Posts Tagged ‘dream’

Nettle Poison Ivy

Feeling stung by remarks; irritation – feeling nettled; sickness in the body; a difficult situation you may try to avoid – as in ‘grasping the nettle’ or ‘stung into action’.

Poison ivy: Poison thoughts or feelings that can cling and cause hurt. Or something that you need to avoid or be aware of.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Is someone or some situation irritating me?

Does this indicate sickness in my body somewhere?

Am I trying hard to avoid something?

Should I be more careful where I go?

See Avoid Being Victims – Martial Art of the Mind – Being the Person or Thing

New

Whatever is new in ones life – a relationship, opportunity, or a scheme. If contrasted with old, an attempt to decide, contrasting what we already know from the past/old, and what is arising.

Each day is a new experience, although we may approach it with old feelings and attitudes. The old habits can become new habits with a bit of work. Each new experience adds to who we are and implies growth. But it is ours to choose what direction that growth goes. See Habits

Here is an example of growth and change.

 Example: Sitting in a window box facing outwards, with Neal H and my son on my left. I felt very scared of falling and asked my son and Neal to climb back into the building. I felt too scared to move until they had shifted.

When I explored the dream I saw it related to my recent situation. Although I am now working for two magazines, the frequency of payment is much less than before. So we are running out of money – my wife being out of work. I have felt very insecure and anxious during the last few days (the fear of falling). I thought of going back to the my previous employment to work, that I see as trying to get back to the safety of the building behind (I had worked in the ‘building’ trade) me – in the past. The two boys are my younger self that is more vulnerable, the parts of me I am trying to grow.

When I imagined doing that it was purely out of fear. In staying in the box though, I feel I am growing and opening to something positive entering my life. So I feel the dream shows that my unconscious assessment of my situation is that if I trust the flow of events I will enter a new stage of growth and experience. I am going to try that. Years later I can see it worked. Dan

The mind in our dreams also deals with problem solving, predicting outcomes of action, playing with possibilities via imagination, creating the new out of old material, replaying disturbing events in order to find ways of meeting them constructively, to form new insights from old experience.

The new can include many things like a new love affair, a new car, anew job or a new direction. The new can be a wonderful thing or a dead end. Dreams can often see what would be good or bad. They can do this because they have the sum total of who we are and what our potential is. See Incubating Dreams

Useful Questions and Hints:

What in my dream is the new thing?

Was it welcome or something I am avoiding?

Am I hoping for news of some sort?

See Using Your Intuition – Genius – ESP in Dreams – Edgar Cayce

News Newspaper

Something that is news to you; or you have just become, or need to be, aware of; something conscious rather than unconscious; something publicly known about yourself. Publically making secret information available. People’s secrets exposed to the world.

Wanting to get your experience or thoughts into the newspaper or on TV suggests something important has impressed you.

In a dream we may be seeing newspapers as the propaganda put out to influence us for political, financial or religious reasons. They often rely on sampling techniques that reveal the trend of “opinion” or “wants” that is, of collective attitudes. On the other, they express the prejudices, projections, and unconscious complexes (mainly the power complex) of those who manipulate public opinion. It also may represent current public opinion, prejudice, race-consciousness ideas and attitudes, as well as worldly thinking.

Newspaper can be used to wrap things in, to line draws or to cover things, so suggests something like yesterdays newspaper that is no longer useful or relevant.

 Example: I had this dream at a time when there was a lot of talk and anxiety in newspapers and on television about nuclear war. In the dream a nuclear attack had been announced. I immediately thought of my children who are away in boarding school. I go out into the street to see if I can get to them, but realise it is hopeless. In the street everybody is walking about as if it were a holiday Sunday. I realised there was no time to get to my children so decided to join the people on the street. John C.

John had this dream at a time when there was a lot of media coverage about nuclear attack. It is therefore most likely dealing with his real fears about how he would deal with such an attack if it happened.

Working for a newspaper: Suggests you will be capable of a wide audience for your thoughts or work. See A Dream is Like a Seed

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

Do I feel that something in my life has become commonly known?

Do I feel a need to ‘spread the news’ about a situation?

Am I receiving new information or becoming aware of something I need to know?

See Archetype of the Paradigm – Summing Up – OBE Experience – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

Nickname

Probably associates with feelings you have, or memories, connected with the person or people who gave you the nickname. Also whatever you feel about the name. See: Name.

Night

There can be many different associations with night in your dream. So try to define what you are feeling. Some possibilities are – not understanding clearly what is going on around you; anxiety about being in the dark; feelings of freedom because you re no longer on view in the light; relaxation and mellow feelings; intimacy and freedom to express. See: Light; Black.

Nightmare

In addition to the bad dreams provoked by primal feelings, basic drives and past traumas, it is known that everyday threats and dangers can also trigger the nightmare experience. It may be that when we suffer periods of low-self-esteem, with the increased vulnerability to anxiety and fear this brings, that we are more susceptible to this type of nightmare. This common type of anxiety dream, which can be triggered by the worry of not coping well with life generally, or specific concerns such as failure in a relationship, dismissal from a valued job or redundancy, or the loss of a child. Occasionally nightmares can relate to a low sense of self-esteem generally, with the dreamer feeling they do not measure up to other people, perhaps in terms of looks or achievement. While a period of feeling low will often pass for most people, for those afflicted with depression or an anxiety disorder, these anxiety dreams may be more frequent and become a problem.

A common theme is a mother who dreams her child is dead, murdered, drowned, strangled or otherwise lost to her. See child is dead

As well as reflecting our mental concerns, nightmares can be a sign that we are suffering from serious physical illness. Decoding the dream symbols in your nightmare may indicate the nature of your illness. However, it is worth bearing in mind that general poor mental health may result in a bad night’s sleep or a disturbed sleep pattern.

True Nightmares –

Grace, 40, an accountant says:

 Example: I have this dream frequently. It is about my two young sons. In the dream I am with them, standing near the edge of a balcony or at the edge of a bridge. As we stand together, one of my boys falls over the edge to his death. This usually happens because I have let go of his hand for a moment.

This nightmare is about change and moving on; although-apparently negative, the dream is telling Grace that she should to let go of both her sons as they become independent, a time she will face as early as nursery school. Grace’s nightmare is making her feel the shock of this and helping her move forward emotionally.

Carol, 60, retired says:

 Example: Years ago I lost my first husband at twenty nine. I had the same dream continually of being in a phone box trying to contact him not understanding why he had left me. He died of cancer. Later I remarried and this husband died of a heart attack. Once again the same dream came back so much.

While it may be painful, this dream tackles two important issues. Carol is trying to come to terms not only with the deaths and the feelings both husbands left her with. But she is also struggling to understand why this has happened, particularly twice. Here, the self-regulatory process in dreams attempts to resolve anything that is blocking a reasonably balanced response to life. It tries to find answers to conflicts, no matter how old, and to help us continue psychological growth. However, you should bring conscious attention to the issues raised: in the case of Carol, it is likely that the nightmare repeated because there were feelings about her husband she had not recognized. See dreaming about dead husband or ex

Symbols of nightmare and conflict

Depending upon the nature of your dreams, many dream symbols will have both positive and negative meanings for you. However, the symbols below will often represent an anxiety or conflict:

The Demon or phantom – The Monster – The Black Hole – The Haunted House – The withered or lightning struck tree – A Dark Shadowy figure or animal. See the feature on Nightmares.

What people meet who have  managed to break through their terrifying images and the apparently real images and events of the dream,  is they meet the cause and enter into direct personal insight. In other words the images of the nightmare give way to direct memories of past events that lay the foundation of feelings out of which the nightmare arose. For instance Robert Van de Castle writes that when he has helped people explore nightmares about a ghost, it has always led back to the childhood memory of a parent coming to the bedroom and lifting them or moving them to prevent bed wetting. See Being the Person or Thing; Our Dreaming Mind by Robert Van de Castle.

Such direct experiences also help us understand what happens when we fail to face the images of a nightmare, or in fact any other troubling fears and anxieties. We know from personal experience that they remain to haunt us. They continue to influence the way we deal with life, with opportunity, with relationships. It is this influence in the present arising out of the past that Eastern peoples call karma

Many dreams lead us to feel an intensity of emotion we may seldom if ever feel in waking life. If the emotions felt are frightening or disgusting we call the dream a nightmare.

Scientists find this definition too vague and so use two categories to define different types of anxiety dream. The first definition is ‘REM anxiety dreams’, and the second is ‘night terrors’. The REM anxiety dream is one that occurs during REM (rapid eye movement) activity, in other words during a normal dreaming period. These are reported to occur most frequently during the last part of the sleep cycle – that is, just prior to waking. One usually remembers the imagery and feelings of these dreams clearly. Night terrors occur during the first two hours of sleep, mostly in stage four sleep – See: science sleep and dreams – and the dreamer has either no recall of imagery at all, or it is a single impression such as a physical sensation of heaviness or difficulty in breathing. After waking from such a dream experience, the person feels disoriented for some time afterwards. See: night terrors; the first example in abreaction is an example of a nightmare.

One of the common features of a nightmare is that we are desperately trying to get away from a situation; feel stuck in a terrible condition; or meet fear or disgust in almost overwhelming degree, so that on waking we feel enormous relief it was just a dream. Because of the intensity of a nightmare we will remember it long after other dreams; remember even if we seldom ever recall other dreams. We may even worry about what it means for a long period of time, perhaps even years. Many people, on waking find the feelings, or sometimes even the imagery, continuing for some time. So for instance they may feel so much fear they have to switch all the lights on in the house.

As so many dreams have been investigated in depth – using such varied approaches as hypnosis, exploration of associations and emotional content, and LSD psychotherapy, in which the person can explore usually unconscious memories, imagery and feelings – we can be certain we know what nightmares are. They arise from many causes.

1. Unconscious memories of intense emotions – such as those arising in a child being left in a hospital without its mother. Many people who have been trapped in an awful situation, whether that is a dreadful marriage, a political or war prisoner, or a life situation one yearned to get out of, frequently dream they are back in the situation unable to get out. 
2. Intense anxiety produced – but not fully released at the time – by external situations such as involvement in war scenes; sexual assault – this applies to males as well as females, as males are frequently assaulted; medical surgery; being attacked and ones life threatened; involvement in a natural disaster such as flood or fire; car accident, etc. The nightmares of Vietnam veterans has been extensively studied for instance. Their nightmares closely parallel their actual combat experiences. 
3. Robert Van de Castle reports a slightly different source of nightmares. This has to do with guilt or future threat. He gives the example of Czech refugees who escaped to Switzerland during the Cold War. They managed this by saying they were taking a holiday, that was allowed, but not returning. The penalty for non-return was several years imprisonment. When one hundred of these refugees were interviewed, fifty six percent said they dreamed about being back in what was then their Soviet dominated homeland and unable to escape. Apart from the possibility of guilt, this is the same as 1. 

Sometimes this form of nightmare shows itself as a terror of being discovered as the perpetrator of some awful crime such as a murder. See murder

1. Childhood fears and trauma such as loss of parent; being lost or abandoned; fear of attack by stranger or parent; anxiety about own internal drives. These fears or trauma may arise from having experienced a difficult birth – See: the account of his nightmare given by Leon under active imagination; being put into hospital or some other form of separation from ones mother; or living continuously in an unloved condition. 
2. Many nightmares in adults also have a similar source as those listed in number 4, namely fear connected with internal drives such as aggression, sexuality and the process of growth and change – such as a youth meeting the changes of adolescence, loss of sexual characteristics, old age and death. So this is fear of the future and imagined events. 
3. Serious illness shown in the dream symbols.  
4. Precognition of fateful events. 
5. Possibly genetic influence in formation of character. Research has shown there is evidence that ones basic disposition is genetically determined. In a small percentage of people this means they are born with an anxious, shy characters that in our society often leads to depression. Other research, by Ernest Hartmann, determined that a small percentage of people had what Hartmann called ‘thin boundaries’. These people have a life long disposition towards frequent nightmares. It seems likely that the two pieces of research overlap. Perhaps Hartmann was not aware of the genetic research, though he does say there is perhaps a genetic basis for the tendency. But it should be understood that such difficulties are brought about by physical problems and are not the basic character of the person. See: night terrors. 
6. Threats to self esteem. We may either be faced by, or fear, the loss of something important to us, such as the failure of our relationship, loss of a child, being seen as stupid at work, or not coping with life in a way others approve of, and feeling sexually inadequate. Many professional people I have spoken to report dreams in which they experience themselves involved in some sort of critical situation at work. For instance a regular radio presenters nightmare is they dream the equipment fails, the CD player refuses to work, or they miss their prompt. Sometimes a deep sense of inadequacy haunts a person. This may be in terms of their sexual performance, their physical attractiveness, but may not be based on such obvious factors. In some cases it is rooted in their general but unconscious assessment of themselves measured against others. This may arise out of a family attitude of inferiority, or something like premature birth, where the baby/child feels some steps behind others, or is led to feel so by an anxious parent. 
7. Recurring nightmares – that is, those that happen again and again, weekly or even more frequently, and have the same basic plot. These are of course the same as ordinary nightmares. Their recurrence however is something to consider. See Recurring.

 Example of 1: I am a detective following clues regarding some sort of crime. They lead me in a large cellar, and within the cellar I come across the entrances of two tunnels. These are nearly the size of underground train tunnels, and are side by side leading away into pitch blackness. I decide to explore the tunnels and start to walk into one. I was overwhelmed by terror, as if the very darkness of the tunnel was a living force of fear that entered and consumed me. I screamed and screamed, writhing in uncontrollable fit like contractions. Nevertheless a part of me was observing what was happening and was amazed, realising I had found something of great importance. Andrew P.

Because Andrew explored this dream with me, I know the darkness was depicting fear he experienced while a 9 year old in hospital. He was given a rectal anaesthetic because he was about to have a nose operation. He fought and begged for the nurses to stop, but to no avail. This led to a very real feeling that humans were terrifyingly dangerous animals who would not respond even if you were on your knees begging. So trauma was the fear in the darkness.

 Example for 2: ‘A THING is marauding around the rather bleak, dark house I am in with a small boy. To avoid it I lock myself in a room with the boy. The THING finds the room and tries to break the door down. I frantically try to hold it closed with my hands and one foot pressed against it, my back against a wall for leverage. It was a terrible struggle and I woke myself by screaming.’ Terry F.

When Terry allowed the sense of fear to arise in him while awake, he felt as he did when a child – the boy in the dream – during the bombing of the second world war. His sense of insecurity dating from that time had emerged when he left a secure job, and had arisen in the images of the nightmare. Understanding his fears he was able to avoid their usual paralysing influence.

For example of 4 see third example in Doors under house and buildings.

 Example of 5: I was alone in a house and asleep in bed. Something materialised or landed on the foot of the bed. It woke me a little and I felt afraid. I had the feeling it was some sort of entity materialising and coming for me in some way. It moved up the bed a little. I felt paralysed, partly by fear but also as if the ‘thing’ was influencing me. This made me more afraid of it. Then it moved up higher, not on my body but on the bed. I was now very afraid and struggling against the paralysing influence. I managed to shout at it – I will destroy you. I will destroy you. As I shouted I pushed at it with my hand. This felt to me as if I were going to will its destruction and use my hand to smash it. I still felt a little uncertain of the outcome but I was very determined to fight it. At this point I woke up or was awakened by my wife. She asked me what I had been dreaming. Apparently I had been pushing her and shouting that I would destroy it. David P.

David explored his dream in depth and describes his insights as follows –

I started by considering the recent nightmare of the ‘thing’ at the foot of my bed. Gradually I began to feel tense throughout my body, with difficulty in breathing. The ‘thing’ seemed at first to be a woman’s vagina. There was a little feeling in this but not much. Then it slowly grew in intensity and I realised the ‘thing’ was death. Recently it is obvious from the mirror that my body is going through another period of rapid ageing. The dream was a dramatic representation of my feelings about this. Death was gradually creeping up on me, gradually overwhelming me and I was fighting it. As the session deepened I saw that in my feelings I felt that death had put its finger on me. The touch of death was like a disease though. Once touched the disease was incurable and gradually took over ones body. I could hardly breathe as I experienced this, and I understood the sort of emotions that might lie beneath asthma attacks. This struggle with death went on for some time. It was not terrible but was felt strongly. I also recognised that my wife Deb, has similar feelings about her ageing, and is communicating to me that her body is dying and unclean, especially her genitals, and this is off-putting. I see that when I shout ‘I will destroy you!’ in a way it is my fear of being destroyed that is behind the emotion.

I began to wonder what to do about the situation. The feeling was that death was claiming me. So I wanted to face the truth about death, whatever it was. I wanted to walk right up to it and look it in the face and know whether death meant a final end. If it did I would rather know. As I approached death like this by imaging walking toward the THING, my feelings went through an amazing transformation. All the tension left me and I could breath easily agaun. I felt good, positive and with a sense of hope about life and death. This was so surprising and sudden I wondered what had produced it. I needed to be aware of how this change had occurred. So I retraced my steps to look at death and try to understand why it had lost its power of fear.

At first I saw that my tension and sense of death being or giving a disease was due to a view I had of it. When we look at the world only through our senses, death is obviously a terminal sickness that claims everyone. Someone said on TV the other day – Life is a sexually transmitted disease that produces a 100% mortality. Seen in this way death is the rotting corpse, the skeleton. The path to it is disease or breakdown. But in looking it in the face I saw another view of it. I saw the dead body, the corpse, the skeleton, as a form left behind by the process of life. When I looked at myself to see what ‘David’ is – I cannot separate myself from the process of life. That process leaves behind shells, bodies, tree trunks, but it goes on creating other forms.

 Example of 6: ‘I dream night after night that a cat is gnawing at my throat’ Male from Landscapes of the Night, Coronet Books.

The dreamer had developing cancer of the throat. These physical illness dreams are not as common as the other classes of nightmare.

 Example of 7: My husband, a pilot in the RAF, had recently lost a friend in an air crash. He woke one morning very troubled – he is usually a very positive person. He told me he had dreamt his friend was flying a black jet, and wanted my husband to fly with him. Although a simple dream my husband could not shake off the dark feelings. Shortly afterwards his own jet went down and he was killed in the crash. Anon.

Understanding the causes of nightmares enable us to deal with them. The things we run from in the nightmare need to be met while we are awake. We can do this by sitting and imagining ourselves back in the dream and facing or meeting what we were frightened of. Terry imagined himself opening the door he was fighting to keep closed. In doing this and remaining quiet he could feel the childhood feelings arising. Once he recognised them for what they were, the terror went out of them. The reason this change can occur is that when the fearful emotions originated, it was at an age, or within a circumstance, during which there were not the concepts, security or viewpoint to meet and deal with the fears. If they cannot be met at the time, they are encapsulated in a way to push them out of consciousness, and surrounded with layers of anxiety or psychosomatic symptoms. As an adult we may have matured to the point where we can now meet these powerful emotions in a transformative way. The new confidence and concepts brought to the old experience are the transformative agents. Of course sufficient ego strength must be developed first in order to do this. We may have learned to meet our emotions and redirect them in a satisfying way. Therefore many people find strengthening dreams occurring first in their exploration of dream content. It is often only later they start meeting nightmares.

A young woman told me she had experienced a recurring nightmare of a piece of cloth touching her face. She would scream and scream and wake her family. One night her brother sat with her and made her meet those feelings depicted by the cloth. When she did so she realised it was her grandmother’s funeral shroud. She cried about the loss of her grandmother, felt her feelings about death, and was never troubled again by the nightmare. The techniques given in processing dreams and Being the Person or Thing will help in meeting such feelings.

What can be learned from these people’s experience, and that arising from clinical work dealing with people such as the Vietnam veterans mentioned, is that even the simple act of imagining ourselves back in the nightmare and facing the frightening thing, will begin the process of changing our relationship with our internal fears. It may be helpful to think of this as walking around a film set examining the parts of the drama, and watching what one experiences, or what memories arise. In this way the monster on the screen is seen to be made of fabricated material and invested with our own emotions. Understanding – the new concept of it – changes our relationship with it. See Eight Step Method to Manage Intense Emotion

Some people manage this transformative confrontation in the dream itself. Charlie, a man in his thirties who suffered a lot of anxiety, told me a dream in which he had been trapped in the basement of his home by a group of men belonging to a Mafia type organisation. They strapped him to a chair and were about to drill his teeth with a large power drill such as one drills metal with. Charlie managed to break free and grabbed the gun of one of the men. He then threw it down much to the astonishment of the men in the dream. When they asked him why he said – still in the dream – ‘All your power is imaginary. This organisation you belong to is all in your mind. I don’t need to be afraid of you.’ The threat then completely vanished and Charlie felt enormous pleasure.

What happened was that Charlie faced his fears and was realising how he is their creator. His own fearful imagination fills the world with threats that are not there. Not that the world is harmless, but one does not need to imagine fears. Thus Charlie related to his own emotions quite differently. Whenever we dream its images are not like real life, because a dream is nothing like outer life where things could hurt you, but is an image like on a cinema screen that even if a gun is pointed at you and fired it can do no damage – except if you run in fear. So all the things that scare you are simply your own fears projected onto the screen of your sleeping mind. See Summing Up

Apart from this in-depth meeting of ones feelings, a very powerful healing factor is to be able to talk over the nightmare and the feelings it engenders with someone else. The person who listens can be a trained counsellor, but does not have to be. The main thing is they need to be able to listen without judgement, and with intelligent but not intrusive questioning. See: peer group work. Many have been helped to move on from seriously disturbing nightmares by discussing them with other sufferers in a group specially formed for this function.

For nightmares such as those dealing with illness or prediction of a future fateful event, a slightly different approach is needed. At first encounter the dreamer may well feel there is little that can be done about these dreams. But experience collected from many people suggests this is not so. Taking the dreams about physical illness, these are often very direct. Perhaps the dreamer looks at an area of their body and sees its sickness; an animal may be gnawing some part of themselves, as in the example; there may be repeated dreams of extreme heat, volcanoes or fire.

Bernard Seigal the American surgeon, always asked his patients what they dreamt. The reason being dreams often diagnosed illness long before he could hope to find it with x-rays or scans. Such dreams were not therefore always to be thought of as messengers of doom, merely as messengers giving information about what is happening in the body and its link with the mind. In writing about his work, Seigal explains many ways people can positively change their physical condition by honouring their own healing potential. Of course work with a sympathetic doctor. Have your condition checked. But do not fail to meet the factors in your dreams. Death is of course eventually inevitable, but as David shows in the example above, we need not meet it in terror.

Regarding the dreams of apparent prophetic doom, even these need to be seen as having the possibility of wonderful messengers warning us, rather than of a certified and final event. A fire alarm does not mean the building has burnt down, it means look out and hurry, otherwise the building might burn down. We have a built in warning system that tells us of all manner of crisis that might arise if we continue in the direction we are taking. This is everyday common sense and all of us meet it in day to day living. For instance if we walk to a busy road we look to see if the lights are right for us to cross, otherwise we might get killed. Dreams are just such warnings. If we deny them a place in our life, they may only be able to break through our resistance to knowing the consequences of our actions at a very late stage.

Acute analysis of the human situation does not portray human life as a pre-destined journey through unalterable events. Movement and stability jostle and change positions constantly. Of course our body and disposition are formed by factors already in place at out birth, such as a genetic heritage and the culture and circumstances we are born into. But mixed with this are the fear or courage we live by, the dullness or creativity we dare to exhibit. We can therefore, by shifting the way we are relating to the world around us and the people and creatures in it, shift what is emerging from the whole mass of interactions that becomes our future.

All dreams are attempts on the part of our being to move toward wholeness and equilibrium. At times this may necessitate disturbance, just as vomiting does when the body discharges poisonous food. Nevertheless, difficult dreams are a way of bringing attention to areas of our experience we may be neglecting to look at, or even powerfully refusing to see. The shock of the dream is therefore more to do with the strength of our repression of the insight it brings. So prophetic dreams give us warning of events enabling us to either avoid what is portrayed, or be ready for it. Unfortunately many people simply bow their heads or react in a fearful way rather than take such dreams as usable information. See Life’s Little Secrets

In older traditions of psychology such as occultism, yoga and Buddhism, nightmares are viewed as the meeting with ones innate tendencies or karma. In occultism a name is given to this meeting. It is called The Guardian of the Threshold. See: occultism and dreams; precognition dreams; nightmares; nightmares abstract; night terrors.

Nine

The fact that all numbers rise in series of nines and then begin again, and that babies are born in the ninth month, lends itself to nine symbolising the completion of a process, or stage of growth. There are also, in some mythologies and religions, nine orders of angels or forces. At the ninth hour, the veil is rent between spirit and matter. The astrological sign is Sagittarius, the sage or counsellor. It rules the thighs, and the ninth house rules travel and dreams.

999 or 912 calls: A desperate attempt to be heard, or a cry for help in a difficult situation or feeling state.

Pregnancy; childbirth; the end of a cycle and the start of something new; cycles. Represents creation and life’s rhythm as it develops. Because it is the final simple number it represent absolute things and it is the symbol of the totality of the human being.

There are nine gifts of the spirit mentioned by saint Paul: wisdom, knowledge, faith, gift of healing, to operate miracles, prophecy, distinguishing spirits, to speak in different kinds of tongues and the gift to interpret them.

Idioms: cat has nine lives; nine days wonder; nine times out of ten; nine to five; cloud nine; nine points of the law.

See: Numbers.

Nipple

Usually connects with infant feelings of longing or hunger, mixed with sexual feelings of pleasure. See: Breast.

No

Unless we can say ‘no’ effectively, our ‘yes’s’ in life may be acquiescence rather than agreement. Therefore, saying no in our dreams is an important expression of our needs and ability to make decisions in face of disagreement. It is important to understand what it is you are saying no to, however. See yes.

Noon

Active waking life. Height of waking consciousness, ego, rationalism. Mid-life.

Noose

Fear of getting ‘hung up’ on something or somebody; fear of a trap – or desire to trap. Sometimes a threat of death or meeting the feeling of dying.

If noose around neck: feelings about death; unconscious – repressed – emotions that are causing a full expression of oneself to be held back by tensions in the neck, feelings of being strangled.

 Example: A man barged into a room and tried to put a noose around another man’s neck. The idea was to slap the horse with the rope tied to it, and drag the man after it.

Example: Also at some point it seemed that my son had either hung himself, or he had been violent with the other children and while he slept they put a noose around his neck and suddenly pulled him upwards. But I was able to replay this part of the dream while semi awake and change it to a situation where my son was not actually killed.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

Was the noose a threat of was someone hung?

What were my feelings in the dream?

Do I feel, or fear being caught or trapped by something?

Is this a fear of death in general?

Do I desire to catch or trap something?

See Summing Up – Dealing with Fear – Being the Person or Thing – Conditioned Reflexes

North

The head, as opposed to South, the genitals. There is often a divide between the north and south of a country in the way of life.

The four major directions such as North, East, South and West also have unconscious significance, but this must depend upon whether you grew up in the northern or southern hemisphere. What is said is for the northern hemisphere, reverse it for the southern hemisphere. There are polarities in your nature. Two obvious ones are your physical body, that gives the appearance of solidity and is obvious to others, and your thoughts, that are not visible or apparent to others.

The swing between waking and sleeping can be seen as the extremes within the possibilities of our experience. Sleeping and waking are the polarities, the North and South Poles of what we can confront. In quite a real sense we can say there is nothing beyond what is included in those polarities.

 As we get older our hair turns white, as we come to our time of winter. White (and purple) also symbolize spirituality.  With experience and age we gain wisdom. Now we have time to rest and contemplate the lessons. North is purity and wisdom, a great place of healing.  This is the time after midnight, a dream time. The time to be grounded within yourself and deep within, like a bear in a cave.

 North is the place of winter – unless we live in the southern hemisphere. This reminds us to stop and listen. That we must have prepared for the long time of winter. Having been in action the other seasons we now rest and contemplate to understand the wisdom we have been given or gathered.

In the Northern hemisphere: darkness; unconsciousness; coldness, suggesting a situation that leads us to seek the light and warmth; death; frozen emotions.

In ancient China the tortoise represented the cold dark of North and death.

In the Southern hemisphere: Light; warmth; life and growth. See: directions.

 Example: In the dream I was becoming a merchant seaman. First of all I was looking at the vessel. It had been adapted for very rough weather. We were going to the North Pole, and the waves would be enormous. As I looked however it seemed as if the ship was sound enough to make the journey. It was wooden. I felt this, going to sea, was the new thing in my life I had been looking for and expecting. At first this was all taking place at Ilfracombe harbour. But now in the dream it was in London. The ship was much bigger and more sea worthy. A.T.

The dreamer explored his dream and says of it: It suggests I am now beginning an inner experience that I will have a hard time coping with. The waves of experience may sink me – but the vessel has been adapted. The years of working on myself have helped me to become strong enough to do what is needed to be done. The port means leaving my present position in life, and the North Pole is coming to my own centre – the highest personal centre.

Idioms: due north; great white north.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Have I ever lived in the north of a country?

What you associated with the north?

Did I have any feelings in the dream – if so what?

See Working with associations – Inner World – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Jesse Watkins Enlightenment

North Star

Guiding star, guardian angel. That which guides you through life’s journey. Intuition.

Nose

Through our nose we sense things that are completely invisible, but nevertheless tell us a lot about what we are sensing. It therefore often appears in dreams to depict our intuition, our sense of whether a situation or a relationship is wholesome or rotten – as with ‘smell a rat’. Such sensing of situations might very well give us a direction to go in, so sometimes the nose is about making a decision or going in a direction.

The nose can also indicate curiosity, or even ‘nosiness’ – poking our nose into other people’s business.

Example: I dreamt my mother was strangling me with her nose. Her nose was pressed right into my neck stopping me breathing. Celine.

Celine’s dream shows nose being used to represent being nosy. Celine was fifteen at the time of the dream. She agreed that her mother was being over curious about what she was doing.

Also the nose is very sensitive and if hit can be painful, so in some dreams it shows us feeling that someone has ‘put our nose out of joint’. In other words we have come into some sort of verbal or emotional conflict with someone.

It is known that our nose is the best test for food that is bad or going off.

In some dreams the nose might depict feelings about the penis.

Broken nose: Signs of having been through struggles and conflicts in life. Maybe it indicates how someone has hit you emotionally.

Malformed nose: might relate to the idiom, ‘nose out of joint’; sense of not appearing good to others.

Idioms: As plain as the nose on your face; cut off your nose to spite your face; following my nose; have a nose for; hold your nose; keep your nose clean; nose out of joint; look down your nose; no skin off my nose; nose job; nose to the grindstone; pay through the nose; powder my nose; rub nose in it; turn up your nose; up one’s nose.

Useful questions:

Am I sensing something that helps me make a decision or choose a direction?

Has my nose been ‘put out’ by someone or something?

Am I seeing my nose as something to be ashamed of?

Is there something rotten I am sensing – if so what does that refer to in life.

Because the nose often indicates the intuition It might be useful to read Using Your Intuition and Being the Person or Thing

Notice

Literally means to notice, to be conscious of.

Nucleus

The nucleus is perhaps the most important structure inside animal and plant cells. It is the main control center for the cell and acts rather like the cell’s brain. Only eukaryotic cells have a nucleus. In fact, the definition of a eukaryotic cell is that it contains a nucleus while a prokaryotic cell is defined as not having a nucleus.  See: Centre.

Another view of our inner nucleus is – The planets of our solar system represent the dimensions of consciousness of the system of universal mind – its consciousness as a whole.  There are nine dimensions to the consciousness of the solar system.  The earth, the third planet from the sun, is the third dimension.  Our sun is as an atom in the universe of stars.  The planets are as electrons with their own dimension of energy around the nucleus of the sun.

The inner nucleus or centre is often called -‘The Self’. This has been described well in the book Siddartha by Herman Hesse:

“Slowly the thinker went on his way and asked himself: What is that you wanted to learn from teachings and teachers, and although they taught you much, what was it they could not teach you? And he thought: It was the Self, the character and nature of which I wished to learn. I wanted to rid myself of the Self, to conquer it, but I could not conquer it, I could only deceive it, could only fly from it, could only hide from it. Truly, nothing in the world has occupied my thoughts as much as the Self; this riddle, that I live, that I am one, and am separated and different from everybody else, that I am Siddartha; and about nothing in the world do I know less than about myself, about Siddartha.

“The thinker, slowly going on his way, suddenly stood still, gripped by this thought, and another thought immediately arose from this one – it was: The reason why I don’t know anything about myself, the reason why Siddartha has remained alien and unknown to myself is due to one thing, to one single thing – I was afraid of myself, I was fleeing from myself. I was seeking Brahman, Atman, I wished to destroy myself, to get away from myself, in order to find in the unknown innermost, the nucleus of all things, Atman, Life, the Divine, the Absolute. But by doing so I lost myself on the way!”

Or we make the Spiritual Self an excuse to run away from the pains and pleasures of who we are as an individual. In this way we forget Life gave rise to us, and to run from one is to run from the other. Although it may not at first appear to be so, as we travel the path of self-discovery, we find God was lost to us because we had been unknowingly turning away from ourselves.

“Or as this dream illustrates – Such a dream might  reveal truths. “I was walking across open moorland, followed by a crowd of people. I was their leader, the only thing was, I had no idea in which direction salvation lay. Now saw a rabbit and it turned into a huge and powerful hare. Then the hare spoke to me, saying, “Where are you going?”

I told him we were looking for salvation. He listened and then quietly said, “Go back, and carry on with your accustomed tasks. Do not wildly seek the Kingdom of Heaven, for you already have what you seek within you. Your seeking only hides it. For what you seek is yourself. You will find it by living your life each day.” Then we all turned around and went back to our village, and carried on our usual tasks, knowing that in time, we would realise our heaven – find Self through growing.’