Posts Tagged ‘dream dictionary interpretation’

Indian Red Indian

The psychic, inner life. The part of us that is at home in the irrational or unconscious, and relates to the spirit through this. See: AmericanIndian.

Indian If you are not a Native American Indian, then it suggests an aspect of your own desires or needs which you do not usually identify with or acknowledge. But it is sometimes the voice or action of the wise unconscious, your intuition. See: aboriginal.

If you are a Native American or have some blood, or have been initiated into their ways, then you have a very great heritage, one that will give you greater ability to dream true or see visions (waking dreams). These can guide you on your life path.

 Example: Then my father gets into a small row boat and I get in. He slowly and carefully goes over the wooden boundary. The motor gets caught. My father says “Uh-oh.” I say, “Don’t tell me uh-oh, when we’re in deep water.” We then get over the thing. Then I’m in a canal. An Indian guide is behind me paddling. He is reciting the legends of our people. I feel like I’m going home.

Example: I had a vision once. Two Indians where dancing around a firer. One old and one in his early 20’s they had eagle feathers and suddenly an eagle appeared and the one that was young stood at the edge of the cliff and said sister we are waiting for you, sister we need you, sister we miss you, come back. Sister we need you. And then I had another one this time the old man joined.

Example: my great grandmother was Cherokee and she was taken from her tribe by an Irish trapper. They had 10 children my grandmother being one of them. When I was a little girl my great grandmother lived in a small trailer beside my grandmother and every time we went to see her I stay with my great one I will call her Pearl. She Smudged me many times and warned me never to tell anyone not my parents or any other family member. She told me to remember that we always came from the blue clan.

She said you will see things others will not see some of us do…I hope you will be ok granddaughter.

I saw the spirit of my grandmother a few times and my heart was missing my people felt something like her calling me back…that was 8 years ago. But a few months ago I was meditating when I came into a smoky hut with a circle of what appeared to be Elders and a couple of older women in the back bundled in blankets….One spoke in his native tongue and I understood him perfect (I am trying to learn it now) but he was saying “Things are not like the old ways …there is no respect in our lands…you have eyes like the color of the sky but your blood runs red and your heart is of our clan”…then he paused.

From that point on …occasionally I will hear his voice or sense his presence but whether this is real or not it sure seems it.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Have you met or been instructed in your dream by an elder of chief?

What have you learned from your dream?

Was the dream a form of initiation?

See initiation – Native American – Native American Dream Beliefs – Iroquoian Dream Cult

Reed

Humility, flexibility, in religion and mythology the reed represents the human will that has been surrendered to Life or the spirit, and is thus directed by the Life will. It does not represent weakness, for it takes a strong will not to be moved by worldly ambitions or sensuality, but to surrender or sink personal interests into those of the universal. See It is important the 2 wills

 Example: I move closer to the reed that is growing in the shallows of the lake and while doing so I see some goldfish in the lake in front of the reed. I reckon I will scare them away when I reach the reed and I am surprised to see that they are not afraid. I think there are three of them. Two I remember; one is an orange goldfish and the other one is white with light orange coloured parts on its body.

It does not represent weakness, for it takes a strong will not to be moved by passing sense impressions and flitting ideas, but to surrender to the subtle impressions beyond thinking and senses.

In some dreams reeds can also be used a breathing tube, either to hide under water or to help a person with a blockage to breathe. Reeds can also be used a roofing in a dream, protection against bad weather/emotions. Reeds are sometimes used to tie a boat to or to hang onto if in rushing water. Both ways of securing something or feeling secure.

 Example: As time passed he showed me a collection of musical instruments he had. I held one in my hands. It was shaped like a reed flute, thin at the mouthpiece, widening to a horn shape, but with an extending lip like a shoe horn. It was black and at times I thought it was slightly transparent. The man told me it was made of some sort of asbestos. I suggested it was an early form of the clarinet, and he agreed.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What part did the reed(s) play in my dream?

Were they to hold on to, breathe through or protective?

What did I feel about the reed or reeds?

See Dreams are a reflection of your inner world – Using Symbols to Change Life Problems – Mountain Path – Jesse Watkins Enlightenment

Reflect Reflecting Reflection

Reflections from a mirror or water usually represent, especially if they show your face or body, what image you have of yourself, what you feel about yourself. Sometimes what you see is an unconscious image from the past that needs re-evaluating. To do that you need to ask yourself where those feelings or that image arose from. In understanding it you can re-appraise it.

Dreams are a magical mirror in which your innermost hopes, longings, fears/terrors and genius are made real. They are made real as external environments, people, animals and relationships. So the person you dreamt about is not them, but is a dream image made out of your feelings and memories.

Looking at your reflection in a mirror is usually about concerns over ones ‘image’ or how others feel about you, self-examination, self-love, negative only if the love is not shared with others. In some dreams it reflects anxiety about changing or ageing. There is the possibility of self-assessment, so how you are judging yourself at the moment. But also being absorbed in yourself. The mirror particularly depicts self-awareness in the sense of insight into your behaviour or character traits.

Present view or opinion of oneself – because few of us define how we really see ourselves, the self image may be largely unconscious, therefore shown as a face that might be different to what we are used to seeing; how we feel others see us; may also be aspects of ourselves the unconscious is showing us that we may not have been aware of.

We are all playing the game of life – the game we play in which we face or run away from the things that scare us; in which we explore the depths of our existence or learn how to love – or simply meet a reflection of our own weakness, terror and of course the wonder of your inner genius. For that is all it is – a magic mirror in which we see ourselves naked of pretence.

Also we can reflect on and learn from experience. Reflecting on a subject in dreams is often a way to see it with wider significance, and even solve problems.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

What feelings or impressions do I get from or in the dream?

If I was looking at a reflection of myself what did I see or feel?

What was my dream reflecting of me?

See Dreams are a reflection of your inner world – Magical Dream Machine – Secrets of Power Dreaming

Refrigerate Refrigerator

To cool down our emotions or sexuality; to be cold emotionally or sexually; a romance that is cooling off; something we have put in ‘cold storage’. To keep things such as feelings fresh or preserve them. See Frozen

It is noticeable that many characters in American films and dreams have bottles of beer they carry around. They usually get them from the fridge. We can see from such films that they get a bottle of beer out of refrigeration and walk around with it in their mouth (like a babies bottle without a teat on). As alcohol is a downer, it may reflect a national characteristic to repress their sensitivity, like switching from one level of awareness to another one.

 Example: He kissed me once, then twice, each time more lingering. He said passionately, “Here, put the beer in the fridge and come here!” My brother Dwight, who had come in behind him, said, “Whoa! I guess I’ll go sit in the car.” I had been putting the beer into the fridge. I noticed that “Harry”, had written letters and messages to me on the beer cartons. I read one about the president getting him enlisted into the navy. I picked up a little Budweiser and gave it to Dwight.

In this dream there are themes of sexual passion, bear drinking and not wanting to see what was really happening, which is a form of refrigeration of one’s feelings.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

Do I feel difficulty when I experience emotions?

What do I keep repressing/refrigerating?

Have you ever noticed how much you edit/cut-out what you think and feel?

See Self Observation – Individuation –  The people we carry inside us – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

Regeneration

See: Death.

Relationship

Relationship in dreams is a fundamental theme. But the men and women you meet, love and fight with, are most frequently showing how you relate to the many and varied attitudes and abilities you have. The great love affair is therefore the drama in which you meet your own masculine or feminine self.

Relatives

A great deal of who you are was absorbed or learned from the close or difficult relationships you experienced while a child. Extremely powerful feeling responses developed to deal with what you needed and what actually happened to you. For instance a man who was placed in an orphanage while young, to top from sinking into deep depression, had to learn to get love from whatever females he could make contact with. As an adult he still experienced a drive to have several women he could turn to when in need.

Relatives in dreams, therefore usually depict family values, a way of life, or particular feelings or responses. In some way they show aspects of what you are doing now in your relationships and activities. So look for such issues as security; attraction or repulsion to males, females; introversion or extroversion as a way of life; dependence or independence and their many levels of growth or action; sickness or anger as a means of getting love, and so on.

Seeing parents dead: Sometimes dreamt at a time you are learning to become independent, so you are letting their influence or power in your life die. See: Brother; Sister; Father; Mother.

Remember Remembered Remembering

A huge percentage of your experience remains forgotten in a general sense. You cannot easily bring it to consciousness. But occasionally a smell, a scene, triggers powerful remembering. In dreams such remembering can happen also. It is then usually about parts of your experience that are important in their connection to the present.

See: Amnesia – Integration – Meeting yourself

Rent

Interpersonal responsibility or relationship; what we have to ‘pay’ for what we have or want.

When the word rent means torn, it can represent a tearing, perhaps forcefully, of something. The ‘something’ might be your feelings, emotions torn apart. If you are doing the rending, then you are destroying something. What feelings caused the action?

Back rent: Represents locked up energies in past repressions of pain etc. These have to be paid up, to right things. Sometimes feeling stressed because of not being able to pay.

Being the landlord: Feeling more secure because extra money come in. But it depends how you see the people renting from you. In any case you have a relationship with the person or people, and the way you handle the relationship shows how you relate to Life.

Collecting rent: What we want from others, or what we are getting from them in the way of feelings, influences.

Unable to pay rent: Depends on your feelings in the dream. Do you feel you cannot keep up with the demands of everyday life? Do you feel that life owes you a living and you have no intention to pay the rent? Do you feel that the financial system and the social system are all awful and so you feel you can disregard their demands? Whatever you decide, honestly ask yourself whether you want people to do the same to you.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What situation were you in with rent in the dream?

Can you justify your actions in the dream?

Do you feel fine about paying your way?

Is the demand too much?

See Understanding this Site – Secrets of Power Dreaming – Business and dreams – Emotions and Mood in Dreams

Reptile

Any reptile in your dreams may depict your surface feeling reactions to that creature, such as like or dislike, attraction or repulsion. But in many cases reptiles such as a snake or lizards are used to portray your very basic instinctive responses to life, such as the fear reaction, flight or fight response, the sexual drive toward reproduction, territorial display, and ritualistic social behaviour – shaking hands, bowing, etc.

The reptile also frequently shows how you are dealing with such enormous flows of emotional or nervous energy. For instance fear is a great protector, but in human life, because we can keep stimulating the response by imagination, by words, it can become overactive to the point of illness. A gazelle may be chased by a lion. If it escapes it doesn’t spend days shaking or drinking alcohol to cover its fear. In a few minutes it is quietly grazing. A human in such an encounter can replay it over and over.

The point is that you cannot become a fully mature human being until you learn to meet these ancient drives and integrate them into your everyday life. So it is important to develop a working relationship with the snakes, lizards and frogs in your dreams. Also the reptile in our dreams is often an expression of our physical makeup. See: Reptile Brain; Snake, Alligator, Frog.

Restaurant

Sociability, relaxation, friendship. Search for sustenance or strength, or ways of directing your life. Perhaps also a search for company or sexual partner, the nourishment of companionship.

Search for emotional or sexual satisfaction; hunger for company or sexuality. Because ones sociability might at times be a fear of being alone, might represent this. Also an experience of giving or receiving, and therefore to do with sustenance or revitalisation. See: Food.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What did I feel was the main points or feelings in the dream?

Was the restaurant about relaxing or about impressing people?

Did you plan to celebrate an event or being with someone?

Was alcohol a part of the meal?

See Alcohol – Eat Eating – Digest – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Questions

Rescue Rescued Rescuing

Intervention in your life by someone else’s action or emotions; something that changes the situation you are in, or changes mood. An intervention or action that has brought about a radical change in yourself, possibly from real psychological or even physical difficulty. It is worth defining what brought about the change, so you can use it in the future.

Being rescued can also mean that you were trapped by your own inner problems or attitudes and was rescued by your own higher self – your core self. See Core

Rescuing someone else, or an animal: This is an action you take to preserve something important inside yourself from being destroyed by common held attitudes or ways of life. For instance a sense of wonder and creativity can be destroyed or ‘drowned’ by materialistic or cynical viewpoints.

Rescued by animal: The supportive and loving action from the unconscious ‘animal’ level of oneself. See Animals in your Brain 

 Example: I am looking at a scene from the top of a cliff. There are large rocks sticking out of the sea at the bottom of the cliff. As I watch this scene a large black – wild? – horse charges towards the edge of the cliff. It carries on running, straight of the edge of the cliff. I am looking down the cliff to see where it will land. I lose sight of it but I am sure it will hit the rocks and be killed. Then I see it swimming straight out to sea. Sometimes it goes under a wave but its direction is strong. Suddenly I realise what the horse is doing. It has been trained to save lives. It had gone into the sea to rescue some people who would otherwise drown. Leon C.

 The horse here represents the natural drives in ourselves we have harnessed for generations and made sociable, and lifted to a spiritual purpose.

Can also relate to one’s desire to do something admirable or noble, such as saving souls, helping someone in distress, and thus having power in life.

Rescuing someone of the opposite sex: Breaking the bonds of emotion, sexuality or dependence that tie us to parents or others.

See Animals in your Brain

Useful Questions and Hints:

Where you rescued or rescuer?

What was the situation you were rescued from or rescuing someone from?

Considering that all dream characters are created out of your own memories and feelings, what part of you was in trouble and was rescued?

See Being the Person or Thing – Dealing with Fear – Summing Up

 

Rest Room

See: toilet.

Revolution

Major changes in yourself, in viewpoint, understanding, activities, in governing desires. It can also show conflict between major parts of your personality. For instance, some people dominate their behaviour with rational thinking, suppressing their feelings. This is akin to the Russian and French aristocracy dominating the working class. The result can be revolution. It also suggests personal conflict and a battle fought to reach a new way of life. 

Revolve: Many dream descriptions use the word revolve suggesting the dreamer constantly return to feelings or thoughts about a subject like parents, an animal or a frightening thing or person. Or else issues revolve around a central part of the personal makeup.

 Example: I had an insight that I had got into a negative feedback loop. Because I had got stuck in this place, then I feared I was stuck there in reality, which produced the certainty I was stuck, which produced the inability to move out. We feed back to ourselves images of failure and feelings of unattractiveness, and all the other negative feelings we all meet during the week. Instead of looking at them and seeing them as passing feelings, we take them as impressions of reality and drown in them. We accept them as true and start to live them. When that happens we see conformation for the negatives and so it goes on.

I tried to find the way out of the loop. The only way out I could find was the realisation that the loop has no end, like the figure eight. There is only one thing to do, stop it playing. Grab it and stop the crazy record or habit carrying on. To help with this, to help grab the thing and kill it, we obviously have to realise it is untrue.

If we still believe the loop to be playing a truth, then we only strengthen the action. So for its cessation we need to realise that our sense of self is a constantly moving fragile thing that has no stable reality. We aren’t ANYTHING – stable, so how can we be a failure, or a success, or great, or of no account, or any thought or feeling? No thought or feeling represents our reality. No feeling, or sense of ourselves, is anything more than a sense, a feeling, it is not us. So how could this feeling represent some sort of permanent personal reality?

Rhinoceros

Throwing your weight about. Using your influence. The same thing applies sexually. The old business of I’ll get you in films if….?

Rich Riches

In your dreams when recorded over a period of time you begin to see how rich you are, not in terms of what money you have stored or acquired, but of what you are of have, or will have if you express your potential. Our real riches are our talents – either expresses of unrealised – our wealth we hold within us from inherited tendencies from our ancestors, our own unconscious information and insights, the enormous creativity shown in our dreams. Every night you create a new drama. You conjure out of your own being the people, the creatures, the surroundings of your dream. Then you give life to what you create – not only life but purpose and drama. You are a supreme dramatist, playwright, actor and actress. You are the great Creator – in your dreams. Considering this, have you ever wondered why that enormous creativity does not flow into your waking life? You can see that some people have that creativity and are enriched by it personally and financially. Why not you? See: Bank; Money.

The animals you dream about, the many different people in your dreams, the old and new places and environments, are all aspects of your own possibilities and potential. It adds to the richness of your life to actually get to know your dream characters, places and animals.

People: Consider each character and discover what qualities, faults, weaknesses or strength they depict for you. Give them a name, as this helps you remember their quality. But look to the context of the dream to find the detailed and changing expression of what the character depicts. See Being the Person or Thing; The Conjuring Trick; Autonomous Complex; Sub Personalities

Places: You get to understand what the places you dream about and what riches they hold for you by trying to sense what your main feelings are about regarding the place, or what happened to you there, and how that left you feeling. You might have felt a lot of conflict in a certain town or while living in a particular road. So you could call that ‘My conflicts’. Or a place may be linked with a loving relationship, so could be called ‘My ability to Love’. See Place Environment

Animals: In fact, we all have animals inside us for your brain has levels, the lowest being the reptilian brain, the second level being the mammalian brain, the third and last the human brain. So often when we dream of animals we are looking at parts of our own nature. See Animals in your Brain

Of course you ARE an animal, and your conscious self is just a rider on an ancient beast. The ancient beast is your body, and your conscious self is the modern and recent rider of it – I say recent rider because we are all from seeds, and seeds do not suddenly appear from nowhere, and carry a massive and ancient history. Some ‘riders’ do not understand their animal needs – and the fact that we have several levels of brain that are independent of each other proves this. Without understanding your inner animals, you are only half functioning and have lost a huge and rich part of your heritage. See Archetype of the Animal

Joseph L. Henderson, writing on Ancient Myths and Modern Man in Man and His Symbols, points out that Perseus had Athena; Theseus had Poseidon. This, Henderson points out, represents the wholeness of oneself (one’s potential which as a woman includes an inner man, and as a male includes an inner woman.) from which we can draw strength – the conscious personality that we identify as ourselves, expressing as it does only a tiny part of the totality of our possibilities and experience. See Archetype of the Animus; Archetype of the Anima

This guiding inner figure is one of the ways the unconscious depicts the unbelievably rich and unimaginably immense cultural information we have absorbed, along with the innate potential arising from the process of life that carries us miraculously through conception and life in the womb.  Or it may be things learned in a rich life that you could not put into practice because of circumstances. In a real sense these enormously potent dream figures, or holy beings are our future self. This is often because they influence us and can change the direction of our living. The new direction when lived becomes our future, and we are often influenced in this way by our own massive potential which is our future announcing itself.

The story of Adam and Eve which has been presented as two individuals who were divinely created and walked the earth in a golden age. But seen from the perspective of our dreams it suggests it is actually a symbolic presentation of periods of human development as we emerged from being instinctive creatures on the verge of self-awareness.

Is the story of Jonah and the whale literally true? Are the stories of Jesus about a historical character? Or are they wonderfully evocative images which tell of another sort of truth than that of historical fact?

This side of the Bible which gives us a wonderful insight into human nature is incredibly rich. It stands beyond all the attempts to fix a literal and dogmatic meaning to it, and speaks of life experience which most of us can identify with and understand. If we look at the Bible as if it were a description of a dream instead of a statement of history, light shines through the stories and enlivens us. See The Secret Bible – The Kabbalah

In many people’s dreams they dig up riches and ancient things. If you are digging up treasure or rich things, this is an uncovering of your past, or your ancestral past. This can sometimes relate to the incredible age of your mind. There is in each of us an intuition or sense that shows us or reveals to us if we care to be aware, that our mind is not simply new with our birth. Its contents, through language, inherited customs, and genetic material, are incredibly old. Exploring such dreams of antiquity can often bring to awareness this ancient heritage. See ancestors.

Below is a description of a woman who led a dream group using Peer Dream Work.

“It was a rich dream, and we know we only were able to touch on those

two parts, but those two parts were so meaningful for her. I think
the most enriching part of the evening, for me, was to see her gain
insight as she was describing herself as an image in the dream. It
was watching the change on her face, the way she was suddenly not
speaking anymore.  She saw meaning so clearly, so deeply.”

 Example: A black man is the chauffeur. The rich guy smiles and says, That way you have room for all your friends.” He says, “I got this car for you because I don’t want you to have to drive.” I laugh and say, “Oh ho! Well, let me tell you, I will too drive. I’ll buy a van with hand controls with my own money.” He looks upset. I say, “Well, that doesn’t mean I’ll ever drive it, it just means I have the power to do it if I want to. That’s called independence.”

Example: I dreamt I was on a garden with an old man, a young boy and a young man in his thirties. The plot of land had something of the feeling of an allotment. It was well tended, and I had the sense the young man had been doing most of the work on it. The soil was rich but at the moment dry. A XE “A”  few shoots were just breaking the ground from hundreds of bulbs which had just started shooting.

The old man was kneeling at the edge of one end of the oblong plot of land. He was digging up bulbs one at a time and looking at them, then putting them back in the soil again. As the soil was dry he had to dig the hole a bit bigger to get them back. The bulbs had good roots and the shoots were firm. I was agitated about the old man digging them up though, and felt he should let them be. This seemed to link with my own propensity to dig up seeds when I was younger, to see if they had germinated.

The young boy was simply watching and was quite shadowy. The younger man was getting on with whatever work he was doing. I spoke to him after leaving the old man. Henry G.

Henry, the dreamer is a man in his late fifties. He explored his dream and summarised what he realised as follows: In connecting with the feelings in the dream the different aged males are all facets of myself. The old man is my own sense of ageing, and the feeling of dryness and being outside of the opportunities that I associate with those younger than myself. My feeling that nothing is growing in my life makes me want to dig under the surface of things to see if there are any new things that might arise. The younger man is the active and creative period of my life during which I did in fact ‘sow a lot of seeds’ which are now emerging into reality. The boy is my impatience but also the aspect of myself from which new ideas and directions can emerge. He is that part of me which is still growing, like the bulbs. The garden is my soul/soil. It is all the work I have done to cultivate skills and attributes in myself and create things in the world. What is important is that even though I am in my fifties, these younger parts were skills and attributes I developed in the past and are still active and devloping in me today.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What riches or sense of being rich was shown in my dream?

Did I manage to have the riches?

What do I consider the riches of my life are?

Does the dream in any way compensate for what I feel as a lack?

Do I feel I am rich in my talents or life?

See Compensation Theory – Self Observation – Survival Skills – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams