘The Life I am trying to grasp is the me that is trying to grasp it.’
One of the enlightenment sites listed has a heading, ‘What you are looking for is what is looking.’
Enlightenment is not a state of mind you can create or develop. It is something beyond any change, outside of anything you can develop. After all, development suggests change.
The frustrating thing about enlightenment is that the harder one tries to grasp it, the further away from it one gets. The more effort one makes in trying to achieve it, the less one finds of it.
It is the ever present, self existent core of yourself that remains when all else drops away.
So the question should not be can I develop the state of mind that is enlightenment, but how can I realise this fundamental state?
One of the enilightenment experiences someone describes was as follows:
The many different paths to the one great ocean of Life can be summarised in a simple way because they all have a common factor. It, like dancing or meditating for extended periods, quietens your normal way of thinking and looking at the world. In a meditation seminar I attended that lasted for several days I observed this with great clarity. After three days of meditation I saw my thinking mind faint. It could no longer sustain the continued concentrated pursuit of the question we were asking. In the moment of my rational thinking mind fainting there was an experience of divine Life knowing itself as this man people call B. In that state I knew connection with all the people around me, and the birds, trees and earth. For they and I shared the same spirit. I had arrived home at the source of things. I felt I was in the Garden of Eden, and that we had never left it. That experience, as ephemeral as it may sound, has given me something that strengthened me to pass through big life changes, and travel joyfully into old age.
Human beings has evolved through huge periods of time to have self awareness, a truly amazing thing, but for many it is a state of constant pain and suffering leading many to commit suicide. But Dr. Maurice Bucke, who himself lived in constant physical pain tells of how him and many others were able to evolve to a new state in which their suicidal pains no longer were active in them. He called it Cosmic Consciousness, but it has been known for ages under different names such as Enlightenment and Liberation. Those who evolved to this level of awareness often say, “That we could all be experiencing this, if only we could stop being typical suffering humans. Regardless of what hell one might fall into an enlightened one is an ordinary person who acts like a true adult.” All the major faiths recognise this and so have left records of how to reach this evolution of self.
Here are some – Ox Herding Pictures – The Many Ways To A New Life – Psychological Vomiting – Communicating With Your Inner Guide
Tests of Analysis
Do You Dream
Tony Crisp
Chapter Nine
From all that has been said, a whole collection of methods present themselves suggesting how we can understand a dream. I suppose one could use all these methods on a single dream, and arrive at a whole spectrum of information. But the question now arises as to whether the interpretation is correct. After all the effort, is it right? It is not just a question of whether the answer satisfies us; it must also enlighten us. It must do even more than that. What we arrive at must fit the events and symbols of the dream, and unveil the characters of our inner life that have clothed themselves in the forms and events of the dream. The interpretation should make sense to other people also, so that if explained, they too can easily see the connection between dream and interpretation. The interpretation should be able to stand the test of time as well.
One of the biggest temptations in analysing our dreams, the thing that most often leads to a false interpretation, is to attempt a purely arbitrary translation of the symbols. By this is meant that because one dreams of a bag, a large key and a snake, one should not therefore immediately denominate these as ‘sexual symbols’. They may be; and we have to keep this possibility in mind. But the dreamer may be a locksmith who is having difficulty opening an important bag. In which case the symbols represent a problem and not sexual intercourse. And he may have a friend who keeps snakes, by one of which he was nearly bitten. So the snake might mean fear of death. This is why one has to be careful to find one’s own associations with the symbols. Only when we cannot find a personal association; or the dream setting does not point to the possible meaning, should we try a general interpretation. Jung has said that if the dreamer finds difficulty in arriving at an association, he would ask him to describe the symbol in his own words, as if Jung knew nothing about it. Therefore, if one dreamt of a table, one would say, ‘It is a thing usually made of wood and having four supports. Upon these a flat surface is fixed, so that one can place objects, food, books, etc., on it at a level nearer one’s hands or mouth.’ Or at least, one would describe it as one saw it.
As for how we can test the interpretation, dissatisfaction is the biggest clue to our inadequate understanding of the dream. If there are factors in the dream which we have not explained, or if the interpretation does not bring to light the inner feelings that shaped the dream, then one will always have a feeling of dissatisfaction. It is as if two parts of a puzzle have not been properly fitted together, or, although the pieces fit, the colours do not quite match. Thus arises the feeling of not having found the right solution.
On the other hand, when the right understanding is arrived at, a very profound thing happens. There is usually a feeling of thrill, a sudden pleasure of exaltation, a feeling of being on the track. This is usually accompanied by a sense of seeing deeply into yourself, sometimes into parts of your being never bared to view before. In all, there is a feeling of pleasure and achievement, of certainty. One is usually somewhat amazed at the wisdom of dreams, despite having felt the same many times before.
Another test of the interpretation’s accuracy, and a guard against arbitrariness, is to see whether it fits everyday experience. A dream nearly always deals with things one has experienced in one way or another. Therefore, if an interpretation does not fit or explain our actual experience, then it should be placed to one side. We must beware of using words we do not understand. For instance, we may read that Jung has said a dark-haired woman can represent a man’s anima, or female nature, while a dominant man in a woman’s dreams represents her animus. Or that Freud suggests that some cutting or scissors dreams might symbolise a fear of castration. But do we really, in our own experience, know what these mean? Can we see them in our own life? It is certainly not sufficient to label our dream symbols this, that or the other. If these ideas are true, then we shall see them in our own experience. We may not give them the same name even; but one that describes them to us! This is not to say that a knowledge of these ideas is not extremely helpful. It may even help us to see these things in our own experience. But we must beware of using such ideas without seeing them in ourselves. Therefore we have to look at ourselves and ask, ‘What part of me does this dream symbol represent? What experience is it dealing with?’ And when the word experience is used this does not simply mean events in the outer world. It means emotions, attitudes, ideas, response to people and events, relationships with others, with self, and with Life.
Sometimes, however, the dream deals with things that have not yet happened, but are about to happen. I am not here dealing with prophetic dreams. When a woman has a tummy ache and says, ‘Ah, my period is beginning’, she is not prophesying. She is speaking from past experience. In a similar way, the dream often sees that things are about to begin that are not outwardly obvious to us. For instance, a man dreamt that a bull broke loose and rushed into a field of cows. Shortly afterwards he was almost carried away by a release of sexual desires he had kept ‘chained up’. His inward feelings had warned of this in the dream. Yet outwardly he could see no sign of it. So with some dreams we have to see if ‘time’ reveals their meaning. Or to put it another way, we may interpret the dream satisfactorily but find no signs of it in our experience. Then it is for time to bring it into the realm of the real.
An example of arbitrary interpretation can be seen in this dream. ‘An unconventional looking postman delivered a registered package. But I didn’t open it.’ This was taken to mean that due to an Unconventional experience, the dreamer had realised something. Something had ‘registered’ on his consciousness, but he had not explored the possibilities of it. Although this seemed to fit the symbols, and no other ideas were forthcoming yet the dreamer could not, despite a lot of searching within, discover an experience of something registering that he had not explored. The registered package is a double symbol, because it also suggests something valuable contained in it. Therefore, despite a seemingly good interpretation, when it came down to testing it, no satisfaction was forthcoming. Which makes us realise that proper interpretation lies not only in reading the symbols, but in seeing the understanding applied to our life.
We can sum up the tests for interpretation then, as: Does it satisfy us? Does it explain us? Does it enlighten us? Can we see it as a part of our experience in the past, present or future? Above all, does it help us carry on with the business of living?
Link To Chapters – Link to Chapter Ten
Your Dream Interpreter
Your Dream Interpreter
In dreams you are freed from the usual restrictions of mind and body, of social rules and personal limitations. But beside meeting your wonderful creativity, you may also meet and transform the shadows of your fears and negative attitudes.
Your Dream Interpreter is available at Amazon USA and Amazon UK.
Sections Include
THE DREAMERS’ WORKBOOKINTRODUCTION – What are dreams? The Amazing experience of dreaming.
THE DREAM DICTIONARY – An A to Z of DreamsINDEX OF DREAM THEMES AND OBJECTSBIBLIOGRAPHY |
Introduction – Your Dream Interpreter
Tony Crisp
IntroductionDreams are one of the most extraordinary experiences any of us can have. This is why they have fascinated men and women in every culture throughout the ages. The roots of our own culture show that we are no exception to this. The Old and New Testament are full of dreams and dreaming, such as that of Pharaoh and of the warning dreams experienced by Joseph. (1) In our own times an enormous amount of experiment into the nature and meaning of dreams and sleep has taken place. This has occurred both in the laboratory and in the testing bed of everyday experience of tens of thousands of men, women and children, along with the professionals dealing with human problems. A vast amount has been learned, showing that dreams are more profoundly revealing of transformative insights and self-understanding than even the ancient cultures realised. This flood of new understanding has shown that dreams are not mysterious jumbles of random images, but arise from the innate mental and physical processes of life within us. They express the unconscious wisdom that enabled and sustains the growth and health of your body and mind. This enormous experiment and research have also defined ways that each of us can learn to understand the dramatic and graphic language of our dreams. What are dreams?As with any area of thought, there are a wide variety of views as to what dreams are and what function they play in life. But if we attempt to find a synthesis of these ancient and modern views, it is that dreams are an expression of the most fundamental processes of life in us reaching toward awareness. Creatures have dreamt for millions of years prior to human emergence, and in their dreaming we see the biological life of our planet arriving at its own kind of consciousness, but achieving it in a very different way than we know in our waking life. It is like a huge pool of collective awareness that never knows itself as any one thing, but is the experience of all living creatures. The Psychiatrist Carl Jung gave it the name of the Collective Unconscious. The Australian aborigines called it The Dreamtime, and recognised that all creatures emerge from it, and pass back into it in sleep and dreams. The aborigines call it the ‘all-at-once’ time instead of the ‘one-thing-after-another’ time. Whether we want to see this fundamental level of awareness as instinct, as holy, or as a collective unconscious, this fundamental part of us has the experience of millions of years. It has within it the essence of all human experience, from all cultures. Not only is this pool of collective experience ancient, holding all patterns of relationship already developed, but also it is always changing, always forming new possibilities from gathered experience. In our waking state we have built an image of who we are. We frequently really believe we are the person that image creates. What you touch in your dreams is the person you can be beyond those limitations and concepts. Dreams open to you this possibility of vastly extending your own experience, and finding wholeness and a connection with your roots. (2) Dreams are more than random imagesCountless experiments have shown that each of us dream about four or five times each night. While we dream our voluntary muscles no longer respond to our attempts to move, and our eyes move rapidly under closed eyelids. Our muscles are paralysed in this way because, if they were not, we would actually run around or act out what we are dreaming. Animals in which the brain area that blocks such impulses has been damaged live out their dream in movement. It can then be seen they are practising their basic life skills such as hunting or survival tactics. But dreams do not simply extend your experience and allow you to practice your future actions; they express all the other functions of the human mind and spirit, reaching beyond the limits of waking awareness and your senses. Dreams solve problems; they reflect the state of health of your body and mind; they reach into your past and often access your earliest memories and responses; they are an expression of the self-regulating process of your body and your mind; dreams express your deepest creative ability and reach into new views and possibilities; they are a safe area to directly experience, and therefore practice, having a baby, getting married, dying and exploring the unknown. Dreams reveal to you what you fail to see about yourself while awake. They show what you miss realising about the world around you, and the directions you are taking in life. They unveil things that usually lie beyond the boundaries of your five senses. But their information is sometimes obscured in apparently strange drama or feelings. Fortunately men and women throughout the ages, and especially in recent times, have clarified ways of extracting information from even the most obscure of dreams. Using these techniques enables you to gain insights that can transform the way you live and experience yourself. (3) It allows you to release old tensions and hurts. More than anything else it starts to unveil your immense potential. Notes(1) See Genesis 40:007 to 41:49 – and Mathew 1:20 and 2:11 (2) It would spoil the flow of the ideas to quote all references to support the statements made. However, the stated view of the dream and what lies behind it can be further explored in such books as: The section by Marie L. von Franz ‘The Process of Individuation’, in Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung. There is a River – The Story of Edgar Cayce, by Thomas Sugrue. Cosmic Consciousness – A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind by Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke. The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra. Supernature by Lyall Watson. The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot. Collision With The Infinite by Suzanne Vega. (3) The word insight is used purposely. It is defined as ‘the capacity to discern the true nature of a situation; penetration. The act or outcome of grasping the inward or hidden nature of things or of perceiving in an intuitive manner.’ |
The Vision of Dreams
Dreams reveal to us things we are ususally blind to
That we have a word such as unconscious in our vocabulary means we acknowledge there are things we cannot ‘see’ about our own existence, about our own body, and about our own mind, intentions and feelings. Many writers on psychology have suggested that the part we know about our own brain/mind is about one tenth its possible size, and we use about one tenth or less of our potential.
In trying to understand this we may come to see that most of our own existence and mind is outside the boundary of our everyday knowing. This has always been realised in most ancient cultures, and many strange and refined techniques were developed to take awareness beyond the boundary of its normal knowing into the land of the ‘unknown’. In this century many people have attempted the same thing using mind expanding drugs or techniques of meditation or altered states of consciousness. See: altered states of consciousness; esp in dreams; the definitions of dreaming under Freud; out of body experience; yoga and dreams.
This difficulty in crossing the boundary of knowing into the unknown is a sort of general blindness most of us suffer. Considering that dreams portray a very different view of life in which this boundary often does not exist, we can say that dreams are a leap beyond our blindness into full supersensual life. In our dreams we can often see the meaning of life experiences we are failing to understand in waking; we can look ahead into what our attitudes and temperament are creating in our life; we can look deep into the workings of our body, and in general extend our senses and awareness beyond any known limits. See: Cayce, Edgar; collective unconscious; wife; dead husband and cannot find husband under family and relationships; hallucinations.
Many modern physicists, working with the information arising in experiments with quantum theory, tell us that our view of the world is based upon our blindness, and is very limited, and through its limitation, unreal. Yet this view we take to be the REAL universe.
The physicist Bohm defines this problem by saying that there are two orders in our experience of the world around us. There is the “explicate” order and the “implicate” order of the physical universe. He defines the explicate order as the impressions of the world gained via our senses and the interpretations the brain places on these impressions. These impressions and the brain’s interpretations – based on millions of years of evolutionary experience and input – lead to a view that we each have separate minds in isolated bodies. The implicate order is the universe as it is when we move beyond the limitations of the senses and the brain’s evolutionary programs. Then we begin to see the universe as a single indivisible whole, and ourselves as intricately part of that whole.
Bohm says that “if we don’t see this it’s because we are blinding ourselves to it.” He goes on to say that “If we don’t establish these absolute boundaries between minds, then it’s possible they could unite as one mind.”
An example of this seeing beyond our conditioned blindness is given in this man’s description of something he ‘saw’ when he moved beyond his usual boundaries:-
I saw an influence in action pressing human society into ever greater super-organisms. These organisms either evolve into functioning new forms, or fail and break down. And by organisms I mean huge groups of people working toward similar goals, such as we find in political or religious groups, or even in nations or social groups. The human body is a super-organism for instance, and combines the workings of billions of cells. What I had failed to see previously is that human beings, despite their felt isolation and individual identity, are actually moved by similar forces as cause cells to gain a common identity in a body.
I saw a push toward a new level of complexity and size which is integrating and using is technology. This new super organism within human society is digesting technology or interiorising it as an integral part of its new organisation and size. This is similar to the way the body has integrated certain things into its own cells, or uses exterior bacteria to help digest food.
The jump to a vastly greater size is enabled by the technology the super-organism incorporates. So if we take human beings as the cells in the body of this huge super-organism, they constitute the living soft tissue, but the nervous system are being formed of the computer driven information and control highways emerging at the moment. And if we are not blind, we will recognise that the equipment we have created is part of our greater body now. Still more though, we must recognise that the huge organism we are incorporated into is more than we are ourselves, just as the body is greater than the cell. If we can see this then we may also recognise that as a human being we may be driven by urges arising in us that are not from our own isolated mind – because our mind is not isolated. Overall our direction arises in large measure from the drives pushing the super organism, and the direction of society is created by the direction of the super-organism.
But how does that help us? What can we do about our blindness?
It helps to understand what dreams can do, so here are some examples.
- An expression of what is happening in the physical body. Some doctors consider dreams to show signs of illness long before they are evident in other ways. Women frequently know they are pregnant very early on through sleep awareness in a dream. See: body; body dreams; Kasatkin_Vasily; consciousness-mind body split.
- A link between the sleeping mind and what is occurring externally. For instance, a person may be falling out of bed and dream of flying or falling.
- A way of balancing the physiological and psychological activities in us. When a person is deprived of dreaming in experiments, a breakdown in mind and body quickly occurs. This type of dreaming can often be a safety valve releasing tension and emotion not dealt with in waking life. See: compensation theory; self-regulation dreams and fantasy; science and dreams.
- An enormously original source of insight and information. Dreams tap our memory, our experience, and scan information held in our unconscious to form new insights from old experience. Dreams often present to us summaries or details of experience we have been unable to access consciously. Sometimes this is as early as life in the womb. See: creativity and problem solving in dreams.
- A means of compensating for failure or deprivation in everyday life, and as a means of expressing the otherwise unacknowledged aspects of oneself. Such dreams are a move toward wholeness. See: compensation theory.
- In dreams we may be integrating new experience with what we have already gathered and digested. In this way our abilities, such as social skills, are gradually upgraded. See: computer, computer-dream process as a; Evans, Christopher.
- Dreams often stand in place of actual experience. So through dreams we may experiment with new experience or practice things we have not yet done externally. For instance many young women dream in detail of giving birth. This function of what might be called ‘imagination’ is tremendously undervalued, but is a foundation upon which human survival is built. See: imagination and dreaming.
- An means of exercise for the psyche or soul. Just as the body will become sick if not moved and stressed, so the mind and emotions need stimulus and exercise. Dreams fulfil this need.
- An expression of human supersenses. Humans have an unconscious ability to read body language – so they can assess other humans very quickly. Humans have an unimaginable ability to absorb information, not simply from books, but from everyday events. With it they constantly arrive at new insights and realisations. Humans frequently correctly predict the future – not out of a bizarre ability, but from the information gathered about the present. All these abilities and more show in our dreams. See: esp in dreams.
- A means of solving problems, or formulating creative ideas, both in our personal life, and also in relationships and work. Many people have produced highly creative work directly from dreams.
- A presentation in symbols of past traumatic experience. If met this can lead to deep psychological healing. Such dreams are therefore an attempt on the part of our spontaneous inner processes to bring about healing change. See: abreaction; compensation theory; nightmares.
- In the widest sense nearly all dreams act as a process of growth or a move toward maturing. Some dreams are very obviously presenting internal forces or dimensions of experience that might lead the conscious personality toward a greater balance and inclusiveness. See: individuation.
- A way of reaching beyond the known world of experience and presenting intimations from the unknown. Many people have dreams in which ESP, out of the body experiences, and knowledge transcending time and space occur. This type of dream may indicate a link between the present person and people who had lived in the distant past; or between the dreamer and all existing life. Some of these dreams present powerful insights into how the transitory human personality may arise out of an eternal consciousness. They thus deal with the spiritual aspects of human nature.
Some examples can be see at Inspiring Stories; Life Changes; Breaking through to the Psychic and Spiritual; My Life in Death; Acting in Your Dreams: