Posts Tagged ‘dream’
Drink Drinking
This connects with your feelings of thirsting or longing. It denotes satisfaction of longings, either emotionally, physically or spiritually. It also shows you absorbing something, taking something into yourself. Most things have some effect on how you feel, so it points to a change in some way.
To absorb or take something subtle into oneself. This may be taking in feelings such as pleasure; absorbing a mood; ‘drinking in’ our surroundings.
Drinking alcohol is like poisoning and punishing yourself, and is not helpful if you wish to meditate successfully.
When connected with thirst: Suggests needs or longings being met. The dream will probably show you how successfully or otherwise you are managing to satisfy your thirst. And what are you thirsting for?
If in company with someone of the opposite sex, or a group: Taking in the pleasure or otherwise of the relationship or group. Sometimes connects with childhood emotional need. See: Alcohol.
If a ritual: Drink, being one of the fundamental physical needs, is often used in rituals. This is often about a shift in the way you feel about yourself, or a new stage of social or personal recognition.
Getting someone a drink: What is it you are giving the person and why? Is this an act of friendship or a desire to manipulate? Is it companionship or a need to be with someone? See: alcohol.
Example: It takes us sometime to find the officer and when we do he is curled up into a small ball. I pick him up and ask: “Do you want to go to the hospital?”
He nods.
“Ask him which hospital he wants to go to,” I tell T. as the dream ends. She is having trouble thinking of the names of hospitals.)
(My body also feels battered from several days of drinking. While I don’t think I need to go to the hospital, it’s as though I have been beaten internally.)
Example: My dreams have the recurring image of water, which for me usually means the ultimate spiritual place. Around the time of my divorce, I tried my hardest to get to the ocean, but in a series of dreams that went on for months, all my efforts were thwarted: in one, a storm came up, and we had to turn back; in another, I got lost. In the last dream I had before I quit drinking, I was at the beach with a lot of strangers. To get onto this particular beach, you had to leave everything behind and go down to the water’s edge with nothing–not your towels or radios or coolers or even your suit. Once in the water, you could swim just as far as you wanted and you were completely unmonitored. ‘A’.
Example: These returns to the womb of fantasy, unrealistic as they are, nevertheless are necessary and nourishing to the mind. All of us are aware of the refreshment of body and soul that satisfying sex, or a great work of art, or deep love can bestow. In these comforts the divided mind is made whole again. It drinks deep of the spring of life and, refreshed and invigorated, returns to fight the battle of reality with greater courage and strength. Quoted from LSD Psychotherapy by W. V. Caldwell
Idioms: don’t drive and drink; drink like a fish; drink up; drink you under the table; drive you to drink; hold your drinks; in the drink; spike a drink; you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.
Useful questions and hints:
Am I taking something in, absorbing something?
Do I long or thirst for something – if so what?
Is this alcohol, and if so what is it doing to me in the dream?
See Life’s Little Secrets – Dream Yoga – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Driving
There are two major conditions in life. One is being in charge of your life in a reasonable degree and making your own decisions. The other is being directed by your fears, lack of confidence or other people’s pressure or manipulation. Being in charge and directing your life is being in the driving seat. Being influenced by other people is being a passenger.
Being in the driving seat is a state of mind. It is nothing else. IT IS NOTHING ELSE! See Avoid Being Victims
Dreamer driving: Being independent and confident. It also suggests making your own decisions and being responsible for your own life direction. See The Driving Seat
Car driving carelessly: Lack of responsibility socially or sexually and need for more awareness. It also suggests you are not really in charge of your life in any positively aware way. There may be an over-riding feeling such as anger or frustration that is eating away at you and causing the carelessness – or are you exhausted?
Car driving without license: Feeling guilty about your way of life or social conduct. Or perhaps you do not dare to test out your quality against social standards, therefore may hide your sense of inadequacy. This might also point to a conflict with social rules and regulations – the social norm. See: Conflicts.
Car drunk driving: Not in control of your life; occasionally refers to spiritual influence leading you to do things that are not rational; or perhaps alcohol is dominating you.
Basically this is about losing real awareness and control of a situation or relationship – and especially your ability to direct your life well.
Useful questions:
If I am not the drunk driver, what or who is irrationally influencing me?
Have I been acting out of careless or irrational feelings or ideas lately?
Am I losing my hold on what is happening in my life?
Car not in control of: This often relates to strong feelings or impulses that you find difficult to deal with. Or if there is a mechanical problem with the car it could suggest that your usual physical and/or psychological checks and balances are not working properly, and so, as with a woman experiencing mood swings during menopause, perhaps you need to find ways of helping this. See Being in Control
The dream might also depict that in some way you are either not watching what you are doing, or are feeling anxiety about not being in control of things.
Car with one other person in: Relationship with that person. What is happening between you and the other person gives a clue to what this is about. So if you are driving somewhere it suggests you are in a relationship with the aspect of yourself depicted by the person, or with the actual person, in which you have a common direction and are linked in some way – emotionally, sexually or because of common aims.
Useful Questions and Hints:
How well was I driving in this dream?
Am I in control of the car?
Where am I going or what am I doing?
What are my feelings as I use the pedal, and what are they showing about how I drive myself? Try using Secrets of Power Dreaming – Plot of the Dream
Drivers seat: Perhaps more than anything else this suggests responsibility and personal decision making. It can also point to the attitudes that direct how you live your life.
Whoever is in the seat is influencing your life, either through your permission, through dependence or dominance, perhaps even fear.
Being in the driving seat is a very special situation, whether it is a car, a plane or a rocket. Every tiny shift or thought, of motivation or doubt redirects where the vehicle – you – are going. So it is very important to clarify your feelings and state, as with the example below.
Example: Dreamt about being in a large removal van with a woman sat on my lap. I held her breasts with pleasure. Don.
In exploring his dream Don found that holding the woman’s breasts showed how he was holding onto and held by sexual pleasure. Holding the woman made him a passenger, and not directing his life. But when he let go he could be the driver. This led him to realise that he was tied to his sexual need like a dependency – a dependency that directed his life.
Being in the driving seat also means you can see all the instruments on the driving panel. This means being in an observing situation with yourself. You can if you wish, observe all the instruments of your being. You can watch and acknowledge what is happening to you sexually, what is happening with your fantasies, what is going on in your physical body – am I tired, am I relaxed, am I stressed, am I confident? You can observe all this in the driving seat and you can make changes. From the observations you can slightly shift, change, make adjustments, and so keep balance and direct the process of interaction and where you are aiming to go in life. This self observation also means you can more easily observe others and understand their needs.
Driving from another seat: This is about being able to ‘stand up to the plate’.
It is an American term and it is about whether you are ready to take command, to show your skill, to be in charge. See https://dreamhawk.com/poems/the-plate/
Are you in fact facing a situation which needs you to be responsible for the directions you are going in life, the decisions you make and take responsibility for who you are and are capable of being?
Try using https://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/secrets-power-dreaming/ and imagine placing yourself in the driving seat in one of the dreams.
Useful Questions and Hints:
If I am in the driving seat what are the attitudes and feelings hat are directing me?
Where is it I am actually taking this vehicle or my life?
If I am not in the seat, what are the skills or failings that are influencing my direction?
Try using Being the Person or Thing – Easy Dream Understanding
Another person driving: This might suggest you are being passive or are in a learning situation with the other person. Perhaps you are being influenced by the opinions or emotions or desires of someone else, or are ready to allow someone else to make decisions for you. The other driver might show you are dependent on someone.
It could also show another aspect of you driving your decision making, so make sure the direction is to your liking. For instance anxiety or emotional pain may lead you to make many decisions, so they are then the driving force in your life, rather than what might be more satisfying.
See car.
Idioms: bottle drive; drive a hard bargain; drive around; drive it home; drive me batty; drive me crazy; drive me to the edge; drive me up the wall; drive standard; drive you; drive you nuts; drive you to distraction; drive you to drink; test drive; in the driver’s seat; take a drive/trip.
Useful questions:
Is this about being caught or avoiding notice?
What feelings are evident in the dream and where do you meet them in waking life?
If it is difficult to get a license, what are the barriers or difficulties?
See Control; Avoid Being Victims; Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Drowning
This is such a common dream and has been answered hundreds of times, we first ask you to look through the many answers given in Drowning – Many Replies Hopefully you will find an answer to your own drowning dream
Because of the water, drowning depicts fear of being overwhelmed by difficult emotions or anxieties, so it often points to struggles – conflicts – or fighting for survival you may have in your life. But this might apply not to dangerous emotions or urges, but to natural urges such as eating, loving or sex, that some people have enormous conflicts with. Drowning in a dream is also about struggling to survive as a person, so it applies to your identity as it is dealing with relationship with other people, but also with your own internal world of instincts, body activities and needs.
But the feelings of being overwhelmed can be caused by fear or anxiety. But if we can, we can meet and dissolve these. For whenever we dream its images are not like real life, because a dream is nothing like outer life where things could hurt you, but is an image like on a cinema screen that even if a gun is pointed at you and fired it can do no damage – except if you run in fear. So all the things that scare you are simply your own fears projected onto the screen of your sleeping mind.
So in dreams you cannot drown, but fear takes away your confidence, so then you go through the agonised emotions of drowning.
This is about being or feeling overwhelmed by something. One can ‘drown’ in sorrow for instance. So you need to look at your waking life to see what you are feeling threatened or burdened by and see if there are ways you can deal with it. If someone else actually drowns in the dream it may mean some of your feelings, your creativity and responsiveness are no longer ‘alive’. But they can be brought back to life if you care for that side of yourself. Sometimes it is simply anxiety we drown in, and much of anxiety is about situations we imagine. Separating what is imagined from what is real can help this. See Characters and People in Dreams
But such fear can be caused because if un-dealt with traumas from childhood are not faced, or by being exposed to awful film images that you believe are real. Read and Martial Art of the Mind
If you feel you are struggling to you ‘keep your head above water’ in a dream, do not give in for it is only emotions you are facing, not reality.
Water and drowning often indicates you are facing the unknown changes and so are afraid. But in dreams we can never die or even be hurt, for we wake without real hurt except for our feelings.
Going under water in a dream depicts you are going deeper into your awareness, so you are beginning to explore your unconscious. That is a major step in your development and is an evolutionary advance. It can lead to many major new abilities such as a wider awareness of life around you. A person describes one of the possible changes, “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.”
Dreamt about someone else: May occasionally show Your apprehension about their health or well being, having the suggestion of death or breakdown.
Example: ‘I fell into a pond. My brother was frightened to be by himself so he jumped in. We were both drowning in the water and we shouted out for Mum. My brother drowned.’ Poppy S.
Poppy dreamt this while feeling insecure and anxious due to her father being seriously ill.
Example: I had been dreaming about sitting on a sofa with my friends – well watching horror movies, when suddenly everything comes to live. I was afraid of the ghost that had been drowning with her husband in the movie, and it comes to haunt me. I asked the ghost’s sister to help and she passes me a necklace with can protect me. And suddenly the ghost appears and tells my friend she was pretty. What does this means?
It means that you need to understand how your mind works. It means that you have nothing to fear about ghosts. As the ghost that appeared showed you, there was no harm in it. Dream images are like images on cinema screens – harmless unless you are haunted by your own fears. But the dream also shows you that whatever you believe in becomes a fact and alive in our dreams. It mean that the necklace gave you confidence, and in fact the necklace is only a crutch for your confidence. But we need such things until we can deal with our own emotions. See Facing Fear
Idioms: drown your sorrow; if you’re born to hang, you won’t drown.
Useful questions:
What powerful emotions or changes am I dealing with?
Am I feeling overwhelmed by something?
Can I define the strengths and ways I use to deal with threatening feelings?
Do I feel as if I am ‘drowning’ in a situation or relationship?
What is it I am feeling overwhelmed by recently?
Is this someone else drowning – if so what facet of me do they represent?
What resource or person could help me survive in this situation?
Another person or animal drowning still suggests it is an aspect of your own personality you need to care for.
Whoever or whatever it is, imagine yourself back in the dream and save them. If necessary imagine rescue services coming to your aid. In doing this you are using imagery to shift your feelings and anxieties.
All water in some way signifies your own inner world of feelings, but the sea often suggests meeting urges and wisdom lying beyond the boundary of your conscious mind. What is it you feel in the sea or river? Try putting it into words.
See Associations Working With; Techniques for Exploring your Dreams; Avoid Being Victims; Secrets of Power Dreaming
Druggist Drugstore
See: Chemist.
Drugs
Most drugs in dreams represent the physical and psychological influence they have. For instance a pain killer is not just something that muffles physical pain, it also enables us to feel we can deal with certain levels of pain. So it would depict those feelings.
Therefore it is important to consider what you feel about the drug, what you use it for if you do, what you have read or feared about it if you don’t.
So a drug can be seen as the sign of a healing activity, or of something that will influence you or pervade you against your will. Some dreams give detailed insights into what a drug you are taking is doing – whether healing or hindering.
Of course, some drugs may be associated with illness, so you must see if you have this association with the dream drug. See Animal Children.
Example: Since taking that strange drug some very remarkable things have happened to me. However, the drug has set things astir inwardly, and I will try to explain this has much as I can.
It was brought home strongly to me that one does not really discover things or people by thinking about or analysing them. Things and people are what they are. Their nature is inherent in their being. Every tiny move we make, every line on our face, every cell of our body, is a total expression of what we are, of our inner state. Knowledge of things is not external to them, it is not thought out, it is only seen. In other words, we only need to look at something and allow the inner being within us, which is also the inner being in all else, to perceive itself in what we are considering, and we will know the thing.
Even this is not clear. But suffice it to say that we do not have to do anything to understand those things that appear outside us, or indeed to understand ourselves. Understanding is inherent in things – we have only to watch for it. Maybe an analogy will explain. Once I went hunting in a wood. I walked and walked, looking and searching for the creatures I was going to shoot, but saw nothing. Tired, I rested by a tree, stood quite still, and gave up my searching. Within a few minutes, what had seemed like a dead wood began to come alive. Birds flew to trees and settled, or moved here and there. Squirrels appeared in the branches and on the ground, and all was moving with life.
So with ourselves and others. We have to stand back and be still for a while to see really what is going on. Having realised this far more fully than ever before, due to the drug, and began to practise the mental and emotional attitude as often as I could in a form of meditation. The drug pushes one into this state, then proves that it works by releasing all sorts of inner material. This proof encouraged me to persevere with the attitude far more confidently than before.
Some of the most effective work with drugs was done with LSD prior to its being made illegal. A number of psychiatrists were registered to work with it. To understand this positive side to these drugs, it is useful to read such books as Myself and I by Constance Newland; and LSD Psychotherapy by W.V. Caldwell. When compared with the literature on ‘tripping’, the tremendous difference can be seen between playing with and working with, the inner process of homeostasis-self-regulation. See Iboga for the Treatment of Drug Addiction – Healing Cancer Using Magic Mushrooms
Useful questions:
What are my associations mentally and physically with this drug?
Does the dream show a shift of feelings or awareness?
Is this shown as harmful of useful?
See Drugs End User – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Questions
Drum
This may represent your heart, depending on the dream content. In some dreams it is obviously about sexual tension, intercourse or masturbation. Or it can be an expression of natural rhythms of the life processes in you and around you, and how you are in rhythm or not. The drumbeat is also occasionally linked with the primitive in us being called out. See: music; musical instruments.
Drums in dreams can also suggest an ability to change your state of mind as in initiation. Drum music can also indicate marching in a crowd, suggesting being moved by the same beliefs or feelings, or else marching to a different drummer.
If you are the drummer it might mean you are calling attention to yourself or creating a beat for others to follow. Or drums might relate to war drums to raise emotion and get one to follow the community direction.
The drum can sometimes indicate the chest, as in the following example as he explored a dream.
Example: “It’s about strength. So much concern about being strong. So much care taken over all this (body; this because he was very weak as an infant and developed anxiety about his health). I’ve got to keep it strong. All the vitamins and good food I eat are taken with the effort to keep it strong. I’m working away at it even in my own kitchen, working, working, keeping its strong.”
All this came as direct realisation without images. I saw how I took so much care of my body. Then words came, but without insight. “It’s all in my chest. It so rigid, like a drum, and I am pushing something down, forcing it down, keeping it down in my chest. I kept it down so good. So much, all down in my chest, for so long. Like Mr. Hyams, a great big barrel all puffed up, a head on one end and legs on the other. Deadness in the chest. It’s fear. So much fear. Oh God. Go through fear. So much fear through pride.”
Example: I invite the audience to the ballroom. I’ll play the piano and the Cary Grant type gypsy owner will add accompaniment with the musicians. I go to the ballroom and some follow. I sit at the piano and play a beautiful classical piece. A drummer came and joined me. Then we improvise a reggae piece. Then I’m playing a dance number. Lots of people are dancing. It’s a success.
It is recorded that Quetzalcoatl’s priests would bang a drum in the morning and in the evening in reverence to Quetzalcoatl. At that time merchants could leave the city and visitors could enter Tenochtitlan. The drum of Quetzalcoatl may be compared with the flute of Tezcatlipoca. The drum separated night from day. The flute was heard at night. The sound of the flute was shrill and anxiety followed it’s music.
Example: Six years ago, I became a member of the Bwiti. I had heard about ibogaine from an assistant in an anarchist bookstore in New York. On a magazine assignment, I went to Gabon and took iboga in an initiation ceremony. It was one of the most difficult, yet rewarding, experiences of my life. I had heard the substance described as “10 years of psychoanalysis in a single night” but, of course, I did not believe it. As the tribesmen played drums and sang around me until dawn, I lay on a concrete floor and journeyed back through the course of my life up to that point, witnessing forgotten scenes from childhood. At one point, I had a vision of a wooden statue walking across the room and sitting in front of me – later, I was told this was “the spirit of iboga” coming out to communicate with me. See Intro to Ibogaine
Idioms: drum up; follow a different drum; follow one’s own drum; beating one’s own drum; drumming up a storm.
Useful questions:
What influence if any has the beat of the drum on me?
What is happening to the drum and what is my connection with it.
Is there any suggestion this might be about my ear-drum?
Can I feel it as my heartbeat?
Did the drimming put me in a trance state or induce initiation?
See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Reaction to the unconscious – The Life Will
Drunk
This might indicate loss of control, lack of reason or having no soul or self control. See Being in Control
Sometimes drunkenness is about being abandoned and allowing expression to parts of you that are usually repressed. It might thus represent a form of freedom from the burden of self awareness, responsibility, and decision making. Occasionally it means we are filled with power from our spirit, or connection with the one life.
Drunk driving: This shows you out of control in your life. Perhaps alcohol is dominating you. See: driving; Alcohol
Example: M. makes a list of what she did with the money she stole, while I get drunk. Behind me, Sakol presses her body up against me, turning me on. M. spent thousands of dollars getting drunk because she was lonely.
The following example is quoted from LSD and Ritalin in the Treatment of Neurosis by Ling and Buckman. She was exploring the roles of her mother and the drunk.
Example: My mother seemed very afraid of a drunk man around the place. It was definitely not my father because this drunk person spoke in Urdu with a Punjabi accent. I don’t know exactly who he was and I don’t remember having heard a name mentioned apart from the “drunk”. He must have lived fairly close to us for he was often around. He unceremoniously leered at my mother. She was afraid and complained to my father but he laughed and said “It’s only a drunk” in Bengali.
On this session I played several roles. Firstly of the drunk. It was as if I had not much to do so I walked up and down, kicking my heels just like an average street loafer. I acted the drunk, I also was like my father, solid and calm and quite unworried about my wife’s fear which I dismissed. When I acted my mother I felt apprehensive that this man was not only thirsty and hungry for food, he was also hungry for sex. He desired me. At one time I strutted around the room and walked up to the bed which then appeared like a home and said to my mother to come away with me. You are beautiful. This was spoken in Bengali. My breath was hot and I panted like an animal. Next I was in my mother’s role and fought and freed myself. Everything around reeled and I said “I’m expecting” and felt I fainted.”
Idioms: a cheap drunk; as drunk as a skunk.
Useful questions and hints:
Does the dream indicate loss of control, and if so what is happening with this in waking life?
Do I feel unrestrained and free in the dream – and if so how can I live that without alcohol?
Was there any indication of a higher power touching me in the dream?
See The Life Will – Programmed – Associations Working With – Ages of Love – Avoid Being Victims
Duck Ducks
Because a duck can fly and also dive under water it can represent both your ability to raise your awareness, to expand your mind and horizons, and also to look into what is hidden under the surface of life. And its ability to float and swim on the surface of water shows it can survive in the conscious mind. Of course for many people it can be associated with food. See: Cormorant.
Ducks can also be beautiful when flying, and are also hunted and shot, so it depends on the dream what they mean to you – are they a thing of beauty or vulnerable.
Ducks are also always followed by drakes, and can be about the way we may also wish to pair off. With babies they are wonderful and highly vulnerable – and even the tiny pieces of fluff leave small waves – suggesting the waves we all leave in living our life, whoever small and vulnerable we might be. See Associations Working With
‘Duck’ might also indicate that you are ducking to avoid something as in the second example.
They are often vulnerable birds because they are hunted, as the following dream shows the duck part of us is vulnerable and needs help.
Example: In my dream last night I was cycling down a familiar lane and came across a white duck which had been injured by a car, it looked dead so I stopped and got off my bike and propped it against a gate but when I turned round the duck was standing and looking at me. It was strange because the way it came right up to me and looked directly at me. I seemed to know what this creature was thinking and it was asking me for help.
Example: Then there is some excitement and we duck down right before a shot is fired by a Secret Service agent standing in front of us. He fires at a man running behind us out of sight between two buildings. I watch the man fall, slowly lowered to the ground by two other SS agents, saying something as he dies.
Idioms: sitting duck; duck takes to water, dead duck; lame duck; duck out; duck soup; duck’s guts; ducks in a row (ducks in order); duck an issue.
Useful questions and hints:
Is the duck wild and free or is it a pet?
Does the duck look vulnerable to you – if so what do you feel vulnerable about?
Are you ducking to avoid something – if so what are you dodging or avoiding.
See Associations Working With – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – LifeStream
Dumb
Inability to express inner feelings.
Dung
Dust
Ideas, thoughts or ideas that can be lifted up by your inner nature. Or ideas without feeling, dried up. The accumulation of time, the passage of time since you last felt or realised what the dream portrays. Also physical life ends in dust as the last example shows. So dust can suggest the remains of what was once alive or active in your life. It is what is left of what has died or worn out till it is tiny and can be blown away.
Dust is often associated with dirt, the debris of how people live, and of not cleaning up ones mess. It can be something that obscures what is of real value – or covers up the past – so depicting feelings that stand in the way of our clear perceptions.
Clearing up the dust shows you making big changes in your life – changes that needed doing for a long time. Dust swirling up can suggest that you are unable to see or realise what is in front of you. Dust thick in a dream house can suggest age or even long lack of care.
In some dreams there is magic dust that can heal of make real changes.
Gold dust can have such an influence. It can represent all that you have realised or built into your life from deeds done or words read. Coloured dust depends on the colour, but it is about bringing a change of mood and power. See colours
Example: We take turns spending the night at a dust filled place underneath a stadium or at home. We do this because one place or the other is always being bombed. I am upset having to move back home when T. asks me (for tonight) as I have all my stuff under the stadium.
Example: “You are nothing but dust. I have called and called to you my dead father. I have begged and prayed, and receive nothing from you. And now I spit on you and kick you aside.” Then, to my amazement, there beneath where the bones had been shone a beautiful treasure. It was not a treasure of gold and gems, but what we so often attempt to represent with precious metals and jewels. It was the shimmering and holy presence of Life. The bones and dust had been covering up, hiding this radiance. When I picked up and held that treasure I knew that this was my true inheritance. I had buried it underneath what was dead and worthless in my life. I had taken the dead shells of what had been living to be a value. And I cried out because I had been duped. The religion of my land that had promised to lead me to the living spirit of things had presented only bones, only what was dead, only what was without life and power. The idolatry of the dead had led me into worshipping a false God.
Idioms: bite the dust; collecting dust; dust bunny; dust devil; gathering dust; see me for dust; when the dust settles. Useful questions and hints:
Is the dust a sign of age or obscuring things?
Is this all that is left of something – if so what?
Is my dream telling me I need to clear out the dust and cobwebs in my mind?
See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Inner World – Learning to Allow Yourself – Martial Art of the Mind
Dustbin
The The unwanted parts of your experience and memories. The things you want to get rid of in yourself; things you don’t like or are ashamed of. See: garbage.
Does the dream point in any way to health or the body; it may be about collecting toxins that need to be got rid of.
Often things that you have used but are no longer needed in your life – or the packaging that goes with ‘life’. In other words you might need company, but you have to feed them as well. Ask yourself whether you are collecting views or things that are of not use to you.
Occasionally there are things in the garbage that are really useful. Can you wort out what is useful from what you feel or think is rubbish?
Trash has been used in America to refer to people thought to be inferior – white trash.
Useful questions:
What part of my life or experience are no longer useful and need to be got rid of?
What is the dream telling me about the trash?
Are there things I am throwing away that are in fact valuable in a way I didn’t see?
See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Programmed – Compensation Theory
Dwarf
Unconscious forces, or the powers that work on your being to keep it functioning. See: dwarf poem.
A dwarf may also represent a part of the yourself that has been held back in development due to fear, pain or guilt. If you dream you are a dwarf it may express the feeling/fear you are small, insignificant, undeveloped.
A part of your personality left undeveloped or not integrated. For instance we may have musical ability which was suppressed by the need to bring up children, or a part of you malformed by painful childhood experience or lack of emotional nourishment. It may therefore be a link with your unconscious.
The story of Snow White and the seven dwarfs are an excellent example of its symbolic meaning. The dwarfs worked underground – the unconscious – bring up treasures. They are working well because of the caring love of a woman. If the dwarf or dwarfs are care for they will become valuable and help the dreamer to do well in the world and they will grow into adulthood and full stature.
So a dwarf often represent the potential or intuitive ability you have that has not been helped to realise itself. Because of the world the dwarf lives in, unable to be like other people, the dwarf is often a figure of deep understanding of the human condition and its tragedies.
Example: I had, or was, a deformed baby, having four eyes, and a somewhat distorted face. The eyes were operated on, two being removed. But the baby grew up a dwarf, very lonely, and shy. The dwarf and the normal me were one yet separated. He lived downstairs, and would often climb the stairs and stand outside my door hoping I would see him and befriended him. I, inside, vaguely felt his presence, but whenever I got near the door his shyness made him retreat downstairs.
The next thing was that a large male dwarf, and two female dwarfs came along the footpath. The two men (whom I now was) recognised they were deeply related to each other, and ran into each other’s arms with great love. As they held each other, they (I) felt that two incomplete parts have now found each other and would become whole.
The following are a series of dreams showing the development if one cares for ones dwarfed self.
1st dream: Then we heard footsteps upstairs, and knew it was the ghost. The eerie atmosphere increased and increased, and the footsteps could be heard coming down the steps of the stairs. We decided to go and have a look at the ghost, despite the fact we were somewhat scared. But when we looked up the stairs we saw it was a youngish woman who was dwarfed in stature, and very unhappy. This was why she haunted the place, and had materialised. I put my arm around her shoulder, and made her feel loved, and led her into the kitchen, where we talked to see if we could help her. The whole eeriness had disappeared.
2nd dream some months later: I was in the wings of a theatre, watching the acts, some sort of variety. As I sat watching, a dwarf woman who was one of a troupe, came and whispered to me and kissed me. I was overwhelmed with love, and tears ran down my face. I hoped she would see them to know how much I loved her.
3rd dream many years later: The woman dwarf had features that, even in the dream, reminded me of someone. On waking I realise it was the dwarf woman who played the ‘medium’ in the film Poltergeist. Once in the room with her I felt more strongly I had known her for many years. She told me she was going to look in her crystal ball to tell me what she could see for me. The room was quite dim. It was her bed-sitting room, and like the corridor, had an air of things going on difficult to see in the dimness.
Throughout this dream I had an erection, and at this point got much nearer to waking, and am aware of the erection and the warm sexual feelings filling my lower trunk and chest. I realise the woman has never been made love to, and I feel compassion and love for her. I pick her up and hold her lovingly. I do not have an awareness of penetrating her, but the charge of sexual feelings flows into her. She transforms into a beautiful female and I know she will always love me – be a haven of love. She has a sister or friend in the room, also a dwarf. She is more difficult to love but I manage it. She transforms into a more native woman.
My beautiful friend looks into the crystal. It is not a thing made of glass, but a great dimension of mind which appears to open in the room, hanging in the centre and is a portal to another dimension, about eight feet across. She tells me I am already touching something that is beginning to happen in the world. My life will become involved in it. I will play my part – by no means a key or leader, but one which I will gain great satisfaction and love from.
Useful questions and hints:
What is the dwarf doing in the dream?
Do I feel small in relation to others in a situation?
What of me has been held back by neglect or pain??
See Processing Dreams – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Questions
Dying
See: Death.
Dynamite
Explosive emotions or a threatening, explosive, situation. See: Bomb.
Eagle
The eagle can represent several things, depending upon its context in your dream. It can point to the powerful, strong hunting instinct in business or in being a providing parent. It can depict protective strength; a male figure; relentlessness. Dominance or a male figure. It is certainly an uplifting power of feelings or ideas, a protective influence.
Because the eagle, like most hunting birds, has an extraordinary far reaching and inclusive vision, it can link with the ability of your own mind to at times expand far beyond the immediate sense impressions and concerns, to include years of life experience, and what you have learned when looked at as a whole. It can therefore represent spiritual vision. This is because the height of the bird and its steady gaze give it unusual perception and wide awareness. To touch such enormous wealth of experience is to be penetrated by the holy. Something so beyond the limitations of our own small personality enters us and leaves its imprint. See: Birds.
Sometimes it is seen as a threatening influence, if it is seen as connected with carrion. But if so it is you fears you are dealing with. Because it is a bird of prey it might appear as a threatening influence. Also this wider awareness may at times feel as if you are ‘carried away’. Being lifted into the unknown in this way can cause unwarranted fear. See The Life Will ; Dreams are Like a Computer Game
In some dreams it represents love, and its death or destruction can mean the death of love – as occurs in divorce. Cayce says that teenagers at a critical stage in life sometimes dream of an eagle pecking or tearing at their heart or thymus area. He says this represents the emotional entanglements that youngsters are subject to and incapable of understanding.
The Egyptian god Horus is a hawk or falcon, and was called the ‘all seeing eye’. This was because it represented the higher function of the unconscious to see all things.
Also the Hawk of Achill, or Seabhag, was one of the first animals to come into being according to Celtic mythos. He has an immense memory and is said to live a very long time. He represents knowledge and the search for it as seen in the poem The Hawk of Achill. He is an ancient bird, over 5,000 years old easily at the time it was written. He is also, as many birds are in mythology, a messenger between the realms. This means he can travel from this realm to that of the otherworlds of the myths he exists in. See Myths and Legends
Example: I was gazing at the sky and the stars, looking up to the sky. The stars were shiny and yellow gold similar to the colour of fire. There were a couple of stars similar to shooting stars but they almost looked like tiny pieces of fire display, like fireworks. It looked beautiful. Soon after the dream shifted to a computer screen and I was checking my emails. I was scrolling down the in box and then clicked on a message thinking ‘why didn’t I check this before?’ the message appeared with a picture of a huge bird and it looked like a Eagle (but the colour was white with a bluish/black outline) with its wings fully spread and moving as if the Eagle was flying; and there was a message underneath in tiny English letters which I read something similar to ‘ your life is going to transform’- I can’t remember the exact words but it was something similar to this and then I woke up. Could this be a message for the future /a prediction/ a omen?
Such beautiful dreams are a real indication of your potential and should be taken seriously. Of course dreams arise from a very deep part of your nature and are like seeds, and so need time to grow and open to the surface; so be patient and hopeful.
Idioms: Watch like a hawk; eagle eyed; like a mother hawk; watch me like a hawk;
Useful questions:
What do I know and feel about eagles?
How was the eagle portrayed in the dream?
Does this have something to do with keeping a ‘sharp eye’ out for something?
Is this about nobility, power and freedom?
Have I experienced an overview, or bird’s eye view of a situation?
See The Wider Life – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Questions