Posts Tagged ‘dream meanings’

Cesspool Cesspit

All those parts of self, such as values, emotions, desires, ideas, hopes, that have been passed out of our living system and become the corruptible parts of human nature that become manure for new growth; and faeces can also represent money or riches, fertility. Such a dream image may also suggest decay, a part of yourself or society cut off from life and growth.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What was I doing in connection with the cesspool?

Was I threatened by it or did I see it as opportunity?

What was the outcome of the dream and would I like to change it?

See Secrets of Power Dreaming and Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

Chain Chained Chains

Very often a chain depicts restriction of some sort. The restriction might be in the form of dependence upon someone, or it might be in the form of imposed constraint. We might feel ‘chained’ to our marriage partner or work, or we may be chained by mental attitudes or habits. See: example in abandoned.

Chains have not only been imposed on prisoners, but also slaves, to stop them escaping. Women working in the sex trade often wore a chain around their ankle, and this probably has links with past servitude also.

A chain can be used to show strength or a powerful or even protective force. In this sense the image may suggest a serious of events – links – which lead to the present situation. Or the dream might point to the links in the chain – a connection broken by breaking any one of the links, or that is broken by a weak link.

Example: ‘My Mother asked me to go and buy some butter for her. A chain on my left leg prevented me from going very far. I look down the road and see my Mum, Dad and my four brothers in the back of a car. I wave and call and they drive right past me, going over the chain I am wearing on my leg.’ Lorraine. LBC.

Lorraine’s dream illustrates not only her feelings of being left out of family life, but also the chain on her leg shows her not fully independent.

Jewellery chains obviously suggest something different, and have been used from the beginning of human history. Originally they were probably seen as a form of magic. In other words, if a woman wore a certain ornament it made her more attractive to men. Of if a man wore something that his fellows didn’t have, it made others respect or notice him. So it was felt the chain was a form of magic. This type of ‘magic’ is still used by men and women today, helping people to feel more confident in their relationships and undertakings. As happens with people wearing a St. Christopher or a cross on a chain.

Chains have also been used to denote an official social position, and so might depict authority in some form.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What is the chain in my dream doing – is it a restriction or a link with something?

Is this suggesting strength, if so what does it refer to in my life?

What am I chained to or dependent upon?

Try using Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Avoid Being Victims – Questions

Chair

It suggests a passive, relaxed attitude or inactivity. It can indicate receptivity or openness or even escapism – escapism if you regularly sit in a chair to read or watch TV as a form or escapism.

If it is your chair it probably represent your rights or position. If you are relaxed in the chair maybe you need to rest or relax.

Putting things under a chair might be like sweeping things under the carpet – getting them out of sight or unnoticed.

A chair can be a place you have stayed in for years, attitudes, feelings, harboured anger that you have not moved out of.

Example: I called out to one person not to go because it looked dangerous, but she ran off. I stayed in that chair for twenty years. When I decided to come down, I was fifty years old and all of that activity was over. I had no emotions, and when I went down, it looked quite a distance. Before I went down, I had to get out of the chair, which was on a shaky and narrow balcony. I needed some help to get out of the chair.

 

Placing of chair in group: Sense of status or importance.

Wheelchair: An in-valid situation; a sense of weakness or illness.

If pushing someone else: Seeing self as carrying an invalid part of you.

Baby’s high chair: This could mean you are acting as a child, not being responsible or not in control.

Standing on a chair: A need for care, because it might indicate an unsafe position.

 

Example: At the end of the promenade was a path which we took. The path went along the top of a cliff. The sea below was pretty rough, a typical Autumn day at the seaside. All of a sudden the path came to an end and there was a steep slope to the right which led down to the beach, I decided to turn right and go down the slope. When we got half way down the slope the path started to give way on the left and I found myself without enough room for the four wheels of the wheelchair. I was desperately holding on, tilting the wheelchair to the right to keep it balanced on the two right wheels when my husband got panicky in the chair and moved. The chair tilted to the left and fell down the rocks. I started running down the path towards the beach, towards my husband and the wheelchair. I never reached the wheelchair or my husband because I awoke and that was the end of the dream. ‘ Mrs C.

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.

Idioms: grab a chair; have a chair; musical chairs; play musical chairs; shuffle the chairs on the deck.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What am I doing in relation to the chair?

Is it another person in or using the chair? See Characters and People in Dreams

Was it a chair I know? See Associations Working with

Try using Acting on your dream – Secrets of Power Dreaming

Chameleon

Changing emotions, instability, lack of stability or sense of duty. Will change values to suit outer events, rather than be true to promises or duty; or adaptability.

Something or someone that is overlooked or seems part of the background.

But a chameleon can represent the means we use to adapt to what others see us as –  I quote from Eric Fromm’s book Escape from Freedom, “A personality offered to you by cultural patterns; and you therefore becomes exactly as all others are and as they expect you to be. The discrepancy between “I” and the world disappears and with it the conscious fear of aloneness and powerlessness. This mechanism can be compared with the protective coloring some animals assume. They look so similar to their surroundings that they are hardly distinguishable from them. The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identical with millions of other automatons around him, need not feel alone and anxious any more. But the price he pays, however, is high; it is the loss of his self.”

Of course you can also master this as a shape shifter blending in and yet maintaining your own individuality. Either ones desire to fade into the background, or adaptability. So perhaps like a shape shifter who can be many different things. Or the trained hunter or predator who makes himself of herself blend in to approach the victim. See Avoid Being Victims

Example: ‘My wife and I saw a large lizard on the wall near a banana. It was there to catch the flies. The lizard turned so it was facing away from us – head up the wall. We then were able to see it had large wing like flaps that spread from its head in an inverted V. With amazement we saw on these flaps wonderful pictures, in full colour, of birds. In fleeting thoughts I wondered if the bird ‘paintings’ were to attract birds, or were some form of camouflage. But I felt certain the lizard had ‘painted’ these wonderful pictures with its unconscious art.’ David T.

In the example the banana is both David’s pleasure and sexuality, while the lizard is the creativity emerging from his unconscious through the attention he is giving it – in other words he is looking at the lizard, his instinctive life, through exploring his dreams. See the information about the reptilian brain under brain levels and dreams.

In this next example it can be seen how allowing the influence of the instinctive ‘lizard’ life into awareness is strengthening.

Example: As we were walking something touched my leg or ankle. It was some sort of alien lizard type creature. I realised it had scratched me and thereby put something into my bloodstream. There was slight anxiety about what this would do, but as I stood wondering I could feel some change going on with my hand and wrists. I looked at my right wrist and saw it had become thicker and stronger. It looked really powerful, and I could feel the same sort of change and strength occurring throughout my body. It was like a positive viral attack. As we walked along further the changes deepened. All of us were now changing and metamorphosing, a process we were learning to direct or change in some degree. I remember making my head bullet proof and my body almost armoured with a sort of scaled chitin.

Just after this dream a massive storage heater in my cottage fell on my right foot as I was cleaning it. The pain was awful and a large swelling came up immediately as if the impact had burst a blood vessel or broken bones. It was about two inches across. I thought I had crushed my foot, but was relieved to see I could just about move a couple of toes. The pain was too much to do more. Within an hour and a half all the swelling had gone and the pain was disappearing. By the evening my foot appeared normal apart from small abrasions. This was so amazing I wept to see how my body healed itself so quickly. The next day I went for a long walk with a friend without any pain.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Do you feel as if you are fading into the background or a shape shifter?

What was your feeling or reaction to seeing the chameleon?

Did anything happen to you in the dream?

Try using  Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Questions – Life’s Little Secrets

Champagne

See: Alcohol.

Chapel

See: church chapel temple.

Chariot

The difference between this and car lies in it being drawn by horses. It therefore shows how your internal spontaneous feelings, or your natural processes, such as growth and ageing, are carrying you along. See: Horse; Car.

Charity Shop

Usefulness of the useless – the discovery of value in what has been discarded. Searching for our needs or things we want, recycling past experience. Also things such as ideas, skills, attitudes, we have got from other people, or ones own discarded or forgotten experience. See: Shop.

It might also point to searching for your needs or things you want in an unorthodox way or places. Also the recycling of past experience; the giving away or clearing out of things and memories that are no longer part of the mainstream in your life. Your own discarded or forgotten experience.

Things such as ideas, skills, attitudes, you have got from other people.

Example: Then I was caught up in the crowds again, partly standing back watching the whole cavalcade of what was happening. Apparently it was a big civic event connected with raising money for a charity. Some nuns were involved and I knew they had come out of a closed convent to be in the crowd. They had collecting bowls for people to drop money in. As a sort of emphasis some women who were collecting had put many coins in their bras, so as they walked one could hear the chinking and see their breasts/coins bobbing up and down. Some of the nuns were in wheel chairs and looked quite crippled.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What is it I find or am looking for in the shop, and am I looking for that in waking?

What interaction do I have with the shop, and what does that suggest?

Am I buying or selling – searching or giving away?

See Talking As – Processing Dreams – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

Chase Chased Chasing

Anything moving toward you in a dream usually signifies that you are becoming more aware of it, feeling it more intensely. So being chased in a dream usually denotes that you are feeling something you fear more intensely and are trying to avoid confronting it. This is not usually a good policy, as you can never get away from yourself.

If you are chasing something it shows what you are making an effort to gain in life, but the thing you are pursuing might be difficult to arrive at, possible because of your own feelings about attaining it.

Many dreams in which you are pursued illustrate how you are running away from certain feelings or fears. The way the action of the dream unfolds depicts how you deal with the things that you try to escape from.

The example below shows how we can be pursued by fears or emotions, and can either continue to avoid them or face them. We are, in a real sense, pursued by what we have created with our thoughts, emotions, action and inaction. What we are avoiding might be sexual feelings; responsibility; expressing what we really feel in public; our fear of death; sense of failure; guilt; emotional pain; childhood trauma; grief – but it might be our creativity; our love; our passionate response to living; our deepest wisdom and oneness with things; the ancient power of life in us. You can never escape from yourself however much you try, so such feelings may pursue you throughout your life unless you turn and meet them.

Example: ‘Three men with clubs were chasing me but never actually caught me as I woke in terror. I was determined to tell myself it was only a dream and the next night as they were chasing me I remembered it was only a dream and lost all fear – stopped running – turned to face them and said ‘This is only a dream, you can’t hurt me.’ As they came closer they faded into nothing and I never saw them again.’ Account of dreams when 6 years old. Mr C.

By animal: Your passions; anger; natural feelings. See What does the animal in my dream mean.

By THING or shadowy creature: Usually past experience or trauma such as a hurt from childhood. It is also sometimes our own wonderful potential we are avoiding through fears such as what it might lead to – success, love? See:  archetype of the shadow

Chased by opposite sex: Afraid of love or sex; haunted by a past relationship.

Chasing: Something you are pursuing in life; something or someone you want. In some dreams it is an expression of aggression. See: follow.

Useful Questions and Hints:

If you imagine turning and facing who or what is chasing you, what do you feel? For help doing this see Stand in role.

Am I aware of what I am avoiding in my waking life?

Do I avoid love, opportunity, expressing myself – what is it I am afraid of?

Please see – Facing Fear – Dreams are Like a Computer Game – Avoid Being Victims – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

Chasm

Sometimes in life we feel as if all the feelings and hopes, the relationships that have motivated us have fallen away, and there is simply emptiness and silence inside. This is typically what the chasm depicts. It is not necessarily a ‘bed’ experience as it allows us to discover the underlying hugeness beyond our small life.

The chasm also sometimes expresses fears or feelings about  death that we have. But it can also be about fear of sex, of the unconscious or the unknown. The following example illustrates such fears. See: Valley; Abyss

Example: My recurring dream is that I am on a spiral staircase with three or four people in front of me and throngs of people behind me. The staircase is not supported from the centre but the steps project from the sides of the stone walls. As we ascend the steps are getting farther and farther apart and narrower as they recede into the wall. There is a doorway ahead and the people in front of me have reached it and are urging me on. However, I can’t possibly reach it as the next step is only about half an inch wide by one inch long. The door is high above and beyond me out of arms reach! I look behind and down the centre chasm – it is very bright so I can see far – at the masses of people waiting patiently for me to go on, so there is no possibility of going back. I was divorced four years ago with no children. My mother and friends want to see me happily settled whereas I am terrified of repeating a disastrous marriage. V.S.

The dream is an illustration of the apparent futility and fear of takingthe next step in life. Yet the dream suggests that if she faces her fear and takes the next step there are people urging her on. Such dreams are simply images of our fears and feelings. The next step can be taken by using Secrets of Power Dreaming

Useful Questions and Hints:

Is there a big ‘hole’ in my life I am frightened of feeling or being engulfed by?

Is this something from the past I am scared of meeting again?

If I imagine letting myself fall into this chasm what do I feel? (Remember that dreams are simply images expressing your feelings or thoughts, and all you are doing here is to meet your own feelings.) For help doing this see Stand in role – Acting on your dream – Avoid Being Victims

Cheat Cheated Cheating

Being dishonest with yourself. Not living up to your real feelings. Feelings about being betrayed or your trust abused in some way.

But such dreams can occur to any woman. especially with ex’s. Dreamers often take theor dreams to mean a link with the actual person, but every thing and everybody represents something other that actula life. But when you think about a lover, a friend, an ex or a person you know, you are only taking in your thoughts, impressions and feelings about them. So many people do not realise that they have an inner person equally as powerful as the external person you know. You have taken in millions of bits of memory, lessons learnt, life experiences along with all the feelings or problems met by meeting or living with them, and they change you and make you the person you are. The memories and experience we gather unconsciously change us and are not lost. It is part of you and is symbolised in dreams as a person or event. Such an inner person can appear in dreams because you still carry the memories or impressions of them, and so they influenced what you hold within you.

These are meories that have altered your reactions and unless you realise they are energies working in you, and not an external person, you will go on living in a fantasy, and perhaps painful world. You need to integrate your past experience. See How Can I Integrate The Effects From Parents Garnparents or Ex’s

This can also be about acting in a way that takes advantage of another person to win; feeling one’s partner is ‘cheating’ on you, or you on them; taking love, money or opportunity under false pretences; not giving as good as you get; feeling you are not respected.

Some dreams are about social situations, such as being cheated by ones employer by not being fairly paid, or not getting your money’s worth in what you have paid for. But we might feel cheated by life events as well.

At times, as when we dream of a partner cheating, it is about feelings of suspicion, distrust or of not being loved or respected.

Example: Last night I had a dream that I was coming through a door way to find that my girlfriend/fiancée was kissing a guy….. and she looked up at me and just said we were over and I started crying begging her to stay with me, and she just kept walking away like I didn’t matter anymore… she started kissing that guy again like they had been dating for a while or something and acted like it didn’t bother me… I woke up crying because it felt real… would you have any idea what this mean?

Example: In my dream I’m with my ex girlfriend (who I still hang out with) we are hanging out being really close and lovey on each other. Then I leave the room for something and when I come back she is with a man. In this reoccurring dream she is always with a different guy and I don’t know who any of them are. When I walk in they are really close to each other and holding hands sometimes she is sitting on his lap. In my dream it always breaks my heart and I tell her how I feel and she acts like she doesn’t care. Then I wake up. In real life we were together for 2 years and I’m a girl. While we were together she cheated on me with men. We still hang out today but we are just friends with benefits.

This type of dream is usually from a young woman who either sees her boyfriend with another man or has powerful suspicions that he is seeing someone else. The dreamer is actually meeting her unresolved feelings of jealousy, of feeling not as good as the other person and not being lovable. Please see Ages of Love; Infidelity

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

Where can I locate these feeling sin my waking life, and what do they connect with?

If I am cheated on in my dream, is this about fears or reality?

Is this about relationship with a person, an organisation or life events?

See Learning to Love – Secrets of Power Dreaming – Easy Dream Understanding

Chemicals

This may refer to the fact that part of your being is chemical. So it might refer to the chemical interactions in you through food or drugs you put into our mouth; or to the state of this fundamental and material level of your existence.

Minerals or chemicals also hold potential energy or power of change in the right conditions, so can point to personal ‘chemistry’ or transformation, as when used in alchemy.

Chemicals play a large part in the subtle interaction in animals and humans, as already suggested by the word ‘chemistry’ when used in regard to relationships.

Socially and personally we also face the bombardment of chemical toxins on our system, along with the possibility of allergies and illness caused by them. So we need to be aware that our dream might be giving information about this influence on us.

Example: I stand and look at what I can see at the narrowest part of the path. Chemical waste is being pumped out of a factory into a large concrete pit to my right. But right in front of me to the right a ventilator is blowing some sort of jelly like substance onto a fence and large pipe. On it dozens of snails and slugs are feeding or have become trapped in it. They look very unhealthy. I turn to leave but somehow get some of the chemical waste on my trouser leg and on my arm or hand. I feel the stuff is poisonous and I am absorbing it through my skin. I experience images of the factory manager who has had many such contacts with the chemical, and has scars on him from where the chemical was on his body.

We need to remember that our experience of self is capable of being radically shifted simply by taking a drug or medicine? as with antidepressants, ecstasy or cocaine. This often reshapes the way we see ourselves, so an evolution in the process of identity building has occurred in our society. Identity in the end is not a set of beliefs or behaviours. The self is not limited to these. In today’s world our identity is often shaped by chemicals.

Example: The animal in your dream can portray your relationship with the fundamental life processes in you. Dreams depict these processes as intelligent and responsive, not just as chemical actions and reactions as modern medicine so often does. Therefore your conscious attitudes influence these fundamental living processes in you – processes that maintain health, digest, beat your heart, rebuild damage and fight infection. Negative feelings or attitudes can cause these ‘animals’ is you to despair or lose motivation, and thus lead to depression or illness. Remember that in looking at the animal in your dreams you are yourself an animal. You as a person are a tiny spark of consciousness, a little bit of self awareness riding an incredibly ancient animal you call your body. Remember that your body has formed from cells and genetic information that has gradually developed over millions of years. It holds that information in it unconsciously. The animal in your dreams depicts this ancient wisdom and how you relate to it. It shows you how you are dealing with the urges in you that are natural, but might need to be helped into modern life or transformed in some way, not killed out, maimed or tortured. Please read Secrets of Power Dreaming and Avoid Being Victims

Useful Questions and Hints:

Is my dream about processes in my body, or the impact of external chemicals introduced?

What feelings are in the dream, and where are they evident and what connected with in waking?

What is the basic statement in my dream?

See Talking As – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Waking Lucid Dream

Chemist Pharmacy

This is usually connected with health concerns, what the body needs, or some form of healing. The pharmacist can be similar to doctor – wisdom about self, insight into self. But also someone who understands the chemistry of life, so may be similar to a witch or wizard mixing potions in some dreams. See: doctor under roles.

The shop is a place to gain advice or help to change a difficult life situation, or to prevent one. In some dreams it also seems to be about searching for something. The search might be for a necessary thing we need, or the search for our own core self from which we find peace and well being.

Most of us have a chemical relationship with life – just look at the place you keep pain killers, alcohol, drugs, vitamins and medicines, even tea and coffee are powerful drugs and chemical alterations of our mind. They all interact with our body and brain – with us. See

Example: I was nursing a baby of about four months close to my chest. It appeared to be mine. Suddenly I was aware the baby was not having any food apart from milk and I became very worried. I set off to go to a chemist to buy some baby gruel to compliment its feeds.

Example: Was coming up out of an underground station. On my left I noticed a brand new shop, like a chemist’s, but called Sexuality. I knew it was a new scheme, legal, smart, businesslike, but prostitution. As I walked up the stairs to the exit, a man, the proprietor, came up to me and said, “Would you like to sleep with someone else?”

Knowing he meant a young prostitute, and making a joke of it, I said, “What do you mean? Someone other than yourself?” He was a bit shocked and said, “Oh yes, of course!”

Useful Questions and Hints:

What am I looking for in the pharmacy, and can I recognise if that applies in waking?

Does the chemist offer advice – if so what is implied?

What is my involvement with the chemist or the shop, and does that represent something I can recognise?

Try using Dreams are Virtual Realities – Acting on your dream – Dream Yoga

Cheque Check

This might represent a promise, or something unredeemed that is of value or has potential. It could even be a bad cheque, a promise that was never meant to be kept. See: Money.

Are you giving or receiving. In dreams giving and receiving are the two sides of the same thing.

The cheque could also point to something you have earned, but perhaps not yet redeemed.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Who is the cheque for or from, and do I owe them anything or vice versa?

Am I hoping for money from someone?

What does the dream say about the cheque, and how might that apply to me?

Tr using Being the Person or Thing – Easy Dream Understanding

Check

See: Bill.

Chess

This probably represents the skills and strategies you use in meeting the circumstances of your life. It may also point to careful scheming or planning to win, or to defeat an opponent. Often this is about relationship too, so it is important to recognise who you are playing against or what the situation is in the game. See: Games.

This might also point to the game of life and how you are playing it – what are the situations you are facing could be indicated in the events of the dream. See: games – Dreams are Like a Computer Game.

A dream is like a game of chess with all the possibilities of the different pieces interacting. So you could be playing a game of strategy with the pieces/people in your dream.

Example: But now I must go back and fight him in order to save my family, now frozen in his power. I go, via instructions from some feminine voice, to a platform up in the clouds and there are some remote control-like game boards in a basket. I pick up one. The voice says, “This one can be adapted well.” I look at it closer. It is a chess game, electronic. I say “Ah, the good old chess game,” satisfied it can be modified to fight this powerful man and save my family. I turn it over and look at the back side of it and see the tiny shapes of the black “men” or pieces. I want to review the rules of how they are allowed to move.

Example: I climbed to the top of some stairs and knocked on a door. It was opened by a woman in Tudor dress who beckoned me to enter. On a dais was the King. He was delighted to see me and hugged me. I presented him with a chair made by women from all over the world. We ate, then he said, ‘We’ll have a game of chess’.

An interpretation given to the dream is: Human self awareness is unique in nature. It comes about by a fragile balance of many factors. Your dream illustrates one of the factors important for personal balance – your relationship with your father, shown here as the king. In our childhood our father is often seen by our inner feelings as the great authority figure in our life. Difficulties with him develop into difficulties with authority in everyday life.

The woman is your mother, leaving the door open to be loved by father, and in the dream the relationship is good. But using the king as a symbol suggests some insecurity. You offer the many aspects of yourself, the chair, as a gift, a way of gaining love. The chess shows you challenging your dependence on your father for love and approval, to develop your self esteem and independence.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What strategies are shown in the dream, and how might they apply to you?

Do I know how to play chess – do I know the rules of the game of life and what moves to make?

Who am I pitting myself against – male or female – does that apply in my life?

Try using Talking As – Being the Person or Thing – Secrets of Power Dreaming