Posts Tagged ‘dream dictionary interpretation’

Invoice

To receive an invoice often symbolises a bill of reckoning. In other words, something you have done or thought, is now producing consequences that have to be paid for. To send an invoice suggests you are calling in what events owe you. But sometimes people might cheat you, as in the example.

 Example: We had gone to bed early and the door bell rang.  When I answered it a salesman was there. I felt he was one of the pushy people who have nothing I want. All they want to do is sell something they have which will earn them a crust. The man was into the house. I got hold of his hair and dragged him out of the house – his body literally prone and dragging on the floor – put him out and shut the door. He had left some invoices or something similar in the house. I went to the door and was about to push them through the letter box when he came and started pushing a bill for two pound through the door for calling on us. I pushed it back with the other stuff.

That is the way you should treat dream hecklers.  “In the ancient view of dreams recorded in the yoga Atharva Veda, being active or even actively aggressive, was seen as a positive sign, even if one was injured or mutilated as a result of ones active stance; whereas if the dreamer passively accepted injury in a dream this was seen as a negative implication. This was because it was felt that the active or passive stance within the dreams indicated a similar disposition during waking life. As the active person is generally more successful, the dream sign of an active disposition was seen as fortunate”.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

Did you send or receive the invoice?

What was the outcome in the dream?

Wht feelings did you have or where indicated in the dream?

See Secrets of Power Dreaming – Techniques for Working your Dreams – Characters and People in Dreams

Iron

Strength; material power or force. Strength of will, perhaps unbending emotions. Brutality. Will that does not allow any partnership with the emotions. Hardness and unfeelingness.

This often indicates strength, use of will, protection, or something that is practical and long lasting. But it is also unyielding and can carry heat or cold well, so may refer to feelings about either not being vulnerable, or to being unfeeling or burnt. Metal bars often figure in dreams where the dreamer is fighting off an attack, or actually attacking someone. This indicates really hardened feelings and anger, along sometimes with the desire to hurt.

Iron is one of the common minerals, and some of these are important in the life of the body. In a very real sense, human life brings consciousness to the minerals and the plant substances. Human life transforms, or can transform or lift up these substances, and occasionally this is indicated in a dream. See: chemicals.

 In a number of dreams iron gates are mentioned, or trapped by iron bars. These can either mean you are trapped by a very rigid view of your life situation or that your thoughts are a form of prison out of which you cannon escape. A woman whose mother had recently died dreamt that “we were standing outside a garden with a wall and wrought iron gates. My mother went through the gate, but I couldn’t”.

Metal in its various forms are often mentioned as jewellery. See gold; silver; jewellery 

 Example: 002:040 002:040 And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise. 002:041 And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters’ clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay. From the Bible, Daniel.

Here iron is seen as strength that can break things in pieces.

 Example: The dream of a pregnant woman. She was feeling very much under the weather and had a dream in which a voice told her she should take iron and calcium tablets. She followed the suggestion, taking kelp and iron, and soon regained her health. This same woman seems to have such dreams fairly frequently. At a time when her husband was ill through overwork, she dreamt that he should take vitamin A and more butter. Remembering the truth of her ‘pregnancy’ dream, he did this, and it was the beginning of his gradual recovery. It is worth stating that neither he nor his wife had previously given much attention to vitamin therapy.

Idioms: Iron fist in velvet glove; iron curtain; man of iron; iron will; rod of iron; strike while the iron is hot.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

What was my relationship with iron – health, protection or a barrier?

Did I experience any feelings in the dream?

Was I aware of any message in the dream?

See Emotions and Mood in Dreams – Plot of the Dream – Summing Up

Ironing

Smoothing out some situation regarding ones feelings or attitudes. Trying to get the difficulties or problems out of ones feelings or social life.

Just before menstrual bleeding the endometrium is thicker and its surface more spongy or “wrinkled” before it sloughs off and menstrual bleeding starts. At this time several women report dreams where they need to iron wrinkled clothing. One woman reported, “I was in the bathroom ironing.”

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

What was being ironed?

Was it succesful in smoothing the material?

Do I iron clothes usually?

See Summing Up – Context/Theme – Secrets of Power Dreaming – Associations Working With

Irrigate Irrigation

It represents allowing emotions or feeling values to come into your life, a healing process that will promote growth and a new sense of yourself. So it suggests cultivation of growing parts of you.

Irrigation ditches suggest ways you have worked on to direct you emotions and energy toward growth.

Sometimes it may be a way of showing you what has been left in your nature from the work of people a long time ago. See The Conjuring Trick

Useful Questions and Hints:

Have I felt dried up or sterile lately and need irrigating?

Where is the water being directed?

Do I feel a new impulse has come into my life?

See Techniques for Working your Dreams – Summing Up – Allowing the Spontaneous Flow

 

Island

Something that has come from the depths of your unconscious, but is now established in everyday life. A part of yourself cut off by emotions or isolation or lack of communication. Feelings of isolation or loneliness, or your attempt to cut yourself off from others due to your feelings about them.

The island can also suggest the way you feel safe from the world, or feelings about being trapped.

The loneliness could be as one might feel when retired from work, isolated from a situation you once knew. Being on an island could signify being independent. The island might also signify a small sphere of operation or influence in your life, or feeling trapped; or conversely, feeling safe from the world through introversion or independence.

One can I form an island of charm through belief which stands against commons beliefs like fortress on an island.

The collective unconscious is seen by some thinkers, like Jung and Sheldrake, who see individual human consciousness like an island in a huge ocean in which there are countless other islands. Above the surface of the water, which is like individual waking self-awareness; in this there is a sense of separate existence, with definite boundaries where the shore meets the sea. Beneath the surface however, one island is connected to all other islands. The land stretches away under the waves and rises here and there into other islands. So, it is thought, personal awareness, beneath our everyday consciousness, shades off into a connection with a collective unconscious we all share. Through this connection we may be able to arrive at insights into other people otherwise denied to us.

Swimming or getting to an island: Move to independence.

Desert island: Attempt to ‘get away from it all’ – or feelings of not connecting with others.

Island in stormy sea: Personality traits such as independence and self assurance that give strength amidst difficult emotions and turbulence.

Large island with other people: Isolating oneself by involvement with a particular belief, group of people or problem.

 Example: A woman in red tells me about an island which is at our left side in the sea, not too far from the beach. It is an artificial island she says, which was created by using sand from the bottom of the sea. I look at the white sand in the clear water and I am surprised about the way the island was made. It is a very small island and it looks beautiful with a lot of trees and plants. I see many boats in front of the island. Then I see what looks like a bridge from the beach toward the island, but the bridge is just beneath the surface of the sea.

The island is a place of beauty that has been brought up from the depths of yourself and is now apparent to you, but you do not know yet how to live on it – make it a permanent situation. But there is a hint in the bridge that is invisible being underwater. Yet if you dare to actually walk to it you will find you can do it. Instead you try the sailing boat – probably because you have experience of it. But you can posses the island! Use – Secrets of Power Dreaming

Useful Questions and Hints:

Am I on the island or far from it?

Is it my island – in fact everything in dreams is your own, though many people feel that they are not worthy or do not ‘own’ it?

What is my relationship with to or with the island?

See Techniques for Working your Dreams – Questions – Avoid Being Victims

Ivory

Something precious or beautiful, such as an insight or personal quality, which has grown out of the push and shove of life experience. Black ivory is the unconscious aspects of the soul or personality. Can also represent purity of purpose.

Because it comes from an elephant, and is the power of a tusk, it can represent the great power of the elephant – the remover of all life obstacles.

Homer in the Odyssey says – Two gates for ghostly dreams there are: one gateway of honest horn, and one of ivory. Issuing by the ivory gates are dreams of glimmering illusion, fantasies, but those that come through solid polished horn may be borne out, if mortals only know them.

 Example: I am staying in a relatives house. He has all these scrapbooks and knickknacks of his daughter who died. I want to steal an ivory piece of erotica (a woman opening her legs to reveal her snatch). I put it in the pocket of my blue smoking jacket.

Example: I am at a museum in some dry place like Australia. It has the most beautiful ‘natural’ exhibits I have ever seen. The most beautiful exhibit is of something that is like an upside down ivory tree, its roots sticking up in the air, with figures of people – angels – naturally formed in the small, fine roots.

Example: In 544 BC, the Buddha’s mother, Queen Maya, dreamed her bed was transported by four kings to a high Himalayan peak, where four queens adorned her with jewels and brought her to a golden palace. A white elephant with six shining ivory tusks appeared and painlessly pierced her side with a thrust of its tusk. She awoke to the song of a blue bird and realised that she had immaculately conceived.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

What do I feel in connection with the ivory?

Do I have any associations with ivory?

Is it something I have wanted to own?

See Associations Working With – Summing Up – Allowing the Spontaneous

Jackal

As dog but a wild version; a trickster figure like coyote and fox; a deceiver; being a scavenger it has sometimes been associated with death as with crows and vultures.

Due to being able to see in the dark and the light, the jackal was seen by the Egyptians as a pathfinder in the underworld – i.e. the unconscious – leading the dead to the other world. As such it can be a great help in showing you the way when you are uncertain. See: coyote.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

What sense do you arrive at of your dream jackal – is he/she sneaky, divine, wise or a messenger? Whatever it is can you sum up what you get from the jackal in the dream?

What do you experience if you imagine yourself and talk as your dream jackal? (For help doing this see Stand in Role)

What are the key words used in describing the interaction between yourself and jackal?

See: key words – Techniques for Working your Dreams – Animals

Jacket

Feelings with which you clothe yourself. Particularly to do with degree of formality you present yourself with. See: Clothes.

Jaguar

Anger; power of assertion and fierceness.

In its native country the jaguar is seen to have mystical powers. In other words the jaguar in our inner world and dreams has great power that can be used if one can meet the inner creature that you are. So it may represent sexual power, the ability to control or be controlled.

Therefore an animal associated in myth with the unconscious and the power of the Mother Goddess. Native people see the jaguar as a guide as they travel the inner world.

A dream jaguar can represent certain things such as speed. stealth, power, sleekness and a predator. If we see the puma has the same associations as the jaguar, the following shows how dreams show how such creatures inhabit our inner life.

Example: It was a large building, but my main impressions were of a huge – seven foot – butler type character who I immediately thought of as Lurch. He came apparently to assist me and lived or existed in the place. I noticed he had a huge knife stuck in his belt and I thought he might use it to attack me. This didn’t worry me too much, but I asked him why he had it. He told me there was a big Puma in the place that leapt on one and you had to guard against it. So he gave me a knife to do so.

We walked off to explore the building and the beautiful big Puma leapt on me. But at this point I knew that nothing could harm me in the dream state. So I caught hold of the Puma in my arms and held it. As I did so I saw it was the beautiful, powerful, female and wild untamed aspect of a woman I loved, and treated the she cat lovingly.

In exploring the dream the dreamer said, “As Lurch I am the Guardian of the Threshold, and I am the guide to what is beyond. My task is to produce fear in those who reach this place. For only those who can face fear can go beyond here safely. I also test the traveler, as I did with B. by giving him a knife. I attempted to frighten him by my appearance – half alive – and by carrying a knife, and also by telling him the puma would harm him. But he passed the test by loving the puma instead of killing it. To pass beyond here you need courage and love.

“As the puma I am life. I am love and the untamed expression of being alive, of feeling passion and love. I am both a test and an opportunity in B’s life. He was not afraid of me, and so I become his companion. I am a native of the America’s –  the inner world. I know this territory. I can survive here. It is what I do, what I know. I can hunt for you B, but I need something from you too. Take the lead and we will be of good to each other.

I am the influence of your woman in your being and in your direction. I am her energy and spirit playing upon you and within you. Together with the Guardian we can walk into new experiences to claim what is there for us. This was a beautiful experience, full of promise of a companionship that has real meaning – entering new territory of inner and outer life – and real companionship – out of having qualities to share that are complimentary to each other and important in what we are journeying to – and a love that has been tested. See Guardian of the Threshold

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

If I imagine myself as the jaguar, do I feel anger, power or fear?

Is it a male or female jaguar in my dream – and how does this link with me?

What is the jaguar doing or trying to do – and does this relate to any of my waking activities or feelings?

See Stand in Role – Settings in Dreams – Life’s Little Secrets – Edgar Cayce

Jail Jailer Gaol Gaoler

This can point to any of a range of attitudes such as – guilt, self criticism, a sense of alienation, intellectualizing life – anything restricting the way you express yourself. So the jailer is the attitudes or concepts you imprison yourself with, or hold yourself back with. See: prison. Feelings of being restrained by your environment, morals, philosophy.

What we believe or imagine about who we are, or what we are not, is for many people an incredibly potent torturer and jailer. But many of what people call their demons are unbelievably subtle, and capture us, restrict us, shut out the possibility of a full life, or being able to respond with our own creativity. The real problem is that we often accept this as normal or barely notice them. See Archetype of the Paradigm – Masters of Nightmares

 Example: I now lives in a state in which I am constantly tortured and put down by seeing that unlike my sisters I have never had a child, have not achieved any lasting success in my life and live in a tiny bedsit which I might have to leave due to not being able to pay the rent. There is also an inner ghost haunting me through my feelings that I have not lived up to my father’s hopes. I long to earn enough to own my own house, and to have a loving partner who closely my life. The lack of all of these pulls me down to frequent feelings of despair and hopelessness.

All of what Lisa feels about her life – no child – no external achievement – no partner – no house of her own – not measuring up to her family – are all true, but only in a certain way. What is devastating is that Lisa believes she is what she feels. Those beliefs are her jailers keeping her trapped.

Example: I was in a prison with several others – all in one cell. It felt as if I had been in the prison for years. I was standing near the bars angry and shouting about the injustice of my incarceration. As I stood raging I suddenly realised that all my anger was having no affect on the world. I was the only one suffering it. I saw that the peace and freedom I wanted from release I could have now by letting go of my anger. I would then be in peace, and would be free of my own negative emotions. I forgave my judges and gaolers, and a change came over me. In the following years I learnt to drop the other ideas and emotions I tortured myself with. I was filled with joy until my bliss filled the cell. In this way all had a changed relationship. In a strange way I was now utterly free.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Can I admit to myself what I am imprisoned by?

Do I use self justifications to avoid admitting the truth to myself?

Is there a way out of the prison I have created?

See Avoid Being Victims – Martial Art of the Mind – Secrets of Power Dreaming – Summing Up

Jam Conserve

In a mess, a sticky situation. Conserved ideas. Fruits of labour. Pleasure, perhaps childhood pleasure or feelings. The sweetness of your life.

 Example: With Nan living in a monastery. Grounds and grounds were beautiful. I was feeling insecure within the relationship but could not know why. As I was walking through the grounds and I looked through a magazine and saw pictures of me, one holding a pot of jam. The article was about male chauvinism, and the jam represented my selfishness. I was so angry about it and where did they get the photos?

Here the jam is seen as selfishness, probably because he is pictured as holding it and maybe not sharing it.

Jam on my brakes: This can indicate a personal emergency that you need to be aware of. It might show a health problem, or saying you need to be careful in driving your car or yourself.

Log jams: If a river is bursting a log jam,it suggests blockages have been removed. It can indicate delays and confusion, and frustration, also feeling stuck with no way to turn. It is good to take time to look back at your life and reassess your life situation.

Traffic jam: This might link with many things depending on what you feel in the dream. Some possibilities are feelings of frustration about not reaching your goals; a life situation in which you are caught up in a public or communal activity or event and find it difficult to escape and go your own way and your own pace. This might also be an expression of feeling trapped by circumstances or other people. Or things in your life not flowing well with feelings of frustration, blocked emotions or finance.

Idioms: in a jam; in a terrible jam; jam packed; jam session; something jams; jam tart; jammed together; traffic jam

Useful Questions and Hints:

What sort of jam is being described, can I define it?

Do you feel in some sort of jam in your life?

Or do you feel jammed up?

See stuck in life – Summing Up – Norman Cousins – Talking to Inner Self

Jar

See: Cup.

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.