Posts Tagged ‘dream dictionary interpretation’
Arms
(Such as weapons – See: Arm for body limb) Guns, spears, usually symbolise aggressiveness and destructive urges and wishes. Or male sexuality. If you are being attacked they depict your own fear of being hurt or dominated, either by your own emotions or those of someone else. See: weapons
Army
This suggests some form of conflict, internal or otherwise. The army might be depicting the forces or qualities you muster to deal with difficulties – i.e. courage, information; aggression or anger. They might be attitudes necessary to face anxieties such as determination or confidence in your core self.
The army is also an organisation and the dream might be about how you are relating to being organised, being told what to do, being under orders, or working within an organisation amongst many others. So it is important to recognise how you feel in the dream. Do you feel trapped, part of something, alone in a crowd, or a meaningful part of something bigger than you?
Sometimes army dreams occur when you are ready to confront the internal traumas and conflicts you carry. The important aspects of such dreams are about what they show of your attitudes or feelings about the army. But it is often necessary to read the entry on war, as the army dream might be mostly about the fighting. See: soldier; war.
Example: I had a series of dreams about being a soldier marching to the front with an army. Then came a day when I dreamt we were in the trenches waiting for the signal to go over the top. It came, I leapt up out of the trench and ran through the flying bullets to meet the foe.
The dreams came at a time when I was getting nearer facing internal traumas I had carried since childhood. After the last dream these broke through into waking life very dramatically, and I relived a tonsil operation experienced as a six year old. Anthony.
There is a great battle we are all part of, the battle to grow into the full beauty of women and men; the battle against the lies we live in; the battle to realise who we are.
This forgetfulness lies upon the world like a blanket of fog, a daytime night. We walk in it and call our darkness light. Believing in what we have as knowledge, we label the gleams of light reaching us, myth, legend, poetry, religion or mere nonsense. Yet the legend and dream persist in man’s awareness through all the changes of his so-called rational beliefs, his science, and his logic. Scientific attitudes constantly change, and with them the logic which depends on them, but fairy stories are as old as time. Or, to be more precise, the living experience in the story remains forever within us, though the outer details change. Thus the underlying essence of the stories of Buddha, Christ, Krishna, Baldur, Mithras, Osiris, and the others, are strangely alike. Echoes of our lost names, perhaps?
Ah yes, “We are shattered, tattered, demented remnants of a once glorious army. Among us are Princes and Captains of Armies, Lords of Battle, amnesic, aphasic, ataxic, jerkily trying to recall what was the battle the sounds of which still ring in our ears: is the battle still raging? If we could make our way back to join the main body of the army. Gropings, orientations, crumbs, fragments, bits of the jigsaw, a few demented ravings that may help the reconstruction of the lost message. I am just beginning to regain my memory, just beginning to realise I am lost, just getting faint sounds of old familiar music – snatches of old tunes, moments of deja-vu, a reawakening of a long-numbed agony – an unendurable realisation of what a debacle it was, what a shambles, what betrayal, horror, stupidity, ignorance, cowardice, craven lust, wretched greed. Faint recall of a raving nostalgia, for the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, Paradise lost.” (The Bird Of Paradise by R. D. Laing – Quoted from my book Yield.)
Useful Questions and Hints:
What are my feelings about the army, or being in the army?
Is this army fighting for something, if so, what? How does that link with myself?
Am I avoiding or being part of the group?
Here are some ways to meet the conflict you face – Methods of Awakening – Life’s Little Secrets – Facing Fear.
Arrested Arresting
It often suggests a restraint of your natural expression by moral judgements or questions of right and wrong. Depending upon the rest of the dream it can also depict restraint of your anger or sexuality, or other ‘unlawful’ feelings. Because such dreams often include the police it can be about feeling that circumstances or social pressures are holding you back; or that your development or growth is held back.
If you have difficult feelings about police or social authority, the dream could point to the way you restrain yourself due to those feelings. Such dreams are often experienced by people who have survived harsh political regimes and know the terror of being arrested. See: police
Arresting someone else suggest that you are trying to hold some part of you that you feel you must control – as example:
I am with some black kid/guy who probably won’t have a full life and I feel so sorry about that. So sorry. We are in a toy store and he is looking for toys – inspirational books/movies – a train set to take my/his mind off the sadness of it all. The black kid scares me because he is so wild, so out of control, so energetic, so untamed. I hold onto his hand. I have arrested him – for much of the dream. I have to threaten to shoot him to bring him under control.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What of my feelings or motivations does my dream suggest I am ‘arresting’?
If it is someone else being arrested, what do they depict of my own urges or traits?
Does my dream indicate I am feeling guilty about something – is so what?
Do past experiences with authority lie behind this dream?
Use Talking As to define what the dream means for you, or Processing Dreams.
Art Artist
The exteriorisation of some inner idea, feeling or direction. The expression of inner content, and thus a source of self realisation. The artist may represent the urge toward fruition, toward self-realisation. The art object however, can depict some meaningful realisation within yourself, that is as yet not clear enough to put into words. This may be because it is pre-verbal experience, or is still barely conscious.
The aspect of oneself that is in contact with the irrational, creative side of the unconscious. The desire or ability to be creative; the drive to express something of oneself, that may be repressed. Maybe the desire for public recognition – or a chance to demonstrate your skill or quality; the impractical aspect of self. For some the artist represents somebody who is impractical and out of touch with real work or life
Meeting an artist: Becoming aware of a creative idea or an aspect of self that is creative.
Watching an artist at work: Recognising artistic or creative ability, but being passive about it.
If you are an artist: This might well be showing you another facet of your artistry, or be exploring in a creative way, or looking at problems you have, depending on dream theme. See: Painting; art in dreams; archetype of artist.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Is this creative expression of an inner idea?
What is the theme involved?
What feelings do I express in the dream?
Try using Acting on your dream to define dream meaning
What is the artist doing in my dream, and what might that represent in my life?
What is my relationship with the artist and what can I understand from that? See key words for help with this.
If I imagine myself as the artist what do I feel? For help doing this see Stand in Role under peerdream work.
Artery
The flow of life giving process in you. It could indicate what you are seeing or realising about the process of life and how it upholds your existence without you being aware of it.
An artery also can indicate vulnerability, because if it is injured you may die. So the dream might be pointing to such a vulnerability that could lead to your feeling hopeless and without purpose.
An artery to the head in a dream needs careful consideration. It could if it shows blockage be a warning of stroke.
If the artery is bleeding it suggests a situation that needs urgent attention. This is not usually physical, but about emotional traumas that drain your motivation, joy of life and sense of purpose.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What am I aware of that is life giving and how can I care for it?
If my dream shows injury, what in me depletes my energy to live and thrive?
What in waking life brings these feelings that I meet in the dream?
See Acting on your dream also Easy Dream Interpretation
Ascending Ascent
Whether the ascending is in a lift, flying or climbing a hill, it can link to the rising feelings of passion or sexual pleasure, or the transition from expressing energy genitally to expressing it in self awareness. Such a shift from a lower mood or sensation to one felt as exhilarating or lighter is often shown as ascending.
In many past cultural traditions ascent was associated with purification or refinement – as in the ascent to heaven, or a holy mountain. It also suggested becoming more detached, or finding a different perspective. We could see it also as evolution of ourselves to a newer level. Because we often move to a wider view of things, becoming more aware of our situation or surroundings as we get higher, ascending is often linked with change, and perhaps leaving things behind, the dropping away of what occupied you below. It can also be an attempt to remove yourself from the difficulties or experiences of the world – there may be a link with losing touch with reality. See Altered States of Consciousness.
Example: I was dreaming that I was walking around a small cul-de-sac early in the morning. I came up to a group of old women dressed in black huddled around a pentagram chanting something. I was terrified of them. For some reason I thought they were witches so I turned to run away. That is when they saw me and they started chasing after me. I started running but I wasn’t fast enough. They were right behind me. Than right before they were about to grab me I shot up into the air. Shortly after I was flying; it felt so freeing. Than for some reason I started trying to find god. I was shouting out for him and calling his name. As I was calling out to him I saw a giant face in the clouds. It felt really powerful. It was a perfect face and I thought my call had been answered. – In the example the dreamer ascend to escape from terror.
The term ‘upwardly mobile also links ascent with success or a change toward greater fortune; moving toward achievement.
In some dreams or out of body experiences, the clear awareness of OBE is sometimes preceded by a feeling of rapidly moving upward. In such cases there is a sort of awakening, and ascending may in fact be an expression of nearing wakefulness. So ascending would be a move to waking, and descending moving toward deeper sleep or knowing the unconscious.
Jung points out that the theme of ascent is part of many ancient religious rituals and beliefs. In most cases the ascent is, like the rising sun during the day or the summer, linked completely with the descent in the evening, night, or winter. Ascent is therefore part of a spiral which also descends, the cycle of birth, death, rebirth. Christianity tends to speak of a one time resurrection however, whereas the ancient belies saw it as a continuing cycle. See: flying; up-upper.
Example: Genesis 028:010 And Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went toward Haran. And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And, behold, the LORD stood above it, and said, I am the LORD God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed.
Ascending a hill or mountain or tree: Often shows having a more inclusive view or understanding of one’s activities and place in the scheme of things. It also signifies purification or personal evolution. Ascent of a hill often appears in dreams of people in or approaching middle age, and depicts their life so far as an ascent. Usually there is a descent following. See: hill.
Ascending into the sky: Upliftment in some form; attaining a wider view of ones life situation – where you are in life; death, as in ascending into heaven. It appears in some dreams showing a change in them leading to a wonderful talent or opportunity. It can occasionally depict a manic state where the person cannot get back down so is a way to escape from everyday life by taking on a more ‘spiritual’ attitude, but often it is so unbalanced it leads to no real satisfaction.
Climbing stairs, going up in an elevator or lift: Movement toward waking or becoming more aware; the mental; or an escape from anxiety or being ‘down to earth’; sexual pleasure, or mounting feelings of love and attraction. It can also indicate going up in the world, so may link with ambition or achievement. Overcoming difficulties such as anxiety to reach a goal; in some stair dreams there is a tremendous amount of anxiety and feeling of insecurity. This may link with the babyhood fear of falling down stairs, and not yet having the skill to deal with stairs easily. See: example in lift under house and buildings.
If the lift goes out the top of the roof, or the connection with base is missing: Can show a critical situation of the mind being split from body awareness; schizoid or manic.
Watching something ascend – such as an object – or something emerging from the sea: Something you are becoming more conscious of; something emerging from unconsciousness.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What am I feeling as I ascend, and where does that feeling appear in my waking life?
Is there a particular situation or difficulty I am moving away from, and is that in my life also?
What method or attitude am I using to ascend? Is it will power or some other influence?
Read Processing Dreams to help define the dream meaning.
Ascetic
Restraint of physical desires, usually in an attempt to realise inner self, but often from inner personal conflicts with such things as sexual urges or anxieties.
Conflict with natural drives; desire to be less dominated by same, so may lead to avoidance of sex. I could also be an attempt to find the spiritual, or it could be an inverted fear of one’s unconscious or a bid for power to control. Preventing one natural urges is also a way to the development of will. See archetype of the ascetic; religion and dreams.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Are there any fears or difficult feelings connected with sex or eating?
What attracts you or repels you in regard to asceticism?
Do you see it as a way to spiritual advancement – or an escape from things?
Try exploring your dream to deepen your understanding of it by using Processing Dreams.
Ash Ashes
What remains in your experience, perhaps as memory or wisdom, after the event or person has gone. Purification. Something that once moved you or troubled you, but the feelings have burnt themselves out; death or fear of it. Ashes also fertilise after a period of decay, death or destruction. Something that is empty of life; or an endeavour, relationship or dream that nothing came of it or that has ended.
Ash filled air: Enormous changes going on; great emotion, or emotion filled events, creating confusion and perhaps danger.
Ashes of someone or something: Something or someone that existed in your life and were a living part of it, but have now gone. Perhaps feelings have burnt out and left only a shadow, ashes of what existed before. The ashes in the case of cremation suggest the loss of the physical body, and what is now living is the influence of that person still existing in your life.
Ashtray: The way you get rid of old feelings, habits, memories; collection of past burnt out feelings or results of relationships; connection with smoking habit.
Cigarette ash: Connection with smoking; old feelings or anxieties.
If connected to cricket: Victory – or defeat if losing them.
Idioms: Rake over the ashes; reduced to ash; ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What is it that is now ashes, and how does that link with what has gone from your life?
With what feelings are you relating to the ashes?
Is there something that has been burnt out of your feelings or purified?
Try using Acting on your dream.
Ash Tree
Because if its fantastic power of growth and survival it often represent your own personal growth and ability to survive and thrive despite attacks. It has been linked in past ages with protection of children.
Ash staffs have been used as a protection, also as a magic wand to ward off evil.
See: tree.
Ass
The basic life processes in the body, which uphold or carry us through the years; the plodding long suffering body; foolishness, a sort of living on whims and fancies, or being used and abused by others. Also a foolishness or stupidity arising from a limited view of things; in the bible the ass carries the Christ, and so represents the unconscious automatic functions of the body which can support the wider awareness. In some dreams it represents stubbornness arising perhaps out of long entrenched habits and automatic behaviour, but also out of the hungers and needs of the body. This aspect of the ass also represents humility and patience along with common or everyday life.
If the ass or donkey is being ridden by or pulling someone else: You may be feeling you are doing all the hard work in a relationship, or working like a beast of burden.
Riding a donkey or ass: This may represent humility or feeling in a lowly position. But may simply relate to your relationship with your body’s needs and responses. See Ass/Donkey.
Useful Questions and Hints:
If you consider that your relationship with the ass might indicate how you are dealing with your body, what does it suggest?
Are you feeling put upon by the needs or demands of others?
Is somebody trying to make you go in a direction you do not want to?
Are you being a donkey or an ass – i.e. a bit dense or silly?
Try being in the role of the donkey or ass and see what you find – Being the Person or Thing.
Assassin
This might link with hidden desires in you to kill certain parts of yourself. For instance sometimes a person destroys their own best interests or creations. The assassin might also show the feelings you hide about someone else or their achievements. See murder.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What is my dream showing that the assassin is aiming to kill, and what does this point to in my waking life?
Am I surreptitiously undermining my own or someone else’s activities?
Have I killed out some aspect of my own feelings, love or creativity?
Try using Talking As to understand your dream.
Ass Or Donkey
The basic life processes in the body, which uphold or carry us through the years; the plodding long suffering body. Foolishness, a sort of living on whims and fancies, or being used and abused by others. Also a foolishness or stupidity arising from a limited view of things. In the bible the ass carries the Christ, and so represents the unconscious automatic functions of the body which can support the wider awareness.
The donkey can indicate stubbornness arising perhaps out of long entrenched habits and automatic behaviour, but also out of the hungers and needs of the body. This aspect of the ass also represents humility and patience along with common or everyday life.
If the ass or donkey is being ridden by or pulling someone else: You may be feeling you are doing all the hard work in a relationship, or working like a beast of burden.
Riding a donkey or ass: This may represent humility or feeling in a lowly position. But may simply relate to your relationship with your body’s needs and responses.
Example: It seemed to me that there were two children, perhaps adolescents, driving or leading a donkey or ass in perhaps a not very friendly or constructive way. Then a man appeared on the scene and knelt down beside the animal which seemed to be lying inert on the ground. He seemed to be explaining to the children that the best way to help the animal was to see it in its true form and release it from its outer coverings. As he was explaining this he began undoing a zip along the length of the animal’s spine and peeled off what I could now see, was a kind of perfect fitting cloth suit, he repeated this action again, removing yet another suit and I am not sure whether he did so a third time, or how many times but eventually I saw the rich, shiny, chestnut coloured coat of a healthy animal. I am not sure at this point whether the animal was now a horse, it looked like a new born but not like a donkey so I think it may have been a horse. It then seemed that some kind of order had been restored, there now appeared a kind of arena and people were filling the seats to watch some kind of a play, As I watched the seats filling I realized there was not one for me and again I was standing in the sidelines, a watcher.
Idioms: donkey work;
Useful Questions and Hints:
If you consider that your relationship with the ass might indicate how you are dealing with your body, what does it suggest?
Are you feeling put upon by the needs or demands of others?
Is somebody trying to make you go in a direction you do not want to?
Are you being a donkey or an ass – i.e. a bit dense or silly?
See Inner World – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Your Core Self
Assistant
See: Helper.
Asthma
If you suffer asthma then the dream will probably be illustrating something about the physical or psychological cause of your condition. Otherwise it probably depicts feelings to do with struggling to survive, or being smothered in a relationship or situation, or maybe some form of anxiety.
This dream experience can arise from powerful fear or anxiety and not due to any physical problems. A response to anxiety is sometimes that of holding the breath, but it can also cause difficulty in breathing. See the Example under Nightmares.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Am I experiencing heightened stress or fear about something?
Am I meeting a fear of death or illness that I am not really allowing to be felt or expressed?
If I imagine myself struggling for breath what emerges; what am I seeking or facing?
Try using Stand in role to clarify the feelings.
Astral
BODY
See: astral body.
Astrologer Astrology
The dream astrologer often represents your intuition or unconscious insights into yourself and others. There may also be a link with a sense of destiny or direction. But perhaps you associate astrology with hocus pocus, in which case your dream might be suggesting you are being misled.
To see, be, or have connections with an astrologer in your dream suggests you are in touch with your intuition, and may be having thoughts or concerns about your future. It can also indicate intuitions concerning your innate abilities or qualities, and where they might lead.
Astrology is a modern version of an ancient realisation about forces of cosmic origin that shape and influence our lives. Unfortunately most of ancient vision has been lost. But any mention of astrology in your dream may suggest that you are now receiving the cosmic impulses in your creative activities, which will lead your life to a fuller expression of your potential.
The more deeply those heavenly signs and their traditional significance’s are studied, the more impossible it appears to consider them as a human invention. In the first place they are more ancient than the earliest records of human history; they can be traced in the earliest dawn of civilisation. The most ancient legends of all peoples are based on them.
Everywhere throughout the world the “Signs,” their symbols, and significance are found practically identical. There are some slight modifications of the symbols to adapt them to local conditions; for instance, the “Bull” becomes an “Elephant” in India; the “Crab” is sometimes a “Tortoise,” in Egypt it was sometimes replaced by the scarabeus, but it remained a “Crab” in the planispheres of the great temples of Egypt at Denderah and Esme; the meanings of the signs were unchanged. The only change of any importance that ever appears to have been made was the substitution of the “Scorpion” for the “Eagle,” and that corresponded with one of the most important facts in the whole story of humanity, which can be more appropriately referred to later.
(During the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt, Vivant Denon drew the circular zodiac, the more widely known one, and the rectangular zodiacs. In 1802, after the Napoleonic expedition, Denon published engravings of the temple ceiling in Denderah in his Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte.[5] These elicited a controversy as to the age of the zodiac representation, ranging from tens of thousands to a thousand years to a few hundred, and whether the zodiac was a planisphere or an astrological chart.)
How can we account for these signs and their traditional meanings. There is no conceivable way in which men in the earliest stages of civilisation could have obtained them from observation and experience. Uninterrupted observations over a complete Precessional Cycle, even if possible, would have been insufficient. And what could lead any primitive race of men even to imagine the possibility of any connection between the stars and their lives and destinies? Given the Zodiacal conception, its significance, and the key to “planetary” workings, by some form of “Revelation,” they would of course be able to observe its influences at work in human – and cosmic – affairs, but no human beings could ever have “invented” it. The only explanation of its origin which appears to be possible is that it was “revealed” to men in just exactly the same way as “prophecies” and all other spiritual mysteries, through the perceptive faculty of the unconscious mind at the period of its most complete activity.
Example: I dreamt my uncle Tony came to me. He asked where the toilet was and I described it. I discovered the sink was overflowing with water. P had left a tap running. When I looked however, the sink was within another sink, thus the floor was not wet. I believe I turned the taps off though.
My uncle talked to me. I noticed he had a wig on, it was also dyed black. He told me, or I knew that a group of businessmen wanted me to talk about astrology. At first I was merely going to give an “off-the-cuff” talk. Later however I began to want to really throw all I had into the talk, both off-the-cuff, and well researched talk.
The dreamer attempted to use intuition to understand the dream by exploring it intuitively not interpreting it intellectually by thinking about or looking up symbols: “The dream brings to your life the present possibilities. Bringing the possibilities to light. There was the time when you were never certain what to do with your life. Life brought pain. When this dream was lived, you were lost within yourself. The dream brought love into your life.
The first part of the dream lifts you from the recent darkness. When your uncle Tony arrives, this represents the coming from within yourself of those possibilities lost when you lost your way three years ago. You lost it them because you tried the path which left the world. There was lost the path your soul came to fulfill. You resisted the urge to teach the word. The word was lost within you. The word was my life calling you. When you resisted the call you decided to leave the world by trying to live the spiritual life. When you (recently) released love on this decision you received the power to speak the word.
The word will live within you. The life you will now live will be the word living in you. The way you live will let my world bring your world my light. The dream promises that you will bring the Star Light to many. The dream promises that you will lift many by telling them the wisdom you received from my word. The dream brings you my world.
There was, last night, the lifting of the mind. There will follow from this the possibility of lifting the mind in others. The dream was lived because you were receiving the power to speak from the word. The part where the water overflows means that the life force now flows freely. Nothing is hurt when it flows over. The present life will allow it to express without harm. It can be turned off or on as wished. The life force flows between the two sinks because they represent the two levels of physical existence, the outer and the inner. See Q’s Big Question
The child – P – represents your present love, longing, and my life within you. The toilet is the creative self now clearing problems by flushing them away which were frustrating it. The wig is the false thinking, the unconscious false thoughts, still prevalent and to be dealt with.
When your uncle brings up the subject of astrology, this means that you are now receiving the cosmic impulses in your creative activities, which will lead you in your life activities. The part where you – plan to – speak to the group, brings your life work before you. When you decide to make this work expression of your thoroughness, then you bring to the cosmic impulses your own gift of self expression”. See Star Beings
Useful Questions and Hints:
Does the astrologer give any information about your character or future – if so can you say what it is?
Do I have particular concerns about my future – if so what are they?
Did I seek help from the astrologer – if not why not? He or she represents your intuition and might hold important and useful insights.
See Using Your Intuition – Summing Up – Being the Person or Thing – Edgar Cayce