Posts Tagged ‘dream analysis’
Late
Feeling you have left something too late or you have missed out on something. Or perhaps you realise you have not acted quickly enough to avert a situation or take advantage of it. It can also mean an avoidance of responsibility.
Lather
Cleansing, or fuss, working ourselves up into a lather.
Laugh Laughing
Release of tension, effort to sympathise or calm, ridicule of another or self, taking things lightly, misunderstanding, depending on dream. Sometimes much laughter can hide tears or sadness.
A spontaneous eruption of joy, merriment or sense of the ridiculous. Sometimes a form of mockery at the expense of others. Release of tension; attempt to put others at ease; ridiculing or feeling embarrassed by some aspect of self; taking things lightly; attempt to hide the truth. Sometimes much laughter can hide tears or sadness.
Fast full breathing is an accelerator. It speeds produces the sort of physical state of excitement, high activity and high emotion such as laughing or crying. It reduces the muscular and psychological barriers we may habitually hold to prevent ourselves openly expressing emotions through the physical movements of sobbing or laughing. This is why it is used a great deal in popular therapy movements such as Rebirthing and Grof’s Holotropic Breathwork. Its use may produce the release of long held emotions or spontaneous fantasy, including powerful body movements and emotions.
Laughing also gets rid of seriousness or stiffness of soul, as this description shows “I tell them that I sense too much unnecessary stiff seriousness here. Such a situation only imprisons mind, I say. I ask the group to get up and move to the sunny part of the room, where I am standing. As a perfect example and symbol of the whole teaching I suggest that everybody kick each other in the butt. I ask them to not forget, as they are doing this, about mutual respect and the oneness of everything. I call it a lesson in perfect connection and liberation. With every passing moment of this unusual activity the feeling of stiffness disappears, being replaced with a sense of mutual understanding and fun. At first it is just myself, but after a short while all of us in the room, burst out laughing loudly while carefully kicking each other in the butt. I stagger with laughter in the middle of the room, watching the other people also laughing intensely. I see how they are enthusiastically raising their long colorful dresses, jumping around on one leg while aiming hearty kicks with the other. They jump and kick each other, laughing, while the sunlight shimmers on the rainbow-colored patterns of their costumes.” Quoted from Working With Dreams By Marek A. Kowolik
Example: There was a young girl on the bus who seemed equally confused. She was either Hawaiian or of Asian descent. I couldn’t tell. Then the bus driver, a man, turned around and laughed maliciously, like he wasn’t going to stop the bus or crash. Finally we came to a narrow cobblestone street, and I grabbed the girl by the hand and jumped off the bus.
Example: I pushed down and “plop,” the baby was born. “My 4th one,” I thought, “so it was easier.” I lay there exhausted. The doctor, who only stood there, didn’t even catch the baby. For that matter, I didn’t even see him. I just knew he had to be there. The nurse started to do the after birth things. The man pushed my table around fast, in circles. It made me dizzy and frightened. I cried out and clutched the table. They laughed. “Don’t be so silly,” they said. The nurse then repeated it. She rushed me on the table across the gym to the opposite wall. I got off the table. They were taunting me.
Example: I felt terrified (I realised afterwards it was terror that I was dying). Then I remembered reading about experiences such as this and was laughing uncontrollably through release from terror.
Example: I realised that our real existence is formless and beyond conception. It is the realisation that frees us from the prisons of recrimination, of feelings of defeat, of ideas and words – even of constant failure. Being formless, there is no mood, no passion, no philosophy that can hold us. So we can slip away from the agony of guilt or self judgment, we can laugh at the phantom of being right or wrong.
Example: I can remember that in the dream another person and I, a male but very indistinct and shadowy, were facing mythical creatures in some sort of odyssey. A strange sort of crocodile or alligator type creature was supposedly attacking me. I had mixed feelings about this. Partly I felt there was nothing to fear about the creature, but another feeling was that it might be able to do some damage. In fact it was biting me across my chest, but all I felt was a very strong tickling feeling that made me laugh.
Example: I feel like a powerful ape at the moment. I am not holding myself back in regard to my fellow creatures. I am ready to fight, play, love, laugh. All the different bits of me are available. This wonderful experience of existing, of being alive with all the powers of a living creature – physical strength, emotions of anger, tenderness, passion and sexual excitement, curiosity, awe and wonder in meeting life and the stars.
Idioms: a barrel of laughs; don’t make me laugh; for laughs; laughing gas; laughing stock; get a laugh; have a laugh; hollow laugh; laugh in somebody’s face; laugh it off; laugh up ones sleeve; laugh on the other side of your face; laugh your head off; laugh yourself sick; laugh yourself silly; kill ourselves laughing; laughing stock; the laughing stock
Useful Questions and Hints:
What type of laugh was in the dream?
Do you laugh often?
Do you have fun in your dreams?
See Avoid Being Victims – Dream Yoga – Using the Voice – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Launch
The committing of self to some direction or project. The launching of new venture, a new interest. The start of something, such as a relationship. It can at times also suggest the finishing of something and allowing it to have independent existence, as with a child being launched into university or work.
The launching of a boat or ship, if it is the launch of a newly built vessel, it indicates planning and work that is now coming to fruition. If it is a large ship the work involved has been enormous and includes many other people your launch touches. It is a major thing you are doing and has enormous outcomes. Launching a boat can indicate desire for a new departure, and frequently holds in it exciting adventures.
Launching into space is often about something with a carefully planned goal. Space is endless and so involves much desire or interest in what the goal is. If there is no planned goal then it is like letting go and falling, and falling , and falling into that immensity, and fall, until there is no more falling – for we fall only in space, in moving from one place to another, but here there is no beginning or end, no landmarks to pass or space to cover. When we dream of space we dream of opportunity, the opportunity to explore, to build in the space, to explore our imagination in creativity. See space
Launching a study suggests the beginning of a new view of yourself or a new talent, and exploration of the new.
Launching into another dimension of life. We often fail to see the many dimensions all of us live in and how we often fail to see or recognise them. Yet each of the dimensions gives us a different view of ourselves, our life and its possibilities. It is obvious that as we leave childhood and enter into adolescence our whole view changes, and it opens up tremendous changes such a sexual feelings, desires and ambitions and longings – a whole new dimension of experience. Many dimensions we do not enter because we do not believe in them or do not have the courage to explore them. We all have an inner world that includes creativity, imagination, the unconscious and the reaches of consciousness. Life itself is often not explored except as an intellectual idea – yet life is the most miraculous thing that any of us can conceive of. And are you not an expression of Life, which had it genesis in the unknown? Have you ever asked yourself the question Who or what am I, and really answered it, avoiding all the ready made answered we are fed that are really no answer at all – none that satisfy us.
Anger or violence that can be launched into an attack, or explode as powerful emotions.
We have not learnt to launch ourselves upon the waters of our inner self. See Inner World
Example: Driving on this road fast, I suddenly I find myself launched into space and make a spectacular, bone rattling drop and crash to the highway below. Later, I make a joke with the people I am working with, asking how many of them want to go sailing because for a few moments there I really felt like I was sailing thru space.
Example: Then I went to sleep and dreamt I was in charge of a ship … this was a sailing ship on land … it had to be launched down a very steep slope but straightened up and floated .. it was going through a terribly high stormy sea and I was steering .. I was outside the boat, swimming, holding on to its prow, yet steering it…. There were people on the boat dependent on me as I steered it and kept it afloat…. It turned right round in the water, faced the wrong way, but I pulled it round and kept it going …
Example: Then I was flying out of the window of a very tall building. I flew around the rooftops and came to one with a sort of tunnel in it. I went in and down on a large shaft. It led to a room where a sort of school was held. The children were watching screens, like the new “learning machines”. We all now seemed to know that there was a dangerously high level of radioactivity. Everybody except myself seemed to go, and I knew that the shaft was a spaceship, and I set about trying to launch it to save myself and family.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Into what was I launched and what was my reaction?
What was I faced with, and could I cope with it?
Have I launched any thing new recently?
See Jesse Watkins Enlightenment – Edgar Cayce – Secrets of Power Dreaming – Questions
Buildings Laundromat Laundry
This shows some way that you are changing or cleaning up your attitudes, represented by the clothes. Attitudes that need to be, or have been, cleansed; relating perhaps to unclean experience. See: Washing.
The washing machine can point to faults within you. A woman dreamt she was washing white clothes in a large amount of water while her friend Alice watched her from the background.
In this dream, Alice, the “friend” in the background, was the dreamer herself. Her own comments on Alice were that she possessed a great deal of spiritual knowledge, but applied little of it to her daily life. Therefore, the dream was urging her to greater application—represented by washing clothes in the machine. Clothes, according to Edgar Cayce, often represent a state of consciousness. Quoted from Dreams Your Magic Mirror.
It can be less dramatic and relate to washing away yesterday’s problems, or refreshing, restoring, making the best of what you have.
If you usually wash your items in a washing machine at home and are in the laundromat it could suggest you are washing your dirty items in public.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What was I washing, it could be a clue, so see items of clothes.
Did I succeed in washing the items?
Do I usually visit a laundromat?
See Easy Dream Interpretation; Settings in Dreams; Avoid Being Victims
Laundry Washing
Attitudes that need to be, or have been, cleansed. See: Washing.
Clearing negative feelings such as despair or self doubt; fears about health – neurotic phobias about ones own wholeness. Sometimes this is shown as a healing of past hurts or tensions, even a warming of cold emotions.
Hanging up washing: Allowing change to come into your life; letting other people see your new attitudes.
Lava
Deeply buried past experience which has pushed to the surface; heated emotions and sexuality; sometimes physical illness such as fever. Unconscious contents that have emerged under pressure and heat of emotion.
But the lava is often your own deep centre or core self pouring up its energy into your daily life. Jumping into it is a way to face and meet any fears connected with your huge potential. If you do it several times the fear or difficult feelings will gradually disappear.
Lava pouring over a landscape is a sign that huge inner changes are trying to emerge, and if not dealt with could cause difficulties.
Example: I noticed that the river wasn’t water and that it was lava. I watched as the lava was emanating from the center of the river and I knew I had to cross it but I didn’t know how I could. Just then, to my surprise, an elephant’s trunk emerged from the lava. At first I thought it was dead, but then I learned it was alive and moving and beginning to ascend. My fear from the lava diminished as soon as I saw this and somehow I made it across. I wondered how the elephant was immune to the lava and admired its strength.
Example: I can remember being dressed as an heroic warrior running through crowds of people or soldiers who were trying to stop me. I pushed or knocked them aside and ran toward what was a huge caldera – the mouth of a volcano. It was hugely deep, and in its depths was a massive glow from volcanic lava. But I knew that this was the core of myself, so I ran and leapt into the void falling into what I knew or felt sure was the light at the core of my being.
Example: I realised that hell is hell and will never be anything else. I felt that there was some thing deeper and so I kept to a centre line, again there was no feeling and so I turned toward the god dream that I had. The look of total love for me in his eyes gave me the strength to trust my own process. I then went into fantasy, God holding my hand and picking up all the people and events in my life and placing them all together on a stone alter, which he then placed me upon and told me to surrender and allow myself to die. This I did and images of great water falls, and molten lava flows filled my being. Then the crisis broke through, and there I was in the kids home, the orphanage, as my father was leaving, I saw my self, or I should say my being go out to him. I felt that if I loved him he wouldn’t leave us. I then saw that I was already bonded to my mother and in that moment of transference there was guilt and I was caught in the middle, then he left creating a schism in which I was left in my spine with a personality on either side. Schizophrenia is the word that covers this state: Schizophrenia a mental disease marked by a breakdown in the relation between thoughts, feelings, and actions, frequently accompanied delusions and retreat from social life.
I then felt what I would call the primal scream emerge from my being and then I was through. I then saw the dogs as my anxieties that have taken up two thirds of my being constantly tearing me apart, also saw that as a kid I didn’t have enough information to redirect the energy elsewhere.
Example: I saw the whole village covered in lava. I explored it both watching panic as well as while all the people were asleep. Afterward there was a period of quiet where everything was still and then life came back…the soil was renewed and some of the people emerged from the village as new glowing beings in human form only not human as before, and others didn’t emerge at all. The past had been burned away – transformed and I intuitively knew that they were going to create a whole new village and community based on their new way of being…new ways of perceiving and doing things…all wonderfully new and evolved. I see these as aspects of myself and this whole process of change underway. Also, just after recording the dream I sensed that the lava erupting was really some kind of eruption of love from within that just needed to be allowed. ~DT
Useful Questions and Hints:
Was I frightened of the lava?
Did any emotions show during the dream?
Are you meeting any big changes?
See Summing Up – Questions – Secrets of Power Dreaming – Martial Art of the Mind
Lavatory
Lawn
Part of yourself that need frequent attention lest it becomes out of hand, overgrown. If you have concerns about what the neighbours would think of an unruly lawn, then this would figure as your dream association. It can also suggest feelings of relaxation or family life, maybe a play area. In some people’s dreams it links with their feelings of being exposed, to things like the rain, lightening and birds so suggests anxiety. See: Grass.
Also in some dreams it is shown as a place to wait for someone, or even a place to love. It is often used in describing a house – Where horses and crumbly barns used to be, now there was a beautiful house, stone barns and lawns.
A happy feeling described as a party, wedding reception, or a celebration for guest taking place on a lawn.
There can be marks on the lawn as signs left of an activity.
Example: ‘A flying saucer dropped a man on our lawn. He was seven feet tall and stood in a ring of light. The sky was vivid pink and a peculiar aeroplane flew over. It was the shape of a cross.’ Mrs A.
Example: I had found the secret way to Wonderland or Shangri-La. The baddies were coming to get us, so I led my wife and children down to the ground floor. There was a lawn with a hollow in it. We all jumped into this hollow, and I said the magic word, and we sank down into the earth. But the baddies were still after us. We walked along a road until we came to huge gates. This was the entrance to Wonderland. I said the magic word, Shazam, and the gates opened. We all went in, but two car loads of baddies got in too. But I felt it didn’t matter as I was sure the place would change them. I said the word however, and the gates closed.
Example: A girl and I danced on the sloping roof of a house. It was by the light of the moon, and the dance was a sort of exuberant twirling about. A horse that loved us, seeing us dance, wanted to be like us and share our humanness. A lawn sloped near to the top of a shed roof, and the horse jumped on the roof and tried to dance. But the roof sloped badly, and its hooves were too slippery, and it fell.
House lawns: It can show the state of your home life or personal habits through it tidiness, rough use or neglect.
Lawn mower: A means if keeping the weed and undisciplined grass growth – the weeds of negative thinking or an untidy mind. Or it could indicate regular care.
Useful Questions and Hints:
In what way was the lawn portrayed?
Was I with others – if so who were they?
Do I have or did I ever have a lawn – what do I rember about it?
See Associations Working With – Being the Person or Thing – Carry the dream forward
Lawyer
Often links with feelings of uncertainty or difficulty involving another person or group of people. You may be trying to clarify action to take in the dream, or sort out your feelings about an issue. The lawyer may also represent inner certainty or confidence, an authority figure, maybe even a desirable lover.
Laxative
Something you are doing, or can do, to loosen up tension, and release emotional blockages, undesired feelings, or memories. Or perhaps this is all too much and you need to slow down? So you can experience a laxative of the mind and emotions.
If you often think you need a laxative or dream of laxatives, it might mean you are worried that you cannot perform in some area of your activities.
In the ageing process some people, because they are less active, and so do not need to eat so much, get constipated. This is because it needs a lot of food to stimulate the bowels, and without movement taking place often the stools tend to dry out. The bowel constantly draws water from the stools, so a mild laxative is a good tool to have. But a preoccupation with bowel function and laxatives was found in over 50% of patients aged 65+ yrs, suffering from a functional psychiatric illness, and was seen at far higher rates than a comparable group of elderly inpatients with physical illnesses.
Example: What I see is that I don’t want to live in suburbia. As the positive feelings arise outside of the dependence on my family, I feel as if I want to move around and not tie myself to any one place for a while. I think this is possible at a practical level if we live fairly cheaply and possibly in poorer countries. I feel shut in and restless just sitting here writing. So living in suburbia has been like an effective laxative to get rid of some concepts I had of what would satisfy me. No doubt this will change again. One thing that burnt me up inside intensely during the height of my difficult feelings was that my whole life had been built around dependence.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Do I suffer from constipation?
What does my dream say about the laxative?
Can I use the information in any way?
See Allowing the Body Speak – Life’s Little Secrets – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Lead
Metal: – Heavy hearted; a weighty situation; feeling burdened; materialistic attitudes. It might also represent something, perhaps feelings or situations that are malleable and can be shaped with only a little effort – or if there is a sense of danger or anxiety, it may be the poisonous aspect of lead you are dealing with. Ask yourself what you are taking in that is harming you. It may simply be opinions.
To lead: To feel sure in a way that creates confidence for less certain parts of your thinking and feeling to be motivated; some strong feelings or ideas that motivate you.
Following leader: An influence from something such as a belief or even a need to feel confident. The leader might therefore represent either the confidence or the need. See leader
To be on a lead: To direct something, as when you control your feelings, or give yourself certain boundaries to live within. To have a measure of control. Restrained or controlled urges; urges we have trained or directed; holding back or restraining or directing parts of oneself.
Example: At the tip of the cliff is a band, and it seems like I’m now the lead singer/screamer of the band. We then start playing, and there is a huge gathering of people, all in dark clothing, at the bottom of the cliff rocking out to our music.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Do I sometimes feel as if my limbs are as heavy as lead?
Have I ever dreamt of being a leader, if so how did I cope?
Have you a tendency to follow a leader – or are you a loner?
See Emotions and Mood in Dreams – Settings in Dreams – Secrets of Power Dreaming
Leader
May be the part of us from which we presently take our lead. Or parts of us we should take direction from, depending on dream.
Our relationship with authority figures, or the generally accepted ideas that people take to guide their life; the relationship with the leader might show how much responsibility we are taking for our own life; feelings of being responsible, as in parenthood or professional capacity.
Example: Working on the car dream I realised I have a pattern of destroying my own energy of expression if it does not succeed as well as I would like. As I worked today I felt the tremendous anxiety aroused by deciding a course of action that offers no certainty. I felt that leaders are those who can cope with high levels of stress situations. A successful person is one who can get into situations that place them in exposure, open to criticism, likely to fail, uncertainty, and to manage the stress and press on.
Example: ‘Walking alone along a road through a small town. I was heading for a place that a group of people, in a street parallel to mine, were also heading for. A person from the group tried to persuade me that the RIGHT way to get to the place was along the street the group was walking. I knew the street did not matter, only the general direction. The person was quite disturbed by my independence. It made him or her feel uncertain to have their leader apparently questioned. I felt uncertain too for a moment. Then I walked on and came to an open stretch of ground.’
Leaves Leaf
The living, growing part of you. The part that is still vulnerable because of its newness, or outworn (depending on colour of leaf) part of your thinking or feeling. You can also be blown like a leaf, suggesting separation from your roots and main growth; or you can take a leaf from someone’s notebook, thus following their example or idea. The leaves as a whole, if falling, can represent the end of your life, the passing ego that dies, but leaves the trunk, the process that gave life. See: tree.
The leaves on a tree may represent your personal life, this particular life with its many activities and desires, that may fall off the tree – die – but what gave it life continues to exist. The leaf may indicate something in you that is living, growing, or outworn (depending on colour of leaf). This may be part of your thinking or feeling. You can also be blown like a leaf, suggesting separation from your roots and main growth; or you can take a leaf from someone’s notebook, thus following their example or idea.
Leaves also can indicate new life that is flourishing and expanding, so a new part of you growing. It is also linked with the mystery of Life, as it emerges from unconsciousness into a new being. Often it is a deep cellular or inner growth
Example: And I look upon the wayside flower, reaching through the grass, and see in its petalled face a peace and a great prayer, for flowers can pray. Within me I hear the echo of its worship. “I am here! I am here! Out of the dark into the light, I am here. Out of nothingness the mystery wrought me. Out of the pieces of its being I arise. In surety I live, until I die, back into the mystery, to be lived again, or be forever that which lived me.”
Example: Walking to the lake which was behind the huge rock column all in open ground and very swampy, we tried to cross. A tree trunk lay over at one point. Some people went to cross but one of them rocked the tree, and I think dislodged it. Now I looked back at the column, and was very surprised to see, on the strange design, little fronds of green leaves. The column was, I suddenly saw, a huge tree, and the leaves were sprouting at the top. To the right was another such tree, but smaller. The shape of these columns was like massive spacecraft cylinders pointed at the top. I believe I now looked across the hills, and saw a track leading off to where I seemed to know our home lay.
Example: The awakening interrupted a dream, which was extremely lucid and logical. I knew clearly, during it, what it meant. I was simply watching leaves, like a fern, grow and expand. As I did so I realised this was an expression of something taking place in my being. Namely, the vegetative (vegetable) forces had been released to greater or more powerful activity. It was very clear in the dream, but I quickly lost much of the accompanying knowledge. But I knew, or experience, that the release was linked with consciousness and will. In some way I cannot yet explain, the power of this process streamed through the will or consciousness, and awareness expanded as the leaf grew. In other words consciousness filled the leaf being grown.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Was the leaves growing from an old tree?
What were my feelings when I saw the leaves?
Were leaves falling or new grown?
See Sacred Tree – Summing Up – Writing it Down – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Leak Leaked Leaking
Wasted or lost energy; or something being allowed out or expressed. The energy leak might arise from any number of past traumas, using energy to keep them unconscious.
Example: I am very dissatisfied at the lack of progress that has been made on the construction. It is nearly impossible to get to the 2nd floor, the plumbing leaks, many places are unpainted, etc.
Leaking roof: There is something about your attitudes or strategies you use to keep yourself feeling secure that is not working. The family atmosphere under which you all live is at fault, probaly in a minor way – unless the leak is enormous. So the leak in the roof suggests something that has attacked your sense of security.
Gas leak: Because a gas leak could at times lead to an explosive situation, be aware of emotional situations. Gas can also indicate enormous energy release; or seomthing opoisonous but usually invisible entering your lfie.
Water leak: This can mean that your emotional energy is be used unwisely, possible through such things as anxiety or fear, especially if the water is coming through a ceiling or wall.
Energy leaks: Although we do not often think of our energy leaking out of us like water pouring away, dreams often show that we often have such leaks. These are usually shown as bleeding, as a pain in our body or even as holes in our body. The causes can be an attitude that is causing us to either block the usualy flow of our emotions or sexual energy, hurt of some sort such as an emotional shock, or that in some way we are ralting to our life process in a harmful way.
Idioms: Leak out – be revealed.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Does the dream clearly show how and what the leak is?
Do you feel pains or difficult feelings are a leak of your evergy?
Is there any solution shown in the dream?
See Energy Sex and Dreams – Active Passive – Avoid Being Victims
Leather
Basic or instinctive responses, instinctive drives, or toughness. If wearing the leather as a coat for instance, it might suggest feelings about fashion, animal welfare, or that you are expressing yourself in a fundamental way. See: animal.
Many dreams in which leather features indicate quality or even wealth. But it depends whether it is a leather jacket worn by men who have a thuggish feeling or a person showing quality. So it depends on the context – Context/Theme
There are some image clichés, such as men or women dressed in black leather – meaning they are possibly dangerous or adventurous as in the film Matrix; the gay men’s leather pants, showing their identification with homosexuality.
Example: When I rang his doorbell, instead of him coming to the window, it was my brother and 3 other men who were all dressed as stereotypical ‘gay men’ leather pants, handcuffs etc lol……in real life, my ex accidently set my budgie free which never returned and I think my brother is ‘in the closet’. Is this dream just because of real-life events or could there be another meaning?
Useful Questions and Hints:
Is it a cliché image in my dream?
What do I feel about the leather in my dream?
Do I disagree about using animal products?
See Key Words – Secrets of Power Dreaming – Questions – Being the Person or thing