Posts Tagged ‘dreaming’
Cockerel
Warning, aggressiveness, masculinity, male sex organ. See: Birds.
A male or the male sexual characteristics; confidence. This can signify feelings of being a strutting proud male. It is often used in dreams to indicate maleness, as opposed to the hen as the female. Cockerels fighting can point to feelings about two men fighting, or family conflicts. Hen and cockerel fighting is about a male and female fight, or power struggle.
Observation or cockerels in their natural surroundings show them to be very protective of the hens and the chicks.
Example: I am in a big crowd of people when I see a large cockerel and a bright yellow canary, but the canary is the same size as the cockerel. The birds start to fight but almost immediately the cockerel overpowers the canary by forcing his head into the canary’s and tries to rip his tongue out. The canary is suffocating and helpless. I become hysterical and start shouting ‘It’s humiliating, somebody stop it.’ My panic becomes worse because nobody else seems at all concerned by what is going on. At this point I always wake.
The dreamer is in the passive role. She feels humiliated and helpless and wishes for somebody else to change the conflict she is experiencing. In this dream there are many options open to her. She could imagine herself stepping forward and parting the birds. She could imagine the canary fighting back. She could imagine the contest stopping, the canary being equal to the cockerel, and seeing the birds mate. She could have a cat come in and kill them -both. But the question is – what would most satisfy her? See – Secrets of Power Dreaming
Example: A large cockerel was amongst them and to my amused pleasure began immediately to chase the hens. They all ran madly away. My father was there now and said the chickens wouldn’t lay with that chicken chasing them. I said it wasn’t a chicken that a cockerel, and they would soon calm down. My mother now came. I said the chickens would stop running eventually because the cockerel was bigger than they. She said, no, it wasn’t the size, but the manner and attitude of his approach. She meant it caused an instinctive responses them.
When I explored the dream I realised that of course I am a cockerel that is inwardly a chicken. I am chicken because I won’t see my own homosexuality. I am chicken because I have made myself a passive female. My mother says it is not the size, its the – inner – attitude. Of course, my inner attitude, as a chicken, is changing. I am the size of a cockerel, but with the soul of a chicken – female. Brian’s series of dreams and his work on them graphically depict what has already been said, that sex is not simply an isolated part of our being.
Sex is intimately connected in the dreamers life, with his self image whether he is a hen or a cockerel; with his relationships, with his mother and father and with his philosophy of life, in which he needs to see sex not as a goal in itself but as a basic pleasure enjoyed for its own sake.
Example: Lying in the road in front of me was a dead chicken, eaten to its bones by maggots and ants. There were sinews and some feathers left. I noticed that as I moved, the head of the dead chicken appeared to look in the direction of my movement. At this point I had the impression the chicken was now gradually taking on flesh again – coming alive once more. Andrew – Southampton
Useful Questions and Hints:
What attitude is the cockerel expressing?
What is the cockerel doing that relate to me?
What is the rest of the dream indicating about the bird?
See Being the Person or Thing – Talking As – Reptilian Brain
Coffee
Many drinks represent a stimulus similar to alcohol, with its property of changing the way you feel and how you act. They release energy, emotions, change feelings, and can thus be associated with spirit. An invisible power, or the power behind human growth, that changes our experience of things. Coffee may also represent sociability, friendship, the giving of affection. See: Alcohol.
Mostly it represents feelings about social ritual, about informal sharing and being stimulated. Coffee is a energizing drug, something that literally changes the brain activity, so alters the way you feel. In this way it is similar to alcohol, though with a different action – an upper instead of a downer. So sometimes it is used in dreams to show an influence that changes the way you feel or relate to life or stimulates you.
Some people refer to coffee as their ‘friend’. As a symbol in a dream, it might therefore be depicting you achieving a feeling of ease, and the ability to better meet what is in front of you.
Other feelings people associate with coffee is illustrated when they call it ‘juice’. This is a word used in the US for electricity, and suggests personal energy and the power to do things they might not do as easily without coffee.
Coffee, however much you are used to it, interferes with your depth of sleep. It isn’t that you don’t sleep, but the depth is not the same. So you are more restless and wake needing the next cup of coffee to get you going. So some dreams may be pointing to coffee in a way to tell you what it is doing to your health or well being. See the following dream:
Example: I walk into my dining room (this shows that the area of concern is food intake). In the middle of the floor is a chicken brooder shaped like a very large coffee pot. On top of the pot is a smoking cigarette. All of the baby chicks die. I feel sad about the dying chicks.
That cup of Joe that gets us up in the morning to perform our secular duties, it says a lot considering what many of us are forced or coerced to do for a living.
While many attribute coffee’s vice-like hold on their physiology to its caffeine content, there is much more going on than a fixation on a stimulant. Its been known for over a quarter of a century that coffee contains a compound with powerful opiate-like properties and which is found within both caffeinated and decaffeinated forms. The average cup of coffee contains five times the amount needed for what is known as the half maximal effective concentration (ED50), which is a measure of a drug’s potency indicating a response halfway between the baseline and maximum. The ‘narcotic’ properties of coffee are no doubt due to a complex interplay between a wide range of compounds, but at least one compound has been identified that is responsible for increasing the release of our own opioids within the body: namely, cafestrol, a diterprene found within the oil of coffee, known to have potent pain-killing properties.
Coffee is also a ‘brain-booster’ and contains a compound called trigonelline which both stimulates the release of dopamine (not unlike cocaine), and stimulates neurite outgrowth, which involves the extension of dendrites and axons in neurons and which may compensate and rescue damaged neuronal networks in the aging brain. One of the greatest nutrition philosophers of all time, Rudolf Hauschka, described coffee’s affect on our body-mind as follows:
Coffee makes us more aware of our bodily structure. And since this structure is so wise and logical, our thoughts become logical in their awareness of it. Coffee thus helps thinking to find a firm foundation. The connection between bodily being and thinking, keeps calling itself to our attention. Coffee has the same effect on digestion that thought has on our upper man, i.e., a properly ordered metabolism goes hand in hand with orderly thinking. Both are founded on a properly ordered physical structure.” Rudolf Hauschka, Nutrition: A Holistic Approach
Coffee is also one of the only sources of “bitters” remaining in the sweet-fixated Western diet, which sadly comes with a certificate of guarantee that the bearer will likely develop type 2 diabetes, heart disease or cancer at some point in their life. Could the extreme bitterness of coffee be the reason why it has been repeatedly shown to reduce type 2 diabetes risk, as it is one of the only ways we can balance out the highly inappropriate excesses of carbohydrate in our modern dietary configuration? We don’t normally think of grains as sweet, but they are on the glycemic index. Puffed rice, for instance, can make the blood sweeter than white sugar which is why carbs are known as “crouching diabetes, hidden sugar.” Coffee contains a wide range of blood-glucose and insulin sensitizing compounds, making it an ideal complement to a carbohydrate-deranged diet.
40 million Americans are estimated to be chronically ill with sleep disorders. Few people recognise their condition and its cause however. Signs of it are chronic tiredness; needing constant stimulants to keep going during the day; constant falling asleep during work, talks, driving, inability to wake easily in the morning. As sleep plays an equally important part in healthy long life as nutrition and exercise, it is important to assure its quality. If our pattern and quality of sleep is disturbed, we may fail to notice the influence of such drinks as coffee, tea, chocolate and alcohol, all of which disturb sleep.
Coffee grounds: Waste product, something left over from what you have been doing or your way of life and relationship. Sometimes this refers to stuff your body sees as waste to discharge or clear. But it may link directly with what you do to yourself to gain artificial stimulation .
Coffee tipped on you: Could mean someone is “dumping” on you.
Coffee shop: Meeting of minds and feelings or a time of rest and perhaps review. Being open with someone. Something is being offered – what is it – what feelings or involvement does it ask or give? In some dreams it reflects the satisfaction of a desire and a time of pleasure – coffee and doughnuts.
Drinking coffee: This depends very much on the surrounding atmosphere and events of the dream. It is usually about being sociable and maybe communicative – but sometimes it shows an attempt to wake up or become alert.
Offering, being offered or sharing coffee: Friendship, intimacy, what you thirst for or desire.
Idioms: coffee talk; wake up and smell the coffee.
Useful Questions and Hints:
The dream of the coffee pot brooder links coffee with the illness of the chicks – what does my dream link coffee with?
What am I feeling in the dream about the coffee?
What are the surrounding feelings and atmosphere?
Try using Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – The power of Habits
Coffin
This is nearly always a reminder of one’s own mortality. So it often points to your thoughts and feelings about death, as these are often in the background of our mind, and dreaming of a coffin suggests you may be exploring how you relate to death. (i.e. are you at ease with it, do you understand it as an integral part of life, or are you still feeling fear or a belief it is the final end of everything?) The coffin might also be showing you the death of a part of yourself – a hope, feelings about a relationship, things lost and buried in your earlier years. See Dreaming of Death.
Seeing your own coffin in a dream has several possible meaning. The first is obviously to do with feelings and thoughts about death as described above. The second is to do with a reminder that there is an end to your life, so live fully and daringly now. Do and be now with those you love what is in you to do. This sometimes means that you have buried your real self and need to really come alive. The third is that you have a presentiment of your own death and the dream is preparing you. Soemtimes people want to see what their funeral will be like.
If you are in the coffin, apart from what has been said above, it might also show you feeling trapped in a life situation, feeling you have no future and life is like a death. At such times you need to let old parts of you, old attitudes and fears really die, as such dreams suggest a great change and a resurrection into a new way of life – almost a return to the womb.
If the coffin is linked with someone you know, Sometimes it may show a hidden desire to get them out of your life, or perhaps worries about the health of the person, or fear of losing them. This includes the death of a relationship and the feelings of loss, or one’s feelings about the death of someone such as husband. If it is the coffin of someone dead, it can also be a link with their influence in your life now they are dead, or if it is a parent, it can stand for the influence of family traditions in your present life.
Example: My father died when I was 3 – 1973. I recently dreamt I was carrying my fathers coffin at his funeral. On the way to the church I dropped the coffin and the lid fell off exposing his face at the advanced stage of decomposition. I replaced the lid so as not to grieve my mother further. But I followed my father’s spirit into the gaps of the coffin. Rosina.
What Rosina’s dream shows is that because we all need a relationship with a male figure f to fully mature from childhood, and Rosina missed this, she is figuratively carrying his dead body around with her to deal with what she missed in life. The dream shows how she is ready to actually progress in the relationship and marks a turning point in the way you will relate to males. The lid is coming off because those old feelings that are not healthy any more are being exposed. The dream says she is trying not to disturb her mother, so may be ‘putting the lid’ on those feelings again.
Example: I am sitting in a large comfortable room when my husband comes in and starts to take off his overcoat. The garden outside is full of flowers so it seems to be summer. As I turn to greet him I see his dead body lying in an open coffin between us. My husband starts talking of our plans for the following day. Pointing to the coffin, I say, “Yes, but we must do something about this first. We can’t leave it here much longer.” My husband goes close to the coffin, takes a long look at the body, his own, says, “Yes, we must. It is beginning to smell.” There the dream ends. I wake up feeling very sad and haunted. I can’t forget it. My husband died over eight years ago. Mrs P.M.
The dream is clearly pointing to the negative feelings of loss that Mrs PM is still carrying around inside her that she needs to deal with. The garden – her potential for growth – is full of colour and possibilities, so she can actually move on.
In some dreams, death, caves, underground, tombs or coffins often appear together. The living process in us – life itself – is fully acquainted with life and death, birth and resurrection. They are all fundamental processes of life in its fullness. We pass through them all while still living in the body at certain times. Such times are usually when great inner or outer change is occurring, perhaps when we have lost something or someone important to us, or have left behind a way of life or work, or a period of ones life such as parenthood. Thus the coffin can also depict these processes of death and rebirth.
Putting a coffin in the ground is in some ways like planting a seed. Within ourselves the fruit of that person’s life, or of our own past, can now emerge in a new way, shorn of its old forms. See: burial; funeral; tomb.
Example: When I was 17 I met a guy and quickly became involved. I met his grandfather only a couple of times during our relationship before he passed. He had raised my boyfriend, he had only sons and grandsons.. Never had there been born a girl in their bloodline. About six months after we started dating, his grandfather died. I went to the funeral with my boyfriend. Shortly after I had a very vivid dream of the funeral. As I walked to the casket to view the body, the grandfather raised up looked me right in the eyes and said, ” You take care of my baby girl.” The next week we found out we were pregnant. I did give the first girl born to that bloodline!
Useful Questions and Hints:
How am I feeling about the coffin, and what does this suggest about my relationship with death or the person in the coffin?
Is this connecting me with something of myself that died recently or in the past?
Is there a suggestion here of my connection with the long past, my ancestors – their bones – and how it influences my present life?
See Near Death Experiences – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Coin
Sometimes a coin has similar symbolism to circle – your wholeness. This may represent something you value, so can have a very wide significance. For instance two gold coins, in one person’s dream represented his twin sons, who were of great value to him.
Anything to do with money may suggest worries about finance, or an intuition of good fortune.
If the money is dirty, it may be a suggestion that you are living beneath your best motives, earning money in a grubby way. Because we call loose money change in English, sometimes the coins might represent change in your life – small changes.
But money is also energy. We get it usually by working, and so it stands in the place of work energy sometimes. So holding on to coins shows you holding yourself back, holding on to what you could let flow in your life. See: money.
Coins have two sides: Occasionally this is the point made in the dream, showing how the dual nature of life – the inner the outer, life and death – are actually only one thing without duality. See You Are Dual
Coins as jewellery: Coins have often been strung together to form a necklace or bangle, and in many cultures personal wealth was worn in this way. To find or dig up such a necklace of coins suggest the uncovering within yourself or your life things of great value, of abilities or talents, often from the long past. Such influence often comes in the form of new abilities arising, or as intuitive awareness of how to respond to certain situations or relationships in your life. So they can be links with what is usually the hidden side of life.
As simple jewellery that is not ancient, they suggest richness of character that is obvious to others and expressed in the way you live.
Example: I was the top of a hill on my knees digging in the earth with my right hand. It was fairly easy. I pulled up what felt like coins, and found they were all joined together, forming something one could wear. This was in the form of a necklace from which ran a long loop from one edge to the other, perhaps reaching fairly well below the breasts. There were coins set a little way apart all around this loop. Then in between there were two connections from coins going down in a V to a single line that connected with the bottom of the loop. From this single line, and the coins on it, there were connections to the coins on the loop, reaching low on the trunk.
The coins, or really, medallions, were shining silver, depicting Christian or ancient saints and martyrs. It was, I knew in the dream, like a rosary, which one could use in prayer. But instead of just the Ave Maria’s, and the Our Father’s, all the other saints were included. Thus it was a very comprehensive guide to prayer. Some of the silvered chains between the coins were missing, but these had been mended with something else. The shape of it suggests the sign of the cross people make on their body. But it shows the right way to do this is first touching the brow, then to two breasts, then down to the genitals – the real sources of power. Richard.
Digging up coins: Can suggest uncovering something of value in yourself, perhaps a talent or ability you were led to bury, or ignore, in the past. Sometimes such coins point to abilities of things of value that are emerging in your present life from the long past. Occasionally such coins need to be cleaned, suggesting you have issues to deal with, karma to work out, before the talents or value from the past can be really used in the present.
Money suggests energy too, so the buried coins may point to energy or personal potential that may have been buried or repressed at some time.
Dropping coins into water: Is an ancient way of giving a sacrifice – a wishing well effect. We give to the unseen powers of life in order to either say thank you, or ask a blessing/wish.
Finding coins: Has in it not only a sense of finding things potentially valuable, and therefore allowing you more possibilities in life, but also at times confronts you with possessiveness, ownership, or sharing.
Foreign coins: Are showing things that are valuable but not at the moment transferable into the potential energy they represent. So you need to ask yourself how you can extract their value.
If the money is dirty: It may be a suggestion that you are living beneath your best motives, earning money in a grubby way that your inner feelings suggest you avoid.
Making coins: Might indicate that you are creating something of value out of basic materials.
Putting coins in a vending machine: Is a little bit like throwing a coin in a wishing well. But here we are giving something to get something – or hoping to get something. So the emphasis is on giving to get – hopes and expectations.
Tarnished coin; Depicts something valuable or interesting that has long been forgotten or not recognised in yourself or in your life events.
Idioms: To coin a phrase; serious coin.
Useful Questions and Hints:
If I have just found the coin or coins, what am I aware of recently entering my life that is of value?
What am I doing with the coin(s), and what does this suggest about the way I use my energy or talents?
If I am spending the coin, what is it I am seeking by this transaction or sacrifice?
Try using Spiritual Life In Dreams – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Old valuable coins: These could depict deeply important memories held within yourself about inherited wisdom from your family, maybe even past lives. See: Bank; Money.
Cold Coldness
Often used in a dream to show how we or someone holds back any warmth or acknowledgment. Therefore it often indicates held back emotions, feeling abandoned, without love or hope and having no emotional warmth, or experiencing fear. This can link with an inward, lethargic, introspective attitude.
In some dreams it suggests feeling neglected or ‘left out in the cold’, and occasionally appears in dreams connected with feelings about death.
Cold flesh is about the lack of sexual or emotional warmth and the living flow of feelings and ease with oneself or others.
Cold spell: This is a term when from warm weather the temperature suddenly drops, and in a dream suggests that the warm feelings you had about someone or life have suddenly ‘chilled’ – or that you are in an environment in which people are cold to you. The following dream illustrates this shift of temperature and also the conflict and death (of love or feelings) that can be associated with coldness.
Example: There’s solid ice and snow all around. Everything is solid white. I’m blinded by the white ice and snow, I feel cold, I’m shivering and I think I’m close to death. Then all of a sudden a huge hand reaches out and grabs me. I recognize the hand. I stare at it for a few minutes. Then I grab the hand. I recognize the hand as the man I have just started to date. What does this dream mean? I’m confused about my relationship with this man, confused about my feelings…
Feeling cold: Suddenly feeling cold, or shivering with cold can be an expression of conflict or avoidance, even fear. When we pull back from something emotionally, or are frightened of our own inner feelings, we often experience a temperature drop, and possible sudden tiredness. It often happens when we are opening to the action life within us, but are in conflict about allowing it. See Life’s Little Secrets
Idioms: catch a cold; cold comfort; cold shoulder; cold storage; cold turkey; cold feet; in cold blood; cold call; cold refreshing; cold murderous rage; cold sweat; left out in the cold; out cold; throw cold water on it.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Can I see any sign of coldness in my waking life – and if so what is it about?
Am I cold, or is someone else cold in the dream?
If the surroundings are cold, can I see there is not much warmth in my environment at the moment?
Try using – Easy Dream Understanding – Being the Person or Thing – Talking As
Collision
This may be telling you that a conflict of opinions, direction or feelings with another person, or that careless behaviour leading to problems in relationship is happening. See car
In some cases collisions are purposeful. It might be the only way to meet or make contact with someone, or it might be a test to see how you will react.
The collision may also be between parts of your own nature, such as your feelings and your intellect – your body and your way of life – your unconscious and your conscious self – your masculine and feminine principles. There are usually hints in the dream as to what it is you are in conflict or on a collision course with. The collision can express an internal conflict arising form a traumatic incident some time in your life – a conflict between loving and avoiding love for instance – avoiding because it was so painful in the past.
Many ‘collisions’ occur between the generations. Adolescent’s often run smack bang into as they make a break for independence and identity.
If this is a dream showing your collision with a car or other vehicle, it is probably depicting your driving or a collision with another person, such as a break in the relationship. But it is worth thinking it might be a warning and so see the following example:
Example: I dreamed my godson had been killed in an automobile accident involving other teenagers. I told him about it and exacted his promise that he would pray for protection every time he got into a car, no matter who was driving.
A month later he and his girl friend were passengers in a car driven by a friend. They were involved in a minor accident on the Hollywood freeway. While the owner of the car was fetching flares out of the trunk, my godson had a sense of immediate danger. Seizing his date by the hand, he ran with her to safety. About two seconds later, a speeding car crashed into the other boy and smashed his car. An eleven-car pileup resulted, sending five people to the hospital. His friend lost his leg, but my godson escaped injury. Quoteds from Dreams Your Magic Mirror by Elsie Sechrist.
See: Car
Therefore in any dreams that appear as predictions ask for help in prayer.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Does this collision show any signs of a power struggle, or a struggle for domination?
Is it a male or female I collide with, and is this reflected in my life I any way?
What attitudes are involved in the collision, what outcome, and what can I learn from this?
See Secrets of Power Dreaming – Associations Working With – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Colours – Colors
To quickly find the description of the colour click on it below.
Red
Burgundy
Orange
Yellow
Green
Blue
Violet
Black
Brown
Grey
Pink
Purple
White
In many dreams where colour predominates there is usually strong feelings as in the example. This suggests colours depict our emotions and feeling tones. Where a dreamer is largely intellectual or out of touch with their feelings, the colour would stand in the place of the emotion, instead of alongside it as with S.C.
White is the most frequently mentioned colour in the collection of dreams used for this book. Black is next, then blue.
Example: ‘I was standing in a very beautifully carved chapel or religious place. There seemed to be shadowy nun or monk like figures around. But it was the exquisite colouring of the place which filled me with a sort of ecstasy. Everything was in the most delicate shell pink.’ S. C.
red Even where red appears quite casually in a dream, as with the hat in the example, there is frequently fear, screaming, horror or a sense of danger in the same dream. Red also represents ones basic emotions, earthy nature, and sexuality. In this sense it depicts your strength or vitality and your down to earth health and power. But because of the modern association with traffic lights and warnings such as brake lights on cars, it may sometimes be used as a warning, or a way of saying ‘stop’ or ‘no’.
Example: These men were throwing a big red rubber ball into a field, and if we didn’t catch it, we would get shot.
Example: ‘An old woman with a very pink, lined face, and wearing a clashing red hat, knelt close to my face. The woman leaned forward to poke my hand, and I recoiled, screaming myself awake.’ Joy S.
From findings concerning early humans we know that the colour red, and substances such as red ochre, played a large and important part in their life. In Africa red ochre was, and still is, called the ‘blood of the earth’ and is used in rituals to do with death and renewal. Because red is connected with blood and blood’s obvious link with health, being alive, and the process of childbirth in women, ochre and the colour red were and still are, often used in healing practices. Red wine is also seen as blood in the magical rituals of the church and other groups. See: blood under body; blood under archetypes; wine.
A recent research team of U.S. and German scientists found that the colour red influences the way people function. It reduces the ability to perform well at whatever task they are doing. University of Rochester and University of Munich researchers reported that even if people being tested were aware of even a hint of red, their performance would be reduced in quality to a significant degree. University of Rochester psychology Professor Andrew Elliot, head of the research, said people associate the colour red with mistakes and failures.
Less frequently: Red can link with blood; menstruation; the biological life force; conception; reproduction; death. The sun. Also war and sacrifice. It is often seen in red clothes and lips as a sign of great sensual attraction. Red wine as a symbol of blood and it holiness – holy because it represents a symbol of the human spirit. This is most likely due to its method of production. The separate ‘lives’ of thousands of grapes were squashed so their life blood would pour into a common vat. This then underwent a magical transformation by yeast which turned it into alcohol. The connection here is that people who have a direct experience of God or of the spirit, experience it as a unification of all that has lived and is living. The experience of countless human lives has been linked and transformed into a vast sea of wisdom and heightened awareness. It is this we ‘drink’ when we touch our own union with the ocean of awareness that is our spirit.
Pale pink: Baby feelings; gentle love; weakness.
Red and grey often appear together: Emotions connected with depression or lack of motivation and pleasure.
Red brick building: Homeliness; warmth.
Red clothes or motif: Sexuality; passion; strong emotions.
Red earth: Fertility; richness; the healing power of the body; the collective memory of past human struggles and discoveries which we now inherit as personal or social skills, or ease of performance of things that would have been difficult or impossible for our ancestors.
Red eyes: This usually suggests feelings or fears about sickness or being irrational or deeply emotional.
Red face: Anger; high emotion; illness .
Red hair: Passionate thoughts, angry ideas, great energy like a fire. See: hair.
Red flowers: Love; passion; dangers of passion.
Red furniture or decor; Plush: richness; comfort.
Rose pink: Love, as one might give to a child.
Idioms: paint the town red; redneck; see red; in the red; red carpet; red letter day; red light district; red faced; red handed; red tape; run a red light.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Are there signs of powerful emotions in the rest of the dream – if so what am I feeling passionate or emotional about?
Is there a warning of danger here, or a message to stop – if so what does that apply to in my life?
Do I feel in any way connected to the earth, to the spirit of nature or life in this dream – if so what does that tell me?
See Being the Person or Thing – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Meetings with Christ
burgundy The colour burgundy is like red earth, but richer and deeper. It feels to me like the wonder of discovering the deeps within you. It is a mood of deep receptivity and quiet.
orange Blending or balance of emotions and intellect. Orange is a blend of red and yellow, and as such much refines the basic instinctual energy or red with the life giving yellow. So it is often used to indicate refined or transformed sexuality or urges, and perhaps greater wisdom. Its link with fruits such as oranges and apricots also might link it with fruitfulness. It therefore suggests health and energy along with a calm mind. Also with warmth and easy feelings
Orange can also indicate heat or warmth, and so can mean you feel energised, or a warning of getting overheated or burnt depending on the dream.
Some people call some shades of red orange, so occasionally there might be a difference in terminology.
Because some people and cats have orange hair, the colour might at times refer to a particular person or feelings about an animal. In my database of dreams orange cats are referred to again and again, and probably depict the female energy or a vivacious personal trait.
Sometimes: Warmth; religious feelings or insight. In some reams when it is an object coloured orange it suggest something flashy, outrageous or quirky.
Brownish orange: This suggests health problems or a lowering of energy and clarity.
Orange hair: Warm or life giving thoughts or ideas – or reminder of a particular person you know with that colouring. See: hair.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What am I feeling in the dream about the colour, and where do I find those feelings in waking life?
What past associations and memories do I have with orange, and do they throw light on the dream?
Where does the orange appear – clothing, objects or body? In whatever context, look up how it relates to the clothing or body part, etc.
See Associations Working With – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
yellow Depending on the context in the dream, yellow can link with lightness of feeling; intuition; hopefulness for the future; a clear intellect or extroversion. Because it is a colour associated with shining, it may indicate your innermost wisdom shining out – especially if you are dressed in bright yellow.
On the negative side it can suggest cowardice, jealousy, caution or quarantine. So in some dreams it is linked with sickness or some form of inner illness, or a warning that something is not right.
Yellow roses are used to depict friendship without sexual love, or a love that is not leading to partnership.
Because the action of light tends to fade colours, you find the word yellowing or yellowed used to describe an ageing process, or something that is old. So in some dreams it would indicate a sense of something being old, worn or perhaps fragile. In The Great Gatsby, Scott Fitzgerald used yellow to represent moral decay decadence and death.
Corn and sun dried landscapes are yellow, and so in a dream can indicate feelings of content, fruitfulness and richness of spirit. As the sun is thought of as yellow the colour also depicts life giving and warming influences or attitudes, of the expression of your own life flow.
Yellow also links with gold, its ability to remain untarnished and its precious quality. So if yellow in your dream has any of these associations it would link with what is of great value and abilities in you.
In some forms of meditation yellow also signifies a shift in awareness, or a change in the way you sense things.
Cream Gentle relaxed feelings. Cream softens the impact of yellow, so suggests, as with cream clothes or furnishings, an easy, quiet feeling, friendship and relaxation rather than sexual excitement and youthful exuberance.
Yellow-green is sometimes associated with lies or deceit, or even sickness.
Muddy Yellow: This might indicate toxins in your body, and therefore lowered energy and poor health. But it can also suggest lack of clarity in your thoughts and feelings, and therefore depressed thoughts and confusion.
Yellow Orange: Energetic and clear feelings and thoughts. This might also lead to feelings of warmth in connection with others.
Idioms: yellow belly; a yellow streak
Useful Questions and Hints:
What of the many associations with yellow does my dream suggest?
Is this a radiant dream, suggesting the expression of my own inner life in a positive way?
Is there any link with age or decay in the dream, pointing to something in me that is outworn?
See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Prayer and Dream Interpretation
green Most of the plant kingdom is green, and so many dreams use it to depict something in that you is connected with growth, potential for growth, or capability of fruition and regeneration. A green living thing might emerge from apparently lifeless earth, suggesting a new living direction or feeling is emerging in your life.
These positive associations are linked in some dreams with healing or positive change, and green is often found mentioned in dreams about heaven.
The negative associations are with envy or jealousy. Also when things go mouldy they often go green, and slime or infected mucous is green, so at times green may mean something is bad or likely to undermine your health or positive feelings.
Many growing things are green before they ripen or flower, so green might also suggest not yet being ripe or lacking experience.
Because traffic lights use green as a ’go’ sign, in some dreams it can suggest a positive yes to decisions or directions you are taking.
There is an obscure but sometimes relevant connection for people who are working to unfold their inner qualities. The green leaves of plants are instrumental in allowing light to become the energy in transforming the mineral forces of the earth into living tissue. So in some dreams the green is used to show how your own process of opening to the forces of Light and Life are transforming your lower or less conscious levels of self into greater consciousness and expression. In all it is about transformation.
Sometimes a dream snake is green, and this shows the possibility of great inner growth, healing and change, depending upon your relationship with the snake. See: snake.
Example: In my dream I was watching a fern grow. It was small but opened very rapidly. As I watched I became aware that the fern was an image representing a process occurring within myself, one I grew increasingly aware of as I watched. Then I was fully lucid in my dream and realised that my dream, perhaps any dream, was an expression in images of actual events occurring unconsciously in myself. I felt enormous excitement, as if I were witnessing something of great importance. Francis P.
Breaking through the imagery in this way to the processes and possibilities underlying dreams is a royal road to discovering your own innate talents. You can transform negative memories and habits, and use your creativity to deal with real life events. Jon describes such a transforming experience.
Example: I met a man who seemed to be something of an adept or master; a source of Caucasian white guru type. At first I understood his name to be Faser Dan Li. Then gradually it became Father Li. This I understood to represent fatherly and the name of Faser Dan Li to mean faster than light. Anyway, this guru figure took me into very large greenhouses. Stretching away into the distance tiny seedlings were growing, most of them about four inches in height. As I watched some youths drove in on cross-country motorbikes and roared around the place. Faser Dan Li did nothing to prevent them. But when they had gone he looked at me and said, “Those are your emotions. They are wild and out of control. As such they could damage the tender growth of souls represented here by these little plants. Until your emotions are much more fully calmed and under control you cannot be given the keys of insight into other peoples being.”
Blue green: This indicates healing or change coming from within or from a spiritual dimension.
Dark yellow/greens: Evil intentions; growth of negative attitudes; sickness; envy; jealousy.
Greenish grey: Pessimism and lack of enthusiasm or ‘colour’ or satisfying growth in your life.
Idioms: Green fingers; green with envy or jealousy; green eyed monster; green light; green – naive.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Do I sense the feeling quality of green in the dream – is so what is it?
Am I meeting changes and personal growth or healing at this time, and in what way?
If there are negative feelings in connection with the green, what of such feelings can I note in my waking life?
See Avoid Being Victims – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Questions
Dark blues: In many women’s dreams threatening men appear dressed in dark blue or navy blue overalls. This suggests the woman is meeting her own male/animus side with anxiety. So there is a need to work with this and find a way to express your power and energy in the world. See Archetype of the Animus.
Dark blue can also suggest mature personal insights into life, or if it is a muddy or murky blue, it indicates depression, negative thoughts or intuitions, and being gloomy.
Light blues: Your sense of intuition, or achieving a wide awareness of life. Blue also links with religious feelings and experience of the holy – i.e. an awareness of those things that are universal – such as birth, caring relationship, parenthood – and so recognised as transcending ones own small life.
Light blue can also indicate coolness of nature. Often seen in visions of the womb as a blue grotto or woman with halo of blue, so connects with prenatal and infant relationship with mother.
Blue-gray: Religious feelings produced by depression, fear or gloominess.
Blue skin: Because we go blue when suffocating or having breathing difficulties, it can be used to show what a struggle we are having with life, how bruised we are with experience, or how cold we feel. But as with Krishna and his blue skin, it might show how you are being pervaded by a sense of the universal, of a wider and beautiful life.
Blue-green: Healing or the ability to heal arising form attunement to the forces transcending your own limited awareness.
Blue-violet: Great attunement with insights and powers transcending normal human ability.
Idioms: the air was blue; baby blues; blue film; blue funk; blue in the face; blue moon; bolt from the blue; once in a blue moon; blue pencil; blue stocking; feel blue; out of the blue; vanish into the blue; blue-blood; true-blue.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What do I feel when I hold this colour in mind, and where is that feeling or association fitting into my life at the moment?
Am I feeling tuned into a wider view of things at the moment, and if so what am I realising?
Am I feeling blue – or do I feel like blue skies are here?
See Associations Working With – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Introduction to Dreams
Violet: This colour mostly appears in dreams where the dreamer has a deep sense of one’s awareness of the cycles of Life and the life that includes but stretches beyond the body. It may also include intuitive awareness or universal love. A wisdom arising from an extended awareness. See Wider awareness
You are probably sensitive, appreciative, and well-rounded person. You have high qualities and are devoted and rich in inner understanding. Often a spiritual leader of some kind in a quiet unobtrusive way.
The flower violet suggests shyness, quiet beauty, perhaps a passive quietness, as suggested by the idiom, a shrinking violet.
Useful questions:
What are my immediate feelings and associations with this colour?
What feelings were linked with this colour in the dream, and what do I gather from those feelings?
Have I been thinking on or feeling things to do with the spiritual dimension of life – if so what?
Indigo – violet: This depends a great deal on what you associate with these colours. But suggests the deep peace that comes from being at ease with the spirit of all life.
Indigo: indicates the deep peace of the night.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What are my immediate feelings and associations with this colour?
What feelings were linked with this colour in the dream, and what do I gather from those feelings?
Have I been thinking on or feeling things to do with the spiritual dimension of life – if so what?
See Spiritual Life In Dreams – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Inner World
black This is the colour of the night, and so because it links with absence of light, opens us to what we can’t see or deal with in the dark – in what is ‘in the dark’, unconscious – within or around us. It is the experience, like sleep, in which the ego diminishes or melts back into unconsciousness, the Core Self.
This also relates to all those things you repress or avoid feeling or being aware of in yourself and life. So the dream will probably include threats of some sort, or what is unknown, hidden or avoided. So this relates to your hidden fears or past hurts that have been buried and remain unconscious. In African traditions black is the colour of night, death, excrement, and illness.
Black can depict what we feel is evil – in other words the unaccepted side of yourself, the parts of your nature you don’t want others to see, and you don’t want to admit even to yourself. It also may indicate depression, what is negative within you or from an outside influence. This includes feelings of secrecy, fear or things we fear, and anxious feelings about death. See It is vitally important – The Con About Evil – Unconscious
Things like a black animal or black vehicle usually indicate that you are dealing with feelings or fears that you have previously kept buried or repressed. Their appearance in your dream shows you are ready to meet such feelings by allowing them to be experienced and acknowledged.
Example: I dreamt last night that a black Spanish fighting bull charged me. I climbed a high wire mesh fence, like that surrounding tennis courts. There I was safe, as the Bull charged again. It charged people. I came down from the fence trying to help divert the bull’s destructiveness.
Here the dreamer is meeting sexual feelings that he had always avoided in the past and still feels threatened by. As the dream shows, he tries to avoid facing these feelings, but in the end has to deal with them. The forgetfulness or repression of parts of ones experience is very clearly shown in the next dream. See – Resistances
I felt very close to the girl. She said, “Do you remember when they made you black all over?” I said I couldn’t, and she reminded me of being a film extra, when, to cover up my bad skin, I was covered in black make-up to look like a slave. I then said, “You know, there are parts of my life I can’t remember.”
The connection in some dreams between feelings about death and the colour black are shown in the next dream.
Example: Mike is dying. He is taking care of the old folks to gain merit because he knows he may soon be joining them wherever they are. He wants to be sure that they remember him kindly. The black road (death road=death row) has been incorporated into President Bush’s speech and is declaimed as death road or death highway in some of his speeches – as in ‘we want to protect you from death road or highway’. Of course, no one believes him as everyone knows that it is impossible to save oneself from death’s road. We all have to travel it eventually.
Black also sometimes indicate what is earthy, the source of life and growth. What is hidden in the unconscious or body can be powerfully transformative. Like compost, it is full of potentially life enhancing energy. Such black or hidden things often take time to clarify. They have remained in a condition of never having been felt or known fully, and so are unclear and pre-verbal. Knowing them means gradually understanding through experiencing them, and being able to describe and integrate them. There is often a complication here in ones progress, in that consciously you may have hidden or repressed feelings or experiences, or been unwilling to accept things, anything that was not judged good or positive. In this way the so called ‘bad’ is repressed and you become one sided and lacking wholeness. Therefore meeting the ‘black’ is important. Out of this fundamental earthiness the new person – you – can become can emerge. See –The Con About Evil
Black and white: The opposites appearing together. In ourselves the good and bad coexist, and one balances the other. So this would suggest such coexistence and balancing.
Black clothes or under garments: This usually points to hidden or unconscious feelings or sexuality. Black is also associated with a priest or the clergy, so might depict a religious or moral influence in some dreams.
A person dressed in black: This may represent your shadow, or less accepted characteristics. See: shadow.
Black people: If this is a true black person, see black people.
Shiny black: Rather like a crystal ball, this suggests looking into your intuitive perception of what lies usually unconscious within you, looking into the depths of yourself, perhaps beyond the boundaries of your personality.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What is it I am on the edge of being aware of, or have been unaware of previously?
Are there anxieties o feelings I usually do not allow myself to feel fully – perhaps using defences such as smoking or alcohol to help push away?
Is there something emerging out of the blackness that offers new growth – if so what do I notice in waking that is new and living in me?
See Dreams are a reflection of your inner world – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Inner World
brown As a mood this can depict gloominess, dullness or even depression. But it depends what is brown in the dream so it can refer to the earth or earthiness and processes of the body. A muddy brown can suggest unclear or selfish emotions and thoughts.
Brown is in some ways black that has become more light, and so might refer to things that you are bringing to awareness, or facets of yourself you have enabled to grow and express after being unconscious and unexpressed. So in some dreams brown transforms into other radiant colours, perhaps in a way a plant draws something from brown soil and transforms it into the colour of its flowers.
Excrement is brown and in some dreams the feelings show this depicting things that need to be left behind, recognised as not needed, or like manure something that is rich and needed for or holding in it the potential for growth.
Brown in regard to objects can show them as being old or worn, as leaves are that have served their purpose and are now ending their life. But brown can also relate to parts of you from the long past, or containing much experience – but also perhaps to do with feelings about ageing.
Example: The striking part of the dream is this rough looking dog, for when I look into its deep dark brown eyes I can see and feel such love and devotion and am so warmed. As I take the road away from the house, the dog stays close at my heels and I know I have a devoted friend who will never leave me and I feel much happier.
Example: I noticed for the first time a small brown mark on my left hand. True I have been out in the sun, but I never grow freckles. This is one of those marks old people have on their hands.
Brown animal: Your natural urges that you are probably comfortable with.
Brown clothes: Middle of the road and perhaps feelings that are a bit dull or conformist, but are easy to live with.
Brown eyes: Perhaps relates to feelings you have for someone you know with brown eyes.
Brown skin: Feelings about health and perhaps attractiveness. However, brown marks on the skin suggest either feelings about ageing, or that there is something wrong, or something has hurt your skin. See: hand.
Idioms: Brown study; browned off.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Am I experiencing or moving from feelings lacking colour, vibrancy or life?
Do I seek a comfortable situation that allows me to relax and avoid the energetic processes of life?
Does my dream relate to feelings of ageing?
Is this an old thing – and if so what do I feel it contains in terms of past experience or information?
See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Inner World – Life’s Little Secrets
grey/gray This sometimes indicate feelings of living an unhappy or colourless dull existence, a daily round without excitement or stimulus, or morbid or serious thoughts. Sometimes it suggests officiousness or officialdom.
Artemidorus wrote that, “.. a sky that is gray, gloomy or full of clouds, signifies failures and afflictions. In fact grey or gray is often used in language to indicate such feelings, as in the following sentence, taken from Castle’s Dreaming Mind. “If a dreamer needs to be sensitised to how gray, confining, or confusing his or her outlook is toward life, dreams may be cast in sombre, prison-gray tones or the dreamer may wander around in a fog.” These states of mind can lead to ill health or at least a lowering of excitation and energy in life. An extreme example of how grey indicates difficult feelings is seen in the following dream.
Example: I have had a series of dreams which feature grey people standing beside my bed, and each time I have woken myself up by screaming, with my heart pounding, my being unable to move. JS
Grey is the mid point between black and white, so in that sense depicts balance or calmness, but it can also indicate lack of clarity, indecision or blurring of distinctions. Like fog, it suggests not being able to see clearly.
With grey hair it has several possibilities depending on the tone of the dream. It can link with maturity, wisdom or gathered experience. But it can also point to ageing, the loss of faculties with increasing years, and the path to death along the avenue of diminished interest or sparkle in life.
Grey clothes suggest neutrality or lack of ‘colour’, or in some dreams officialdom. But as with the grey colours worn by puritans, it can also suggest a moral stance, an avoidance of extremes or vivid passion. Such a stance might be one of avoiding full relationship or involvement in life. It might also suggest lacking anything more than a ‘bread and milk’ diet sort of life.
But some dreams describe grey in a powerful and exciting or enjoyable way. One dream includes a ‘beautiful, grey, old time car’. Another has a grey carpet that reminds the dreamer of home and comfort. Silver grey is sometimes felt to have these positive and life giving qualities.
Idioms: A grey world; a grey area; grey matter (brain); grey power.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Is the dream environment I am in a grey one, and if so what aspect of my life does it reflect?
Does my life lack colour at the moment, and if so in what way?
Is this grey in the dream depicting my own feelings, or is it how I see the environment I exist in?
See Processing Dreams – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Life’s Little Secrets
Pink This indicates softness, femininity, a baby girl, or babyhood in general, or perhaps tender love rather than passionate love, the sort one might have for a child. It can also suggest happiness, or having a joyful optimistic view of life. See: red above.
Pink is the colour of healthy flesh, and suggests glowing feelings or warmth, something alive and with emotions. Because the inside of the mouth and vagina are pink occasionally the colour is linked with deeply sensual sexual feelings. Pinks are also part of sunrise and sunset, and in some dreams suggest a new dawning of something, a resurrection and so a new life – or the glorious ending. It sometimes appears in dreams of ecstasy or religious wonder.
Example: I was standing in a very beautifully carved chapel or religious place. There seemed to be shadowy nun or monk like figures around. But it was the exquisite colouring of the place which filled me with a sort of ecstasy. Everything was in the most delicate shell pink. JAS.
Example: Jesus was looking at me. There was a light all around him, beautiful colours of cream, pink and gold. I could hear the most wonderful music and singing. I said to a young couple standing near, “Look at the Heavenly Choir, Oh! just listen to them”. Tears streamed down my face as I watched and listened. Doris.
Pink and white: Suggests cleanliness and warmth.
Pink and red: Sometimes this includes in the dream, feelings about love and passion, love or pain, or love and real hurt.
Idioms: In the pink; tickled pink; rose coloured glasses.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Are there clues in the rest of the dream as to what feelings this depicts?
Am I feeling gentle love for someone, or is this about just feeling good?
Are there any signs of spiritual wonder in my dream, if so what is it I am experiencing?
See Processing Dreams – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Life’s Little Secrets
purple This has always been associated with royalty, with spirituality and the law. In terms of the personality it is seen as relating to the ability to deal with practical matters and with spiritual power. But it can suggest an overbearing attitude. It might also relate to the body, suggesting poor circulation, heart problems, palpitations or indigestion.
Example: When I looked into his liquid brown eyes I just saw directly through his soul and it went way out into some deep purple void which I knew to be the ultimate universe. PL
In the example the deep purple suggests an as yet unexplored or known dimension of experience. This links in some dreams with serenity and peace.
Purple is also the colour of a bruise, and in some dreams can either indicate hurts you feel, or sexual passion.
Idioms: Born to the purple (royalty); purple with rage; purple language; purple rank.
Useful Questions and Hi nts:
What are my major feelings in this dream, and where do they appear in my waking life?
Does my dream link the colour with deep wonder or cosmic powers?
Is there any feeling or imagery to do with sickness – if so what does it suggest about me?
See See Emotions and Mood in Dreams – Secrets of Power Dreaming – Easy Dream Understanding
white This colour has an enormous number of different associations. Most commonly it depicts being aware with a clearness of mind. But as with wedding gowns, it indicates purity, virginity, cleanness or light feelings. A brilliant white light usually shows a real and experienced inner realisation or enlightenment. It suggests something from your core self shining through to your waking self.
In certain dreams white is very threatening. Perhaps we have connections with hospitals in these dreams, and depict the anxieties and fear we have about illness or death. Maggots, mould, dead or sick people and shrouds can also be white, so white can depict the same sort of feelings. In some Eastern cultures white is associated with mourning and death.
Example: ‘There was a huge white kitchen. I was scared when I entered it and there was a door leading out of it into a white corridor with a turquoise carpet which scared me even more.’ H. H.
White can also be used to denote attraction, something noticeable or plain to see.
Example: I was looking at my right forearm which was bare. It was very brown from the sun, and at the top of the forearm near the elbow was a white slash. This surprised me and I ran my finger across it, and it felt something like a scar because the skin was slightly raised. The main thing about the slash was its intense white. It was so white it is difficult to know whether it was shining like light, or was simply incredibly white. Miche
In this dream Miche felt the whiteness was a very noticeable part of him, representing hurts (the scar) that had been transformed by hard work and skills (the right arm) and were now apparent to other people.
Black and white: The opposites appearing together. In ourselves the good and bad coexist, and one balances the other. So this would suggest such coexistence and balancing.
Shining white: The emergence of powerful life energy in a pure form. This is often connected with new insights amounting to enlightenment – i.e. the realisation of a much wider understanding.
White animals: Urges and sexuality that have been accepted or integrated with conscious activities. This means urges that at one time your were in conflict with or anxious about, and have been transformed in urges and feelings that are acceptable parts of your present life. They become available and creative energy.
White clothes: A sense of wholeness; purity or marriage. Attitudes that express or allow a lot of your core energy.
White face: Often a sign of feelings to do with sickness or sick attitudes. Sometimes it indicates fear.
White flowers: Love that has grown beyond the physical needs and dependencies.
White hair: Sometimes this is about feelings or fears regarding ageing, but it often indicates you accessing greater insight or wisdom about life and yourself.
White horse: As with any white animals, it shows sexuality and basic instinctive urges or energy that have become transformed into greater and acceptable release, It is the difference between holding back on your feelings and creativity because of doubts or conflicts, and then finding a great flow and ease with self expression.
White powder: Often suggests thoughts or feelings about drugs and your relationship with them, or poison. The dream might be indicating that you are doing something, or have taken in something that is detrimental.
White rabbit: Because of the almost universal connection of this with either a pet or with the rabbit Alice followed into the rabbit hole, it depicts feelings about vulnerability or dependence, as with a pet. If it is linked with a pet, it can also connect with feelings of caring and warmth – even love – felt for the pet. Being white suggests good clear feelings and inspiration. The Alice type of white rabbit links with an entrance into your inner world – a descent into your feelings and the world lying under the surface of your everyday life.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What are the feelings in the dream connected with the white, and what do I gain from them in my waking life?
Is there any fear in this dream, if so can I define what the basis of the fear is?
Am I finding something new here, a new release of innate creativity or realisation perhaps?
See See Emotions and Mood in Dreams – Secrets of Power Dreaming – Easy Dream Understanding
Coma
If you are in a coma it could suggest that events or hurts in your life have caused you to withdraw or be largely incapable of interacting with other people and events. It can also portray a situation in which you have become unconscious or unaware of what is going on around you and have turned inwards.
But in most cases this is probably depicting a part of you hurt at some time and it closed down. For instance if you have been deeply hurt emotionally in a relationship, you may still go on being capable of relating at a certain level, but the part of you that enters deeply into sexual and emotional relationships may have closed down, as in a coma.
Dreaming about this usually means you have become more aware of the situation and there is an opportunity to heal and awaken that facet of yourself.
If somebody else is in a coma, this might still be about what is described above, but it can also show you relating to the person in a non-verbal, heart to heart manner. Sometimes this is shown in dreams where you feel out of contact with someone you love or care for. In such cases the dream is showing that it is only the surface level of communication that is missing.
See Signs of consciousness in People who are Considered Vegetative
Comb
Something you are doing or thinking about doing, a technique you are using, to tidy up your thoughts or self presentation. The self presentation means that you are trying to change the way you present yourself to others, or change how they see you. See: Hair.
Example: I’ve been recently dreaming that as I combed my hair a woman came and combed it for me. As she combed she finds head lice and gives them to me. I wish to know what this means as I have been recently separated from my husband. Z. B. R.
In the dream it is fairly obvious that the lice are the thoughts in her head are doing her no good. They are perhaps unhappy or even angry thoughts that the dream is suggesting she recognise and get rid of. The other woman is most likely an attitude or another woman helping her see that these are ideas to comb out.
To comb also means to search, to seek something, so the dream and its contents might be showing you searching and perhaps finding what you are looking for. The comb by itself though, links with the method, technique or way you go about your search or self transformation. See: hair.
Idioms: Fine tooth comb; combed the whole area.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What have I been doing lately in connection with straightening out my thoughts and attitudes?
Have I been combing/searching for ideas, direction or a change?
See Associations Working With – Secrets of Power Dreaming – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Comet
Sign of coming changes or personal changes. These changes might be very positive, or like problems, depending on the other indicators in the dream. It can also indicate new influences arising from within you, or influences entering your life from an unusual source. So it can mean the birth of a new facet of yourself, a great expansion of who you are.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Do I feel gladness and pleasure in the dream, or a feeling of anxiety?
Are there signs in my life of a great change – do I feel I am the verge of something new?
Am I aware of unusual influences entering my life?
See Indications of Change – Every 7 Years You Change – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Comic
Sometimes this points out the funny or maybe inconsequential things in your life that although funny, might hold important information. It also could be saying ‘this is to be taken lightly, not serious’. The ‘comic’ events portrayed can also be illustrating something that is very true but usually not recognised. Like caricatures, they are sometimes more true to life than life itself. This can draw out truths that might otherwise have remained hidden.
The comic can depict social situations, ways you relate, in a way that brings attention to them.
The comic can be a diversion – you try to deal with situations or difficult feelings such as loneliness by diversions such as entertainment, etc.
Occasionally the attempt at laughter hides serious feelings or even painful memories.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What life situation or personal situation does the comic portray?
What part does the comic play in the dream, and how does that link with events in my life?
Am I using light entertainment as a diversion – if from what?
See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Processing Dreams – Role
Compass
Your attempt to find a direction or activity you feel confident about. Or your attempt to decide what is the best direction to take. It might even express feelings of being lost, and trying to get your bearing or know where you are in life. The ability to continue in the face of confusing outer events. So it can express your instincts or intuition.
A compass can also be about orientation in another way. By being clear about the character and nature of those around you, or the nature of what you are involved in, and also being clear about what your own stance, qualities and weaknesses are, you can better deal with whatever you face. So the dream compass may be clarifying those sort of issues.
The circular nature of the compass, and the fourfold points it indicates are also an archetypal symbol of wholeness. It includes the light and the dark, the cold and the hot, the lower and the higher in what it indicates about our own nature. Such circles existed in most ancient cultures. This meaning is held in the word ‘encompass’. See: north, east, south and west; mandala.
From this wholeness we all have an inbuilt sense of direction in regard to our innate qualities and motivating passions, but this may have been corrupted by education, parents and authority figures criticising or giving counter directions. So the compass may depict this, as in the example below.
Example: I dreamt my watch was a compass. The second hand was the pointer. I (it) wavered and constantly flickered but held true to 12 and I walked in the direction it pointed. Two other people with compasses walked on my left but we all walked in the same direction. Frank P.
Frank comments on his dream by saying: Part of the tragedy is that it is only back in our real self that we have any connection with the world, with nature, with our innate sense of self and direction. That part of us is like an inbuilt compass, orienting us to the world and to other people. That orientation connects us to the sun, the moon, the tides of life around us. If we are walking around as a pseudo person we haven’t got a bloody clue what that compass is telling us. Our evaluations of who we are and where we stand in life are all shot to pieces.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Where am I heading in life, and what does my dream add to what I know about my direction?
Is there anything I can understand from the direction the compass is suggesting?
What am I doing with the compass, and what does this suggest about the way I am relating to my intuition or instincts?
See Avoid Being Victims – Settings in Dreams – What is the main action in the dream?
Company Corporation
How we relate to a massive company or corporation in a dream may show how we deal with our feelings of being a small part of the billions of life forms on this planet. It might also be about your relationship with work, and your place in the scheme of things. How you relate to the company illustrates how you relate to society and social pressures. It is also sometimes about becoming an adult – how you have or have failed to attain that.
A company or organisation is like a giant organism. As such it has a life of its own, feeds, excretes and needs people as ‘cells’ working in its ‘body’. So your dream may be showing you how you relate to that and how, perhaps to better deal with it.
Being in company with others or with one person shows you being involved with or influenced by particular attitudes, feelings or opportunities. The word ‘entertaining’ often used in regard to having friends visit, holds in it the idea of considering, or giving attention to something or somebody. We ‘entertain’ a project, relationship or possibility.
Running a company shows you pulling things together. either inwardly by organising and integrating what were before perhaps fragmented feelings or ideas; or outwardly in new plans or projects.
Example: I had a very powerful sense of knowing I was never wholly an individual. I felt the enormity of the forces and influences that brought me into being. Like a huge organisation that one can resist, but never win, because of its enormity. So one can uselessly fight, or join. I felt this to be like a massive Corporation or company – perhaps like Fords. But it was a company that was behind everything everywhere in the world. So there was no way to avoid it by joining another company. It represented life itself and whether we are going to work with it will try to avoid it.
I had an image of a merry-go-round with different places on the outside, like the different horses. Each might think it is making its personal movements, because as one goes up, and another goes down. But they are all moved by the same machinery. So we too like to believe we are individuals, but underneath we are all moved by the overall organisation – or company. This was so scary at first I wanted to resist it, even though resistance is pointless. But then I decided to join. I saw myself as a tube, a brain cell, fitting in, taking my place amidst other cells. It felt good.
I also had the image in regard to this fantasy of entering the company and asking what I needed to do. A manager came to me and said that what I was doing in life was fine. I could do whatever I liked. The Company did it all. All it asked of me was to wear a little gadget like a mobile phone. It represented intuition. I was told that if there was a big move within the Company I would be told what it was, and if I wished to I could co-operate.
Useful Questions and Hints:
If my dream is about a company, what is my involvement and what does that suggest?
What feelings or atmosphere do I sense about the company I am in, and am I involved in those feelings?
Is there something or someone I am considering or entertaining?
See Life’s Little Secrets – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Avoid Being Victims
Competition
This is often about winning or losing, and frequently involves a love interest as in the example below. Depending on the dream, it can also be about a test of your skill, uncertainty about your abilities, or even a stimulus to achievement. There may also be an element of self grading, a way you measure yourself against others and what you feel you will achieve or be able to claim.
Example: I am in a high school classroom. There is a boy I like a lot sitting on the other side of the room. He notices me and comes over to talk about something I’ve written. I sense that I’m very smart and he’s attracted to me. There are other girls who want him but they are no competition. He wants to be with me. We chat for a while. I sense that our conversation had something to do with him deciding if we should go out together. He doesn’t come to a decision but I’m happy because I know he will ask me out.
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Complexion
Feelings connected with how you appear to others. Perhaps worries about how you believe you look to other people. How you feel you appear to others. It can also be an indicator of your health, or feelings. A very poor complexion might suggest a health check, or that you are troubled by feelings that disturb your confidence in meetings others.
Our complexion also reflects our inner psychological condition, so can point to emotional disturbances or painful memories.
The complexion we see on other people is a summary of what we feel about them, or how we judge them. This piece from a dream illustrates this – He is very tough in appearance and has a swarthy complexion. See: face; skin; under body.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What character, state of health or qualities does the complexion suggest to me?
Am I feeling any inner disturbances about the way I might appear to people?
If I look in the mirror, what response to my own image to I have?
See Dreams are a reflection of your inner world – Dreams are Virtual Realities – Dreams are Like a Computer Game
Compost Poop
Compost is food for the Earth. Remember, everything eats.
It can signify the irritating useless, outgrown parts of yourself, the energies of which can be re-used once the habitual methods of expressing them have broken down. The extraction of fertile ideas and insight from digesting old experience.
The compost heap in our dreams can be made up of all sorts of things – animals, clothes, people – and these depict a variety of things such as attitudes/clothes, old ways of being or thinking/people, and the other parts of self and activities that make up our life.
Compost in the ground points to past experience that has been integrated and is now adding to your possibility of personal growth, creativity and achieving fruition in your life.
If there are things in the compost that you feel guilty about or responsible for – a dead body perhaps – they show there are things buried deep in your memory that are still causing some distress.
Dreams often represent learning or personal growth as an organic process. Ideas and experience are taken in, digested, then form part of an organic whole in an integrated way. This is sometimes depicted much as a tree absorbs through its roots. What is absorbed becomes a living part of the organism. But that does not mean taking it in whole; it is broken down and only the parts that are usable are integrated into the life of the organism, the rest is discharged as waste matter and is later used as compost. This is why garbage, or compost, must be thought of as material capable of being used in a new form.
The soil which is the basis of all life, for plants are fundamental to the feed chain, comes from death and decay. We all need to compost what is dying or dead, and even our human waste, for in dreams as in life, nothing is wasted but is transformed into fertiliser for new growth.
Example: I had built very tall sides to my compost heap, making it about 12 feet high. It was full up, and I had piled some person on top to level it off and weigh it down. I stood on top and trod it down, and it reminded me of treading grapes.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Is there any clue in this dream as to what you have let go of that is being composted?
Is the compost a source of trouble or of richness and possible growth – can you define what it is?
What am I discovering in the compost, and what does that link with in my life?
See Toilet – Excrement – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Talking As – Conditioned Reflexes