Posts Tagged ‘dream’

Evil

Evil is ‘live’ spelt backwards. In dreams the sense or presence of evil is often depicting those things you have so repressed that they are no longer properly alive and healthy. Repression has turned them back upon you making them an internal evil. They therefore need meeting and being brought into proper recognition and expression. Usually refers to some of our own urges which we have judged as wrong because of moral or social values, and thus denied expression. Charles in the example below, probably feels that what he identifies with as himself – his established values and beliefs – is threatened by what he senses beyond the door. Whatever threatens our ‘I’ or ego, is often felt to be evil, even if it is natural urges. The unbalanced and real evils in the world, such as terrorising of individuals and minority groups, can of course be shown as the feeling of evil.

“All you may know of heaven or hell is within your own self.” EC

Example: ‘At the top of the stairs is a small door, half opened as if inviting me to go up. I get an overpowering sense of something evil beyond the door just waiting for me.’ Charles M.

Example: ‘I am lying on the floor in my bedroom with a towel over me. I am trying to hide and protect myself because I am terrified. There are four devils trying to get into my body and take over. My bedroom is going like a whirlpool around me, like evil all around me. I wake in a hot sweat and am terrified to go back to sleep.’ Joanna. LBC.

Joanna is most likely in conflict with her sexuality – the bedroom. When we fight with our own urges they often feel like external agencies – evil forces – attacking us. See:  archetype of the devil; black magic; active/passive. While we sleep our conscious self is largely or totally unconscious, and while we sleep our voluntary muscles are paralysed – therefore another will or motivating force moves our body. So we have a Conscious Will, and what I will call a Life Will.

The first one we have experience of as we can move our arm or speak in everyday activities; but the second will takes over when we sleep. This Life Will or motivator has been active for millions of years and we see it working all the time in animals. We are partly split in half because we are often opposed to what our Life Will in us wants. So the only way to express what is good for us is in dreams when our conscious will is largely passive. When we meet the inner urge to grow as it expresses from our Life Will, it feels like a hugeness which they are usually unaware if. It feels like something alien or attacking, it is a shock. The Hugeness that we are, we often react to it in our dreams or in waking with fear or panic or as something evil. So we dream of being attacked by aliens or frightening creatures. If we realise that they are things we have created through our own fear we will pass on. The Hugeness is part of our totality. It is the enormous potential you have within you, it is Life you are frightened of.

Example: I was destroyed a long time ago, and now I go about destroying my own. So full of hate for ourselves are we, that we hate our own children.

But I was destroyed a long time ago. Yet somehow I am not quite dead, and must needs go on destroying my own until I destroy myself. I must snatch my children from supposed harm and hurt them, and then blame the buggered life not onto myself, but upon the supposed. I must take him out of my neighbour’s house because their boy is dirty, and swears, because he calls me a silly sod, and because my wife says so. I choose to believe that there is evil in dirt, in swearing, in loud voices and talk. It is easier to believe that than to see the evil as the lack of interest and of my own absence of love. So I shut him in his room, not wanting to accept that it was too many shut doors, averted lips, closed hearts, that opened the neighbour’s soul to their own sorrow.

Example: It developed into an idiot like babbling. There were no formed words, and the chattering on and shouting in a mindless way, with saliva dripping from the mouth. I thought at first this was expressing madness or idiocy, but it went on from there. The body posture was slightly crouched, the babbling and grunting developing.

After a long time it became more intense. My left hand covered my face, and my eyes looked through my fingers at the group. With idiot and leering laughs, the quality of a mindless and evil desire was manifested in. It was the desire for power over people and things. The right-hand pointed at the group, expressing manipulation. Now the spirit began to feel threatened and callout, “Oh. Oh. Oh.” Its crouching leering postures slowly changed into one of being bent double, hands touching the floor. It called out a number of things – Satan, Durga, and other words I cannot recall.

It seemed to be calling for help, but was gradually being “cast out”. As this happened my body crumpled up and eventually fell on the floor. There was more crying out and a little thrashing about. The words, “Over. Over. Over” was said a number of times. Then the body relaxed.

The man who experienced this went on to say, “I lay there for quite some time, then was led to stand up. As I stood, inner realisations came to me. What had been cast out was a creature I had myself brought into being by my own desire for power expressed in my life. It was a hidden or unconscious thought, or desire, which was created out of my own energies, and then fed on them. It also, in subtle and hidden ways, manipulated my actions to fulfil its own mindless and base impulses. I realised there was no external evil or devil. It is what we create with our own fears, our own desires and plans to grab money or sex that have awful effects within us. 

Evil spirit or spirits: The idea of evil spirits started early in human experience, for anything that caused people to experience any awful thing was was seen as evil – i.e a hidden or invisible influence that could cause harm or fear. So what we now call germs or viruses was called evil spirits. But today we tend to see anything that we cannot understand or account for can be represented in dreams as an evil spirit as in above example.

Useful questions and hints:

What of my own urges do I struggle with most?

Do any part of the dream suggest what the evil feelings emerge from – bedroom/sex; bank/money – food/gluttony?

What do I try to avoid or pull back from?

See Processing Dreams – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Avoid Being Victims

Exams Examined Examining

If your dream relates to exams or being examined, it usually points to some uncertainty in yourself, or perhaps some sort of search for deeper understanding if it is a positive experience. If there is anxiety in the dream it may relate to a way of feeling about yourself that you learned at school, due to exams and their results.

Being examined can also show you examining yourself to see who you are.

Self criticism or attempts to live up to moral or intellectual standards or habits of concern over accomplishments. Also worry about some coming test of self value, such as a new job or new sexual partner.

Exams can also be about feelings of competition, or even fear of failure. Exams can mean so much because of all the hopes and the future you hang on passing. Do you regard exams as a kill-or-be-killed competition: if you are slow you go under?

Example: I gave birth to a healthy, happy, and smiling baby boy (even though I looked barely pregnant in the dream and gave birth at home with no pain). I was very happy and felt a lot of warmth, care, and protection towards my baby and cuddled him a great deal. Then I was led away by a strange nurse through a sea of people (apparently in a shopping mall) for some sort of bogus medical exam. When I returned to my room, my baby was gone and no one would tell me where he had been taken. My mother had been in the room and other people I trusted. I woke up feeling very sad with a sinking feeling in my chest /stomach.

I believe this dream is about love that you gave birth to easily. Then you trusted others to care for it as you did yourself – but they were not, and probably are not to be trusted.  As the dream says, the examination was bogus. Love, like a new born baby, is such a precious gift you need to protect it with all you can. Your inner baby is not lost forever, so reclaim it.

Example: I am back at the college at which I took my degree in English in 1942. 1 wander between the four floors and along the lengthy corridors, searching for my old room. I feel panicky when I can’t find it. Sometimes I’m aware that I’m about to take an exam and I’m terrified of failing. I’m a retired teacher, still doing private coaching. I am a childless divorcee. I live alone with my cat but have a devoted male friend who is an artist. My hobby is writing. I’ve had some success but desperately want more before it’s too late. At present nothing has been accepted, I suffer writer’s block and am losing heart.

I have come across similar dreams so many times. What happens is that the years in University or school and the taking of exams sets up a pattern of feeling. It can be a feeling of uncertainty, of fear of not succeeding, or failure – or other responses to facing the course. Once this pattern is set up it will be repeated every time you feel stressed – or whatever you felt during exams. So you dream it to remind you that you are feeling the same response. It is an instinctive way of warning you, but it is only a reminder.

What you can do that might be helpful is to sit quietly and remember as clearly as you can the feelings that occurred at university. Then talk to your self and the instincts within you saying something like, “Okay, you and I met some difficult situations back then, and we have developed a conditioned response. Now I know it was made a habit by repeated exposure, but understanding it we can change it. So we do not need to feel the feelings we felt then every time we meet them. That only makes us worse and feel at a low. So every time those feelings emerge we will change it to feeling good about ourselves.” See Conditioned Reflexes

It is also worthwhile to sit and visualise yourself back in the dream and change the ending so you get out of the building. You may need to repeat it for it to establish a new way. See Secrets of Power Dreaming

Examined by doctor: Concern over health; desire for attention. See: Test.

Useful questions and hints:

What is the exam about, and how do I feel about it?

Is this about a coming situation in which I feel I will be judged?

Am I examining my own ability in some way?

See Associations Working With – Inner World – Life’s Little Secrets – The Slow Breath

Excrement

Very often expresses feelings of repulsion or distaste, or emotions or parts of experience that need to be released or let go of. Like digested food, faeces can represent experience that was relevant and enjoyable at the time of consumption, but needs to be let go of to release tension or internal discomfort.

But very often it shows the shit we carry around in us – our emotional attitudes and views that are so much rubbish that we need to clear up and admit.

Example: As I write this an inner realisation has come to me which I cannot yet explain intellectually. It is that holding onto my faeces in this way is a holding on to one’s creativeness or outgoingness. It would block one’s ability to express oneself in the world. I didn’t see why or how, but the idea certainly links with some of the dreams and then gives an interpretation later. The dream of looking for the toilet; the block of capable outer expression, etc, due to a problem in connection with the abdomen.

Also in connection with the above meaning, some dreams about faeces link with the body being clogged with toxins. This might show in dreams where faeces are everywhere and interfering with normal activities. Toxins might arise in the body through poor food, or through an allergy to something like wheat. So these dreams might be suggesting the physical need to have a healthy bowel. See: kasatkin.

Because babies often play with their faeces, and have a feeling connection with this to do with their self expression and self-giving, in dreams that show this it could refer to an infant level of exploration or self expression.

From infancy we gradually learn to consciously control our bowel movements, and so excrement can depict either how we are controlling what we hold within us, or the need to release it. Control, flowing, or lack of control are therefore very linked with excrement dreams, and often with the way we deal with money or how we give of ourselves. The Incan description of gold was ‘excrement of the gods’! See: toilet.

Sometimes: Personal creativity; being able to let go of what you don’t need – so can link with money and generosity; the primal level of our being; sensuality, intense pleasure and infant sexuality. Shit can of course produce wonderfully rich fertiliser.

If shitting on someone or something: Expressing desire to belittle them or to feel one’s superiority; heaping unjust accusations on someone; bringing something which appeared powerful into perspective.

Idioms: In the shit; feeling shitty; talking a lot of shit/crap; being shat on; being a shit; 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:

Are there feelings I need to let go of?

Am I living in a way suggestive of being in a pig pen?

Does the dream suggest I am over controlling what comes out of me?

See Learning to Allow Yourself – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Questions

Execution

See: Death.

Explosion

Anger; dramatic release of energy in making changes in self expression; social upheaval; fear; orgasm.

Because our ego is only a small thing compared with the immense uncosicious forces of life that are underlying it, an explosion of growth or destruction can occur from the unconscious which may destroy all we have built in our conscious self as Life readies us for change and growth.

Example: I watched an insect emerging from what appeared to be its chrysalis – shaped a little like a mermaid’s purse. As it emerged it was vibrant with life, movement and colour. In fact it shifted its shape so quickly I was amazed at how it moved in and out of shapes as it adjusted to its final form. It had a beautiful gold barred design on its back, like a symbol – perhaps a bit like one of the zodiacal symbols. I watched another insect doing the same thing, and began to realise how life was bursting forth in the garden. Looking up in the hedge I noticed a large pod expanding on top of a stalk. Its was visibly getting larger, like a balloon. Suddenly it opened, forming many stalks with leaves and small rose like buds. Another pod was doing the same. As I watched I noticed a young woman nearby. I called to her to witness this extraordinary explosion of growth and life – a dynamic extravagant springtime of activity. She didn’t appear to really see. I was very moved though, and stood leaning against what felt like a wall, perhaps the wall of a house, and wept at the beauty. I started to restrain my emotions, as the woman did not share them, but then thought I wouldn’t hold back because of her. Andrew.

Here is an example of destructive forces at work as one gets ready for change.

Example: We could hear bombs dropping and exploding. We were just carrying on with our normal activities though. Then I was standing near a big floor to ceiling glass window. I heard a bomb whistling down and it landed just outside. It exploded and the whole house disintegrated, glass was flying around and I was flying through the air from the explosion. I felt like the explosion had taken place in my head and blasted my brains, and I thought although the people near me had got it pretty badly too, that the children, being nearer to the ground, would have avoided the worst of the blast. It was a horrific mess and I knew I had been killed. This didn’t seem to worry me though. At this point I was waking from sleep and found myself thinking I had kept awareness through the whole situation, so there was part of me – an awareness – which did not or had not died. I was left wondering – is that what happens after death, and can one communicate with others in that state? H. C.

This interesting bomb dream occurred just as HC was entering menopause and great changes occurred in herself and her life. A break-up began to occur with her husband as well as external changes in work. So the death suggests the end of the life she knew up till then. The awareness that did not die shows HC experiencing her central self, her core self, that does not die and is not the external personality or body that constantly changes and can die – in other words undergo massive change.

Another side of explosive force in ones life is given below.

Example: Dreamt I was on a bomb site. I found old shells from the war. I was interested in them and dug them up, but felt that they might explode. Throwing them to one-sided I crawled away sheltering from expected explosions. None came, only smoke. Then a friend offered a basement to Chinese restaurant owner. It was enormous, with great possibilities. I began to work in the basement. Brian.

As Brian explores his inner life through his dreams he comes across damage that occurred in his childhood and youth. The war was the personal inner conflicts he experienced. Meeting these was not as difficult as he had expected. Then, in doing this a whole new area of possibility opened up – the basement, an area of himself that had previously remained unconscious.

Useful questions and hints:

What is my reaction to the threatened or actual explosion?

Have I felt inwardly under pressure lately or near to emotional release?

Can I allow this explosion by letting my body and feelings express it?

See  Interpretation and the passion – Exploring Dreams -Techniques to use –  Life’s Little Secrets

Eyes

This is about How we SEE the world and ourselves. Although eyes are not mentioned much in the collection of dreams used for data in this book, SAW, SEE, SEEING, LOOK and LOOKING, constitute the highest number of mentions. In a computer word count of 1000 dreams, these words were mentioned 1077 times. Feel, feeling, felt, came second with 855 hits. So dreams are predominantly a looking at and seeing activity, in the sense of insight and awareness.

Fundamentally eyes are about awareness – seeing and being seen. These aspects of relating to the world and others have enormous impact in our life. What we see, and how we are seen, leave great depths of feeling. Someone I know of saw his mother kill his father. That image will never ever leave him.

In many dreams the eyes represent our understanding, or how we ‘see’ the world, our view of things or other people. This is very personal. Also, they depict intelligence, our ability to give attention, and where we focus that attention, along with our boundaries of awareness.

Eyes are used in many ways in dreams. As these quotes from people’s dream descriptions show, eyes can represent the soul or psyche in its many moods – ‘dark deep eyes’; ‘desperation in its eyes’; ‘shining eyes’; ‘impersonal eyes’; ‘staring eyes’; ‘eye to eye’. So in most dreams the eyes display the inner feelings or situation of the person or yourself.

Here is another description of eyes that tells so much.

She looked at me quickly. Her eyes were very brown, but quite round. “I was very much in love with somebody, ” she said. Her eyes were wide open looking at me, and her mouth was trying to carry on speaking, but the weight of emotion behind what she wanted to say carried the words to her eyes, where they began to come out as tears.

Blindness: Not being aware, not wanting to see something – usually about oneself.

Eye Lashes: I have only seen a few dreams that mention eye lashed, and these either show a woman’s sense of her own good looks, or the loss of an attractive feature.

Example: This guy in a TV audience is telling how exciting his life is living with this black girl sitting next to him. As he is talking excitedly all this fake hair – side burns, eyebrows, eye lashes, etc. – falls off. She is laughing, embarrassed. He goes on talking without noticing.

Loss of sight or difficulty in right eye: Not seeing what is going on in the outside world.

Loss of sight or difficulty in left eye: Not seeing what you are really thinking or feeling; not aware of self, motives, behaviour; no ‘in-sight’.

Lack of eye contact: Avoidance of intimacy; feeling ashamed or bowed.

Closed eyes: Introversion or avoidance of contact; not wanting to see. It is a huge step into your inner world because you have shut out a major sense organ for sensing the physical world.

In the Sixties Donovan sang a song called ‘There is an Ocean’.  To quote some of the words, he says the ocean is, “The abode of Angels, the mystical Promised Land, The one and only Heaven, the God of man, Is but the closing of an eyelid away.”

That ocean is just an eye blink away.  When you close your eyes you are in the huge ocean of consciousness.  Of course you are never out of it.  But with open eyes and ears, you may be completely unaware of its enormous depths and dimensions.  Even with eyes closed you may be lost in the choppy ocean surface waves of thought and emotions.  So many impressions claim awareness, apparently of enormous importance.  Urges gusting from hormones, from deeply etched habits, claim attention.

But if we you can find your way through those surface influences, as important or potent as they may be, we you discover another dimension of our experience.  It is one we all know when we surrender our desires and thoughts, our conscious motivations and urges in sleep.  Then that other dimension speaks to us in dreams and visions.  And in it there are depths or heights, forms of experience beyond the images and emotions even of dreams.  And to go consciously and willingly into that realm is to transform it.

Hair in eye: This suggests some sort of irritant or irritation connected with what you can see or have seen. If it is the right eye it means something interfering with what is going on in the outside world. If the left eye it is an interference with what you are really thinking or feeling; not aware of self, motives or behaviour; no ‘in-sight’.

The following example shows how eye contact can change a relationship, as if the eyes are in themselves a form of contact and touching.

Example: ‘ I saw a young soldier with a gun, but as our eyes met we were attracted to each other, and he put his arm round me.’ Pauline B.

Example: ‘I was dimly aware of a biggish black bird that came down close beside us on the step and pecked at the baby’s eye, then it flew off. The eye was gone completely.’ Heather C.

Heather’s dream shows the eye depicting the ‘I’ or identity. In fact her sense of self was damaged in infancy. Therefore ‘eye’ can often be a play on words meaning ‘I’.

Many eyes: This is usually about feeling watched or noticed, often by a god like awareness, either that or an audience or crowd looking at you.

Example: So I stood and watched the bubbles rise, and saw in each one of them an ‘I’, watching me like many eyes – a reflection of me looking back at me. All the lonely bubbles separated from each other, individual I’s, looking at me only because I was looking at them. They existed only because I existed, and knowing that I was their God, suddenly I loved them. Then suddenly, and with some shock I realised that I was a bubble, and only existed because a godlike awareness had caused my existence and was looking at me.

Example: The image was of a smart very confident and aggressive young woman. She was attractive and attracted but her approach was one of attack, so to have a relationship I needed to fight her. What I appear to be facing is that I have the sex drive, but what I am facing is a monster. In fact I had the image of a huge spider that could come out from hiding and drag you helpless into its lair, its many eyes shining.

Opening the eyes: If you have had your eyes closed for a long period, opening them in dreams represent opening them to a new realisation or experience, especially if you woke from sleep. It shows you have woken to new realisations and abilities.

Winking: A wink can suggest a communication that is hidden or only meant for a particular person or group.

Idioms: All eyes; an eye for an eye; apple of his eye; bat an eye; beauty in the eye of; believe my eyes; black eye; bright eyed; catch your eye; can’t you see; cry your eyes out; eyeball this; eagle eyed; evil eye; eye of the storm; eye opener; eyes glazed over; eyes peeled; evil eye; feast your eyes on; fresh pair of eyes; give her the eye; got my eye on; I see; I saw it with my own eyes; sheep eyes; keep an eye open; keep an eye out for; lay eyes on; one in the eye; meet eye to eye; more than meets the eye; out of the corner of my eye; turn a blind eye; keep your eyes open; easy on the eyes; right before my eyes; turn a blind eye; sight for sore eyes; wink of an eye; you must be blind; your mind’s eye.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

What is it I am ‘seeing’ or understanding in my dream – can I define it?

In what way are eyes shown in this dream, and what idiom or life situation does that suggest?

What feelings or unspoken words are being expressed here?

Try Exploring Dreams -Techniques to use – Secrets of Power Dreaming – Processing Dreams

 

Facade

In some house dreams, great stress is given to the front or façade of the house. Sometimes it crumbles away revealing what is within; sometimes it is painted or changed, and so on. The façade thus represents your front shown to the world, your social self that may hide quite a different interior. See: house.

This is the more public or expressed part of your nature, or attitudes you use to meet ‘the world’; a ‘front’ or façade, used to create an impression, or the point of stress where you as a person contact others and meet impacts, and so are more vulnerable. For instance the back of a house or building would be a  more private area. So a front door would be where you meet and decide whether to allow someone into your life.  Your social self or face.

Dropping the façade is about the attitudes or feelings we may mask our real emotions with in everyday life – for instance a child may scream if someone it dislikes gets near it, but an adult will probably tolerate the nearness, or refrain from expressing displeasure.

A great secret is that behind the façade we may erect to tell people who we are, each of us want to be capable of loving and supporting at least one other human being. We want at least one other person to be glad we exist.

Example: We’re curious, so one of us goes up and opens the door and steps through. Then says, “What a joke! There’s nothing over here at all, it’s just a door to nothing!” See, the door isn’t set in part of the building, as if multiple stories, it’s just somewhat more than door-high, maybe 1 story, and then sky. But you can’t see there’s no roof. And there’s a space nearby, a break in the wall, and the one who went through the door steps through that, showing it’s just a façade. We all find this curious and funny, so we go through and find a big stadium-like space between office buildings.

Example: I dreamt I was in a place far from home, yet it seemed to be where I was staying.  A small room. My brother (who I’ve been estranged from since childhood except for unavoidable family holidays, at which time we “act” pleasant enough and put on a normal exterior façade of “family”) and his girlfriend showed up in the room with me.  They point to writing on the wall which shows I’ve let 17 days pass after his birthday and didn’t send any acknowledgement in that time.  They feel I’m bad and point to this as evidence.  This is funny becuase I feel he’s doing this to point the finger back at me and deflect away the reason I’ve avoided him all these years.

Example: There was the one side where everything was wonderful as my mother told me it was. This was a sort of façade, a superficial façade where I loved my mother, she loved me, she was wonderful and everything was happy. The other side, the side which I couldn’t face in my conscious mind, was this unhappiness underneath, which my conscious mind under the drug told me was so.

• I realised that she was weak, unreliable and bad and I couldn’t bring these two sides of my life together. When, finally, something snapped in my brain at about five when we had this terrific row about our sexual play, I think it really came to a head, and I couldn’t carry on with these two sides of my life any longer. They clashed, and I just couldn’t find any basis for a proper relationship with my mother knowing what she was, knowing her demand for love, and knowing her demand for implicit obedience. I couldn’t find any way of living with her, and therefore I had to cut her out of my life, which I have done for the last thirty years, and with her, of course, all other deep human contacts, particularly with women.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What impression do I have of this façade – or what impression might other people have?

Is any change going on – and if so does that express my personal situation or feelings?

Do I connect or feel repulsed by the façade?

See Processing Dreams – Secrets of Power Dreaming– Defence Mechanisms and Resistances

Face

How your face appears in a dream points to how you see yourself, your self image, the fears or feelings, even anxieties you have about how you appear to others and yourself. It can also show the expression of or hiding of inner feelings and attitudes. It can be defined in two words – ‘identity’ and ‘communication’. This is because not only do most of us believe we are how we look, but also through our face we communicate to others what we feel and think. See Dreams are Virtual Realities

The face, especially if you are looking at yourself in a mirror, can also mean that you are facing yourself – facing up to yourself, or need to, ‘face yourself’. This dream often occurs when you are ready to really look at who you are and what facets of yourself you might be ignoring or even hiding. It is a sort of seld assessment or self analysis; but it might only be reflecting an aspect of you that needs attention and is usually about your inner world. See Inner World

Someone else’s face: How you see them and how you relate to them. What you feel and think suggest what your opinion of them is, and how you relate to them inwardly. The face could also point to what feelings and memories of them you carry within you. See Characters and People in Dreams

Blushing: Unconscious response to things. Feelings that you usually keep hidden, or are not usually aware of yourself. Often about strong feelings about another person you really like but are not showing, except for blushing. Something wrong with face: Sense of not being adequate; fear of how others see you. If it is someone else’s face it probably depicts how you feel about them, or your intuitions about them.

Changing ones face or head: Changing ones attitudes or decision about something; being uncertain or ‘two faced’. Having different aspects of your personality or seeing another side of yourself. Change the wording to fit seeing someone else with changing face – your to their.

Hiding ones face: Being ashamed of something; low confidence or uncertainty; being afraid of how others see you; hiding motives or feelings.

No face: This is probably what is called a shadow figure if you see it on another person – parts of your nature or behaviour that you usually keep hidden or do not admit to. If you are faceless then it could suggest either that you realise your real self is pure potential without particular characteristics, or you feel a fear of about loss of identity or uncertainty about who you are.

Example: Was looking in a mirror. Suddenly a shadow appeared on it. At first the shadow seemed threatening or frightening. Then I saw it was only a directive, a face,  figure with its arm and hand extended as if pointing. Looking behind me I saw that the shadow was cast by a featureless cat or animal. That is, its head was completely smooth, without eyes or ears. At first I thought it could not see or hear, but then realised it must be able to, as it was pointing to a man out in the rough sea. The man had a lifejacket on, so was in no immediate danger. But the sea was very rough. I went out and brought him in, dried him off, put him in my house to recover, then phoned the police in case they needed to know.

Here the dreamer was looking at himself in the mirror, and was directed to realise that although there wasn’t any immediate danger, he was fighting against heavy emotional forces. The dream tends to not directly tell us about ourselves, but uses another person of event to point things out to us. See Characters and People in Dreams and Exploring Dreams -Techniques to use

But being faceless in the role of a helper, guide or nurse can have a much deeper meaning. It suggests that it is an aspect of you that has given up its egotistic state of being important, a leader or even a saint. As such it becomes a Christ like figure who becomes a servant of Life – washing peoples feet. Such a dream figure is worth listening to.

Idioms: Blue in the face; egg on my face; face down; face the facts; face the music; face up to; face value; fill your face; flat on one’s face; face lift; fly in the face of; get out of my face; in your face; keep a straight face; long face; poker face; pull a face; save face; shut your face; two faced; wipe that smile off your face; written all over your face. See: head.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What is being expressed or felt here?

If there is change what is the change moving toward or expressing?

What character, qualities, or lack of them does the face depict?

See Secrets of Power Dreaming – Emotions and Mood in Dreams – Associations Working With

Faeces Feces Shit Poop

Considering that passing faeces is a natural function, in dreams it can suggest getting rid of emotions or toxins that need to be released or let go of. Like digested food, faeces can represent experience that was relevant but now needs to be let go of. Very often expresses feelings of repulsion or distaste.

Sometimes this indicates something you have produced and created; something visible that has come out of you. Apart from the meaning mentioned under Cesspool, that is, the corruptible parts of human nature that become manure for new growth, faeces can also represent money or riches, fertility.

In another sense, to pass faeces with feelings of relief means to be rid of worrying burdensome feelings, of tension, or sexual repression. While to be covered in faeces may suggest a fear of being outwardly repulsive, or to harbour self destructive thoughts and feelings.

To play with faeces is a return to infantile behaviour; but it may develop in the dream into a question of what to do with them, or how to use them. This is the beginning of using our basic, earthly nature, to creative ends and the shaping of self. Because babies often play with their faeces, and have a feeling connection with them to do with their self expression and self-giving, in dreams showing this it could refer to an infant level of exploration or self expression.

Example: One such memory that was a dream I experienced. I must have been very young because I had no feelings about it other than joy and pleasure. I was lying on my back cradled in my auntie Flo’s knickers and she was wearing them. Then she did a crap all over my body and that felt like a most wonderful and orgasmic feeling. I cannot remember anything beyond that wonderful feeling. As an adult I wonder whether the child mind does not have so many feelings about being dirty but revelled in the close physical contact and the shit.

Some dreams about faeces link with the body being clogged with toxins. This might show in dreams where faeces are everywhere and interfering with normal activities. Toxins might arise in the body through poor food, or through an allergy to something like wheat. So these dreams might be suggesting the physical need to have a healthy bowel.

From infancy we gradually learn to consciously control our bowel movements, and so excrement can depict either how we are controlling or the need to let go. This can link with the way we deal with money or how we give of ourselves. This is very important because we are told or taught how to control everything from our bowels, urine, anger, sexual feelings and ourselves, but we are not taught how to really let go of control and learn from life. See control; LifeStream

The Inca description of gold was ‘excrement of the gods’! Shit can of course produce wonderfully rich fertiliser.

If shitting on someone or something: Expressing desire to belittle them or to feel one’s superiority; heaping unjust accusations on someone; bringing something which appeared powerful into perspective.

Idioms: In the shit; feeling shitty; talking a lot of shit/crap; being shat on; being a shit. See: Toilet.

Useful questions:

Are there feelings I need to let go of?

Am I living in a way suggestive of being in a pig pen?

Does the dream suggest I am over controlling what comes out of me?

See: excrement – Associations Working With – Exploring Dreams -Techniques to use

Failure

The feeling of failure could arise because of comparison with others; competitiveness; or because of ones high aim missing its mark. Failure is the alternative to success. So the failure might be ‘because’. See: falling; or the Because Factor described in processing dreams.

 Example: ‘I was in a race riding a horse but couldn’t get to the starting gate in time. The others were way ahead of me jumping the fences. I couldn’t catch up, and one fence I came to grew to a huge height and was like a steel barrier. I couldn’t get over it and felt a failure.’ Ron S.

Ron had not done well at school; had not taken any particular training; no steady relationship or children. In his late twenties Ron looked at his friends with steady job, married with family, and felt a failure. From the dream he realised he was viewing life as a competitive race to succeed. This was stopping him from following his real interest, psychotherapy, which his family viewed as playing games. He could ride his horse into the fields and explore. He did, by going to America, training, raising a family.

Example: Dreamt I was driving to work in my car. Just as I was opposite our house a lorry – bread – hurtled out past a parked car, didn’t seem to see me, and smashed straight over me. I was left standing by the roadside, the car smashed away from me to about the size of a bike. My right leg was slightly encased in the smashed car. I thought I had lost my leg, but it was not smashed off, only bloody and perhaps broken.  I remained standing by the road and shouted for my wife to call the ambulance. I thought I would have to be in hospital for some time and quite liked the idea, and decided to meditate while there. I seemed to have an inner realisation about the crash. I knew that my karma had led me to death at that moment, but because of the work I had done at ashram over the past eight months, this had been escaped.  Now I asked my wife to phone my emplore and tell him I would not be going to work that day.

The man who dreamt this explore it and came to this view of  his dream. Going to work is the steady, persevering work on myself – the daily facing of difficulties and patiently pressing on.

The car is, because it keeps going wrong, my sense of failure (when I dreamt this the car was in the garage for repair). It is all the past things that have driven me, or carried me along out of a sense of failure.

The bread van was a connection with work. It was the great power which had been released by the persistent facing of myself, and which now smashed away the failure drives. This left me standing on my own feet, but outwardly insecure. The injured leg was the causes of the failure drives being revealed – my psychological inability to stand strongly on my own feet – my lack of confidence.

Going to hospital meant that in the healing of these causes or root problems, much more inner peace, or chance to enter deeply into self would arise. I would have died as a person, not being able to progress beyond this point, this problem, if it hadn’t been for the many things learned in giving myself to others and teaching LifeStream. If I had not followed the inner drive to start activities at Ashram, during which I learned to open up the whole inner mess of my life. I might not in this life have gained, developed or being given the necessary qualities  and tools to melt and pass beyond the problem. Not going to work is not having to work any longer in that way. It was now my choice.

Example: As I looked at my present situation, as I was wondering how to come to terms with being a second-class sort of person in a second-class life situation. I started thinking about all the potential and mental possibilities I have touched in the past. How could it be that I had come through so many things, grown beyond myself in so many ways, and yet at the moment I am locked in this apparent decay and decline? Has all the past been an illusion? Have I declined so much that all the power and wonder of my previous life is now lost to me?

I realised I had got into a negative feedback loop. I tried to find the way out of the loop. The only way out I could find was the realisation that the loop has no end. There is only one thing to do – stop it playing. Grab it and stop the crazy record. To help with this, to help grab the thing and kill it, I obviously would have to realise it as untrue. If I still believe the loop to be playing a truth, then I only strengthen the action. So for its cessation I need to realise that my sense of self is a constantly moving fragile thing that has no stable reality. I am not ANY ONE THING – so how can I be a failure, or a success, or great, or of no account, or any thought or feeling? No one thought or feeling can represent my reality. No feeling, or sense of myself, is anything more than a sense, a feeling, it is not ME. So how could this feeling represent some sort of permanent personal reality?

 

Useful questions and hints:

What do I feel I have failed at – compared with whom?

Who has told me in the past that I have not performed well enough?

In what way is failure shown in the dream, and can I recognise that in feelings?

See Associations Working With – Exploring Dreams Techniques to use – Life’s Little Secrets – Martial Art of the Mind

Faint

Fainting in dreams can indicate stress great enough to produce the faint response – a way of avoiding too much emotional pain, shock, great fear or avoidance. Some esoteric techniques cause a fainting if consciousness enabling the person to be aware in the world of the dead, the unconscious, and visions. This causes the rational mind to faint, and so brings about a condition in which one can contact one source, perhaps having a profound vision. This was the method of Jalal ad-Dīn Rumi.

In the ‘Bardo Thodol’ it says, ‘The common people call this the state wherein the consciousness principle (object knowing principle) hath fainted away.’ These teachings declare that if we cannot hold onto this condition, we drop into the next level, which is experiencing the effect of the Clear Light. If this is not possible to maintain, we drop into our karmic matrix. If this is not maintained, we become lost in images and ‘dreams’ arising from the karma we have gathered, i.e. our loves, hates, fears, and aspirations.

But you can have a faint marking, a faint sound, his presence was faint, be faint of heart, faint praise or faint recall.

See: Dizzy.

Fair Hair

Your conscious thoughts, awareness, light headed. See: Hair.

Fairground

What is happening to you at the fairground often shows your feelings about the enormous range of differences and activities you observe in human society. It therefore depicts the range of human fate – rich to poor, midgets to giants; the ‘swings and roundabouts’ of life. So you may be finding your way through the many things facing you, and it is wise to keep a certain amount of suspicions of others motives.

It could also suggest you want some fun and release in your life. See Amusement Park or Arcade

Example: For the past year I have had recurring dreams about fairground rides. Occasionally members of my family, including my father have died on the rides. When I’m on the ride I’ve survived, but I can sense danger all around me. This dream is beginning to bother me. I am 15 years old.

As we try to become independent of parents we dream of seeing them dead. If it is not murder, then the dreamer sees the parent or parents die. In either case, the child still faces life without them, and this seems to be the point of such dreams. So the example illustrates the quieter form of getting rid of a parent.

The fairground can also be a testing oneself to define self image. This because some rides need a certain amount of courage or ability to face new experiences. There is also great variety here, and so might point to the varied experiences we are meeting and trying to find our way through or understand.

The fairground also represents the ups and downs of life, its variety and uncertainties. There IS danger in almost everything we do in life. But there is also opportunity and the possibility of deep satisfaction. The challenge is what YOU will make of it? How will you play your part? Will you forever feel surrounded by danger, and thereby not fully express yourself? Or can you laugh and love while the ride goes on? The following example clearly shows the difficulties we face. See also: amusement park; Market.

Example: Whilst walking home with a boy we reached the end of the path. However there was an exit leading to an empty dark fairground. My friend ran off, leaving me frightened. I ran away and found a church. Inside a service was underway and I sat down. I realised though that everyone around me were zombies. A man pointed a gun at me and I somehow escaped.

It seems the dreamer may have had a difficulty with a boyfriend leaving her, or the fear of it. This has made her doubt the ready made images about love and marriage. The dark fairground has in it the sense of looking behind the bright lights to see the reality back of the glamour of things. I don’t know what age she is, but she is wondering what life has to offer you without a male. Because of those feelings you wonder if there is comfort in traditional religion. But the people you see using this approach are, in your mind, doing things automatically without questioning. But the end of the dream is important though. It suggests the whole dream arose out of her hidden fears of being hurt in a relationship.

Useful Questions and Hints

Where there parts of the dream you had intense feelings?

Did you feel fear or pleasure in the fairground?

Were you alone or with someone?

See Processing Dreams – Being in Control – Exploring Dreams Techniques to use

Fairies Fairy

Natural forces or processes, such as electricity, gravity, cohesion, magnetism. The unconscious tends to express such forces pictorially as ideas are portrayed in most dreams. But the fairy might also be a process or realisation within yourself. It can also refer to something that is completely impractical or a fantasy.

The fairy can represent the desire to believe in the magical despite a feeling of its loss. There is an overall sense in the Western mind and psyche that God does not exist – ‘God is dead’. For many people this leads either to a dry intellectual relationship with life, or a feeling of something missing. And as a society we may attempt to deal with the dryness or sense of loss with alcohol, meaningless social rituals, drugs, excessive ambition to grasp money, mental illness or breakdown between self and society. Aniela Jaffe says this is a retreat of consciousness. The ‘magic’ of a living contact with our own core self is dead. See Core

Fairy tales: Are the language of the unconscious and dreams. The meaning of them has been forgotten by modern humans, yet it is an important language because it reveals secrets of the inner life of humans that they ignore to their detriment. To quote from Dreams the forgotten Language by Erich Fromm, “For the people of the past, living in the great cultures of both East and West, there was no doubt as to the answer to this question. For them myths and dreams were among the most significant expressions of the mind, and failure to understand them would have amounted to illiteracy. It is only in the past few hundred years of Western culture that this attitude has changed. At best, myths were supposed to be naïve fabrications of the pre-scientific mind, created long before man had made his great discoveries about nature and had learned some of the secrets of its mastery.”

Unfortunately this forgetfulness has led to the crazy world we live in today, in which countless thousands are constantly on anti depressants and do not know how to cope with life.

Useful questions and hints:

In what way does the fairy exist in the dream and how do I relate to it?

Is this some sort of wish for a magical thing to be real in my life?

If I imagine myself as the fairy what do I experience?

See Inner World – Simple Truths – Clicking On – Myths Legends and Fairy Tales in Dreams

Fakir

The irrational rather than reasonable self. The part of you that does things for no logical reason. See: Guru.

Fall Fallen Falling Fell

Some dream researchers suggest falling is one of the main themes in dreams. In the sample used for this book, the words fall; falls; fell; falling, occur 72 times in a 1000 dreams. The words find; finds; finding; found, occur 297 times. Whereas the words connected with looking and seeing occur 1077 times.

Falling indicates a loss of confidence. a threat to usual sources of security such as relationship, source of money. Also falling can link with your social image such as loss of face or sustaining beliefs. It often involves tension, loss of social grace or moral failure – such as falling into temptation.

Sometimes it is about coming down to earth from a too lofty attitude or even sexual surrender. Apart from insecurity, falling might at times point to the dropping away from or pulling back from outer worldly activity. We can in fact ‘fall’ in love, with all its pleasures and pain, its ups and down. And as the idioms show at the end of this entry you can fall in many other ways.

During our development or growth we ‘fall’ from our mother’s womb when ripe; being dropped by a parent must be our earliest sense of insecurity and we fall many times as we learn to stand and walk. As we explore our boundaries in running, climbing, jumping and riding, falling is a big danger. At times it could mean death. Learning to walk down stairs is a great achievement for a baby, and has very real danger and fear of falling. See: stairs.

Out of this we create the ways falling is used in dreams. By learning to meet our insecurities, perhaps by using Secrets of Power Dreaming we can dare more in life. This is in essence the same as meeting the fear of falling off our bike as we learn to ride. If we never master the fear we cannot ride.

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 ask 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. In fact it was just a fear, and he went on to develop secure work.

Example: ‘I was on a road which led up to the hospital I was put in at three. I felt a sense of an awful past as I looked at the road. Then I was standing on the edge of a precipice or cliff. My wife was about four yards away near the road. I stepped in an area of soft earth. It gave beneath my weight and I sank up to my waist. I realised the cliff edge was unstable and the whole area would fall. I was sinking and shouting to my wife to help me. She was gaily walking about and made light of my call for help. I cried out again. Still she ignored me. I shouted again for her help. She took no notice and I sank deeper, the ground gave way and I fell to my death.’ Barry I.

Through being put in a hospital at three without his mother, Barry had a deep seated fear that any woman he loved could desert him. The cliff edge depicts the edge upon which a lot of his life is lived – a point of insecurity about relationship. His fall is the loss of any sense of bonding between him and his wife out of this fear. His death is the dying of his feeling of love and relationship, and the pain it causes. Understanding these fears Barry was able to leave them behind in later dreams and in life.

Example: I am falling down a cliff. In the dream, I know if I hit the bottom I will die. (I’ve been told by dream ‘experts’ that this is so.) I hit the bottom – my body is splattered on the ground, but ‘I’ am floating through the air thinking ‘How strange! I’m supposed to be dead! But I’m alive and free.’ Ingmar Bergman.

Example: ‘Near where I stood in the school gymnasium was a diving board, about 20ft. off the ground. Girls were learning to dive off the board and land flat on their back on the floor. If they landed flat they didn’t hurt themselves – like falling backwards standing up.’ Barry I.

The school is a learning situation. Once we learn to fall ‘flat on our back’ – i.e. fail – without being devastated or ‘hurt’ by it, we can be more creative. Dreams like this take falling into realms beyond fear. The following examples illustrate this.

Example: ‘As I prayed I realised I could fly. I lifted off the ground about three feet and found I could completely relax while going higher or falling back down. So it was like free fall. I went into a wonderful surrendered relaxation. My whole body sagging, floating in space. It was a very deep meditative experience.’ Sarah D.

Sarah has found an attitude which enables her to soar/dare or fall/fail without being so afraid of being hurt or dying emotionally. This gives a form of freedom many people never experience. This does not arise from denying or suppressing fears.

Example: ‘I was standing outside my mother’s house to the right. The ground in front had fallen away. The house was about to cave in. I felt no fear or horror. Instead I was thinking about new beginnings and the possibility of a new house.’ Helen B.

Helen is here becoming more independent and leaving behind attitudes and dependency.

Example: I saw that I was lying on a bed. … Observing my bed, I saw I was lying on plaited string supports attached to its sides: my feet were resting on one such support, my calves on another, and my legs felt uncomfortable. I seemed to know that those supports were movable, and with a movement of my foot I pushed away the furthest of them at my feet – it seemed to me that it would be more comfortable so. But I pushed it away too far and wished to reach it again with my foot, and that movement caused the next support under my calves to slip away also, so that my legs hung in the air. I made a movement with my whole body to adjust myself, fully convinced that I could do so at once; but the movement caused the other supports under me to slip and to become entangled, and I saw that matters were going quite wrong: the whole of the lower part of my body slipped and hung down, though my feet did not reach the ground. I was holding on only by the upper part of my back, and not only did it become uncomfortable but I was even frightened. And then only did I ask myself about something that had not before occurred to me. I asked myself: Where am I and what am I lying on? and I began to look around, and first of all to look down in the direction in which my body was hanging and whither I felt I must soon fall. I looked down and did not believe my eyes. I was not only at a height comparable to the height of the highest towers or mountains, but at a height such as I could never have imagined.

… I thought of what would happen to me directly I fell from my last support. And I felt that from fear I was losing my last supports, and that my back was slowly slipping lower and lower. Another moment and I should drop off. And then it occurred to me that this cannot be real. It is a dream. Wake up! I try to arouse myself but cannot do so. What am I to do? What am I to do? I ask myself, and look upwards. Above, there is also an infinite space. I look into the immensity of sky and try to forget about the immensity below, and I really do forget it. The immensity below repels and frightens me; the immensity above attracts and strengthens me. I am still supported above the abyss by the last supports that I have not yet slipped from under me; I know that I am hanging, but I look only upwards and my fear passes. As happens in dreams, a voice says: ‘Notice this, this is it!’ And I look more and more into the infinite above me and feel that I am becoming calm. . . .I see that I no longer hang as if about to fall, but am firmly held. I ask myself how I am held: I feel about, look round, and see that under me, under the middle of my body, there is one support, and that when I look upwards I lie on it in the position of securest balance, and that it alone gave me support before. And then, as happens in dreams, I imagined the mechanism by means of which I was held; a very natural, intelligible, and sure means, though to one awake that mechanism has no sense. I was even surprised in my dream that I had not understood it sooner. It appeared that at my head there was a pillar, and the security of that slender pillar was undoubted though there was nothing to support it. From the pillar a loop hung very ingeniously and yet simply, and if one lay with the middle of one’s body in that loop and looked up, there could be no question of falling. This was all clear to me, and I was glad and tranquil. And it seemed as if someone said to me: ‘See that you remember.’ And I awoke. Leo Tolstoy, A Confession, 1879

Tolstoy’s dream is a wonderful example of the subtle balance between fear and confidence that goes on in each of us constantly. Not only does it illustrate the loss of confidence, but also how it is regained – by fixing on a different mental image. The strange and fascinating thing is that the immensity above and the immensity below are equally awe-full. Perhaps the difference between fear and confidence is that although we may be faced by the same situation, when there is a movement from the feeling of falling, or being out of control, to the feeling of rising or flying and therefore being more in control, our relationship with the world totally alters.

Example: I am walking along a road with my family. There is a large pit ahead and my mother falls into it. I wake feeling very disturbed. A few weeks later my mother died. Sarah B.

Here the pit obviously deals with Sarah’s sense of her mother’s impending death. This enabled her to face the event with greater balance when it happened.

Example: If I but let go, and let the moan of pleasure cry out, and fall, and fall, and fall, into that immensity and fall until there is no more falling – for we fall only in space in moving from one place to another; but here there is no beginning or end, no landmarks to pass or space to cover – then I will have gone wonderfully, ecstatically mad. I would be so mad I could love you; so mad I could give everything; so damn blissfully crazy I need never again hold on to anything, to anyone, to any moment, any past, any future – any – any – anything!

Occasionally: If we use fantasy and thought to get away from the ‘real’ world’ or if we use entertainment, alcohol, socialising, to escape from inner pain and conflict, when these distractions are taken away and reality breaks through again there is a sense of falling and threat. So falling may depict this fear of being faced with our own inner feelings.

 

A person falling: Wish to be rid of them; or anxiety in regard to what they represent.

A child or son falling: See: baby; son.

Falling into an abyss or pit: Fear of failure; fear of meeting ones own depths of feeling and the hidden side of oneself; anxiety about some form of death. It can often be a way of facing fears involved in falling, and can be met by imagining yourself falling into the pit or abyss. See Falling – Secrets of Power Dreaming

Fear of falling: This may refer to anxiety about falling into old patterns of behaviour or past depression and difficult feelings. But of course it can still link with the other definitions of falling such as failure or lack of confidence.

House falling down: Personal stress; illness; personal change and growth due to letting old habits and attitudes crumble. Sometimes it is about leaving an old way of life behind and starting a new one.

Going fast to an edge and falling: Could mean overwork and danger of breakdown of health.

Seeing things falling or falling on you: Sense of danger or change in regard to what is represented.

If you imagine things falling at you, your instinct is to feel careful or suspicious that you might get hit. This suggests you feel anxious about ideas or events that you feel will badly influence you – maybe public attitudes or opinions.

See: house; abyss; chasm. See also: flying.

Idioms: break your fall; fall apart (at the seams); fall asleep; fall behind; fall between the cracks; fall between two stools; fall flat on my face; fall for; fall for that; fall head over heels; fall ill; fall in line; fall in love; fall into a trap; fall into my lap; fall off the wagon; fall on deaf ears; fall on your sword; fall short; fall through; fall through the cracks; fall to pieces; let the chips fall where they may; pride goeth before a fall; the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree; the bigger they are the harder they fall; the wheels fall off; wheels fall off; fall-out.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

Did I actually fall in my dream, and if so what did I feel?

Was I near a hole or an abyss, or at a great height, and what was the outsome?

Did someone else fall?

Where you hurt in a fall?

See – Avoid Being Victims –  Characters and People in Dreams – Exploring Dreams Techniques to use – Facing Fear