Posts Tagged ‘dream dictionary interpretation’
Rain
Generally rain symbolises emotions, release of feelings.
If the rain is gentle it is usually a relaxing experience and suggests a release from ideas and intellect. If it is a downpour and storm, it is feelings which may drench us, as in sadness or grief about a friend passing. If the land is inundated, then our common sense is lost to sight in the emotions released, and danger may threaten.
But rain may also show a return of feelings after a long spell of dry intellectualism or drought of feelings.
Some dreams show a massive downpour and feel that they have to wade through a flood, making it difficult to move; also it can be dangerous because visibility is poor. This suggests either emotions or natural events make it difficult for you get around as usual. A heavy falll of rain can also can be a start of very big changes in ones life and feelings.
If the rain is entering ones house it can signify worries about ones living conditions and comfort.
Rain can be a cleansing experience when it clears the ground and plants grow because they are watered. So it then represent a cleansing of worries or thoughts and emotions.
If a flood or huge rainfall washes your house away or other things it may be that it is about a way of life, an attitude that has been radically changed. I can suggest a new beginning and a new and better way of life.
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.
Example: I happened to rub or scratch my flesh and felt like bits of something on me. I looked and saw they were maggots. They had come off the blanket. I tried to brush them off, and it was like pieces of dirt or scum coming off the body, but I could not seem to get rid of all of them. Afterwards I saw my sexual feelings rise like a thermometer. This didn’t clear the maggots, but I felt impressed to rise thermometer right up to my head. I watched the liquid rise. Then it came out of my head like a fountain, raining down on my body. This fell upon the maggots, which fell off me. As they did so they became seeds that grew in the ground.
Idioms: Come rain or shine; it never rains but it pours; saving for a rainy day.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What did you feel about the rain in the dream?
Was the rain gentle or a heavy downpour?
Do you dislike or like the rain?
See River – water – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Questions – Magical Dream Machine
Rainbow
At the core of each of us is an amazing potential. Throughout history religions have been built around connecting with or recognizing this potential. The reason being that it holds the possibilities of enormous transformation of body and mind. From it can emerge healing of illness and enormous change and enlargement of your mind. The action or release of this core potential into your everyday life is shown in dreams by anything shining or deeply beautiful, and the rainbow is such a symbol.
We also associate the rainbow with calm after a storm, or respite after rain. So it can be a way your unconscious tells you that better times are ahead. This might well apply to your health, signifying that your body is reaching a greater balance. But it could apply to everyday circumstances you face.
Lastly, the rainbow, in the phrase, ‘chasing the rainbow’, suggest we are pursuing something we will never achieve. This only applies in your dream if you are in fact trying to get to the foot of the rainbow.
A sense of better things to come; illusion; an awareness of the beauty and value of life in the midst of difficulties. imagery.
It can mean a symbol of God’s promise, the rainbow which came after flood, which promised humankind would never be wiped away in total destruction again.
The Rainbow Tribe is used to signify people of difference races, beliefs and religions acceptance each other.
The existence of the rainbow depends on the conical photo receptors in your eyes; to animals without cones, the rainbow does not exist. So you don’t just look at a rainbow, you create it. This is pretty amazing, especially considering that all the beautiful colours you see represent less than 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Example: I looked down and saw fields and villages below. I noticed something very strange, rising from the ground. It was like ripples or bands rising from particular points on the earth; like rainbows, only with many, many three dimensional bands going right down to the ground. I couldn’t really understand it, but wondered whether it was people praying.
Example: it had a peak the same as a spinning top almost pointing to his head. What I felt was wonder as I realized it was a rainbow representing all the colours.
I think it is an experience of your life energy gaining strength. The colours also show how the flow of energy in you lifts your mood – thus the feeling of wonder.
Example: Through admitting my own weakness, failure and ineffectiveness I have grown out of the chaser of rainbow ends and mirages to one who can accept an imperfect world, my own imperfection, and take cups of water from shaking hands. I take my place as a man among mankind – not the saints. “When those Saints go marching in, I am not to be among their number.”
Example: I see the outline of her robe her veil, her folds in her veil and robe and her face. The outlines are all in the colours of the rainbow. She does not speak she is above my bed in mid-air she is there for a few minutes. I close my eyes and open them again she is still there. It is only years later that I find out colours of the rainbow are always mentioned when others have seen visions of our lady.
Example: ‘Then I had a vision that I was walking along a narrow trail through the brush-no tall trees. It was a beautiful day. No wind. Plenty of sunshine. I walked along this trail for about an hour until I heard the sound of tinkling bells in the distance. As I came nearer to the sound, I saw four men sitting around something that was round. Above their heads was something across the sky like a rainbow. One of these men called me his grandchild. He said, “You are supposed to tell the people once in a while when you are in trouble about something you know, something that’s in you.
Before his assassination Henry IV dreamed he saw a rainbow over his head. This was seen as suggesting a violent death.
Idioms: Chasing a rainbow.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What do you feel and think when you see the rainbow?
Was there a storm before the rainbow?
Did anything follow the rainbow?
What you feel and think in your rainbow dream is your personal message from the rainbow. Note it well.
A preceding storm suggests that things have been difficult for you and are now improving.
If something happened in the dream after the rainbow, this might be a clue to what is emerging in your life. What does it suggest to you?
See – Questions – Magical Dream Machine – Because Factor – Look at I
Raincoat
Attitudes that protect you from emotion, worry, or outbursts, especially other people’s. See: Clothes.
The attitudes we use to meet difficult emotions or events; often appears in dreams of dead spouse, suggesting tears or the release of emotions. But in many cases it suggests a means of hiding what we feel or our vulnerability, or protecting oneself.
Dubious characters are often dressed in raincoats in movies, and so this cliché is sometimes used in our dreams to suggests something underhand or shady, or even threatening is being faced or felt. See: rain.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What are the feelings and dream situation surrounding the coat – i.e. is it happy, sexual, threatening – and where does that feeling appear in my waking life?
Whose coat is this, and what associations or memories do I have with it?
If I am not wearing it, what character is shown in it? See: Characters and People in Dreams.
See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Secrets of Power Dreaming
Ram
Tenacity, masculine strength, toughness, leadership and power. A man’s strength. The sacrifice of the ram is a surrender of this strength to the spirit that it may be directed by wholeness.
Masculinity; sexual drive; the aggressive defensive side of ‘sheep’ – i.e. of ones conformity, being one of the group, the passive employee; power of renewal; leader of a flock or group of people, or the less dominant aspects of self; being dominant or pushy. Idioms: Battering ram; ramming ones point home; like a ram among sheep.
In ancient cultures the ram was often a sacrificial animal, and possibly represented to offering of ones power or seed – genitals – to God to bless. Also the ram is the symbol for the sign of Aries in the Zodiac. This is the ‘Cardinal’ ‘Fire’ sign. It depicts the pouring out of new life, power, energy, impulse, activity. The person born with the sun in Aries is said to posses initiative, a pioneering spirit, etc. The sign is represented as a young “Ram,” lying down with one foot bent under it, and its head turned backward, looking as if it had been slain as a sacrificial victim. This possibly shows an early stage in the psychological development of human beings, in which the instinctive drives were killed out or purposely repressed in order to develop the personal will and identity. If one is born as an Arian, a ram in ones dreams may represent ones fundamental qualities. See: sheep below.
Example: I was looking through a circular window with lead lights in it. I was looking down into a field. Below I could see myself lying on the ground on my back with a ram standing over me making sexual movements. I only watched and felt nothing. Cath H.
Useful questions are:
What character does my ram display?
Is it dominating, sexual, sacrificial, etc, and what does that suggest about me?
What is my interaction with the ram?
If I am born under the sign Aries, what does this dream tell me about myself?
Rape
This can mean you are overcome by events, by other people dominating you, or by your own internal unwanted emotions.
Rape in dreams is very different from rape in real life, as we create our own dream, so why introduce rape? Perhaps in the example below Mrs B. discovers her own power in the situation as she realises the weakness of the male.
Example: ‘I tried to turn but my legs were like lead. The man caught me and I fought. He tried to rape me but couldn’t do it. As I talked to him I began to feel sorry for him and not frightened. I realised that inside he was a nice person. In the end I found I liked him so much I began to kiss him myself.’ Mrs J.B.
Example: ‘A man is trying to make love and at the last moment I repel him as I know it will cause a pregnancy. When I was about ten I was raped and for many years had a fear of men.’ Anon.
This is the other side of rape. Rape in this dream may be memories, the effects of that are still visible in the life of this dreamer, causing her pain in warm sexuality.
Example: ‘The Devil attacked a woman. He was invisible. The woman turned black as he raped her. She didn’t die. At this point I woke and went to the toilet. On returning to bed I continued the dream, particularly wondering what I was in conflict with in the image of the Devil. I found it disturbing and frightening to be confronted by such a powerful opponent. Partly because of the rape, I realised it was repressed sexuality. I then approached the ‘black’ woman with tenderness and this transformed the Devil into available sexual or emotional energy. I tried this again and again. Each time it worked, and I could observe the Devil was my sexual warmth and love that had become negative through restraint.’ Neil V.
In this male dream, it is the conflict with his sexuality that causes the ‘devilish’ rape. When he can find tenderness the negative aspect disappears. Rape also depicts the real evil of another person disregarding our personal needs and feelings, abusing not only the body, but particularly the ‘person’. Being raped by someone known: Feeling anxious about sex with them; fighting off desire for them.
This can mean you are overcome by events, by other people dominating you, or by your own internal unwanted emotions.
Rape in dreams is very different from rape in real life, as we create our own dream, so why introduce rape? Perhaps in the example below Mrs B. discovers her own power in the situation as she realises the weakness of the male.
Example: ‘I tried to turn but my legs were like lead. The man caught me and I fought. He tried to rape me but couldn’t do it. As I talked to him I began to feel sorry for him and not frightened. I realised that inside he was a nice person. In the end I found I liked him so much I began to kiss him myself.’ Mrs J.B.
Example: ‘A man is trying to make love and at the last moment I repel him as I know it will cause a pregnancy. When I was about ten I was raped and for many years had a fear of men.’ Anon.
This is the other side of rape. Rape in this dream may be memories, the effects of that are still visible in the life of this dreamer, causing her pain in warm sexuality.
Example: ‘The Devil attacked a woman. He was invisible. The woman turned black as he raped her. She didn’t die. At this point I woke and went to the toilet. On returning to bed I continued the dream, particularly wondering what I was in conflict with in the image of the Devil. I found it disturbing and frightening to be confronted by such a powerful opponent. Partly because of the rape, I realised it was repressed sexuality. I then approached the ‘black’ woman with tenderness and this transformed the Devil into available sexual or emotional energy. I tried this again and again. Each time it worked, and I could observe the Devil was my sexual warmth and love that had become negative through restraint.’ Neil V.
In this male dream, it is the conflict with his sexuality that causes the ‘devilish’ rape. When he can find tenderness the negative aspect disappears. Rape also depicts the real evil of another person disregarding our personal needs and feelings, abusing not only the body, but particularly the ‘person’. Being raped by someone known: Feeling anxious about sex with them; fighting off desire for them.
Occasionally some rape dreams are traced back to sexual assault by the father when young, or another member of the family. Here is a quote from the book Dreams and Sex by Dr. Gayle Delaney.
The terror Deborah felt in this dream was so great that it led to her recall of incest with her father thirty years earlier. When she told her sister about the dream and the memories, her sister refused to talk to her. But later her sister confirmed that she had experienced similar nightmares and memories. Both had worried that they might be falsely accusing their father of incest, but after a few months of therapy, they decided to confront their parents and found solid confirmation of the abuse. I have written about it because there are so many adults who have been abused as children and do not yet know either what to do about it or that they have plenty of company among others who were abused and are still ashamed.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Was I raped in the dream?
If so did I fight successfully or unsuccessfully?
Was it a frightening experience?
How did you deal with it?
See Active Passive – Magical Dream Machine – LifeStream – Secrets of Power Dreaming
Rat
What you sense as sick or negative, so can depict your fears or anxieties, frightening instincts or urges, physical sickness or anxieties about health. Perhaps also feelings of sexual repulsion, or using sex to gain material aims. But this was caused by the fallacy that rats carried the plague and are unclean, but rats are very clean.
It was found out by historical research that it wasn’t the rat that brought the plague to Europe but the gerbil was the culprit. Sometimes a rat in your dream can remind you of love that was betrayed, or intuitions about a person being a ‘rat’ or ‘ratting on you’ – doing things behind your back or underhandedly – or deserting a relationship when difficulties arise.
The rats can point to threatening things going on that you are not clear about, or a view of the underhanded side of yourself or others – the evil side of human nature, its dirt and squalor, or time gnawing away at your life. The unacceptable parts or oneself. In some dreams the rat has the character of most rodents, the gnawing inquisitive searching out of things. It can therefore relate to one’s anxieties, self questioning and worrying mind that disturbs or eats away at things like peace of mind or confidence.
Because we may have associations with rats used in laboratories they may suggest healing and sacrifice.
Pet rat: Quite different to general rat associations; vulnerability, instinctive intelligence, the caring feelings or drive to care; responsibility for caring. The rat is an intelligent creature, is a great survivor and explorative.
In China where various types of rat are cooked and eaten, the astrological symbols are replaces by animal symbols. The rat (sometimes referred to as a mouse) is the first of the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac. People born in this year are expected to possess qualities associated with rats, including creativity, intelligence, honesty, generosity, ambition, a quick temper and wastefulness. People born in a year of the rat are said to get along well with “monkeys” and “dragons”, and to get along poorly with “horses”.
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Here the rats in this Hindu temple are venerated, and are being fed.In Indian tradition, rats are seen as the vehicle of Ganesha the elephant god, and a rat’s statue is always found in a temple of Ganesh – the elephant god the remover of all obstacles. In the north western Indian city of Deshnoke, the rats at the Karni Mata Temple are held to be destined for reincarnation as Sadhus (Hindu holy men). Rats are eaten by some people in India also. |
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Idioms: Rat on someone; rat race; smell a rat; feeling ratty; cornered rat; rats leave a sinking ship.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Am I confronting or remembering something that I feel is repulsive or evil?
Am I in a relationship that I intuitively feel difficulties about?
Am I being a rat in a relationship or situation? Is a worry or irritation eating away at me?
See animals – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Questions
Razor
Intellectual acuteness, the ability to cut through the useless or misleading to the real issue. But such cleverness may be dangerous if we are not humble, for you can also cut away feelings and pleasure in living. It can also depict the thin dividing line between wisdom and folly, life and death, genius and insanity, self and spirit.
Occam’s razor was the principle stated by William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347), who was an English Franciscan friar and scholastic philosopher and theologian. The principle can be seen as “Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.” So it might suggest either that you are making your thoughts or views too complex – or that you have cut down to the simplest to arrive at truth.
The middle way can depict any behaviour or attitudes that are not one-sidedness, which otherwise would lead to imbalance within the individual. But at the same time it is not about being perfect or a saint, but the balance between the black and white, that leads to a balanced and whole human being with very wide choices. Walking it we balance between the opposites facing us. See The Mountain Path
Useful Questions and Hints:
How is the razor being used in the dream?
Does this represent a ‘razor sharp mind’, or something along those lines?
Is this illustrating that thin edge we sometimes walk in life between opposites?
See The Con About Evil – Summing Up – Integration – Meeting yourself – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Read Reading
Realisation, thinking, learning, looking at self, across, reviewing ideas, considering something, or memorising.
Reading of books represents th en, information and proof, and also packets of different contacts, a different person’s soul, which adds to your own life experience in some way. What you read may often impress you enough to appear in your dreams, as next example shows.
Example: Looked in the mirror and saw that my face had certain `Mongol’ features, especially the lower lip. Realised that I had always had these, but they had remained latent. In the dream I knew that this was Bright’s disease, of which I should surely die. Then it came to me that this had all come about through stopping sex and if I started again the features would go.
The Bright’s disease is something that was read about a few days ago. It was in connection with premature death, so probably links with fear of death.
Example: Dreamt I opened a paper at the comic strip. Began to read and became involved in the story. A small speedboat was on the sea. But the sea dissolved anybody who fell in. One man fell in but held himself together as a blob of water, and jumped back to the speedboat. I remember the words, “The sea is a great solvent.”
Reading a dream is a bit different to reading a book, for we have fairly well defined definitions of words. But dream images are completely different, for the dreamer creates the images out of their own personal experience with their own associations. See Working with associations – An example can be heard by clicking Dream Exploration
Useful Questions and Hints:
Am I ‘reading’ myself (looking at myself) in the dream?
What ideas or new information am I taking in?
Did the reading give any new insights or emotions?
What was happening in the dream?
See Makes Inner – Every 7 Years You Change – Martial Art of the Mind – Clicking On
Reap Reaper
Experiencing the results of your actions; harvesting the results of your life. See Karma And Past Lives
Autumn in dreams often represents the second half of your life, or a time of reaping rewards from past action.
Unfortunately, women reap the harvest of what has probably been sown by the man’s mother. The woman he feels ‘in love’ with then appears to be an angel of light, or a destructive witch, or even a femme fatale.
Knowledge learned goes beyond the individual. At this stage a man can look at life and discover that if corn is planted, a harvest may later be reaped. This realisation can be passed on. At its lowest level it is learned response. At its highest level a collection of conscious realisations about life.
Example: Death or the grim reaper inside a room with a woman. She tells him to leave. He took her husband. She tells him to leave – forces him to leave. His hand caught in the door, finally he leaves. She concentrates on his leaving. It is her force of will. It is her intense hatred that forces him to leave.
Example: During the last year, three of my family have died. I dreamt I was in bed at home and I woke up. In front of me was a black shape just standing at the foot of the bed. I was so frightened my body was shaking. Then instead of the black shape my dead mother, sister and brother were there, young again instead of old.
The black shape is the darkness and fear of the unknown. In fact, fear of death! You met the dark stranger three times this year, and our culture paints a pretty dreadful picture of the reaper. Images of skeletons and rotting bodies are the order of the day, and you are dealing with the emotions connected with this view of death. You literally shake with them.
But your dream then goes beyond this to a meeting with your family where sickness and age are wiped away, and your feelings of fear melted. Here is the bright side of death, and it is a message for you in your old age that you need not go to the unknown with dread, for your family are waiting to greet you. Find your way to them in peace.
Idioms: grim reaper; you reap what you sow; sew the wind and reap the whirlwind
Useful Questions and Hints:
Does my dream deal with what I sowed in my life’ (experiencing the results of my actions)?
Can I actually see and recognise that cause and effect are tied together?
Can I see that what I ‘reaped’ are because of what I ‘sowed’?
See Emotions and Mood in Dreams – Working with associations – Inner World – Meditation with Seed
Receive Received Receiving
This is usually about a straightforward receiving of something like feelings from a relationship, or ideas that are helpful.
But receiving or being able to receive have many possibilities as these quotes from dreams show: we were receiving a heavy attack; a wonderful experience of receiving and giving; same time receiving sexual satisfaction; receiving a flash of light; receiving some form of healing, or redirection of energies; not receiving enough attention; am I receiving information; receiving or giving love; people, receiving it, worshipping the light shining from me; on the receiving end; receiving the power to speak from the word; you are now receiving the cosmic impulses; the breast is the soul receiving its own sustenance.
As can be seen the way of receiving and what is received can vary enormously. So to understand your dream it seems important to define what or how you are receiving, and whether you welcome or are scared of receiving. Having done that you can use the following to make the dream clearer see Dream Understanding also Being the Person or Thing is useful.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Am I willing to admit or receive whatever is being depicted?
What am I giving of myself?
What is involved in the relationship with whatever or whoever is giving or receiving?
See The Keyboard Condition – Life’s Little Secrets – Martial Art of the Mind – Incubating Dreams
Recipe
The way to use yourself, or the right proportion of things to aim for.
Recluse
See: Hermit.
Records – paper or filmed.
Usually memory or information you may have forgotten or not accessed before. See: CD
Any video or film, even if the characters or theme seem strange, is nearly always a depiction of some aspect of you. Some drives or areas of self act or express despite what we would want. These are named autonomous complexes. Recent research into brain activity shows that in fact the brain has different layers or strata of activity. These strata often act independently of each other or of conscious will. Sensing them, as one might in a dream, might feel like meeting an opposing will or being possessed by an alien force. Integration with these aspects of self can of course be gained. See Animals in your Brain
You are yourself an amazing recording apparatus. You have taken in millions of bit of memory, lessons learnt, life experiences, along with all the feelings or problems met while living with or loving someone, and they are what make you the person you are – they are YOUR memories. Your dreams tend to put these memories into the image of the past person when you are dealing with the influences/recordings left in your from the relationship. See this wonderful example.
But if you are not honouring what you have taken into you, it might be giving you indigestion of the soul. What I have found over years of investigation is that everything we take in, experience as well as food, needs to be dealt with in a particular way. We are a living process like all living things. We have to transform what we take in into living processes. For instance when a plant takes in water and nourishment it changes it into living cells the same with us if we are healthy, we change food into our living body and awareness. As I wrote years ago, “We often take for granted some of the most astounding facts about our everyday life. They seem so normal we barely notice them. But just think, the potatoes or rice you ate yesterday is today capable of sitting and laughing at a television program. When you digested the food you ate, in some way that is truly astounding, it transformed into your movements, and feelings, and being able to do maths and enjoy a video”. (Quoted from SuperMinds).
How we do that with our experience, well we have to digest it fully by experiencing it fully. If we do not do that it is like plastering stuff/experience on ourselves that is like thick coating which leads to all sorts of mental disorders. Look around you and see the massive crap many people are carrying. Experiencing it fully is a life process like digesting our food. We cannot do it ourselves (we do not consciously digest our food) because Life in us does it. You help it by imagine taking an image if a person in your dream, or the recording or instrument into you. Literally imagine that you are going to take them into your body and you are accepting them – not as outside people, but as the experience you took into you. Then you must allow any feeling to surface fully – that is how we digest experience. In our culture we have been taught to repress everything, that is why we have so much social sickness. See Life’s Little Secrets and People’s Experience of LifeStream
Useful Questions and Hints:
What have I sought access to in this dream?
Were there words, information or music in the dream?
Have I in any way digested the mass of experience recorded in me?
Are my memories simple lifeless ideas I have, or have they become living parts of me?
See Memory and Dreams; The Long Memory of Existence; Breakthrough to Memory; Water Wonderland – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Records
Paper or filmed: Usually memory or information you may have forgotten or not accessed before.
Rectum
The rectum is the final part of the colon or large intestine just prior to the exit, which is called the anus. Sometimes the two words are confused, so the exit might be called the rectum. What matters in regard to your dream is what you have understood it to mean prior to the dream.
This whole area is one that is very sensitive to emotions and sexual experience. It links with very primal feelings and may easily become tense, or respond to hurt in oneself or others.
One of its main functions in life, as with the bladder, is to control or release the excretion of faeces. As a baby the process is spontaneous and beyond our control, so has to be learned. It therefore frequently becomes a physical focus for any problems or lessons to do with control or letting go. Thus we have the phrase ‘he/she is really anal’ meaning they hold on to everything or try to control everything.
This holding on or ability to both control and let go, are at the very basis of dealing with adult life, and influence whether we can allow our creativity and sexuality flow. Problems here deeply influence how we deal with our sexual and emotional love, and our ability to let ourselves flow out into activity and creativity. Tension and holding on can lead to a type of auto-homosexual experience. In other words instead of the flow going outwards to others and the world, it is turned back on itself and become in turned sexuality and aggression. See: Faeces.
This whole area is one that is very sensitive to emotions and sexual experience. It links with very primal feelings and may easily become tense, or respond to hurt in oneself or others. One of its main functions in life, as with the bladder, is to control or release the excretion of faeces. As a baby the process is spontaneous and beyond our control, so has to be learned. It therefore frequently becomes a physical focus for any problems or lessons to do with control or letting go. Thus we have the phrase ‘he/she is really anal’ meaning they hold on to everything or try to control everything. As already mentioned, this area, which links very strongly with the genitals, psychologically links with the earliest stages of our development and our earliest experiences as a baby. Many muddled or unconscious experiences are contained in this area of our psyche regarding sexual feelings, desires and self expression. So if you are dreaming about this area it might be that you are becoming more aware of these things. If so you may begin to experiences many sexual urges and confusions that previously remained unconscious or buried in your body. See This base area of the body also depicts the powerful instinctive and biological forces or potential lying at the base of our being – at the base of our personal development. These forces, sometimes represented by a snake or lizard – the instinctive reproductive, flight and fight drives – are the power flowing into our life. If they are not allowed to flow into the development of our personality, we will lack energy and power in some way. In other cultures they are encouraged to flow beyond the fundamental pathways of genital sex toward the functions of greater awareness and insight, thus opening their other possibilities. See Energy Sex and Dreams.
Useful Questions and Hints: Am I meeting any experiences to do with controlling or letting go – if so what is involved? Am I getting rid of some of the crap I have carried around internally or externally? What struggles with infant feelings or sexuality am I meeting – if so what are they? See Use the body to discover dream power – What is the main action in the dream? – Victims
Red
Even where red appears quite casually in a dream, as with the hat in the example, there is frequently fear, screaming, horror or a sense of danger in the same dream. Red also represents ones basic emotions, earthy nature, and sexuality. In this sense it depicts your strength or vitality and your down to earth health and power. But because of the modern association with traffic lights and warnings such as brake lights on cars, it may sometimes be used as a warning, or a way of saying ‘stop’ or ‘no’.
Example: These men were throwing a big red rubber ball into a field, and if we didn’t catch it, we would get shot. Example: ‘An old woman with a very pink, lined face, and wearing a clashing red hat, knelt close to my face. The woman leaned forward to poke my hand, and I recoiled, screaming myself awake.’ Joy S.
But red must also be understood in context with the other ideas presented. For instance a road accident where blood is seen has a different feeling in your dream that a lovely young girl with red hair – a sign of a lively and perhaps passionate woman. From findings concerning early humans we know that the colour red, and substances such as red ochre, played a large and important part in their life.
In Africa red ochre was, and still is, called the ‘blood of the earth’ and is used in rituals to do with death and renewal. Because red is connected with blood and blood’s obvious links with health, being alive, and the process of childbirth in women, ochre and the colour red were and still are, often used in healing practices. Red wine is also seen as blood in the magical rituals of the church and other groups. See: blood under body; archetype of blood; wine.
A recent research team of U.S. and German scientists found that the colour red influences the way people function. It reduces the ability to perform well at whatever task they are doing. University of Rochester and University of Munich researchers reported that even if people being tested were aware of even a hint of red, their performance would be reduced in quality to a significant degree. University of Rochester psychology Professor Andrew Elliot, head of the research, said people associate the colour red with mistakes and failures.
Less frequently: Red can link with blood; menstruation; the biological life force; conception; reproduction; death. Pale pink: Baby feelings; gentle love; weakness.
Red and grey often appear together: Emotions connected with depression or lack of motivation and pleasure.
Red brick building: Homeliness; warmth.
Red clothes or motif: Sexuality; passion; strong emotions.
Red earth: Fertility; richness; the healing power of the body; the collective memory of past human struggles and discoveries which we now inherit as personal or social skills, or ease of performance of things that would have been difficult or impossible for our ancestors.
Red eyes: This usually suggests feelings or fears about sickness or being irrational or deeply emotional.
Red face: Anger; high emotion; illness .
Red hair: Passionate thoughts, angry ideas, great energy like a fire. See: hair.
Red flowers: Love; passion; dangers of passion.
Red furniture or decor; Plush: richness; comfort.
Rose pink: Love, as one might give to a child.
Idioms: paint the town red; redneck; see red; in the red; red carpet; red letter day; red light district; red faced; red handed; red tape; run a red light.
Useful questions and hints:
Are there signs of powerful emotions in the rest of the dream – if so what am I feeling passionate or emotional about?
Is there a warning of danger here, or a message to stop – if so what does that apply to in my life?
Do I feel in any way connected to the earth, to the spirit of nature or life in this dream – if so what does that tell me?
See Colours – Emotions – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams