Posts Tagged ‘dreaming’

Absorb Absorbed Absorbing

This suggests two separate qualities that merge into one. In a relationship, whether a feelings relationship or one in which you are learning something, you often absorb things from the person. You might take in such things unconsciously, as you did many things from parents and from the culture you were raised in. So the process of absorption in a dream may refer to such influences you are taking in.

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.

Seeing something absorbed in a dream may therefore represent the taking in of ideas or influences, or even poisonous feelings, depending upon what the dream images are.

The meaning of the dream does depend on the situation of the absorbing. So if your body is absorbing something, this may refer to something you are eating, or some influence in your life.

Being absorbed in something like water or energy suggest your personality opening to being a part of the wider life around you.

So being absorbed into something it suggests an enlarged experience of yourself, or a letting down your defensive barriers. It might also feel like being overwhelmed by another persons identity or another influence you do not identify with.

Useful questions are:

Does the dream give me a clue to what I am absorbing?

What do I feel in the dream, and what does this say about me?

What do I do, or what could I do, about the situation?

Try the following to help you clarify the dream Talking As.

Abstract

An abstract shape, patterns, or colour in your dream most likely refers to feelings you meet that are difficult to define, or even recognise. It is important therefore to define them from whatever feelings or responses they produce in the dream.

Useful questions are:

What do the colours or patterns remind me of or make me feel?

Do the images lead me to do anything in the dream or respond in any way?

If so what does it suggest?

Try the following to help you clarify the dream Talking As.

Abuse Abused Abusing

Abusing, being abused, or abusing, physically or sexually, may point to your own past experience. The dream may be an attempt to work out the inner damage you have about this. If not that, then there is a likelihood it is showing you some way you are either abusing someone else’s friendship, or are yourself being, or feeling, abused.

It is like aggression, and can be physical or very subtle, so can be passive-aggressive. Some times abuse, like aggression can be caused by held back sexual urges, or a means of passing on what you received in abuse as a child.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Do I have any memories or feelings about being abused?

We sometimes abuse ourselves by damaging or repressing parts of our nature, so does the abuse point to this?

Am I in an abusive relationship or work situation?

It may  be useful to use Carry the Dream Forward; Using symbols to change life problems and Dream Yoga. Also see hostility; aggression.

Abyss Black Hole

Usually the abyss represents the unknown, and perhaps the infinite, of your own mind or consciousness. The fear of falling into the abyss represents your attempt to control your feelings and what emerges from within yourself. It also frequently refers to feelings about, or fear of, death. To quote from Dream Yoga, “Death is a fact that we all face, and it is no good running away from it in our dreams. That only makes it more scary. Because you CANNOT run away from death you should meet it face to face. If you do that it will transform into the beautiful part of life it is, instead of the horror we have been taught to see it as.”

The positive side of the dream is that it links your conscious mind with the immense potential you hold within yourself unconsciously. Part of this potential is an experience of going beyond opposites, of resolving paradoxes, of moving beyond the limitations of the rational mind and emotional responses. In these ways it is similar to the dream images of the Sea; void. It can also be thought of as the void or nothingness. This can be frightening until we realise that the void has everything in it, but it is without form. Another way of looking at it is that it is the polar opposite to waking consciousness – the deep dreamless sleep type of awareness. See Levels of the Mind in Sleeping. 

 

Falling into the big black hole:  Are things we avoid in waking life, but should not be avoided in dream life. Here is a dream of someone who is no longer afraid.

There was still a current trying to pull me back into the black hole hugeness, and I began to feel afraid as I felt that if I regressed any more I would cease to exist. Then it came to me that I regressed every day in this way when I went to sleep. I lose any sense of personal existence yet emerge none the worse the next day. But in sleep I regress to whatever lies beneath consciousness without being aware of it. The difference now was in being conscious of what was happening. So I knew the fear was unnecessary as every time we go to sleep we drop back into this condition.

So I let go and fell. I didn’t go to sleep though. Instead I fell into an awareness of immensity, of hugeness, and the immensity was full of knowing. Like a raindrop falling back into the ocean, I seemed to merge with that hugeness and yet maintain a sense of my own existence. And between the hugeness and my own sense of being there was communication. I was aware that what held me was the process that had grown me from being a tiny seed in the first place. It is so obvious, but I experienced it like a revelation that I had not created or grown myself. But now this deep part that had caused me to exist and grown me was unfolding me again, like a plant opening. I understood that we each have this force at our centre, and as I watched it working in my body and life, it seemed to communicate with me. I understood from it that if I opened to it each day, if I surrendered to its action, then it would grow me to a fuller life until it realised itself in me. This felt like a holy gift, that the mystery of life would live and know itself in me.

The hole is an important part of you and should not be ignored. If you can enter it you realise that it is the way to your own center and power. It is the hole described in Alice in the Wonderland.

The abyss in a dream gains its meaning largely from how you respond to it. It suggests a situation you might fall into or be lost in, but it is also space, infinity, a situation or state of mind not limited by form or smallness.

Sometimes the abyss is the same as a void, suggesting the formless spirit of life lying within and at the core of all physical formed life. Therefore it might link with the transcendental or the spiritual life of death.

Example: The first experience was looking at a green wall and seeing the huge moving circle of the mandala. At the centre of it was emptiness. Out of this nothingness poured forms of living creatures, all moving and dancing out from the centre in time with each other – though the individuals were not  aware of their synchronous movements. These emerging, dancing forms went out to a periphery – the edge of the circle – then they danced back to the centre and merged back into the nothingness. I knew this represented life and death and again life, for as things fell into that nothingness, at the same moment new life spewed out of it.

But holes can be like that at the base of the tree in the photo, can be an entrance into another experience or dimension,

If feared: Fear of losing control; loss of identity; fear of failure; meeting with those dark fears or worries we hide in our depths; lack of confidence; death in some form; the unconscious. Having these fears in no way suggests the external or internal world warrants anxiety. But lack of confidence will obviously hamper performance in dealing with the difficulties represented by the abyss.

Without fear: Being able to take risks, not be afraid of illness and death in a paralysing way. It suggests going beyond the boundaries of one’s own limitations, concepts, present experience. It represents the enormous personal potential lying beyond already formed conceptions and experience. It is the aspect of human consciousness existing beyond the opposites such as good and bad, right and wrong. Access to this gives tremendous liberation to the dreamer, freeing them from restricting rigid concepts or habits of thinking, responding and relating. See: death; falling; pit; void; archetype of the void.

Useful questions are:

Am I frightened of the abyss?

If so what is my fear about?

What does the abyss offer me if I enter into it?

What holds me back from it?

What have I found in meeting it?

Try Acting on my Dream.

Accelerator

Ability to govern your expression or expenditure of energy or speed of advance in work, a relationship or life. What you are doing with the accelerator shows the amount of power or ‘drive’ you are putting into what you are doing or where you are aiming to go in life.

If the car is not responding when the pedal is pressed it suggests you are out of energy, or that there is a problem with how you are motivating yourself.

If pressing down on accelerator: Desire to reach ones goal or desire quickly, or putting more effort or power into your resolve; frustration; ability or ‘drive’ to succeed.

Lack of response from accelerator: No inner enthusiasm for tasks or goals; a sense of getting no response from something you are involved in.

Useful Questions and Hints:

How is this depicting my desire to control things, or speed up things in my life?

How much am I depressing the pedal and how does that relate to where I am aiming to go?

If the car is not responding I need to ask myself why my emotion or body are not responding to this decision.

Explore your dream using Dream Processing.

Accept Accepted Accepting

To be willing to admit or receive what is represented in the dream. If somebody else if accepting something from you, then it is about feelings of being acceptable, or having something to give. See: giving; gift.

 An unwillingness to receive or accept what is offered or being offered needs to be explored. Acceptance is a great power that will open many doors in the inner or dream world. It is like allowing the Life Will to work through you. See The Life Will .

 Example: I woke this morning to a terrible smell. It was so strong I felt one of my cats had either peed or shit on the duvet. I was cautious about moving because it felt so near to my nose. The smell was slightly chemical in that it irritated my nose slightly. I slowly sat up – slow because of suffering vertigo and sitting up can be awful. So I slowly reached over and switched on the table light. Then I began searching for the awful mess that I was sure was causing the smell. But there was now no mess and no smell. I asked myself what was the cause of the smell and received the response it was the awful stink I had set up in my relationships with women. But there was no feelings or insights attached to it so I was left wondering.

 On then exploring the cause I was gradually shown the heap of shit I had been. Firstly my teenage years when I was depressed. Then my early twenties and thirties when I remembered my awful condition in not being able to meet peoples eyes and not even being able to wave to a friend who greeted me. And then the worse shit of all, the memory of having blood on my hands from killing someone – and the person I had killed was me, so I had walked around like the living dead, depressed, unable to make love to my wife, a zombie looking to others for life and love, a heap of shit.

But then I was shown the way out – admitting that I was a shit, and asking for help as the twelve steps in Alcoholics Anonymous define it. In opening myself to that wonderful otherness my heap of shit became a compost heap which offered new growth.

  

Useful Questions and Hints:

Am I willing to admit or receive whatever is being depicted?

What am I giving of myself?

What is involved in the relationship with whatever or whoever is giving or receiving?

See The Keyboard Condition – Life’s Little Secrets – Martial Art of the Mind

Accident Accidental Accidentally

In your dreams there are no accidents or chance events. In one way or another, you create the whole dream. Therefore to dream of an accident may mean you sense attitudes, or events, are leading you toward whatever is depicted in the dream. This is in no way a prophecy, but it might occasionally depict a self-fulfilling incident. In which case it is wise to be aware of any events suggesting what is portrayed in your dream. You can then avoid the final moves creating the accident.

The dream may also be showing feelings of stress or tension that could lead to events best for you to avoid. The event might be a relationship break-up, a work crisis, or whatever is suggested in a dream – or caused by a relationship or work break up.

Again, defuse the situation by being aware of the tensions or stress contributing to the dream accident. Deal with the stress of tension, and thus avoid its possible consequences. An accident in a dream may also suggest feelings of being out of control, or not being able control events occurring around you, perhaps heightening stress.

Sometimes this simply suggests the feelings it gives rise to, as shock or fear. Perhaps something has shocked and hurt you. Often dreams of upheaval are signs of great change that are or will occur, so learning to meet change is a necessary skill, and something we need all the time.

Many people have strong feelings of anxiety about any dream which shows them having an accident or being injured. If we could have a record of every dream each person had, we would see everyone dreams again and again of being injured, murdered, killed. Because these are common themes, some dreams are going to coincide with an actual accident or plane crash. Because these dreams are common themes, many dreamers attempt to link the dream with a later event. But such dreams are usually about psychological injury or anxiety. Nevertheless many people do have warning dreams.

Defuse the dream situation by using visualisation to change the dream imagery – see Acting in Your Dream. See: esp in dreams; warning dreams.

Accident at sea: Feelings of threat about relationship. Perhaps a sense there is a problem building up. See: First example under boat.

Accident in car: Tension about your efforts to ‘get somewhere’ or achieve your goals. Take care in driving for a few days. See: car.

Accident in the home: A sense that tension is building up in your home life. Occasionally this means you have unconsciously noticed something might cause an accident in the home. Therefore check whatever it is that produced the accident – i.e. is stair carpet loose if you dream of falling down stairs?

An accident to someone else: Could be hidden aggression, but consider what facet of yourself the person depicts and see how an accident links with that. See the entry on people to help with this.

Plane crash: Worries about a project such as business collapsing or not coping financially. See: Aeroplane.

Example: The other night I had a dream that my ex-boyfriend was killed in a car accident. I was mortified and became hysterical. I can only remember little bits of it now, but I do remember seeing him in his car, dead. I think I started crying in my sleep. I have been thinking a lot about him lately, before I had the dream. I’ve missed him so much and this worries me. A.R.E. dream.

The woman in the example had actually parted with her boyfriend. The dream is therefore most likely an expression of her deep feelings about losing him.

Idioms: Accidentally on purpose; chapter of accidents; a blessed accident.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Am I feeling stressed or tense about something?

Is there an attitude I have that could lead to some sort of accident or misfortune?

Is there something I am avoiding doing that is at the root of this dream – i.e. have you noticed the tires on your car are bald, or a piece of electrical equipment needs attention?

What are you worried about?

How can I change the dream imagery to defuse it? See Carry the Dream Forward.

Accordion

Like most musical instruments, it represents an expression of feelings, a coming into harmony or accord with things or with yourself. It shows some sort of self-expression.

It can, in some dreams, show the pleasure of being able to play. See: musical instruments.

Accounts or Accountant

Obviously to do with thoughts or concern over money. Whether it is about anxiety or insights depends upon what is portrayed in the dream; may also depict having to give an account of oneself, revealing the details of your actions or dealings with others. It can help to decide what the dream is about by using Processing Dreams.

Difficulty in balancing accounts: A sense of not having been honest or careful in your dealing with others or yourself; worries about money and surviving financially; not remembering events and activities clearly; an unresolved problem.

Accountant A pert of you that has a good business sense, although perhaps you could be more creative.

Argument with your accountant or the tax inspector This is probably a warning to remain in the black and not spend beyond your means.

Negative accounts or arguing with accountant: Worries about money or an inner warning to watch expenditure; a conflict relating to feelings about money or value.

Positive accounts or praise from accountant: You are moving to good fortune and are handling your business and money well – unless there is obvious money worries at the time of dream. In which case it might be a compensatory dream.

Idioms; Account for; an account to settle; be accountable for; by all accounts; call to account; doctor the accounts; of no account; on account; on no account; settle an account.

Useful questions are:

What does money represent for me?

If you have an accountant how do you relate to her or him?

How are you feeling about money at the moment?

Have you been honest in your dealings with others – this can be a big cause of money worries?

Accuse Accused Accusation Accuser

Feelings of guilt, or social or relationship difficulty. If you are the accuser, it may be showing feelings of being victimised or wronged. The feelings may be from the far past. But it can also be a way of avoiding being truthful.

Accusing someone else: Unconsciously feeling someone is not playing fair with you or you have a feeling you are not expressing to them; or self accusation about something you feel strongly about.

Being accused by someone: Feeling wrongly judged; feeling guilty about something; something you need to be aware of.

A lot of people’s dreams are like the following example, feeling wrongly accused, although some are obviously about accusing others.

Then she begins to get hysterical, accusing him of being untrue and doing her wrong. As her accusations get more hysterical and untrue and harsh, the entire tribe begins to see it is wrong. They walk away from her. She is now sobbing and screaming that she had been to the doctor’s this morning and got bad news. Finally she’s on the floor sobbing. Everyone has left the building except me.

It is a truth in psychology that we tend to blame anything on to others. To face up to the accusations is a very positive step.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Have I felt accused lately?

Am I holding back dealing with feelings about someone?

What is the accusation in the dream, and is there a link with my waking life?