Posts Tagged ‘dreaming’
Chicks
This is a reference either to your own babyhood. or feelings or events associated with it, or even to your external baby or babies. This may at times point to vulnerable people or assets.
Example: ‘An old lady made room for me to sit at the end of one of the three seats of a bus. As we drove away a very large chicken size baby bird flew in. It had short stubby wings and yellow down, but flew expertly. I believe it first landed on the lady and chirped squeakily. But in it’s squeaks it actually spoke, saying it had lost it’s mother. It sounded as if it were crying.’ Andrew.
Here the chicken obviously represents the dreamers own childhood feelings of desertion. The old lady is the mother. The bus is a shared journey with others – we all have difficult feelings.
Chicks in a dream might also point to your own children, or even children you want to have or will have. See: Birds.
Coming out of the egg is a reference to birth, and the shell of the egg is the protection provided by being in the womb and early childhood. So coming out of the shell is the facing of independent life – literally ‘coming out of your shell’.
The life cycle of a bird has so many similarities with important human stages of growth we frequently use birds to represent parts of our own deeply felt experience, such as being totally dependent upon parents ‘in the nest’. The amazing experience of ‘leaving the nest’ and how well it has been managed. Learning to fly and so becoming independent. They are all so much a part of our own tings we meet in life. See Individuation
Useful Questions and Hints:
What was happening to the chick – what part of its life cycle was involved?
What feelings were experienced or indicated in the dream? (The example of the baby bird crying for instance.)
Can you get into the role of the chick and feel it? That will really give you insight into your dream.
Try using Stand in role – Talking As
Child
“The message from my father, “You are a bright kid,” left open the freedom, creativity, and energetic resources of my Child Ego State. The Child is the most “real self” as well as the strongest part of the personality. It is responsible for feelings, biological needs, motivation, and expressiveness. It is the child at two, and at four and at ten, with all the daring and spontaneity of those early years.” Quoted from All My Children by Jacqui Lee Schiff
The child in a dream can represent the innocence and wonder of childhood, the strange openness and ability to be part of the holiness of Life; the grandness if the heavens opening to them. But also the crucified child in agony through the terrible state of adults ignorance.
Unfortunately many of us do not get encouraging words or good information about life from father or mother, instead we get the most terrible put downs, or else wordlessly we are defeated and crushed. Usually links with your own feelings arising from your childhood. The Dream child can also depict feelings regarding your growth or vulnerability, such as dependence, or the emotional links you have with people. What is happening to the child in the dream will give a clue to what sort of feelings. If the dream child is one of your own children look up son or daughter. ; boy; girl; daughter; son
Sometimes a child can represent the marriage – what was created by their marriage.
Hitting a child: Sometimes an attempt to repress or control your own urges that you were trained to hold back, or were punished for during your own childhood. See: archetype of the child; hitting.
Children appear in so many roles in dreams, and mostly as already said, point to those facets of oneself that either were hurt in your own childhood, or have not grown beyond that stage. But a child can express playfulness, uninhibited enthusiasm, or feelings of pain or hurt. The lost child might indicate either feelings of responsibility and panic about something vulnerable, or that you need to ask yourself how you have suppressed your own inner child. See: Inner Baby and Child; baby in my dream.
The child in a woman’s dream might also have a connection with the deeply instinctive process of producing, caring for and rearing a child. So it might indicate what is happening within the dreamer in regard to this. The following dream illustrates this as Angie, the dreamer who is 18, struggles with the difference between her inner feelings and the attitudes of those around her. See A Woman’s Creative Power
Example: I dreamt I had a child and had to cancel a test because I had to take care of the baby. I was breast feeding the baby, because it is healthier to breast feed than to give formula from a bottle. The person that I had been seeing wanted to know what I thought I was doing. The question was in an accusatory manner, like I had no business breast feeding my own baby. Then I left the baby with my friends and left. When I came back, they were feeding the baby Tabasco sauce because they ran out of milk. This shocked me because I thought my friends were more responsible than that.
Carrying or looking after child: In a relationship sometimes we come up against the child in our partner. The child manifest in the adult as jealousy, dependence, anger or helplessness if left, unwarranted emotional outbursts, and other behaviour that is natural to young children but difficult in an adult. Sex may also be more of a ‘thumb suck’ if it hasn’t matured beyond the child stage, rather than two people caring and sharing. An example of this is given in the following dream.
Example: I was near a hospital where nurses were trained. A lot of young women were about and I hoped to become friends with at least one. Later I was with one and hoping to become intimate. We then went into a room where a woman was examining a queue of nurses. She asked each one questions as their turn came.
There were a lot of children, mostly girls, who had no parents and were trained for nursing from an early age. One of the girls came to me as I lay in a chair. She wanted a cuddle. I held her for a while. Then a boy came for a cuddle. I said to one of them, perhaps the boy, “There are plenty of mums about (meaning the nurses), but you want a daddy don’t you?” I held him with my strength. One of the children asked me if my nurse friend had got a man yet. I considered for a while, then said no, she hadn’t, as I realised I was not her “man”, only a friend. Alec.
Alec was a married man with children. His wife had been a nurse. When Alec explored his dream he described what he experienced as follows.
It was clear early on that the nurses represented my wife, but the rest of the dream was still beyond me. But as I imagined myself as the young boy I knew this was me. I didn’t like seeing that part of me. I had kept it covered up with pride over the years, but it was there and I was at first ashamed to see this childlike, dependent, emotionally hurt part of myself. It was because I related to my wife in this dependent, childlike way that the dream showed me holding him. My father had never really been a man for me and the child me was desperately in need of knowing that strength. The boy’s question was a turning point for me. In fact my wife didn’t have a ‘man’ yet because I was still moving toward real manhood. But suddenly I felt what the little girl in the dream meant. I said to my wife, “You’re the little girl in the dream. Do you see? Every time I get back to my warm sexual feelings I’m a little boy again, because I haven’t really grown up sexually yet, and that scares you. Whenever my weak side shows, you feel really threatened so you attack that part of me. It’s because you need a strong daddy, and every time I show my weakness it triggers the little girl in you whose daddy was weak. He never grew up, so you never had a strong man for a father. That’s why you married me. Okay, I am strong enough now to be your strong daddy like I am in the dream.”
There was more to the problem though. Why did my wife’s little girl trigger my withdrawn little boy? I enter into into this. I remembered how, when we had separate beds, I had often wanted to masturbate but had stopped in case my wife heard. I realised how much I wanted to hide my masturbation from her. At the same time I realised how I easily stood before her naked and with an erection, so what was this problem over masturbation? Of course, it was mother again. My mother had given me hell over masturbation as the disapproving mother, and when my wife got into her “downing” role I saw her as the disapproving manhood killing mother again, and was deeply repulsed by her. I am not going to be killed again by/mother/wife, so I will cut off from her and will give my manhood to women who do not kill me.
Child dying or dead: One dreamer said, “I saw him jump off a bridge to his death.” This occurred at a time when her young son was making his first moves toward independence, and it was a difficult thing for the mother to face – the loss of her son. So it can easily be shown as the death of ones child in a dream.
When a mother or sometimes a father sees their child leaving them it is like the death if one part of their life. A parent has been everything for their child for years, has told them what to do or even ordered them, and when a child begins to make its own decisions or leaves home to go to college it is the end of a long period and can be shown as the death or even murder of their child.
Another women describes it differently as follows:
‘I am standing outside a supermarket with heavy bags wearing my Mac, though the sun is warm. My daughter and two friends are playing music and everyone stops to listen. I start to write a song for them, but they pack up and go on a bus whilst I am still writing. I am left alone at the bus stop with my heavy burden of shopping, feeling incredibly unwanted.’ Mrs F
Mrs F was dreaming about her young daughter leaving her, and she has to grieve it, almost like a death.
Example: A male reporter who was interviewing my wife and I about our work ended by asking us about the meaning of a nightmare he experienced the previous night. In it he was walking arm-in-arm with his wife across fields, followed by his four year old son. Looking back he saw his son fall into a small but deep hole. He ran to help, but the child had disappeared under water in the pit, and he was tormented by the decision of whether to jump in himself – he might be killed by the fall. Then his son was out of the hole, his heart faint but still beating.
The man was deeply anxious in case the dream had predicted the death of his child. This may seem ridiculous if one has not had such a dream, but the strength of emotions in nightmares tends to create anxiety in even the most rational minds. The original scene, however, depicts marital togetherness, which led us to tell him the dream was about a recent threat to his marriage rather than his child. Astonished he confirmed his marriage had hit a bad time, and he was fearful of the survival of the relationship. “But” he said, “why did I dream about my son?” The reason is probably because the son represents what has been created by their life together. There may also be the added association of the son being a factor which bonds the marriage, and a threat to the son would mean less mutual bonding.
Holy child: This miraculous child is a symbol of the Self that literally “depresses” the ordinary human being, even though it is the only thing that can redeem him. In many works of art the Christ child is depicted as, or with, the sphere of the world, a motif that clearly denotes the Self, for a child and a sphere are both universal symbols of totality. When a person tries to obey the unconscious, he will often, as we have seen, be unable to do just as he pleases. But equally he will often be unable to do what other people want him to do. It often happens, for instance, that he must separate from his group-from his family, his partner, or other personal connections-in order to find himself. That is why it is sometimes said that attending to the unconscious makes people antisocial and egocentric. As a rule this is not true, for there is a little-known factor that enters into this attitude: the collective (or, we could even say, social) aspect of the Self. (A quote from Jung’s writing.)
The miraculous or holy child is a symbol of your whole self – your waking self and the parts of you that you never have been aware of – Jung calls it the Self. This Whole Self as always is both benevolent and malefic; like life it is both the light and the darkness, male and female, creative and destructive – but the Whole is the balance between the opposites and is often shown as the sun, or Christ – the cosmic man. But man in these cases refers always to mankind, both female and male.
The image is made up of all human life
Here is a modern image of the same huge being. It depicts the meeting of the one individual with what lies behind it – the cosmic mind. Again made up of the many, all human lives.
Useful questions: What is happening to this child in the dream, and what, as an allegory, does that suggest about my relationship with my own inner child? Is this about my relationship, showing how we are triggering each other’s childlike responses? If I imagine myself as the child what do I feel and how do I describe myself. (See Stand in Role under peer dream work for help with this ). See Stand in Role – Secrets of Power Dreaming – Easy Dream Understanding
Childbirth
The emergence of a new part of yourself, perhaps difficult to give life to. Bringing to consciousness a new part of you that has been developing but remained previously unexpressed. This may also refer to the desire to have children, your own pregnancy, or the memories of your own birth. Sometimes, giving birth to a child means that one way of life is ending and another beginning. See: A Woman’s Creative Power; Birth.
So many girls or women dream of giving birth even though they are not pregnant of childbearing age. This is either because the basic way a woman creates is by dreaming of giving birth – which is an amazing act of her creative power; or else because she is practising her creativity. If it is a difficult birth it is worth using Secrets of Power Dreaming.
Such births need to be honoured even though there is no physical sign of a child. Remember that we are all the time growing and producing new sides of us, as happened in teenage when we started menstruation and a different view of life. So the new dreamt baby if a vulnerable part of you that needs care to grow and become a real part of your waking life.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Is it a dream birth or am I actually pregnant?
Was it an easy or difficult birth?
Is this the first time I have dreamt of having a baby?
See pregnancy and childbirth; the baby in your dream; meeting with an unborn child.
Chimney
Smoking an its dangers. Also it could indicate the the birth canal, and of course home and a sign of inner warmth. It can sometimes indicate an erect penis, or if falling down then the opposite. A way to vent the heat of passion or pain.
An interesting comment was made by the ‘talking cure’ as Breuer and his patient Anna O called it, this ‘chimney sweeping,’ acted cathartically to release the bottled-up emotional obstruction at the root of the problem. This was the approach already used by Mesmer, and in essence, later by many modern practitioners. I called it LifeStream.
Maybe you have associations with Santa Claus and chimneys, and perhaps also the magic of Mary Poppins. If so see Associations Working With. Also many paintings with old world and romantic suggestions show a cottage with smoke coming from a rural chimney.
Such dreams may also have associations with heavenly gifts or abilities, a link with heaven and perhaps communication. Because the womb life often gives a sense of being part of Life itself, going up a chimney may indicate an escape to heaven, or even germination of new ideas or insights.
Example: The ceiling has lots of windows too. I see two black funnel clouds in the sky and I say to her excitedly, “Tornadoes. I see tornadoes.” She isn’t interested and I keep pointing. They whirl around and around and then disappear back into the chimneys they came out of and then pop back out and roll around. They have sharp points on the heads; they kind of look like penises.
Example: I am in an enclosed space with only a very difficult way out – up the chimney – a tiny tunnel through which to crawl. The means of in and out seem quite natural although very awkward and cause no distress.
Belching black smoke: The grim mechanised side of our culture centred on production instead of humanity. The world of adults and not of children or of nature – except of course of volcanoes.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What feelings do I have about the scene? See Emotions and Mood in Dreams
What do I associate with the chimney?
Was I interacting with it in some way?
Try Acting on your dream – Being the Person or Thing
Chin
This can be used in your dreams to show your strength of character and such things as determination and ability to face difficulties. But often such dreams are self assessments arising at the time. The example below for instance shows the dreamer taking an analytical look at himself and assessing his strengths and weaknesses.
The chin can be seen to indicate many things such as resolve, sternness, obstinacy, character. Your ability to take the blows of life on the chin. Also willpower, stubbornness, bullishness, bravado, determination, pride.
The chin and mouth are one of the ways we judge people from their expression. It might also figure in what we say. Chinning can mean chattering.
The male chin in white stock does not grow hair on the chin until approaching manhood. This is shown in the following dream.
Example: The boy appeared to be naked. I held him firmly in my arms. I felt strength in him and said, “I can feel the manhood growing in you.” I felt a noticeable increase of the strength in him. My hand touched his chin. There was a stubble of young beard there. I said how I was aware of his body growing into manhood. I was aware of us adults sharing the experience deeply.
Example: I look in the mirror and see I have a large face with weak chin. Then I see that my face is huge, with a huge neck, and in all, reflected great underlying strength, and this was the “image” people would see of me. This is my mission, to share that strength.
Example: Some part of me decided that I should learn something as well as have fun, and a mirror appeared before my face. I knew that I was looking at my self-image rather than a direct reflection. It revealed distortions, doubts about my self-worth, that I needed to clear up. These were pictured as dark splotches on my chin and cheeks, and a misshapen nose.
Idioms: a chin wag; lead with your chin; take it on the chin.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What weakness or strength is my dream showing, and how can I usefully use those insights?
Is this me feeling anxious, or is this a useful insight?
What can I do with the traits I see in myself?
See The Adventure of the Dream World and carry the dream forward
China Chinese
For Westerners, in general China may represent irrational, secret knowledge, intuition, wisdom of life. It may be a fear of the irrational. That is, a fear of believing or being influenced by ideas that are not logically proven, or commonly understood or held by others. What you feel about China and the Chinese.
In a Westerner’s dream China may represent urges or experiences the dreamer does not identify with. For instance in each of us there are things we repress, or do not have opportunity to express, emotionally, sexually or with our ambitions. China may depict these aspects of the dreamer, or urges at odds with conscious fears and decisions.
Commonly this would reflect your feelings and responses to the Chinese people you have met. But for some people China would represent a threat. That is because often we feel threatened by anything we do not understand about us, especially if it is an urge or feeling we do not recognise.
In some dreams the Chinese person can represent intuitive wisdom of great insight. This is usually obvious and felt as such in the dream. So it can indicate contact with ones unconscious material.
Example: I was on a plane or a journey. On my right sat an American, very flabby, with a paunch. I was eating an apple, and my elbow sometimes touched his paunch. It felt lifeless, lacking vitality. I told him he ought to eat only apples for a while, and all the dead flesh would fall off him.
Then a young Chinese man came to me and pointed out a line marked on my apple, on the green, less developed side. He said every apple had it if one looked, and under the line was a hair. He said it was the “hair of discontent.” He said this was poisonous, and best not eaten. I slid my fingernail under the line, and pulled out a long hair. I thought this was wonderful, and that I had been given real wisdom of the East.
Example: Example: Dreamt I was on a bomb site. I found old shells from the war. I was interested in them and dug them up, but felt that they might explode. Throwing them to one-sided I crawled away sheltering from expected explosions. None came, only smoke. Then a friend offered a basement to Chinese restaurant owner. It was enormous, with great possibilities. I began to work in the basement. Brian.
As Brian explores his inner life through his dreams he comes across damage that occurred in his childhood and youth. The war was the personal inner conflicts he experienced. Meeting these was not as difficult as he had expected. Then, in doing this a whole new area of possibility opened up – the basement – an area of himself that had previously remained unconscious.
If you have travelled to China: What you felt or experienced in China.
Chinese writing: If you do not understand it, this is usually a way your inner self expresses things that you have not yet consciously recognised, admitted, or been able to put into words in your own language.
Useful Questions and Hints:
If I put into words what I feel and think about China, what would I say?
What are the main feelings in this dream, and in what way does the connection with China comment on them?
What are the key words in this dream, and what do they suggest?
See: Key Words – Talking As – Being the Person or Thing
Choke Choked Choking
This can suggest many things, and you need to look to the dream for confirmation. Choking can be about swallowing something that has got stuck, suggesting a experience you are ‘choking or gagging’ on. It can be about breathing in something that you are reacting to, suggesting being in an environment or ‘atmosphere’ that you have difficulty with.
Constrictions of the throat can cause choking, and in dreams this points to the possible holding back of powerful emotions. In other words you are choked up with feelings.
Example: In my dream, which sometimes comes within three quarters of an hour of falling asleep, I have swallowed something which is literally choking me or is going to poison me. I wake up and rush down the stairs to the kitchen spitting and choking, holding my throat and making all sorts of disturbing noises which frighten my wife. I have had this dream as many as five or six times a night. My doctor says it could be to do with the last war. Mr. K.T.
Mr. K.T. says that as a child he lived through the war and “.. my dad had to constantly wake me up to take us down to the shelter, sometimes as many as four times a night, and we were bombed out twice.” So there are probably strong feelings still trying to be expressed that were never felt during his childhood.
A difficult birth or the cord around the neck during birth, could lead to feeling you can’t breath and you are choking.
Choking can also be the result of a conflict between expressing and repressing something, and so indecision – as when we choke on our words, repress emotions.
There is an action in the dream process that attempts to bring to the surface of our awareness memories or experiences that were deeply buried or repressed. As the emergence takes place there is a swing between release and suppression, and this can result in choking. See Life’s Little Secrets
There may of course be a much more down to earth explanation as the following example shows.
I had an interesting learning process recently, a friend of mine was telling me that he’d had a terrible dream where a man was in his room, and lifted him up by the throat, up in the air above the bed, and was choking him and shaking him about. He said it was intensely real and scared the bejesus out of him. At first I was at a loss to explain it. Then another friend walked in on the conversation and said that she’d had sleep apnea for a while and had had similar dreams. The guy who had the dream then said that he was just getting over a cold and a bad chest which had been giving him trouble breathing, which instantly seemed to explain the dream. Karen.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What am I feeling as the choking takes place, and can I put it into words?
Is the choking about something going in to me or something coming out, and can I connect that with daily life?
Am I in an environment that leaves me with difficult feelings?
Have I been suffering breathing difficulties?
Try using Use the body to discover dream power – Being the Person or Thing
Chopper
Male sex organ, expression of hate or destructiveness. See: Arms.
Christ
There can be several felt associations with Christ or Jesus. The first might be whatever you feel about organised religion. In this sense Christ could depict the forces in you that create moral pressure from the norm lived by society. So it would be the pressure to conform to the norm.
Christ is also an internal sense of how your life measures up to the universal life you constantly sense around you. This would be a feeling of what your highest potential is, and how well or badly you have manifested it. Sometimes this is experienced as a meeting with truth, the truth about yourself. To properly connect and realise what Christ is, it is necessary to be able to put one’s rational mind aside and able to enter a different dimension of ourselves, our mind.
But more important Christ might be seen as a collective identity arising in the consciousness of humanity. This relates to us individuals much as our identity relates to the cells of our body. It survives our death and change, integrates our experience, transcends our function, and has a personal relationship with us. See: archetype of Christ.
Although people generally think of Christ as an historical figure, Christ is never that – even though pictures and paintings depict Christ as a human being. That is because we have been taught that Jesus and Christ are the same person. But it clearly says that when Jesus was baptised something immense happened to him. “Now when all the people were baptised, it came to pass, that Jesus also was baptised – of John in Jordan – and praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven which said, ‘Thou art my beloved Son: in thee I am well pleased.’ (Luke 3:21-22).”
It tells us that the heavens opened and something from the cosmos entered Jesus and transformed him into having Christ Consciousness. For Christ was an aspect of Godness and had always existed. It is easier to see it rather like our growth. When we were babies we grew and entered another level of awareness and ability called childhood. Later another huge change entered us and we became adolescents – again with a different mental and emotional state. Many people have attained the change of Christ consciousness. It is a further stage of human growth. As an example Siddartha became the Buddha when he experienced such a great change. In different languages this change has different names such as Krishna Consciousness. It might shock some people to see Christ linked with Buddha and Krishna – if so you have a lot of growing to do and if you do you too can enter Christ consciousness.
As a dream symbol he depicts powerful influences acting upon your personality. For a start, Christianity is a huge social and political force in the world. Many of us as children are educated to accept its beliefs or we meet its influence in one way or another. Therefore Christ in our dreams often depicts this enormous influence and how we relate to it.
Christ can also be a very potent compensatory symbol. Events can be either pleasurable or painful. As children, and often as adults, we are largely at the mercy of events as to whether our life is experienced as painful or pleasurable. If we are lonely or depressed for instance, we may read a book, go out with a friend or watch a film, stimulating feelings that displace or compensate for the loneliness or despair. In many dreams the figure of Christ is used to compensate for what may be felt as crushing or defeating life circumstances or inner despair. Such compensation may be used to deal with things missing from your life, such as a sexual partner or social achievement.
But the hidden and miraculous power that caused you to grow, that heals and supports if you open to it, is also often shown as Christ. But the highest of these is that Christ in our dreams can be the Highest in us. It is the potential you hold within you that has not been allowed to flower. It is the very best of what you are, not some distant possibility that you have to get from outside yourself. See Meetings with Christ.
“Such a myth, however, consists of symbols that have not been invented consciously. They have happened. It was not the man Jesus who created the myth of the god-man. It existed for many centuries before his birth. He himself was seized by this symbolic idea, which, as St. Mark tells us, lifted him out of the narrow life of the Nazarene carpenter.” Quoted from Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung
The early Jewish Christian group known as the Ebionites taught that the Spirit had come as Adam and later reincarnated as Jesus. Other Jewish Christian groups such as the Elkasaites and Nazarites also believed this. The Clementine Homilies, an early Christian document, also taught many incarnations of Jesus.
My take on it is that just as many people can become Buddhas also many people can become Christs. That is because just as Jesus became the Christ, so can we by evolving to the level where we too touch a universal awareness, in which all human experience is synthesised and apparent.
Useful questions:
How do I relate to the image of Christ?
Am I in conflict with it because it represents organised religion?
Is Christ an image of all that is good in my potential?
Christen Christening
Traditionally the rite of christening represented the acceptance into the community of a new being. A name was given by the parents and recognised by the community. This may still be the meaning in some dreams – an acceptance by the community and the gaining of identity.
But it may also depict a change, a new beginning. The dream process especially uses the image of water to show how the conscious personality may willingly allow the unconscious process of life to wash through consciousness and transform it. It can also suggest the acknowledgement or acceptance of a part of you that is newly emerging. This may mean that you are recognising the quality or character of that new part and naming it.
But at a deeper level still is has a far more significant meaning. For not only is it a giving of a name and acceptance by the community but it is also a giving of a soul to the child. This is because without the attention, sharing of language and the giving or the strange gift of being an identity, we would never have gain self awareness.
See: Name; baptism; bible – dreams and symbols; spiritual life in dreams; archetype of Christ.
Chrysalis
An outer inactivity, while you are inwardly going through great change. A new aspect of yourself getting ready to emerge, or sometimes a desire to retreat from the world. See: Butterfly.
Church Chapel Temple
This indicates your religious feelings or beliefs, including the moral code you live by, or your feelings, negative or positive, about organised religion. So the church can represent the attitudes and morals you hide behind in living your life. In other words you may hold back your own longings and need by using ideas of right or wrong, and imposed rules and concepts such as sin. On the other hand you may rebel against social norms in morality and so accept a way of life demonstrated by other rebels. Either way, this may not be who you are within yourself.
Example: Dreamt I was taking my dog Merlin for a walk. He was pulling like hell, and I was going to hit him to make him walk more calmly, but the lead broke. He ran off and played with an Alsatian dog belonging to the man who works at a nearby garage. We were all in the churchyard near my old school – St Marylebone.
Just then a woman “broke from cover”. She had been hiding by the church. She ran as if she had done something wrong, and the dogs chased and stopped her. I went to her. She explained something about me having drunk wine with her, and this had caused this reaction, as if she were on a hallucinogenic drug. We became very emotionally close then. Steve.
Steve says about this dream, “Merlin is my feelings of joyous energy and love trying to get away from the hold/leash I had always kept myself on through my moral restraints. The break is made. The man is myself working in a job beneath my capabilities as I am doing at the moment. The woman is my love, sexuality, which I felt so guilty about most of my life and hide under the cover of church/morality. This has been a life long struggle. The alcohol depicts the attitudes I use to hold back or deaden my love. But I have started releasing – and this has produced a rather confusing condition in my life after restraining myself for so many years.”
Each of us have a sense of our relationship with the forces of life within us and the world around us. A church may depict this sense and what we do with it. This is our awareness of what is holy or fundamental to all life, and therefore eternal, such as the urge to exist; the cycles of life and growth; reproduction and interdependence. So the church, or entering the church might indicate how you let this wider awareness and impulse flow into you, how you relate to it. Or it might show you opening to its influence.
The church may also represent what spiritual qualities or functions you have developed or built in your personality. By spiritual is meant those things that transcend the limitations of your body senses and identity. For instance when you care for another person you are going beyond your own personal needs and desires. This giving of yourself, or receiving from another, transcends your own limitations or boundaries. In this way the church can depict the indwelling wonder of life in each of us that we so often forget or work against.
The physical structure of the church particularly represents these inbuilt qualities.
Example: I was with several other people searching the rubble of what had been a great church. The building, recently ruined by some disaster such as an earthquake, or perhaps internal weakness, was now no more than a heap of stones. I and others searched amongst the rubble for anything that might be salvaged. Suddenly, among the stones that at one time made up a wall near the door, I found a most wonderful chalice. Its wonder was not because of any precious metal it was made of, or from artistry. It was because the stemmed cup shone with its own light, a light that never diminished. Just seeing it, being near it, produced an experience of awe and wonder.
As we took up the cup we understood that it was the emanation of this light around which the church had been built. Yet out of some fear, the chalice had been hidden in the wall of the church, and stranger yet, completely forgotten. With feelings moved by this tragedy we realised that for perhaps hundreds of years people had continued to attend the church, performing empty rituals, singing hymns, going through all the motions of worship without any direct relationship with the wonderful manifestation the divine cup gave. But now we could once more place the chalice in a place where anyone could stand in its light. For it shone on all without exception, and each of us, as we were permeated by that divine light, were transformed in some way by it.
This exceptional dream shows the dreamer looking at the ruin of organised religion that completely misses the point. Then he finds it, the light that never falters and is not caused by anything else – the eternal Spirit that we can bathe in.
See: archetype of the christ; Life’s Little Secrets; compensation theory; religion and dreams.
Walking past the church: Not entering into contact with the best in us – or our rejection of dogma or what religion means to you.
What was my actual response to the abbey, and what part does that response play in my life?
Example: It was like an English Church with several great spires. The whole building seemed to be built in a white and gold design. The gold parts shimmered in the sun. I gazed at this wonderful sight for some time and felt such a wonderful feeling of upliftment, my tiredness gone. Johan E.
Example: The priest was going to question and assault my friend in connection with some opinion he had offended the church with. I went to stand near him to give him moral support, and physical help if necessary. I hated seeing anybody degraded. The priest saw my move and sent three thug type men to shoulder me out. They surrounded me to knock me down. I went berserk and knocked them all over the place with kicks and punches. John P.
In the example John sees the dogmas of the church as an assault and degradation of human qualities of love and moral support. See: prayer
If you have negative feelings about religion, then your dream may be expressing something to do with these conflicts.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What are the feelings in this dream and where do I meet them in my daily life?
What is my relationship with the church in the dream, and what does that suggest about the way I feel about religion or life?
Did I experience any sense of holiness or the divine in the dream, and if so what has it left me with?
Try using Easy Dream Understanding – Being the Person or Thing
Cigar Cigarette
In some ways smoking a cigarette is like drinking alcohol. This is because it has a mind altering or consciousness altering influence. Like alcohol it changes the way we feel or respond to life, and inhibits anxiety while stimulating alertness. So it can depict our dependence upon the drug to deal with our anxiety or lack of confidence. See: alcohol.
Because of this dependent link, the cigarette is sometimes shown as a friend, a helper to meet stress.
Cigarettes also now link with taking into oneself something that is a danger to health. In a dream this might point to actual absorption of cigarette smoke, or of subtle but harmful atmospheres or attitudes in those around you. Of course it may associate with feelings or fears about cancer. If this is so it could be linked with a great deal of suppressed anxiety, as in the following dream. It has shown to lessen the chances of a woman becoming pregnant. See Infertility causes of.
Example: I am a regular smoker. I often wake 3 or 4 times a night dreaming I have dropped my cigarette. I wake and frantically search everywhere, turn the lights on and often cannot go back to sleep. I don’t realise it’s a dream at the time, so think I have really dropped one. How can I stop this? ‘The Marlbro man!’
This dream is not simply about smoking, but about a life threatening situation.
Smoking with someone suggests a link, a connection, maybe conditioned by or made possible by mutual dependence on the drugged reduction of anxiety. It can therefore sometimes represent sexual relatedness. In this way the cigarette might depict penis or genital sex.
If you are now smoking an electronic cigarette, the n the health risk has gone, but the dependence might still be a factor.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Can I recognise the cigarette as a dangerous means of deadening anxiety and difficult feelings – and could I find less dangerous ways of doing this?
Is there any sign of being in a clique or special group in the dream, and does this happen in my waking life?
Are there health fears shown in the dream, and if so what can I understand from them?
See Talking As – Being the Person or Thing
Cinema
Films often portray on the screen elements of our own inner world, with its fantasies, fears, trauma and passions. Looking at the screen is like looking at a mirror in which you see portrayed your own inner life and drama. Therefore the cinema can depict any of these aspects of yourself. 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.
Example: I’m watching a film or video taken from a helicopter, I suppose, of a city skyscraper all the way up to the roof where a singer – maybe an opera singer – is performing, singing to the sky in an evening dress. The “camera” passes over her and continues, showing the tops of other high buildings. Now I’m in a car on a hill – it’s night, been night all along – and I’m crying because I’m afraid to go up that high. I couldn’t do what the singer was doing. The person I’m with hugs and consoles me. Alta
Here Alta is meeting her own fears and recognises them as factors that limit how ‘high’ she can go in life.
Example: When I looked at the film it was a carnival going on in the street, people with gay clothing and crowds watching. Two girls were going to sit in an old model type car, but someone said it would be better if they sat on the back of the car as they could been seen in the parade. Then I was looking into the crowd to find me and it was like looking at a snapshot, it felt very important that I find me, I saw my green slacks just showing, right at the back of the crowd. H. K.
Here the main feature in the dream is the effort to ‘find me’. So the dreamer is watching the film in order to clarify their own self image, or find out who they are and how they relate to other people – the crowd. She was there, but at the back.
The cinema is sometimes a place of romance, of sexual contact, or fantasies about it.
Films enlarge the area of your experience, just as dreams do, so some dreams might use this image to suggest vicarious experience. Or else the horror films, and these feature in many dreams,having pu the idea of awful fears in people’s mind. But they are a good way to face ones own fears. See Facing Fear and Secrets of Power Dreaming
If we are lonely or depressed, we may read a book, go out with a friend or watch a film, stimulating feelings that displace the loneliness or despair. This ability to produce positive or different feelings is often seen in the dream process. By holding in mind an image connected with hope and love, feelings will be produced that will compensate in some measure for pain or depression we may be feeling. See Depression and Dreams
There are of course documentary films, and films that give you a new perspective on life and the world around young and the universe you live in. This type of film is a way your dream creator brings new experience and new perspectives to your awareness.
The cinema may also be a dream environment in which you can have an objective view of parts of your own personality – as if they were film characters. See: film.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What is the theme or the feelings in the film and how do they relate to me at the moment?
What is happening in the cinema, and can I find reference to that in my waking life?
Am I learning something from this film, and if so what?
See Plot of the Dream – Being the Person or Thing – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Circle Circles Circling Round
Yourself; personal identity; wholeness. It suggests a good harmony between all the aspects of your being – thus a feeling of pleasure, centeredness and openness, physical, mental and spiritual; may be used to depict the Self. It can also depict eternity; female sexuality; ‘the same dull round’ of routine suggested by Blake, in which one might be trapped if there is no alternative, depending on the content of the dream. If the circle is irregular, suggests imbalance or lack of harmony. See: ring.
Completeness, wholeness, all of the parts of our being, body, soul, spirit. It also represents the universe as a whole, harmony, symmetry. Sometimes symbolises an enclosure or restraining influence, or protection, and stands for the womb, or female sexual organs. May also represent emptiness, receptiveness, or a fertile condition. Or just yourself.
In dreams one often walks in a circle, or ploughs, or is moved in a circle. This means that one is enclosing, protecting or bringing the enclosed under the influence of the power that caused you to circle. Your circle of friends. But it can also mean searching for something or someone. Magic and teaching can occur in the circle in our dreams.
Example: To my amazement a huge living and wondrous circle appeared on the wall. It was full of movement, everything dancing in time to music. At the very centre of the circle was emptiness, nothing, a void. Yet out of this nothingness all things emerged. There were plants, animals, people, hills, rivers and mountains all coming to birth. They danced out in their own individual movement, yet each unknowingly was part of the whole wonderful and intricate dance which made a great pattern and movement in the body of the circle. All danced to the periphery and there turned and moved, still in their ballet, back to the centre. At that centre they plunged into its oblivion again. But at that very moment new life sprang from it to dance once more.
Example: I dreamt I was sitting in a circle of elders, it was cold and there was a fire. The mountains behind the oldest were purple and I could smell water. An elder to my right with very white hair in two long braids pulled out a pipe and I offered my cigarettes to him. I took one and sprinkled the tobacco in my palm and cupped my other hand underneath it. He turned from me and addressed the circle, speaking in a different language. I asked what language he was speaking and a voice in my head said “Tiwa” – it was a deep, masculine voice, and then I understood it.
“The magic circle of the fairies, the sun, the moon, a phonograph record with its diminishing grooves, a bedspring, or an ascending spiral, all may represent degrees of harmony and wholeness. A halo is an even more graphic illustration of a mandala, for it is automatically associated with saintliness. The triangle within the circle shows the same union with the divine self; for the triangle is representative of man in the earth and the circle symbolizes God. Combined, it shows wholeness of ideals and purposes.
The square indicates a balance in the material.” Quote from Dreams Your Magic Mirror.
Idioms: Go round in circles; come full circle; vicious circle; circle of influence/friends.
See: shapes and symbols.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Does this represent a figure of speech, such as: go round in circles, come full circle, circle of influence or friends, family circle and so on?
Does this suggest an enclosure or protection of some kind?
Is the dream about wholeness, or completeness?
Does it have a more spiritual meaning having to do with universal harmony?
Is there anything frightening about the circle?
Try using Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Key Words
Circumcision
This may associate with feelings either of losing some sexual power, or of cleaning the penis. But of course it may also be associated with being Jewish, or having being parented by those like Moslems or in hot countries.
As circumcision often takes place at a very early age it can link in ones experience or unconscious with enormously complex fantasies. This is because it is a pre-verbal experience and so one tends to illustrate or view such experiences through fantasy or fairy stories – perhaps mythological themes, as Freud pointed out with the Oedipus complex.
Some times the lost part of the penis is shown as a missing petrol cap, or a ‘dead end’. It may be felt as a broken penis, or there may appear a desire to ‘steal’ someone else’s penis as ones own is broken. There can be shame or a sense of inadequacy around this.
Feelings of helplessness can invade a child around such issues, and also fix a determination not to ‘let anything in’. The results are often experienced as unsuccessful sexual growth, or the inability to find peace and fulfilment in sex. But often such issue are found to have many connections with other infant or childhood events and traumas. See
If you dream of circumcision and you are not circumcised then it has the general meaning as explained above, and of cutting off your sexual feelings and drives.
But in recent times I feel the reason circumcision was used in the past has been revealed, for in Africa it was made necessary to stop the passing on of AIDs. The foreskin is in fact a natural harborer of bacteria.
Female circumcision is usually about feelings of guilt, shame, or suppression of healthy sexual urges.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Am I facing difficulties or struggles regarding sexual feelings or performance at the moment – and if so what are those struggles about?
Do I repress my sexual feelings, or feel shame about them?
Are there strange fantasies I have about sex and sexual organs – if so what is their underlying theme?
Try looking at Children’s Traumatic Fears – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Background