Posts Tagged ‘dream analysis’
Jaw
In general the jaw suggests strength of will or purpose, sometimes called determination, or even stubbornness.
Jaws also link with your strength to stop anyone getting into you or at you – through your mouth. They are your power to hold onto emotions – by clenching your teeth.
Often we tense our jaw to refrain from showing our real feelings. The jaw can also represent being swallowed up – in other words a fear of losing your identity or will, thus being at the mercy of someone or something. The one idiom linked with jaws is about snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. This shows jaws as a fatal end, being lost to something or someone. See: Chin.
Jaws often figure in animal dreams. For instance when dogs get their mouth near you it often is a sign or bonding as is licking, which is the way dogs beg for food. Or else they are showing signs of aggression. But jaws in general are often a sign of our feelings of fear. Such fear should not be taken without any response, as the following dream suggests.
Example: In the dream I was walking up several flights of stairs to get to the attic room. I was holding a small dog in my arms – one of those rather flat nosed toy dogs. When I arrived at the attic I put the dog down. But now the attic was empty and dark. I could feel my hair stand on end and my skin ‘crawling’. Actually I feel it all again as I write this. The feeling arose because there was an unformed dark shape creeping around at the far end of the room. The dog was really afraid and came into my arms.
Then the dark creature leapt at me, transforming into a massive mouth with huge fangs and awful demonic face. Immediately I leapt at it in the same way and smashed against its face with my own huge fangs. This utterly disarmed it because it had felt, in its primitive way, to terrify me. It surprised me too that I could so immediately transform into a monster when necessary.
Then I approached the dark form, back in its original condition, trying to find out what it was and why I had met it in that way. Gradually I experienced its situation. It had originally been a human being, but had gradually lost its humanness and become this slinking darkness. I was slowly able to help it realise that it could once more take the path to become human if it wanted to. Then it asked me how that could be done. I told it that first of all it had to come out of this dark and empty place to mix with people. The human environment created a different surrounding and influence that would penetrate it and help it to change. It also asked me how I knew about its condition and how I could transform into its own monstrous form. I told it I had once experienced that condition, and that’s how I knew it was possible to come out of it.
The point of this is that we do not have to run in fear from such dream images but can trasnform them by our own approach to what frightens us.
Example: At first I began to think he’d go to one of the lead singers (who I used to have a crush on) but then I see the dog go over to one of the more-in-the-background members. I watch as the dog leaps up and nuzzles its black jaw’s happily against the jaw of this band member. For some reason I notice the black hair of this guy, his jaw, and the dog’s jaw together and it seems a significant moment of clarity that ‘ah-ha’ the dog belongs to him, this is right. They are made for each other.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Am I noticing anything to do with stubbornness or tension in waking life?
What am I holding onto or tense about?
Is my strength emerging more fully?
Can I meet any fear in a positive transforming way?
Try using Easy Dream Interpretation or Talking As
Jellyfish
Feelings arising from the unconscious which might be painful – sting the dreamer, bring a sense of helplessness – spineless, or are from a non verbal level of memory.
Jesus
Jesus may depict in our dreams the social pressure we feel to conform to a norm, to other people’s ideas of what is morally right; a compensatory process in us to take the place of being able to live a full life externally.
A compensation for traumatised aspects of oneself which are therefore not functioning properly. Jesus may depict the social pressure we feel to conform to a norm, to other people’s ideas of what is morally right; a compensatory process in us to take the place of being able to live a full life externally. A compensation for traumatised aspects of oneself which are therefore not functioning properly. A compensatory force in you to help meet otherwise crippling pain. For instance a baby which does not receive love and contact may later in life create a powerful internal sense of Jesus or some other holy figure. From this figure love is received, thus making up for the earlier lack, and enabling the person to grow emotionally. See: compensation theory.
Jesus could also be, depending on the dream, a point of truth from which you can see the quality of your own life and your link with the living sentient universe, or the collective unconscious as Jung calls it.
In a general sense, free from institutional dogma, Jesus can represent the human experience of life in the body, in which we meet conflict, temptation, death – and our personal consciousness meeting life in the body. Particularly our sense of humanity as a whole rather than as individuals.
If you have religious beliefs, Jesus would represent those beliefs. In many dreams though, Jesus depicts the link we have in our own life with what is eternally abiding in the world – with the one life existing in all phenomena.
Do not mix up Christ with Jesus; Jesus was a man, according to the gospels, who was Christed. In other words he was given a new form of consciousness. This is described as, “Jesus, when he was baptized, went up directly from the water: and behold, the heavens were opened to him. He saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming on him. Behold, a voice out of the heavens said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” That was Jesus receiving the Christ. In other cultures it is sometimes called enlightenment. For example Siddartha became the Buddha when he experienced a huge change and vecame the Guddha. Both Buddha and Christ were ordinary men but became more than that when they achieved the next level od evolutiion, See Archetype of the Christ; Meetings with Christ
Example: In the dream I met my “teacher”. It was a powerful meeting of two men who respected each other. I met him because of my own independence. I recognised his greatness because of my own success and craft in life. Then I was a teacher among disciples. There were only about six. They were all capable and mature adults who were my pupils because they loved and respected me. They gave me great and practical support. One of them, a woman, came to me and said that if I ever needed to be held, I need only go to her.
In exploring this dream I uncovered a lot of emotion. I felt Christ was the teacher I met. The dream expresses qualities of Christ I had never seen clearly before. Namely that Christ is so many-sided. Christ is approachable or open to children – to fishermen – to scholars – to women in love – to the sick – to businessmen. Also, Christ is understandable by a child. As a child one feels as if Christ is a friend who is just a few steps ahead of oneself, showing the way. But as one grows, Christ is always there, just a few steps ahead.
Jewellery
Things we, or our unconscious treasure; our integrity or sense of wholeness; the lasting parts of our nature, even the eternal aspect of self or the essential core of ourselves. For instance, ability to creatively work with others, is not just valuable in general, it also expresses the powerful symbiotic force in nature. It connects one with the universal. This might be depicted as a jewel. See Jewels
It can sometimes indicate love given or received. The desire to be loved or noticed. Relations with others. Particularly memories or feelings connected with the giver, or the circumstances of getting the jewellery. Sometimes qualities you can develop, or have achieved.
If the jewellery has a particular history, such as a family heirloom, then it represents what you feel about, or what you have gained, from your family tradition,
Because jewels connect with what you value, they can depict your sexuality. So losing jewels might mean loss of virginity, or loss of good feelings about what you are doing sexually. i.e. you have lost something of value.
Jewels and Jewellery
Things we, or our unconscious treasure; our integrity or sense of wholeness; the lasting parts of our nature, even the eternal aspect of self or the essential core of ourselves. For instance, ability to creatively work with others, is not just valuable in general, it also expresses the powerful symbiotic force in nature. It connects one with the universal. This might be depicted as a jewel.
Jewelery may represent the giver of the piece, or ones feelings about them; love given or received; something valuable in a ‘quality of our life’ sense, such as something we have learned through hard experience and ought to value; a woman’s honour, self respect, sexuality. If the jewellery has a particular history, such as a family heirloom, the first piece of jewellery given by spouse, then it represents what we feel about family tradition, spouse, etc. See: ring.
But jewels can be symbols of many things and have very personal associations. The can represent insight into the invisible of life. Also truths and wisdom condensed in the stone, and be symbol of the divine in us.
The searching for jewels depicts a search for the core of your being. To find them or dig them up shows that you, through your work on your inner life, have uncovered important part of you that were unconscious before.
To possess jewels is to know you have reached the highest in you. The cutting of jewels represents the work you have done in your attempts to grow and reach for the highest.
Jewels in caves guarded by dragons or serpents show you facing the immense power of the unconscious. The power can only be achieved by facing the dragon or serpent without fear. See Dragon
Jewels in crowns and necklaces show you that you have achieved recognition and enlightenment.
Jewels worn by royalty, especially women, and jewels kept hidden show you are in possession in great insight and wisdom.
In occult lore, jewels are ascribed various protective, curative and magical properties. In their negative aspect, jewels symbolise the material, greed for riches, and profane love. As always when dealing with dream meanings, it is you personal association that are important – see Associations Working With
Diamond: This is the hardest known material. It lasts forever, so the advertisements tell us. It represents the eternity of spirit, the gem or jewel at the centre of being. Spiritual consciousness. It can also represent human greed, hardness, cold as ice, anything for power. But is not often used as such in dreams.
Ruby: The feelings, sympathies, love, arising from the spirit, rather than material values. The ability to reach out and contact others.
Emerald: The growth principle, growth of consciousness, growth of spiritual awareness, harmony with life.
Pearl: Value, beauty, from the depths of our being. The fact that a pearl arises from irritation makes it the symbol of that beauty or inner wholeness that has arisen from the trials of life.
Sapphire: Religious feelings, devotion. quieting of material consciousness, peace of mind, protection from evil.
Opal: The inner world of your dreams, fantasies, psychic impressions. Protection against anger. Purification.
Amethyst: Bringer of dreams and visions. Protection against being carried away by spiritual elation or inner influences. Healing.
Lapis Lazuli: Sensitivity to inner impressions. Vitality.
Useful Questions and Hints:
If it is a jewel I own, what does it mean to me?
Was it something that was buried or hidden?
Did I receive it from someone?
See Inner World – Emotions and Mood in Dreams – Summing Up
Jockey
Ability to direct energy and instincts. The drive to win at what you are attempting. So being a jockey might link with success or failure. See: Horse.
Joker
Joker in cards represents the irrational inner self, that can take on any quality, and in itself is neither good nor bad, wise nor foolish, high nor low. See: Clown.
Journey
In general, the dream journey is a comment on what is happening in your life, and how you feel about it. It may also relate to undertakings you embark on; new experiences or ways of life you are entering. You can go on the journey of life, a spiritual journey, the journey into marriage, parenthood, but more than any thing else it is a magnificent journey of meeting every aspect of your being, every life form and your particular past dwellings – for you meet everything. The journey cannot be undertaken unless you are willing to travel, to move from one experience, one attitude or way of life to another. So sometimes you meet hesitations or things to do before you can go.
A new undertaking, relationship or way of life. Sometimes it is the voyage of self-discovery into your inner life.
Throughout history we have examples of how such inner journeys were lived out. Mohammed for instance, describes his massive breakthrough into what he felt was a cosmic revelation as The Night Journey, which occurred in a dream. Siddhartha, after years of discipline and privation, finds a new way of experiencing life in what we now call enlightenment, and became the Buddha. Jesus transformed into the Christ at baptism through an opening to a new type of awareness. Thousands of people in today’s world have followed in the footsteps of those early pioneers and experienced for themselves the meeting with what Jung calls The Self – the emergence into an experience of greater wholeness or completeness; the falling away of the defences, resistances and fears that have held us back from our fullest and most profound experience of ourselves; an experience of enlightenment. It is not a case of developing an attribute we didn’t already have, but of bursting through the personal or culturally imposed barriers that have walled off this greater expanse of self from easy access.
A journey at sea cuts us off from our usual activities. It puts us in closer and inescapable contact with fellow travellers. It also offers the possibility of missing the boat, something that may be irreversible. This all points to how we are always in the midst of enormous natural forces, times and tides of activity. Your sea dreams will indicate your relationship with this.
A dreamt of journey often shows how we are feeling about our life and its ups and downs, goals and destinations, challenges and opportunities. It also can define undertakings we embark on, or experiences being met. The overall tone of our life is may be depicted by the dream journey and the direction our unconscious is taking us and our life and what it is achieving.
In our life we have lots of journeys, such as that through schooling; marriage and perhaps divorce; work; parenthood; and the overall journey of life and death.
In a similar way people have remembered their life from conception on, a life of tremendous change and wonder, a life of amazing transformations from a vegetative state of simple cell growth, into basic life such as a fish – for we go through a phase in which we have gills – and from that we pass slowly into a creature that is capable of life out of the water. In fact, we still carry the evidence in our body. See Levels of the Brain
Such journeys are all forgotten for most of us, and yet we are the result of them – perhaps unconsciously. But there are countless other journeys we have usually forgotten, for we are the latest stretch of a journey that is as old as life on this earth, and even older if present scientific discoveries are true. There has never ever been a break in the line of life that started in the beginning of life in an ancient sea. Some people remember it, see Jesse Watkins Enlightenment
We tend to name them past lives but could be better thought of as forgotten journeys.
Forgotten journeys: We have been on a long series of journeys, and the series make up our present life, or at least underlie it. For instance most people cannot remember their birth – yet that was an important and often dramatic life journey. Yet thousands of people have recovered such memories, often because they were able to face the enormity of their emotions – as a baby you could not think and so all you had was feelings and instinctive responses. See Programmed
Interrupted or difficult journey: Expresses difficulties and anxieties of present life situation; symbol of the psychological journey of self-realisation.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What sort of journey was it – walking, but, train, bicycle, car or plane, or even space flight?
Were they difficulties on the way?
Did you reach your goal?
See: Where applicable day and night, for time of journey; car; train; boat; hill; aeroplane. Also it is important to see individuation; Travelling; Boat; Journey; Archetype of the Night Journey; Journey Through The Mind ; Journeying Beyond Dreams and Death; Journey Inwards.
Judge
Your sense of whether you have acted in harmony with your best self, or with the people around you. The judge may be an inner self-criticism that you carry with you, and need to re-evaluate.
Sense of guilt or self judgement; conscience; decision making. May depict the ‘shoulds’ and ‘should nots’, we apply to ourselves, or our moral code. Sometimes, the way we judge others becomes a harsh judge of ourselves. Feeling what a failure our parents were in raising us becomes a difficult judgement of our own state as a parent – we accuse ourself as harshly as we accuse others.
In the end we are the judge of our own life in our dreams. To quote a dreamer, “To not judge others I think I have to choose not to judge myself first and that would require some conscious, deliberate work.”
Do not judge yourself harshly, for such judgement stands in the way of learning from our failures. Learning from those lessons is to be understood and treasured, not condemned.
Judging something can also be a way of weighing the value or usefulness of something, “Judging by the noise of the brakes the car might not stop in time”.
As for how God sees us, well it is not as an outsider who judges or condemns us. People are so mixed when they consider God. My experience is that Life/God, when we really open to our core, is the very self that we are and we have kept projecting it outside of us. It is something that is beyond description but is Love, Power and Insight without judgement, without blame; and it is there all the time. We do not have to be wonderful paragons of virtue to know it. We are, after all, little life forms, seeds of Life struggling to grow. All we have to do is to say, “Life/God, I love you and please help me to know you.”
Example: I am a male, 19, single and live with only one parent and my new born son. I live with my father who is paralyzed from the waste down. My parents recently split up and its been really hard to deal with my dad. Since my son has been born my dad constantly nags at me and judges me about the way I take care of my son. I am a college student and have accomplished few positive things in my life, and I could assure you I don’t completely know all the aspects of fatherhood but I know my son and I believe he’s been giving to me for a reason. My mom and dad are so critical on me, and my girlfriend.
Example: Now here it was, I the human parasite. At first I wouldn’t let it into consciousness. A moral judgmental attitude held it in the unconscious. I had to say to myself, “Okay, here is a part of myself I have judged as unpleasant and pushed away. All right, I have judged you. Now I drop my judgment and love you. Come and show yourself.”
Then up came the realisation about my own parasitic a relationship with my wife and her children, and life in general. We are all takers. I saw how I had led her to look at the children critically so I would appear well in her eyes. I saw how it is a pattern of a parasite such as I, to gradually make its host feel it is needed. So actions and words are done from the aim to produce the feeling of value. And things are done to build up usefulness and someone’s need for us. Meanwhile we satisfy our own needs. But a parasite always feels insecure. It depends so much on its host it fears the attempts to be helpful and useful will be seen through to their true parasitic nature.
Idioms: Judge not, that ye be not judged; sit in judgement.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Am I judging or being judged in the dream?
What was the conclusion in the dream?
Have I lernt not to judge myself too harshly?
See Karma – Martial Art of the Mind – Secrets of Power Dreaming – Edgar Cayce
Jumble Sale
See: CharityShop.
Jump
To take a risk, a leap into a situation that is uncertain. Taking a chance.
See postures movement and body language
Jungle
Eruption of urges and feelings from the unconscious – could be negative or positive depending on dream. It can be a representation of confusion, or an experience of ‘uncivilised’ or unconscious area of your mind; maybe non socialised feelings and urges, therefore may contain unmet anxieties – snakes and lions – or sexual urges – native men and women. It is similar to forest, except that dreaming of a jungle you may meet more exotic creatures, and be lost in the tangle of nature. The jungle can also be an area of your experience in which you meet the wisdom that lies usually unconscious in your body and mind – wisdom collected from millions of years of life on Earth.
Example: Jungle woman: My dear lovely woman – what are you in the end? An instinctive lovely creature that has moved out of the jungles, forests and plains, moved away from the rural settings of early human beings into the modern world. You haven’t yet got instincts that inform you as to what you should do here. That is, apart from the fact of your fundamental drives, to love, to care for those that you love, and defend them and yourself from what is sometimes a harsh environment. And this is the great wisdom of today. This is what you need to nurture. If that love extends to the strangest of beasts and people, well, let it. If you feel comfortable with it, if it does not injure some part of you, let it.
Eruption of urges and feelings from the unconscious – could be negative or positive depending on dream. Or a confusion; an area of ‘uncivilised’ or unconscious, maybe non socialised feelings and urges, therefore may contain unmet anxieties – snakes and lions – or sexual urges – native men and women. Sometimes it represents a change in the way you are dealing with life and your inner world, so it can be an initiation into new areas of experience.
Example: I had my first lucid dream when I was quite young, maybe 5 or 6. In it I was myself at the time, a small child and I was alone in a jungle in the daytime (I knew it was day as I noted that it was somewhat light through the deep tangle of lush plants). I was alert in this exotic environment, but not afraid. All of a sudden a large adult tiger appeared directly in front of me moving towards me. I was quite startled and aware that I was in a very dangerous situation. But I just calmed myself from within, and at that moment, I was able to tell myself that it was ok; I was in a dream and the tiger would not really hurt me. Then I was able to face the tiger directly as an equal with no malice. I don’t know what happened after that, or if I simply awoke, but I know I never considered that dream a nightmare, and I have always remembered it. P.
This dream of a young girl shows enormous maturity. It indicates not only lucidity, a condition that many people never attain, but also that in the jungle of her fear and instincts she masters her fears and meets them. It promises the girl will become a woman who will have a lot to offer.
Example: I’m in a car. A bad man with a gun tells me to drive. He has the gun in my sides. I feel helpless, paralyzed, afraid. He’s going to kill me. He has a bag full of millions of dollars. I kill him, so that he won’t kill me. We are in the South American jungle. Then I decide to take the money. I run, fearful that someone will find out and too greedy to give the money up. Trapped in a life of fear by my own greed.
A very different effect from being in the instinctive urges that the jungle represents. This time the dream feels the urge to grab all for itself, like the monkey who to get a handful of food puts it hand into gourd with a narrow entrance. It’s greed makes it unable to let go and so it is trapped. Children are often living in the jungle of their natural urges.
Example: Having missed seeing my young son on the way to meet him after school, I then carried him and told him how I was so sorry I had not seen how I had frightened him, and how he had needed me to pick him up. I told him he was mine and I loved him, and I had run all the way to find him. I said Merlin was my hunting dog, and we had lost his scent on the road, and so ran all the way hunting him till we found him, because he was somebody to me. I explained how roads were dangerous parts of the jungle and showed him how to cross.
On the way back home, while I was holding him in my arms, my son was saying, “L …L …L” I said, “L..ove – L..onging – L…aughing.” He said, no, “Liar. Cheat” meaning me. He hit me a lot, and I understood he needed to do this to see if I was strong. If I could stand lots of banging about; see if I was strong enough to look after him. Despite this he expressed loving closeness to me.
Example: But slowly I got into the mood I entered last time, of being an animal – human animal – just the same as my primitive forebears, but now confronted by the complexities of modern life, with its subtle and ingeniously devastating values. This business about the house was one of these values. A house was a modified cave. It was so easy to get lost in this jungle of values and forget that. As a (primitive) man I recognise what are the basic needs – food, shelter, and human and physical warmth. A cave without emotional warmth was deadly and even if it fitted the modern “values” was deadening. Love was a food that we all needed to face the outside world with outgoingness and pleasure. Without it there was no flowing radiating charge in us to transform the outer world into a place we could meet with courage. Example: Then I was standing looking along a road edged each side with jungle, stretching straight off into the distance. I knew that lions sometimes waited hidden to capture travelers walking the road. I stood trying to decide whether I would take the road.
In exploring his dream, the dream said he had been offered a great opportunity, “But because I have no degrees, official training, or backing, I have to decide whether I have courage enough to say what I see – i.e. take that road alone, despite the possibility of attack or censure from others.” He imagined the lions jumping out on him and realised they were his own anxieties that could easily have made him give up on the opportunity.
Example: I am a man! What is a man? What is it to be a man? I really feel this isn’t a way to be. It is too strange to be a man. I am really something odd. It is odd being a man. It is frightening. I am not like the other beasts. The other beasts haven’t got this difficulty. They don’t carry this difficult – consciousness. They don’t carry the difficulty all the time. Why should I be different? I don’t like it. DON’T like it. There is something I am looking at which is to do with how human beings got to be in the situation they are in today. Part of it is this feeling of wanting to turn back – wanting to go back to being unconscious – to being asleep. A lot of them did it. They turned back. Hundreds and hundreds turned back. That was the story of Noah. Hundreds turned back because they didn’t want to bear it. A lot still do it today, feeling crushed by being conscious, so use drink and drugs or any means to avoid bearing this awful consciousness.
This is sometimes the awful result of emerging from childhood without the support of real love and support. They experience the jungle of their own painful meeting with conscious life. That was the real meaning of Eve and Adam who felt cast out of being animals without self awareness. It was a shock, they/we felt naked. And below is the positive transition.
Example: I felt a great peace and my being became quiet and still. There was no need to strive, it was wonderful just to exist. In this stage I realised that although I had come to India looking for Sai Baba and Shaktipat, they did not in fact have what I was searching for. What I sought I was already finding, and had always known. It was in me and around me in everything and everybody. It was life in all its forms and conditions. I had met it everywhere. Now I saw the mystery of the jungle – something coming out of the jungle as I sat in existence. It was my own connection with all things, and I felt myself melting back into it. This was very gentle, and I realised it was deepening as I got older.
Idioms: Law of the jungle; gods of the jungle; it’s a jungle out there.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What was my experience of the jungle?
Did I feel any emotions or meet anything new?
Was I able to meet the fears and anxieties met in my inner jungle?
See Temple of the Animals – Voice of the Jungle – Programmed – Techniques for Working your Dreams
Jury
Conscience, ideas of right and wrong, attempts to make decisions.
See: judge.
Kaaba
This cube, holy to Islam, represents an expression of the divine will in material affairs. See: Cube.
Kangaroo
Because of its pouch the kangaroo may depict the safety of your mother’s womb, or protection. Or conversely, the safety and protection you can give. But kangaroos are also things that jump around, and could be associated with something that you cannot get hold of or is changing too fast to connect with. If it is a male kangaroo it might represent a male in your life or a facet of yourself as whatever attitude the kangaroo illustrates. Kangaroos can also be very aggressive and attack by kicking. If this is what you dream it would mean a vicious attack by somebody or yourself reacting without thought. If you know the habits of kangaroos this might be about the family group you are in, or the social group.
Useful questions are:
What is the dream kangaroo doing, and how does this translate into your everyday life? See: themes.
Is there something going on in your life to do with protection or mothering, or wanting to return to that sort of protectiveness?
Is there any group involved in your dream, or any aggression – if so what does that reflect of your life?
Keel
Similar to foundation, or basis upon which your life is built, but also represents that which holds you steady against opposing conditions. Basic personal strengths. The foundation of your personality or identity. Perhaps also the strength to built a new you from.