Posts Tagged ‘dream analysis’

An accepted idea or attitude that does not agree with you. The inability to stomach something. Or may be actual indigestion. Something you have taken in, perhaps something said to you, that you did not see at the time was a poisonous remark.

Are you ignoring you ‘gut instincts’ and thus causing you to dreams of indigestion? So conflict about love can cause indigestion.

Example: The words then came, “Eat not.” I have a strong feeling this was the forbidden apple, and in some old way, this was why I had not been able to eat apples lightly, because for the past few months, if I ate apples I suffered strong acid indigestion. Something seems wrong with my digestive system anyway, as I have had acid indigestion, pains, and now piles. I felt, though, that the apples could now beaten, and have in fact being able to eat them without ill effects since this session. The indigestion was caused by being offered and apple one day by a woman I was in love with but had a tremendous conflict because I was married. Realizing the connection rid me of indigestion whenever I ate an apple.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Did I experience indigestion or was it just mentioned in my dream?

What did the dream point out about indigestion?

Have I had a conflict about something?

See Life’s Little Secrets – Settings in Dreams – – Avoid Being Victims – Summing Up

Industries

Creative or constructive energies.

Infancy

Parts of yourself that still reflect childhood experiences, perhaps patterns of behaviour you have not grown out of, or being controlled by mother’s will. Or else the feeling of being a baby, or desire to be a baby to escape adult responsibilities.

Infect Infected Infection

The influence of other people’s fears, worries, or cynicism upon you. Influence of your own thoughts acting negatively. Fear of being pregnant.

Ideas or thoughts which cause irritability or negative internal states. Thinking ones job is not secure might create disinterest and loss of motivation in work, even if, in reality the job is secure; taking in negative attitudes from others; warning about physical health; sexual impregnation. See: illness; body.

Your conscious attitudes influence the fundamental living processes in you – processes that maintain health, digest your food, beat your heart, rebuild damage and fight infection. Negative feelings or attitudes can cause these usually unconscious processes in you to lose their strength, and thus lead to illness.

Being the victim of childhood trauma, abuse and the attitudes and standards we often pick up – rather like infections – from others around us, and our culture. When these attitudes enter us it can lead to self criticism, negative comparisons, the denial of ones own talents and ‘light’, and in bad cases, illness.

Hans Selye, the father of stress causing illness found that exposing animals to situations that did not expose them to bacteria or pathogens, but were in cages on a roof and so were stressed, produced all the illnesses – hypertension, strokes, heart attacks, ulcers etc. This finding was revolutionary because scientists previously believed that illnesses were caused by different pathogens. Stress, as a concept, caught on.

Example: I continually have a dream that I have an earache. The pain in my dream is excruciating, then I wake up and there is no earache. Any ideas? Could I be grinding my teeth to cause this problem. S.

When questioned S said she did have a slight problem with a tooth at the back of her jaw on the same side as the dream toothache. Such tooth problems can lead to ear infections. So they are worth taking notice of, and one should check out ones health in the area.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Is the infection shown as severe?

Have I noticed any pain or discomfort in the infected area?

Do I need to check with a doctor?

See Norman Cousins – Talking to Inner Self – Life’s Little Secrets

Inflate Inflation

This might refer to breathing in some way; it can also depict what happens to an image or idea we have, that becomes inflated with energy, and takes on a life of its own. Also to fill up or be carried away by a sense of your own cleverness, superior abilities, knowledge and power.

Carl Jung also used the terms ‘inflation’ and ‘negative inflation’ to describe psychological conditions. The first he described as egocentric and conscious of nothing but themselves and their one importance. They are incapable of learning from the past or understanding contemporary events.

The negative inflation is typified an unrealistic low opinion of themselves. It usually means the person has failed to meet or integrate an unconscious trauma or difficulty. Thus they live in a shadow world of despair and despondence.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Have you created a world inflated by your own energy?

Do you feel you are a wonderful and clever person?

Or are you living in a world of shadows?

See Avoid Being Victims – Life’s Little Secrets – Martial Art of the Mind – Techniques for Working your Dreams

Inhale

To take into your thoughts or experience, to consider, to accept mentally.

See: breath.

Initiation

Discovery of new levels of consciousness, and the opening to new power, wisdom or love. Initiations often link directly to a stage of growth, such as the shift from babyhood to childhood, and childhood to adolescence, but more so to the later stages of life. See Every 7 Years You Change

I had the insight that an initiate is someone who wishes to stay aware, who wants to discover the mysteries of life. That means remaining aware in sleep and what we call death. Therefore it means that while attempts to remain aware and widen one’s awareness in life – in the quietness of life and in its action and tragedy.

I saw that the pathway is open to everybody. It is there waiting. It is not closed. It is not a secret. It is not guarded, and is open to everybody. In a similar way growing up is open to everybody, but some people do not managed to grow beyond certain levels of childhood or youth. And I’m not talking about physical growth but about mental emotional growth. To enter the path one needs to stop drugging oneself and thereby to wake up. There are the drugs of alcohol, tobacco, barbiturates and other things that people take to diminish their relationship with the impact of life and their feelings. These diminish awareness, or the breadth and depth of awareness. But there are other types of drugs too. Some belief systems diminish one in similar ways. Some ways that people live within them into such an intense relationship with objects and exterior things, that they never actually meet themselves in any depth. There are many ways we can avoid knowing who we are.

There is no need for would-be initiate to choose a lifestyle that takes them away from everyday life. The events of normal life of themselves lessons on the path of initiation. It is meeting them with an awareness and with a willingness to learn and understand them that distinguish the would-be initiate from the person who avoids knowing who they are.

Through meeting the events of their life and feeling what is to be felt, and they meet the dangers in trials that are part of the path. The initiate clears the way of lives, clears the pathway, cleanses the debris from the past, so that the energy of life flows through more freely. And with that flow comes insight. That insight gives wider awareness, and that wider awareness is an initiation.

In exploring the power that lies behind initiation, I understood from this that we as individuals, are not in the relationship in which we are dominated or in which we are moved around like pawns. It seemed more as if there was some sort of partnership, some sort of symbiotic and mutually helpful relationship involved. This has arisen because in the end we are not individuals in the widest sense. We have a tiny, vulnerable sense of separateness. We have gradually developed as life forms an awareness that this shut off from the greater whole, and this enables asked to have a sense of self, and of self awareness. This is a very wonderful although vulnerable thing. So, when we confront this wider world sometimes it seems as if you’re losing what took us such a long time to develop. It feels as if we might be losing self. See Life’s Little Secrets

Example: About this part of the session I realised that a initiation was fundamental to the human life. What ever brings this change about it can lead us into a deeper communion with a our society and with our fellow human beings. To pass through to an even deeper interior, we must in some way burst through the boundaries of our mind and feelings. We must in some degree die to ourselves and awaken to that greater of life.

In the past, young males were initiated into their tribe at puberty. They thus became men by such things as hunting alone, fasting, having a vision, learning to bear arms. Now, young men are initiated, but it is a very unspoken of thing, unacknowledged. To reach manhood they have to remain confident in face of yearly exams, terminal tests, and massive competition. At the age of manhood they have to preserve a sense of their own value despite having hardly any share in the world’s wealth.

For young women it is being faced by all manner of what are really fantasies about how they look to others, of whether they can attract a good mate, and also how to compete in today’s attitudes and work. In the past they were initiated into the mysteries if womanhood and childbearing – their first menstruation was a time of celebration.

Initiation I saw was a process of constant adaptation. It remained healthy as long as it was not taken over by an organised group, a priesthood, or made rigid by rules and regulations. To remain healthy initiation needs to stay in the hands of the people. I felt it very clearly that through my experiences and my life I was one of the Elders of the mother Church. I also felt that two of my friends were also elders of this Church. The mother Church seemed, according my deepest feelings and intuitions, to have pre-existed Christianity. The mother Church was as old as humanity.

Example: The wonderful life is in all of us. It is the realisation of universality. However, we may shut it out from consciousness by fighting to maintain our separate identity, by struggling just for our own needs, and fending off others through anger, fear or competition. What had happened to me in the tombs I entered in Ireland was initiation. I saw that some of the wonderfully common things in life prepare us for this meeting with the universal within oneself. Falling in love and caring for another person starts to erode the protection we surround or own identity with. Being a parent and giving oneself to the needs of children takes us further still beyond the isolation of living only for and in oneself. Being a husband or wife who cares for one’s partner stretches the fabric of one’s psyche to include more than oneself. Through the sympathies aroused one can also begin to empathise with the feelings of other parents, other lovers, other partners. Their loss, their wonder, their tragedy and joy is felt more fully as one’s own. And all of this opens one toward the universal spirit of life within oneself. Though imperfect in all my own endeavours in these areas, I had still been helped by them toward finding the wonder of the All within myself.

The common life of love and caring, of social endeavour in service is the path to the wider life of the spirit. Through them you learn the world of love that transcends one’s own small life, and gives you entrance to Life’s love. The beautiful sexuality of a man or woman is part of that mystery which we share with each other. It is a part of the universal life. If we are at odds with it, then in some way we are at odds with life. Loving a person we may fall through the personality at the surface and fall into the deeps of desire and love that lies behind or around the conscious psyche. Therefore sex, if it is not for procreation can be a time of worship.

My feelings about this in the session were connected mostly with the feeling that society does not understand, respect or support the action of initiation. Without social acknowledgement the initiation is still only a personal thing. This is very personal, but with social acknowledgement it integrates the individual more fully into the world and makes of him a more satisfied and useful member of society. I had a great desire to press for governments to allow use of the ancient tombs such as the one’s I visited, for the sake of individual initiation. In this way one connects with the most basic aspects of oneself – the earth, the rocks, the return to the darkness of the womb. I had no sense of there having to be a priest. The sincerity and readiness of the initiate is the ‘priest’, or the power that opens the person. What I did feel was necessary was that the person was supported by friends and family, and so the initiation and the entrance into a fuller life which it provides, was witnessed by loving and supportive members of the community connected with the initiate.

Example: I saw that what I have called the borderline, the frontier, is actually functions in what I suppose we call our mind. But I also had a sure sense of knowing that it was also to do with parts of the brain, the very top of the head. Mostly we do not use this part of the brain unless we develop a very active spiritual life where we really are opening to something beyond the boundaries of what we already know, what we already dare to experience, what we already are capable of experiencing.

What I saw was that what my female partner and I have done, the relationship we have developed, has further stimulated this area of my being, helped me to go on, given me confidence to take that leap beyond where I have been before. So this has stimulated processes in myself that were ready to emerge, but needed our relationship and what it has brought to further it.

I also saw that this higher brain functioning, this higher mind process, has a particular function. It is an interface between all that we are as our everyday waking personality; between all that we have gathered and understood and lived in this lifetime, and the immensity of what we are as a human being. I saw the details of this and it is quite difficult to summarise or to explain in any way. But as clearly as I can it was like the processing of information, so that all that you are, formed a sort of the pattern or a signal, and that signal called out of the immensity of the spiritual life what was relevant to you and your further development. Now that is a very clumsy description because even as I say it I sense an enormous subtlety of what I met and experienced. What I saw was that the interface is unique in every being. This is because every being is unique and creates their own pattern. And that pattern calls out of the infinite something different. So in this sense there are as many faces of God as there are human beings.

As I saw all this I realised that if one could help people to come to that point, to bring themselves to that meeting, then they would begin to receive that influence that frees them. It frees them by growing them, by giving them more of themselves.

As I stood on what I have called the borderline, that interface with the highest in oneself, I understood that the interaction needed to be complete. One needed to bring everything of oneself to that meeting. This is because the relationship is a transforming one. If you do not come to the meeting completely it is like leaving half of you, or some of you, outside the door. Therefore the process cannot work in you. Also it means you’re not really opening to the process.

So I came to that frontier with everything that I had. I came with everything that I am, everyone and everything that I love, everything that I possess. Therefore my partner was by my side standing with me on that borderline. And I understood that the process, although it is no form of judgment, nevertheless cannot help but reveal the shadows, the lies, the falsehoods one brings. Because of this it can be a meeting that we might avoid, because we may not wish to lose or have revealed certain parts of what we are, what we hold onto, or what we have hidden within ourselves. But the connection between my partner and I was blessed, was seen as whole and a truth. This was quite a wonderful feeling. I understood why Abraham was asked to bring his son to the Mount and sacrifice him. It had nothing to do with killing his son. It represents a willingness to come with everything that you love with the risk that you might lose it. Or at least, it might be revealed to you that it has no real value or place in your life.

Now it seemed as if my awareness went beyond the frontier. This was a very visual experience. I was seeing a vast desert and I knew this represented immense periods of time, perhaps what we call eternity. So it could be called the Desert of Eternity. Here and there in the desert were huge rock formations, a little bit like what one sees in Monument Valley in Arizona. But these rock formations were not plain or slightly coloured rock. Also they were immense. They had the appearance of massive mosaics – brightly coloured mosaics. But the mosaics did not form illustrations or patterns. However, some pieces of the mosaics were larger than others. And each piece might be in itself multicoloured and a sort of miniature pictograph.

As I looked at these massive formations I understood that they had been carved or created through events in the passage of time. Each mosaic, each part of the overall mosaic, had been formed by enormous creative acts, or by long-standing actions. So these latter were like ideograms or archetypes. So, for instance, mother creatures have cared for, fought for, died for their young. This pattern of behaviour has been so enormously potent and perhaps we can use the word successful, that it has created, shaped aspects of eternity. It has left its pattern, its artwork, on time itself. Thus eternity honours that pattern by giving it a place in the very structure of itself. No one being created such a mosaic in the formations. Such a mosaic was large and had in it the essence of all the lives that formed it.

So the rock formations and the mosaics on them represented influences that will flow into the future. They were sources of power or influence that shaped the phenomenal world. They were the body under the coat so to speak.

Example: I dreamt I was up a very large tree in the grounds of a university. A great branch ran out over the grounds and a car park. I was at the end of this branch with a bag in my left hand and a man’s head in my right. The head was dismembered and skinned. The bag held the rest of the dismembered body.

I threw the head down in front of a man walking across the car park. He was an intelligent, respectable, schoolteacher or professor type. He was very shocked and poked at the head. At first he thought it was plastic, but then he saw the reality of it. An eye came out, then the brains. He realised the thing he had been holding at bay – this must mean a murder had taken place. He went off to call the police. I began to work my way back along the branch, feeling there was no way of tracing the head to me. But I realised that each move was leaving clues, everything I had done had left traces to my involvement.

I explored this dream with two members of a dream group I had led. At first I couldn’t get into it deeply. I felt a fear when I thought of the police coming to investigate the crime. In short I felt guilty. Then I went through the track of leaving my wife – staying with my wife – going away – back to the beginning – conflict. No way out!

Then I looked at the head. Wendy had been saying I was a masochist. I just felt such labels didn’t help. Love was like breathing. I couldn’t, didn’t want to stop loving either my children or my wife. As long as I could, I would suffer the pain the conflict produced. The pain was because I had leftmy marriage and thereby broken up their home.

I had a strong fantasy of the head coming alive it was me and what I had done to myself, torn my body and head apart trying to find a solution. Then I saw flesh on its cheeks. Then it was like a native mask made of various things, and feathers. The feathers predominated in the fantasy. The mask kept breaking up, leaving only a few feathers, as if it or I were all nothing. I remember saying – “There is not even a mask, it’s just a few feathers!”

With enormous certainty I realised that there was no cure for my sickness and I had struggled in vain. It was a tremendous blow – and I gave up. I mean I gave up hope, everything.

Then it was one feather tied to a twig by piece of wool, blowing in the wind – a feather blowing in the wind. This was very stable and persistent in the fantasy. Everything resolved back to the feather blowing in the wind. It seemed like a Red Indian symbol, perhaps tied to the suspended body of the dead, but I could not understand.

Then it came to me that I had to listen in deep stillness – not think, not seek to understand, not struggle, just listen. My whole being entered into silence, gently listening as one might listen to the rain falling on a lake. Then suddenly it was known – the feather blowing in the wind – the sound of one hand clapping – the essence of human existence. Open against the sky – emptiness – enormity. I was healed.

The only thing I can see as the turning point is complete surrender, a total giving up. Then it was like an experience of enlightenment.

Example: One of the major parts of what I saw/realised/had insight into, was that life was a Whole as well as a Part. That is a clumsy way of trying to describe the experience of the fact that we each exist as part of a Whole. As such we may only have access to a very limited part of the whole, to a limited part of our own mind, a limited part of social possibility, of sexual meeting, of financial opportunity. In a relationship we may only be able to let a small part of our partner into ourselves, or of giving them only a tiny part of self.

From this the theme unfolded into seeing that widening our access to this physical, social psychological, spiritual Whole, is what has been called initiation. When a new level of accessibility opens to us it feels like a dramatic event, a new level of experience, and manifests as further maturity. The new level of maturity offers access to greater power and opportunity, but it also brings with it new responsibilities. It is like an inverse balancing. The less that is available to us, the more we can be intensely egotistic and individually possessive or seeking personal rewards such as money, sex, fame. The more that is available the less person, the less self-centredness is involved. So that I saw grades of possessiveness, grades of dependence upon possessions and role, grades of personal sexuality. Within the grades of great access, need for personal possessions drops away, need for a personal sexual relationship drops away. At the top of this one owns nothing but in a way has everything. One is without any sexual relationship, a complete celibate, but has intimate relationship with all living creatures.

Needs for Initiation

1) Willingness to go along with an inner process, to struggle in some measure, to be changed.

2) Sufficient understanding, from any source, nature, religion, philosophy, poetry, history, dance, to be able to face disruption and change. The keynote is to contact and be centred in the Source or Self. In this way, because the Self both disrupts and builds up, the personality need to be able to face change. Thus it is necessary to feel in contact with, and directed by, the Master.

3) Discrimination – Humour – Patience – Initiative – Action – Inaction.

4) To feel sufficiently self-assured to release the contents of the unconscious and redeem them.

5) Ability to relate well to widely diverse situations.

6) Willingness to look at self impartially and see faults; to take criticism without being overthrown by it.

7) Tolerance and openness to new ideas in an explorative way.

8) Willingness to co-operate with God.

9) We must be able to be born, to die, to be attracted and repulsed, to give and to receive, to love, to hate.

10) Ability to forgive the past – one’s parents – one’s culture – one’s religion – and be thankful. Then one can build. Otherwise we are still chained by these things. Accept, and thus integrate the past.

11) Recognise limitations

Inject Injection

Feeling other people’s opinions or will forced on you and influencing one; internal influence of something exterior; social pressure to conform or be obedient; sexual intercourse, or influences taken in during sexual relationship. There is often sexual meaning involved, so it could be simple sex, forced sex, or influences taken in during sexual relationship.

Injection of snakes venom can mean the poison you inject into your own system from destructive emotions and thoughts – such as fear, hatred, malice, wanting to kill or even jealousy. See Norman Cousins

Maybe someone has been injecting malicious talk or ideas into you, and you could feel it. Such ideas are poisonous if taken seriously, but quite harmless if you see where the poison is coming from and why they are doing it. It is usually a person who wants what you have or is dangerous. So look around and see where the poison is coming from.

Example: Someone holds me down and gives me an injection. I fall asleep and wake up…looking for help. A dark figure comes to me and asks what happened…I do not know. Next I am looking into the mouth of a black whale (which dwarfs me). It seems to have tonsils shaped like a white heart.

Moby Dick is about a tremendous fight for control by the human ego and the enormous Life Will. But your meeting with the whale is fine, and it is saying it loves you. In fact it is a classic symbol of the unconscious, and it is fine to allow yourself to enter it unless you are frightened of it. If you do it will be the beginning of a amazing journey.

The injection is a way of saying that your conscious self, your ego, will be knocked out. So it is another way of entering the Life Will or unconscious. Then you are in the dark, and meet a dark figure – all signs of things arising from the unconscious. The gates are representing “A threshold, like that between conscious self awareness and our total experience – such a gate needs to open and close.” See The Life Will

Injection can also refer to a male penis being inserted, so ask yourself what was injected into you.

If a sedative is given: Return to non responsibility as in infancy. See: syringe.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What was injected and who by?

Did you notince any effects of the injection?

Are you scared of being injected?

See The Life Will – Avoid Being Victims – Techniques for Working your Dreams

Ink

Something that may leave a mark on you, such as a blot on your character. Sometimes represents an unconscious content you are dealing with, or the material to leave an impression or visible sign. It is what you use to leave a mark in life – your artistry, your words, your work.

Occasionally used in laboratory experiments, so then suggests getting your attention to be aware of something. Or the ink blot testing, signifying your unconscious feelings and associations.

Example: Ink is creating in words, it’s what is needed to write, a source to create. A pen is of no use without ink and my creativity and work is not going to move forward without the right vibration I feel in my energy. D.

The poet Coleridge says of a dream he had under the influence of opium which led him to write Kubla Khan. Again a desire to leave his mark.

Example: On awaking he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved.

Example: I dreamed I watched a woman who stood beside me, calmly injecting tiny octopi, each with a brilliant coloured ink. Even though the creatures were incredibly tiny she’d pick each one up easily, inject it and set it down in a silver tray, glistening amongst others. Each one wriggled for a minute, ever so slightly in gentle death spasms, adding to its group and each group in different puddles of ink. She said it would be The Cure and I was not to be anxious anymore.

Example: Dreams have guided me throughout my life and are often the source of my art work. Through art and writing I explore my inner world and bring its dream energy and wisdom into my everyday life.

I have a “mix and match” approach to media, and use acrylics in various ways, as well as transparent and opaque water color, monotype, charcoal, brush and ink and other drawing tools, fabric photograph and collage. Alissa

Useful Questions and Hints:

What was my connection with the dream ink?

Was I using it to write or give a message?

Did I simply see the ink?

See Questions – Settings in Dreams – What is the main action in the dream? – Techniques for Working your Dreams

Inquest Inquiry

An attempt to understand; very often an examination of past experiences that killed some part of you, or caused feelings to die or be injured.

An inquest is to properly understand. Or it can be concerned with parts of your experience you need to let go of and bury.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What is it you are trying to understand or be clear about?

Has a part of you died and needs to be examined?

Have you been the inquisitor?

See Summing Up – Associations Working With – Inner World – Secrets of Power Dreaming

Insect

Irritations or feeling something ‘bugging’ one; feeling insignificant – the ant in the mass of other ants. It can relate to the automatic unfeeling processes of life; cold unfeeling urges; sexual urges, especially with cock-roaches – insects may also represent the sperm swarming toward the ovum, and therefore may deal with pregnancy.

As Jiminy Cricket suggests, insects can represent our conscience and guilt which reminds us of feelings we might sooner forget – perhaps insects represent these areas because they live their life in our house and garden largely unseen – so depict thoughts and feelings occurring on the edge of consciousness.

Ants: Like many insects, the ants might depict small irritations or criticisms things that have got into you in some way. Ants have been used in a dreams to suggest sperm also.

Bees: Collective activity; working as or within a community; hard working or self sacrificing.

Beetle: As the first example points out, they are sometimes associated with things that are repulsive or are irritations. But sometimes are used a symbol of eternal life, of fate, or cause and effect.

They can also indicate the destructive forces at work in us, such as negative emotions of repugnance. The Egyptian scarab can suggest a force of positive change or influence in your life – a force of resurrection.

Example: I am walking around looking for someone to connect with and talk to. I see the turtles laying their eggs, that are really little transparent, snail-like things. A bunch of large beetle-like bugs come out and go to the babies and begin to latch onto them. At first I think this is a ritual where a symbiotic thing happens to help the babies. But then I realize the babies are being eaten. I feel sick. I try to walk and everywhere there are slimy, nasty bugs and things and I must step very carefully. I try to put shoes on to protect my feet so I won’t feel them. I feel sad for the babies.

Example: I dreamt that I was with a very wise being like a teacher and that I had a Scarab (Egyptian Beetle) in my chest. The feeling that I had was that it was alive and I had a very full feeling in my chest. The wise being told me it was all right and then he just said to me, “past lives.” Recently I have been meditating everyday for 10-15 minutes and asking to be guided to my purpose in life. Maybe that has something to do with my dream.

Bug: They are small things that might still ‘bug’ you. Small irritations or things that might scar you. But some dreams are about how beautiful the bug is or how useful. Also, what are the bugs doing and what do you feel about that?

Idioms: bitten by the same bug; bug (someone); chicken on a June bug; cute as a bug’s ear; Love Bug; put a bug in my ear; snug as a bug in a rug.

Bumblebee: There are hardly any dreams in my database about bumblebees. But in general the bumblebee is not aggressive unless its colony is threatened. So you need to use Talking As to see if you can understand what it signifies in your dream.

Butterfly: Something beautiful, such as a delicate realisation that is fragile and easily destroyed. The butterfly also links with the caterpillar, and therefore the ability to transform and leave an old way of life behind, therefore transformation and the spirit.

Dead insects: Has been used to represent an unwanted baby in some dreams. As such it shows the death of the foetus, or abortion of the foetus.

Fly: We usually see flies as something we do not want in our house. So it may suggest either an urge to kill them or get rid of them. Or it can suggest there is something unclean or even dead around. See flying

Flies are also the food of some creatures like lizards or bats and birds. So if you dream of this it suggests the natural order of things.

Example: I had the most disturbing dream the other night and I can’t stop thinking about it. Basically in the dream I was in my bedroom and there were flies everywhere, so I lifted up my mattress and under my bed there was a giant newborn dead babies and a coffin. I opened up the coffin and there inside was another dead baby.

The flies in this dream were a way of getting the dreamers attention to much bigger problem than the flies.

Example: I could see the spiders grow and trample over flies, only leaving lifeless corpses behind. They were sucking the blood right out of them. Then I saw a giant spider, more like a monster, taking a fly and eating it. After it was done, the spider had a human expression on its face.

This shows how we use dream images to show human situations or themes. The theme is how humans can trample over each other and misuse them for their own purposes. Think of the thousands killed in political wars or cleansing operations.

Irritating flies can suggest either someone else is interfering with your life, or you need to become aware of what is constantly calling for your attention. For instance a small irritation can take your attention away from something important.

Example: We have some marijuana to power the raft and push it into the driveway. There we begin waiting – meanwhile fighting off small scourges of rats and flies – while with a shovel waiting for a real big herd of rats to attack us.

The dreamers comment on this is, “After having sex with a stranger, I am afraid that my guilt feelings will attack me?”

Example: When I centred back on the dream I began to shout, “Let me out please. Let me out of here,” banging my chest. As I cried out my head turned to the left and I felt I was a fish. The position was appropriate because my head had an eye each side of my body. I remembered my two fish dreams, one with the dead fish covered in flies.

“Stinking dead fish. Something really rotten. Something really stinking, right in their (in my left chest).” Suddenly I took on a very nose in the air, supercilious attitude toward this rotten thing in my chest. “Quite horrible. It’s a stinking thing. A stinking thing. It’s a stinking fish. Take it away.”

Now my superciliousness of voice and face went. “It’s a fish, like the fish under the carpet in the dream. It’s a bit of me. The wreckage of life. I am a bit of the wreckage of life. Dead fish – I am a fish out of water. Then I remembered when I went home and looked at the house and saw how I neglected you all. I just broke down but I couldn’t let it out there and then. I can bear to see now how I had failed as a father and husband, how I couldn’t give myself to home, family, or a lover. I wouldn’t have been able to see it because there were so many other psychological problems in the way and I didn’t know how to resolve them – my failure, my lack of strength. It’s only because those are out of the way I can begin to see this now.

Idioms: as the crow flies; drop like flies; how time flies; time flies when you are having fun; you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

Useful questions and hints:

Are the flies small irritations or signs of something I need to become aware of?

Is something buzzing around in my head and I am not understanding it?

Are there signs of something dead?

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

Glow-worm: Intuition; inspiration in dark moments; the inner light.

If flying off: Ones children leaving home.

Lice, fleas or parasites: Thoughts or sexual habits which are purely selfish or carry a health risk; feeling your relationship with someone is parasitic. Thoughts that sap resolves, energy, or ambition, and that detract from your sociability. Attitudes or beliefs, 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 even films you have watched.

Scorpion: Like any of the stinging insects, the scorpion can indicate your fear of being hurt, or vulnerability to hurts and slights. Its shape and down curled sting also gives it the sense of inturned negative emotions – the way we hurt ourselves with fears negative judgements, or angers turned in upon ourselves. In this sense it is like the snake. But it might be that you know the scorpion is an amazing mother, and so use it in your dreams to represent the ferocious and protective mother, carrying her children with her.

Spider: Often the dependent emotions and conflicts one feels ‘caught in’ connected with mother or family; any emotions you don’t want to ‘handle’, such as those surrounding a spouse leaving; wanting to ensnare, or feeling trapped by someone.

A spider can also indicate the basic survival instincts in us such as a spider might have – can I eat, or will I be eaten in this meeting/relationship? This level of our sensory and feeling perception is important. Like a spider it keeps one of our feet/fingers on the web or influences that connect us with other people and the world. Like the spider, if we are wise, we thereby know something of what is coming our way – do we advance or run? See: web.

Stung by Wasp Bees or hornets: Painful emotions; feeling stung by remarks.

The example below shows memories of pain and anger are still irritating or ‘bugging’ Rita. The swamp shows these feelings undermine her confidence. See moth.

Example: ‘I have to keep walking because there is something I am afraid of behind me. When I am pressed up against the ceiling being crushed I look down and the stairs and banister rail are swarming alive with a black moving wave of crawling things, like some awful insects. In the hallway is a swamp with crocodiles and other hideous things. My terror is terrible. 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: I had an awful pain in my left thumb. On going to the doctor he examined it and changed into a surgeon who operated on the thumb. As he cut it open masses of spiders poured out, releasing the pain. Paula LBC.

Paula’s mother had died shortly before the dream. She had subsequently experienced a lot of emotional pain about undealt with feelings between herself and her mother. These had begun to pour out into her conscious life. The dream therefore represented this as a healing process.

Wasp: If the wasp hasn’t stung you, then it suggests memories of past hurts and feeling threatened again. Wasps also can eat flesh, so can indicate feelings eating away at you.

Wasps can also show your own waspishness, or your hurtful words or actions.

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

In looking at his hand he realising there was a hole in his life, A. B. took note of what he felt. Just prior to the dream he had experienced a lot of anxiety about whether his marriage was breaking up. The dream made him realise that niggling thoughts and emotions were eating away at his self confidence leading him to feelings of being near to the scrap heap, having outlived his usefulness. The dream had depicted these emotions and thoughts as wasps. This enabled him to see that if he entertained such feelings, they would certainly eat away his grasp of life. He could see that as a person he only ENTERTAINED thoughts and emotions. They were simply what he thought and felt about reality, not reality itself. It was up to him as to decide what he wanted his reality to be. Did he want to entertain the reality of the tired ageing man who could no longer satisfy his wife’s need for love and companionship, having nothing worthwhile to contribute to others? That could certainly become reality if he allowed such feelings to dominate him. He had thought that his life was like a giant thistle, but on closer inspection he saw it was a giant hardwood. It did have branches which needed pruning, but the rest of the tree was good and perfumed – giving off good feelings to others. So he decided to put love and care into his life and marriage instead of self doubt and a sense of defeat.

Example: I had a dream of a 3 inch black wasp-I was trying to spray the nest and it flew at me and landed on my hand and I killed it and had to pull the stinger out, it was still moving as it was pumping venom into the palm of my left hand. I thought it was going to hurt but it didn’t to my amazement! It did leave a small hole in my little finger. That is all I remember. I don’t want to be a mean person, I will be on guard so that I am not mean or hurtful. I try to not be that way.

It sounds a little like you are not admitting who you are. I say this presuming that you sprayed the wasp nest to kill them. If so you were not being the harmless person. So the sting was a reminder to leave them alone.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Were you afraid and trying to avoid or kill the wasp?

Do you realise that nothng can hurt you in a dream?

What were you doing in the dream?

See Being the Person or Thing – Conditioned Reflexes – Active Passive – Processing Dreams

Inside

An inside pocket, inside a house, tree, car, most often represents your own inner feelings or desires, perhaps usually unacknowledged.

Inside a house, or other environment, means you are feeling, or involved in what that environment represents.

Our inner being encompasses all aspects of life, and should be allowed safe expression. Inside you there are a murderer, a great lover, a sadist and homosexual, an inventor and genius, an angel and devil, as well as God and the stars. To repress them is to force them into expression in your outer life. It is our thoughts and fears that create the monsters inside us.

We all have the creative ability to solve problems; otherwise we would not have survived so long. This ability is always there inside you. That wonderful ability belongs to you.

What do we carry inside us? Well we carry our whole past history inside us and dreams show it to us if we learn from them. It is ridiculous, as far as dreams are concerned to say, “I have left my past behind me.” See Inner World

Example: The people watching are saying ‘Kill her! Kill her! Kill her!’ Then someone finds an extra bullet, puts it in the gun and shoots me in the stomach. I wake with my body completely straight with my hands on my stomach. I feel my whole body cracking up inside.’ Vanessa. LBC

Vanessa wakes to just such tension, with a sense of her body being fragmented. In her dream Vanessa was re-enacting a disaster in which a man rampaged and shot down many people, and she was feeling the fear it engendered.

Example: We embraced and kissed. The feeling of mutual pleasure was intense. So much so I felt what she was feeling as if we did not have separate bodies. I felt an orgasm grow inside her pelvis and reach its pitch, flowing into the rest of her body. It was her orgasm but it felt as if it were mine also. It was a beautiful melting experience with no harshness or disappointment anywhere. Damon.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Am I inside something or is it inside me?

What does the dream suggest I am dealing with?

Am I sensing something inside of someone else?

See Techniques for Working your Dreams – Being Person or thing – Questions

Insignia

Ideas of special importance to you. They usually synthesise a great deal of knowledge or information in the sign. To understand them in depth you need to use Techniques for Working your Dreams

Jung distinguished between a symbol and a sign. Insignia on uniforms, for instance, are not symbols but signs that identify the wearer. In dealing with unconscious material (dreams, fantasies, etc.), the images can be interpreted as known or knowable facts, or symbolically, as expressing something essentially unknown.

Before the liberation of Rome in 312 AD, Emperor Constantine experienced a waking vision of a cross of light which bore the inscription Conquer by This. Christ appeared in Constantine’s dream that night and told him to have the insignia represented on the shields of his soldiers to serve as a safeguard against his enemies.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What does the sign represent for you?

Is it something you believe in or belong to?

Would you use it as a sign of yourself?

See Symbolism of Dreams and their Imagery – Clicking On – Dreams are Like a Computer Game