Posts Tagged ‘dream analysis’
Gaze
Concentration, or an attempt to influence. Gazing into someone’s eyes can be a means of intimacy or an attempt to communicate something wordlessly.
Averting ones gaze can be a way of not seeing what is going on, or a protection against the power of what we might see or witness or what it might invite. Sometimes a gaze can lead you to depths of experience and insight that are missed in a casual glance.
Example: In my dream I was standing at the edge of the estuary looking across it. A terrible natural disaster had occurred. Before me uncountable bodies were strewn in the water. Children, women, men, all in disarray, so many of them, arms and legs were meshed into a huge web of death.
I stood with sorrow so deep it was without emotion. Although I had no sense of being responsible, I was nevertheless involved. I was witnessing and part of the event.
At this point I woke and remained in a semi-sleep state. I realised without attempting to do so that I must find my way through the awful imagery of this tragedy. As I stood and gazed upon the scene, I realised that this expanse of death was not a single occurrence. Each time the tide swept out it carried with it countless people in death. It happened daily, hourly, minute by minute. Each time the sun sets it does so on thousands of deaths. But equally, each time the tide comes in it brings with it births to all nations and social classes. Birth and death – the great tides of human experience. I had witnessed, am witnessing, the tide going out in my own life.
Useful questions:
Is this about taking in a new view, or an attempt at intimacy?
Am I attempting to influence or am being influence by someone, or a situation? If so can I define what?
If I am averting my gaze, what am I achieving by it?
See Characters and People in Dreams – carry the dream forward – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Gazelle
See deer.
Geese Goose
A sense of freedom. If flying it suggests your essence as it moves with the forces of life and perhaps flies through many lives. It might also point to wanderlust. In some cases you might use the goose as a symbol for life long relationship.
Geese fly very high and can cover huge distances, suggesting that your inner life can achieve a wider awareness. and in doing so can incorporate masses if information. See Wider awareness
Because geese mate for life and seek out a partner, it can sometimes illustrate the way you are going about finding partner.
The goose can, in the dream world, lay the golden eggs. This indicates great fertility and wealth in life.
But like any animal, a goose also represents the complex behaviors that we see in a goose or a flock. So they can depict a part of you that is responding to fairly instinctive ways of doing things. For instance a goose will instinctively attack if frightened, and it finds security in a group. But such instinctive responses are rooted in a great depth of experiences.
We also use the word goose to indicate foolishness or group conformity.
Idioms: ones goose is cooked; silly goose; mother goose; flight of geese; wild goose.
Useful questions:
What is your dream describing about any desire to fly free?
Are you seeing yourself as a flock of fussing geese making a lot of noise?
What fixed behaviour or instinctive response is shown in your dream?
Am I a silly goose or wise with instinctive knowledge?
See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Processing Dreams – Martial Art of the Mind
Gem
See: Jewels.
Geometry
The balance, connection and relationship of things in your life and especially within your mind and memories. The unconscious particularly loves symbols to represent abstract and subtle realisations about yourself and life. Because nature forms many such patterns it can refer to the structure within yourself that gives you a sense of identity and existence amidst the many shifting forces of life.
Geometry Class: Learning about how things in your life relate or function together. If you have been in a geometry class it would link with how you felt about the class.
Genitals
Direct reference to sexual aspect of self; often used to represent gender. In such dreams a man might dream of having female genitals, suggesting he is experiencing the female aspect of himself. See: gender; vagina; penis; castrate; washing
Useful Questions and Hints:
In a female dream – what is the central thing this dream is presenting to me – is it about the way I feel about sex, about residues of my father’s influence in my life, or about my female power?
In a male dream – does my dream in any way indicate my fears or strengths in my relationship with a woman – or is it about residues of my mother’s influence?
Does this dream reveal anything about the way I am in an intimate relationship – if so what is it?
Are there any signs of me growing beyond old patterns of my sexual/emotional behaviour – if so can I enhance them?
Here some useful links – Easy Dream Interpretation – Sexually Inadequate – Man In Your Dreams – Dream Like a Computer Game
Genius
May represent feelings of inferiority or superiority, or even be similar to Guru, depending on dream.
Example: When I was 68 I took an opportunity to ‘get education’ because up till then I had not had the questionable advantages of being taught – except when I had to do national service in the RAF and was taught nursing. I got a pass at an Oxford college and while studying there wrote three books which were later published – all without education of the normal kind. My secret was, if it could be called that, I never waited for anyone to tell me what to do or give me permission or pieces of paper called diplomas, etc. I simply got on with what was burning inside me.
While I was being ‘educated’ I met a woman student who assured me that as a woman she was almost paralyzed by restrictions due to her sex. She told me she couldn’t get work. I then thought of my mother from an older generation who never ever had such thoughts and always got work, or created it.
See Genius – Releasing Your Inner Genius – From Black Slave to Genius
Germs
A hidden worry, or something invisible weakening your health. The germs or virus may also represent a feeling that you may be absorbing a bad influence from another person – depending on the dream. It may be directly a fear about your health, or even an intuition about a viral or bacterial attack.
Germination
A part of yourself that has been quickened to life and growth by some influence, such as love, interest, change of heart, understanding or personal growth. Such germination usually arises from something small but alive within you, or as an outer influence, and expresses enormous potential.
It could refer to pregnancy where conception takes place.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Is there something new but small and even insignificant happening to you?
Can you feel an urge to grow or go beyond your usual bahaviour?
Do you have a sort of itch inside that leads you on or keep pushing for attention?
See Summing Up – Clicking On – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Gesture
Most gestures we make in dreams symbolise some inner state of being. To understand them it is best to imitate the gesture and thereby see what it expresses. For instance, there are the typical gestures of fear, anger, tenderness.
Gesture may also be a way of communicating something that is still not put into words, not clear. Or occasionally gesture or posture is a way of changing your inner condition. For example by taking a positive posture, or making a confident gesture, this might shift feelings of uncertainty. See Posture.
Geyser
Expression of emotions under pressure. A powerful energy arising from beyond your conscious self. Deep passions becoming known or expressed.
A geyser can usually indicate a fault line on which the geyser exists. If this is part of your dream it can show the possibility of enormous changes – earth changes – at a deep level of yourself.
Useful questions and hints:
Is there any sense of pressure in your life, and if there is can you say what it is?
Do you often feel as if you are holding onto what you feel and then it burst out under pressure?
Can you see the signs of enormous life changes at the moment? These would show as a different direction you are starting, or a change of mind or heart.
See Life’s Little Secrets – People’s Experience of LifeStream – Avoid Being Victims – Processing Dreams
Ghost
Memories, feelings, guilt, which haunt us, or parts of the wider awareness of the unconscious which attempt to communicate. What communicates can sometimes be the husks or influences from past traumas or events, which have been emptied of hurt and real influence, but still affect us as habit patterns. They can also be fantasies, hopes, longings we have given time to, and so filled with our life and sexual energy, and which now influence us.
But also they can indicate people we feel close to but have left us, like a son or daughter that has gone off to college or married. Their ghost then represents the feelings that are still alive in us as memories.
Ghost of a living person: A sense of their thoughts or presence influencing us. Many people communicate with the so called dead. We can also be haunted by desire for them, or a resentment or feeling about them.
Some people believe that in dreams the living haunt a place. This is possible because a living person may experience an OBE and be seen as a ghost by someone in the area of the experience. Seeing a ghost while awake can still be considered as connected with the dream process.
Robert Van de Castle points out that in his work with people, whenever he has helped them investigate a ghost dream, it has always led back to the childhood experience of a parent coming to the bedroom and lifting them or moving them to prevent bed wetting. He says the ghost is invariably the mother, and the robber figure is the father.
But some dreams suggest that ghost can be any appearance in your awareness of someone experience an out of body experience, or even as the next example says, contact from another level or reality.A ghost which feels solid: The dreamer is ‘touching’ aspects of their own mind or awareness existing beyond preconceived ideas and beliefs.
Example: Last night I had a strange nightmare. I was in an ancient room. It had the feeling of being an old church. Then my wife and I were in bed in the room. A middle-aged woman was in the room. She was a ghost. I felt afraid of her, but to meet the fear needed to confront her. I reached out my hand to her. I was crying out in my sleep from fear. As she took my hand I was amazed and shocked to feel it as physically real. I cried out, “I can feel you!” She also was surprised and said, “He is from the other level,” or some named level or dimension. I had the impression that this level or dimension was recognised by “them”. I then said I wanted to speak to her, as I needed to understand. I then woke up.
Example: There was an eerie atmosphere about the place. Then we heard footsteps upstairs, and knew it was a ghost. The eerie atmosphere increased and increased, and the footsteps could be heard coming down the steps of the stairs. We decided to go and have a look at the ghost, despite the fact we were somewhat scared. But when we looked up the stairs we saw it was a youngish woman who was dwarfed in stature, and very unhappy. This was why she haunted the place, and had materialised. I put my arm around her shoulder, and made her feel loved, and led her into the kitchen, where we talked to see if we could help her. The whole eeriness had disappeared.
Example: While I was engaged to be married I had a dream in which I was looking at thick velvet curtains, very rich in texture. The curtains parted and my dead mother walked through. She came to me with such a look of love and said, ‘My darling I am so sorry, but this marriage is not to be’. The dream then ended.
I was due to meet my fiancé at a hotel, as he was working, travelling around the country, and this would be our last meeting before our wedding. I travelled to the hotel, and when I got there the manager took me to one side and told me my fiancé had been killed in a car accident. My mother’s warning had saved me from a terrible shock.
Example: J. A. Hadfield in his book Dreams And Nightmares tells the story of a young woman who was happily engaged but who suddenly became depressed. It was discovered that her depression started when her fiancé had greatly aroused her sexually. That night she had a nightmare in which she saw the ghost of a man to whom she had been previously engaged but had been killed in a war. He was looking at her reprovingly. She felt terribly ashamed and disloyal because of her passionate love for her present fiancé. The reason for such depth of feeling was that when her previous fiancé had died she swore to herself she would not marry again, although he had not asked this of her. So the ghost here represents not only the past relationship, but the woman’s deeply implanted decision not to marry again, raised from the dead as it were by her passionate love for her present man. See Dead Husband or Ex
Example: I was in an ancient room. It had the feeling of being an old church. Then my wife and I were in bed in the room. A middle aged woman was in the room. She was a ghost. I felt afraid of her, but to meet the fear needed to confront her. I reached out my hand to her. I was crying out in my sleep from fear. As she took my hand I was amazed and shocked to feel it as physically real. I cried out ‘I can feel you – I can feel you!’ She also was surprised and said, ‘He is from the other level,’ or some named level or dimension. I had the impression the level or dimension was recognised by ‘them’. I then said I wanted to understand.
Example: I always thought ghosts were the expression of fear as we meet the unknown; the anxiety of glimpses into realities so different to what we assume they should be, that we fall back. But today I am meeting ghosts that have been working silent fingers into my history. They are archaeologists of my heart, leading into the sacred burial grounds where my past love died and was buried. They are ghosts that so subtly lift up old bone’s, enter dried out skins, to make them parade across the theatre of my feelings. In their charade they pose as my lover to affright me. They act out old dramas as if enlightening me of today. And so silently and with craft have they done this, it takes me unawares. Time passes till I catch them at their awful game. I banish them as I banished their living form in the past, by remembering that the flower that grew and died last year, is not this year’s flower.
Example: I was in bed with Tony, my husband, but we weren’t close. I was awake and looking at him, our heads were quite close together. Then we were both looking at a candle alight and a big cork, one for a jar, was being lifted in the heat of the candle. The cork was moving in directions that I didn’t think the heat was but it still kept up, and moving. We both watched this for quite some time, then the cork suddenly shot across the room and I knew Pat, woman who worked with us, was sleeping on the floor next to us, the cork caught some thin material, then went thud onto the wall and fell into an armchair. Pat awoke, thought it was a ghost coming to get her, she rushed out of bed, in the dark, went wildly into the wall trying to find a door to escape. I thought it very funny and laughed to myself as I got up to go after Pat to tell her not to be afraid, it wasn’t after her at all.
Useful questions:
Does this represent a particular old memory, fear, or piece of the past that ‘haunts’, or keeps coming back to me?
Does it indicate dread of the unknown? If so what is it you dread?
Do I have doings from the past that I have tried to bury or forget about?
See: Spirits; Hallucination; Processing Dreams; Dreaming of Death
Ghoul
This is usually a repressed part of your childhood that haunts and terrifies you. Sometimes it is the memory of a parent in a frightening situation. When explored these ghouls usually turn out to be images describing a frightening event that happened in childhood, or in the past, or fears you are keeping unconscious in the present.
Example: my wife and I lived in a two-bedroom house. Our three young children slept in one bedroom, my wife and I in the other. At that time I was also running a part time book business. Because it was quite a small house with little cupboard space, I used a cupboard in the children’s bedroom to store new books. Much of the work I did with the books was done in the evenings when the children were in bed. Unfortunately this meant entering the children’s bedroom while they were asleep, and with a small torch searching for books I needed. Quite quickly it became apparent that one of my children showed signs of terror each time I entered the room. From his point of view all that was visible was a small light accompanied by shuffling sounds. I realised that he believed I was some sort of strange or ghostly creature coming into his bedroom. Of course, with this belief, he was terrified.
As soon as I understood this, I waited for darkness and entered the room with my torch. I could hear my small son’s sharp intake of breath and feel his sense his terror. Then I gently spoke, explaining that I was in the room looking for a book, and I switched the light on so he could assure himself of this truth. The terror never reappeared.
If you can let the ghoul approach you instead of running away or hiding you will get to know what is behind the frightening images. See ghost
Useful questions and hints:
Do I have a vivid memory of a parent or other important figure in a frightening situation?
Is this about a repressed part of childhood that still terrifies me?
This is just an image and emotions about fear, why am I running from them?
Is this similar to a ghost and I am frigthned of it?
See Hallucinations – Summing Up – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Giant
In many dreams the giant represent huge forces that are behind our own lives and existence. For example you are constantly moved in your body by forces that you do not control or even fully understand.
The potato you ate yesterday remembers your address today
We often take for granted some of the most astounding facts about our everyday life. They seem so normal we barely notice them. But just think, the potatoes or rice you ate yesterday, is today capable of sitting and laughing at a television program. When you digested the food you ate, in some way that is truly astounding it transformed into your movements, and feelings, and being able to do maths and enjoy a video. Not even the brainiest person in the world has been able to make a robot or creature that can eat potatoes and change them into the ability to read this book. If we can already do that amazing thing, what else might we be able to do?
This giant in your dream is showing you face to face with
We are all subject to the forces of growth – it is one of the main functions of life. But because growth is a push toward change, change that we do not want to face, we often resist it, often without realising we are doing so. Psychiatrist say we have resistances to meeting the uncomfortable aspects of our self. A young woman who was anorexic dreamt of cutting off her breasts, suggesting trying to cut out the living process that was moving her into being a full woman. So such resistance can also relate to how we try to dissociate from our own process of growth and ageing.
The human personality – the You that you call yourself, with the realisation that you as a person with a name, is only a tiny thing. It is moved and tossed around by all manner of drives, ambitions, emotions, fears, temptations, worries, love and desire with its pains and hopes, we take many sorts of pain killers to deal with this meeting with ourself. Things such as alcohol, coffee, medical drugs and street drugs, and yet we are still prone to break down, as can be seen by the number of people who need antidepressants or are totally lost in themselves. Look around at the number of people who have to take anti depressant, or who have to use alcohol every day, or smoke or take other drugs – all means of not facing the difficulty of meeting self awareness which shows us the reality of an enormous giant being.
Paul Levy writing about this says: “This process can be so extreme, so radical, that the ego experiences it as death …. This experience is related to the shaman’s descent to the underworld as well as the archetypal journey of the wounded healer. See Programmed
But we have to remember that having a personality with self awareness is a very new thing and has only existed for a short time. Before that we were like animals that lived only in the Life Will – what we usually call instincts. So the development of self awareness was an immense step, and left us very vulnerable, and still does.
Many people as their awareness reaches beyond what they feel is their normal self feel scared. Such resistances cause us to create awful dreams and fears as a means of avoiding our own inner world and its wonders. We feel that we will be swallowed up and we will die. It is important to say that when we meet the experience of powerlessness through becoming aware of the hugeness of your Life, which we are usually unaware if, it feels like something alien or attacking, and it is a shock.
When we begin to meet the Hugeness that we are, we often react to it in our dreams or in waking with fear or panic. So we dream of being attacked by aliens or frightening creatures; or being swallowed by a whale or something huge, a tsunami, or even possessed by evil entities. If we realise that they are things we have created through our own fear we will pass on.
The story of Jack and the Beanstalk is about this meeting with the giant self we all are. One of my sons dreamt he climbed up the huge beanstalk and felt the presence of the Giant Being. He also felt sure they were aware of him and that they would kill him.
That is exactly what the story is about. There he finds himself exposed to many different views and opinions, one of which is that one can grow beyond the normal everyday experience of people and gain a much richer and extensive view – the magic beans, the power of personal growth.
People who never find this power of personal growth may remain stuck in life situations from which they may never emerge. The situation might be one of never establishing a full and satisfying sexual relationship; constantly feeling hurt by the actions of others; existing in a state of depression or anxiety; forever having to seek activity or company to deal with ones own inner emptiness; experiencing enormous jealousy or anxiety in a relationship; feeling you have never made it in life – the list could be endless.
This grows in him and he is enlightened by it because he is able to see a vaster view than those locked in chasing after financial riches or being lost in worldly cares or desires. But this brings him to the world of giants. As said, “The Life Will is an enormous activity, a giant in its abilities and coverage. Also, people meeting it fear they are dying or will killed. See Enlightenment
That is true, YES they will be killed, but not physically. It is a facing of the huge Life Will that seems threatening to the small and less powerful Conscious Will as the massive influx of information and experiences is released from the Life Will. See Death of Ego
If you are the giant, then it might mean you have feelings of power over others, or you are a big person. On the other hand, it might suggest you feel inferior and are compensating. A giant in a dream can also depict feelings you had about parents who, in your childhood, were giants physically and emotionally.
If someone else is the giant. then it may symbolise your relationship with them, such as feelings of inferiority, powerlessness, fear. If you take the trouble to understand what the other person signifies, apart from their size, it is often found they represent one of your emotions, fears, or ambitions, that have become too big for you to handle and have grown to giant proportions.
Childhood feelings about grownups, especially the frightening side of parents. If you are the giant, then it means you have excessive feelings of power over others, and being a big person. If someone else is the giant. then it may symbolise your relationship with them, such as feelings of inferiority, powerlessness, fear. If you take the trouble to understand what the other person signifies, apart from their size, it is often found that they represent one of your emotions, fears, or ambitions, that have become too big for you to handle and has grown to giant proportions.
There are also giant insects and creatures, and again this says their size is magnification of normal fears and feelings.
But some giant figures of not awful or destructive. These are perceptions of something that is wonderful and beyond your understanding as the following dream describes:
Example: I see this great giant of a man, I feel I mustn’t look at him in case I offend him, but he has such beautiful eyes. It is Life. I look away because I’m so uncertain. They are looking at me, those eyes. Look, isn’t it beautiful. A different sort of a human being, can I come and look at you? It’s like something everyone always dreamed about; the love you always wanted but never dared ask for. I love you. I love you. It’s the eyes of my dog as it loves me, elephants, dolphins and people who have poured out to me – life itself.
Example: It was like the end of the world. The wave of destruction and fire rolled towards us. I grabbed the girl, almost carrying her, and ran. I felt if we ran far enough, we might escape, yet somehow felt there was no escape. Now a huge giant stood upon the earth. I believe he swallowed someone. Then he explained that he had been trapped beneath earth within the pylon, behind a barrier of water, and had now escaped. He was the father of all beings, but people had never realised it. His seed had gone into the waters, and somehow fertilised things and created people. At one time he had tried to escape by coming up through the water, holding his breath, but he had not quite made it. But he had grabbed a woman and taken her back down with him.
The dreamer appears to be meeting the giant forces that are behind our own lives and existence. He feels frightened because he had never come face to face with what was behind his own life.
Example: I needed to go to the toilet to pee, and this created many bubbles in the water. As I watched something caught my attention, for it seemed that each small bubble was an eye looking up at me. Wondering what this could mean I looked more closely, to see not eyes, but I’s. Each bubble had a tiny reflection of me in it. I was amused because there were dozens of tiny copies of me all looking up at me with their separate existence.
I felt how true it is that each of us are like little bubbles, all in our own small sphere of experience. Then it struck me that although all of these tiny individuals appeared to have a separate identity, a separate body in space; and although they all had eyes with which they were looking at the world, they only had awareness out of my own consciousness. In fact they had no existence outside of me. Unknowingly they were all reflections of me.
Suddenly, and with some apprehension, I realised the meaning of this interesting dream that my unconscious had been communicating. I am a bubble. My personal awareness, although it seems distinct and separate, is in fact the reflection of one great giant consciousness pervading the universe. So who am I when my bubble bursts, as it must, and I return to my source? The fear I first felt has long melted. It has been replaced by joy as I have explored what it means to burst and return home. The giant is now a part of my life.
Useful questions and hints:
Who is the giant… myself or someone else?
Is this about feelings of having power over others, or that I want to?
At the other end of the scale, are these feelings of inferiority, powerlessness or fear?
Has some situation become too big for me to handle?
Or is this something grand I am meeting?
See Reaction to the unconscious – The Life Will – The Life Will – Secrets of Power Dreaming
Gift
This may be an intuition, unconscious knowledge, or what is received in a relationship – such as support, sense of worth, acceptance. Sometimes a dream reminds us of the gift of life, and shows us how we relate to it. Or fertility and the coming of a child is a wonderful gift.
A gift can also be like marking ones territory, as with a wedding ring; the forming of a connection.
In North American tribal traditions a gift is often seen as a feather or a dead animal found by the person. In such cases it is felt that Life, or the Great Spirit, has ‘gifted’ the person with the quality of the animal.
There can also be ‘gifts of the spirit’. These are listed as Wisdom; Knowledge; Discerning of spirits (Human, Angelic, Demonic); Speaking in tongues; Interpretation of tongues; Prophecy; Faith; Working of miracles; and Healing. These can be thought of as an entrance into a wider life, and the gifts are an extension of human knowledge and ability.
But in our dreams we are often shown or initiated into gifts other than those listed. One person dreamt he had received the gift of a quiet spirit, and the ability to care for others. But another dreamer dreamt this:
Example: Here I had the feeling of my being stretching back endlessly through my fathers. As I saw this I said, spontaneously, “Through what I have been given in my culture I have a soul. Without the self giving of men and women throughout the ages I would have no soul, no personal awareness of my own. Because of language, and the accumulation of knowledge, I have a soul. This is mankind’s gift to me. Without it I would be like an animal without self awareness.”
Some gifts are very personal however. This next dream shows this:
Example: Steve, my lover, gave me a copper kettle, same shape as the one John, my husband, took to bits and then never put back for me. I was very happy with the gift. I saw the kettle was clean, with no dents, not highly polished, but with a homely glow.
Considering that a kettle can indicate a woman’s feeling of wanting to provide a good home for her lover, and also her ability to bear a child, the gift is a symbol of the deep feelings that create love.
Giving gift: Giving of self; hoping receiver accepts or likes you.
Receiving gift: Something that you have received or offered by someone or some aspect of yourself.
Receiving unwanted gift: Difficulties in accepting someone, or something from within; perhaps sometimes to do with pregnancy. See: Giving.
Useful questions and hints:
If I am giving the gift to someone, what do I see myself sharing?
Does the gift suggest what it is I am receiving or have any special associations for me?
If the gift is unwanted, what difficulty am I experiencing about accepting someone or something from within?
For subtle gifts, take time to explore the feelings you get when you imagine giving or receiving the gift.
See Life’s Little Secrets – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Questions
Girdle Corset
Sexual restraint, or the restraint of pride or vanity that shows only as an outer facade, and does not bring about inner changes. Self inflicted restrictions, holding yourself back in some way. Or even presenting yourself as you think others want to see you, perhaps by using an external alteration instead of an internal change. The restriction may be connected with your sensual or sexual feelings.
Corsets and girdles in a male dream is often linked with a particular type of sexuality, as described in this following piece.
Example: Image after image of women flashed through consciousness. Pictures of women in black brassieres and black corset straps. Women with fags in their mouth with unfeeling hard faces. Women having a period. It was the cultural images I had been handed of women. See: armour.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What restrictions am I putting on myself?
Am I trying to fit into someone else’s idea of what I should look like?
Are sexual feeling appearing in this dream at all – if so what do they suggest?
See Processing Dreams – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Questions