Posts Tagged ‘dream analysis’

Odyssey

Usually symbolises the problems, of a personal and inner nature, that we have to deal with in order to find greater maturity or wholeness.

Offer Offered Offering

To offer something in a dream, or be offered something usually depicts some sort of change, perhaps one in which a decision has to be made – whether to accept or not. It might also suggest extending yourself, or being reached out to in some way. This might involve some level of risk or exposure to rejection or being used.

Our human ability to move among and learn from or experience the many states of being shown as all the characters we dream about. It offers a much wider or more inclusive view of where you are and where you are going in life. Characters and People in Dreams; Imagination

 Example: A woman who was a radio researcher was offered the job of presenter. She was thrilled but dreamt she was in a road walking and planes flew overhead dropping bombs and shooting. She had to dive into a ditch to avoid being killed. When she explored the dream she realised she was afraid of facing the public directly and this fear if left unconscious would have caused her to refuse the job. She meets the fear and managed to press forward with the job.

Example – This is my dream. I am driving my car, alone. I can see a female friend and stop to offer her a lift. I partly want her to be impressed by my new car. She looks at me. Now she tells me she doesn’t want a lift and I am watching her walk off with a man I do not know.

Example: But then I was shown the way out – it was by admitting that I was a heap of shit, and asking for help as the twelve steps in Alcoholics Anonymous define it. In opening myself to that wonderful otherness my heap of shit became a compost heap which offered new growth.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

Was I offering or offered to?

What was it being offered and what does that mean to me?

Did I reject what was offered and can I say why?

See Summing Up – Deciding – Yes-No – Writing it Down

Officer Official

Mostly symbolises the part of you in control of a particular area of yourself. Love for a husband and children may act as a controlling factor on desires to have a good time with others, or cover innate laziness. Or fear of being a nobody may direct ambitions and plans. Sometimes represents a feeling of confidence or wholeness that brings authority to guide and direct.

It also associates with any dealing you have with authority, and what this invokes in you. So it might refer to your father in some way. It can therefore show how you ‘authorise’ your own actions, or how you judge them,  our sense of right and wrong; a co-ordinating or directing function in ourselves; a sense of sureness out of wider awareness or experience. It often indicates your relationship with authority or officialdom.

An official can be someone like a teacher or headmaster, a police person, a doctor or any person who may be an authority. We often relate to them in dreams in a positive helpful way, or in a way that takes away our own initiative and will.

 Example: A Nazi officer got out. He looked at me and told me that I was under arrest. I was to report to headquarters. I asked, “Where is it?” He said, “Follow me.” So the kitten and I walked along. He went too fast (the officer), and I lose him. I didn’t know where headquarters was, so I asked directions!! It finally dawned on me that I could escape, that I was being really silly following orders.

Example: In the dream I was attending an adult class with about 20/30 people, mostly men, in it. The teacher came in. He said something and a man asked a question, or spoke back. The teacher got really angry and hit him with a walking stick. Someone else in the class remarked on the beating and was attacked also. A man sitting next to me on my left said that if the teacher hit him he wouldn’t sit and take it. But as the second man was hit my companion said something like – Bloody hell. The teacher landed two mighty blows on his arse, but he didn’t move. I said in horror, “Good God,” whereupon the teacher moved to hit me. I stood up and said, “If you hit me with that thing I will whack you in the fucking ear.” I felt fired up ready to fight. He backed off and threatened to get the headmaster in. I told him to try it. He said if I could do better, do it. So I took over the class and it went really well.

Here the dreamer questions and confronts authority than can do damage to peoples confidence. Many people are told things by authorities that they never question. I have met people who were told that they could not sing and so never ever sang again, or were told they were stupid or couldn’t learn and so gave up. The truth is we each live in a unique world and so see the world in unique ways. In looking at a lake, an artistic child would see its form and colour; a child who had interest in mechanics would see the potential for hydro electrics; a nature lover would see all the places where creatures lived and how to find them.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

Do I always do as I am told by an authority, or do I asses the situation for myself?

Can I learn from someone in charge or have a problem with authority?

What do I feel about officials?

See decision – Autonomous Complex – Habits – Being the Person or Thing

Ogre

Feelings developed in relationship with ones father or mother; lack of sympathy or understanding; being inconsiderate; feelings about authority. A criticizing, reprimanding and ignoring parent or person – is it a picture of you? In fact is there a situation or event in your life in your life that was felt as overwhelming, even terrifying?  The ogre can also show how you feel about people in authority, your boss?

Ogres can represent a destructive, oppressive force that threatens to devour individuality. They often appear in dreams in relation to discipline problems. They may concern father-child relationships or may be about self-discipline issues. Dreaming of slaying an ogre can be about getting rid of a hated father.

 Example: If we learned to solve our problems in our lucid dreams by magically changing things we don’t like, we might mistakenly hope to do the same in our waking lives. For example, I once had a lucid dream about a frightening ogre, whom I confronted by projecting feelings of love and acceptance, leading to a pleasurable, peaceful, and empowering resolution in my dream. Suppose I had chosen to turn my adversary into a toad, and get rid of him that way. How would that help me if I were to find myself in conflict with my boss or another authority figure whom I might see as an ogre, in spite of my being awake? Turning him into a toad would hardly be practical! However, a change in attitude might indeed resolve the situation.  Quoted from Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by LaBerge & H. Rheingold.

However, I see it as a better solution to actually understand the roots of the dream or become the ogre, for the image is simply a cover for the real feelings you are trying to flee from. Here is a much better way that enables the dreamer to realise his own human feelings and deal with them.

 Example: I thought about the dream that I had about L., the dream was that L. had a very red face when she told me that she was pregnant. But I didn’t think that I could have made her pregnant and I told her so. She then changed her mind and said, ‘OK then I’m not pregnant’.

In working on the dream I imagined becoming L. I entered into her pregnant body and felt her sexuality and understood the dream. She had offered herself to me, her sexuality and her body but I didn’t recognise it, I couldn’t see it and so she withdrew. L. wants another child and she had offered herself to me but I couldn’t give myself to her. I have never given myself before. In the dream I felt I was not responsible for her pregnancy which represents the denial of my own sexuality and of all that results from it.

This is when I entered into the house of God. At first I saw the image of a huge cathedral or church with a magnificent domed roof and I knew that I was in the house of God. I felt the utopia, I felt like I have never felt before, so very good, so excellent. I knew all things. I didn’t have to read the bible or any kind of teachings because the answers are all here in the presence of God. In this state I could ask any question and know the answer. I knew God, yet I was God because there was no separation. Neal

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

Did I run in fear or cower when facing the ogre?

When have I faced such feelings in my actual life?

If I faced the ogre and defeated him what was the result for me?

See Being the Person or Thing – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Summing Up

Oil

We can pour oil on troubled waters; be an oily or slippery sort of person, or be well oiled. The word is sometimes used to mean flattery, unctuousness, cunningness, or working well, removal of friction, argument and disagreement. In the parables it is referred to as resourcefulness, forethought, and as a symbol for the soul.

Attitude which removes friction in oneself or in a relationship; flattery; unctuousness; fat in ones diet. Oil can at times indicate love and its healing effect, or an easing of conflict. Attitudes or feelings that enable you to experience trouble free living.

Oil often used in sacred rites and in dreams it can signify the giving of a blessing or a spiritual gift. See Spirit

 Black oil in your car or a machine shows the problems from the past that lead to the car/machine not functioning well. This arose from the way you lived in the past. So changing or putting in oil shows a move to greater love or positive feelings – better and easier working and the freeing or easing of problems.

Baby oil: Healing words or actions to soothe simple problems or to ease someone’s childlike pain.

Oil the palm: Being bribed or bribing someone.

 Example: A huge furnace of coke is slowly dying out. Oil or fuel is dripping on it, but instead of igniting, it is putting the fire out through insufficient heat. I therefore open the air vent further and this solves the problem and the fire builds up.

The dreamer felt this was about his energy, his fire of life going out. Then through breathing exercises it was put right.

 Example: I was talking to someone, a man, about having changed the oil in my car. The oil was slightly black, but the green still showed. I explained that it would have been even less discoloured, but the previous oil was very dirty/burnt/black, with sediment.

This dream shows you the problems that are causing darkness/pain at present. The oil is that which brings your life to trouble-free running. The changes made in your life are represented by the oil change. The changes are those which cause you to seek love in your life. This is blackened by your past feelings and inability to love. The man is your present state of mind.

Idioms: Well oiled; oil the wheels; strike oil; oil on troubled waters; burn midnight oil.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

What was the oil used for in the dream?

And what else was mentioned in the dream, your attitudes?

Am I feeling and depression or painful emotions that the oil of love might help?

See Being the Person or Thing – Conditioned Reflexes – Avoid Being Victims – Martial Art of the Mind

Ointment

A healing or soothing influence or feeling. Feelings to do with care and contact. In some cases it may associate with injury or illness.

Old

See: Ancient.

One

One is the first number and is indivisible. It symbolises yourself as an individual, a beginning. the first manifestation, something that is so basic and fundamental it cannot be divided. It represents the heavenly Father, the male, masculinity, power. One can divide into any number leaving that number unchanged. It therefore symbolises the power of spirit to enter into all things and yet not change their outer manifestation, as all manifestation has arisen from the one. That is, although each manifestation may be different in outer form yet one can enter each and not change it. Thus a hundred divided by one is still a hundred. One stands for the astrological sign Aries, and represents personality, ego or sense of individuality, pioneering abilities, and the head. It can also mean length or height. Although it is an odd number, and therefore masculine, it is sometimes shown as hermaphroditic due to its ability to go into all. See: Numbers.

Onion

Probably the most general associations with onions is they can make you cry. So this might be saying there is something going on in your life you might need to shed some tears over. May represent something we find it difficult to face. It sometimes represents the layers of your personality. Its symbolism possibly arises from its layer upon layer going into the centre.

Onions can be portrayed in dreams as a health aid or perhaps how your body deals with eating them. Being round the onion can represent wholeness and unity. Sometimes the onion is used instead of garlic to act against the powers of evil. See Core

If you dislike onions then it is pointing to feelings of dislike about something or someone.

Ooze Oozing

If something like water or mud is oozing out of somewhere, it suggests a leak, or an expression of something. The primeval ooze, mud that germinates new life, such as ideas and creativity. Such oozing mud carries the primeval powers of your body and the life process.

It can also indicate the mess of your own or someone else’s fears and emotions entering your experience in some way. It is similar to what we mean when we say, “What a mess.” See: Mud.

 Blood oozes sometimes in dreams and can suggest a loss of energy or a woman’s menstrual flow. Sometimes oozing is sometimes used in describing someone trying to get into your life or body, or trying to hide what they are up to. 

Example: Then the crazy man oozes through under the door jam. He is now a “small person.” I grab him by the throat and try to strangle him while I hold him up. I go out to the hall and throw him in the elevator. I yell at him not to come back!

Example: The pipe ran under the floor from the cellar in the house nest door. The pipe had an open connection hole level with the floor. It was from this the thick oily sewage oozed up. I realised someone next door had gone to the toilet and as their toilet or pipe was blocked in some way it caused the flow-back. I went next door to tell them to do something about the situation. On waking I thought I imagined the best resolution was one in which I screw on a sealing cap to the pipe. Then any backflow would go into the next-door cellar.

Example: Those children, wallowing in the mud beside the willows in the hot summer sun, had been performing an ancient and sacred rite, returning to the source of life and their beginnings under the sun.

These things help to explain the great importance of the anus to the psyche, and why the sexual fantasies of most children center on the anus rather than the vagina. Later, with more specific knowledge of their origins, children replace the image with the vagina, and a new series of sexual theories appears. Most patients deal with their birth fantasies at this level, and there is much dealing to be done before the simple animal facts can be accepted.

Faced with the vital, primitive conditions of birth, patients draw back in shock and revulsion. But they face them all the same, for there seems to be some instinctive reality demand made upon the evasive consciousness. Before they are through with a long therapy, most patients have experienced a remarkably accurate and harrowing recapitulation of what birth must be like. They discover that with civilized human beings it is still remarkably the same process that mare and colt, cow and calf, bitch and puppy endure.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

What is oozing and what from?

How did I relate to it and with what feelings?

Did I manage to deal with it?

See Martial Art of the Mind – Being the Person or Thing – Clicking On

Opal

A reflection of what is going on within yourself. All the shades of feeling within you. The inner world of your dreams, fantasies, psychic impressions. Protection against anger. Purification.  See: Jewels; Magical Dream Machine

Opera

Dramatisation of inner feeling situations. See: arena; Stage; film.

 Singing or hearing opera represents your own dramatic play of feelings, often an uplifting influence, a reaching up to your heights, or down to your depths of emotion. Sometimes it also has a theme and will lead to a realisation. See Plot of the Dream

So this might be suggesting the dramatisation of your inner feeling situations. Or perhaps the drama of your life, the stage of life, or stage of development reached. Most operas are about tragic, romantic or magical relationships, and so your dream might be indicating something in your own life reflected in the opera.

 Example: I am walking rapidly down a very crowded street. I am in a blue velvet suit, and I am the star of the opera which is about to be presented. All of the people are recognising me as I walk through the streets.

Now I am in line as one of the spectators waiting for the show. I have a ticket in my purse and my dog, Duffy, in a kennel box.

Now I am with Cliff, an intimate college friend of mine, in his house. Attached to his house is the building where the opera is to be presented. He is the carpenter, builder, and logistics supervisor for the production. All of his work is done backstage. I have great feelings of love for him and prepare myself for the show in the sunny spacious apartment where he lives. Quote from Sundance.

This dream is clearly about his life’s work, as the very word opera comes from the Latin opus, meaning work. Opera as an art form includes, as doe’s life, a variety of artistic expressions: singing, dancing, high drama. It can also be seen that you experience all of the perspectives in the dream which people experience in their own lives: the spectator, the star, the producer, and director. What isn’t said clearly is that all the work of the carpenter takes place ‘backstage’, out of sight in the unconscious. See: archetype of Christ  

 Example: I’m watching a film or video taken from a helicopter, I suppose, of a city skyscraper all the way up to the roof where a singer – maybe an opera singer – is performing, singing to the sky in an evening dress. The “camera” passes over her and continues, showing the tops of other high buildings. Now I’m in a car on a hill – its night, been night all along – and I’m crying because I’m afraid to go up that high. I couldn’t do what the singer was doing. The person I’m with hugs and consoles me. Alta

Here Alta is meeting her own fears and recognises them as factors that limit how ‘high’ she can go in life. It shows her wonderful potential but also the fear if the way of claiming it.

Idioms: soap opera

Useful Questions and Hints:

Was I singing or listening?

Did the music move me, if so in what way?

What was the effect of the opera?

See Active Passive – Characters and People in Dreams – Being the Person or ThingBeing the Person or Thing – Core

Operation

Some inner attitude is sick, and is being removed. Fear of illness. Memories connected with an actual past operation.

Opium

Is often used to describe an attempt to hide weaknesses by idealism, romanticism, religion. It can symbolise any means by which we hide fears, failings, inability to face life, inability to come to terms with life.

Oracle

Intuition.

Orange

The colour:

The colour – Blending or balance of emotions and intellect. Orange is a blend of red and yellow, and as such much refines the basic instinctual energy or red with the life giving yellow. So it is often used to indicate refined or transformed sexuality or urges, and perhaps greater wisdom. Its link with fruits such as oranges and apricots also might link it with fruitfulness. It therefore suggests health and energy along with a calm mind. See: Colour.

Some people call some shades of red orange, so occasionally there might be a difference in terminology.

Because some people and cats have orange hair, the colour might at times refer o a particular person or feelings about an animal.

Sometimes: Warmth; religious feelings or insight. In some dreams when it is an object coloured orange it suggest something flashy, outrageous or quirky.

Brownish orange: This suggests health problems or a lowering of energy and clarity.

Orange hair: Warm or life giving thoughts or ideas – or reminder of a particular person you know with that colouring. See: hair.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What am I feeling in the dream about the colour, and where do I find those feelings in waking life?

What past associations and memories do I have with orange, and do they throw light on the dream?

Where does the orange appear – clothing, objects or body? In whatever context, look up how it relates to the clothing or body part, etc.

See orange under food – Kundalini – Energy Sex and Dreams – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams