Posts Tagged ‘dream’
Mahout
The conscious self directing the mighty cosmic forces within.
See: Letter.
Mail Man
See: postman.
Make-Up
Our ability to change the impression we make on others; cover up for our real feelings or situation. See: Cosmetic.
Example: The place was a seedy joint. I felt badly about the entertainment. I went down the stairs to the dressing room. I put on makeup and an evening dress. I got up there and sang my heart out. They liked it. It was classy.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What part is the makeup playing in my dream and in my life?
What do I feel about the makeup, and how does that relate to my present situation?
Am I trying to hide or cover up something – if so what?
See Identity and Dreams – Inner World – Associations Working With
Male Man
I suppose one of the most striking things I experienced in recent years is that a dream image is just a ‘front’ for massive data banks of experience and information. For instance, supposing we liken your memory to a huge filing system – rooms of it. Within those rooms there is a whole section marked ‘MAN’. Within that section of ‘MAN’ are countless folders with experience and information in about particular men in your life – from father onwards. Apart from that there is a big file or system of files dealing with what you inherited culturally about MAN, and also what you have absorbed from mother and other women. Then there is the media and books. So much.
What particular aspect of all this a dream is expressing depends on how the dream presents, clothes, acts, speaks and relates as the man. So the dream image is a communication between your waking awareness and those massive files of information, and dealing with a particular aspect of your life and development. There is a whole book here somewhere.
As for the female male, and the male female, this is one of those lifetime areas of growth we each face and achieve in lesser or greater degrees. Fundamentally we are without a particular gender, but in connection with our body we often have very marked female or male characteristics and responses to life. However, as we move through the major problems we are wrestling with we start meeting our other half and finding symbols of blending. Eventually the male and female are one in us, though we can easily continue to live as a male or female. A way of cutting through to direct understanding is to use Being the Person or Thing
One of the simplest meanings a man in your dream has is that he portrays your relationship, your feelings about, or responses to, a relationship with a man. The man in your dreams in nearly always an aspect of your own feelings, hopes and fears. Even if it is someone you know well, the dream image is never that person. It is certainly an image you have built out of your memories, your views of that person, your likes, dislikes and insights, the pains or pleasures, the things you learned in relationship with that man.
The man in your dreams in nearly always an aspect of your own feelings, hopes and fears. Even if it is someone you know well, the dream image is never that person. It is certainly an image you have built out of your memories, your views of that person, your likes, dislikes and insights.
The man is in general the polarisation of thought, of activity in the world, of invention and doing, even if you are a woman, you have these qualities that will probably be dreamt of under the image of a man.
In general a person in a dream shows one of your own character resources or problems, depending upon how you relate to the character. Each character trait is a part of the your repertoire of behaviour. If you are at odds with the person in the dream or threatened by him or her, then the trait dominates you rather than you being able to use it without fear. An important point is that the dream image of the person or object summarises the trait. Through the image the you can access the resources of the trait. Therefore it is an image of power. See Being the Person or Thing
Inner male: Most people are often totally unaware of the experience they take in and how it interacts with them when we love someone or have lived with them. In other words the memories and experience we gather unconsciously change us and are not lost. It is part of you and is symbolised in dreams as a person or event. You have taken in millions of bit of memory, lessons learnt, life experiences along with all the feelings or problems met by loving and living with someone and they are what makes you the person you are. Your dreams tend to put all that in the image of the past person when you are dealing with the influences left in you from the relationship. Please read this wonderful example, it will show how much we take in from those we love or lived with.
In a woman’s dream: The man might represent your felt relationship with a particular man, or males in general. In this sense the man portrays the power of your own womanhood, indicating whether you can meet male energy with your full female energy. The man might also represent your ability to question social conventions and to attack issues with thought.
In a man’s dream: An aspect of your own character traits.
Man in black: Usually represents something we fear or a part of us we are largely unconscious of, but is coming to awareness if we allow it. See shadow
Mysterious Man: The mystery man can be a way of describing the mysterious life process or higher self. It can be scary because we are not, in civilised cultures, in touch with Life but are frightened of it. Nothing can hurt you in a dream, so even if you fear the man is dangerous, it is only your emotions clothed in a dream image. See What we Need to Remember About Dreaming.
Old man: This might depict some aspect of the relationship with your father, or it might be a form of wisdom you are meeting.
Half animal man: Urges and aspects of yourself that have not yet been socialised, or are at odds with today’s form of social life. See Archetype of the Animus – Ape-man Half man Half Monster
Malformation
Whatever is symbolised is not expressing its true characteristics.
Ma Mama
Feelings about your mother, receptiveness of mind, change, fertility. See: Mother.
Mandala
If one could produce a graphic image of the whole of human nature, many different forms might be integrated within an overall shape, such as a circle or square. Also, if it were possible to have a visual presentation of a person’s inner world of mind, weaknesses, strengths, order, confusion, and quality, each person would appear differently. Some would be internally jumbled, divided and ugly; others symmetrical, integrated and beautiful.
Because the unconscious produces dreams, and because dreams are imagery that give form to the otherwise abstract elements of internal human nature, there arise in some dreams shapes or patterns which depict an overall view of ones own inner condition. Carl Jung drew attention to the circle and square designs in some dreams, calling them mandalas – which is a Sanskrit word meaning circle, and referring to religious symbols – and seeing them as representing the nucleus of the human identity. Although we are, in our everyday life, the magical and mysterious process of life, it is difficult for us to actually answer the question ‘Who am I?’ or ‘What am I?’ with any lasting conviction. See Life
The mysterious essence of ourselves is met in dreams as a circular or square object or design; as the sun, a flower, a square garden with a round pond in the middle, or a circle with a square or quartered design within it, a circle with cross within, a revolving or flying cross shaped object. Classical symbols from all nations use this theme, and we can find it in the Round Table of king Arthur, in the centre of which the Holy Grail appeared; the healing sand paintings of the Navaho Indians; the zodiac; circle dances; stone circles; the Buddhist wheel of birth and death; and so on.
The circle usually symbolises a natural wholeness, our inner life as nature has shaped it. The square shows wholeness we have helped shape by conscious co-operation with our inner world or the healing power of the Self. There are two main reasons why one produces this theme in ones dreams. It occurs in children or people meeting internal or external shocks, and produces a strengthening of the vulnerable identity in meeting the varied influences they face. It arises in people who are meeting and integrating the wider life of their being existing beyond the boundaries of their usual interests, or what they allow themselves to experience. The contact with the Self is then part of an extending of awareness into what was dark or unknown, not only in ones own unconscious, but in external life. In touching the nucleus of ones being in this way, one becomes aware in some measure of the infinite potential of ones life. There is often an accompanying sense of existence in eternity and the many different ‘mansions’ or dimensions of experience one has within the eternal.
Jung says of it “The mandala serves a conservative purpose-namely, to restore a previously existing order. But it also serves the creative purpose of giving expression and form to something that does not yet exist, something new and unique. The second aspect is perhaps even more important than the first, but does not contradict it. For, in most cases, what restores the old order simultaneously involves some element of new creation. In the new order the older pattern returns on a higher level. The process is that of the ascending spiral, which grows upward while simultaneously returning again and again to the same point.
Example: The first waking dream was looking at the green wall and seeing the huge moving mandala. At the centre of it was emptiness. Out of this nothingness poured forms of living creatures, all moving and dancing out from the centre in time with each other – though making different movements. These emerging, dancing forms went out to a periphery – the edge of the circle – then they danced back to the centre and merged back into the nothingness yet at the same time new beings were born from it.
See: The archetypes of the self and search for self; yoga and dreams; archetype of the mandala.
Mane
If on an animal, it suggests power, strength, wildness or freeness of feelings and urges. If on a human See: Hair.
Mansion
The mansion, like house, shows all the different departments of your life, such as the bathroom for cleansing, library for mental growth, etc. The mansion however, is sometimes used to show just how big you are, how much you hold in yourself, and perhaps the amount of work you have put into becoming who you are. See: House.
Although a house represents all the aspects of self in which our identity lives – a body, emotions, creativity, etc. – a mansion is depicting the same thing with a different emphasis. It is ourselves as we are plus features still latent, possibilities not yet developed or explored.
Example: When I identified with the house it took a while to really experience it as a living process rather than simply an intellectual interpretation. But when I did I become the structure and experienced the extent of the house, I realised it as my body. But it was not my body as I had been taught to see it through my training as a nurse. I did not experience it simply as a biological process, or a physiological machine. I experienced it as an incredibly ancient thing, carrying or incorporating in its form and functions lessons of life gathered over millions of years of human and animal evolution. I felt that it holds within its darkness – the presently unconscious areas developed and lived in the past – enormous amounts of information or memories. We fail to be aware of these because our attention is so fixed on the world outside of us. But of course, even there, if we look carefully, we can see we are the result, our culture and language are the result, of the events and lives stretching back into the ancient past.
Manure
The things you no longer need, that no longer nourish you, but can now be used in new growth when broken down. The manure might be new ideas or a new encounter that stimulates growth. See: Faeces.
In some ways our personality or identity is like a plant which feeds from the most unlikely material to produce beautiful leaves and flower. The plant can transform manure into living leaves and petals. Our identity feeds on experience and information – some of which may appear uninviting, painful, or unwholesome. In fact the experience may be all of these, and be shown as manure, and if not put to our roots – our process of becoming aware of things in an intensely felt manner which links feelings with intellectual insight – remain a disintegrating influence. Like manure something that is rich and needed for or holding in it the potential for growth.
Learning processes which pile intellectual information on children or adults without helping them to allow their deep feeling responses, are piling manure on the psyche while cutting off its roots. Personal disintegration is the result.
Example: Example: I was near a lake in the countryside. Everything was frozen. I saw some horse droppings still steaming and this seemed to be the only living thing around. Kevin K.
Kevin’s comments on this are that the frozen lake and countryside express his feelings about the world around him. He sees it as cold and uninviting. It is frozen and there is no life in it for him. That is, he cannot find anything in life to excite him or have meaning. The horse dung he realised is the resources he can use to change his life. The dung can be manure or food for growth, or fuel to burn for energy and heat. This made him feel as if there is a way to transform his old unsatisfying patterns of ‘frozen’ emotions into something growing and satisfying.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What is happening in the dream with the manure?
Is it seen as useful or objectionable?
If I have used manure how have I used it?
See compost – Settings in Dreams – Dreams are Virtual Realities – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Map
Clarifying ideas of direction in life. Understanding of what one has or wishes to do, and how to do it. You might be wondering what direction you need or want to take in life, or where your present course of action is taking you.
We can be lost and need a map for many things. For many of us are without a map of our life, or we lose ourselves in love and get terribly lost in the experience, even in childhood we can lose ourselves, or become lost in ourselves because of troubling experiences.
Example: We give ourselves all these names – like God – Christ – Allah – Buddha – Soul Mate. We find that wonder in ourselves and then project it externally. We cannot believe that what we see as God, or Allah and a great love is a glimpse of our own potential, is a vision of what we are. So we project it outwards and kneel before it.
Example: Of course this didn’t mean that my sense of time was fully developed from there on. The experience of being lost in the world of Michaelmas daisies and sticklebacks, shows how slowly the sense of time creeps into our soul, and influences it. It is difficult to map the gradual encroachment of time into our worldview. Even well into my school years, summer holidays felt like an eternity. At that period I had no concept of the holiday ending.
There is a view that there is a map of the way forward. When we can realise something of our Core Self, then we can begin to feel we have achieved some level of mastery in the physical world. Therefore, if we see enlightenment as the extension of self-awareness through a further maturing of our individual self, just as adolescence arises through maturing of the child self, we will look to those around us who have achieved some degree of enlightenment as our older brothers and sisters. We will move toward the map of our life though the processes of growth and maturing, especially understanding our dreams, which give many maps for us to follow if we take note of them.
Likewise we need a map of the hugeness we are within us – the unconscious. An introduction to this is given in Levels of Awareness – Functions of dreams
Useful Questions and Hints:
When have you felt lost and in need of a map or guidance?
What or who have you felt guided by in the past?
Have you a map or assurance of the way you are heading?
See Enlightenment – Life Changes – Collective Unconscious – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Marathon
Participation in life, in the human ‘race’. What happens may sum up your feelings about how you feel about life. It might also have tones of winning or losing. See: Race.
Mare
A mare in you dream is your powerful instinctive womanhood. Or if it is a male dreaming it, then you relationship with a powerful female. See woman
Our awareness of the inner mammal we all are can be frightened because of a pain experienced in the past. That is how animals function. They experience immediate primitive pleasure pain or fear in their body and emotions, enough to turn them away from possible danger or move toward pleasure. And that is exactly how our own animal brain communicates with us still. Such communication results in what we call psychosomatic illness, irrational fears, and panic attacks. Or on the positive side the great exuberance and pleasure. See horse
The horse or other animals are a part of you that if you took the time to really feel the feelings they provoke, and get past the blockages you have as protection against you knowing yourself, then you become more whole, saner, and with more powers. See Mammal Brain
They are the natural urges in you that have only been slightly broken in, or socialised, so we may feel them as urges that may react against what we ask of them. A horse for instance is broken in, or socialised, when it is young, as we are. For we are ourselves largely a mammal and this part of us still has to be cared for. A horse for instance is exactly as we are when first born. But if we are caring for our inner mare – a horse – we must still make sure it has proper food, exercise and rest, as well as an expression for its herd instinct and desire to reproduce. Please see Programmed
So the mare in your dream can sometimes be about being a mother and giving birth.
Example: I dreamt two great wolf like dogs were on a headland. They had to be killed for some reason. I shot them. They seemed to take a long time to die and I felt compassion for them. Now horses seemed to be lying with them. The death struggles became the horses – mares – struggles to give birth. I saw the vagina parted to show a head. Birth would follow. Nathan.
Nathan explored his dream and had the following intuitive response to it as if someone was explaining it to him: “When you were trying to murder the lower forces in yourself they would not die, they only thresh about. Try the bringing of life to them. The bringing of love is represented by your desire not to have them suffer. Great love turns the destructiveness of the lower forces into creativeness. The gun was the destructiveness of the fears and angers in you turned against yourself. The love redeemed this power, directing it in a new way. Love enables new life to emerge from the whole. The new life promises strength where there was only fear. When you love yourself, you lift parts of your being into new life.”
Example: I saw a beautiful dappled grey mare. It was exquisitely shaped, and had the look of great sensitivity and intelligence. Its front left leg had been snapped off below the knee in a recent accident. I went out and called it gently. As I laid my hands on it the mare quietened and lay its head against me in obvious relief to be near someone in its pain. It so needed contact it put its injured leg around my shoulder, pulling me closer as a woman might who needed to be held and loved. I felt great contact and love for the creature. In waking I felt it wanted me to make love to it.
Such an exquisitely beautiful dream shows you are a person who has created or crafted your own mental and emotional clarity. The lovely horse is in fact your own natural feelings, your own emotional responses. They have been hurt in some way connected with love, and you are managing to care for this pain in yourself, but there is a longing in you for the physical tenderness of a woman.
Becoming a mare: This is a very primal and important dream. It shows how much you have integrated the mammal into your conscious self. It brings great power and wonder to you.
When this happens you are one the ancestor of the tribe and the clan, your family. Therefore you have become more than human and have begun to see Life, as most people are blind to.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What did you feel about or in connection with the mare?
Did you feel any connection or links with it?
Can you imagine yourself as the mare?
See Being the Person or Thing – Clicking On – Animals
Mark Marked Marks
A mark may suggest the influence that created the mark. We may be marked by certain experiences of life, or leave a mark through our actions. A mark may also have arisen by intention, or by accident. The mark may represent a sense of ownership or a connection, as with a trade mark. The mark may indicate quality or lack of it – the mark of Cain, or a goldsmith’s mark.
The huge transitions or changes we meet in our life leave a mark on us which may be shown in dreams. For instance, “Today I noticed for the first time a small brown mark on my left hand. True I have been out in the sun, but I never grow freckles. This is one of those marks old people have on their hands”. So this was an indication of ageing.
Also our parent and forebears, as do the culture and language we are born into leave enormous marks or influences in us. See Programmed
Our body – as with finger prints – always leave marks of our presence. Your activities and work leave an observable mark upon the world. The Y chromosome in each male holds in it markers showing ones ancestral history back to the beginning of human development – 300 million years in fact. See Ancestors
Blood on the ground can be the mark that someone has been hurt or killed or as a sign of danger.
A brand can suggest ownership by whatever has branded you, or it can be a marking of you socially as a warning of some sort. In some cases it is a mark of recognition, as in tribal branding, or a mark of love.
Example: The pain in my chest started in earnest in connection with my struggle in relationship with Sonia – again the love connection. In later years a great many things that I uncovered in exploring it were to do with my loving and conflicting feelings regarding my children and with my wife. What have I done to love to create this pain? Why has its branded me like this?
Useful Questions and Hints:
Can I recognise how I got the mark and what it means?
What have I done to leave such a mark on me?
Is it a mark of things I have faced and met, like scars?
See Being the Person or Thing – Life’s Little Secrets – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Market
Everyday reality. Your contact with the world in general, the hustle and bustle, the commerce of life, the commercial instincts, the unsympathetic mob. Trade, the buying and selling, even of yourself, perhaps in your skills or labour. In some dreams the market place is where you meet a person who represents the highest in yourself. This might be in the form of Christ or a being you know is radiant with love.
Reality of everyday life; the push and shove, give and take of relating to people in general, but particularly ‘the public’; the wide range of experience one meets in exposing oneself to more than ones close family and friends; the buying and selling of things or self, therefore the self interest in oneself or others. It is also a place of choices and decisions, so maybe you are looking for or seeking something.
There are also the huge markets in goods, sex slaves, prostitution, the black market, the stock market and the marketing of beliefs or ideas – such with religion or politics. These are dealt with in our dreams.
Example: In fact I am still learning. My body, and I guess part of my emotional structure, was formed out of generations of forebears who were Roman Catholics. Some of my inner journeys showed me that this has actually changed aspects of the biological and physiological processes in my being. It has been a struggle to grow, and it is still not easy.
Dreams sometimes show you marketable ideas of projects, so may be market research is needed.
In the Chinese Ox Herding pictures the last one shows a man who has made the whole life journey in the market place as a common man, without any special robes, or religious dress, or even any followers. You can be special without any outer show.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What sort of market was it in the dream?
Was I seeking something or buying?
Did I feel comfortable in the market?
See Decision – Simple Truths – Meditation with Seed – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams