Posts Tagged ‘dream’

Breath Breathing

Breathing links with being alive and in a normal state of awareness. The speed, ease or difficulty in breathing point to pace of life and your emotional state – i.e. peaceful or disturbed; holding on or releasing.

Different types of breathing link so fully with states of mind or altered states that dreams often show this in various ways. So the held breath can suggest anxiety or an attempt to be still. Fast breathing can link with excitement or effort. The held breath can also be a way of stepping out of ones normal awareness, as the following example shows and is often a way of avoiding feelings.

Example: Gliding from a mountain top. Then I am with Pat Brown, a girl friend I knew at school. I am lying on top of her holding her breasts. Then I was being led into rooms but avoiding them each time as I felt some sort of trap and threatened imprisonment. To avoid being caught I take a deep breath and this caused me to fly up into the air and away.

Breathing in – Inhaling: Taking in something or someone; absorbing an influence; absorbing life. To absorb something, to take into your thoughts or experience, to consider, or to accept mentally.

Breathing something in: We often associate breathing things in with anaesthesia or smoking, and therefore with powerful influences entering us.

Fast breathing: Excitement; emotional release; experience of fear. Also stimulates our whole being in some way and can lead to emotional release in some cases.

Holding the breath: Expression of will. We breath-hold when repressing emotions and anxiety, but it may at times be a means of experiencing the non-breathing and deep absorption of life in the womb. the slow breath; the breath of life.

Struggling for breath: This usually relates to great fear or the feeling that existence is a struggle to survive. It can also link with feelings that you are being smothered or overwhelmed in a relationship or situation.

Under water and not breathing: Womb like state; experience of level of awareness without sexual, biological drives, and without opposites; return to deep relaxation – healthy if you can easily emerge. Might be an escape from waking reality if you cannot. See: lungs; air.

Example: ‘I was getting married. I could hardly breathe, I was in a room with my brother and I was really terrified.

Example: 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 touch of death was like a disease though. Once touched the disease was incurable and gradually took over ones body. I could hardly breathe as I experienced this, and I understood the sort of emotions that might lie beneath asthma attacks. This struggle with death went on for some time.

Idioms: breath of fresh air: bad breath; bated breath; breath of wind: don’t hold your breath; out of breath; under my breath.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What does the state or type of my breathing suggest, and can I link that with my life experience?

Is anybody else involved in what is happening with my breathing, if so in what way, what relationship?

Am I breathing something in? If so what is the influence of it suggested in the dream, and can I recognise that influence.

Try Techniques for Working your Dreams; Talking As; Processing Dreams

Bride

This usually relates to feelings about or desire for marriage; love; receptivity and fertility; or integrating parts of your personality previously not expressed. The bride also depicts ones soul – the open and receptive qualities that are fertile and ready to open into new life and creativity.

The bride is a wonderful and powerful image, holding in it enormous feelings, potential and life. The following dream illustrates some of this power.

Example: A young woman, a bride, was given a bunch of flowers. The flowers were covered up, or wrapped, in paper, or newspaper. This was removed, or I removed it, and the flowers looked rather wilted and lifeless. As soon as they were uncovered however, life seemed to come into them. The buds opened before our eyes, blooming into lovely white flowers. The flowers had many petals, and lots of fine moving stamens. The flowers seemed to be constantly moving within, and everybody cried out, “Oh, orchids!” As I looked at them I experienced intense joy.

It is this opening to the fertility and flood of life energy that a bride depicts. The flower represents this perfectly because it is an expression of the profound forces of nature as they open ready to become fertilised and help to create new life. But this opening need not be toward a man, it can be in relationship to your own potential and creative power.

Of course the bride in a dream links with marriage, but not necessarily a marriage of the body. It frequently links with your own growth to wholeness, and it does this with the ease or difficulty shown in the dream marriage ceremony. The marriage, if it takes place shows the integration of your male and female characteristics, and thereby an achievement of greater maturity. See Archetype of the Anima – Archetype of the Animus

Some of the classic difficulties faced or depicted by the dream bride are to do with – for the male – the challenge of surrendering independence and youthful manhood in service of life and the female principle. And for the woman, the finding within oneself of the ancient female power that can accept and meet the male as a woman – i.e. receptive, fertile and nurturing. This does not relate to the outer life, but to the inner power of the male and female recognising and enhancing each other. The example under relationship and dreams clearly shows a man involved in this struggle. See: Beware of Love; Growing Up to Love.

Female dream: Your marriage and what it means to you; feelings, fears or hopes about marriage; feelings about your daughter. The bride also depicts all those perhaps unlived dreams, beauty and love within you; all your womanhood perhaps never linked to and recognised by a man.

If getting married: Integration of inner aspect of yourself never previously known or expressed, especially if bride/groom is oriental or black.

Male dream: Frequently depicts your relationship with your own feelings and non rational nature, as well as being an indication of how you relate to real marriage and the integration of your female characteristics. See Archetype of the Anima

Useful Questions and Hints:

If I am the bride, is this about my hopes for or involvement in marriage – or is it showing what stage of unity I have with my male characteristics?

If I am a male dreamer what is my relationship with the bride, and what does that say about the way I relate to women or my own female characteristics?

What feelings accompany the dream and what do they suggest about myself?

See Characters and People in Dreams and Stand in role

Bridegroom

This can indicate a desire to be married or find a partner. It often shows the dreamer gradually meeting his female half. See Archetype of the Anima

Female dream: Meeting or relating to the groom shows how well you are managing to relate fully to a man or your own male characteristics. Feelings about marriage or getting married. The following examples show the subtleties or difficulties of these situations.

Example: I am in a church attending a wedding. Niki is the bride. I am to escort her down the aisle. I see her standing at the top of the aisle looking beautiful and serene. She starts to walk down the aisle but suddenly she loses her balance and stumbles. I sense that she is very nervous. I rush to her side and hold her up. She’s near panic. I support her and earnestly whisper encouraging words in her ear. I tell her I love her and everything will be alright. …. We step across the rail and again she stumbles. Then she laughs nervously but with relief that she finally made it. I let her go and she moves toward her groom. She’s eager to join him. She’s freed of her fear.

The dreamer is here dealing with her fears and sense of inadequacy in relating fully to a male, but she is helping and supporting that part of herself to move beyond past anxieties.

Male Dream: Feelings about marriage; attempt to integrate conscious and unconscious. But if you are a man it often, through the drama in the dream, shows what difficulties or success you have in relating fully to a woman or integrating your own female characteristics. See: marriage; example concerning marriage.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Am I facing any difficulties in this dream? If so what are they, and do they relate to my waking life?

If I imagine myself as the groom what do I feel and see about myself?

What have I been thinking or feeling lately about marriage or male female relationship, and what is the dream commenting on that?

What difficulties am I facing in relating to my own internal male/female?

See Stand in role and Talking with a dream character

Bright

See: Glowing; Light.

Brooch

See: Badge.

Broken

The word or image of something broken enters into many areas of our life. It can be about a relationship, something in a house that might indicate a physical situation, a piece of equipment, a plant or object. Being broken indicates something is no longer working, that it has been clumsily used, worn out, or old and no longer something that can meet the demands of active life.

Something broken can also relate to oneself, as when we feel broken and hopeless or a failure, broken by events and people.

Look up the object or equipment elsewhere. For instance a broken water pipe could show either a physical weakness or that your way of channelling your emotions is no working well. See: damaged.

Useful questions are and hints:

What is it that is broken, and what does that indicate in me and my life?

Can this be mended or changed in any way?

Is this information I need to take seriously in regard to my health or my relationship?

Try using Being the Person or Thing and Talking As

Brook

See: River.

Broom Brush

An effort to clean away irritating or old thoughts and feelings or things such as influences that are still in your life from the past. It usually links with efforts to clean up your thoughts or life, or to wipe/brush away cares or irritations. It therefore links with change or efforts to change.

Broom can also represent the male penis.

The broom or brushing can also refer to pushing something aside, such a relationship or other things you want out of your life.

If it is a paint brush then it links with making changes, but still has the association of getting rid of things.

Example: I am a teacher and I am mildly interested in one of my students. I know it’s not right, so I resist. He tries to interest me. In a fit of energy, I start to clean up the room. I get a broom and sweep Toostie O’s on the floor. He also starts to help. We feel good about being responsible and taking care of business before pleasure. After it’s clean, we (now my daughter Dovre and the young man) laugh and frolic together. I (a mature person) am pleased with them and approve of their actions. Barb

Example: ‘I dream insects are dropping either on me from the ceiling of our bedroom, or crawling over my pillow. My long-suffering husband is always woken when I sit bolt upright in bed my eyes wide open and my arm pointing at the ceiling. I try to brush them off. I can still see them – spiders or wood lice. I am now well aware it is a dream. But no matter how hard I stare the insects are there in perfect detail. I am not frightened, but wish it would go away.’ Sue D.

Idioms: brush cut; brush it off; brush up on; brush with death; brush with the law; paint with the same brush; tar with the same brush; brush-off; give him the brush-off; the brush-off.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What in particular am I brushing away or cleaning?

Am I managing to do this or are there difficulties?

Is the brush or broom working?

If not maybe I need to use a different strategy.

Try Acting on your dream or Being the Person or Thing

Brother

Oneself, or the denied part of self, meeting whatever is met in the dream. These may include rivalry, anger, feelings of persecution, love and admiration, authority, or an outgoing ability to deal with the world.

Brothers often appear in different ways in a sisters dreams. She can be used as a helpful DIY guy; or someone to share fun with, or even someone who needs your help. See Characters and People in Dreams.

If you don’t have a brother, it most likely depicts an aspect of your personality illustrated by the dream character, or your male characteristics.

Example: Dabney was a baby about 10 months old. I carried him around but he was still capable of doing all these craft things. Now we were in the farmer’s house. The baby had grown up. Now he was a younger brother and he was sort of me.

In the dream the person recognises that the dreamt of brother is actually as aspect of herself.

Brothers: If you have brothers in a dream can mean many things depending on what is done or the dream context and environment. So look up What is the main action in the dream?; Background; Context and any other things they are up to, like fighting, helping each other, etc.

Death of a brother: This suggest the death of the Elder Brother, and Its significance to the world. So is loss of a talent because of defects, imbalances, or weaknesses in the physical body. Death of a younger brother the loss of vulnerability, or something you cared for or were at odds with.

In woman’s dream – younger brother: Outgoing but vulnerable self; rivalry.

Older brother: Authority; one’s capable outgoing self; feelings of persecution.

In man’s dream – if younger brother: Vulnerable feelings; oneself at that age. See: boy; man.

Idioms: Big brother; brothers in arms; blood brother.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Could this indicate ‘brotherly love’, or perhaps rivalry?

What do you associate with your brother?

What was the relationship in the dream?

Try Talking As and Easy Dream Interpretation

Brow Forehead

This usually refers to thoughts, especially clear and insightful realisations. In some dreams there is a mark or even a swelling in the middle of the brow. This indicates the ability to be aware of things beyond the limitations of your senses. It suggests that the instinctive urges or energies have been lifted up into a new form of expression or perception. This sometimes occurs through loving feelings or learning to become detached from desires, anger, moods and longings. But detachment does not mean you do not have anything to do with the world and its ways; you can still have anything you want but you can let go of it easily.

But as the last example points out, what you are that is often hidden to others is written on your forehead.

Example: I recently took three antidepressant pills over 6 days. During this time I had dreams that my brain was being snipped with scissors. I also developed a large pimple between my eyes – the region of the third eye or brow chakra. And…my friend in Singapore developed a searing headache between her eyes (again the brow chakra) just after I took the third pill. When she called me to tell me about it, her headache automatically went away.

All of this suggests to me that antidepressants cut off our third eye connection to our higher self or whatever spiritual connection exists. Jan

The brow definitely links with our mind and our potential as the following example shows.

Example: It was very beautiful and symmetrical in every line, silver in colour; but as it appeared I saw that it was not so much a fish as a great creature, a mixture between a black panther and seal, with a smooth legless body. It reared its head, and I saw it had an emerald at its brow, just above its eyes. Our reason for calling it up was to get the jewel.

Example: The Buddhist monk then told me to look at his forehead and see what was written there. I looked and saw the lines on his forehead were placed so that they spelt out a word explaining what he was. It was something like MEEK. He then told me to look again and I would see my own self written there. Again I looked, and this time saw the word BITTER. The other people there could not see the writing, and he told me everyone had what they were written on their forehead. He then pointed into the audience and said, “But you will do the thing you came to do. You will do it!” He pointed beyond me, but I felt the words were for me.’

Useful Questions and Hints:

If there is a mark or words on my forehead, what is suggested, or what do I feel about this?

Am I gaining new insights about something – if so what?

Have I had some new form of perception lately – if so how would I describe or define this?

See Using Your Intuition; Victims and Being the Person or Thing

Brute Brutal Brutality

This may hide experiences of pain during your youth or childhood. Sometimes it replays scenes of violence witnessed or felt.

Bubble

Illusion. Something delicate and easily lost such as day dreams. Sometimes it depicts the transitory human existence. If on the skin it can suggest injury or the site of poison or hurt – perhaps old hurts being realised.

A bubble is an entire and enclosed world. So inside the bubble might suggest a different ‘world’ of feeling, attitudes or experience. In this case the bubble might be a protection, and can indicate strengths or attitudes that are protective or inhibiting. But an ovoid can express the power of your own potential, the power still unexpressed that can come to life and flow through you. This is sometimes shown in a dream as a floating bubble or flying saucer.

Occasionally a pregnant woman might use a bubble to depict the amniotic sac holding her baby.

Also bubbles can show that something is leaking, as with air in a tyre, so might point to something needing attention.

Example: I am standing in the toilet peeing into the water. This creates lots of bubbles. As I look at these bubbles I notice each one has an eye looking at me. Fascinated I bend lower to look back at these eyes. When I do so I see they are not ‘eyes’ but ‘I’s’. Each is a tiny reflection of myself looking back at me. Amused I ponder this multitude of me. Each tiny being, with its own individual sense of self, its own eyes and legs and fingers, feels it is separate from its fellows – and it is. But what they don’t realise is that their awareness, their consciousness is a reflection of me. I am their god. Out of me all have their being. – Then suddenly I realised I am myself a bubble. I too have a sense of being independent, with my own eyes, fingers and legs. Yet in reality I am only a reflection of one great life – One Self existent in all diversity and multifarious forms. I felt afraid.

Useful Questions and Hints:

How am I relating to the bubble and what is it indicating?

Is there a sense of something easily burst in the dream?

Is anything inside the bubble? If so what do I associate with it?

Is this a leak – if so what is it pointing to?

Use Being the Person or Thing or Easy Dream Interpretation

Bud

As can be seen in the example under bride, the buds are about the wonderful essence of womanhood and femininity opening and flowering. The bud therefore often symbolises the richness and beauty of the vagina – not so much the physical vagina, but all the feelings, desires, opportunity of creativity and love the healthy vagina involves us in.

Occasionally it is seen in male dreams, or dreams relating to males, and the penis is shown as a bud. It has in this case a similar meaning to that above – the flowering of the richness of male sexuality

Buds can also be pointing to things you have ‘planted’ in the past – i.e. things done or set in motion – that are now beginning to become apparent outwardly in your life.

The few idioms associated with bud and budding are descriptive of these meanings: nipped in the bud – or nip it in the bud and budding genius.

Example: There are 3 candles burning. One, his candle, is near something and I go over to look. A plant is too close to the candle, and a bud is on fire. I pull it away and put out the flame. Most of the plant falls off. I exclaim, “Look how it’s grown. I got this plant this evening. It just had a few shoots and now there are long shoots and 2 or 3 buds.” I feel sad that it’s burnt and broken, but I feel O.K. because it grows fast and will regrow new buds. In a way, it’s like it’s been pruned and will regrow faster. I blow out all three candles and get back in bed with Paul. Barb

Example: “….I felt as if I were the bud of a crocus. I seemed to be slowly unfolding with difficulty. Not until I fully opened did I feel a great relief. The results of this have made me feel very positive in my outlook, and far happier…..I am a trainee yoga teacher and have been teaching for three years. I have a small class of fourteen students who are keen and attend regularly. I decided to have my students try this to see how they would react. I explained it as well as I could, and the feedback I got was:- A man in his thirties said, ‘I felt I was in a womb. It was very comfortable, cosy and dark. I wanted to stay there. I didn’t want to come away – it was so peaceful. I have never experienced anything like it before.’ He was very impressed. A woman in her thirties felt like throwing her arms around and kicking her legs. ‘I felt I wanted to give birth and was about to deliver.’ She didn’t fling herself about, but held back. I think it was a pity she didn’t let go. (A description of a woman using LifeStream).

Useful Questions and Hints:

Is the bud, or buds, living or dried up and dying? How does this apply to your feelings and life situation?

What is the drama in the rest of the dream linking with the bud? See keywords for help with this.

Am I aware of something growing and opening in myself or events?

Try using Key Words and Talking As

Buddha Buddhism

Depends a great deal on personal associations with Buddhism, but may represent your core self and wisdom from a wider awareness than your everyday knowledge. In this type of dream there is an awareness of wonderful release from the limitations we impose upon ourselves through believing the illusion we erect from our sense impressions, or beliefs and habits. So the Buddha sometimes depicts a form of liberation from thinking and desiring, and the worldview that arises from the sensory impressions of the world and the belief that one is only the body.

But often, in Westerners dreams it is associated with the denial of, or loss of, ego.

In a Christian persons dream it may depict a threat to their belief system. See: archetype of the self and archetype of the buddha; Buddhism and dreams.

The Buddhist beliefs are built upon the statement that human pain can be overcome or left behind. This could be seen as emerging at a time and historical period where masses of people were in a social condition causing pain. The second example is comments from a person exploring in a dream state.

Example: The memorandum also contained this grim warning: “It is probably no accident that the society which most consistently encouraged the use of these substances, India, produced one of the sickest social orders ever created by mankind, in which thinking men spent their time lost in the Buddha position under the influence of drugs exploring consciousness, while poverty, disease, social discrimination, and superstition reached their highest and most organized form in all history.”’ Quoted from David McClelland, Chairman of the Harvard Center for Research in Personality response to the use of psychedelics.

Example: As I explored the states of being suggested in Eastern practices I saw something I had never seen before. Firstly it was to do with the whole social situation of Eastern countries. Always the individual cells – the individual men women and children – were in stress in the sense that society pushed them to conformity. The cast system of India, the killing of students in social conflict, the conformity seen in Japan, and the recent feudal systems; all pointed to individual stress and pain. I saw the image of the termite hill as representing this. If the mound satisfies the individual members then their needs are met. But supposing there was not enough oxygen in the mound, this would show as individual and collective distress.

The other telling point was that the information I had received about the ‘answers’ to life in the Eastern system were always suggested as a release from pain. Buddha’s nirvana was an extinguishing of the integrity of the individual, so there would be a release from the pain of life. The sight of death, illness, suffering in Buddha’s life was what motivated his search for an answer. The path of Buddhism is a way toward release from suffering. This suffering I realised as the individual ‘distress’ such as the termites might feel if their ‘social system’ were not actually supplying the needs of its individuals. The massive concretization of the caste system suggests this from another angle.

In fact the whole story revolves around a young prince who lived a life of intense advantage and in looking at the life of those not so advantaged felt their pain. He did not preach a way of the rich sharing what they had with everyone, as was and is done in such systems as the Native Americans or many tribal people, but taught a way to escape from pain. And of course it still carries on, and today we are a people who are medicated out of their social pain. See We do Not Realise

Useful Questions and Hints:

What are my feelings or central experience in this dream? Is it of peace and liberation or threat?

Is there something in my dream that is like a paradox – if so what can I learn from that paradoxical experience?

If I imagine the mood or feelings of the dream what does it create in me?

Read LifeStream; Methods of Awakening and Victims

Buffalo

See: bull below.

Buildings

This section is about large public buildings such as hospitals, factories blocks of flats, depicting particular functions suggested by their nature, such as work or healing. But of course, if the house or building has a personal connection – the house you live in, or place you have worked – then you need to define what is the essential feelings about such. See processing dreams or Easy Dream Interpretation to help with that. If a house or building has a quality of some other type of construction, such as a library feeling like a factory, or a house a church, both aspects should be accepted as important. See: house for home and house links.

To quickly find what you want click on the links below:

Abattoir – Abbey – church – chapel – temple – Airport – Aisle – Apartment – Arena – Art Gallery – Ashram – Auction Room