Posts Tagged ‘dream’
Mouse Mice
Minor irritations; fears and worries; the mousy or timid part of self; shyness; the activities within us – our house – which go on unconsciously, which might be important though small, or gnaw away at one. It can therefore represent a problem of some sort that needs attention; the sexual organ which goes in and out of a hole. Often the mice in dreams are eating away at things you have stored, or are infesting a house or ones clothes. This suggests influences that are gradually gnawing away at your energy, well being or confidence. Or, as with the clothes, attitudes that are unclean or that you feel very uncomfortable with to the point of wanting them out of your life.
In some mouse dreams the mouse is burst open in some way, perhaps a cat attacking. This suggests the realisation or experience of ones own vulnerability or weakness.
But for some people the mouse depicts their feelings of revulsion, filth, horror, an influence that is unconsciously but persistently pervading their life and response to things.
Example: I saw that the place was infested with mice, and was somewhat dismayed. Then I took off, or shook out, my jersey or shirt, into a bathtub full of soapy water. Hundreds of mice fell into the tub. I saw that they all died in there as the bubbles dispersed a little. Then my wife and my mother were with me, and I told my wife she must make an effort to put all the food away and into containers, as if the mice found nothing to eat they would go away. TP.
Example: A mouse darted across the kitchen work surface and I caught it by placing a clear glass cover over it so it couldn’t escape. I was upset because mice are unhygienic but I didn’t know how to keep them out. I was trying to stop somebody from lifting one of the covers off the mouse but they lifted it anyway and the mouse ran out. I turned and moved away quickly so the mouse wouldn’t run up my arm. I turned my back on it and crouched down, hunching my shoulders up. But the mouse ran up the back of my clothing, under several layers, and got trapped at the back of my neck. In the dream the scenario was horrific for me as this little mouse was wriggling around inside my clothes desperate to escape and I wanted it out ASAP but didn’t want to hurt it. I was annoyed that it had run up MY back. It could have run up anybody’s back so why did it have to run up mine? CJ
As these two dreams show, the dream mouse can generate great feelings of revulsion. The last dream also illustrates a feeling that was trapped, but then released and travelled up the trunk of the dreamer. This is typical of released feelings that have been repressed and held in the body. The upwards movement showing the shift toward consciousness.
Example: I could now see that it was a small white mouse that moved. It was walking towards the children’s bedroom. We were all staying in a friend’s seaside holiday cottage at the time. I asked my wife what a white mouse was doing in the house, and thought maybe it had been a pet left by a previous holidaying family. Wanting to catch the mouse I got out of bed and went towards it. As I did so I saw that it was not just white, but shining, very beautifully. It also seemed to grow larger. First to the size of a rat, then to that of a cat. I was now close to it and it looked enormous, shining with an inner light, white and radiant. It was a thing of beauty. Its eyes especially struck me; pink but also shining.
For computer mouse see mouse under computer.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What if anything is eroding or gnawing away at your health, resources or identity?
Is there something happening that you feel very uneasy about or not proud of?
Is this a special or shining mouse – if so can you define the feeling and what it links with in you?
Does the feeling of revulsion link with any event in my life that I can remember?
See Being the Person or Thing – Mammal Brain – Martial Art of the Mind
Mouth
Your mouth is a fundamental part of life. It takes things in such as food, pleasure or even pain. Basically the mouth is a pleasure area, but it is also the way you express pleasure or pain, as with smiling, crying or grimacing. So the mouth is a way you communicate as well as satisfy yourself or gain your needs. As an organ of expression the mouth can also give thanks for life and utters beauty in words or sounds. This is a way you can uplift the dark things in you and transform them. See Using the Voice
Sometimes speaking can be likened to shooting things out of the mouth, projecting them to or firing them at other people angrily. But the mouth can also be receptive as when we take things into our mouth pleasurably.
As we eat with our mouth, it can indicate what you take into you, or what you expel or need to get out of you, as in the following example.
Example: I go into a bathroom and begin pulling weeds from my mouth. Weeds, weeds and more weeds come out from my mouth – come from deep down inside of me. I am still pulling them out when I leave the bathroom and someone, a woman walking behind me, helps me to pull some weeds that are trailing from my mouth behind me.
Pulling stuff out of the mouth, such as hair or weeds, is a common dream, and most likely expresses the feeling of discomfort we feel if something foreign is in our mouth or throat. It shows the feeling of urgently trying to rid yourself of something that is unpleasant – perhaps feelings you have taken in, or things we have said or done that leave a nasty taste in ones mouth. Perhaps there is something you are not admitting to yourself. Or it can represent the lies and untrue stories we have been fed as a child, but also strong emotion as we express the results of trauma. See Exploring Sound
A dream of our mouth being buttoned – button your lip – or sewed up, could suggest that inwardly you regret having said certain things, or need to hold your tongue. Or perhaps you have been made to hold back your feelings as a child, so have had to sew up your mouth – figuratively. But speech is a lot more than noise or emotional expression; more even than utterance of thoughts. It is the giving form or clarity to what was previously unseen or unknown. Through the mouth we can pour love, praise or crit to others.
Sometimes the mouth may represent your house and the teeth the inhabitants or your family or other inhabitants. So the dream of losing a tooth thus logically becomes a symbol that a person in this household is dead, or that one wishes him dead.
Chewing: Considering something; mulling over something; trying something out – getting a taste of it so to speak. See Digest
Kissing: On the mouth is often a way of intimately sharing oneself, emotionally, and also a sharing of body fluids, which is either a form of trust or of careless introvention.
The kiss, oral pleasure, was our first area of loving with our mother. From that original centre of pleasure, it grows into anal and genital pleasure. When that happens the body begins to move. But there was still no engorgement. The movement was the forerunner of the inner pleasurable urge to thrust or be penetrated. So there can be a slow and internal growth through escalating feelings, and not an outwardly ordained set of movements that lead to “sex”!
Mouth fixed closed: Inability to express something, or a decision not to express something you hold inside. Sometimes a feeling of being inadequate socially, or that you do not have the power to get people to hear you. As in the example below, not having people understand what your difficulty is.
Example: I am in a situation which is different every time, but always includes different people in a conversation. Suddenly I can’t talk. It’s as if my mouth is sewed together on the outside. I make muffled noises, straining my muscles to open my mouth. I think that if I pull hard enough the stitches will tear, but they never do. It seems to me that even my muffles are loud enough to be heard as a scream, but no one I’m with seems to notice. They smile and carry on as usual. By this time I feel so desperate I usually wake up in a terrible state.
Pulling something out of mouth: Trying to clear emotions or attitudes not properly expressed. Perhaps one is not admitting something. Try Arm Circling Meditation but allow any sounds that you feel a need to express.
Teeth coming out of mouth: See: teeth; Chew.
The mouth can also give birth: People often dream of giving birth from the mouth. The shape of the mouth is similar in some ways to our sexual organs, and can also discharge things. This usually happens when the person has something important they want to say, and is a way of allowing life in us to give thanks and birth to something new. See birth
Idioms: a bad taste in my mouth; all mouth; a big mouth; butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth; down in the mouth; hand to mouth; horses mouth; loud mouth; mouth watering; nasty taste in the mouth; put your foot in your mouth; put your money where your mouth is; shoot your mouth off; shut your mouth; silver spoon in mouth; word of mouth.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What is happening to the mouth and in what way might that link with everyday experiences or feelings?
If I remember how I felt in the dream, when has that feeling occurred in my waking life?
Do any of the above descriptions link with what is happening in the dream – if so what are they describing about my life?
See Being the Person or Thing – Trauma – Examples of – Digestion – Self Help – Letting things Happen – mouth the function of
Move Movement Moving
In general the quality of your movements in dreams depicts your feeling or mental state, your confidence or lack of it, your ability to make changes – move easily – or difficulty in facing change – paralysed. The quality or lack of it that you express in your life; what you are creating or ‘giving off’ in everyday life. But movement is always an expression of who you are, of your potential to achieve, to make changes, to ‘get somewhere’. So look to your feelings in the dream to define what it is of yourself that is being expressed, what of your potential is flowing or being denied.
If it is an object moving, it suggests the thing has direction, life, or purpose of some kind. In this case you need to understand what your relationship with it is in the dream. It might also refer to it attracting your attention.
Agility: Coping well with your situation; adaptability; mental quickness.
Easy flowing movement: Self acceptance and thus easy expression of oneself; feeling in harmony with emotions and sexuality.
Getting stuck, unable to move: Often being held back by anxiety or fears, such as fear of failure. See postures and movement – Life’s Little Secrets
Moving House: See House moving
Movie
See: Film.
Mud
In some dreams, as in a muddy road, or swamp, the mud is simply the retarding aspect of your hesitations and fears. In other dreams, people search through, or dig in the mud, which represents the cleansing of emotions caused by outer circumstances, the looking through the experience or muck of your life for its treasure, for often a flower or jewel may be found in the mud. IT is the primordial substance or life energy, sensuality, even blood.
Mud is like clay, it is a substance that can be moulded, and so may present the idea of your basic memories and emotions that were shaped. Mud may also symbolise healing, as it contains all the elements of the past, which we need for completeness.
The fundamental primordial, sensual, slimy basis of life and how we relate to it; emotions which cause us to feel bogged down; past experience which may hold us back, but has enormous growth potential in it; the healing possibilities of our body and its minerals.
Our mind is a fantastic and multidimensional area. It holds all that you have even been – most of it unconscious. You still hold the original primeval slime in your testicles or the wonderful eggs that are part of the flow of blood that was the start of life. You are still a cellular creature. You still have within you all the levels of being, the reptilian brain, the mammalian brain and the human brain. See Levels of the Brain
Apart from the millions of bacteria you need to digest your food, what about the ones that actually make your food into a smelly decaying mess in your bowel? We are all part of the process so living and dying. Also to reproduce and to have a child you revert to the very beginnings of evolution, the mud and the slime of sex. Yet that is the very wonder of Life. And from that slime of the beginning of life, you went through the whole process of evolution in your mother’s womb. From a tiny seed you became a vegetative process where cell divided into other cells. Then you became a fish-like creature with gills, and finally a body that had the possibility to become a human child. See Programmed
Body dirty with mud: Ill health; ones life needs ‘cleaning up’ morally. But mud can also be a healing thing – mud baths.
Sinking into mud: Sexual difficulties; feelings of hopelessness or despair.
Idioms: Mud slinging; drag somebody through the mud; ones name is mud; stick in the mud.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Do I feel like I am stuck in the mud?
Can I accept that mud is the basic stuff of life?
What is my dream telling me?
See Martial Art of the Mind – stuck in life – accept – Your Core Self
Muezzin
The call of the spirit of God, in the midst of everyday affairs; in our very forgetfulness, He has not forgotten us.
Mule
Stubbornness. See: Ass.
Mummy Egyptian
The attempt to preserve ourselves as we are, instead of opening ourselves to the constant change, death and rebirth, that life brings. This only results in mummification or desiccation. The mummy often appears in dreams where a partner or someone close has died, and there are still difficult feelings. In such dreams it shows difficult feelings about death., and pain at loss.
The mummy can indicate an attempt to preserve a way of life which is dead – mummification – instead of facing change and the new. So it could show patterns of life and behaviour from your past that have been preserved, or something from the past that has been preserved and is now gaining your awareness.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Do I feel a connection with Egypt or the mummy?
Is there an area of my life that feels dead?
Can I raise the dead into life by being aware of the mummy?
See Archetype of Rebirth or Resurrection – Being the Person or Thing – Jesse Watkins Enlightenment
Murder Murderer Murdered
Each of us are implicated in killing – by denying, repressing, controlling – some part of our own nature. These denied areas of your own sensitivity or potential can fortunately be resurrected through self awareness of your deed. If you flee from a murderer, it depicts a fear that is threatening your confidence or something you feel threatened by.
Murderous rage in dreamer: It is observable that repressed sexuality or traumatised childhood love leads to feelings of murderous rage which may not be expressed socially, but do appear in dreams; may also express childhood anger linked with emotional bond with mother being damaged. In this case the dreamer will be the murderer – even if in the dream the murderer appears to be someone else. The murder will then be the killing of any love or emotional connection or bond between child and parent. The child often thus murders its own feelings of love for the parent in order to survive apparent or real desertion – as for instance a child being put in foster care. The bonds are so instinctive and strong; to survive parting the child may have to hack away any emotional links.
Freud says, “Has different ‘moral standards’. In dreams we rape, pillage, murder and adventurously act in ways we would resist with horror in waking life.”
Example: I still denied that I wanted to mutilate or destroy my sister. Impossible. I had no such evil in me. When at length I did admit the evil in me, it was with outrage: of what therapeutic use could it be to discover that I had wanted to destroy, murder, my sister – at a time when I could scarcely think? Freud has this interesting comment to make: ‘A child is absolutely egotistical: he feels his wants acutely, and strives remorselessly to satisfy them, especially against his competitors, other children, and first of all against his brothers and sisters. And yet we do not on that account call a child ‘wicked’ – we call him ‘naughty’.
Example: It was something like a semi detached and sited on a slope. I was outdoors and I think felt or knew that we had just taken over this house. But I felt uneasy as if something from the past was linked with it.
Then I was at the back of the house, on the part sloping down from the back wall of the house. I noticed things covering what turned out to be a big hole dug against the back wall, deep into the soil. This was where I felt most ill at ease about the place. The hole had been covered with bits of board and other odd pieces of junk. I lifted these at the left of the hole and looked in. Sticking out from the side of the hole, about three feet down was the dead body of a young man. I could see the back of his skull had been smashed in. But although he had obviously been under the soil for some time, and had now been uncovered, the body was still in good condition, being slightly dried out or mummified.
I felt really guilty and connected with the body, as if I had been part of his murder, and was wondering frantically what I could do to hide or get rid of the body. Part of the problem was that pulling it out risked being seen with it.
In ‘being’ the body in the dream the man said, “But it wasn’t until I got into the role of the dead body that any depth of feelings emerged. Almost as soon as I was in the role of the dead body I began to think about and feel things connected with the way I had killed my sexuality as a teenager. Gradually these feelings deepened and I was describing my feeling hatred in regard to sexuality and how the masses were pulled along by their genitals into some sort of conformity and performance. I felt anger and loathing for what I felt at the time were the cattle human beings were. At the time I despised and hated them. I also felt repugnance at the way people talked about sex or appeared to enjoy it. It has to be understood that in that period in history in the UK, most of sex was depicted in terms of smut, dirt, animal desire, hidden pornography, or loveless fucking. I wept deeply, at times hardly able to breathe, with the pain of seeing what I had done to myself. I said sorry over and over. I saw that I need not have killed my love and sexuality, but could have expressed it in a tender and loving way.
Killing: Repressing or stopping some aspect of oneself – as when we kill our love for someone.
Where the dreamer imagines the death of a beloved relative: Freud believed this was because rivalry and hatred between brothers and sisters was deep rooted though unconscious and, in adult life, concealed by apparent warm affection. One reason for this, he suggested, was that for the child the idea of death meant no more than being ‘gone’: to wish another dead, in early childhood, is simply a way of wishing him removed from the scene. There are however other reasons. In moving toward independence we may find it difficult to establish our own decision making and feeling responses because our parents are so deeply engraved into our ways of behaving. In order to make a break from this we often kill them off in our dreams in one way or another. See: the section of father under archetypes, especially the part of killing father or burying father.
Example: I know what this is about — waiting for that impulse. I’ve created two golden ceremonial knives. I’ve got to cut my way out of the membrane. . It’s my flesh, as I strike out I feel it stabbing, it’s like someone is hacking their way in (hacking movements). I’ve done it, I’ve got it – crying gasping. I killed him – then I severed the arteries. I killed them. I cut the life blood. Then locked myself away never got up again – collapse’s – I got knocked down. I killed them. . (Guilt). The anger came from deep in the soul. I killed them so I could survive. M. went mad; alcoholic brag artist, my dad. That’s my guilty secret, I’m a murderer, killed them from within like a cancer. Undermined them all the time. They’ll be sorry – most of them are, but I’m wonderful, because I am a murderer. I killed to survive. Law of the jungle. All this shit about suffer the little children unto me. . Paradox I died to survive the matador. Comes’ into the ring crippled. Buddhist Mafia – protection money.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Is the body about in the dream?
Do I feel involved and if so in what way?
Can I identify with the murder or the body?
See Being the Person or Thing – Secrets of Power Dreaming – Emotions and Mood in Dreams
Muscle
Your strength, and ability to do things, therefore confidence and sense of adequacy. Muscles can indicate feelings of being outwardly forceful, or masculinity in its physical aspect. Also may refer to your physical muscle, and therefore how good you feel about yourself and your abilities physically.
Muscles of particular parts of the body would refer to the strength or weakness of what that area suggests. So an injured bicep of your right arm – if you are right handed – would suggest a feeling of weakness of inadequacy in your outer activities, or something to do with being able to produce an effect outwardly. It might therefore indicate a lack of confidence. So look at the limb or body part in which the muscle is to define it.
Example: I dreamt P T was in my father’s shop in London. Someone had shot him in the bicep and I was trying to help him. I had a small box on the counter and there was fluid or blood in it, and I put the hurt muscle in it hoping to heal it. When the gunshot flesh was in the blood the blood bubbled and effervesced, becoming hot. I felt the flesh would not be of any use now, but wasn’t sure. In the end though I was considering cleaning away the injured flesh from the arm (left I think). All I could see were the sinews with a small amount of flesh on them – no muscle in between. But I began to feel that gradually new cells might grow and develop into a new muscle – granulate.
In exploring my dream I found that the injury was due to my feelings that my father had never given me any confidence but always words of criticism. This was the injury to my left arm, the strength/muscle that supports action.
Muscles of particular parts of the body would refer to the strength or weakness of what that area suggests. So an injured bicep of your right arm – if you are right handed – would suggest a feeling of weakness of inadequacy in your outer activities, or something to do with being able to produce an effect outwardly. It might therefore indicate a lack of confidence. So look at the limb or body part in which the muscle is to define it. See Context and also The Two Powers
Useful Questions and Hints:
If this is about injury or sickness, in what way do I feel lacking in power or confidence?
What specifically is my dream presenting about my muscle(s)?
If this is about health or development of muscle(s) what can I observe about my increasing ability to express in the world?
What am I confronting in life about my confidence and self image?
I stress again the need to look at the The Two Powers if you suffer waking up to paralysis while asleep.
See Use the body to discover dream power – Your Core Self – Martial Art of the Mind
Museum
Memory; family and cultural heritage; the living past within us.
Often it is a search into ones past, and the clues left in us, in an attempt to form a clear understanding of ourselves in the present, our identity. It can also be your view of ideas, for inspiration and beauty.
Carl Jung says, “Just as the human body represents a whole museum of organs, each with a long evolutionary history behind it, so we should expect to find that the mind is organized in a similar way. It can no more be a product without history than is the body in which it exists. By “history” I do not mean the fact that the mind builds itself up by conscious reference to the past through language and other cultural traditions. I am referring to the biological, prehistoric, and unconscious development of the mind in archaic man, whose psyche was still close to that of the animal”.
A dream in Jung’s book Man and His Symbols mentions a hall in the attic of a museum, which looks partly like a ship’s cabin painted black. Jung says the black colour indicates darkness, night, a turning inward. The cabin, then the museum through cabin is associated with a ship. The suggestion is that when the mainland of our conscious mind is flooded by unconsciousness and barbarous images, shown by the museum-ship, it suggests carrying those who enter it beyond the rational mind and link the dreamer, not with the dead remains of the past, but with alive and meaningful realisations of his past. See The Conjuring Trick
Example: I am staying somewhere where there are some old papers of my father’s. I am waiting for a chance to take a look at them without raising my brothers’ suspicions. I am hoping the papers will lead me/leave me something valuable. My mother is there too and as I am there on a visit she will hardly leave me alone. She wants to be with me constantly. I feel frustrated in not having a chance to look at or search for my father’s papers – a birth certificate? I can see a picture of a document with several people engraved at the top – two on the left and three on the right with the title of the document in the middle at the top. I am hoping to be able to copy the document and hope that it will give me a chance to inherit something. I am looking for some very, very old papers. I am thinking of looking up the same kind of paper in a library or museum and making up (forging) an original copy of these papers.
Example: Had another “travelling in London” dream. This time I was with my youngest son and a group of people. I assumed we were all going to the same place – something my son would be interested in, perhaps a museum or exhibition. The group I followed on the Underground got off. I followed them, and a woman like Edith (motherly middle-aged type) told me they were all going home, not my destination. I then realised I had lost my son.
In exploring this dream he said – I realise it is about following unconscious habits – the Underground. I follow other people’s opinions and already built in habits. What answer is there in the unconscious? If we had an answer, it would already be part of our unconscious. As we do not have an answer we must find it not in the past – the museum – but in future, in the formless, in my potential. We must leap into the unknown and bring back the new to etch into my body. The loss of my son is the loss of a vulnerable and loved part of me.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What events were surrounding the mention of the museum?
Did I find any thing that drew my attention?
Was I searching for something?
See Using Your Intuition; Links to Archetypes and Acting on your dream
Music Musician
The play of subtle feelings and forces in our being, or realisations difficult to define, and the influence of wider awareness in our life. Much music has personal associations, so you need to define what type of music you dream about, and what it leads you to feel or do.
But our whole being is an example of a wonderful orchestra, with all the different organs and processes working in harmony when we are healthy. In reality you are a musical instrument plated by Life. Life plays us with such skill unless we interfere with its controlling hand playing our notes – the rhythm of our breathing and heartbeat which plays us even when we are asleep. But even though we are an amazing musical instrument, many of us have out notes, our keys, so stuck we cannot be played to our full potential. We are so stuck we are afraid to let the full range of our emotions play, or we are so fixed in just playing one or two notes of our wonderful range, we just play our sexual or digestive organs, or are fixed in just ambition or even playing passive pieces. Yet Life lives in the lightening, the sunshine, the earthquakes and the depth and mystery of the sea, and if we are fluid we have them all as part of our extraordinary range. See Opening to Life
Sometimes music in a dream implies awareness of new areas of experience arising. But for many people, especially during teen years, it is a way of defining your identity. See Identity and dreams
Plato warned that “A change to a new type of music is something to beware of as a hazard of all our fortunes. For the modes of music are never disturbed without unsettling of the most – fundamental political and social conventions.” Many people believe these ancient-and modern-warnings should be taken more seriously.
There are also many clichés and images used in books or films. Some of them are the man or woman all in black or in black leather and the scary music suggesting fear. Part of the shutting off to things like art and music is that they involve emotional involvement.
The narration or ritual repetition of sacred texts and ceremonies, and the worship of a hero figure with dances, music, hymns, prayers, and sacrifices. They grip an audience with deep and mysterious emotions and lift people above their normal experiences. Many people, who visit concerts, often feel a form of hero worship and are very moved by the experience.
Example: When I looked at the green wall again the movement had begun, and there were green dancing figures all over the wall. They all started from an obscure yet fascinating centre point, full of symbols and movement, and radiated out, dancing and interweaving. There were Indian goddesses with beautiful breasts, lithe figures like green grass, all moving in time to the music from the transistor radio. My hips were also managing a similar timing.
Example: I had the following strange dream and experience. I was a young man living in Italy. The surroundings gave me the impression of it being during a period several hundred years ago. I was walking through the streets of a town. As I did so I was thinking about the liver disease I had and about my plans to move to another town where a learned doctor lives who specialised in liver complaints. I wanted to not only be his patient but also his student, to learn what he knew about liver illnesses.
As I walked I started to sing Ave Maria – I believe it is Gounod’s version. My singing was beautiful exhibiting wonderful voice control and expression of emotion. I am not sure of the sequence of this but there was a building I was looking at. People wanted to have the building restored but could not raise the money. So I had painted a huge mural on the building depicting scaffolding covering the house. This attracted public attention and interest in the house, and so money was raised. I realised that I was not just an artist but also an architect and musician.
It was on this thought, and with Ave Maria still sounding its lovely quality that I realised I was dreaming and became awake enough to observe and think about what was happening. I realised that as a musician I had very great ability as a composer, and decided to compose an ‘Ode to Mozart’. No sooner had I decided this than the music poured through my consciousness. So much so I heard it as if listening to an orchestra or record. The music soared and moved in a wonderful expression of human vision and transcendence. As this occurred I could observe the process of creativity or composition, which was spontaneous to an extraordinary degree. It appeared that by asking for or seeking the composition I had opened a window in my mind. Through it I could observe a huge and unlimited sea of mind or consciousness. In it was all that have ever existed, merged and yet distinct. Every human talent and thought was in it alive and vital. My ‘Ode to Mozart’ drew on this unfathomed depth of being. I knew as I observed this that the music itself, although precise and clear and Mozart’s own work, proclaimed the human ability to leap beyond boundaries into this immense and apparently limitless world of experience – to allow the mind to soar and fly, to move beyond its own conceptions and rejoice.
I wanted to test this amazing ability and asked the huge mind how I could compose ‘modern’ music. What followed was like being instructed. The experiences arose as if I were being told that music was a reflection of basic life processes. If life had managed to express as a basic process, such as a simple celled creature or a crystal, this was like one note sounding over and over. After doing this over and over for infinite repetition, perhaps the process stumbles upon a slight change in itself. This would be like the playing of two different notes over and over. Then maybe another basic process has learned to play three different notes, and if these two meet they play a more complex music together.
To this meeting was added theme upon theme until an orchestral music was built up, and this was likened to our body, with its many different processes playing together, or society in which so many opposing ‘themes’ in the end form a whole. This was an extraordinary experience for the dreamer and is a doorway that opened to him the realisation that while the dead are slowly absorbed into the whole, the individual person is there too, like a jewel.
Example: I was walking near big, old, blocks of flats. They were very worn needing repair, almost slums. I then noticed that it was all black people in these blocks. Really jet black. One called out from a balcony asking what I wanted. There was a slightly hostile feeling as they all looked at me to see what I would do or say. I was then partly my father, and said I had come for a blow, (i.e. on the saxophone or clarinet). Everybody was now friendly and crowded around. They asked me if I had my brushes with me – that is, drum brushes. I said no, and then started playing the clarinet. It was completely spontaneous, moved by the spirit, and was wonderful music. It brought us all together.
Example: ‘I am a journalist reporting on the return of Christ. He is expected on a paddle steamer going upstream on a large river. I am very sceptical and watch disciples and followers gather on the rear deck. The guru arrives, dressed in simple white robes. He has long, beautiful auburn hair and beard, and a gentle wise face. He begins to tap a simple rhythm on a tabla or Indian drum. It develops into complex intermingling of orchestral rhythms as everyone joins in. I now realise he is Christ, and feel overwhelmed with awe as I try to play my part in the music. I’m tapping with a pen and find myself fumbling. A XE “A” bottle or can opener comes to me from the direction of Christ. I try to beat a complementary rhythm, a small part of a greater, universal music.’ Lester S.
Example: My curiosity as a scientist, I suppose, also played a major part in motivating me towards this research “trip.” Within 10 or 20 minutes after taking the psychedelic agents, I began to notice a wonderful, dawning sense of euphoria. The music from the hi-fi expanded to a new kind of “living sound” more beautiful than any music I’d ever heard before. I could hear all of the percussive noises of the instruments, the scraping of the bow on the violins, the mechanical noises of the other instruments, the breathing and air noises as the vocalists sang, and within the space of a few minutes, the orchestra had transported itself from the loudspeaker and now seemed to be totally inside my being somewhere. I was delighted, amazed, and carried away with the sheer majesty and beauty of these sounds which were liquid and tinged with colored lights. I wondered indeed why it is that the ears of man are normally so hard of hearing. Lambert Dolphin
Playing music: Self expression; expressing our essential self which might be overlooked in general activities. See: musical instrument.
Idioms: Music to ones ears; face the music.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Where there strong feelings or reactions to the dream music?
Did you learn anything or was anything conveyed by the music?
Was there any sense of being in a different time?
See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Summing Up – Questions – Magical Dream Machine
Musical Instrument
This shows how well you can express your flowing feelings and spontaneous creativity. In some dreams it is linked with what you feel about sex or your genitals, and how well you express pleasure and feelings sexually. If it is a large and complex instrument it might be depicting the mind.
Musical instruments, or music in your dream, are a way you begin to become aware of subtle or creative impulses that are emerging. Just as a plant takes shape and colour from a tiny seed, so also your personal growth emerges from obscure and formless possibilities within you. Music is the expression of that flow to life.
A musical instrument being played: This depends upon what feelings the music produces. Whatever the feeling, whether sadness, uplift, haunting, wistful, stimulating, take it as expressing that in yourself, and see if you can connect the feeling with everyday issues in some way.
Playing an instrument with great pleasure and skill: At the time of the dream feeling in harmony with oneself and allowing ones pleasurable feelings to flow into expression in some form. It is an illustration of your ability to feel pleasure in what you do in life and express yourself with enthusiasm.
Playing an instrument with difficulty: You are able to express yourself, but lack of confidence or other forms of hesitation or uncertainty are stopping your easy creativity or positive feelings.
A large complex instrument: The mind and its influence in the rest of our being. See: drum; organ.
Example: In a few lucid dreams I play the piano, and play it like a concert pianist. My “real” keyboard skills are all by ear, self-taught, and at best rudimentary. But in the lucid dream state I’ve had fun with this ability and spontaneously composed some wonderful classical pieces as in a concerto. At times I awoke with the musical composition still fresh in my mind. The pieces were complex, beautiful, moving, and as far as I can tell, thoroughly original and spontaneous. These dreams have shown me that we probably all have a tremendous capability for innate, spontaneous creativity and composition.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Can I play an instrument or is it only dreamt?
Do I listen and if so what do I feel?
Am I creative in my dream?
See Genius – Emotions and Mood in Dreams – Inner World – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Mustang
Youthful sexuality, aggressiveness, nonconformity. See: Horse.
Mystic
See: Guru.
Nail
Binding power, strength to hold together, as a common belief will bind people together of opposite temperaments. A nail may also represent, as in Christ being nailed to the cross, the painful links that bind us to our body, our earthly experience, our pains and trials.
Bonding; holding power, male sexuality.
Fingernails: These sometimes depict your ability to effect or change something, to grasp small things. They could also reflect your way of life such as rough physical work or otherwise, suggesting whether life has been hard or kind. Perhaps also your state of health. They might be weapons, or reflect your personal condition – i.e. dirty or cared for, whether you are ready to really use your hands.
If nail is in body: Consciousness painfully bound to physical reality; pain of bonds, but also the willingness to be fully involved in ordinary physical activities as you tread the path toward wider awareness. It might also be the willingness to be fully involved in ordinary physical activities.
Padre Pio, the stigmatist, caused to appear on his hands the nails he meditated upon in the hands of his saviour. Some people are able to make any image quickly appear on their skin.
The symbolism of the nails in the hands and feet depict how our personal awareness, and the divine at our core, are nailed to physical life, and through being willing to work at the common tasks necessity demands, we experience the falling away of personal desires. The nail holes in the feet are the willingness to accept everyday life and earthbound consciousness, instead of struggling to rise above common humanity. The binding clothes are the restrictions of sensual consciousness as it falls away.
“Gradually there was an awakening. The crown of thorns was lifted off. I felt my pierced side. There were nail holes I felt in my hands. I understood I had suffered these by being willing to work at the common tasks necessity demanded. The nail holes in my feet I had suffered as the willingness to accept everyday life and earthbound consciousness, instead of struggling to raise my own consciousness. The binding clothes were the restrictions of sensual consciousness falling away”.
Problems hammering in a nail: For a man it can indicate his masculine inability, his anxieties about his sexual ability. For a woman it can mean she is scared of sex which is violent.
Example: “I dreamed I was pulling nails (used in building) out of the soles of both feet. Infection had already set in. Someone gave me an injection.”
The major problem of this man was being hypercritical. The dream showed the infection lay in his own personal trait of building himself up (represented by carpenter’s nails) by tearing others down. Therefore, he had first to remove the infection by the “injection” of right principles. Quoted from Dreams Your Magic Mirror
Example: My husband had this dream twice in one week. He is at work when he feels something between his teeth. He uses a piece of wood with a nail in it to try to remove the object. The nail then gets stuck too! Feeling anxious he goes home to get the pliers in the hope of pulling the nail out. He wakes worried and confused. Sarah
Being at work sets the scene. This is about an irritation your husband has about his job. It might be a small irritant, as something stuck between the teeth might be, or the sign of a larger issue he has not been able to work out.
Idioms: Hit the nail on the head; tough as nails; nail biting; bed of nails; nail down; nail in ones coffin; nail it down; tooth and nail
Useful Questions and Hints:
What were the nails being used for?
Was there any hurt involved?
Am I good at do-it-yourself?
See Being the Person or Thing – Secrets of Power Dreaming – Working with associations