Posts Tagged ‘dream dictionary interpretation’

Navel

Birth, dependency – especially upon mother; the way we connect our deepest self with the outside world. Having no navel would suggest you have no connection with your parents and forebears, or have lost or repressed any feelings of such connection. In some literature or drama it is shown as meaning the person is an alien or spirit. See navel and umbilical cord under body; birth dreams. Particularly read the piece under active imagination about the umbilical connection loss.

A symbol of an outer connection with our innermost feelings and being. It also represents a sign of dependency, of our dependence upon mother, upon the life process, upon earth.

The navel is a very important dream subject and can indicate your feelings of connection with your mother. But such feelings transfer onto any person we develop a close and feeling relationship with. So when there is any threat or disturbance in the relationship with husband, wife, or partner, this area might be involved and appear in a dream, or you might feel the pain or shock there. These feelings might be positive or very disturbed, depending upon your birth and childhood experiences. The likelihood is that such feelings will be blamed on the partner, wife or husband, instead of you being aware that they arise from ones earliest experiences of connection and physical and emotional dependence.

The navel, and its link with the umbilical cord, also can deal with feelings of dependence and the need for nourishment at a basic baby level. As such they sometimes become very linked with sexual need and what is felt in the sexual relationship. See Ages of Love

At a more abstract level, this area – the solar plexus – links with the way we connect with other people and the world through sympathetic feelings. It deals with how we take things into us from others, and what we give out. The digestive tract, with its ability to absorb and excrete is an image of this, but needs to be seen in a psychological way. Hurt, disturbance or pain in this area of our psyche can lead to tension and painful emotions or even physical sensations in relationship with a person or life.

Also the navel, like the nipples, can act as a sexual stimulus for some people.

Useful Questions and Hints:

How would I describe my early connection with my mother, or with my present partner – is it easy and secure, or do I still hold back or feel insecure in any way?

Is something happening in my life related to secure connection in a relationship?

What is the situation of the navel in my dream?

See Arm Circling Meditation – navel; umbilical cord; blood sucked

Near Nearer Nearest Nearness

When something is near to you in your dream, it shows the strength of your feelings about it, or how aware of it you are. The nearer it is, the more conscious and feelingful you are about it. The nearer something is to you in a dream, the closer it is to becoming conscious in a direct way rather than as a symbol. See: adjacent under positions.

There are many ways people dream of nearness – near the edge; people near me; near to the scrap heap; near to death; stand near him to give him moral support; near me is a woman. We can be near so many things in so many ways. In dreams you can be so near to someone or something you can merge into them/it. That is because what we see as outside us in a dream is simply our different thought, attitudes, abilities, fears and hopes all projected outward in the drama of our dreams.

Some people feel near to madness or despair. Their situation has become apparently helpless. But such helplessness only exists if you believe in it. See Martial Art of the Mind and

People get terrified when they begin to realising that they are fundamentally bodiless consciousness, we create a dream image of ourselves with a body. Also to realise that we are not in control of our life can create enormous fear. Out of that arises all the fear of death – for even if we lose all our limbs we are still us. See Life’s Little Secrets

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

What am I near to in my dream? Look it up to gain more insight.

In what way is it influencing me?

Am I in some way trapped by being near?

Is fear or pain a trap for me?

See Method to Manage Intense Emotion – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Martial Art of the Mind

Neck

The neck may indicate the way you connect your thinking (your head) with your feelings and sexuality (your body). Your neck is also the weak or vulnerable part of you, unlike the chest or head that is protected by bone, so any attack to the neck shows being influenced through your vulnerable feelings.

A woman who experienced a lot of neck pain and explored the underlying causes of this wrote:

Over the past few weeks and last weekend I got an opportunity to spend an extended period of time alone and relaxed during which I was able to tie the threads together, and understand what the throat and neck symptoms are about. I had been thinking along the lines of suppressing my inner creativity due to fear of censorship and that is one element, but I think the more fundamental is that the throat is constricting my experience of the environment, because I am scared stiff of what it will do to me. If I experience the outside world “raw”, it will evoke such strong emotions in me that I will be blown apart, annihilated, so I cut down what I experience of it and I try to manipulate it so that I cut out anything that will evoke painful emotions. S.

As the throat is the narrow channel through which we express or repress our emotions and reactions, it can become a site of great tension or pain. What S. is realising is that she is causing her neck pain through her ‘constriction’ in her throat. When S. tried to drop her controlling attitude she described what she met as follows:

I guess it’s a process that needs to occur bit by bit: you can’t turn over ingrained belief patterns all at once. The other day my neck tension became very painful and wearing and I felt very demoralised because I thought all my progress was an illusion. The next day I woke in a state of terror and anxiety but the tension had gone. “Good,” I thought, “I would rather have the terror”. And I have been trying to keep the terror and investigate it. It is the terror that I will not know how to deal with what life brings, or how to cope, and the resulting emotions will be overwhelming and ultimately blow me apart. So there are issues of self-trust, but I think that is because I am assuming that I’ll be using my father’s rules. I have to convince myself that if I use my rules, life will be a beach!

Problems with the neck often refer to the way the neck can act as a bottleneck, or of traffic jam for deeply felt emotions. In such a case you need to examine what feelings are persisting, what emotions or words you haven’t allowed yourself to say. As the neck connects the head-thinking, with the body-feelings and sexuality, the neck may refer to a split or non connection between these two main areas of your being.

To be strangled in a dream may be due to difficulty in breathing, feelings of being unable to express easily or say what you really feel. Some relationship situations leave people feeling that life is being choked out of them. To have your head cut off, is to have thinking divorced from feeling.

You can stick your neck out, which means to take a risk; have a lot of neck, or nerve or audacity. These meanings have arisen possibly from the head being severed in execution, or hanging, or strangulation. The neck is a weak point, and to offer it suggests confidence, fearlessness. So the neck may depict a certain attitude, such as confidence or caution. The neck is also the point up to which we can be easily immersed in water. Beyond that point there is danger. So it can depict what we can take in life, and what is more than enough.

Because the throat holds our organ of speech, the neck sometimes depicts our will, our ability to ask for what we want, and also our confidence, as when we use the idiom, ‘stick my neck out.

Back of neck: This suggest emotional energy that is largely unconscious and may be blocked. Our biological energy not only flows into movement, sex, digestion, etc, but also into being aware, feeling, expressing who we are and our potential. As described by S. above, this can be held back for various reasons. If it is not is flows up the spine into the head. It may then express through the mouth, or be experienced as an uprush of understanding or insights.

Head hanging off: Dolls sometimes lose their heads because they have been so abused by their owner, so this may link with feeling that life has so harshly treated you that you feel like a helpless doll being dismembered. See: Dismembered body.

This can also suggest ‘losing ones head’. See: head.

Held by back of neck: Some dreams show someone being held or carried by the back of the neck. This is probably a link with how we see cubs being carried, suggesting helplessness and dependence, along with being cared for.

Hung from neck: Quite a few dreams show someone, or yourself, hung by the neck. There are many possible things this might indicate. For one thing it definitely links with death or the possibility of death. Such a death might be the result of self sacrifice, as show in the Tarot card of the hanged man, or it might be as the result of social action – a cause and effect of things done; a punishment because of feelings of guilt.

However, many hangings are due to suicide, and so might in a dream reflect depression, loss of any pleasure in life, a retreat from pain, or feelings of hopelessness or guilt.

In some dream however, there is a different sense of the hanging. It suggests not a death but an almost complete suppression of the life in one. A strangulation of the flow of pleasure and creativity that would otherwise stream through one. In such a case the rope needs to be removed and a new way of relating to oneself developed. (For help doing this see Secrets of Power Dreaming

Gripping neck or strangled: This has connections with strangled the creative flow in oneself or another. It is a way of repressing or controlling ones natural responses and feelings. But it may be shown as being gripped or strangled by somebody else, and might therefore show how another person’s influence in your life has a strangle hold over how you express yourself, what you say, and what you do.

Large neck: This suggests power, the ability to survive or face threats and persevere. It also may indicate having an inner strength or bigness.

Small or thin neck: Vulnerability of some sort, maybe emotionally. It could also indicate lack of reserves as far as health or illness are concerned.

Idioms: Breaking one’s neck; breathing down ones neck; dead from the neck up/ down; neck and neck; neck of the woods; pain in the neck; put ones neck on the line; risk one’s neck; stick one’s neck out; up to one’s neck. See: throat.

Useful questions or hints:

Is the neck in any way threatened or attacked – if so what am I feeling vulnerable about or attacked by?

Is something or someone gripping the neck – if so am I, or my responses to someone else, causing me to hold myself back?

Is something stuck in my throat – is so what is it I am having difficulty saying or expressing – maybe in asking for what I want or need?

See Secrets of Power Dreaming – Being the Person or Thing – Questions

 

Necklace

Display of special qualities; richness of feelings; feelings connected with the giver; social position. Jewels in necklaces represent your highest wisdom something to treasure and care for. See: Jewellery.

Power, authority, augmentation of personality, social attractiveness, charm or amulet. May associate with person who gave it, and the relationship with them. It can sometimes represent the things you hang round your neck, as a millstone round the neck. That is, obligations, karma, difficulties, set backs.

In Hindu tradition, it is believed that a spiritual thread binds together all things in existence, as a necklace binds together pearls and other treasures of the ocean floor.

Given as a gift: An acknowledgement of your special qualities.

Golden Necklace: Suggests a loving gift, or may imply many abilities of a spiritual long lasting nature.

Pearl Necklace: Beauty and wisdom that has arisen from the depths of your being.

To find or dig up a necklace of coins: Suggest the uncovering within yourself or your life things of great value, of abilities or talents, often from the long past. Such influences often come in the form of new abilities arising, or as intuitive awareness of how to respond to certain situations or relationships in your life. So they can be links with what is usually the hidden side of life.

 Example: I was the top of a hill on my knees digging in the earth with my right hand. It was fairly easy. I pulled up what felt like coins, and found they were all joined together, forming something one could wear. This was in the form of a necklace from which ran a long loop from one edge to the other, perhaps reaching fairly well below the breasts. There were coins set a little way apart all around this loop. Then in between there were two connections from coins going down in a V to a single line that connected with the bottom of the loop. From this single line, and the coins on it, there were connections to the coins on the loop, reaching low on the trunk.

The coins, or really, medallions, were shining silver, depicting Christian or ancient saints and martyrs. It was, I knew in the dream, like a rosary, which one could use in prayer. But instead of just the Ave Maria’s, and the Our Father’s, all the other saints were included. Thus it was a very comprehensive guide to prayer. Some of the silvered chains between the coins were missing, but these had been mended with something else. The shape of it suggests the sign of the cross people make on their body. But it shows the right way to do this is first touching the brow, then the two breasts, and then down to the genitals – the real sources of power. Richard.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Was the necklace a gift and if so who from?

Did I find the necklace or was I wearing it?

What feelings do I have about the necklace?

See Characters and People in Dreams (Use it on anyone who gave you the necklace) – Being the Person or Thing – Questions

Needle

It depends what sort of needle. If it is one used to give fluids in hospital, then it can suggest an inflow of life-giving energy or influence, or it could indicate a health problem.

Needles can link with drug use, and indicate possible poisons or infections entering your body. If dreamt in connection with a child, it might be worth making enquiries to see if the dream has any truth in it.

Needles can mend things or sew them up, and if your dream suggests this it is about healing old hurts or even securing something.

It can also suggest small hurts, small pricks, male sexuality, or something irritating you by getting ‘under your skin’, penetrating insight, male sexuality or power to mend ills probably with some pain. Also irritations. Or the ability to pierce through the surface of things and get to the heart of the matter.

Seeing a being of light piercing the centre of the forehead with a needle usually represent the beginning of awakening intuition.

Compass needle: Choices or direction, like the swinging needle. What direction is it pointing – see north – east – south – west

Needle in body: Sickness in body.

Needle on electronic apparatus: An important indication of what is happening emotionally or physically. See body

Needlework: What one has made of oneself. Creative activity showing the direction of your creativity.

 Example: Another man and I were almost completely submerged in deep, dark water. I was aware of a pain in the area of the solar plexus. Then I saw a hand with a large needle sew my lips together.

The man was feeling a lot of friction at work, and the dream was a hefty hint to keep his mouth shut to prevent being fired.

Idioms: Get the needle; needle in a haystack; stick a needle in; needling someone. 

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

Am I feeling needled – if so what about?

Do I express my creativity through needlework?

What was happening with the dream needle?

See Being the Person or Thing – Creativity – Conditioned Reflexes

Nectar

In past ages nectar was thought of as the drink of the gods. In other words it is the transformed essence of life experience – the spirit existing within the physical. It is that which can be extracted from what flowers in your life and your growth.

In some traditions it is taught that what flows from lovemaking – the nectar from the vagina – is a divine drink. Taken as a symbol in a dream this suggests that what arises from love is a transforming living energy that can heal and uplift.

Some dreams suggest the nectar arises from something certain cells or subtle organs in your body create. This nectar would be the result of opening yourself to the influence of your core, your eternal nature. The result of this would be a taste of heaven. See Honey.

Neighbour Neighbor

Probably a symbol of the qualities we feel they have. They may be helpful or grumpy. Or may be used as a male or female symbol. See: Man; Woman.

Ones relationship with other people; the qualities we see in our neighbour, or the conflict we have with them. They are the social environment in which you live, the quality or lack of it with which you are surrounded. Your interaction shows the manner in which you live your life. They are part of what you are aware of and what you observe, and part of what you accept in your social environment. See Characters and People in Dreams – Levels of the Brain;  Secrets of Power Dreaming

Example: I discover that my neighbor has organized a classical music program for his guests. Mr.R, my neighbor looks completely different in the dream.He offers us some delicious rice cakes,a specialty from the region he comes from.
I am so glad I came down or I would not have known about the music program or got to eat the delicious food.I had had the urge to eat those rice cakes earlier and now I got to eat such well made,authentic rice cakes that only someone from that region could make so perfectly.

Mr.R says all his guests would be going to the music program and he was serving breakfast to them before they went there.I notice a food stall has been set up near the building entrance with many containers of food for the guests.

The dreamer sees her neighbour as a helpful and organising influence in her life.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Have you ever had problems with neighbours?

In the dream what is the relationship with the neighbour?

Are you naturally a friendly person or a loner?

What do I feel about the neighbour?

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

Nest

Emotional dependence upon parents; home life; not being independent; female sexuality; nest egg. Of course there are different types of nests, birds, bees, ants, and other creatures – even crocodiles have nests for their eggs.

What you dream in connection with the nest might indicate the home you have created, especially if it was for your children or loved one. It can depict the emotional, economic and psychological ties or dependencies you have, or have had with your parents.

Because this involves raising young, it might also show what is happening in you in being a parent, its pleasure and difficulties. In this connection it sometimes represents the female function of holding eggs and hatching them – so the vagina and uterus. Maybe even a nest egg.

The urge to find a partner and reproduce is also an aspect of all living creatures, as is nest or home building, caring for young, and the urge to gain respect within ones social group. Building a nest is an instinctive urge and arises from our deeps. It shows us creating a place if safety and a good environment to raise our children. It can be called a holy urge and its depth of feeling is difficult to understand.

The vagina in a woman’s dream really is her nest in which she keeps her eggs. It means expressing the full flood of her sexual need with its desire for a child, a caring and supportive nest to rear that child in.

In some cases another male may ‘lay his seeds/eggs’ in a nest that he himself did not help build. This is the idea of the cuckoo/cuckold.

Example: Later, in daylight I noticed a hornets nest in the side of the house. The next door neighbour’s son knocks it off and hornets enter the house and stung me. I angrily show the neighbour and son the huge watery swellings. I clout the boy for stirring up the hornets. I had held my arms above my head and the swelling decreases. Now, with lowered arms I see a bubbling up of skin spread up my arms to chest, then to my entire front. I have no apparent sexual organs because I am covered in a wafer of dead skin.

Example: There was the shiny little tool I had bought so many months beforehand for just such a need. As I picked it up I had an immense experience of my father, and his father, and all the people who have used tools to create their home — and beyond this the animals that strive so hard to build a nest, to make a den, in which to rear their children.

Leaving nest: Gaining independence; meeting change or leaving a dependent relationship.

Making nest: Home building; parental urges; partnership if with another bird; a sign of wanting a family and getting ready for it.

Nest: Home; family environment; security; even the womb.

Destroying nest: An aggressive desire to break away from family dependence, or a desire to wreck a relationship.

Eggs in a nest: It may be a sign in a woman’s dream that she is pregnant, or ready to conceive. It might also suggest that money is coming.

Broken eggs in a nest: Family problems, broken promises or betrayal, or a conception that didn’t work.

Idioms: Foul ones own nest; hornets nest; feather ones own nest; cuckoo in the nest; nest egg.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

Where there eggs in the nest?

Have I ever collected eggs from a chickens nest?

What were my feelings for, or relationship to the nest?

See Being the Person or Thing – Secrets of Power Dreaming – Summing Up – Emotions and Mood in Dreams

Net

The subtle aspects of emotions, words or a relationship that we may get trapped by or in; attitudes in oneself or others that may trap or imprison subtle living parts of ones being.

Nets can protect us and provide safety, catching us when we fall and are caught, or when using a mosquito net. Also a source of food when using a fishing net. But they also can entangle and entrap, as when the gladiators used nets against their victims.

We all have a complex net of connections with others, and so includes love interests, work, creativity, friendship, victims and others.

Basketball net: This may be about success or failure – getting the ball into the net or missing. Or it might be about the quality of your aim/aims in your life.

Fishing net: There is a saying that a fish doesn’t know it is water until it is out and struggling for breath. So fish can represent in our dreams unconsciousness of our real situation. So a dream net is something designed to catch part of s that have remained unconscious, and then through hard work of fishing and hauling is led to become more conscious. But people set nets to catch a man or woman, usually unconscious of what is happening. It such situations it is the instinctive desires the woman or man works on. There are many women trapped by their enormous desire to be loved who are stripped of their savings.

Net curtains: Suggests a need for privacy, or a desire not to be seen. Hiding your inner thoughts and feelings.

Tennis or badminton net: The net can suggest something you can be caught by and so fail – or missing it is success. So it might include feelings of competitiveness etc.

 Example: I stop in a red brick building which is strange because all of the windows have been newly bricked up. I go inside to see what is going on and suddenly it begins to collapse. I turn and see a man going into a position of kneeling and bowing forward as if paying respect or praying to something, so I do the same thing. The building collapses on top of me, but I am not hurt because of this posture I am in. Instead of bricks slamming on top of me, it is like a mosquito net falls over me.

Example: I am happily walking down an interminable straight road of small terraced houses. On approaching one in the middle of a terrace, the net curtain is drawn back and a hand continually beckons. It is that of my GRANDMOTHER, dead fifty years ago!

Example: I see my white satin top and the net petticoats and feel that the dress should be prettier than that and decide it will have a long satin skirt over the net. The two women, one dark-haired, bring the bouquets they had made – satin with a white gardenia. I am very impressed at their kindness in making these.

Idioms: caught in a net; net surfer; safety net; surf the net; the net effect.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

What was the net used for?

Did it catch anything?

Was success or failure shown or felt?

See Fish – What is the main action in the dream? – Water – Being the Person or Thing

Nettle Poison Ivy

Feeling stung by remarks; irritation – feeling nettled; sickness in the body; a difficult situation you may try to avoid – as in ‘grasping the nettle’ or ‘stung into action’.

Poison ivy: Poison thoughts or feelings that can cling and cause hurt. Or something that you need to avoid or be aware of.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Is someone or some situation irritating me?

Does this indicate sickness in my body somewhere?

Am I trying hard to avoid something?

Should I be more careful where I go?

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

New

Whatever is new in ones life – a relationship, opportunity, or a scheme. If contrasted with old, an attempt to decide, contrasting what we already know from the past/old, and what is arising.

Each day is a new experience, although we may approach it with old feelings and attitudes. The old habits can become new habits with a bit of work. Each new experience adds to who we are and implies growth. But it is ours to choose what direction that growth goes. See Habits

Here is an example of growth and change.

 Example: Sitting in a window box facing outwards, with Neal H and my son on my left. I felt very scared of falling and asked my son and Neal to climb back into the building. I felt too scared to move until they had shifted.

When I explored the dream I saw it related to my recent situation. Although I am now working for two magazines, the frequency of payment is much less than before. So we are running out of money – my wife being out of work. I have felt very insecure and anxious during the last few days (the fear of falling). I thought of going back to the my previous employment to work, that I see as trying to get back to the safety of the building behind (I had worked in the ‘building’ trade) me – in the past. The two boys are my younger self that is more vulnerable, the parts of me I am trying to grow.

When I imagined doing that it was purely out of fear. In staying in the box though, I feel I am growing and opening to something positive entering my life. So I feel the dream shows that my unconscious assessment of my situation is that if I trust the flow of events I will enter a new stage of growth and experience. I am going to try that. Years later I can see it worked. Dan

The mind in our dreams also deals with problem solving, predicting outcomes of action, playing with possibilities via imagination, creating the new out of old material, replaying disturbing events in order to find ways of meeting them constructively, to form new insights from old experience.

The new can include many things like a new love affair, a new car, anew job or a new direction. The new can be a wonderful thing or a dead end. Dreams can often see what would be good or bad. They can do this because they have the sum total of who we are and what our potential is. See Incubating Dreams

Useful Questions and Hints:

What in my dream is the new thing?

Was it welcome or something I am avoiding?

Am I hoping for news of some sort?

See Using Your Intuition – Genius – ESP in Dreams – Edgar Cayce

News Newspaper

Something that is news to you; or you have just become, or need to be, aware of; something conscious rather than unconscious; something publicly known about yourself. Publically making secret information available. People’s secrets exposed to the world.

Wanting to get your experience or thoughts into the newspaper or on TV suggests something important has impressed you.

In a dream we may be seeing newspapers as the propaganda put out to influence us for political, financial or religious reasons. They often rely on sampling techniques that reveal the trend of “opinion” or “wants” that is, of collective attitudes. On the other, they express the prejudices, projections, and unconscious complexes (mainly the power complex) of those who manipulate public opinion. It also may represent current public opinion, prejudice, race-consciousness ideas and attitudes, as well as worldly thinking.

Newspaper can be used to wrap things in, to line draws or to cover things, so suggests something like yesterdays newspaper that is no longer useful or relevant.

 Example: I had this dream at a time when there was a lot of talk and anxiety in newspapers and on television about nuclear war. In the dream a nuclear attack had been announced. I immediately thought of my children who are away in boarding school. I go out into the street to see if I can get to them, but realise it is hopeless. In the street everybody is walking about as if it were a holiday Sunday. I realised there was no time to get to my children so decided to join the people on the street. John C.

John had this dream at a time when there was a lot of media coverage about nuclear attack. It is therefore most likely dealing with his real fears about how he would deal with such an attack if it happened.

Working for a newspaper: Suggests you will be capable of a wide audience for your thoughts or work. See A Dream is Like a Seed

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

Do I feel that something in my life has become commonly known?

Do I feel a need to ‘spread the news’ about a situation?

Am I receiving new information or becoming aware of something I need to know?

See Archetype of the Paradigm – Summing Up – OBE Experience – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

Nickname

Probably associates with feelings you have, or memories, connected with the person or people who gave you the nickname. Also whatever you feel about the name. See: Name.

Night

There can be many different associations with night in your dream. So try to define what you are feeling. Some possibilities are – not understanding clearly what is going on around you; anxiety about being in the dark; feelings of freedom because you re no longer on view in the light; relaxation and mellow feelings; intimacy and freedom to express. See: Light; Black.

Nightmare

In addition to the bad dreams provoked by primal feelings, basic drives and past traumas, it is known that everyday threats and dangers can also trigger the nightmare experience. It may be that when we suffer periods of low-self-esteem, with the increased vulnerability to anxiety and fear this brings, that we are more susceptible to this type of nightmare. This common type of anxiety dream, which can be triggered by the worry of not coping well with life generally, or specific concerns such as failure in a relationship, dismissal from a valued job or redundancy, or the loss of a child. Occasionally nightmares can relate to a low sense of self-esteem generally, with the dreamer feeling they do not measure up to other people, perhaps in terms of looks or achievement. While a period of feeling low will often pass for most people, for those afflicted with depression or an anxiety disorder, these anxiety dreams may be more frequent and become a problem.

A common theme is a mother who dreams her child is dead, murdered, drowned, strangled or otherwise lost to her. See child is dead

As well as reflecting our mental concerns, nightmares can be a sign that we are suffering from serious physical illness. Decoding the dream symbols in your nightmare may indicate the nature of your illness. However, it is worth bearing in mind that general poor mental health may result in a bad night’s sleep or a disturbed sleep pattern.

True Nightmares –

Grace, 40, an accountant says:

 Example: I have this dream frequently. It is about my two young sons. In the dream I am with them, standing near the edge of a balcony or at the edge of a bridge. As we stand together, one of my boys falls over the edge to his death. This usually happens because I have let go of his hand for a moment.

This nightmare is about change and moving on; although-apparently negative, the dream is telling Grace that she should to let go of both her sons as they become independent, a time she will face as early as nursery school. Grace’s nightmare is making her feel the shock of this and helping her move forward emotionally.

Carol, 60, retired says:

 Example: Years ago I lost my first husband at twenty nine. I had the same dream continually of being in a phone box trying to contact him not understanding why he had left me. He died of cancer. Later I remarried and this husband died of a heart attack. Once again the same dream came back so much.

While it may be painful, this dream tackles two important issues. Carol is trying to come to terms not only with the deaths and the feelings both husbands left her with. But she is also struggling to understand why this has happened, particularly twice. Here, the self-regulatory process in dreams attempts to resolve anything that is blocking a reasonably balanced response to life. It tries to find answers to conflicts, no matter how old, and to help us continue psychological growth. However, you should bring conscious attention to the issues raised: in the case of Carol, it is likely that the nightmare repeated because there were feelings about her husband she had not recognized. See dreaming about dead husband or ex

Symbols of nightmare and conflict

Depending upon the nature of your dreams, many dream symbols will have both positive and negative meanings for you. However, the symbols below will often represent an anxiety or conflict:

The Demon or phantom – The Monster – The Black Hole – The Haunted House – The withered or lightning struck tree – A Dark Shadowy figure or animal. See the feature on Nightmares.

What people meet who have  managed to break through their terrifying images and the apparently real images and events of the dream,  is they meet the cause and enter into direct personal insight. In other words the images of the nightmare give way to direct memories of past events that lay the foundation of feelings out of which the nightmare arose. For instance Robert Van de Castle writes that when he has helped people explore nightmares about a ghost, it has always led back to the childhood memory of a parent coming to the bedroom and lifting them or moving them to prevent bed wetting. See Being the Person or Thing; Our Dreaming Mind by Robert Van de Castle.

Such direct experiences also help us understand what happens when we fail to face the images of a nightmare, or in fact any other troubling fears and anxieties. We know from personal experience that they remain to haunt us. They continue to influence the way we deal with life, with opportunity, with relationships. It is this influence in the present arising out of the past that Eastern peoples call karma

Many dreams lead us to feel an intensity of emotion we may seldom if ever feel in waking life. If the emotions felt are frightening or disgusting we call the dream a nightmare.

Scientists find this definition too vague and so use two categories to define different types of anxiety dream. The first definition is ‘REM anxiety dreams’, and the second is ‘night terrors’. The REM anxiety dream is one that occurs during REM (rapid eye movement) activity, in other words during a normal dreaming period. These are reported to occur most frequently during the last part of the sleep cycle – that is, just prior to waking. One usually remembers the imagery and feelings of these dreams clearly. Night terrors occur during the first two hours of sleep, mostly in stage four sleep – See: science sleep and dreams – and the dreamer has either no recall of imagery at all, or it is a single impression such as a physical sensation of heaviness or difficulty in breathing. After waking from such a dream experience, the person feels disoriented for some time afterwards. See: night terrors; the first example in abreaction is an example of a nightmare.

One of the common features of a nightmare is that we are desperately trying to get away from a situation; feel stuck in a terrible condition; or meet fear or disgust in almost overwhelming degree, so that on waking we feel enormous relief it was just a dream. Because of the intensity of a nightmare we will remember it long after other dreams; remember even if we seldom ever recall other dreams. We may even worry about what it means for a long period of time, perhaps even years. Many people, on waking find the feelings, or sometimes even the imagery, continuing for some time. So for instance they may feel so much fear they have to switch all the lights on in the house.

As so many dreams have been investigated in depth – using such varied approaches as hypnosis, exploration of associations and emotional content, and LSD psychotherapy, in which the person can explore usually unconscious memories, imagery and feelings – we can be certain we know what nightmares are. They arise from many causes.

1. Unconscious memories of intense emotions – such as those arising in a child being left in a hospital without its mother. Many people who have been trapped in an awful situation, whether that is a dreadful marriage, a political or war prisoner, or a life situation one yearned to get out of, frequently dream they are back in the situation unable to get out. 
2. Intense anxiety produced – but not fully released at the time – by external situations such as involvement in war scenes; sexual assault – this applies to males as well as females, as males are frequently assaulted; medical surgery; being attacked and ones life threatened; involvement in a natural disaster such as flood or fire; car accident, etc. The nightmares of Vietnam veterans has been extensively studied for instance. Their nightmares closely parallel their actual combat experiences. 
3. Robert Van de Castle reports a slightly different source of nightmares. This has to do with guilt or future threat. He gives the example of Czech refugees who escaped to Switzerland during the Cold War. They managed this by saying they were taking a holiday, that was allowed, but not returning. The penalty for non-return was several years imprisonment. When one hundred of these refugees were interviewed, fifty six percent said they dreamed about being back in what was then their Soviet dominated homeland and unable to escape. Apart from the possibility of guilt, this is the same as 1. 

Sometimes this form of nightmare shows itself as a terror of being discovered as the perpetrator of some awful crime such as a murder. See murder

1. Childhood fears and trauma such as loss of parent; being lost or abandoned; fear of attack by stranger or parent; anxiety about own internal drives. These fears or trauma may arise from having experienced a difficult birth – See: the account of his nightmare given by Leon under active imagination; being put into hospital or some other form of separation from ones mother; or living continuously in an unloved condition. 
2. Many nightmares in adults also have a similar source as those listed in number 4, namely fear connected with internal drives such as aggression, sexuality and the process of growth and change – such as a youth meeting the changes of adolescence, loss of sexual characteristics, old age and death. So this is fear of the future and imagined events. 
3. Serious illness shown in the dream symbols.  
4. Precognition of fateful events. 
5. Possibly genetic influence in formation of character. Research has shown there is evidence that ones basic disposition is genetically determined. In a small percentage of people this means they are born with an anxious, shy characters that in our society often leads to depression. Other research, by Ernest Hartmann, determined that a small percentage of people had what Hartmann called ‘thin boundaries’. These people have a life long disposition towards frequent nightmares. It seems likely that the two pieces of research overlap. Perhaps Hartmann was not aware of the genetic research, though he does say there is perhaps a genetic basis for the tendency. But it should be understood that such difficulties are brought about by physical problems and are not the basic character of the person. See: night terrors. 
6. Threats to self esteem. We may either be faced by, or fear, the loss of something important to us, such as the failure of our relationship, loss of a child, being seen as stupid at work, or not coping with life in a way others approve of, and feeling sexually inadequate. Many professional people I have spoken to report dreams in which they experience themselves involved in some sort of critical situation at work. For instance a regular radio presenters nightmare is they dream the equipment fails, the CD player refuses to work, or they miss their prompt. Sometimes a deep sense of inadequacy haunts a person. This may be in terms of their sexual performance, their physical attractiveness, but may not be based on such obvious factors. In some cases it is rooted in their general but unconscious assessment of themselves measured against others. This may arise out of a family attitude of inferiority, or something like premature birth, where the baby/child feels some steps behind others, or is led to feel so by an anxious parent. 
7. Recurring nightmares – that is, those that happen again and again, weekly or even more frequently, and have the same basic plot. These are of course the same as ordinary nightmares. Their recurrence however is something to consider. See Recurring.

 Example of 1: I am a detective following clues regarding some sort of crime. They lead me in a large cellar, and within the cellar I come across the entrances of two tunnels. These are nearly the size of underground train tunnels, and are side by side leading away into pitch blackness. I decide to explore the tunnels and start to walk into one. I was overwhelmed by terror, as if the very darkness of the tunnel was a living force of fear that entered and consumed me. I screamed and screamed, writhing in uncontrollable fit like contractions. Nevertheless a part of me was observing what was happening and was amazed, realising I had found something of great importance. Andrew P.

Because Andrew explored this dream with me, I know the darkness was depicting fear he experienced while a 9 year old in hospital. He was given a rectal anaesthetic because he was about to have a nose operation. He fought and begged for the nurses to stop, but to no avail. This led to a very real feeling that humans were terrifyingly dangerous animals who would not respond even if you were on your knees begging. So trauma was the fear in the darkness.

 Example for 2: ‘A THING is marauding around the rather bleak, dark house I am in with a small boy. To avoid it I lock myself in a room with the boy. The THING finds the room and tries to break the door down. I frantically try to hold it closed with my hands and one foot pressed against it, my back against a wall for leverage. It was a terrible struggle and I woke myself by screaming.’ Terry F.

When Terry allowed the sense of fear to arise in him while awake, he felt as he did when a child – the boy in the dream – during the bombing of the second world war. His sense of insecurity dating from that time had emerged when he left a secure job, and had arisen in the images of the nightmare. Understanding his fears he was able to avoid their usual paralysing influence.

For example of 4 see third example in Doors under house and buildings.

 Example of 5: I was alone in a house and asleep in bed. Something materialised or landed on the foot of the bed. It woke me a little and I felt afraid. I had the feeling it was some sort of entity materialising and coming for me in some way. It moved up the bed a little. I felt paralysed, partly by fear but also as if the ‘thing’ was influencing me. This made me more afraid of it. Then it moved up higher, not on my body but on the bed. I was now very afraid and struggling against the paralysing influence. I managed to shout at it – I will destroy you. I will destroy you. As I shouted I pushed at it with my hand. This felt to me as if I were going to will its destruction and use my hand to smash it. I still felt a little uncertain of the outcome but I was very determined to fight it. At this point I woke up or was awakened by my wife. She asked me what I had been dreaming. Apparently I had been pushing her and shouting that I would destroy it. David P.

David explored his dream in depth and describes his insights as follows –

I started by considering the recent nightmare of the ‘thing’ at the foot of my bed. Gradually I began to feel tense throughout my body, with difficulty in breathing. The ‘thing’ seemed at first to be a woman’s vagina. There was a little feeling in this but not much. Then it slowly grew in intensity and I realised the ‘thing’ was death. Recently it is obvious from the mirror that my body is going through another period of rapid ageing. The dream was a dramatic representation of my feelings about this. Death was gradually creeping up on me, gradually overwhelming me and I was fighting it. As the session deepened I saw that in my feelings I felt that death had put its finger on me. The touch of death was like a disease though. Once touched the disease was incurable and gradually took over ones body. I could hardly breathe as I experienced this, and I understood the sort of emotions that might lie beneath asthma attacks. This struggle with death went on for some time. It was not terrible but was felt strongly. I also recognised that my wife Deb, has similar feelings about her ageing, and is communicating to me that her body is dying and unclean, especially her genitals, and this is off-putting. I see that when I shout ‘I will destroy you!’ in a way it is my fear of being destroyed that is behind the emotion.

I began to wonder what to do about the situation. The feeling was that death was claiming me. So I wanted to face the truth about death, whatever it was. I wanted to walk right up to it and look it in the face and know whether death meant a final end. If it did I would rather know. As I approached death like this by imaging walking toward the THING, my feelings went through an amazing transformation. All the tension left me and I could breath easily agaun. I felt good, positive and with a sense of hope about life and death. This was so surprising and sudden I wondered what had produced it. I needed to be aware of how this change had occurred. So I retraced my steps to look at death and try to understand why it had lost its power of fear.

At first I saw that my tension and sense of death being or giving a disease was due to a view I had of it. When we look at the world only through our senses, death is obviously a terminal sickness that claims everyone. Someone said on TV the other day – Life is a sexually transmitted disease that produces a 100% mortality. Seen in this way death is the rotting corpse, the skeleton. The path to it is disease or breakdown. But in looking it in the face I saw another view of it. I saw the dead body, the corpse, the skeleton, as a form left behind by the process of life. When I looked at myself to see what ‘David’ is – I cannot separate myself from the process of life. That process leaves behind shells, bodies, tree trunks, but it goes on creating other forms.

 Example of 6: ‘I dream night after night that a cat is gnawing at my throat’ Male from Landscapes of the Night, Coronet Books.

The dreamer had developing cancer of the throat. These physical illness dreams are not as common as the other classes of nightmare.

 Example of 7: My husband, a pilot in the RAF, had recently lost a friend in an air crash. He woke one morning very troubled – he is usually a very positive person. He told me he had dreamt his friend was flying a black jet, and wanted my husband to fly with him. Although a simple dream my husband could not shake off the dark feelings. Shortly afterwards his own jet went down and he was killed in the crash. Anon.

Understanding the causes of nightmares enable us to deal with them. The things we run from in the nightmare need to be met while we are awake. We can do this by sitting and imagining ourselves back in the dream and facing or meeting what we were frightened of. Terry imagined himself opening the door he was fighting to keep closed. In doing this and remaining quiet he could feel the childhood feelings arising. Once he recognised them for what they were, the terror went out of them. The reason this change can occur is that when the fearful emotions originated, it was at an age, or within a circumstance, during which there were not the concepts, security or viewpoint to meet and deal with the fears. If they cannot be met at the time, they are encapsulated in a way to push them out of consciousness, and surrounded with layers of anxiety or psychosomatic symptoms. As an adult we may have matured to the point where we can now meet these powerful emotions in a transformative way. The new confidence and concepts brought to the old experience are the transformative agents. Of course sufficient ego strength must be developed first in order to do this. We may have learned to meet our emotions and redirect them in a satisfying way. Therefore many people find strengthening dreams occurring first in their exploration of dream content. It is often only later they start meeting nightmares.

A young woman told me she had experienced a recurring nightmare of a piece of cloth touching her face. She would scream and scream and wake her family. One night her brother sat with her and made her meet those feelings depicted by the cloth. When she did so she realised it was her grandmother’s funeral shroud. She cried about the loss of her grandmother, felt her feelings about death, and was never troubled again by the nightmare. The techniques given in processing dreams and Being the Person or Thing will help in meeting such feelings.

What can be learned from these people’s experience, and that arising from clinical work dealing with people such as the Vietnam veterans mentioned, is that even the simple act of imagining ourselves back in the nightmare and facing the frightening thing, will begin the process of changing our relationship with our internal fears. It may be helpful to think of this as walking around a film set examining the parts of the drama, and watching what one experiences, or what memories arise. In this way the monster on the screen is seen to be made of fabricated material and invested with our own emotions. Understanding – the new concept of it – changes our relationship with it. See Eight Step Method to Manage Intense Emotion

Some people manage this transformative confrontation in the dream itself. Charlie, a man in his thirties who suffered a lot of anxiety, told me a dream in which he had been trapped in the basement of his home by a group of men belonging to a Mafia type organisation. They strapped him to a chair and were about to drill his teeth with a large power drill such as one drills metal with. Charlie managed to break free and grabbed the gun of one of the men. He then threw it down much to the astonishment of the men in the dream. When they asked him why he said – still in the dream – ‘All your power is imaginary. This organisation you belong to is all in your mind. I don’t need to be afraid of you.’ The threat then completely vanished and Charlie felt enormous pleasure.

What happened was that Charlie faced his fears and was realising how he is their creator. His own fearful imagination fills the world with threats that are not there. Not that the world is harmless, but one does not need to imagine fears. Thus Charlie related to his own emotions quite differently. Whenever we dream its images are not like real life, because a dream is nothing like outer life where things could hurt you, but is an image like on a cinema screen that even if a gun is pointed at you and fired it can do no damage – except if you run in fear. So all the things that scare you are simply your own fears projected onto the screen of your sleeping mind. See Summing Up

Apart from this in-depth meeting of ones feelings, a very powerful healing factor is to be able to talk over the nightmare and the feelings it engenders with someone else. The person who listens can be a trained counsellor, but does not have to be. The main thing is they need to be able to listen without judgement, and with intelligent but not intrusive questioning. See: peer group work. Many have been helped to move on from seriously disturbing nightmares by discussing them with other sufferers in a group specially formed for this function.

For nightmares such as those dealing with illness or prediction of a future fateful event, a slightly different approach is needed. At first encounter the dreamer may well feel there is little that can be done about these dreams. But experience collected from many people suggests this is not so. Taking the dreams about physical illness, these are often very direct. Perhaps the dreamer looks at an area of their body and sees its sickness; an animal may be gnawing some part of themselves, as in the example; there may be repeated dreams of extreme heat, volcanoes or fire.

Bernard Seigal the American surgeon, always asked his patients what they dreamt. The reason being dreams often diagnosed illness long before he could hope to find it with x-rays or scans. Such dreams were not therefore always to be thought of as messengers of doom, merely as messengers giving information about what is happening in the body and its link with the mind. In writing about his work, Seigal explains many ways people can positively change their physical condition by honouring their own healing potential. Of course work with a sympathetic doctor. Have your condition checked. But do not fail to meet the factors in your dreams. Death is of course eventually inevitable, but as David shows in the example above, we need not meet it in terror.

Regarding the dreams of apparent prophetic doom, even these need to be seen as having the possibility of wonderful messengers warning us, rather than of a certified and final event. A fire alarm does not mean the building has burnt down, it means look out and hurry, otherwise the building might burn down. We have a built in warning system that tells us of all manner of crisis that might arise if we continue in the direction we are taking. This is everyday common sense and all of us meet it in day to day living. For instance if we walk to a busy road we look to see if the lights are right for us to cross, otherwise we might get killed. Dreams are just such warnings. If we deny them a place in our life, they may only be able to break through our resistance to knowing the consequences of our actions at a very late stage.

Acute analysis of the human situation does not portray human life as a pre-destined journey through unalterable events. Movement and stability jostle and change positions constantly. Of course our body and disposition are formed by factors already in place at out birth, such as a genetic heritage and the culture and circumstances we are born into. But mixed with this are the fear or courage we live by, the dullness or creativity we dare to exhibit. We can therefore, by shifting the way we are relating to the world around us and the people and creatures in it, shift what is emerging from the whole mass of interactions that becomes our future.

All dreams are attempts on the part of our being to move toward wholeness and equilibrium. At times this may necessitate disturbance, just as vomiting does when the body discharges poisonous food. Nevertheless, difficult dreams are a way of bringing attention to areas of our experience we may be neglecting to look at, or even powerfully refusing to see. The shock of the dream is therefore more to do with the strength of our repression of the insight it brings. So prophetic dreams give us warning of events enabling us to either avoid what is portrayed, or be ready for it. Unfortunately many people simply bow their heads or react in a fearful way rather than take such dreams as usable information. See Life’s Little Secrets

In older traditions of psychology such as occultism, yoga and Buddhism, nightmares are viewed as the meeting with ones innate tendencies or karma. In occultism a name is given to this meeting. It is called The Guardian of the Threshold. See: occultism and dreams; precognition dreams; nightmares; nightmares abstract; night terrors.

Nine

The fact that all numbers rise in series of nines and then begin again, and that babies are born in the ninth month, lends itself to nine symbolising the completion of a process, or stage of growth. There are also, in some mythologies and religions, nine orders of angels or forces. At the ninth hour, the veil is rent between spirit and matter. The astrological sign is Sagittarius, the sage or counsellor. It rules the thighs, and the ninth house rules travel and dreams.

999 or 912 calls: A desperate attempt to be heard, or a cry for help in a difficult situation or feeling state.

Pregnancy; childbirth; the end of a cycle and the start of something new; cycles. Represents creation and life’s rhythm as it develops. Because it is the final simple number it represent absolute things and it is the symbol of the totality of the human being.

There are nine gifts of the spirit mentioned by saint Paul: wisdom, knowledge, faith, gift of healing, to operate miracles, prophecy, distinguishing spirits, to speak in different kinds of tongues and the gift to interpret them.

Idioms: cat has nine lives; nine days wonder; nine times out of ten; nine to five; cloud nine; nine points of the law.

See: Numbers.