Posts Tagged ‘dream’
Soft Toy
As a child our toys can be extremely important. A soft toy might be the only non-threatening relationship we have, and so depict security, love, and the ability to control instead of be controlled. It could therefore represent the ability to create, with the aid of an external object, an internal source of love and assurance. As an adult it might suggest a desire for a non-threatening emotional or sexual relationship. It can also be a means of venting anger or pain. See: Doll; Toy.
Stranger
May be referring to an unrecognised part of yourself, your behaviour or character, or something you fail to see or recognise as you. In a way this might even be a new growing part of you you haven’t met before. So if it is an ‘alien’ stranger it is something so new it is out of your present world view.
The stranger could also involve feelings of not belonging, of not connecting, not feeling you have a home or know where home is.
Stranger can mean we do not recognise who someone is in relationship to us, what they feel for us or we them. The stranger is also the person you have rejected – the you that is rejected.
Stranger at the door could mean a new and unexpected meeting or an opportunity.
A ragged or dirty stranger may not be about something awful appearing in your life, as sometimes the dirt hides value. But you can find out by using Being the Person or Thing
Useful Questions:
What sort of person is this – threatening, loving, interesting – see of you can define it, and ask yourself what of those is at your door of opportunity?
What is your response to the stranger, and what does this suggest?
What is the stranger doing, or what is the actions in the dream, and how does this reflect your daily life?
I Died – But I’m Alive – Super Minds 17
When young Debbie N. was dying in hospital, she suddenly started saying to the nurses that her brother had come to meet her and he was telling her not to be afraid of death. The strange thing was that Debbie had never been told she had a brother who had died. Her parents were amazed when they knew what Debbie had said. They had kept their son’s death a secret.
Debbie had looked through the door of death as it opened to receive her. But some people pass through the door and come back to tell us what it was like.
Sam was a baby when his mother died.[1] He was still only four when something tragic and wonderful happened to him. He was playing with other boys near a mill-stream. As he was in the water, one of his friends pushed him into deeper water just as the mill-gates opened. Sam was dragged under by the flood and drowned. Other boys ran for help and Sam was pulled out, apparently dead.
Visiting the world of the dead
After tense minutes of resuscitation however, Sam breathed again. His father carried him home, and in his arms Sam excitedly told his father that something amazing had happened to him in the water. Sam said he felt himself dragged down into the water and everything went black and he seemed to sink further and further. Then he felt a change and experienced a rising feeling of floating upwards. Gradually it got lighter and he surface above the water in the waves of a great sea. Other people were surfacing too, and they were all carried toward the shore where people were waiting for them. As he got near the beach he saw his grandmother and grandfather waving to him. In front of them stood his mother, so pleased to see him. She bent down to lift him out of the water, catching hold of his arms. As she did so a cross she was wearing around her neck swung down in front of Sam’s face, and sparkling on the cross Sam saw seven jewels. Just at that moment Sam felt himself dragged back, down into the darkness again, and when he came out of the darkness he was on the river bank, and his father carried him home.
As he told this story, Sam’s father was very quiet, and never commented. It was only years later that he told Sam something he had kept as a precious secret. Sam’s mother had died suddenly just on her birthday. Before this Sam’s father had saved and bought a special present for her of a cross with seven jewels in it. It had been a surprise, and Sam’s father, telling nobody, opened his wife’s coffin one night before the burial, and with love placed the cross around her neck.. So when Sam told him about the cross, he was so ready to cry he had not said anything to Sam.
Leaving your body behind
Many children and adults have what is called a ‘near-death-experience’ or NDE. This may occur while they are ill, or due to an accident. For instance 11-year-old Brad Steiger was caught in the blades of a large piece of machinery on his parents farm in Iowa. He suffered several skull fractures as the metal blades hit his head. While on this borderline state between life and death, Brad felt himself drift away from his body and was able to watch what was happening from a distance. He could see his injured body on the ground, and saw his sister run for help. He could both watch his father carrying him, and feel something of the sensations of being in his father’s arms all at the same time. While out of the body he also became aware of knowledge beyond his usual ability, being able to see the patterns or processes in life. Although young, he felt he had been shown a plan of the universe and people’s life in it. He wanted to tell people that we are all part of eternal life, and are not alone in the universe.
When people experience being out of their body they are able to do and know things they are not usually capable of. When I was 18 and living in Germany, I had such an experience, and was able to see what my mother was doing in London. But a fascinating example of this appeared in the newspaper The Scotsman of February 27th, 1937. It reported a talk given by Sir Aukland Geddes, MD, to a meeting of the Royal Medical Society in Edinburgh. He described the case of a doctor friend who late at night was suddenly ill with acute gastro-enteritis. At ten o’clock the doctor had tried to ring for help, but found himself unable to move. Gradually he felt as if he were being split in two. One part was outside, and distinct from his body, the other still existing as the self in his body. The awareness outside his body grew stronger though, and the body consciousness disappeared. He was dying from his illness, and could watch his body from a distance. Then he began to realise he could not only see his body, but any other person or place he thought of or concentrated on, whether in London, Scotland, or anywhere. Whoever he thought of he could instantly be with and see what they were doing and knew what they were thinking.
Someone came into the room where his sick body was dying. He could witness that person running to the telephone to call a doctor, and the doctor answering on the distant telephone. Watching his own body and the body of those people he saw, it appeared to him that the brain was like a receiver not only of impressions from the three dimensional world our body exists in, but also from dimensions beyond that. So the mind was not in the brain, but the brain was in the midst of the mind, like a radio is within radio signals.
The brain is a radio set in an ocean of mind
Near death experiences suggest that our awareness can at times reach far beyond the limitations of our seeing, hearing and feeling. We live in a universe in which our mind is still a largely unknown territory. Scientifically we have travelled further within our solar system to map and understand it, than we have within the huge space of the human mind.
Perhaps yours will be the adventure and wonder of helping chart those infinite spaces of mind.
Return to Chapter Links or Go to Seventeen
[1] I have given fictitious names to Debbie and Sam, but they are real people.
Abandon Abandoned
There may be a fear of being left or losing someone, perhaps arising from an actual experience of loss in the past. You need to consider whether your feelings of abandonment are also feelings of dependence. But it depends what you have a given yourself to – if it is careless abandonment it could lead to careless results. If it is to your wholeness then it might mean a journey into yourself.
Nearly always such feelings offer opportunities to meet ones fears and learn greater independence. Difficulties surrounding this are often linked with what we frequently call love, but might, for greater clarity, be called dependence. For instance, if a partner leaves us and we experience great pain, much of that pain and anxiety comes about because we have depended upon our partner to supply, or help supply, such needs as money, a place to live, social standing, sexual satisfaction, a sense of being wanted, companionship and support in crises.
Dependence and need are often so closely intertwined it is difficult to really separate them. But I feel that life in us is constantly trying to move toward survival and independence. But being independent does not mean leaving a partner. But if the thought or feeling brings distress or difficult feelings it becomes suspect and might have links with childhood experiences. But an amazing sense and experience can flower from the freedom of true independence. It is more rewarding than simple independence, and with infinite possibility. Life could begin in an entirely new way. Relationships could be things of depth, variability, and beauty, once freed of the shackles of the eternal buzzing fears and pains. Because on the end none of us are totally independent – or totally alone unless we have shut ourselves up in a small and lifeless inner world. See Inner World Making
Example: For instance, if a partner leaves us and we experience great pain, much of that pain and anxiety comes about because we have depended upon our partner to supply, or help supply, such needs as money, a place to live, social standing, sexual satisfaction, a sense of being wanted, companionship and support in crises.
Perhaps the difference is found in awareness? As in if the co-operation on different levels between two (or more) people was a conscious choice. I have struggled a lot with this dependence on my partner in the past and have often questioned if I had made the right choice to walk this path with him. Now I dare to trust that I did.
Perhaps all needed is to add “TOO MUCH” as in …….because we have depended too much upon our partner…………….too much would then mean a dependence beyond the mutual agreed co-operation.
Longer Explanation
Although, as an adult, you might now be capable of gaining your needs, such powerful feelings of helplessness, anxiety or sense of abandonment, can be stimulated by any situation reminiscent of the childhood situation that first called them into play. Therefore, it can help to carefully look at your life situation to see what changes are producing these feelings. You also need to decide whether there is real cause for fear, or whether you are suffering anxiety due to past experience.
Example: I was in a very loving relationship in which I had developed powerful emotional links with D. We communicated many times each day while apart at work, etc. But one day there was no communication. I felt tremendous anxiety and emotional pain and shock, really frightened that she had dropped me. In fact she hadn’t, but my fears were very real and difficult to deal with. A real shock.
In a certain sense, the pain arising from abandonment, and feelings attending it, can arise from other losses, such as termination of employment or a baby or loss of status. This can be seen as a confrontation with one’s own internal poverty. If this can be accepted, then the situation becomes an opportunity to gradually transform old pains and dependencies. The roots of these frequently become revealed if we accept the pain as a signpost to its source and understanding. Awareness of the part such pain has played in your life is a tremendous means of transformation. See Self Observation
But because facing the enormous emotions that are locked up with feeling abandoned are difficult, sometimes it needs us to grow to greater strength to meet them.
In general the dream might link with a sense of how others, particularly our parents, felt about us while we were a child. This feeling of not being wanted may have become habitual. It may not be true that we were not wanted, but our feelings are saying it is. A sense of abandonment powerfully influences our relationships as an adult, and can lead to feelings of being unloved in the midst of what is really a happy and caring relationship; sometimes carries an element of self pity. The feeling if abandonment can represent big changes in your life such as leaving home, or travelling and living in another country, and so feeling abandoned by all ones friends and usual sources of support.
Dreaming of abandonment may also link with feeling life has no meaning or purpose. They may occur after going through separation or divorce, or even the death of a loved one, especially a parent or spouse.
Such dreams can reveal grief, anger, resentment and despair that has not been faced or dealt with. Meeting such feelings is a way meeting and working through these feelings and is important and may show emotional blockages. See Life’s Little Secrets
If by a friend or relative: Suggests either anxiety about losing friendship, or of illness creating a loss. It can also suggest that you feel unloved and unwanted.
Being abandoned in the sense of allowing sexual and emotional liberty: Finding a new freedom; dropping usual social codes and unashamedly expressing ourselves.
An abandoned building, project etc: Something that you were involved in and had life for you at some time, but is now either in the past, or that you have withdrawn energy or enthusiasm from, or perhaps given up on.
Also: It can be an example of one of the functions of dreams, which is to release held back sexuality and emotion. See: alone; functions of dreams; hero/ine.
Example: ‘My Mother asked me to go and buy some butter for her. A chain on my left leg prevented me from going very far. I look down the road and see my Mum, Dad and my four brothers in the back of a car. I wave and call and they drive right past me, going over the chain I am wearing on my leg.’ Lorraine. LBC.
Lorraine’s dream illustrates not only her feelings of being left out of family life, but also the chain on her leg shows her not fully independent. We often feel ‘abandoned’ while we are trying to become more independent.
Useful questions:
Is the feeling in the dream one I have often?
If I look backwards through my life, when did this feelings start?
Because this feeling might deeply influence the way you feel in a relationship, it is helpful to recognise the difference between the history of this feeling as it has played in your life, and what is actually real in your present relationship?
What or who have I abandoned or been abandoned by?
What are you seeking through being abandoned?
Are you gaining anything from it?
See Talking As – Habits – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Abattoir
Unpleasant feelings about death or illness, and maybe the denial of your instinctive urges. It can also mean the killing of finer feelings. Because it is about the killing of animals see Animals.
If you have difficult feelings about killing animals or eating meat, it can be about those feelings. After all we kill whatever we eat, but as we are all from the same family we are only giving to ourselves – though the way we did it might be questionable.
If carcasses: Something to do with death or the physical facts of life; may be a reference to your body or health. See: meat; butcher.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What feelings do I have that underlie the images of this dream?
Am I killing something in my nature or in others? If so what is it?
What do you feel about death – have you ever faced the feelings? See Death Dreams; Near Death Experiences.
See Levels (Brain) and Mammal Brain
Abbey
This can depict religious feelings, or the inner place of quiet. That is, those areas of feelings and thoughts that are quiet, strengthening, and inclined to consideration of the meaning of life.
Is the abbey ruined or in good order? If it is in ruins then it can represent memories; or even that your thoughts and feelings about traditional religion have now fallen into ruin. If so does that feel like growth or regret?
But personal feelings about religion may play a great part in what this dream means to you.
Anything connected with religion can indicate a variety of things, depending upon your own feelings about, and links with religion. Therefore the dream can suggest –
1) A social programme attempting to integrate as many individuals as possible into one cohesive group. The aim is to achieve a community with the same goals and beliefs, perhaps within a hierarchical structure.
2) When such an integrated group is formed, being a member of it can produce a positive sense of connection with others. If one disagrees with the goals and beliefs of such a group, the group can sometimes exert an enormous pressure to conform with their goals. This can lead to individual persecution, or conflict between the opposing groups or nations.
3) A system of beliefs and practices that are designed to enhance one’s relationship with oneself, with others, and with a greater whole. Such systems often have the underlying belief that the whole is greater than the part. They may therefore aim to help the individual recognise his or her connection with the whole, or even gain experience of it.
4) A means of dealing with personal and social anxieties, egocentric urges, the human sense of helplessness against the trials of life, in a positive or socially acceptable way.
5) An awareness of or a reconnection with the core of your being. You might call that core God, Life, Spirit, but as in the example below, it is the powerfully regenerative side of your inner life or feelings, thus your contact with LIFE itself; or it might be the world of experience you have created inwardly by your thoughts, meditation, actions.
6) The moral rules we make decisions from – such rules may at times kill much of our inner life; moral authority; our relationship with the community.
Example: ‘It was like an English Church with several great spires. The whole building seemed to be built in a white and gold design. The gold parts shimmered in the sun. I gazed at this wonderful sight for some time and felt such a wonderful feeling of upliftment, my tiredness gone.’ Johan E.
Example: ‘The priest was going to question and assault my friend in connection with some opinion he had offended the church with. I went to stand near him to give him moral support, and physical help if necessary. I hated seeing anybody degraded. The priest saw my move and sent three thug type men to shoulder me out. They surrounded me to knock me down. I went berserk and knocked them all over the place with kicks and punches.’ John P.
In the example John sees the dogmas of the church as an assault and degradation of human qualities of love and moral support. See: prayer; religion and dreams.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What was my actual response to the abbey, and what part does that response play in my life?
Do I have personal associations with an abbey? If so what are they?
Have I difficult feelings about religion? Can I put those feelings into words?
If I imagine myself as the physical structure of the building what do I feel? See Acting on Your Dream.
Abdomen Abdominal
Your dream may be directly about your physical health or diet needs. If so it will in some way be connected with food or activities bringing illness or health.
Almost half the dreams on file that mention abdomen, belly or stomach, show the dreamer being shot, as in the example below. This is obviously to do with a particular type of hurt. When human beings learned to stand up, they exposed their vulnerable underbelly. If we are hurt or threatened we tense the pelvic and abdominal area. The sort of hurt referred to is that related to when we might be deeply criticised, feel badly wronged or slandered. This area often feels the pain of a broken relationship too.
So this might point to vulnerability, or the sort of hurt that results from being deeply criticised, badly wronged or slandered. This area often feels the pain of a broken relationship too.
Pleasure in this area show a sense of integration within yourself and with the world. The solar plexus also links with hunger, the longing to be held, desire to give of yourself, or to be at the real or figurative breast. If these urges have been hurt, we tend to hold ourselves back from active social expression or intimacy in relationships.
We link the abdomen with ‘gut feelings’ or intuition; feeling reactions in a relationship. For instance we use such phrases as ‘you make me sick’ – ‘I can’t stomach what you’re doing’ – ‘you haven’t got the guts’ – ‘like being hit in the guts’ – ‘I’m really hungry for you’. See: solar plexus.
The opposite is to dream of waves of pleasure moving within us, which gives us a sense of integration within ourselves and with the world.
The solar plexus might also link with the potential of our fully active natural drives such as hunger; longing to be held; desire to give of oneself. If these are hurt, we tend to hold ourselves back from active social expression or intimacy in relationships.
The dream might point to gut feelings or intuition; feeling reactions in a relationship. For instance in the English language we use such phrases as you make me sick – I cant stomach what you’re doing – you haven’t got the guts like being hit in the guts – I’m really hungry for you.
Our abdomen is our digestive ability, both physically and psychologically. See absorb
Stomach or abdominal dreams may refer to some dis-ease in the actual organs. We might not be able to stomach something we have met in the everyday world. We may not be integrating our experience.
In a woman’s dream: May refer to her childbearing ability or pregnancy.
Shot in the belly: something to do with sex, a painful response to relationship, or feeling a target of someone’s verbal or emotional attack.
To vomit: A discharging of unpleasant feelings resulting from ingesting, hearing, reading, being told, experiencing, something unpleasant.
Example: The people watching are saying Kill her! Kill her! Kill her! Then someone finds an extra bullet, puts it in the gun and shoots me in the stomach. I wake with my body completely straight with my hands on my stomach. I feel my whole body cracking up inside. Vanessa. LBC
Vanessa wakes to just such tension, with a sense of her body being fragmented. In her dream Vanessa was re-enacting a disaster in which a man rampaged and shot down many people, and she was feeling the fear it engendered.
Here is a very interesting example of relating to such hurt.
I was getting ready to leave and this dark haired guy told me I couldn’t leave, I felt scared and was going to leave anyways, he pulled out a pistol and shot me in the stomach. I fell down, but there was no blood. The thoughts in my head was, “OH NO”. Next thing I remember is that I was still on the floor in the same place and I got up and I remembered being shot but I didn’t seem to have any pain or blood and was moving normally etc. I started looking for a way to leave I was sneaking around trying not to get noticed so that I could get out of there w/o the shooter guy seeing me.
The interesting thing is that even though she could see no hurt came from being shot, yet she was still scared of the guy with the shooter. And it is overcoming such fears that can release you from fears and hurts that haunt us. See What we Need to Remember About Dreaming.
Idioms: Belly aching; have a bellyful; eyes bigger than ones belly; have a strong stomach; turn ones stomach; butterflies in stomach.
Useful questions are:
What was happening in this area in terms of my feeling responses to people and events?
What was the feeling involved?
Was there pain or swelling that might indicate emotional wounds?
Might it have something to do with digesting new experiences in my life?
Is there a health or diet issue that is causing some concern?
See Body
Abduction
You may be feeling influenced by someone else against your own inclinations or desires. This can occur when events in life, such as leaving school or home, push you into changes you do not embrace with pleasure. Or it may be you feel a group of people you are involved with are forming a clique and pressurising you.
If a flying saucer is involved it shows and enormous amount of feelings and experiences are trying to surface from deep within you. They are shown as aliens because your present education and experiences are very different from what you are capable of and what you hold within you.
Happening to someone else: The desire to influence or have power over someone.
Happening to yourself: Feeling influenced by someone else against your own inclinations or desires. This can occur when events in life, such as leaving school or home, push you into changes you do not embrace with pleasure. Or it may be you feel a group of people you are involved with are forming a clique and pressurising you.
Abduction in connection with flying saucer: It can sometimes point to being sexually abused as a child. But some of the most intense research on such dreams or apparently real experiences suggest a powerful full surround virtual reality such as dreams create. They usually show an enormous break through into consciousness of unconscious material that had been repressed or denied . Everyday life and especially western social attitudes and beliefs make it difficult for the core life processes and feelings of connection with the cosmos to surface. When they press for acknowledgment it may feel like, or be presented as, an alien attack. This is because inner energy and awareness is often felt as alien to what one presently believes or knows.
See UFO’s – The Final Answer by David and Therese Barclay – Flying Saucers – A Modern Myth by Carl Jung.
Useful questions are:
If I identify with the alien how do I experience myself? (For help doing this see Stand in Role under peerdream work.
What new or strange experience is entering my life or trying to claim my attention?
Is there something within me or that I feel that I am feeling threatened or swept away by?
Ablaze
See: Fire.
Abnormal
Even if parts of your body or face are shown in a dream to be distorted or abnormal, such a dream is not usually referring to your body. This is about how you feel you are, or your idea or image of what sort of person you are. The dream translates the feelings into your body form. You might dream your face looks subnormal mentally, or your body has strange areas. This refers to an internal sense of yourself not having developed to your full potential, or of psychological hurts having distorted some facets of you, such as your ability to feel positive and creative. Nevertheless, occasionally dreams of this sort do point out illness, so if there is any cause for worry, it is best to go for a medical check. See: body; dwarf; giant
If something else in the dream is abnormal other than ones body: Feelings that there is a problem in some aspect of your life. Look up the object in the dictionary to check what it is.
Whether the abnormal feature in your dream is part of your body, of someone else’s body, or of the dream objects or surroundings, it suggests two things:
1) You may be harbouring fears about how other people see you – your self-image. Or the dream may reflect fears about your physical health. Even if these abnormalities appear on someone else, it may still refer to yourself, perhaps a part of you that has not developed to its full potential, or has been hurt. Our ability to love, for instance, can be hurt, and so may not have achieved its potential.
2) If the abnormality is part of the dream environment, it may point to feelings that something is not right, either with what is happening around you, or how you are responding to it.
If something else in the dream is abnormal other than ones body: Feelings that there is a problem in some aspect of your life. Look up the object in the dictionary to check what it is.
Useful questions are:
What did I feel when I looked at the abnormal features?
Do I feel something like that about myself sometimes or about my life situation?
Was there pain or swelling that might indicate emotional wounds?
Might it have something to do with ‘digesting’ new experiences in my life?
Is there a health or diet issue that is causing some concern?
What is it about myself or my life that I feel is distorted or not fully developed?
See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Life’s Little Secrets – Life Changes