Posts Tagged ‘dream meanings’
Example 11 – Descriptions of Enlightenment
A person trying to describe their experience of wider awareness
Now it seemed as if my awareness went beyond the frontier. This was a very visual experience. I was seeing a vast desert and I knew this represented immense periods of time, perhaps what we call eternity. So it could be called the Desert of Eternity. Here and there in the desert were huge rock formations, a little bit like what one sees in Monument Valley in Arizona. But these rock formations were not plain or slightly coloured rock. Also they were immense. They had the appearance of massive mosaics – brightly coloured mosaics. But the mosaics did not form illustrations or patterns. However, some pieces of the mosaics were larger than others. And each piece might be in itself multicoloured and a sort of miniature pictograph.
As I looked at these massive formations I understood that they had been carved or created through events in the passage of time. Each mosaic, each part of the overall mosaic, had been formed by enormous creative acts, or by long-standing actions. So these latter were like ideograms or archetypes. So, for instance, mother creatures have cared for, fought for, died for their young. This pattern of behaviour has been so enormously potent and perhaps we can use the word successful, that it has created, shaped aspects of eternity. It has left its pattern, its artwork, on time itself. Thus eternity honours that pattern by giving it a place in the very structure of itself. No one being created such a mosaic in the formations. Such a mosaic was large and had in it the essence of all the lives that formed it.
So the rock formations and the mosaics on them represented influences that will flow into the future. They were sources of power or influence that shaped the phenomenal world. They were the body under the coat so to speak.
Afloat in the Ocean of Sentience
While snorkelling off Atsitsa Bay on the Greek Island of Skyros, I was cruising along in crystal clear water about four or five meters deep. The water was warm and there were plenty of fish to watch. As I reached the tip of the island I suddenly swam over the edge of an underwater precipice. The water was so incredibly clear I could see into an immense depth, with thousands of fish adding dimension to the abyss. The sudden depth scared me, so I scrambled back to shallow water to gain confidence before once more floating over the abyss. It was an extraordinary experience, swimming in shafts of light, floating in enormous space in the midst of thousands of living creatures.
This describes a little of how it feels when we become aware of the immense web of life in which we exist. The analogy can be taken further, because one way of explaining how synchronous events work in our life is to say that we all float in an ocean of sentience.
Experience of War
As I lay there on the floor, torn from the depths of sleep, I felt such extremity of fear as I had never known. From the waist downward I shook in an uncontrollable trembling, horrible to experience. In the same fraction of time, the upper part of me reached out instinctively, with a deep gasping breath, to something beyond my knowledge.
I had the experience of being caught, as neatly and cleanly as a good fielder catches a ball. A sense of indescribable relief flowed through my whole being. I knew with a certainty, such as no other certainty could be, that I was secure. There was no assurance that I should not be blown to pieces in the next instant. I expected to be. But I knew that, though such might be my fate, it was not of great account. There was something in me that was indestructible. The trembling ceased and I was completely collected and calm. Another shell came and burst, but it had lost its terror.
An overview of Life
To quote J. B. Priestly from his book Rain Upon Godshill: ‘Just before I went to America, during the exhausting weeks when I was busy with my Time Plays, I had such a dream, and I think it left a greater impression on my mind than any experience I had ever known before, awake or in dreams, and said more to me about this life than any book I have ever read. The setting of the dream was quite simple, and owed something to the fact that not long before my wife had visited the lighthouse here at St Catherine’s to do some bird ringing. I dreamt I was standing at the top of a very high tower, alone, looking down upon myriads of birds all flying in one direction; every kind of bird was there, all the birds in the world. It was a noble sight, this vast aerial river of birds. But now in some mysterious fashion the gear was changed, and time speeded up, so that I saw generations of birds, watched them break their shells, flutter into life, mate, weaken, falter and die. Wings grew only to crumble; bodies were sleek, and then, in a flash bled and shrivelled; and death struck everywhere at every second. What was the use of all this blind struggle towards life, this eager trying of wings, this hurried mating, this flight and surge, all this gigantic meaningless effort?
As I stared down, seeming to see every creature’s ignoble little history almost at a glance, I felt sick at heart. It would be better if not one of them, if not one of us, had been born, if the struggle ceased for ever. I stood on my tower, still alone, desperately unhappy. But now the gear was changed again, and the time went faster still, and it was rushing by at such a rate, that the birds could not show any movement, but were like an enormous plain sown with feathers. But along this plain, flickering through the bodies themselves, there now passed a sort of white flame, trembling, dancing, then hurrying on; and as soon as I saw it I knew that this white flame was life itself, the very quintessence of being; and then it came to me, in a rocket burst of ecstasy, that nothing mattered, nothing could ever matter, because nothing else was real but this quivering and hurrying lambency of being. Birds, men and creatures not yet shaped and coloured, all were of no account except so far as this flame of life travelled though them. It left nothing to mourn over behind it; what I had thought was tragedy was mere emptiness or a shadow show; for now all real feeling was caught and purified and danced on ecstatically with the white flame of life. I had never before felt such deep happiness as I knew at the end of my dream of the tower and the birds.’
Extending Further
This has happened to me several times, and each time is similar. It is as though I have grown used to living in a room in a house. It is all I have ever known, so I take it that this is all there is of me. Then suddenly it feels as if the walls of that room melt away, or a door opens, and there I am stretching away forever. My mind, and what I can know, has no boundaries. If I think about a question, whatever it is, I have the most amazing response and insight, as if I have lived throughout all history. I feel as If I am part of a huge and unlimited sea of mind or consciousness. In it is all that has ever existed, merged and yet distinct. Every human talent and thought is in it alive and vital. At those times I know with an unshakeable surety that we cannot help but be a part of this immense life. Yet at the same time we can be at odds with it, be unsympathetic to it. This causes a condition of stress within us, and within our relationship with it. But I feel that if we completely accept our place in this being, even though one is a minute and seemingly insignificant part of it, then we are aligned with its huge universal life and purpose. Then we become revivified in some way.
Remembering
About 10 years ago I was what you would call awakened, enlightened, I would say living on the next spiritual plane. In a state of being where you wake up in the morning and look in the mirror expecting your eyes to have turned into deep, unending pools, encompassing all space, time and knowledge. All of life looked to me like a giant, glistening, shining web, and I lived at the centre of that web, and everyone else lived at the centre of their own web, and all of the webs were interlinked. Like a spider I could feel every tremor in the web; everything that happened in the world, every footfall, every mind waking up and going to sleep… I felt it and knew of it all…
I lived outside of time. The past, present and future were all one, and I always knew what was coming next. I saw how all of our yesterdays and tomorrows affected our now’s and next year’s… I lived in the pure present, and yet my consciousness spanned across all of time…
(Wow, what a great feeling to suddenly remember all of this again!)
I lived this way for some time but ultimately I did not know where to go next – I did not know what the next stage was. So I spent all my time frantically trying to enlighten others, and eventually I burned out. I came back to earth with a crash and sank into a deep depression. As a result, I have been a little afraid of going back there. But everything I have learned since then has suddenly come together and I know that it is safe to attempt to reach that state of being once more. I knew straight away that this dream I had was a calling back to that realm, a catalyst.
Every truth I have searched for, every book I have read, every conversation I’ve had, and every thought I have formed since then, has been an endless search for knowledge of where we go next once we have achieved that state of being, of how to live in that dimension. I have not been able to access that realm until now, because I could not go there again without knowledge of what to do once I am there, and without some surety that I will not come back to earth with such a bump this time. The new discoveries in quantum physics and neuroscience are a big part of this new understanding. If anyone had told me 10 years ago that science would bring some coherence to my spirituality, I would have doubted it. But for some time now I have had the surety that science and spirituality would one day come together, and I have devoted my time to both equally for the last 8 years, looking for some sign that this would come to pass. It seems that time is here.
The Bubble
I needed to go to the toilet to urinate. It was a great pleasure to do this, and to watch the falling water splash into the pool creating many bubbles. But something caught my attention, for it seemed that each small bubble was an eye looking up at me. Wondering what this could mean I looked more closely, to see not eyes, but I’s. Each bubble had a tiny reflection of myself in it. Because my senses were amplified the ability of our waking consciousness to receive information from the unconscious was heightened, I was led to see each of the tiny replicas of myself as having separate identity. The suggestion behind this was that I, and everybody else, with our personal identity, are like bubbles. We are all in our own sphere of skin, apparently separated, and yet at the same time, all part of the same substance. As this interesting line of experience developed, I saw that each of the separate bubbles, although they each were different in size, occupied a different space, and therefore had a different identity, only had awareness out of my own consciousness. They were all unknowingly reflections of me.[i]
Suddenly, and with some fear, I realised the meaning of this interesting fantasy. I am a bubble. My personal awareness, although it seems distinct and separate, is in fact the reflection of one great consciousness pervading the universe. So who am I when my bubble bursts, as it must, and I return to my source? The fear I first felt has long melted. It has been replaced by joy as I have explored what it means to burst and return home.
Touching the Centre
In the dream I looked over at a plain wall in the room. It was light green. To my amazement a huge living and wondrous circle appeared on the wall. It was full of movement, everything dancing in time to music. At the very centre of the circle was emptiness, nothing, a void. Yet out of this nothingness all things emerged. There were plants, animals, people, hills, rivers and mountains all coming to birth. They danced out in their own individual movement, yet each unknowing was part of the whole wonderful and intricate dance which made a great pattern and movement in the body of the circle. All danced to the periphery and there turned and moved, still in their ballet, back to the centre. At that centre they plunged into its oblivion again. But at that very moment new life sprang from it to dance once more.
To touch that centre, to be renewed by it, you may need to surrender to it, to let things happen. You need to hold it as an image and drop into the centre with as much trust as you can. By doing so you are opening to the primal essence in you for renewal, for guidance – a guide in the dance. You may be out of step even with yourself. That is your sickness.
A View of Eternity
Before I went to sleep that night I focused on the question -Who am I, really?
The dream was vivid, and still gives me shivers to this day. I dreamed that I looked up and there was this incredible star that was emanating points of light in the sky. It got brighter and brighter and the bottom-most point reached down to where I was and transported me up to the star. The points of light came out from the centre in all directions, and I found myself on the end of one of the horizontal points.
A wonderful (female) voice spoke to me and said this is who you are, and I had the strong sense of being located at the end of the horizontal light bar. Then she said and this is who you are and carried (transported in some way) me to the next bar of light, where I saw another version (incarnation?) of myself (in a different time and place, although I knew that the essence of this version of me was really me). She continued transporting me from bar to bar where I experienced myself in many different versions in the past, present, and future. I had different skills and interests that were the focal point of each version of myself–a musician in one, a farmer in another.
Some of the versions were females, although I experienced the same sense of self in all of them. Then she returned me to the horizontal bar of my current self and said to me that all of this is who I am, but that now she was going to show me who I really am. Then she drew me into the centre of the star (light, energy source) where I merged with her and could see each of the emanating points of light as manifestations of a single source or spirit. It was one of the most incredible feelings of being integrated and whole that I’ve ever experienced, and I basked in the feeling for a while just absorbing and soaking it in. Then she returned me to myself (with a cosmic wink) and I slept peacefully for the rest of the night. Ever since then I haven’t felt the need to ask who or what I am, and I’ve seen my various abilities and struggles in life in a totally new way. C.A.
[i] ‘And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’ Genesis 1:26.
Angling
This shows you creating a receptive state of consciousness that allows the deep insights or processes within you to become known. You are literally dipping into your unconscious levels of awareness to bring insights and intuitions to the surface. So you are trying to find spiritual nourishment, ‘fishing’ for ideas or information. You might even be fishing for compliments. See: fish and sea creatures.
When we fish in a dream or usually represents us creating a receptive state of consciousness which allows the us to find things that are usually difficult to ‘catch’ with our normal mind. So it is like trying to bring things up from our memory that we have either forgotten or perhaps never ever realised before. So it is like trying to find spiritual nourishment. It might in some dream show us ‘fishing’ for ideas, compliments or information; seeking intuition.
Fishing rod: Male sexuality; personal power, or feelings of impotence.
Getting a new fishing rod: In a man’s dream might mean feeling anxious about his ability to ‘hook’ a woman. For a woman it could mean a desire to ‘catch’ a new man. In general the rod suggests the means of pulling something out of the unknown of life or your mind. So it could suggest intuition or skill in acquiring creative ideas, or something that nourishes.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What are your trying to catch, a partner, inner wisdom, something to deal with hunger?
Have I been looking within myself lately for creative ideas or understanding?
Has anything been caught, and if so what do I feel about it?
What do the events and environment of the dream add to my understanding?
Did you catch anything, and if so what did it make you feel?
Where you trying to hook objects – if what memories do they link with?
Try talking as to define your dreams meaning.
Twin
There are several possibilities when you dream of a twin or twins.
The first one is that it is part of you that has got split off from your main development. So they can be one of the many polar opposites or splits in our being – the split between waking consciousness and sleep or the unconscious; the split between what we want in our deepest desires, and what we can allow ourselves socially; the split caused by infant trauma; the split between our sense of eternity and the facts of physical mortality; introversion and extroversion; something of self which has got split off, or perhaps even ‘died at birth’, leaving us feeling only half a person; the lack of balance in our being.
Twins can also represent duality, conflict, or two sides of an issue, but also the emergence of something new, something that was denied, that you were born with, but never acknowledged as part of yourself. It can also be your unconscious relationship with another person, such as occurs in a telepathic link. In some cases though it is about separation, and the feelings you have about that, or about the denied or unrealised part of yourself.
But if you were a twin at birth and you twin died it could be a reference to them and your continued link with them. To quote from http://www.twinlesstwins.org/GRIEF/ProfessionalResearch/TwinBereavement.aspx –
“When we lose a twin, it feels for many of us like the literal end of our lives. That is true, in that it is the end of life as we have known it since the moment of our conception. As one twin explained to me: ‘The day my twin died, the lights went out.’ Another twin said to me, ‘After Daphne died, it was as if I couldn’t breathe. I’d never in my life thought about breathing. I just took it for granted that Daphne and my breath were part of being alive.’ When our twin dies, we must begin to breathe again; we must begin again with our lives, starting with what truly feels like the end.”
“Twins begin their identify formation in the womb. Whether fraternal or identical, they receive different stimuli and resources in the womb environment and, therefore, have different experiences that affect their fetal development. But from their cellular origins, they are ushered into the womb in relationship, both to their mother and to each other. And early on, they begin to show distinct, individual, and also interactive patterns of behavior and temperament, which have been observed and documented by researchers with the use of ultra-sonography. These patterns are often repeated after birth.”
But here is another possibility, explained by man who was trying to find himself.
There is a part of me that he has never actually involved in this present life. It has never been expressed. It has never been incarnated. It is almost as if it was not born with me. It has never expressed through the body. It hasn’t made itself real through the body. So it is almost as if it has been a spiritual or invisible twin, a ghost, a spirit guide. It is influencing his life – God, what a story – and yet is so frustrated. Frustrated all the time because it can’t live its life. It is pushing and pushing me toward what it wants to do, yet it is not felt as wholly me. It is not something I have built into my life and trusts, and so I do not live it in the same way as he lives the other areas of my life. When I look at this question though, I see there is a problem which is a part of my nature. It has created this division. When I was born there was a struggle about incarnation. I didn’t want to be born. I didn’t want to face again the experience of the world. So, a very large part of me was cut off from involvement and expression. It was pulled back or held back. It did not directly build the body or build the experience it might have done otherwise. See Meeting My Baby Self
An amazing conception happened after two eggs were fertilised at the same time in the womb. Both Kylie and her partner Remi Horder, pictured below, are of mixed race. Their mothers are both white and their fathers are black. According to the Multiple Births Foundation, baby Kian must have inherited the black genes from both sides of the family, whilst Remee inherited the white ones. The odds against of a mixed race couple having twins of dramatically different colour are a million to one.
A mixed-race British couple has defied the odds — twice — by producing two sets of twins in which one sibling appears to be black and the other white.
Alive
In some dreams there is a great feeling of extraordinary aliveness, or there is a particular emphasis on the difference between being alive and dead. This usually refers to the dreamers potential of positive feelings and energy. The dream might even compare the two.
Example: 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 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 her. 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 one’s 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 ‘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. I felt good, positive, easy to breathe 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. I am Life.
Useful Questions and Hints:
In the dream what attitude allows or creates this feeling of aliveness?
Do I diminish the feeling in any way, and if so how?
In what ways does this differ from my daily sense of myself, and what can I learn from that?
See Talking with the Dead; Near Death Experiences; Life and Death.
Agony
What feeling or decision, what responsibility or concern is tormenting you? Or does the dream suggest this is a physical pain? If so See: Illness.
Agony in your dream may be a sign either of something radically wrong in your body or in your inner feelings. If it is the first you need to arrange a physical check. If it is the second you need to arrange a situation in which you can talk out, explore and express the inner agony.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Am I aware of actual pain in my body while awake, and am I doing anything about it?
Does this agony depict a misery I am carrying inside me, and if so how can I allow it to be expressed?
What clues do I get from the dream about the source of the misery?
You can make great changes and healing by using Acting on Your Dream.
Teenage Male Dreams
Adolescence is the time of your greatest sexual growth, and development of new ranges of emotion, intellect, and sensitivity. So any adolescent in your dream often points to yourself at that age, and the things you faced – or if you are not yet a teenager, then the things you feel about moving toward adolescence.
During adolescence we move from youth to becoming a mature adult. This means learning to become more independent of the work energy, the money and time given by parents. It means making your own decisions, moving toward earning your own keep and establishing yourself in the community and the world. Sometimes the break from parents is made by establishing a relationship with someone. However the shift needs a level of heroism in many ways, and if you succeed the difficulties change and deepen you.
At such a time you may unconsciously use certain strategies to become independent. One is to become angry, defensive or down right obnoxious. What this does is to give strength to break away – even if it means feeling your parents are a heap of shit.
Another way is to become a mothers boy and cling – but this doesn’t mean you become independent emotionally, but it might make you feel safe.
On one site about teenage behavior it list sucht things as:
Does your child often:
- lose his temper
- argue with adults
- refuse to comply with rules and requests
- deliberately annoy people
- blame others for his mistakes and misbehavior
=> Is your child often:
- touchy and easily annoyed by others
- angry and resentful
- spiteful and vindictive
These are all ways to become yourself. After all, all your life you have had to be dependent on parents or carers. And it is quite something to emerge from it. But if you understand what happening it can become an easier journey.
The dream world of the adolescent shows very big shifts from that of the child. One of the major themes here is illustrated in this dream from Natalie, a thirteen year old:
I have this recurring nightmare. I see my mother standing by my bedroom door, blocking it as if I am being trapped and stopped from getting out. I often call to her, “Let me out Mum” but she just stands there staring with no expression on her face at all. I end up getting out of bed and switching my bedroom light on and then she disappears. Sometimes I will see her standing by my wardrobe. It seems as if she is always standing by a door and trying to trap me.
The dream shows how a teenager is trying to find a way out of her dependence on mother. The dependence is felt as if it is the power of the mother over the child, a sort of restrictive force. This theme of moving toward independence physically and psychologically is a huge step to take, and many dreams in this period explore how this can be achieved, and the various paths one could take to attain it.
Example: Back with my lover I felt, still young, inexperienced and a bit clumsy, but laughing and happy, the flow of pleasure to my lover, leading to a kiss. The deep internal pleasure of kissing gradually widened until it led to genital feeling. I realised so many things as this lovely gentle growth of feeling and flowing occurred. I realised that I and most teenagers have too much technical sex instruction, so it is portrayed as an erect penis entering the vagina.
But I was seeing it wasn’t like that at all. First of all came the gradual relationship with my lover. As that deepened it led to touching, being happy together and kissing. The kiss, oral pleasure, was our first area of loving with our mother. From that original centre of pleasure, it grows into anal and genital pleasure. This was what was happening. Then gently the body began to move. But there was still no erection. The movement was the forerunner of the inner pleasurable urge to thrust and penetrate. So there was a slow and internal growth through escalating feelings, and not an outwardly ordained set of movements that led to “sex”!
The following dream shows a particular facet of this. It is from Eric Fromm’s book on dreams, The Forgotten Language. The dreamer was a young man, an only child, who had been cosseted by over protective parents, and was finding it difficult to face life without their support.
He dreamed that he was about five or six years old and was faced by a river he must cross. He looked for a bridge but found none. He thought of swimming but then realized he could not swim. (In the waking state he actually could swim). He then sees a tall, dark man who indicates he will carry him across the river in his arms. He is greatly relieved and allows the stranger to pick him up and begin. But then he is seized with panic. He suddenly realizes that if he does not escape from this man he will die!
They are already in the river, he in the man’s arms, when he gathers his courage and makes a desperate leap into the river. He is sure he will drown but suddenly finds that he can swim and soon reaches the other side. The frightening man disappears.
How do I leave home?
Dr. Fromm describes crossing the river as the need, and the difficulty, of moving from childhood toward adult independence. The man represents all the support he gets from parents and other people such as teachers and friends – excellent while he was a child, but something he must learn to do without if he is to develop his own innate strengths. When the dreamer takes the risk of daring the river, he finds he has the ability to survive.
In many teenage dreams a darker note arises as the emerging independence starts to make a dramatic break with parental authority and with the dependence upon the succouring received. Because the break is difficult it sometimes needs anger or a form of violence. This is not because the parents are necessarily holding on to the child, but because the need of the child is so strong, that to cut those ties a form of violence is used. We then find a dream such as the following:
I dreamed I dared not move from home as I had murdered my father and hid the body in the rubbish tip at the end of the garden.
If it is not murder, then the dreamer sees the parent or parents die. In either case, the child still faces life without them, and this seems to be the point of such dreams. In waking life there may at such times also be some anger or aggressiveness toward the parents – once again a means of making the break. After all, how could you move away if you were still tied emotionally? The next dream illustrates the quieter form of getting rid of a parent.
For the past year I have had recurring dreams about fairground rides. Occasionally members of my family, including my father have died on the rides. When I’m on the ride I’ve survived, but I can sense danger all around me. This dream is beginning to bother me. I am 15 years old.
Sexual development is of course of prime importance at this time. So dreams explore the facets of this in a variety of ways.
Example: As I considered teenage I had a series of wonderful scenes occur. They were so lovely I laughed with pleasure. I felt the explosion of energy which occurs in adolescence, and I saw teenagers, running, dancing, loving, fighting, and exploring relationships. They were life exploding into the new, into experiment, into growth. If we held them back too firmly it would be like my stuck record, and my vision of the cosmos had shown me life never repeats itself, never stops. It always moves on, changes, dances.
Many things we face while young are never resolved, or remain as potentials, and are frequently confronted later in life. So the dream teenager can depict these unresolved issues or potential still to discover and work through them by keeping in touch with their dreams and attempting to understand them.
Useful questions:
What did I face as a teenager that is still a factor in my life?
What am I exploring about being a teenager, and what can I learn from this?
What is the character of this adolescent and how does that relate to me at the moment?
What theme or actions surround the teenager, and do they give clues my present situation?
What things are happening in the relationship with this adolescent and do they throw light on a present relationship?
Struggle
For some people just to exist is a struggle. But there are so many struggles the dream might be pointing to. Struggling to earn enough; struggling for recognition; struggling to find and earn love; struggling against depression and despair; struggling against illness; struggling to find your way through the maze of life events; struggling to contain your anger about what happens around you or in front of you; struggling against the madness of some human actions; struggling to continue after the loss of a child or loved one; struggling to breathe; struggling to learn something – struggling.
What is your struggle?
You can find your way through such struggles.
See Recovery from a Life of Pain
Positions
Your stance or position in life; the way you are relating to what is depicted in the rest of the dream – or the way you feel you are relating to it.
above What is superior or has a wider view or possibility than your present standpoint; sense of inferiority in relationship to what is above us; what we strive for.
If we are standing above or high up: Having a wider viewpoint; being intellectual; feeling superior or in a position of advantage.
Idioms: Above all; above and beyond; above asking; above oneself; above board; above ones station; risen above oneself. See: high; hill; mountain; flying.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What are the abilities or achievements I feel good about?
What am I looking up to or reaching for?
What or who do I feel is above me?
adjacent/adjoining Suggests a strong connection with the dreamer, or what is wanted or being worked toward. For instance in Japan, rocks or trees that are close together are sometimes seen as married or linked. Dreams use the same sort of symbology to suggest a more than surface connection with someone or some aspect of life. There could also be the suggestion of confrontation or discovery – being near something in this case meaning that we can no longer escape meeting it, or it is near at hand in the sense of being discovered or experienced. The example below shows adjacent as depicting difficult feelings near at hand that the dreamer meets.
Example: I had a dream in which my best friend, her 4-year-old daughter, and myself were staying in this huge old, Victorian style house. My friend put her daughter to bed in another room, and we went in the adjoining room to watch a movie. My friend fell asleep and then all of the sudden, her daughter came screaming into the room, covered in blood. I didn’t actually see what happened, but I knew instantly that a crocodile had attacked her and bitten her legs off. I tried waking up her mother and I was holding her (the child) in my arms and crying. Then I woke up. The dream was so realistic, and when I awoke I was covered in sweat and shaking really bad. The dream upset me so much that I didn’t tell anyone about it. A week later, I found out two other friends had dreams in which this little girl was also attacked by a crocodile. What could this possibly mean? A.R.E. dream.
The dream suggests a close and perhaps psychic connection with the girl and her mother. See Possession
Useful Questions and Hints:
What or who am I feeling connected to or near at this time?
What is the influence of this connection?
behind The past; what you have chosen to or want to forget – left behind; what one is unaware of – as talk behind ones back; what has been learned or dealt with.
People behind dreamer: taking the lead in relationships; being decisive.
Idioms: Behind the scenes; behind the time; fall behind; put something behind me.
below Something you feel is ‘beneath you’; what is ‘below’ in the body – so the non intellectual or sexual aspects of self; something one can now look back on from a detached viewpoint. If below something else – see above.
Idioms: Beneath my contempt; It’s below my standards.
beside See: adjacent/adjoining above.
close Intimacy; being made aware of or having a fuller awareness of something or someone; what one feels connected with or has ties with; near to, in the sense of making a decision – near to leaving home; close to, as ‘close to finding the solution’; a situation that is near at hand or being confronted or realised now.
Idioms: At close quarters; close fisted; close on; close to home; that was close.
distant Barely conscious of; a long time off; something one does not identify with strongly.
in-front The future; what is seen and understood; what is being confronted.
Lying down or prostrate If Injured shows a possible psychological situation that has ‘floored you’. If resting you have given up your persona efforts, making way for new ideas or impulses to arrive. If in prostration it shows that you have recognised something bigger, more advanced or powerful than your personality, so you are opening yourself for something better to enter you.
Example: It was the Swami, whose photo I had seen at Exeter. He was sitting on the floor, as was everyone else, but in semi darkness, and partly covered in a coat or blanket. He looked at me, but seemed to sink into himself or the gloomy light. When I saw him I saluted him in complete prostrating, lying face down on the floor.
The interpretation he arrived at was that, “My love prostrated itself before the love of something holy. The love of what lifts ones spirit remains partly hidden, but through your surrender, this love will come to you.
opposite Meeting or ‘facing’ a situation; opposition or resistance to decided direction.
side Supportive feelings as ‘by ones side’; as well as; indication of choice as ‘what side are you on’ or ‘who’s on my side?’
Idioms: From all sides; let the side down; on every side; on the wrong side of thirty; on the right/wrong side; on the side; pass by on the other side; pick sides; put to one side; side by side; side with somebody; take sides; take to one side; the other side – death; safe side; bit on the side; seamy side. See: adjacent/adjoining above.
Move Movements
In general the quality of your movements in dreams depicts your feeling or mental state, your confidence or lack of it, your ability to make changes – move easily – or difficulty in facing change – paralysed. The quality or lack of it that you express in your life; what you are creating or ‘giving off’ in everyday life. But movement is always an expression of who you are, of your potential to achieve, to make changes, to ‘get somewhere’. So look to your feelings in the dream to define what it is of yourself that is being expressed, what of your potential is flowing or being denied.
If it is an object moving, it suggests the thing has direction, life, or purpose of some kind. In this case you need to understand what your relationship with it is in the dream. It might also refer to it attracting your attention.
Agility: Coping well with your situation; adaptability; mental quickness.
Easy flowing movement: Self acceptance and thus easy expression of oneself; feeling in harmony with emotions and sexuality.
Getting stuck, unable to move: Often being held back by anxiety or fears, such as fear of failure. See Life’s Little Secrets
Moving house: See house moving
Useful Questions and Hints:
Do I have any sense what my movement or posture expresses?
Am I aware of my body much or what I am saying through it?
Do I love moving or is it a chore?
See Body Postures – Use Body – Postures Movement and Body Language – Mind and Movement
Active Passive
We are in a passive role when we are an inactive observer in our dream, we are all the time on the receiving end of dream action, or as in the example below, make no effort to move from discomfort. If this occurs frequently in our dreams, we are probably passive in our waking life also.
Example: ‘I was in a house that I lived in many years ago, how I got there I do not know, but I saw myself sitting in an ordinary chair just behind the closed front street door. It was very quiet, and I was afraid, but I did not make any effort to move.’ Ms J.
This habitual passivity can gradually be changed by such techniques as active imagination. It is our own emotions, fears and sexuality we are meeting in our dreams, so it is wise to take charge of ones inner feelings rather than be a victim. The following dream illustrates an active dreamer. See: Secrets of Power Dreaming – Active Imagination – processing dreams.
Example: ‘As I walked toward a house a number of demons or devils came at me menacingly, trying to stop me getting near the house. Although they made all the ghostly noises I wasn’t at all afraid of them. I felt they were a damned nuisance, and to show them I meant business I grabbed one and with my right hand I gripped its flesh and squeezed. It started to squeak in pain and I squeezed harder.’ Clive J.
Example: I am on holiday, standing outside the hotel, at which I am staying. The day is lovely, warm and sunny. Across the road and to the right there is an old white house with a low, stone bridge leading away from it into the country. I turn, enter the hotel, but when I get to my room find my luggage has been removed and the room occupied by strangers who seem completely unaware of the situation and of me. I then go to the dining room which is full of people eating, enjoying themselves – I know no one and am left standing in the doorway, watching.
In the last example the woman is extremely passive in her response to other people taking over her room. Because a dream offers so many possibilities the woman could easily throw the people out or acted in a more aggressive manner; for dreams are created by you emotions, fears and also your courage or lack of it, so fear creates fearful or passive dreams. So you Cannot be hurt or die in your dreams.
Remember that dreams are like a computer game in which you can kill or be killed – feel it all – and come out of it unhurt unless you are still frightened. Fear is a great creator of awful dreams and you need to fight back.
In the ancient view of dreams recorded in the Atharva Veda, being active, or even actively aggressive, was seen as a positive sign, even if one was injured or mutilated as a result of one’s active stance. Whereas if the dreamer passively accepted injury in a dream this was seen as a negative implication. This was because it was felt that the active or passive stance within the dreams indicated a similar disposition during waking life. As the active person is generally more successful, the dream sign of an active disposition was seen as fortunate.
We are psychically always on one side or the other—tiger or fawn, destroyer or destroyed, taker or giver, object or subject, active or passive, creator or created. Here is the dichotomy of our fall from the greater self of primitive psyche into the forms of reality, the division of self and other. All our lives we try to achieve a balance of these contradictory opposites, and whether in our egos we succeed or fail, every function claimed by the ego is balanced by its opposite in the subconscious. Only in the fusion of infancy, or of sexual orgasm, or in religious ecstasy do we escape the psychic wound of division. See Stuck in life – unable to move and Avoid Being Victims
There is another side to this disposition of action or passivity though, where passivity has a positive connotation. So this must not be forgotten in regard to dreams and dream work, or in fact in connection with everyday life. This aspect of passive/active is described well by P. W. Martin in his book Experiment In Depth (Routledge and Kegan Paul 1964). In talking about working with active imagination he says, ‘One must be actively passive – active in giving over the energy, passive in observing. The outstanding characteristic of the true vision is its complete autonomy.’ This is a very important issue, as without the ability to control one’s reaction to one’s inner life, much of it will remain unavailable. If one is stuck in being constantly controlling one’s thoughts and emotions, in being a sort of powerful ‘in charge’ sort of person, then ones spontaneous inner life may never be able to emerge. Thus an ability to become passive is essential. But Martin calls it passive-active because it is a consciously decided passivity rather than an unconscious habit.
This holds true even while one is asleep and dreaming. I learned this lesson while hunting as a young man. For hours I had walked through woodland looking for a quarry but without sign of a single creature. Tiring I stood against a tree eating a sandwich. Slowly and magically the forest came to life around me, creatures walking and flying nearby unafraid while I remained quiet.
This powerful control of ones own activity in an open and receptive state is the key to the doorway of the living ‘creatures’ and personalities of our dreams – to the unfolding of innate qualities that would not otherwise be able to break through the threshold of consciousness and become known. Without being able to become passive in the sense of not interfering, the spontaneous emergence of unconscious vision and content cannot occur. The examples given in active imagination and dreams shown how this is used in actually meeting unconscious content – alsp see Opening to Life.