Posts Tagged ‘dreams’
Boot Trunk of Car
The memories, the karma, or influences from past actions and experiences that we still carry with us. Also the necessary things we carry about with us, such as shopping, that would connect with caring for personal or family needs. Occasionally something you want to hide or get rid of.
The boot might also suggest the ‘baggage’ of anxieties and thoughts that you carry in the back of your mind; or tools for dealing with difficult life situations.
The boot is a storage place too, so can relate to things you have such as qualities or values, that are not being used, but are at hand if needed.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What is in the boot/trunk in the dream, and what do I connect with them? i.e. are they things connected with work, holidaying, clothes (social attitudes), leisure things such as golf clubs.
Is this something I am hiding in the boot, or am I okay about it?
What resources do I have in the boot?
Please see Processing Dreams and Role
Border
You are probably meeting some sort of barrier or hesitation. A point in your growth where you may have to prove yourself or make changes. If you cross the border you may be facing a different way of life, or a different experience of life. Hesitations and uncertainties may prevent you making the crossing. See: Frontier.
Boss
The prevailing major driving force in your life, as ambition, desire, love. There is also a possibility here of the boss figure representing authority, and so the dream of the boss dramatising your relationship with an authority figure.
The boss can also stand in the place of father or mother, and depict some of the less apparent aspects of your relationship with them. Any suggestions in the dream that the dream boss links with an actual person who is or has been your boss could obviously be about the way you relate to that person, and feelings, difficulties or emotional ties revealed.
Whatever of these most fits your dream and feelings, it is still useful to stand in the role of your dream boss and explore what is felt and observed from his/her standpoint. This is because such characters in our dreams often incorporate perceptions about them you may not be aware of consciously. See the entry on characters or people for more information on this.
Sometimes dreams deal with a sexual relationship with the boss. Such dreams need exploring as in the characters link above. But sometimes a boss in a dream can represent an example of a helper who knows you and can guide your process of growth, spiritual or otherwise.
Example: The owner was gruff. He was ordering his help around in a mean way. They were pissed at him. There was a commotion at the door. Some blacks were crashing, and the whites got up to leave. It was riot city. I jumped up and said, “Wait. We can all work it out.” I ran to the stage. The men grabbed me and started to pick me up and carry me up the stairs. I pleaded, “No please, don’t! You’ll hurt me! You’re all angry; I can do it myself.” The men said, “The boss told us we have to. We don’t want to, believe me.” I started ordering everyone. I told the boss he’d better shape up and treat people nicely and he might get better results. He was shocked and started to argue. I stopped him. He glowered and then agreed. I told the men to carry me to the stage and I’d introduce them to a nice blonde woman, “Sandra,” who was rich. They were surprised and then got nice and agreed. They got me up on stage. People were walking out. I got the mike and said, “Wait. You’re gonna miss something neat if you leave.” I started belting out “I am woman.” I pushed the curtain back so I could play to the whole club (arena-like stage). I saw on the left, a red plush banquet set up. No one was there. Everyone started dancing and enjoying themselves. Blacks, whites, men, and women, all together. I was the pivotal peace maker. Barb
Barb is obviously a woman with spirit and doesn’t bow down to authority but manages to make it work through her own power.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Is this suggesting a struggle or conflict in any way – if so is it showing an authority or personality conflict?
What is the essence of the relationship with the boss in the dream?
Is there any love connection here?
Is the boss directing or encouraging me to do something – if so what, and how does that tie in with my life?
Please try Stand in role and also carry the dream forward.
Bottle
A bottle can depict many things depending on how it is presented in the dream. Fundamentally it is a container so can represent the vagina, or the function in you of holding – perhaps as we might hold on to an idea or a resentment, which we later ‘uncork’ and pour out. But because it can contain things it may often link with what is in it. As such it suggests the quality of what can be poured out of. In this sense you need to wonder what you are pouring out or holding onto in your life. If the bottle is corked or difficult to open it is suggesting that you have resources or feelings that you are not expressing or accessing easily. Maybe you are ‘bottled up’ in some way.
If the bottle is empty: Resources you have used up, or that you are feeling empty or have nothing to offer others.
If something in it: Resources you have.
With wine, spirits or beer: Sometimes an influence that changes the way you feel, just as alcohol does.
If red wine: Similar to above, but with the added possibility of depicting a sense you have of there being more in life than your own ego, its worries and desires; a sense of sharing life. See: alcohol.
Hot water bottle: A real comfort if you feel cold and cannot give warmth. If it is cold then ‘cold comfort’ would apply.
Example: Some of the huge limitations that exist for most of us during physical life are to do with how small our range of sensory awareness is. We might feel almost as if our body is a bottle and we are encased in it; or that we are the bottle, separated in time and space from all other bottles. If the bottle is black we think we as a person are black. If the bottle is female we believe that fundamentally we are female. If the bottle is damaged, we may feel certain that as a person we too are inadequate in some way.
Example: I picked up a bottle marked Mr. Crisp – or so I thought – but I can’t quite read the name. Maybe it was Mrs. Crisp, or Mr. Christ, or something. It was a bottle of vitamin C, and said on the label that it was for inflamed or red eyes.
Example: Suddenly a bottle in the bag she was carrying the picnic lunch in, fell over and spilled a sticky brown liquid on the floor and on me. It was a large cider bottle. I tried to stand it upright. The bottle is the pouring out of your own soul, the love you find it hard to let pour out of you. Being sticky means you do not enjoy the feeling of this.
Idioms: bottle drive; bottle man; bottle up; chief cook and bottle washer; hit the bottle; new wine and old bottles; spin the bottle.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Is the bottle empty – if so what might it have held or what has been ‘poured out’?
Does the bottle contain anything – if so what do I associate with it?
Am I holding onto anything in myself that needs to come out?
Is there any indication or analogy with sex in my dream – is so what is it suggesting?
Try using Being the Person or Thing and LifeStream.
Bottom
This is sometimes used in England to suggest the posterior, the behind. So it might be word play for that; if about the bottom of a garden, hill or hole, it can suggest something at the back of your mind – known but pushed to the back; If you are at the bottom it suggest difficulties, or a long climb, effort to get to the top, or even back to where you were; being at the bottom can also be despair. The bottom of some sort of container depicts the holding power, the power to contain and support.
If so, it indicates something you do not usually expose publicly, or something to do with your sexual characteristics; the you that others see but you may not know about or be personally aware of.
If the dream is about the bottom of a garden, hill or hole, it can suggest something at the back of your mind – known but pushed to the back. But if you are at the bottom of a hill or hole it suggest difficulties – perhaps something difficult to reach or obtain, or a long climb, difficult to climb out of, an effort to get to the top, or even back to where you were. Being at the bottom can also be despair.
Getting to the bottom can also link with finding out what is the cause of something, what is ‘at the bottom’ of a mystery or someone’s behaviour. It also means going deeply into something, perhaps into oneself.
Example: We are alone. Death confronts us. We reach rock bottom. We fully accept our humanity. Then comes death and all falls away except that Reality innate in all things.
Bottom of a bucket or box: The power to hold, to contain something. So when we say ‘the bottom fell out of the world for me’, we mean that we no longer feel held up or sustained by the world.
Bottom of a bag: This could refer to something you had forgotten you had, or something difficult to find amongst your memories or resources. Can occasionally refer to sexual feelings in some form.
Bottom of a hill: This suggests the beginning of something such as the start of a climb or of reaching somewhere in life.
Bottom of a road: Far away, or not immediately important but something you are meeting.
Bottom of the sea or river: What is hidden, unconscious or difficult to get. May sometimes show something precious.
Idioms: bottom fell out; bottom line; bottom out; bottom rung; bottoms up; from the bottom of my heart; get to the bottom of; hit rock bottom; scrape the bottom of the barrel; you can bet your bottom dollar.
Useful Questions and Hints:
If this is about my body, what is the dream suggesting?
What hill, hole or situation am I at the starting point of, or down to earth about?
If I am finding something or reaching to the bottom of something, what am I reaching for in life?
Try Easy Dream Interpretation and Because Factor
Bowel Colon
Links mostly with how you deal with the waste products of your experience and in your body; with what your being rejects as no longer useful. For some people it connects with squeamish feelings about their internal organs and being unclean. Also, if you have had connections with bowel illness it might well point to worries about that.
Some dreams show concerns about what you have taken in that might be ‘rotten’ – and such things can relate to ideas and motivations that do not harmonise with who you are.
The rectum is the final part of the colon or large intestine just prior to the exit, which is called the anus. Sometimes the two words are confused, so the exit might be called the rectum. What matters in regard to your dream is what you have understood it to mean prior to the dream.
This whole area is one that is very sensitive to emotions and sexual experience. It links with very primal feelings and may easily become tense, or respond to hurt in oneself or others. One of its main functions in life, as with the bladder, is to control or release the excretion of faeces. As a baby the process is spontaneous and beyond our control, so has to be learned. It therefore frequently becomes a physical focus for any problems or lessons to do with control or letting go. Thus we have the phrase ‘he/she is really anal’ meaning they hold on to everything or try to control everything.
This holding on or ability to both control and let go, are at the very basis of dealing with adult life, and influence whether we can allow our creativity and sexuality to flow. Problems here deeply influence how we deal with our sexual and emotional love, and our ability to let ourselves flow out into activity and creativity. Tension and holding on can lead to a type of auto-homosexual experience. In other words instead of the flow going outwards to others and the world, it is turned back on itself and become inturned sexuality and aggression.
As already mentioned, this area, which links very strongly with the genitals, psychologically links with the earliest stages of our development and our earliest experiences as a baby. Many muddled or unconscious experiences are contained in this area of our psyche regarding sexual feelings, desires and self expression. So if you are dreaming about this area it might be that you are becoming more aware of these things. If so you may begin to experiences many sexual urges and confusions that previously remained unconscious or buried in your body.
This base area of the body also depicts the powerful instinctive and biological forces or potential lying at the base of our being – at the base of our personal development. These forces, sometimes represented by a snake or lizard – the instinctive reproductive, flight and fight drives – are the power flowing into our life. If they are not allowed to flow into the development of our personality, we will lack energy and power in some way. In other cultures they are encouraged to flow beyond the fundamental pathways of genital sex toward the functions of greater awareness and insight, thus opening their other possibilities.
Example: For the past year and several months I’ve had a recurring dream at least 10 times pertaining to my menstrual cycle and bowel movements. These dreams have always been embarrassing. Either my period has came down unexpected while I’m sitting on the toilet and/or I am catching a bowel movement in my hand and trying to hide it from people around me. I have been thinking of what possible meaning this could be.
This is about the person holding onto their inner emotional rubbish/shit because they feel embarrassed if they allow it to be expressed.
The bowel and everything associated with it are of course a constant source of humour and fun:
Example: a fat hippie guy says, “I have to go to the bathroom. I hope I can make it.” The crowd answers sympathetically. He starts to walk, then his face grimaces up as he has a bowel movement in his pants right there in front of everyone. “Oh,” he cries, “I couldn’t help it, and it’s a hiney.” He turns around so we can see his butt. Two pounds of butter is in a plastic sack and stapled to his shorts. Some guy jokes about it, “At least it wasn’t chili,” to ease his embarrassment. Raul jokes, “Is there any money on it?” (betting he could do better).
Example: It seemed as if I were watching a married couple in their house. The woman had been out somewhere and the man had perhaps eaten something and now had pain. The pain was not specific and he and the woman talked over what began to be felt as a serious developing illness. The morning of the next day the situation was worse. At that point their son, about eighteen, walked in, very bright and positive – apparently now living independently. They told him the situation, remaining bright and positive he asked his father to lay on the bed with head on pillows and knees bent. Then he took hold of his father’s ankles and moved his legs up and down in a pump like action. Farts accompanied each movement and the problem was resolved.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Am I meeting any experiences to do with controlling or letting go – if so what is involved?
Am I getting rid of some of the crap I have carried around internally or externally?
What struggles with infant feelings or sexuality am I meeting – if so what are they?
Am I in any way worried about my digestive system – if so what is the worry, and do I need to have a check?
Am I dealing with difficulties to do with a need to discharge parts of what I have experienced – i.e. do some experiences still remain undigested or are bringing emotional discomfort?
Am I holding myself back in some way?
See Use the body to discover dream power – What is the main action in the dream? –
Victims – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – absorption – Easy Dream Interpretation – Anus; toilet
Box
Things you store inside you, such as memories or emotions. A closed box can represent the womb, or things you hide from the view of others or even yourself. Depending on the size of the box, it can represent memories, or treasured experiences. It might, like chest, represent the way you store feelings. See: Chest.
It can be about abilities you have that are only used on special occasions, such as tools, art equipment, special knowledge etc. Maybe a box in which you keep your instinctive animal urges to stop them being free. See Animal
Bird box: This is a place where birds bring up their young, and so it may be a comment on your own parenting ability, or even about pregnancy – the eggs being hatched.
Closed box: Often represents the womb/uterus and its connection with childbearing; or if not that, something you have experienced that you have closed away in you or in the past.
Mail or P.O. Box: This often shows some sort of excitement about what might be in there, or disappointment if there is nothing of interest. It can be about waiting for news, hopes for or even real communication. Hopes about opportunity; surprises or bad news.
Example: I look in the mail box and wonder why I don’t get as much mail as I used to as a teenager.
Received box: Something you now have but perhaps have not yet opened to explore or become conscious of.
The IN box of email: Similar to mail box.
Window Box: A special area of growth that you have to tend to care for.
Example: One person, “looking for herself, came upon a tightly closed box. Tearing it open – in her fantasy – she found inside a lovely rose, and realised that she had been enclosed in a box of Puritanism, of self denial and physical shame. The outer petals of the rose, pink and mauve, seemed to whirl and dance; they sent her fancy spinning off like a ballerina into flowered landscapes of delicious femininity. The inner petals were shaded from the light, obscure and mysterious. Here the colours darkened to deep crimson and velvet purple. They reflected her deep animality. These she avoided, until she realised that it took both the light and the dark to make a lovely rose. She could not have one without the other. Gradually the rose became a nourishing symbol in her life and growth.”
An example of how we can shut up or hide important and even beautiful parts of us. The walls of the box can be made of fear, or as in the dream, Puritanism, shame and self denial. It takes all of us to be whole and beautiful, the lights and the dark. Only when they merge can we see the wonder that we are.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What am I aware of that I have within myself, and am now exploring or discovering?
If this is a received box, what has recently come into my life?
If an old box, what do I hold from the past that has maybe been stored away.
What is in the box and how do you relate to that?
See Methods of Awakening and Processing Dreams.
Boy
– i.e. male under the age of thirteen.
Boyfriend Your emotional feelings, attachment to, or fears about the boyfriend. This includes the difficulties, struggles with feelings and sexuality felt in connection with boyfriend or other males. It might also be your insights into his behaviour.
Boyfriend dreams often have an element either of fear or dreaming of possibilities. In other words the dream explores what you fear might happen in the relationship, or what you hope will happen.
Example: I was sitting in my boyfriend’s house and the phone rang. My boyfriend answered it. In real life he always goes upstairs away from me to speak on the phone, and I am frightened he is talking to an old girlfriend. I heard him say that he wasn’t seeing any one. When I heard him say this I flipped and ran out to get a taxi home. Karen.
This dream is typical of how Karen’s fear of not being wanted or loved pushes her to run away from the relationship.
Example: An old man, rather Merlin magician type, lived in an open area near the flats. His house was disguised, rather like camouflage on the outside. I was like Tarzan, somewhat undressed, and was trying to induce a young boy to go into Merlin’s house, which I managed with difficulty. Then I had to get a large spider into the dwelling. At one point it was like trying to get the spider into a narrow necked bottle, and the spider was as unwilling as the boy, and bit my finger.
If known: What you feel about that boy. Whatever it is this is probably referring to yourself. i.e. One might think the child cautious and anxious; so it depicts one’s own childhood feelings of caution and anxiety. See: Characters and People in Dreams
Male dream: Yourself at that age; the difficulties faced, habits acquired, attitudes imprinted on you by experiences at that age – circumstances may not have permitted parts of you to mature, so your relationship with a woman and the world might still be conditioned by that age mode. So this could be a part of yourself you need to ‘father’, or help grow toward maturity.
The boy might depict the eternal potential for growth, openness to the new and enthusiasm about tomorrow.
If older than yourself: Your potential or how you feel about maturing.
Female dream: Your own developing ability to express in outer action. Feelings about a son or brother. See: son under family.
Useful questions and hints:
What is my relationship with this boy, and does it suggest love, personal qualities or parental feelings?
If I imagine myself as the boy what impressions and feelings do I meet? Characters and People in Dreams
If this is my younger self, what is it expressing?
If I know the boy how would I describe him -what characteristics or qualities?
If teenage female: Feelings you have about a boy, boys in general or a brother. In many teenage dreams there is a lot happening in connection with emerging feelings of attraction. See: adolescent.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What is my relationship with this boy, and does it suggest love, personal qualities or parental feelings?
If I imagine myself as the boy what impressions and feelings do I meet? See: Stand in role.
If this is my younger self, what is it expressing?
Try Talking As and Processing Dreams
Boyfriend or Ex
Dreaming about your boyfriend is usually about your emotional feelings, attachment to, or fears about the boyfriend. This includes the difficulties, struggles with feelings and sexuality felt in connection with boyfriend or other males. It might also be your insights into his behaviour. Please read Ages of Love
Boyfriend dreams often have an element either of fear or dreaming of possibilities. In other words the dream explores what you fear might happen in the relationship, and what you hope will happen. See Inner People
Example: I constantly have a dream that me and my best friend/boyfriend of 3 years just suddenly aren’t together. I never know why, but I am either with another guy or simply alone and just have this horrible feeling in my stomach, and know it’s not right. In my dream I get upset my bf never called or contacted me after breaking up, and I never know why we ended either. The dream ends with me giving in and trying to find a way to call him but then I wake up. The obvious conclusion would be I think I belong with my bf, but is there anything else possibly?
This is a wonderful example of how the mind works, and the play between what we allow ourselves to think – our conscious mind – and what we do not allow ourselves to know – our unconscious. As an example of this here is another young woman’s dream.
Example: During my teens I was engaged to be married when I found a more attractive partner and was in considerable conflict. Consistently I dreamt I was at my fiancé’s funeral until it dawned on me the dream was telling me I wanted to be free of him. When I gave him up the dreams ceased. I don’t understand what this means, and its really bothering me. Why am I dreaming of this? Can you help me understand the meaning of these dreams?
Each person we spend time with, fall in love with, make love to or grow up with, or even with animals, we develop an incredible and often invisible bond. For instance many women and men write and ask why they keep dreaming of partners, parents of even old friends they have moved on from. You keep dreaming about your ex from years ago or old friends because while you lived with them you experienced millions of memories, situations, conflict and learning experiences. So you carry them with you as memories, lessons learnt, love or anger still trying to find a way of being absorbed.
So in a way it is not your husband, ex or others you are dealing with but yourself – we dream about them and use them as a symbols of what we picked up from the relationship. We cannot have a mass of experience with someone and move away without it influencing us. Life is, in a very real way, a learning experience, and every new experience has to be fitted into what we are learning.
Cheated on: Many dreams of this are sent and here is an example:
Example: In my dream I’m with my ex girlfriend (who I still hang out with) we are hanging out being really close and lovey on each other. Then I leave the room for something and when I come back she is with a man. In this reoccurring dream she is always with a different guy and I don’t know who any of them are. When I walk in they are really close to each other and holding hands sometimes she is sitting on his lap. In my dream it always breaks my heart and I tell her how I feel and she acts like she doesn’t care. Then I wake up. In real life we were together for 2 years and I’m a girl. While we were together she cheated on me with men. We still hang out today but we are just friends with benefits.
This type of dream is usually from a young woman who either sees her boyfriend with another man or has powerful suspicions that he is seeing someone else. The dreamer is actually meeting her unresolved feelings of jealousy, of feeling not as good as the other person and not being lovable.
Ex-lover/boyfriend: This frequently shows any feelings or hopes still connected with him. The ex-boyfriend or lover often becomes a symbol for all the hopes for love that are not being satisfied at the moment, or in the present relationship. Sometimes it is a way of digesting or living in the past. It may occur in some dreams that the ex-lover is seen as a dead body, or a murder is involved. This is usually because we are killing, or have killed some of our longings and love for that person.
Example: Although married for almost nine years, I have been dreaming almost every night about an old friend. We used to date twelve years ago, but although we still meet occasionally, our relationship now is purely platonic.
About two weeks before I found out he was getting married I had a dream where he handed me a single red rose and said ‘I love you, but the time’s not right’. In the latest dream I was reading a paper with the heading ‘Broken Hearted Babies’, with a picture of both of us as babies, with our names underneath. Amanda – Teletext.
Obviously Amanda still has unfulfilled longing and dreams in regard to her ‘old friend’. Even so it is worth reading the things in the previous section.
Example: I dream I am in a room with my ex-boyfriend – Gary. I feel scared about having sex with him but want him to show me all the excitement and thrill of sex. I love him but can’t tell him how much I want the enjoyment of his body closer to mine. You are the first person I can write to telling about having sex with my ex-boyfriend. Donna – Lancs.
Relationships are complicated and here Donna is experiencing the conflict of wanting him yet being separated. Remember that dreams are like computer games I which you can be killed, make love a thousand times, and come away none the worse – unless of course you feel that what happened was exactly like waking life. Then you would have the sort of questions and dilemmas you are telling me about. See Dreams Like a Computer Game; Dreams are a reflection of your inner world.
Daughter’s boyfriend: This may illustrate your judgements and feelings about the boyfriend.
Male dreaming of boyfriend: Usually this is about the qualities of weaknesses you witness in your friend. See the entry on Characters and People in Dreams to understand this. It can also be about the reasons you have become friends, and the intricacies of the relationship.
Useful Questions and Hints:
If this is about a past love, what do I honestly now feel about him and why?
Do the events in the dream show what I fear – and if so can I honestly see them as fears, not reality?
What relationship situation does the dream depict, and how does this comment on waking life?
See Growing Up to Love – People Animals and Objects of our Dreams are Projections
Brain
This can suggest intellect, thinking, insight, creativity or what someone really thinks. But there are many other possibilities.
Often we feel that our real self is somewhere inside our head in the brain, so the dream might be referring to your sense of existing. Also we use the word brain or brains to mean cleverness or the lack of it, and some dreams use just this type of imagery. We have a belief that injury to our brain is an injury to us. Therefore we associate brain injury with death. But the brain is simple a wonderful organ that connects our core self with our body. See I died but I’m alive; Tony’s Experience of Stroke; Talking with the dead.
The brain is made up of billions of cells, and sometimes dreams use this to illustrate how we interact with some events – all our cells, or an auditorium full of people – interacting with the event. There is some evidence that we are not our brain as science has told us. It is an organ that enables us to express though our body in such ways as speech.
People often say, “but part of my brain is telling me that I know this house, I know the room very, very well.” But scientific research has now assured us that all our thoughts come from a part of our being that is unconscious. See Unconscious. We now know that even our sight and hearing are a virtual world we unconsciously create. The light you receive in your eyes is translated into nervous impulses, sent to the brain where it is again translated into images and associations. So you cannot actually ‘see’ the world, only a virtual reality you creates. So when you dream and enter the virtual reality of your dreams, in the widest sense there is only you. That is why it is difficult to interpret dreams because we create our own reality.
Also your brain has three separate sections; the reptile brain, the a mammalian brain and the human brains. Each of these can be the cause of particular types of dream. See Brain Levels.
No Brain: Loss of personal awareness or having no self awareness – maybe brainless, not using your brain.
Something being cut out of brain: Loss of some function or sensitivity. If you are taking anti depressants or some other drug it may be due to the drug’s action. This is because some drugs suppress certain brain functions.
Idioms: Brainstorm; brainchild; pick someone’s brains; hare brained; scatter brained.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What is the suggestion about the brain – is it growing, sick, bits missing – and what does that suggest about me?
Am I giving a self assessment in this dream, and if so what is it?
Is there something that woke my interest and involved lots of my attention?
See Easy Dream Interpretation; Levels of Awareness and Life’s Little Secrets.
Brakes
This suggests your ability to be in control of a situation, or out of control if the brakes do not work. This might be control of anxiety or sexual feelings or emotions. If the brakes are working they allow a feeling of confidence in dealing with life. See: Car.
This could also point to social situations. In other words we might not be taking notice of the ‘stop signs’ in social settings, personal relationships or as far as the law is concerned. Maybe it is about the motion of events that you could stop.
Brakes not working: Might suggest high anxiety or losing control of a situation or events, thus may indicate a fear of taking chances or initiating things in case they get ‘out of hand’; difficulty in controlling sexual desire or emotions.
Our brakes might not be working in some settings, such as in a relationship or work. This could mean you collide or are on a collision course with someone or with a situation. Banging into another car, person or house would depict this.
Example: Then there’s snow on the ground and I’m on a dirt road. In the snow, I skid and lose control. I realize as I pumped the brakes that I have no control, so I just sit there and steer to a soft as possible “crash” into a bank. I sit there, wondering what I’ll do now! Barb.
Example: Dreamt by a man who reported making love to a girl and finding it difficult to stop short of sexual intercourse. ‘I was in my car driving along and I wanted to stop the car immediately but my brakes would not work. This went on and on until I wakened.
Example: In an Edgar Cayce-interpreted dream we read: “I was driving down a lakeside road close to an embankment when suddenly I appeared to go over the edge. I had time to jam on my brakes before I reached the edge, but instead I did nothing. I jumped out of the car into the lake. The car fell on top of me and I was killed.”
Cayce: “This is a warning to change conditions in the physical body while there is yet time! Don’t just think about it. Do it!—Now! The lesson: To know how to do good and to do it not, is sin.“
See Control-No Control – Learning the brake, gears and accelerator
Useful Questions and Hints:
What part are the brakes playing in this dream – to avoid something; to stop; to control speed?
Can I recognise how I use control and release in my life, and how well I can operate them?
Why am I dreaming of brakes at the moment – is there a situation I am in that needs skill in controlling or letting go?
Am I feeling anxious about what is happening to me sexually or emotionally?
Have I done something that is like running through the red light?
What is it I need to review about being in control?
Try using Acting on your dream and Easy Dream Interpretation
Bread
Fundamental nourishment; our basic emotional and biological needs, but also as in ‘give us this day our daily bread’ it also means our daily needs for survival. It can also suggest substance in the sense of wealth or possessions. In a spiritual sense it represent our universal experience of physical or bodily life, so connection or relationship with others. See: Food.
Being fed bread or giving it to someone else suggests being cared for or caring for others. It is to do with sharing life, or recognising the deep connection one has. As such it is given as a sacrament in churches where the dread represent the holiness of all physical substance – holy because everything is a part of creation. See Creation.
Bread crumbs can relate to what has passed or what is left from things past. They might also depict scraps given or received.
Sometimes represents a baby/pregnancy, especially if uncooked and being put in an oven.
Unusual or exotic bread: This probably depicts greater pleasure or enjoyment, such as sweetness in malted breads. .
Idioms: bread (money); bread and butter (ones daily needs); don’t know which side your bread is buttered on; breadbasket.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Am I not getting the bread – and does this point to any lack of pleasure, nourishment or relationship in my life?
Is the bread whole or rotten – and am I easily sustaining myself in life or have things gone ‘rotten’?
What am I doing with the bread, and what does this suggest?
Try Being the Person or Thing and Talking As.
Break Breaking Breakup
This can suggest the ending of something if an object or thing is broken, or it can link with the strength or weakness of a situation or relationship, as suggested by the words ‘break-up’.
Depending on the drama in the dream it might also link with a broken promise, shattered idealism, hope or faith or feeling broken in spirit. We are moved and tossed around by all manner of drives, ambitions, emotions, fears, temptations, worries, love and desire with its pains and hopes; it is something we take so seriously and get carried away into awful situations; we take many sorts of pain killers to deal with ourselves. Things such as alcohol, coffee, medical drugs and street drugs, and yet we have still are prone to break down, as can be seen by the number of people who need antidepressants or are totally lost in themselves.
A break can also depict changes as we ‘break’ with the past, or feelings of loss or damage. But breaking something, or breaking through a wall or obstacle, show you freeing yourself from old habits or restraining influences. But a big thing in people’s life is that way a break can show how they have broken through the barriers of our physical senses into a wider world of experience. See Answer to Critics.
Example: ‘For several hours I could find nothing about the dream. My mind simply wandered. But with help I persisted. Suddenly I seemed to break through, first to seeing how my father’s shop was a place in which I had unconsciously experienced great emotional pain. My father was always criticising. Never a word of encouragement. Then I burst into powerful sobbing as I felt the pain of wanting my father to love me, and help me grow into somebody capable of meeting life, instead of criticising me all the time.’
Example: Example: I dreamt I was on a garden with an old man, a young boy and a young man in his thirties. The plot of land had something of the feeling of an allotment. It was well tended, and I had the sense the young man had been doing most of the work on it. The soil was rich but at the moment dry. A few shoots were just breaking the ground from hundreds of bulbs which had just started shooting.
This shows how growth can be a break.
Idioms: Lucky/bad break; break a habit; break away; break the bank; big break; break down/ up; break new ground; break a leg; break a promise; break a spell; give me a break; broken heart; break the ice; break the news; break through; break with.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What is it that is broken, and what might that link with in my life?
Did I do the breaking or was it someone else?
What were my feelings in the dream, where can I recognise those feelings in waking life, and what do they connect with?
Try using Easy Dream Interpretation and the Because Factor
Breasts Breastfeeding
In general the breast represents a giving of oneself, or of ones sexual pleasure. But at the most fundamental level it is LIFE ITSELF. Having watched and even help in the birth of babies I noticed something that isn’t shown in the media. As the baby is born it is connected with a very evident umbilical cord. This cord I realised was the continual life connection for the infant. In many birth situations this cord is cut as quickly as possible, I wonder if the nurse feels that is being efficient, but while it is still pulsing the baby feels connected with its life source. Watching kittens being born, as soon as the mother breaks the sac it was born in and disconnects it from the cord, the first thing these tiny creatures do is crawl to the nipple and so connect with the life flow again. Unfortunately newborns can’t crawl but they too want to quickly connect to the life giving source again.
The breast is an expression of female love and nurture, and an expression of female sexuality. To go to a woman’s breast in a dream may represent an expression of the baby’s desire to be fed, be loved and made feel secure. That is, a regression, or reliving of infant desires. A woman expresses male sexuality through her breasts, in that she fulfils the body of the infant. May also represent emotional security.
But kissing the breasts with much tenderness and lack of lust can indicate the soul receiving its own sustenance. It is releasing the power from the breast and mouth to be lifted to a new level of experience by love.
Self giving, nourishment or the wonderful bonding and connection that arise from motherhood or sex.
But at the most primal level it can mean many things. The other emotion that the breast may arouse is ultimately as rapturous as the first, the joyously orgiastic, but it is entirely different. The two raptures are prototypes, ultimate extensions of almost every emotion we feel in life. They express the most fundamental split in the psyche: one, the passive release, dissolving into ecstasy; the other, the hot, aggressive conquest which ravishes its object. Every psychic feeling, thought, or act seems to fall on one side or the other of this great divide of the mind. Hostility, aggressiveness, sadism, masculinity, egotism, self-aggrandizement, the attempt of the self to become a god and destroy all else—these are all expressions of the hot fire of conquest which reveals itself in oral cannibalism. Submission, masochism, sexual passivity, mysticism, selflessness, humility—all these are the attributes of the passive release.
We are psychically always on one side or the other—tiger or fawn, destroyer or destroyed, taker or giver, object or subject, active or passive, creator or created. Here is the dichotomy of our fall from the greater self of primitive psyche into the forms of reality, the division of self and other. All our lives we try to achieve a balance of these contradictory opposites, and whether in our egos we succeed or fail, every function claimed by the ego is balanced by its opposite in the subconscious. Only in the fusion of infancy, or of sexual orgasm, or in religious ecstasy do we escape the psychic wound of division.
In woman’s dream: In quite a number of women’s dreams the breasts appear in a health sense, connected with the anxiety about breast cancer. To dream of that does not mean you have cancer, only that you are anxious.
The breasts also link with how positive you feel about your own womanhood and ability to feel proud and easy with your sexual as well as intellectual functions. So in some women’s dreams the breasts are exposed to say, “See, I am a real woman.”
Of course the breasts also are used in dreams where the desire, lust or love feelings link you with a man. But such a link is not necessarily to do with an external male. They also indicate how well or badly you are relating to your own wholeness.
The size or development of the breasts in a woman’s dream are often used as a self assessment regarding how fully you have emerged from childhood.
Breastfeeding: Quite a number of dreams are about breast feeding, and this usually indicates how easily you can give of yourself. At times it can be about past experiences of feeding and any difficulties encountered.
Many dreams received are about giving birth to a baby and breast feeling it, even though there may not be a man involved. This is about caring for a new aspect of you that has come into your life. See Woman’s Creative Power.
Kate in the example gives of herself even though frightened, and feels whole – the circle.
Example: ‘I was about to lie down naked near my grandmother as I was caring for her, when she started to suckle my breast. For a short time I was very frightened that she would hurt me or even suck my breast right off, but she didn’t and it felt very good as I fed her. It felt as if we were one, our bodies forming a circle.’ Kate.
This next example shows how the breasts are a measure of emerging womanhood, especially when young. Lin was near to being anorexic.
Example: I’ve been meaning to tell you about a dream I had when I was so sick. Truly weird. I sort of woke up and rubbed my chest. It was so bony, and I thought in that instant I have the chest of a guy. I then fell back asleep and dreamt I was a boy! Needless to say, after that dream, I began my campaign of making myself eat! Lin.
Example: In this dream it was as if I had just remembered that I had a baby, and as I remembered this I also realized that I hadn’t been feeding it. I was upset and thought, “How can I have forgotten something so vital and important as feeding my baby!?”
I thought I had better start feeding the baby again, but I was worried that my milk would have dried up. I picked up the baby to feed him, and was struck by what a lovely child he was – he seemed calm and serene even though I had been neglecting him. He had a beautiful face and shiny, longish straight hair. He didn’t look malnourished or dehydrated and I was relieved at this. I was even more relieved when I put the baby to my breast and he started feeding again. As he started to suckle I could feel my breasts filling with milk and I could see that he was swallowing, and thus getting milk. I knew that the more I fed him, the more my milk supply would increase – I was happy then, to know that despite my neglect of the baby, all would be well.
Woman’s breast in a man’s dream: In some measure this is usually about a return to infant dependence, or childhood pleasure and wonder of accepting a woman’s love and comfort. Even when this is directly sexual, it still links in some way with how well or badly you were bonded with your mother, and what traits you carry from that.
In some men’s dreams the breast are a confrontation with what is felt as the woman’s power in your life. If you feel emotional pain or fear when you get close to a woman emotionally, that is the power you feel she has. Or is when you become intimate with a woman you feel enormous dependence and pain if you feel you are losing her, then that is the power of the woman in you. In other words each man carries deep imprints of his maternal relationship, whether for ill or good, and that acts as a powerful force in his life influencing the way he relates to females. The breasts in dreams can indicate this.
Example: When I was about six or even younger, because my mother worked constantly I was left with our next door lady who had a daughter who must have been in her late teens or maybe a bit older. One morning I was standing at one side of their large dining room table, on the other side was the daughter standing side on to me. As I watched her I saw that her blouse had a spilt and through it I could see her naked breast. Immediatly my whole abdomen was fulled with an exquisite hunger. It wasn’t hunger for food, but for the beauty of the feelings a child gets when at the breast.
The following example shows Grant, the dreamer, meeting his ability to unite with his inner ‘woman power’ and to recognise this as an aspect of himself.
Example: Two night ago I had a fascinating dream that left me feeling more at peace with myself, and more hopeful of a real sense of growth than for a long time. The dream was one of those that seemed to go on and on. In one section of the dream I was with a number of women in what felt like a classroom or semi public building. I felt completely at ease with the women and the marked feature was that I had easy and relaxed intimacy with any of them. With one of them for instance I was gently stroking her breast, which was very cone shaped and nice to hold. Even as I dreamt this part of the dream I had quite a high level of lucidity. Enough to realise that I was experiencing the ability to claim any of the female aspects of myself.
This then also occurred with males. In this section of the dream though I actually became any of the males who appeared in the dream. Again I was lucid enough to realise how I was able to accept any aspect of myself and identify with it easily, and how wonderful this was. There was another section of the dream which is difficult to remember. I believe it was more general in that I was realising some of the pleasure or wonder of being able to accept life – myself – so fully. Grant.
Example: I felt lonely, terribly lonely, for it, longing for the nearness of someone I loved. My face was against my left bicep. It was the only human comfort I could find – myself. I rolled my head back and forth across the softness of my bicep. Then, as my aloneness became more intense, I suckled my bicep like a breast, longing for the warmth only I could give myself at that moment.
Breast Implants: I want to bring the word “natural” in here because it is relevant to what is being explained. If we see animals as examples of what is natural, or what happens in nature without human intervention, then we could say that it is not natural to have one’s appendix taken out when it is inflamed. It is not natural to have breast implants. It is not natural to have vaccinations against disease. But these things are all options we are capable of, along with the countless other things that humans do because they are possible.
Dreaming of breast implants could have several associations, such as what would be the consequence; would I feel better with them; is it safe. So you need to ask yourself what thoughts and desires you had felt before the dream, and what the dream is commenting about this.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What are my feelings about breasts in this dream?
Are the breast(s) linked with feelings that I am usually repressing or accepting?
Am I at ease in this dream – if not what is it that prevents this?
You can explore your dreams to find otherwise hidden meaning by using Processing Dreams or Talking As
Breath Breathing
Breathing links with being alive and in a normal state of awareness. The speed, ease or difficulty in breathing point to pace of life and your emotional state – i.e. peaceful or disturbed; holding on or releasing.
Different types of breathing link so fully with states of mind or altered states that dreams often show this in various ways. So the held breath can suggest anxiety or an attempt to be still. Fast breathing can link with excitement or effort. The held breath can also be a way of stepping out of ones normal awareness, as the following example shows and is often a way of avoiding feelings.
Example: Gliding from a mountain top. Then I am with Pat Brown, a girl friend I knew at school. I am lying on top of her holding her breasts. Then I was being led into rooms but avoiding them each time as I felt some sort of trap and threatened imprisonment. To avoid being caught I take a deep breath and this caused me to fly up into the air and away.
Breathing in – Inhaling: Taking in something or someone; absorbing an influence; absorbing life. To absorb something, to take into your thoughts or experience, to consider, or to accept mentally.
Breathing something in: We often associate breathing things in with anaesthesia or smoking, and therefore with powerful influences entering us.
Fast breathing: Excitement; emotional release; experience of fear. Also stimulates our whole being in some way and can lead to emotional release in some cases.
Holding the breath: Expression of will. We breath-hold when repressing emotions and anxiety, but it may at times be a means of experiencing the non-breathing and deep absorption of life in the womb. the slow breath; the breath of life.
Struggling for breath: This usually relates to great fear or the feeling that existence is a struggle to survive. It can also link with feelings that you are being smothered or overwhelmed in a relationship or situation.
Under water and not breathing: Womb like state; experience of level of awareness without sexual, biological drives, and without opposites; return to deep relaxation – healthy if you can easily emerge. Might be an escape from waking reality if you cannot. See: lungs; air.
Example: ‘I was getting married. I could hardly breathe, I was in a room with my brother and I was really terrified.
Example: I started by considering the recent nightmare of the ‘thing’ at the foot of my bed. Gradually I began to feel tense throughout my body, with difficulty in breathing. The touch of death was like a disease though. Once touched the disease was incurable and gradually took over ones body. I could hardly breathe as I experienced this, and I understood the sort of emotions that might lie beneath asthma attacks. This struggle with death went on for some time.
Idioms: breath of fresh air: bad breath; bated breath; breath of wind: don’t hold your breath; out of breath; under my breath.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What does the state or type of my breathing suggest, and can I link that with my life experience?
Is anybody else involved in what is happening with my breathing, if so in what way, what relationship?
Am I breathing something in? If so what is the influence of it suggested in the dream, and can I recognise that influence.
Try Techniques for Working your Dreams; Talking As; Processing Dreams
Bride
This usually relates to feelings about or desire for marriage; love; receptivity and fertility; or integrating parts of your personality previously not expressed. The bride also depicts ones soul – the open and receptive qualities that are fertile and ready to open into new life and creativity.
The bride is a wonderful and powerful image, holding in it enormous feelings, potential and life. The following dream illustrates some of this power.
Example: A young woman, a bride, was given a bunch of flowers. The flowers were covered up, or wrapped, in paper, or newspaper. This was removed, or I removed it, and the flowers looked rather wilted and lifeless. As soon as they were uncovered however, life seemed to come into them. The buds opened before our eyes, blooming into lovely white flowers. The flowers had many petals, and lots of fine moving stamens. The flowers seemed to be constantly moving within, and everybody cried out, “Oh, orchids!” As I looked at them I experienced intense joy.
It is this opening to the fertility and flood of life energy that a bride depicts. The flower represents this perfectly because it is an expression of the profound forces of nature as they open ready to become fertilised and help to create new life. But this opening need not be toward a man, it can be in relationship to your own potential and creative power.
Of course the bride in a dream links with marriage, but not necessarily a marriage of the body. It frequently links with your own growth to wholeness, and it does this with the ease or difficulty shown in the dream marriage ceremony. The marriage, if it takes place shows the integration of your male and female characteristics, and thereby an achievement of greater maturity. See Archetype of the Anima – Archetype of the Animus
Some of the classic difficulties faced or depicted by the dream bride are to do with – for the male – the challenge of surrendering independence and youthful manhood in service of life and the female principle. And for the woman, the finding within oneself of the ancient female power that can accept and meet the male as a woman – i.e. receptive, fertile and nurturing. This does not relate to the outer life, but to the inner power of the male and female recognising and enhancing each other. The example under relationship and dreams clearly shows a man involved in this struggle. See: Beware of Love; Growing Up to Love.
Female dream: Your marriage and what it means to you; feelings, fears or hopes about marriage; feelings about your daughter. The bride also depicts all those perhaps unlived dreams, beauty and love within you; all your womanhood perhaps never linked to and recognised by a man.
If getting married: Integration of inner aspect of yourself never previously known or expressed, especially if bride/groom is oriental or black.
Male dream: Frequently depicts your relationship with your own feelings and non rational nature, as well as being an indication of how you relate to real marriage and the integration of your female characteristics. See Archetype of the Anima
Useful Questions and Hints:
If I am the bride, is this about my hopes for or involvement in marriage – or is it showing what stage of unity I have with my male characteristics?
If I am a male dreamer what is my relationship with the bride, and what does that say about the way I relate to women or my own female characteristics?
What feelings accompany the dream and what do they suggest about myself?