Posts Tagged ‘dream dictionary interpretation’

Mandala

If one could produce a graphic image of the whole of human nature, many different forms might be integrated within an overall shape, such as a circle or square. Also, if it were possible to have a visual presentation of a person’s inner world of mind, weaknesses, strengths, order, confusion, and quality, each person would appear differently. Some would be internally jumbled, divided and ugly; others symmetrical, integrated and beautiful.

Because the unconscious produces dreams, and because dreams are imagery that give form to the otherwise abstract elements of internal human nature, there arise in some dreams shapes or patterns which depict an overall view of ones own inner condition. Carl Jung drew attention to the circle and square designs in some dreams, calling them mandalas – which is a Sanskrit word meaning circle, and referring to religious symbols – and seeing them as representing the nucleus of the human identity. Although we are, in our everyday life, the magical and mysterious process of life, it is difficult for us to actually answer the question ‘Who am I?’ or ‘What am I?’ with any lasting conviction. See Life

The mysterious essence of ourselves is met in dreams as a circular or square object or design; as the sun, a flower, a square garden with a round pond in the middle, or a circle with a square or quartered design within it, a circle with cross within, a revolving or flying cross shaped object. Classical symbols from all nations use this theme, and we can find it in the Round Table of king Arthur, in the centre of which the Holy Grail appeared; the healing sand paintings of the Navaho Indians; the zodiac; circle dances; stone circles; the Buddhist wheel of birth and death; and so on.

The circle usually symbolises a natural wholeness, our inner life as nature has shaped it. The square shows wholeness we have helped shape by conscious co-operation with our inner world or the healing power of the Self. There are two main reasons why one produces this theme in ones dreams. It occurs in children or people meeting internal or external shocks, and produces a strengthening of the vulnerable identity in meeting the varied influences they face. It arises in people who are meeting and integrating the wider life of their being existing beyond the boundaries of their usual interests, or what they allow themselves to experience. The contact with the Self is then part of an extending of awareness into what was dark or unknown, not only in ones own unconscious, but in external life. In touching the nucleus of ones being in this way, one becomes aware in some measure of the infinite potential of ones life. There is often an accompanying sense of existence in eternity and the many different ‘mansions’ or dimensions of experience one has within the eternal.

Jung says of it “The mandala serves a conservative purpose-namely, to restore a previously existing order. But it also serves the creative purpose of giving expression and form to something that does not yet exist, something new and unique. The second aspect is perhaps even more important than the first, but does not contradict it. For, in most cases, what restores the old order simultaneously involves some element of new creation. In the new order the older pattern returns on a higher level. The process is that of the ascending spiral, which grows upward while simultaneously returning again and again to the same point.

Example: The first waking dream was looking at the green wall and seeing the huge moving mandala. At the centre of it was emptiness. Out of this nothingness poured forms of living creatures, all moving and dancing out from the centre in time with each other – though making different movements. These emerging, dancing forms went out to a periphery – the edge of the circle – then they danced back to the centre and merged back into the nothingness yet at the same time new beings were born from it.

See: The archetypes of the self and search for self; yoga and dreams; archetype of the mandala.

Mane

If on an animal, it suggests power, strength, wildness or freeness of feelings and urges. If on a human See: Hair.

Mansion

The mansion, like house, shows all the different departments of your life, such as the bathroom for cleansing, library for mental growth, etc. The mansion however, is sometimes used to show just how big you are, how much you hold in yourself, and perhaps the amount of work you have put into becoming who you are. See: House.

Although a house represents all the aspects of self in which our identity lives – a body, emotions, creativity, etc. – a mansion is depicting the same thing with a different emphasis. It is ourselves as we are plus features still latent, possibilities not yet developed or explored.

Example: When I identified with the house it took a while to really experience it as a living process rather than simply an intellectual interpretation.  But when I did I become the structure and experienced the extent of the house, I realised it as my body.  But it was not my body as I had been taught to see it through my training as a nurse.  I did not experience it simply as a biological process, or a physiological machine.  I experienced it as an incredibly ancient thing, carrying or incorporating in its form and functions lessons of life gathered over millions of years of human and animal evolution.  I felt that it holds within its darkness – the presently unconscious areas developed and lived in the past – enormous amounts of information or memories.  We fail to be aware of these because our attention is so fixed on the world outside of us.  But of course, even there, if we look carefully, we can see we are the result, our culture and language are the result, of the events and lives stretching back into the ancient past.

Manure

The things you no longer need, that no longer nourish you, but can now be used in new growth when broken down. The manure might be new ideas or a new encounter that stimulates growth. See: Faeces.

In some ways our personality or identity is like a plant which feeds from the most unlikely material to produce beautiful leaves and flower. The plant can transform manure into living leaves and petals. Our identity feeds on experience and information – some of which may appear uninviting, painful, or unwholesome. In fact the experience may be all of these, and be shown as manure, and if not put to our roots – our process of becoming aware of things in an intensely felt manner which links feelings with intellectual insight – remain a disintegrating influence. Like manure something that is rich and needed for or holding in it the potential for growth.

Learning processes which pile intellectual information on children or adults without helping them to allow their deep feeling responses, are piling manure on the psyche while cutting off its roots. Personal disintegration is the result.

 Example: Example: I was near a lake in the countryside. Everything was frozen. I saw some horse droppings still steaming and this seemed to be the only living thing around. Kevin K.

Kevin’s comments on this are that the frozen lake and countryside express his feelings about the world around him. He sees it as cold and uninviting. It is frozen and there is no life in it for him. That is, he cannot find anything in life to excite him or have meaning. The horse dung he realised is the resources he can use to change his life. The dung can be manure or food for growth, or fuel to burn for energy and heat. This made him feel as if there is a way to transform his old unsatisfying patterns of ‘frozen’ emotions into something growing and satisfying.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

What is happening in the dream with the manure?

Is it seen as useful or objectionable?

If I have used manure how have I used it?

See compost – Settings in Dreams – Dreams are Virtual Realities – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

Map

Clarifying ideas of direction in life. Understanding of what one has or wishes to do, and how to do it. You might be wondering what direction you need or want to take in life, or where your present course of action is taking you.

 We can be lost and need a map for many things. For many of us are without a map of our life, or we lose ourselves in love and get terribly lost in the experience, even in childhood we can lose ourselves, or become lost in ourselves because of troubling experiences.

 Example: We give ourselves all these names – like God – Christ – Allah – Buddha – Soul Mate. We find that wonder in ourselves and then project it externally. We cannot believe that what we see as God, or Allah and a great love is a glimpse of our own potential, is a vision of what we are. So we project it outwards and kneel before it.

Example: Of course this didn’t mean that my sense of time was fully developed from there on. The experience of being lost in the world of Michaelmas daisies and sticklebacks, shows how slowly the sense of time creeps into our soul, and influences it.  It is difficult to map the gradual encroachment of time into our worldview. Even well into my school years, summer holidays felt like an eternity.  At that period I had no concept of the holiday ending.

There is a view that there is a map of the way forward. When we can realise something of our Core Self, then we can begin to feel we have achieved some level of mastery in the physical world. Therefore, if we see enlightenment as the extension of self-awareness through a further maturing of our individual self, just as adolescence arises through maturing of the child self, we will look to those around us who have achieved some degree of enlightenment as our older brothers and sisters. We will move toward the map of our life though the processes of growth and maturing, especially understanding our dreams, which give many maps for us to follow if we take note of them.

Likewise we need a map of the hugeness we are within us – the unconscious. An introduction to this is given in Levels of Awareness – Functions of dreams

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

When have you felt lost and in need of a map or guidance?

What or who have you felt guided by in the past?

Have you a map or assurance of the way you are heading?

See Enlightenment – Life Changes – Collective Unconscious – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams 

Marathon

Participation in life, in the human ‘race’. What happens may sum up your feelings about how you feel about life. It might also have tones of winning or losing. See: Race.

Mare

A mare in you dream is your powerful instinctive womanhood. Or if it is a male dreaming it, then you relationship with a powerful female. See woman

 Our awareness of the inner mammal we all are can be frightened because of a pain experienced in the past. That is how animals function. They experience immediate primitive pleasure pain or fear in their body and emotions, enough to turn them away from possible danger or move toward pleasure. And that is exactly how our own animal brain communicates with us still. Such communication results in what we call psychosomatic illness, irrational fears, and panic attacks. Or on the positive side the great exuberance and pleasure. See horse

The horse or other animals are a part of you that if you took the time to really feel the feelings they provoke, and get past the blockages you have as protection against you knowing yourself, then you become more whole, saner, and with more powers. See Mammal Brain

They are the natural urges in you that have only been slightly broken in, or socialised, so we may feel them as urges that may react against what we ask of them. A horse for instance is broken in, or socialised, when it is young, as we are.  For we are ourselves largely a mammal and this part of us still has to be cared for. A horse for instance is exactly as we are when first born. But if we are caring for our inner mare – a horse – we must still make sure it has proper food, exercise and rest, as well as an expression for its herd instinct and desire to reproduce. Please see Programmed

So the mare in your dream can sometimes be about being a mother and giving birth.

 Example: I dreamt two great wolf like dogs were on a headland. They had to be killed for some reason. I shot them. They seemed to take a long time to die and I felt compassion for them. Now horses seemed to be lying with them. The death struggles became the horses – mares – struggles to give birth. I saw the vagina parted to show a head. Birth would follow. Nathan.

Nathan explored his dream and had the following intuitive response to it as if someone was explaining it to him: “When you were trying to murder the lower forces in yourself they would not die, they only thresh about. Try the bringing of life to them. The bringing of love is represented by your desire not to have them suffer. Great love turns the destructiveness of the lower forces into creativeness. The gun was the destructiveness of the fears and angers in you turned against yourself. The love redeemed this power, directing it in a new way. Love enables new life to emerge from the whole. The new life promises strength where there was only fear. When you love yourself, you lift parts of your being into new life.”

 Example: I saw a beautiful dappled grey mare. It was exquisitely shaped, and had the look of great sensitivity and intelligence. Its front left leg had been snapped off below the knee in a recent accident. I went out and called it gently. As I laid my hands on it the mare quietened and lay its head against me in obvious relief to be near someone in its pain. It so needed contact it put its injured leg around my shoulder, pulling me closer as a woman might who needed to be held and loved. I felt great contact and love for the creature. In waking I felt it wanted me to make love to it.

Such an exquisitely beautiful dream shows you are a person who has created or crafted your own mental and emotional clarity. The lovely horse is in fact your own natural feelings, your own emotional responses. They have been hurt in some way connected with love, and you are managing to care for this pain in yourself, but there is a longing in you for the physical tenderness of a woman.

Becoming a mare: This is a very primal and important dream. It shows how much you have integrated the mammal into your conscious self. It brings great power and wonder to you.

When this happens you are one the ancestor of the tribe and the clan, your family. Therefore you have become more than human and have begun to see Life, as most people are blind to.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

What did you feel about or in connection with the mare?

Did you feel any connection or links with it?

Can you imagine yourself as the mare?

See Being the Person or Thing – Clicking On – Animals

Mark Marked Marks

A mark may suggest the influence that created the mark. We may be marked by certain experiences of life, or leave a mark through our actions. A mark may also have arisen by intention, or by accident. The mark may represent a sense of ownership or a connection, as with a trade mark. The mark may indicate quality or lack of it – the mark of Cain, or a goldsmith’s mark.

The huge transitions or changes we meet in our life leave a mark on us which may be shown in dreams. For instance, “Today I noticed for the first time a small brown mark on my left hand. True I have been out in the sun, but I never grow freckles. This is one of those marks old people have on their hands”. So this was an indication of ageing.

Also our parent and forebears, as do the culture and language we are born into leave enormous marks or influences in us. See Programmed

 Our body – as with finger prints – always leave marks of our presence. Your activities and work leave an observable mark upon the world. The Y chromosome in each male holds in it markers showing ones ancestral history back to the beginning of human development – 300 million years in fact. See Ancestors

Blood on the ground can be the mark that someone has been hurt or killed or as a sign of danger.

A brand can suggest ownership by whatever has branded you, or it can be a marking of you socially as a warning of some sort. In some cases it is a mark of recognition, as in tribal branding, or a mark of love.

 Example: The pain in my chest started in earnest in connection with my struggle in relationship with Sonia – again the love connection. In later years a great many things that I uncovered in exploring it were to do with my loving and conflicting feelings regarding my children and with my wife. What have I done to love to create this pain? Why has its branded me like this?

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

Can I recognise how I got the mark and what it means?

What have I done to leave such a mark on me?

Is it a mark of things I have faced and met, like scars?

See Being the Person or Thing – Life’s Little Secrets – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

Market

Everyday reality. Your contact with the world in general, the hustle and bustle, the commerce of life, the commercial instincts, the unsympathetic mob. Trade, the buying and selling, even of yourself, perhaps in your skills or labour. In some dreams the market place is where you meet a person who represents the highest in yourself. This might be in the form of Christ or a being you know is radiant with love.

Reality of everyday life; the push and shove, give and take of relating to people in general, but particularly ‘the public’; the wide range of experience one meets in exposing oneself to more than ones close family and friends; the buying and selling of things or self, therefore the self interest in oneself or others. It is also a place of choices and decisions, so maybe you are looking for or seeking something.

There are also the huge markets in goods, sex slaves, prostitution, the black market, the stock market and the marketing of beliefs or ideas – such with religion or politics. These are dealt with in our dreams.

 Example: In fact I am still learning. My body, and I guess part of my emotional structure, was formed out of generations of forebears who were Roman Catholics. Some of my inner journeys showed me that this has actually changed aspects of the biological and physiological processes in my being. It has been a struggle to grow, and it is still not easy.

Dreams sometimes show you marketable ideas of projects, so may be market research is needed.

In the Chinese Ox Herding pictures the last one shows a man who has made the whole life journey in the market place as a common man, without any special robes, or religious dress, or even any followers. You can be special without any outer show.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What sort of market was it in the dream?
Was I seeking something or buying?

Did I feel comfortable in the market?

See Decision – Simple Truths – Meditation with Seed – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

Marriage and wedding

Feelings about being or getting married; uniting two different aspects of yourself such as intellect and feelings, practical and intuitive self; the ‘marriage’ between conscious and unconscious self – any children of the marriage would be flowering of new abilities or qualities. But children of married partners can often indicate the state of the marriage, its problems of wonders.

Sometimes it refers to what our energy or drive is uniting us with – such as a new business venture or creative scheme – any children of this type of marriage suggest our intuitive assessment of the likely outcome.

There are many urges in a woman or man other than getting a good partner. There is also the urge to find recognition in society, to move toward independence, to find a comfortable place in life – probably alone, to achieve financial independence, or to have children.

In some cultures dreaming of a wedding signifies a death in the family.

But from the viewpoint of the unconscious marriage is not about a church or civil ceremony. As the most orthodox church Catholicism states, you are not married unless you have had penetrative sexual intercourse. If that has not happened there is no need for divorce because marriage never took place.

The unconscious sees it similarly. As soon as you have penetrative sex with anybody you have formed links that are not physically visible but make a form of marriage. But it has to be between a woman and a man, for marriage is a holy rite leading to the wonder of procreation, the giving of life, which is what we are all about being life forms; which is  holy, not because the church says so, but because Life itself is a holy mystery.  So a man can never be married in the true sense to another man, or a woman to a woman. They can have a civil ceremony but not a real marriage.

But although the point of marriage is procreation, in dreams the creation of a child still takes place as many woman and men have dream children – which is the birth of a new part of oneself. It is a bringing to consciousness a new part of you that has been developing but remained previously unexpressed. Such births need to be honoured even though there is no physical sign of a child. So the new dreamt baby is a vulnerable part of you that needs care to grow and become a real part of your waking life.

But from this viewpoint there are two types of marriage, the first is through sexual intercourse between a woman and man. The second is through a complete union of the whole couple. Some believe that the spiritual marriage comes through the agreement to abstain from sex which should be a free mutual decision, rather than resulting from impotence or the views of one party. But experience shows another view which arises as one is able to open one’s life to the divine within you. This leads to the full marriage which includes the body, the personality and the divine impulse.

Example: I was led into the experience of my merging with Divine Love in marriage – when I married P. Gradually I was led to realise that it wasn’t me and P. that were married, the marriage was between the duality if Life meeting itself in wonder and love. This went on to a visionary experience of knowing the birth of each of us was the birth of wonder, of light and transcendence. I realised that we are all then ‘put down’ by those who raise us, and so the light we are is dimmed to an extraordinary degree. And I carried this light to my own spiritual self and all the women and men – including my children – who I loved. This felt incredibly real as if they would realise for themselves that they are married to the Highest. Example: I wanted them in some way to share what I had experienced – that the most high had incarnated into us.  God was not outside of us.  We are it, living this strange, often difficult, but wonderful life.  To have experienced that divine union in myself in the images of the divine female and the divine male as we join in a wondrous union, still moves me deeply as I write this.  To be shown once more that I am, as we all are, an incarnation of that very mystery of life, is a very great gift.

Dreaming of wedding if single: As in the example below, Mary could equally as well have dreamt she was the bride, but being in her thirties and unmarried it is easier for her to consider or experiment with the idea of marriage using the image of her friend. Should she marry whoever offers? When single one often dreams of marriage as a way of clarifying – what it would be like; could one succeed in it; is the present partner okay; how shall one achieve it? Man dreaming of marriage: For a man marriage faces him with something quite different to a woman dreaming of marriage. It is a woman’s initiation, and a man may feel as if he has to give up his manhood. So he may be facing such fears in his dreams – although marriage is a meeting and often a merging with his feminine self. For a man it can also be intimating the uniting of his female characteristics. See hermaphrodite; archetype of the anima Marriage: When a woman and man marry, something that often happens is that the woman interiorises the man and feels she is now complete. She has her man in her life and in her. The man can do the same thing. That is fine when it works by them staying together faithfully. But if the man leaves the woman, or the woman leaves the man, because they had taken their partner into them to become whole, the leaving feels like something has been ripped out of them. It is a terrible shock. See Archetype of the Animus Wedding dress: Feelings and hopes about relationship and wedding; in a negative dream it represents anxieties about ones relationship or the future. Wedding dress given by mother: Qualities and strengths or problems absorbed from mother about relationship; letting go of external mother by expressing her qualities in the present. 

Example: I am at the wedding of my best friend. The groom doesn’t turn up and she decides to marry the first person who comes along. I wonder whether this is a good thing to do.’ Mary T. Example: When I was engaged to my present husband I dreamt we were married and I looked down at my wedding ring. It was twisted and bent. In fact I now see it as a warning because we have not made a good marriage.’ S.W. Example: I am a gay 20 year old woman. I’ve been in a relationship with my girlfriend for about four months now. Previously, she had been my best friend for six years. Last night, I dreamt that we were married. I didn’t dream of a honeymoon, or announcing our marriage, or even proposing or anything of that nature. In the dream, I just…knew that we were married. My girlfriend’s hair was significantly longer than it normally is, if that means anything. In the dream, she insisted that she wanted to have a baby, and she wanted to do it by becoming pregnant through a sperm donor. It was a little strange, because neither of us are really keen on the idea of having kids at all, much less actually becoming pregnant. We were both excited about it in the dream though. Example: It was the realisation that in the little community I live in I am the only single male. I am feeling, or guessing, that the other males here are curious about that. This led me onto spontaneous speculations about what this meant in my life and whether it was a problem I was not looking at. I saw that some of the women in my life have wanted me to be more fully involved as their partner. I sometimes puzzle why I don’t have the same need, or I don’t feel the same need in reverse. As I explored this it felt as if I didn’t want to be contained within a woman’s needs. It reminds me of the proprietorial aspect of male female relationships.

See: Integrating the female in the male; Integrating the male in the female; bride; bridegroom.

Marsh Swamp

This usually indicates feelings of being bogged down, held back, or retarded in some way. You may be stuck in attitudes or feelings that are holding you back, or even threatening your wellbeing. It occasionally appears to depict the cloying relationship existing between mother and child; or sometimes, though not so often, between father and child. The marsh here represents the difficulty felt in breaking away from parental control, the emotional hold over you, and the ties of security and protection. Or the difficulties faced in becoming real individuals.

The swamp may show feelings of despair of great uncertainty in a relationship.

The marsh or swamp can sometimes represent a meeting with what is lying hidden within you, and so it may be felt as threatening or frightening. It is a place where the ancient or primeval may emerge. So it may be an experience of being held or swallowed by the swamp, which indicates strong feelings of being overcome by difficulties or losing your power.

 Example: Now a huge unknown creature began to enter into my awareness. I felt the presence of an enormous creature rising to the surface of something like a swamp or a body of water. At first I thought it might be a whale, but as I paid attention to what was happening it defined into a huge crocodile. This huge creature looked at me and said, “Mathew, join me.”  I laughed at this because it was so huge, and with so many associations of swallowing things, that I said something like, “What do you mean join you? Don’t you mean that you want to eat me?”  The creature replied to me, “No. No, it’s not like that, I’m just like a submarine. I have all these lives in me. I have many, many lives in me. I am life. I contain the many. 

The great crocodile represent both the threat and fear we may feel when meeting our own hugeness. See reaction to the unconscious 

Example: I was walking past a large building site which had been excavated for foundations. Rain had filled the excavated pits and a large lake had formed. As I walked past I could see ancient primitive creatures rising out of the water. One of them, a large dinosaur, came toward me. I was scared and ran away. The dinosaur followed and started speaking to me. I couldn’t understand what it said. Don.

Don explored his dream and says – I realised that through my internal digging into myself I had uncovered some feelings I had never met consciously before. Seeing these things helped me understand what was behind my difficult feelings and fears. For instance I saw that fear is fundamental to all human experience, and I needed to meet it and help it to enter into the modern world instead of be repressed and remain primitive.

Example: As I looked I realised it was the road to the hospital here I experienced such trauma as a three year old – and in which I had my tonsils out/both. I felt a sense of an awful past as I looked at the road. Then I was standing on the edge of a precipice or cliff. My wife was about four yards away near the road. I stepped in an area of soft earth like a marsh. It gave beneath my weight and I sank in up to my waist. I realised the cliff edge was unstable, and the whole area would fall. I was thinking and shouted to my wife to help me. She was gaily walking about, and made light of my call. I cried out again. Still she ignored me. I shouted again for her help. She took no notice, and I sank deeper, the ground gave way, and I fell to my death

Useful Questions and Hints:

Are you feeling threatened, and can you say what threatens you – not in the images of dream?

What is happening in your life what feels like you might get trapped or something emerging?

Is another person involved in how you feel and what you are facing?

See Facing Fear – Life Changes – Dealing with Fear – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

Martyr

May suggest a holier than thou attitude, a reluctance to change opinions in the face of criticism or condemnation, rightly or wrongly. Willingness to suffer for convictions. The sacrifice of part of yourself because of convictions. As a dream symbol this is not really healthy, in that all aspects of the nature come alive and are useful in your wholeness. Moving toward wholeness brings a resurrection of the dead or repressed parts of yourself, made clean and harmonious. See: archetypeof the scapegoat/martyr.

One can be a martyr in giving oneself to a cause, or one can be a martyr in that one forever feels one is being abused or used by others. There may be a sense of being asked too much by those around you or by the events of life. In such martyrdom there may be a hidden belief that if one does what is asked, if one sacrifices ones life for another, then one will be appreciated and loved. If one gives enough, maybe one will be recognised and rewarded.  

Parents, but especially mothers, often have a sort of inbuilt martyr at work in them. It is from this they manage so many years of self giving.

P. W. Martin, writing in his book Experiment In Depth about archetypal influence and how it overpowers the person if they are possessed by it, says, ‘A man so driven will not necessarily be self-regarding in his action. He may be completely disregardful of his own personal interests, a fanatic, a martyr even, for the cause. But archetypal energy is inherently ambivalent, as destructive as it is constructive, a dynamic which in the end is self-annihilating.

Orpheus was a man, a prophet and a teacher of divine wisdom. He was martyred and his tomb developed into a holy shrine. Later he was seen as a Christ like man, who kept alive the roots of religious feeling connected with agriculture and nature, with its cycles of birth, growth, flowering, fertilisation, harvesting the seeds, decay and death. These were seen as natural and a reflection of human life, with its renewal in the spring that followed – a resurrection through a natural process, the mysteries.

Christianity as it developed into an organisation fought against anything which linked it with past beliefs such as the Egyptian statement that a virgin mother had existed before Christianity, as it had in the statements of Buddhism. So it killed out any beliefs in its connection with natural cycles – which are obvious because the birth of the sun/son takes place as the sun is born in its yearly cycle. The Son of Man is said to have its start in heaven, not in the body of a human child – and yet we are all the creations of the great creative act. Even Christianity says the same – “And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” In his own image – it cannot be any clearer than that.

 Example: Although my father appeared to be passive in sending us away, his values governed our household, and these (as I interpreted them) included: – don’t give up at all costs because that is weakness; – if it hurts it’s worthy (martyr); – what you feel about something is not the point: what you are doing and achieving materially is what counts – don’t worry if you’re in a pickle because God will look after you: do what God wants and you’ll be alright (NB this tends to be the opposite of what you want because you’re sinful – another justification for why hurt is good for you).

Example: Rob is my son and he finds it hard to forgive himself.  I associate myself with Rob here.  I had always struggled with what God’s will is in my life.  Maybe I was supposed to stay in the marriage…be a martyr.  Back and forth I would struggle with this.  I had no one to talk to about any of this until my job change and meeting this supportive priest.  I know today, that by leaving the marriage it was the absolute best thing I could have done for every one of us.  We are all much healthier because of it.

Example: The mother of one man who goes to church every Sunday and labors every day cooking and sewing for charity. Her eyes are ever lowered in meekness and humility. In time of strife she dissolves into tears, and if things go too badly she has a heart attack. She is the most unfortunate, put-upon woman that ever lived—her face proclaims it. But she has driven her husband to impotence and drunkenness, and rendered her children helpless, dependent slaves to her every whim. Her whole family has literally been destroyed by the guilt she laid in its path.

Her son grew up obsessed with the idea of his own wickedness. Not until he realized that his sense of evil was a gift from his mother, not until he had ascertained that what she called evil was simply what displeased her or conflicted with her interests, did the pall of his self-hatred begin to lift. Finally, in one shattering revelation, he saw behind her mask of innocence the hidden monster, saw the transmuted fury and vengeance she had poured upon him, the cruelty of the psychic damage through which she had manipulated him. Only then did he learn to free himself.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

Do I feel others have abused me?

Am I happily self sacrificing, or do I try to get acclaim or love in that way?

Am I ready to die for a cause – if so what cause or belief?

How would I describe the martyr in my dream?

See Archetype of the Martyr – Avoid Being Victims – Being the Person or Thing – Life

Virgin Birth

This represents motherhood or the positive and even holy feelings about ones mother that arise in one at a very early age. But Mary is also a symbol of religious openness or receptivity.

This represents the human soul or psyche and its possibility of dropping pre-conceptions, thus attaining an inner virginity and through that being receptive to the unseen or unconscious side of self. Christianity named this the Holy Ghost. But older cultures also depicted this inner state of fertile receptivity. For instance Egypt expressed this human possibility in the form of Isis. Also Buddha’s mother Queen Maya, in 500BC, is said to have dreamt that a six-tusked elephant pierced her side with one of its tusks. This produced an immaculate conception. She understood the dream to mean the resulting child would become a monarch whose domain was the world. So the idea of virgin birth was not new to Christianity.

When we experience this personally, the child we conceive is the union between the receptive conscious self and wider awareness. This receptivity and virginity of mind leads to the birth in oneself of a force or activity that gradually transforms and enlarges ones life and experience. In the west we call what grows in us ‘The Christ’. Other cultures give it different names. See: How I Became A Virgin; Lifestream; Archetype of the Christ; archetypeof great mother; virgin; Meetings with Christ.

Generally speaking, outside of the Catholic faith, the image of the Virgin Mary is smiled upon. Even where critics point out that many older religions also had virgin deities who gave birth to a holy child, they still often fail to see its significance as far as mankind is concerned. This does not mean, however, that a few with understanding have not openly pointed out that the Virgin Mary represents an active principle in every person. Literally, every person can turn to this for help. But let me explain. Seen as dream symbols, the virgin birth gains a personal, inner significance to the man outside any religious beliefs. From this we can see that Mary represents the intuitive, receptive part of our own nature. Our feelings, our own virgin nature (i.e. that part of us not interfered with by thoughts, doubts, fixed opinions, biases and pre-conceived ideas) is open to new ideas, new opinions, new feelings. So Mary conceiving from the hidden processes of Life means that our own state of receptivity, of freedom from bias and prejudice, of ‘pre-conceived’ ideas, can receive parts of our nature that are as yet unknown. This is really only common sense. No new idea comes to any man with a closed mind and heart. No discovery is ever made by a person who believes they already know it all. To receive the new, we have to have at least a part of our mind ‘virginal’.

As Einstein said, “Knowledge is limited – Imagination circles the world.”

Mask

A false self you might put on in meeting others; latent qualities you can express or wear when needed – a mother might be a tigress when her children are threatened, but a meek person otherwise. Her tigress would not be ‘false’; ego less. An artificial front we have learned to develop since childhood. See Ground Zero – The Psuedopod

 We can mask our real feelings and guilt with other attitudes and feelings, perhaps because of ones work or relationship that is felt as disagreeable. So brutality or hurtfulness in relationship can be in the form of subtle accusations or criticisms masked as rational comments.

 A dream image is simply a mask you use to describe a feeling or a realisation. So if you dreamt of a mountain lion, and you imagine yourself in the body of the mountain lion/dream image, you will get behind the mask and you will feel the quality and reality behind the image.

 Example: When the masks of the dream images were stripped away, the woman sobbed so deeply because her daughter had never been independent from the mother’s love before and it was terrible for the woman to face life without her daughter. Her daughter had left home and gone to university, and the woman had dreamt her daughter had been murdered.

Taking of a mask could suggest people seeing you without the cover of status, vocation, lack of confidence or the pretense we use – or maybe reveal the real beauty or genius you have. Or putting on a mask might be a way of putting ones ego aside.

Animal masks may suggest either animal qualities being worn, or sometimes the person transforming into the spirit of the animals that we all have within us. See Levels of the Brain

Or sometimes another aspect of you showing itself yet remaining masked, or a dead person – trying to communicate with you. The clown shows us the wonderful and tragic human feelings underlying the masks we might wear in daily life.

An oxygen mask suggest you either have signs of breathing difficulty, or else you feel a life threatening situation is being dealt with.

I found that death has a beautiful face once we tear away the awful mask we put on it. Death is naked beauty. It is a mask we put on it because we have been assured again and again that death is the end and all we see are the marks of illness or bodies torn apart by war. We perhaps all have masks which hides our true being. For most of us have never be aware of the Life that moves us, and so are masked.

 Example: I had a strong fantasy of the head, which was severed from the body and skinned, coming alive it, was me and what I had done to myself, who I was that felt so much, I had torn my body and head apart trying to find a solution to the misery I had suffered for years. With enormous certainty I realised that there was no cure for my sickness and I had struggled in vain. It was a tremendous blow – and I gave up. I mean I gave up hope, everything, and simple lay there.

Then I saw flesh on the cheeks of the head. Then it was like a native mask made of various things, and feathers. The feathers predominated in the fantasy. The mask of me was made of many things, but behind it when I/it fell apart was the certainty of being. The mask kept breaking up, leaving only a few feathers, as if it or I were nothing. I remember saying – “There is not even a mask, there is no me, it’s just a few feathers!”

Then I had a vision of one feather tied to a twig by piece of wool, blowing in the wind – a feather blowing in the wind. This was very stable and persistent in the fantasy. Everything resolved back to the feather blowing in the wind. It seemed like a Red Indian symbol, perhaps tied to the suspended body of the dead, but I could not understand.  Then it came to me that I had to listen in deep stillness – not think, not seek to understand, not struggle, just listen. My whole being entered into silence, gently listening as one might listen to the rain falling on a lake. Then suddenly it was known – the feather blowing in the wind – the sound of one hand clapping – the essence of human existence. Open against the sky – emptiness – enormity. I was healed.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What was expressed by the mask or what was its function?

Was I wearing a mask, and if so what did I feel about it?

Do I ever ‘mask’ my feelings?

See Martial Art of the Mind – Clicking On – Programmed – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

Mass

An approach to the sense of wholeness, the communal whole or collective mind, or to the Christ. See: Meetings with Christ; archetype of Christ.

In an inner sense the wine or spirit used in the celebration of the mass represents a life changing influence, an influx of power or potential – i.e. a deep self acceptance allowing new and often life-changing experience and energy both from within and from other people and events. In this sense the alcohol or spirit is probably used by the unconscious in dreams because the conscious self often feels helpless, or has to surrender control, in order to allow the up flow of what is potential or innate within you to emerge. It therefore relates to drunkenness – drunk with the spirit. See last example below. Here is a man’s experience of exploring his dream about being drunk because men had poured alcohol into him. See alcohol

 Example: As I allowed this I had a deep sense that this represented a profound self acceptance, but also an acceptance of my life situation. I can see this in that I am no longer struggling to climb out of building work or common everyday life. The men in the dream I felt as ordinary everyday life experience, and they were pouring the spirit of life on and into me. In other words the acceptance of everyday life opens to a connection with the roots of life within oneself – life that is both common and ordinary, yet profound. At this first part of the dream I also had an image that I was drinking the blood of thousands of human beings. I don’t mean I was drinking lots of blood, but that I was drinking the essence of their lives. This had in it the experience of taking in a huge realm of everyday life. It was the taking in, the acceptance of a wide range of human experience – everything from deep sexuality to religious realms of the supersensual. This I felt was what the wine used in Mass represented.

The lifting of the chalice represents the spiritualisation of the wine – but in fact it is only a symbol unless we feel inside us that we are taking in the blood – “drinking the essence of their lives”.

The bread is also a wonderful representation of what is holy in our everyday experience.

My experience of the meaning of this came about because my awareness was lifted up and spread over the immensity of time, and from this condition I was shown the beginning of things.

I cannot say I saw this, more that I experienced the condition of the beginning. And this condition was the gathering together of what I understood to be a whole universe that had previously existed. All that had existed had come to such unity that although this beginning was physical, it was also, in its unity, a being. It had awareness. This awareness did not exist in what we know as space and time.

As I experienced this I felt as if a resolution between science and religion had taken place in me. For here was something like the condition science suggests preceded the ‘big bang’. But what had been left out, I realised, was this consciousness, this immense being. For all life had here found a unity in one immense being beyond my comprehension. It was, in fact, difficult to grasp because I was overcome by emotion as I witnessed this.

This great consciousness had longed that other beings might exist. But in its present form this was impossible. Then I understood something that tore my heart to pieces, as it still does today when I dwell on the memory of the experience. This being purposefully went about destroying itself so that our present universe – we – might have existence. It was such a wondrous action for it was done in such a way, with such skill, with such love and self-sacrifice, such art and science, that its very death was a magnificent creative act. In other words its death struck into action forces and effects that created the universe in all its variety. This death is what we know as the ‘big bang’. It created time and space and the very special circumstances of the ‘death’ set in motion the forces that brought about a very particular universe. Without the particular influences set in motion there could easily have been a universe without any ‘space’ for individual awareness. It could have been a universe where everything was purely automated. It could have been many things.

As I experienced this, I realised that everything, every atom, every living thing that exists is a part of that wondrous being. There is nothing that is not of its love. So that whatever arises in the universe arises out of, and as, THAT. The human sense of God is a realisation of the very substance of our own existence. The awe we might feel is from an intuition of what has been given us as our own being.

So the bread, which represents the very ordinary and everyday source of our existence and nourishment, is in fact the very being of God that we eat. But we need to be aware of what we do in eating to make it holy. See big bang

Useful Questions and Hints:

Can you be aware that you are taking in and living the holy all the time?

Will you let your life reflect the holy that you are?

The bread and food you eat are all the creation of the universe?

See Enlightenment – Self Help – Life – Summing Up

Massage Masseur

Healing influence, loosening up of rigid attitudes, tensions, preconceptions, repressions.

Being massage or giving massage in a dream is a very intimate relationship, and in fact is much deeper than many people realise. Our body is a wonderful and sensitive thing, and pressure or massage does not simply touch the surface of the body, but can touch the very brain, our memories and trauma. So unless we are aware of that we may not be doing anything other than a sensual or sexual stimulus, unaware of the depths we are touching.

Example: I dreamt I was massaging the feet of my dear friend. I was very happy and wanted to do a good job for him (he has helped me so much in waking life). His feet were smooth and well looked after so it was an absolute pleasure for me to offer love and gratitude in this way. I remember wanting to use a range of massage techniques but he was gently moving away after some time, I felt he was possibly overwhelmed or embarrassed by my gesture. He thanked me with his eyes and I smiled because I knew I would pick up this act another time. This person often makes appearances in my dreams and we always have lots of fun together. I feel he is deeply connected to magic.

Example: F. was kneeling behind me and began to massage my spine. This was an extraordinary experience because it felt that where she touched my flesh, or rather where she produced some pressure on my flesh, I could feel the nervous impulse cascade through my body. It was literally as if I could feel it passing from one set of nerves to another to another and another, cascading through different sections of me. I could feel that where my body was touched it connected with different parts of me, physical and psychological. I could see that F. was moving on too fast so it was stimulating other areas and other responses. So I asked her to slow down so I could explore what was stimulated by touching one area.

It is amazing how different parts of the body respond. I explained to F. that each time she touched there was a ripple through my whole body. I said this because she was moving across different areas too fast. The same one place could produce a prolonged enough response to discover what that part of the body connected with physically and psychologically. Then I asked her stay in one place, to keep the pressure on one area. When she did this I began to feel that the particular spot being pressed connected with my throat and my rectum. It has links downwards and upwards. I could also feel a small part of the brain lit into action as it was pressed.  As this was happening I began to feel that nature erected self-awareness because it was so wonderful for life itself to look back at itself and develop further understanding. It had the possibility of working with the other creatures, of being a part of the processes of life on earth. We could work with forces of nature. Instead of that it has become a sort of self idolatry thing. You know, look how great we are. Let’s do this for us! It is like that awful advert – “Because I deserve it!”

I asked her again to stay on one place so I could see if it were possible to explore the connections.  “I can experience this impulse going right into my brain. But it is also going straight down into the cellular level of my being. It seems to be stimulating different responses that my being is capable of. It is calling them into play artificially. I suppose it is like playing notes and causing a piano or musical instrument to respond in certain ways. So in a way it is like exercising my being. I can feel a part of me coming alive in some way. It makes me wonder what this conscious self of mine is; what part it plays in the body. It is lovely to feel it as part of all that is happening in my body at the moment.”  There is something going on in my body that I am barely aware of yet. Areas of sensitivity are touched that connect with past experience. Therefore the touch connects with those areas, with those feelings, with those memories. It goes on and on because those memories connect with habitual responses and the other levels of myself. F. was pressing on the lower part of my spine where I think there was not much sensation. But it was bringing about the response in which my body wanted to groan and move. There was no pain attached to this it was simply an impulse arising from the pressure on that area of the spine. I allowed the moaning gasping sound to be expressed. I could feel the memory that was being touched and stimulated linking right back into the womb. A distinct sense arose that my body was just being formed – that I was just forming my body. As I was doing this things happened. I could feel my body as an integrated whole. The moaning struggle went on, deepening. I began to make baby like noises. As this happened I experienced complete helplessness with the overriding feeling of not being able to move. Like a tiny baby that did not yet have the capacity to move its own limbs because of the impact of full gravity. I knew in some way that this was how I felt when I was born. I couldn’t move and was completely inert and dependent. Completely without an ability to do anything for myself. There was just a big hunger.