Posts Tagged ‘dream’
Dead
Seeing something dead in your dream suggests you are realising that some part of yourself, or your feelings, are no longer expressing fully. In fact you may have killed that part of you by denying it, repressing, or freezing it from normal life. The ‘death’ may even have been caused by a painful experience. But even so, it still means you have made a decision – perhaps unconscious – to shut out that part of your life. This can also relate to a lost opportunity or potential.
Some aspect of your outer or inner life is fading, or being superseded by a changed approach, so may be shown as dying. Your drive to achieve something might die, and be shown as a death in your dreams. Changing from adolescence to puberty, maturity to old age, are also shown as oneself dying. Lost opportunities or unexpressed potentials in oneself are frequently shown as dead bodies. All of us unconsciously learn attitudes or survival skills from parents and others. If these are unrecognised they may be shown as dead. Sometimes we have killed the child or teenager in us because of difficulties or trauma at those ages, and these may be seen as a dead person in one’s dream.
Some death dreams may show the awakening of new life in the dreamer. For instance, Sue worked on a dream in which she was told her baby had died. She woke shaking with grief and tears. The dream and emotions appeared to show her becoming alive enough to feel the grief of her past pain as it connected with the death of her hopes, love, and ideals. She had suppressed her pain for so long. In now coming alive enough to feel her emotions, she was feeling at last that something had died in her.
If the death is someone we know: Frequently, as in second example, desire to be free of the person; or unexpressed aggression; perhaps one’s love for that person has ‘died’. We often ‘kill’ our parents in dreams as we move toward independence. Or we may want someone ‘out of the way’ so we do not have to compete for attention and love.
Death of oneself: Exploration of feelings about death; retreat from the challenge of life; split between mind and body. The experience of leaving the body is frequently an expression of this schism between the ego and life processes. Also: Death of old patterns of living – one’s ‘old self’, the loss of the boundaries that limit your awareness to an identity connected only to the body. This latter is usually a willing surrender of self to the process.
The walking dead or rigor mortis: Aspects of the dreamer that are denied, perhaps through fear.
Dancing with or meeting death or dark figure: Facing up to death.
Example: ‘My son comes in and I see he is unwashed and seems preoccupied and as if he has not cared for himself for some days. I ask him what is wrong. He tells me his mother is dead. I then seem to know she has been dead for days, and my two sons have not told anyone. In fact my other son has not even accepted the fact.’ Anthony.
Anthony is a divorcee. Processing the dream he realised the two sons are ways he is relating to the death of his marriage – the children’s mother.
Example: ‘During my teens I was engaged to be married when I found a more attractive partner and was in considerable conflict. Consistently I dreamt I was at my fiancé’s funeral until it dawned on me the dream was telling me I wanted to be free of him. When I gave him up the dreams ceased.’ Mrs D.
Example: ‘I dream I have a weak heart which will be fatal. It is the practice of doctors in such cases to administer a tablet causing one painlessly to go to sleep – die. I am completely calm and accepting of my fate. I suddenly realise I must leave notes for my parents and children. I must let them know how much I love them, must do this quickly before my time runs out.’ Mrs M.
This is a frequent type of ‘death’ dream. It is a way of reminding ourselves to do now what we want to – especially regarding love.
Although the unconscious has a very real sense of its eternal nature and continuance after physical death, the ego seldom shares this. Unconsciously we realise that collective humanity carries living experience from the life of those now dead. The farmer today unconsciously uses the collective experience of humanity in farming. What innovation he does today his children or others will learn and carry into the future. But apart from that there is life after death. See: Life after Death By Dr. Elisabeth Kubler Ross.
Idioms: Dead and buried; dead from the neck up / or neck down; dead to the world; play dead.
Dreams about a dead person: Dreaming of someone who is dead, a relative or loved one, is quite common. After all, the person may have played a big part in your life, as for instance a husband or wife. Therefore the influence of their existence is still very much a live in you.
As an example of this, you will probably be able to realise that some of your traits, some of the ways that you think or respond to things, have arisen because of the way you related to the person you dreamt about. So in many cases the dead person indicates the feelings you have about the, the traits you still have alive in you from them. When someone close to you dies you go through a period of change from relating to them as an external reality, to meeting and accepting them as alive in your memories and inner life.
Some dreams of dead people are expressive of attempts to deal with feelings, guilt or anger in connection with the person who died; or your own feelings about death.
Dreams about a Dead husband or wife: Many dreams of dead people come from women who have lost their husband. It is common to have disturbing dreams for some period afterwards; or not be able to dream about the husband or wife at all; or to see the partner in the distance but not get near. In accepting the death, meeting any feelings of loss, grief, anger and continuing love, the dream may become as in the third example. See: Death.
Dead-End
See: Cul-de-sac.
Death
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Death the walking dead or rigor-mortis
Death dancing with or meeting dark figure
There are two forms of death and any study of death needs to be aware of them.
- The easiest one for us to confront is the death if the body. This occurs when the body is badly injured, has suffered a bad illness or is dying from old age and so cannot support the intricacies of consciousness, then consciousness can longer function in the body.
- Another one that many people are not aware of is ‘ego death’. There are many descriptions of ego death, in fact the term Ego Death is misleading, because nothing dies in this process of enormous process of growth, instead it is a huge enlargement, a massive shift of our ideas and experience of who and what we are. The history of those who obviously have experienced this enlightened state, does not show that their experience of themselves has disappeared, it has been transformed. It occurs when we have stopped living in our thinking, beliefs and opinions – or what is sometimes thought of as our personality.A man, Anthony, describes the experience of it by saying, ‘I was sitting opposite someone during an enlightenment intensive workshop. We had been posing the question for days – “Who are you?” Suddenly I realised that it was a silly question, because I was the answer. All thought stopped and I existed as the answer. My being had always been this. In this state there was an awareness of being connected with everything around me, in the beginning of creation. This was the first day.While in the state of simple existence I was able to observe many things I am usually not aware of. For instance while I simply existed, my usual pattern of behaviour and thought went through contortions to be the centre of attention again. I could see them almost like habits, systems, that have life, like a body does, and they were dying and twitching in their death throes. Also I saw that I knew that all thought is like a mimic, so all our thinking is like photocopies, without any real life. Also as I saw this I had an image of a monkey that was actually my normal thinking self running alongside my every motion and trying to mimic it. It was almost as if as I as a person walked along, another mechanical person ran alongside trying to keep up and mimicking everything I did in an attempt to be alive and real. Yet thought can never be life. If you think of dog, the thought can never be a living creature, just a word.’
Another person says, ‘Unexpectedly everything changed and my fundamental self was something that existed throughout all time. It didn’t have a beginning or end. There was no goal to achieve. I am.
I am a wave on a shoreless sea.
From no beginning
I travel to no goal,
Making my movements stillness.
Constantly I am arriving
And departing,
Being born and dying.
I am always with you
And yet have never been.’Slightly different but still the same enlightenment. ‘Everything seemed to slip away and I felt as if I melted back into the primal being of the universe. It didn’t seem as if my ego was gone, just melted into everything else. It was blissful.’
Dreaming of death: Some aspect of your outer or inner life is fading, or being superseded by a changed approach or attitude, so may be shown as dying. Your drive to achieve something might die, and be shown as a death in your dreams. Changing from adolescence to puberty, maturity to old age, are also shown as oneself dying. Lost opportunities or unexpressed potentials in oneself are frequently shown as dead bodies.
But death of anything also involves a tremendous release of energy as the form breaks down. But the various levels of energy involved in the death of a person are never lost, for energy cannot ever be lost, it is transferred and used elsewhere. A transformation takes place. The consciousness and energy that gave the body life also goes through a process of transformation into universal life.
All of us unconsciously learn attitudes or survival skills from parents and others. If these are unrecognised they may be shown as dead. Sometimes we have killed the child or teenager in us because of difficulties or trauma at those ages, and these may be seen as a dead person in one’s dream. Some death dreams may show the awakening of new life in the dreamer. For instance, Sue worked on a dream in which she was told her baby had died. She woke shaking with grief and tears. The dream and emotions appeared to show her becoming alive enough to feel the grief of her past pain as it connected with the death of her hopes, love, and ideals. She had suppressed her pain for so long. In now coming alive enough to feel her emotions, she was feeling at last that something had died in her.
Because you cannot actually die in your dreams. It is like you become totally involved in a movie that you can only escape from by waking. But when you wake things are the same – you are not dead – but you have been enriched by a lot of new experiences. I feel so deeply that our society does not let us die. What a terrible thing! The process of death isn’t just your heart stopping, it is a long process of shifting values, of creating a self that is no longer so deeply identified with the things of the world. The way our society is structured forces the ageing individual to go on and on almost like a hunter or warrior tied to processes in the external world trying to pay their way. Why I wonder? It seem so strange that the Stone Age societies living in very difficult circumstances, without our massive technological back-up, could manage to support their ageing and allow them a period of sinking into death. We, with massive resources, cannot do this. I felt a tremendous desire here to let go of all my worldly activities. I wanted to hand all my savings over to my sons and say, look, you care for this. All I ask is for a small amount of money to pay for my food and basic needs. I dearly wanted to give up and live from within myself.
Also parts of ones feelings sometimes die. Our love for someone might die for instance, and so our dream illustrates this with a death, perhaps of that person. Some teenagers dream of their parents dying as they start to become independent. This is a form of killing of dependent feelings about their parents as a means of growth. This happens in some relationships too, where we want to break with the person. See Dimensions of Human Experience
“The dead differ from the living only in this respect: they are in a permanent dream state the subconscious state because the conscious mind of the physical body no longer exists. But the body is an expendable shell, and all else is intact. On the astral level of existence, the sub-conscious mind replaces the conscious mind of the soul, and the superconscious replaces the subconscious. Hence, in dreams, we find that communication with those who have passed on is more logical than the average person is able to comprehend.” Quote from Edgar Cayce.
Death of someone known: Frequently, as in the example, this might express desire to be free of them, or unexpressed aggression. Perhaps your love for or connection with that person has ‘died’. We often ‘kill’ our parents in dreams as we move toward independence. Or we may want someone ‘out of the way’ so we do not have to compete for attention and love. When someone we know dies lots of things happen to us. First of all we have always thought of the person as being outside of us. Then suddenly they are gone from the outside world, and we either think of them as gone forever never to be seen again; or we do what dreams often do and find them inside of us. In this way we can discover a new relationship with them, either because they now communicate with us as a dead person, or we receive from them what they left in us.
Example: ‘During my teens I was engaged to be married when I found a more attractive partner and was in considerable conflict. Consistently I dreamt I was at my fiancé’s funeral until it dawned on me the dream was telling me I wanted to be free of him. When I gave him up the dreams ceased.’ Mrs. D.
Death of yourself: You might be exploring your feelings about death, or retreating from the challenge of life. Sometimes it expresses a split between mind and body. The experience of leaving the body is frequently an expression of this schism between the ego and life processes. It could also be death of old patterns of living – your ‘old self’, or the loss of the traits that limit your awareness to an identity connected only to your body.
Example: ‘I dream I have a weak heart which will be fatal. It is the practice of doctors in such cases to administer a tablet causing one painlessly to go to sleep – die. I am completely calm and accepting of my fate. I suddenly realise I must leave notes for my parents and children. I must let them know how much I love them, must do this quickly before my time runs out.’ Mrs. M.
This is a frequent type of ‘death’ dream. It is a way of reminding yourself to do now what you want – especially regarding love.
Example: During a major operation I dreamt I saw my little daughter – dead for many years – standing in a corn field. When she was actually buried the cemetery was skirted by a corn field, and later in life, coming to terms with this early death of a child, I imagined my daughter walking into the corn field. In the dream I walked into the corn field. My daughter was waiting for me with her arms held up. I put my arms to her and we greeted each other smiling. At that point I felt it wasn’t time to die yet, turned and walked out of the corn field. Ken S. Example: I was upstairs watching T.V. with my dog laying on the bed. I heard a motorbike out in the yard. I went downstairs and the dog followed me and this person on the bike tried to run the dog over. My husband came out and told me to go back to bed. I picked the dog up and started up the stair, reached the top and there was a big gap from the top of the stairs to the bedroom door, so to get to the bedroom I had to jump across this gap. I tried to jump this gap but missed and I fell and hit the bottom. The next thing I remember was I was floating up, I looked down and saw myself lying face down with arms spread out and I suddenly realised I was dead. I was so frightened that I woke up. I had the feelings of fear of dying and that the dog had been killed. I felt no pain.
The dream is obviously about her fear of dying, and also shows that even if one hits the ground one does not actually die, but experiences feelings of dying.
Death of child: Dreaming that your child dies can have several meanings. In some dreams a parent, much to their horror dreams of killing their child; or as one dreamer said, “I saw him jump off a bridge to his death.” This occurred at a time when her young son was making his first moves toward independence, and it was a difficult thing for the mother to face – the loss of her son. So it can easily be shown as the death of ones child in a dream. Another women describes it differently as follows:
‘I am standing outside a supermarket with heavy bags wearing my Mac, though the sun is warm. My daughter and two friends are playing music and everyone stops to listen. I start to write a song for them, but they pack up and go on a bus whilst I am still writing. I am left alone at the bus stop with my heavy burden of shopping, feeling incredibly unwanted.’ Mrs F
Mrs F was dreaming about her young daughter leaving her, and she has to grieve it, almost like a death.
This can mean a lot of other things than your actual child dying. For instance a man told me a dream that worried him enormously about walking with his wife and his young son fell down a hole and was apparently dead. But in fact he had had a terrible row with his wife that day, and it was showing the child as what they had created between them. In fact the dream child recovered as did their marriage. Your child dying can also be a warning that your inner child is dying. We each carry some awful memories from childhood that are shown in our dreams as our child. So it is worth taking hold of your apparently dead child – nothing can actually die in our dreams – and hold it and tell it you love it. Watch any feelings that emerge as you do this and any tears you shed. See what you understand from what you feel. Of course this could be a ‘mother’s’ dream in which your terror of losing your child is dreamt. A woman ones told me a dream in which her daughter was murdered. As we helped the woman explore her dream – not interpret it – she burst out into enormous sobs, crying that her daughter was leaving home and she was terrified of losing her. The girl was never murdered. See Baby or child hurt or killed So ask yourself what your fears are about.
But our dream child can represent many things, and it is useful to realise that any person, object or scene in a dream is not a symbol – it is not dead thing that has to be interpreted – it is a living part of you and can only be understood by relating to it. So in this way I have found that a child can represent whatever our strongest feelings about them are. It can represent your marriage or partnership because it is what you have created between you. In that case the death of the child can depict something like an awful argument that feels as if it the marriage has died.
A child and its death can also show you how you have killed out the growing or adventurous side of you; or if you see your child as vulnerable and needing protection it could show you the death of that part of your feelings.
So you need to ask yourself what your dream child depicts as a living part of you.
When our child actually dies it is one of the most heartbreaking experiences we can meet. Sometimes it takes years to adjust to what has happened. Not only is the adjustment emotional and psychological, but also your way of life is often built around the person you have lost. Therefore the changes we meet can be enormous. However, we each have enormous resources of healing and ability to meet the new if we can access them. Very often there are experiences we have, or dreams, that continue our relationship with the child. Unfortunately we live in a culture that often denies the possibility of this. See Life’s Little Secrets
For instance, Dr. Morse, in his book Closer to the Light, tells of a mother who came to him because she hadn’t slept properly for 1041 nights after the death of her son. She showed him a picture of her son, but Dr Morse was suddenly called away to a ward emergency. Having dealt with the sick baby, he was writing up the notes and a nurse who had been helping said to him, ‘Who was that person who came in with you? Is he a student?’ Morse did not understand what the nurse was talking about as nobody had come into the hospital with him. As he was trying to find a pen for the notes he was writing he pulled out the photograph of the woman’s son. Immediately the nurse said, ‘That’s him. He kept trying to get your attention’. When he returned to his office Morse asked the mother if she had ever been contacted by her son after his death. She said, ‘Oh yes. After he died, for several nights he would stand at the foot of my bed and tell me he was alright, and that I should stop crying. But that was only a crazy dream.’ However, such things are not crazy dreams, but insights into a greater reality. After her converstation with Dr. Morse the woman slept properly for the fist time in nearly three years.
Death the walking dead or rigor mortis: Aspects of you that are denied, perhaps through fear.
Death dancing with or meeting dark figure: Facing up to death and developing a different attitude to it – unless of course you are running away. If you turn around and face these figures you will break through to a different way of life. Death of someone close to us: As explained above, this often refers to ones own feelings or talents that have been hurt, denied, or ‘killed out’ by events and your response to them. The following example illustrates this.
‘My son comes in and I see he is unwashed and seems preoccupied and as if he has not cared for himself for some days. I ask him what is wrong. He tells me his mother is dead. I then seem to know she has been dead for days, and my two sons have not told anyone. In fact my other son has not even accepted the fact.’ Anthony.
Anthony is a divorcee. Processing the dream he realised the two sons are ways he is relating to the death of his marriage – the children’s mother. Although the unconscious has a very real sense of its eternal nature and continuance after physical death, our conscious personality seldom shares this.
Also we all we all carry within us ideas, behaviours, talents and ways of life from those now dead. The farmer today unconsciously uses the collective experience of humanity in farming. What innovation he does today his children or others will learn and carry into the future. This aspect of a life beyond the physical is shown in many dreams.
For instance a man I knew dreamt of walking with a friend of his. As they walked they came to a river. The friend crossed, but the dreamer was unable to. Even in the dream he felt crossing the river meant his friend had died. Some time later he discovered that his friend had died at about the time he experienced the dream.
As the dream points out, the friend died, but continued another type of life ‘across the river’. A woman told a similar dream to me. Her teenage son came down to breakfast looking very unhappy. When she asked him why he said he had a dream that deeply disturbed him. In it he was walking with a friend and the friend walked through a door. When her son tried to follow he could not pass through the door. They could not find a rational explanation for the dream, but on arriving at school, her son heard that his friend had been killed in a motorbike accident on his way to school.
The river and the door are often used in this way, suggesting a change to another dimension of life usually unreachable by the living. Idioms: Dead and buried; dead from the neck up/or neck down; dead to the world; play dead; dead to the world; dead tired; drop dead; stone dead; at death’s door; brush with death; death wish; kiss of death; sick to death. See: Dreams of Death; Illness;
Useful questions and hints:
What feelings about death does this dream highlight?
If I imagined the dream being carried forward, how would I change it?
Am I changing and my past self dying?
If this is someone I know what are my feelings about them – and where are those feelings arising in me at the moment? What part of myself have I killed?
See Being the Person or Thing – Near Death Experiences – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Journeying Beyond Dreams and Death
Debt
You may be feeling you owe something to someone, or to society. We are all, in fact, in debt for our life. Do you have a feeling that you have not given to others what they, in their life, have given to you? Have you promised something that you have not taken care of?
Some dreams show the recognition of your deep links with your culture, and the enormous debt you have to it for language and the formation of your identity. Recognition of your cultural inheritance is the gaining of a new life, and is an access to a wider awareness.
Dreaming of financial debt probably shows you in a state of anxiety or tension that needs to be dealt with. Often if we explore the dream it shows a way out if the difficulty.
Debt also suggests actions in the past, either performed by you or someone else. This means there are things to deal with in the present arising from that past. Strangely dreams sometimes suggest paying off a debt is involved in the difficulties of your life. Living through difficulties is paying off your debt.
Example: ‘I am sitting in a high window box facing outwards, with my son and a friend of his on my left. I feel very scared of falling and asked my son and his friend to climb back into the building. I feel too scared to move until they shift.’ Trevor N.
At the time of the dream, for the first time in his life, Trevor was working as a full time freelance journalist. His wife was out of work and his frequency of sales low enough to cause them to be running out of money. The building behind felt like a place he had worked in on a nine to five basis, so associated it with security. Falling was fear of failure, getting in debt, dropping into the feelings of self doubt and being incapable and feeling inadequate.
It can sometimes express the idea of not living up to the mark; a sin or trespass; not giving to others what they, in their life, have given to you. “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”
Useful questions:
What influence from the past am I facing at the moment?
Is there something I owe someone or to society, that I need to pay?
What do I feel indebted to or what given that I have not been rewarded for?
Why do I feel in debt?
Who do I feel in debt to?
See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – The power of Habits – Secrets of Power Dreaming
Decay Decayed Decaying
This suggest a sense of something in your life not being alive and expressive. Possibly it is something you are not proud of, or you feel ‘rotten’ about. Occasionally this could indicate something not working well in your body or feelings.
Rotten might mean ‘bad’ emotions felt in a relationship; a hunch or feelings about something, such as memories.
Example: I look at the trunk of the thistle examining it. At this point it seems like a giant hardwood tree. I snap a twig and it smells very nice – a perfumed wood. Other branches are going rotten. Walking around to the back of the tree to see if the bark is rotten I notice a hole where bees or wasps have a colony. I put my left hand up to touch the bark and as I do so notice there is also a hole in the back of my hand, in and out of which wasps are flying. With great shock I look in the hole and see wasps eating my flesh away, so my hand is almost hollow. I awake with the feeling of being old and decrepit.
In exploring the dreamer the man in looking at his hand and realises there was a hole in his life. He took note of what he felt. Just prior to the dream he had experienced a lot of anxiety about whether his marriage was breaking up. The dream made him realise that niggling thoughts and emotions were eating away at his self confidence leading him to feelings of being near to the scrap heap, having outlived his usefulness. The dream had depicted these emotions and thoughts as wasps.
This enabled him to see that if he entertained such feelings, they would certainly eat away his grasp of life. He could see that as a person he only entertained thoughts and emotions. They were simply what he thought and felt about reality, not reality itself. It was up to him as to what he wanted reality to be. Did he want to entertain the reality of the tired ageing man who could no longer satisfy his wife’s need for love and companionship, having nothing worthwhile to contribute to others? That could certainly become reality if he allowed such feelings to dominate him. He had thought that his life was like a giant thistle, but on closer inspection he saw it was a giant hardwood. It did have branches which needed pruning, but the rest of the tree was good and perfumed – giving off good feelings to others. So he decided to put love and care into his life and marriage instead of self doubt and a sense of defeat.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What do I feel is decaying of rotten in my life?
How do I meet these feelings of something decaying?
Is it about ageing?
See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Life’s Little Secrets – Transfiguration
Decision
Whatever decision you make in your dream, it is wise to look at the drama and details of the dream to understand why the decisions was made, or out of what influences or needs. The dream process often brings to your awareness insights that help you to choose your way or direction, and these should be considered. But dreams should not be seen as totally saying what you must do, only as wise advisors.
But many decisions arise out of old angers, hurts or fears, so make sure you are not acting out of those. Unconditional and detached love and insight are the best attitudes to act from.
There are also life decisions we make that are not always made by clear thinking or as an adult. Even as a baby we can experience enormous feeling reaction to some situations we are confronted by. These reactions constitute a decision, even though not made consciously. From that point onwards we, as the baby or child, will respond to a similar situation in a given way. For instance a baby may have found so little love and warmth from it mother, and so much care from someone else, it alters its responses to its mother, and transfers it bonding and warmth to someone else. Such decisions have enormous influence on adult life, and are often not recognised for what they are, and so are not re-evaluated.
We are all the time deciding, although most of the time we do it unconsciously. We do it as habits of response, as habitual attitudes and feelings; even our habitual fears and beliefs are building blocks of our decisions and faculty of deciding.
Imagine a woman or man who constantly feels they are a failure; not only that they feel fear that they will never change and to find it they will have to die. Their fear and their beliefs turn them away from making or trying any new approach. As they say, “I cannot let myself express my feelings because I am frightened I will not survive”.
Of course we have met such people. They suffer crippling depression, and are convinced that what they suffer is incurable. And it is such etched in convictions that are the things that imprison them. See Life’s Little Secrets
Out of such things we create the decisions we make. But of course there is another route, and this person feels certain, from looking around at life in the plants, trees and animals. That Life is a process which constantly tries to heal any wound. It does it best to do this in vomiting up what we have taken in, or as a boil creating a situation to get rid of a poison. And as unpleasant as that is it is the way we are healed physically and psychologically.
It is not a case of thinking positively, but of being aware the direction our thoughts or decisions take us. So our decisions are important as the second example explains.
Example: “I had woke that morning with a headache. This was very unusual so I knew another lump of pain was ready to come up. For some weeks my sessions had all been centred around being a tiny baby left to cry. As that baby I had hungered for my mother with every ounce of my being. I don’t suppose many adults can conceive of a condition where any feeling or desire is totally engulfing. We are used to thinking of that sort of being swallowed up and possessed by a feeling as madness. Because of the pain most of us feel when we really begin to experience our deep yearning we do relate to our deepest feelings in a sick mad way. Yet a baby is neither sick nor mad, but it is totally engulfed in its feelings. See LifeStream
I had been experiencing this in the sessions in which I opened to LifeStream (LS), and how as a baby I had killed my longing when nobody came. And because of that I had not as an adult been able to really let myself feel deeply in relationships. Or when I did begin to go deep into a feeling relationship with someone it brought great pain. So I thought the thing coming up was another lump of baby pain.
As soon as I had an opportunity I had a session. I had been sitting in with a friend while she had a session, and now we swapped roles. As I lay down the pain in the head increased. I felt sick and dizzy. My body began to jerk and it was like words being forcefully squeezed out of my body. It feels as if those words, and the emotions pouring out with them, were literally in the body, like juice is in an apple, and the process of LS, squeezes out this painful juice.
At first the words were just a jumble of noise being pushed out as my body cramped up and squeezed. Then I was shouting out ‘I’ve got VD I’ve got VD’ Then every so often I would gasp out ‘A father…s father…’
I didn’t understand at this point what it was meaning, but I knew from the past it would explain itself if I let it come, and there was no need to analyse or think it out.
Now the body contractions became deeper and I could feel some real deep emotion in my chest just beginning to come up. ‘Dirty, I’m dirty,’ I was shouting. ‘I’m a father and I’m dirty’. Then my body just gave a big heave like I was having a baby or something, or a tooth out, and I was just one frozen block of pain, and a great moan of pain came out. I was sobbing and moaning about my children. Hardly able to say it because of the pain and sobbing, nevertheless the words squeezed out of me ‘D…. Duh …Does.. a… Does a father…’ I just couldn’t go on for a while. My body contorted up with this inner emotional pain again, and a sort of bellow of it came up from deep down. Then the words came again. ‘Does a father…Does a father kill his children?’
I couldn’t take it. I just wept. I knew that’s what I had been doing for years. That’s what most of us are doing, only we can’t and won’t see it. We kill the bright hopes and joys of our children. We forced education upon them, and education thought up by people themselves with a hurt amounts of pain in them. But even though we hide from it, the pain of it is there like poison juice in our body. Now mine was being squeezed out and the words were like pips forcing out of my mouth.
Example: Somehow I had managed to enter what people call the unconscious – yet I was far from being asleep or unaware. Instead I was wandering through the vastness of my own inner world and I could also see my waking self and everyday life. My outer life seemed to me to be like the surface of the earth, where things like plants and people sprout from seeds and grow. Whereas where I was I knew as the creator, the Source which gave all things life.
But as I wandered and was amazed at what I was experiencing I realised that I was looking for a way out, an escape from the awful depression and pain I was lost in. Knowing that I was in the very foundations of my being I thought there was a doorway out, a release; or else I could manipulate it to find some escape.
So I looked and sought, but all I saw was a world I had created, and as such a world I could not escape from. It was such a crushing realisation that every thing I had decided to do was my own work in creating a hell. It wasn’t a hell that was a punishment because I saw I had created it. And any release could only come through starting to create a new me. It was all so clear – no escape from myself.
In that clarity I saw that all the woes of my life, the terrible things I had met, the afflictions we apparently have as an accident, were all my own awful creativeness. As Kipling says, “And lose, and start again at your beginnings.” Fortunately the lesson was so well impressed on me that I could not blame my fortune on fate, God, others, my mother or the people around me – it was all my own work. And fortunately too I had time and strength to start again.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Am I aware that I constantly shape my life through my decision?
What is the driving force of my decisions – fear, depression, hopelessness or love?
Can I accept the responsibility of my life situation and not blame it on God or other people?
See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – The power of Habits – You Are a Dual Being
Decoy
Means you lead others to believe something you really do not feel, or think. A self deception of what you feel. For instance a man, because a job offers a high wage, may lead him to believe he likes the work, but inwardly hates it.
This could also be the warning, either of a trap you have created to trick someone, or else you sense it is put out to catch you.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Am I being led into or leading another into a deception?
Am I deceiving my self or even lying?
What is the decoy about or for?
See Dream Yoga – Life’s Little Secrets – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Deep Deeper
Most of the processes of our body and mind take place without our having any awareness of them. Going deep underground or into water usually shows you becoming more aware of what is taking place in these usually unconscious parts of yourself.
It can also mean you are becoming more aware of the past strands of influence from family and culture, out of which your present personality was or is woven.
Another meaning is that it can link with experience of life in the womb.
You can be deeply troubled, experiencing deep peace or relaxation, deep emotions, deeply in love, or in deep trouble.
Usually we live on the surface of our mind. In sleep we dive down deeper but lose sense of self. If we maintain some awareness in these ‘deeps’ of the mind, it is somewhat like snorkelling in a deep sea. We realise what immense and unbelievable depths lie beneath us. Dreams often portray this as depth – a hole; deep water; a chasm; space.
It can also indicate our non verbal life in the womb, or early childhood, which is remembered as patterns of feeling reaction rather than verbal utterance. In the depths we may find gems, skeletons, archaeological objects, and these relate to the memory of our evolutionary past, family influences we carry within us unknown.
Deep cuts: Suggests a hurt which penetrates us; or emotions which affect us powerfully.
Idioms: In deep water; in the deep end; deeply troubled; deeply hurt.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What am I experiencing as deep – water , sleep, peace, despair?
How am I dealing with the depth?
Am I anxious about it to is it a revelation?
See Abyss – Hole – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Deer
The soul, the gentle harmless self that is often hurt or wounded by our aggressiveness and cynicism, or by other people’s criticism; vulnerability; the unsocialised or wild, but gentle side of our instincts; love-sickness.
In Greek mythology the deer was associated with the virginal huntress Artemis. So the female deer in a dream suggests the qualities of female gentleness and the connection with nature and the hidden world of the unconscious with all its strange wisdom. While the stag often links with bold and powerful masculinity and sexuality in a natural and potent form.
The Core Self often appears as a deer, or woodland creature in dreams. Below is a quote from Carl Jung’s book Man and His Symbols.
Example: “I am your child and your mother. They call me the ‘connecting animal’ because I connect people, animals, and even stones with one another if I enter them. I am your fate or the ‘objective I.’ When I appear, I redeem you from the meaningless hazards of life. The fire burning inside me burns in the whole of nature. If a man loses it, he becomes egocentric, lonely, disoriented, and weak.”
Example: As I walked the meadow my dog was running free. I felt I must call him to heal, as there were grazing animals about. I called him and saw him coming, almost wraith like, or like a spirit form, shadowy and powerful looking. He was running behind a wonderful looking beast – a mixture between a sheep a gazelle and a deer. The remarkable thing about it was its colouring. There were bright blues on its hindquarters, and radiant almost transparent colours elsewhere, perhaps on its head. I shouted to stop my dog frightening the creature. It ran towards me and jumped into my arms, very fearful, but relaxing and feeling safe as I held it. I could sense its emotions of terror. I seemed to feel what it was feeling inside. It was a creature without any means of defence except to run. So it was frightened for its life. This sense of its inner condition was impressive as I knew what it was like to be that creature when hunted. I also could feel how it could feel safe in my arms because somehow it was like handing over its defence to a sort of mother, as a baby might.
Then I seemed to look at the creature anew and saw that it had a much bigger body than I had first thought. In fact it must have been different because when in my arms it was small, but now it seemed to be about the size of a fallow deer.
In the above dream the man actually feels the quality of his inner condition represented by the deer.
Deer are sometimes used to indicate a sexual longing for a woman – the hunter and hunted. The sexual implication of the deer hunt is underlined by a medieval English folk song called “The Keeper”: The first doe that he shot at he missed, And the second doe he trimmed he kissed, And the third ran away in a young man’s heart, She’s amongst the leaves of the green O”.
In a man’s dream: The deer may depict a young woman the man is in pursuit of, or a daughter if you have one.
In a woman’s dream: The deer may link with you as a young woman, or to a daughter if you have one.
Killing a deer: It can suggest many things depending upon the rest of the dream – the killing of the feminine, feelings self; a willing sacrifice such as crucifixion; male conquest of the feminine.
Because animals, plants and all creatures are expressions of the One Life, and so have the divine spark of life in them the same a humans, and because animals and deer are seen as examples of the Creator of the one Life’s awareness. the deer often represent the ability to know both the hidden worlds and the world of the known body.
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It took Hercules a full year to capture this magical creature alive – the hind of Ceryneia which was the goddess Diana’s pet. This is of course a symbolic story and says that often we have to kill the very thing we seek, and suffer the remorse in order to become sensitive to the wild beauty that we hold within us – the goddess Diana – and through that we find healing and entrance to the union of human life with the life of the creatures of the forest and moorlands. Then love flowers between you. |
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| The man raised the tiger and had to leave it for a long time, and when he returned the wonderful creature poured out its love for him |
Useful Questions and Hints:
What are the qualities of the deer in your dream?
Does it link in any way with a feeling of entering the magical realm of nature or the unknown?
Are you feeling about it as you would with a female?
If a stag, are there symbols linking it with sexuality, such as its horns or its attraction to you?
See Animal – Animal Children – Being the Person or Thing – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Defecate
Self expression; release of tension; getting rid of negative experience or emotions; creative expression; permitting the natural in oneself. See: excrement ; Faeces.
Example: After seeing my woman and daughter off I felt so angry that I give so much and yet when I try to speak to those I have known so well all I get as a response is lies or shit. These past few days have seen my kids putting me down, Nan in many ways doing the same, my lover is not being truthful. I give them my home, time, money, and love and feel, they just want to keep harping on about the past or, if you don’t do it my way attitude, then your a bastard. Any way I kicked fuck out of the settee, it’s like being left alone again. I sense what they are feeling yet when I ask and they don’t confirm I go back into insecurity.
Idioms: sometimes life is a bucket of shit and the handle is inside; a pinch of coon shit; up shit creek; that’s a crock (of shit); in deep shit; dump on; take a dump; the shit hit the fan; wouldn’t say shit if her mouth was full of it; get your shit together; shit or get off the pot; happy as a pig in shit; shitting bricks; shit list.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What do I feel shitty about?
Have you released it or do you still need to?
Do you identify with any of the idioms?
See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Life’s Little Secrets – Questions
Defence Defend Defended Defending
Any sort of defence system such as a castle, a shield, weapons, fighting, may depict one of the basic ways of dealing with life – being defensive. Defensiveness means that in some way one wards off the impact of life experiences. In this way the influence of these experiences negative or positive, are kept from being taken in and absorbed or integrated.
For instance a person may have very rigid religious beliefs and defend themselves from hearing anything which enlarges or questions these beliefs. They may do this by arguing away any other ideas or experiences, or by holding a sense of righteousness and difference between themselves and other people. Similarly one can defend using clever intellectual argument which yet has no open doors to allow new ideas, feelings or new experience. See: castle; defence mechanisms; anima under archetypes.
The most ancient part of our brain, one we share with reptiles and birds is called the R complex – R for reptilian. This part of your brain deals with deeply instinctive behaviour such as flight, fight, procreation, swallowing, automatic reflexes, inbuilt mating behaviour, territorial defence and aggression. This R complex developed about 200 million years ago and is still an underpinning part of what influences your behaviour today. Dreams often portray these urges in you as snakes or lizards and are part of our defence system – or, if it is mot dealt with well it becomes inturned and destructive. See Levels of the Brain
Example: William massaged at the area and discovered a pea sized nodule. It was like a concentrated lump of pain. When he pressed I started moaning, crying, and at one point, laughing. I realised that not being influenced by anyone was a defence I had used for most of my life. Underneath that was the laughing. As William continued words started coming up by themselves. The cries of pain were real, but without linking with feelings. I felt this massage method could release the pain, but it would be like a dry labour, long and unnecessarily painful.
Later I found quite few of these nodules of pain on my back, and then I learnt how to really express anger from my past by beating hell out of cushions with a stick. Then slowly the nodules disappeared.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What am I defending against?
Can I recognise ways I defend myself with very rigid beliefs?
Do I ever get aggressive when faced with some idea or belief?
See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Nothing Can Hurt You in Your Dreams – Dreams are a reflection of your inner world
Deformity
Part of your nature, that due to fear, repression or ignorance has not been able to grow in its natural beauty. This often happens from traumatic childhood experience. Or it could be something you do not like about yourself.
The deformity also can say that whatever is affected does not work well, so you cannot express fully because of it. Often this deformed part of you, often shown as someone else or child, needs love to help it grow into it full form in your life. See abnormal; dwarf
Useful questions:
Do I in some way feel inadequate?
Have I been traumatized in the past and now need to develop my potential?
What does the deformity suggest is not functioning well in me?
See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Questions – The power of Habits
Degenerate Degenerating
There is a feeling of sliding back, of not living up to what you hope and desire. It occasionally refers to some process in the body that needs caring for, or is degenerating through misuse or misunderstanding. Sometimes refers to ageing, or the prelude to a rebirth where degeneration heightens prior to regeneration.
Parts of our nature, through lack of self worth or feelings of guilt, often prompt us to do things or live in ways that slide right back from our best. This might be indicated by someone or something that is degenerate or degenerating. Our beliefs can also degenerate and this can lead to conditions of uncertainty or feelings of lostness or even apathy.
In dreams we can often dream of a degenerate alcoholic or a degenerate woman, and these can sometimes point to things that are not admitted by the dreamer. For instance a man who constantly irritates people by his holy than you attitude might dream of the alcoholic passedout in a street, in order to aid him to balance his opinion of himself. The man dreaming of a degenerate woman, in a similat way, might be helped to see that his female self is not a nice person and needs some work being done on his nature.
Also degeneration is part of our natural processes, as in our digestive system, and the decay and eath of thousand of cells each day. We die to be born again; and because of this it represents life as well as death, growth and renewal, as well as degeneration and decomposition. So it can in fact be a way of perfect union, balance, equality and atonement of the different parts of our being.
Our culture, government and our way of life can also sometimes be seen as degenerate or degenerating. Things that do not have a good foundation, things that are degenerate, diseased or weak, do in a way shake themselves to bits through their own internal energy because of the energy playing upon it.
Useful Questions and Hints:
In what way is the dream showing degeneration?
Do I feel or see any signs of this in myself?
Is it parts of my nature or body that are shown as degenerate in the dream?
See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Avoid Being Victims – Resistances
Delay
Frustration. Putting things off. Unwillingness to make a decision, or confront or acknowledge that which is symbolised in dream.
But delay can point to delayed development, delay in speaking to someome, delau in getting on with what you intended, with a relationship, with life.
It might link with an unexpected delay in some area of your life, with frustration or irritation, or even lack of energy to move or be sexual.
The end of the world was only delayed by the efforts of the devout in some religious beliefs. Peoples living in the uncertainty of seasonal changes and unreliable harvests, may have expressed their deep fears and hopes through such rituals and beliefs.
Example: I dream that once at the doctor’s, after some delay, I am given the serum for the snake bite after first being ‘branded’ with some initials – imprinted on my arm, supposedly so they will immediately know what killed me if I die which is very likely!
Useful Questions and Hints:
Does this indicate that I have been putting things off?
Am I have difficulty making a decision about something?
Is there something important I should be remembering about a situation?
See Resistances – Active Passive – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Dell
A quiet retreat within yourself. A way you have found of creating inner quiet. Female sexual organs. Sometimes the dell is shown as a magical place where you are in touch with the usually hidden life beyond your usual senses.
The part of yourself that is not unconscious but out of the way of general awareness, and so hidden attitudes or desires can take place there. It can also be the place the refuse of your life gathers.
Example Dreamt that there was a green and beautiful place on top of the world. It had crags and cliffs and vales and hills, and all was covered with bright green grass and moss. In a deep dell, more green and beautiful than the rest of the place, a young girl met a young man, and married him; for what reason I cannot tell, except perhaps that the place was beautiful. Now the young man was an alien from another planet, but he did not tell the young girl in case she would not marry him.
‘As time passed the young girl and man drifted apart and slept in separate rooms, still on top of the world, and the young girl grew to hate the young man, although he seemed unaware of it and quite content.
‘This then was their state when I arrived. I immediately leapt and skipped over the hills to the place where they had met, but found it no different in appearance to the rest of the hills: no more beautiful, no less. I then went to see the young man and talked to him. I explained to him the feelings of the young girl, and that it was because she did not understand him that she felt the way she did. Whereupon he immediately went to her and confessed to being an alien, and she accepted him as he was. Then they grew together again and slept in beds side by side and peace filled their nights and beautiful children one after the other were born to the young girl. And the young man was surprised and amazed beyond his comprehension.’
Useful Questions and Hints:
What is taking place in the dell and what is that in my life?
Am I experiencing something that is usually out of sight here?
What magic or unusual am I finding here?
See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Characters and People in Dreams – carry the dream forward
Deluge
A release of emotions that you feel as overwhelming, as might be experienced in breakdown or shock. The deluge is also often a sign of release and a cleaning of withheld emotions or problems. As such it probably signifies a time of change, usually brought about spontaneously rather than by your conscious acts. Defenses you have used to prevent this are washed away. In fact any emotional pain felt in connection with this may be a struggle between your will and the forces of nature within you. See: Water.
Dreams about water, rain, floods, deluges sometimes indicate situations of the mucous or excessive water in the body. In such cases it might be wise to take less salt, and more brweres yeast tablets and vitamin C, which helps the body deal with such illnesess.
As with Noah, it symbolises in some dreams a cleansing of mind and body.
In some cases one can have a deluge of raging emotions – or in a dream a deluge might indicate that.
Example: I see to my left a picture flash, like a vision, of ocean water or some sort of rushing water coming from a distance. A deluge? Earthquake? Terrible storms? All I know is that some natural calamity of terrible magnitude is coming and will wipe out the people. It is coming much sooner than anticipated and it is almost upon us. Many people will die and they don’t even realise what is coming.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What was the deluge doing in my dream?
Was I involved or just a witness to it?
Did I feel any feelings, fear, hope?
See Tsunami – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Emotions and Mood in Dreams