Posts Tagged ‘imagination’

Visualisation

Your mind is a magical thing, but you may not have been taught to use many of its wonders during your years at school or college. One of the greatest of its abilities, seen in its most impressive form in remarkable works of art, is imagination and the skill of visualisation. With imagination you can soar beyond the limitations of your body and surroundings; you can bring together in creative ways things you had never brought together before. You can leap beyond logical thinking into real insight and creativity. When you add visualisation to an ability to listen and watch, it becomes a doorway to enormous depths within you. Through it you can access treasure of insight and experience that were previously locked in unconsciousness.

To use this well might take some practice, but it is worth the time taken to learn. There might also be some barriers to overcome. For instance most of us seem to have a resistance to imagining ourselves as someone else – even if it is a character from our own dream! Then, to imagine ourselves as an object at first seems even more alien. Please press on till you move beyond such hesitations.

Perhaps without being really aware of it, you already know your body is a screen. When you see a film or read a book you might be moved to laugh or cry, or shout out in fear. Considering that the book and film is not reality, what is happening? Well, the outside images or words are helping you to experience things upon the sensitive screen of your body and mind.

With visualisation a similar thing can occur. But you need to learn how to direct your attention inwards instead of to a film, TV screen or book. So take time to turn your attention inwards and look beyond the surface gross impressions of your senses and swirling thoughts. When you do, what do you observe is going on – do you feel relaxed, tense; are there persistent body sensations or aches; is there an overall feeling such as sadness or loneliness? Learn to notice these and carry on watching.

We are born with a problem-solving ability present. When we face a life situation in the form of an external event in which is a life problem, usually we respond with deep emotional and mental involvement. The transformation in ourselves occurs because we are led through the experience and events we face to the point where a shift occurs. The mental changes that do not solve problems are those that simply replay the difficulty without moving on to a change in the events to bring a shift of feelings and realisation. Once we realise that this is a fundamental process our mind uses in problem solving, we can take it up consciously and make use of it, extending its efficiency far beyond the level occurring without conscious help.

To put this into plain language, supposing painful childhood events had left someone with the habit of building a powerful shield between themselves and others. Suppose this barrier was like a great metal shield they erected every time they felt slightly hurt, thus stopping them from prolonged intimacy with others. To attempt a change in this habit, one need not wait for a dream. If the situation has been seen, the first step is to create a pictorial representation of it just as a dream does. So, in this case the person could be depicted as having powerful great doors which could be shut whenever anyone came close.

The next step is to act this out alone or with one or two other people who are sympathetic to the technique. It can even be done by imagining – fantasising – the action. The person could act out closing their powerful doors and excluding people.

So far this simply represents the negative habit the person has built into their life, but this is important because it makes it real for the person. The next step should be taken slowly, and with as much openness to emotions and delicate feeling responses as possible. This is to enact a shift from the problematical position to a different one where they try opening the huge doors that block them. So, the person might try opening their doors – but not automatically – with sensitivity to what fears, emotions they experience in doing so.

Any example of doing this: Dreamt that at the same time I was myself and had spent a long time following clues in my research into the unconscious. One line of clues had led me to go through a door in the house in which I lived. This house has no clear connection with any house I know, although it reminds me vaguely of G. L’s house. The door led to an area somewhat like a cellar or basement. It was certainly down some steps, but I felt more as if it were an almost secret place within the house rather than underneath it. It was dark, with no windows though, and was similar to being down deep.

I was like a detective following clues. To follow the clues, I tried an experiment. I sat in this interior place facing a tunnel. It was maybe about five or six feet high. Where I sat was dimly lit, but the tunnel led into complete blackness and the unknown. I believe I repeated some keywords and looked into the tunnel.

I had neither warning nor expectation for what happened. I was overwhelmed by terror, as if the very darkness of the tunnel was a living force of fear that entered me and consumed me. I screamed and screamed uncontrollably in reaction and found myself running back up the stairs.

Nevertheless, a part of me was observing what had happened, and was amazed and realised I had found something of great importance. Somehow, I managed to turn my screaming self away from the tunnel. But on my right – it had appeared to be behind me – was another tunnel that brought about the same terror.

I managed to get to the door, open it and get back into the everyday part of the house. I remember feeling, as I did so, that I hoped no one would observe me coming out, as in some ways it was illegal to go into or be in such a place. I also feel as if I have had many, many dreams involved in the house, that I have never brought to consciousness before.

In meeting the terror of the tunnels using the method described above, I first felt two string connections; firstly I felt that society puts an authoritative and restricting stamp on the people by considering that only psychiatrists, doctors, priests, or professors have anything useful to say about it. This led to my sense of secrecy or illegality shown in the dream.

The second association was with feelings that I had a lifelong habit of retreat form adult functioning, this showed itself in a spontaneous movement of me burying my head trying not to be involved or to see.

But it worked out as my struggle to avoid the rectal anaesthesia as a child during a medical operation I experiences as a nine-year-old in which I kicked the bottle that held the anaesthetic that was being poured into me. I wasn’t experiencing the emotions of that, only the movements and intuitions about its connection with the dream. That is, I kept saying, “I didn’t hurt anybody. I didn’t.” This was expressive of a sense that the pain inflicted to me during the operation, must be because I had done something wrong. I could see that I associated inflicted pain with the punishment a parent gave because of some “bad” action. So, I could not understand why the pain had been inflicted on me.

Because the operation was on my nose, I couldn’t be given anaesthetic via the nose, instead the nurse tried to stick a pipe up my behind. She gave me no explanation about why or what she was doing, so I fought like mad and kicked the bottle of anaesthetic out of her hands. But again, without explanation she brought several other nurses who held me down as they applied the anaesthetic. The effect of this made me feel I was being blown up and I felt I was dying, so was fighting for my life against what felt like women attacking me and trying to kill me.

I screamed, struggle to and shouted, expressive of fighting with nurses. What I screamed was pleas to be left alone. What had I done to deserve such an attack? I screamed to my “attackers” to stop.

What arose from all this was the distinct reaction that people could not be trusted. For no good reason, and despite physical struggle and screamed pleas for them to stop, they yet persisted and caused me pain. So, I saw that out of my experience of people in those situations arose a powerful suspicion and mistrust of people. Also, I developed a belief that people are purposely deceitful. This was because my mother, and nurses, doctors, say such things as, “This won’t hurt. Everything is going to be okay. You’ll go in, they will put you to sleep, and you won’t feel a thing.” There was no mention that nurses might attack me and subject me against my will to what felt to me like death.

The sense of death equated with pain and people hurting one. At the time of the anaesthetic my conscious identity had been plunged still with some awareness deep into the unconscious. The loss of shape or senses was felt to be death. So, a conditioned reflex had been set in me lasting many years until I recovered the memory of it and so transformed the terror into understanding. The conditioned reflex was or is that when I get to the point of consciously entering the unconscious, my frantic screaming and struggling for life was triggered. It was the way I mastered the nightmare using such things as Opening to Life and Secrets of Power Dreaming – Acting on Your Dream.

The Magical Dream Machine

We all dream every night, so we each have what could be called a Magical Dream Machine.

To gain a feeling of this, imagine yourself entering one of those game machine areas where youngsters can ride a motorbike, or ski down a slope. But instead of a simulation of a car, you discover a large machine that you can climb into and become completely enclosed. When you close the door, contacts link onto your body and head in the complete darkness. It is quiet as all the external sounds disappear, and you relax your hold on your body and senses. Your whole experience of yourself shifts as the external world melts away, along with your awareness of your body. That is sleep.

But now – in the darkness a light glimmers. Gradually it takes shape. The shape of a person is suggested. In the time that follows he or she evolves form, moves, and you have full sensory experience. You are totally involved, with all your emotions and sexual responses. Changes occur and you love, fight, fear, murder or bring to life again the person, who can become an animal, a devil, God or a bodiless voice lost in a sombre countryside. Your experiences are totally real, and you move through heaven and hell, despair and joy, darkness and light. Scenes from your past can be revisited – or totally new experiences can be felt so clearly, you are enriched. That is a dream.

 Seeing Is Not Believing

If you had been in such a machine, and on coming out of the total involvement of these moving experiences, you were told you had created it all yourself – that on the black screen you had, out of your fears, habits, secret longings and passion; out of your immense store of memories; with your unbelievable range of feelings and creativity – you had given form to urges and processes in your body and made this rich world of experience, what would you feel? Would you disclaim responsibility? Would you consider it meaningless? Would you realise what amazing creativity and potential you have?

In your dreams you create such a world and such experiences. But perhaps you have not taken time to consider the wonder of your creative process in dreams. Every night you create a new drama. You conjure out of your own being the people, the creatures, the surroundings of your dream. Then you give life to what you create – not only life but purpose and drama. You are a supreme dramatist, playwright, actor and actress. You are the great Creator – in your dreams. Considering this, have you ever wondered why that enormous creativity does not flow into your waking life? You can see that some people have that creativity and are enriched by it personally and financially. Why not you?

But what is the REAL world?

In considering how you reply to this, remember a few well-known facts about how you encounter the so-called ‘real’ world of waking life. Firstly, when you look at an object such as an orange or apple, remember that although you have the sense of seeing what colour and texture the fruit has, in fact all you are seeing is reflected light. You never see the actual colour of the object.

Also, as far as texture is concerned, this is a mystery to you. Texture depends entirely on what you approach the fruit with. If it is an electron microscope, then the texture is one of shifting swirling atoms and subatomic particles. If you were tiny the apple would have a very different appearance than it does to you at your present size. Also, remember that you never actually know what the apple feels like or looks like directly. Your eye takes in streams of light that are translated into nervous impulses transmitted along the optic nerve. In the brain these nerve impulses are again translated into an image that enables you to have some relationship with an apparently external world. In the same way the nerve endings on your fingers transmit signals that are translated into sensation.

Similarly the television picture you watch on a screen is translated from signals the TV set is sensitive to and changes into pictures, colour and sound. The signals are not in themselves images, colour or sound. So, like the TV, the world you feel so sure you are seeing and experiencing, is one your brain has created in order to enable you to deal with survival. Even so it is a translation of ‘the world’ that has been shaped by evolution and its limited needs. You only respond to very narrow wavebands of light and sound for instance. So you do not know much of what is actually going on in the world anyway. Your eye, as a lens produces an upside down image of your surroundings, and this is ‘corrected’ to help you move around more easily.

Considering that you only experience a virtual reality of the external world created by your brain – and that is itself limited to a tiny fraction of what is actually surrounding you – you cannot take seriously your perceptions of the world or people. There are so many radiations, energies, and depth upon depth of texture in the cosmos and objects around us, that in effect we are blind and deaf. See Inner World

 You Are the Creator

So it is true to say that you live in a world, in conceptions of yourself and your surroundings that are a self-created virtual reality. You could just as correctly be asked the question of whether you accept that you create all you experience in regard to the objective world, as you could of the magical dream machine.

However, we are discussing dreams, but remember that what is said could equally as well refer to your waking life.

So, your dreams are a magical place in that you have the ability in them to create a totally real world. Do you discount them? Do you see that you create your own world of experience in them? If you do, have you wondered why you may have a propensity for creating what you do? Or why, with such creative potential, you might still lack self-confidence? Just as you create your surroundings in dreams, you also create the psychological and sensory world you live in. Understanding your dreams can help you to clarify why you at times create what does not satisfy you, and how to generate a whole new world of experience. You can take charge of your creativity and ride with it instead of being at its mercy. Such power, after all, can as easily produce misery and ill health as pleasure and ability – unless you learn to direct it. Such creativity can lead you into hell, or create a heaven.

A few magic words to remember to say to yourself – “I have the magical power of creation. So I can create a hell for myself or a heaven. I have immense ranges of ability and problem solving. So here I go in believing in myself!”

Amazing Storehouse of the Mind

Although you constantly use the huge storehouse of memory and developed skills in your everyday life, you may usually fail to recognise what you are doing, and what a miracle it is. As an example, you now hold in store millions of bits of information. By asking you a simple question such as ‘What is your present home address?’ I can call to conscious awareness a minute part of the information lying unconscious. If I were to present you with a bicycle, or you were dropped in deep water, the skill of cycling or swimming could also emerge from latency if you had previously learned those skills.

Apart from these aspects of your immense storage of information, there is also the possibility that by the right series of questions or experience, you could arrive at a creative synthesis of information already held. In other words something not previously held in memory could arise by putting together old ideas or experiences. With the right stimulus, in the same way you could bring to expression potential within you that is at the moment lying dormant.

While we dream we have a very full access to the storehouse of our experience. If we learn to use the dream process we can more capably use the riches of what usually lies unconscious like treasures at the bottom of the ocean. There is a natural process of putting together the separate pieces of your experience into creative new combinations. All of this can be accessed by exploring the treasures held in your dreams and the dream process. See Using Your Intuition; Clicking On

 Mind Watching

Because of the many nature films shown on television we are now used to the idea of mature and intelligent adults spending days or years watching the behaviour of animals such as hyenas or chimpanzees. In her book In The Shadow of Man, Jane Von Lawick Goodall explains how, by watching chimpanzees and taking note of her observations, radical new insight into the behaviour of chimpanzees arose. She didn’t think beforehand what she expected to find, but simply observed and put together the information that arose. For instance on several occasions she saw the chimpanzees kill another animal and eat its flesh. The knowledge that chimpanzees were meat eaters was entirely new.

In a similar way, by observing dreams and laying bare the emotions and associated ideas and memories you have with your dream imagery, you gradually define your personality, its strengths and weaknesses, in a depth you had never managed previously. I have called this mind watching, but it covers every aspect of human nature, not simply the intellect or thinking.  See Self Help

This mind watching through observation of your dreams first presents information about your personal experiences and memories and how they influenced your growth and influence present responses. Gradually the information arising from such watching leads beyond your present boundaries of self. It shows in many cases how your unique self has arisen from, and has indissoluble links with your forebears, with your culture, with the past as a whole, and with the cosmos itself. It leads from yourself to the edge of the known, and perhaps helps you take a few steps beyond that edge into the unknown, to create new understanding, and enter new dimensions of experience.

Remember that you are probably one of the millions of humans suffering amnesia. If you doubt this ask yourself why you do not remember your childhood. No doubt you have also forgotten your life as a baby. You fail to remember your life in the womb. Perhaps, more importantly, you have also forgotten your link with the rest of the cosmos. In fact you are an amnesiac, and by ‘dream watching’ your memory can gradually be restored. It takes time and perseverance, but gradually the time line of your existence will be filled with detail.

This mind watching also gradually reveals to you the many aspects of your mind’s working, and with such insight may come the growing ability to use these facets of yourself. Not only may you discover great vistas of personal memory, but also the roots of your creativity, the subtle senses of your emotions and unconscious, and the treasures of experience you have gathered.

The Path To Take

There are many methods you can use to discover the enormous content within your dreams. For instance look at the following features and explore them to discover what works best for you:  Introduction to DreamWatching; The AmplificationMethod – PeerDream Group – Active Imagination.

Another method that can be used with great benefit if you are a person who meditates, is as follows:

The meditation method of dream understanding rests on the function of memory. The aim is to hold the dream in mind, and at the same time hold the question of what are the activities, passions, memories or pains in you that have formed the dream?

You hold this question in the same way that you hold any question – such as the one asked above about your address. Do not strive, and do not struggle to arrive at an answer. Simply sit and WATCH the dark space of your mind and feelings. Take note of whatever memories, feelings and fantasies arise.

It helps to think of your being as a keyboard that your unconscious knowledge and intuitions can play upon. Holding your self stiffly, in mind or body blocks this mobility. See the passage on using the body in dream work for further information.

This may not be a quick method. So be patient, even when nothing seems to be happening. The mind is a wonderfully responsive thing, and will attempt to present what you are seeking. But at first perhaps only stray memories or feelings will arise. Also, the insight might require you to feel something deeply, so be ready for that and let it happen if you can.

Over a period of days gradually more and more will arise, and it is worth the time spent in the exploration. But do not be content with airy-fairy insight. Do not make the dream a platitude or a cliché. Dreams are powerful expressions of your down to earth, here and now self. You will know if you have arrived at insight because it will be deeply moving and clarify areas of your life that were previously obscure.

It is important to consider what you have received and weigh it against practical observation. See if there is something you can learn from it and apply. Test it wherever practical. Do not be afraid to doubt it and try it against the world. If you are not accessing the best in yourself you need to know it. This avoids the trap of wanting your intuitions about your dream to be true at any cost. The intuitions arising from the meditation method are a valid way of gaining information, just as your senses are, or your ability to read. But your senses and your ability to read can also be ways in which false information is taken in. So your discrimination is needed when using your intuition, as it is in everyday life. The more you use it the more sharp your faculty will become. But discrimination must not act as a source of doubt that blocks your ability to receive spontaneous information.

The Hidden Buttons in the Machine

One of the things we take for granted in our experience of the world is that there are many possibilities hidden in nature that nature itself does not express. For instance lightning is one of the few ways nature expresses electricity. But as a species we have learned there are many other possibilities for the use of electricity. By directing it in various ways we can produce heat, light, sound, power to move things, and pictures as we see on the television, PC monitor or in the cinema.

This applies also to our own body and personality. The example we can use here is the drive towards sex. This has developed in us through millions of years of evolution in the process of reproduction. This gradual development has formed organs and traits, such as courting behaviour, that lead directly toward an attempt to plant the seeds or receive the seeds to reproduce.

In our own culture we largely accept this except where there is psychological trauma that may prevent a normal expression of sexual drive. We have the unconscious concept that there is no other possibility. This is rather like looking at lightning and saying, “Well, that’s how nature does it, and that is the only possible way it can be experienced.” But some other cultures have looked upon the sexual drive in a similar way that we have looked upon electricity. They have explored its possibilities.

To explain what they found, and its relevance to what is being said about your personal potential, we need to remember that in nature the electricity in the lightning simply earths itself. All that tremendous energy flows into the earth. What we have learned to do is to put something in between the flow, such as an electric fire or a television set. In this way the flow back to earth produces many different phenomena. New potentials of the electricity are manifest.

Although this is an analogy, we could say the same thing about human sexuality. The discharge of feelings and body fluids in sexual orgasm and ejaculation are like the flowing back to earth. Nature does its thing and the energy is gone. In most human sexuality today there is not even the possibility of reproduction. What other cultures have developed is the concept of this as energy. They say that this energy is potentially many other things than physical reproduction. So they divert the energy into the body toward the brain, rather than out of the body to be earthed. The results of this when successful are extended functions of the brain and senses.

The techniques and teachings lying behind yoga are fundamentally about recognising the potentials lying dormant in you and learning to use them. The eastern cultures, far more than is true in the West, have developed techniques to extend possibilities of human life. See Kundalini

Bringing this back to the “Magical Dream Machine”, once we recognise the enormous creative potential we have, and that we can see active in our dreams, we can begin to realise we are only at the foothills of the possibilities open to us. For a start, millions of tonnes of drugs are taken each year to deal with depression. Yet here we each are, capable of creating a full surround virtual reality, with extraordinary people and creatures, but we are still victims of our own feelings and fears. Isn’t that strange? Isn’t that a tragedy? See – Avoid Being Victims; Life’s Little Secrets; Archetype of the Paradigm –

Take the journey! Learn how your magical dream machine works. Find out which buttons you unconsciously press to create heaven and which buttons you press to create hell! Create your own music. Create your own life!

Dialogue With a Dream Character or Object

Every part of a dream, whether an object, person or animal, is alive with our own intelligence. Each part has been created out of ourselves in some way, and depicts some area of our own total being. We can therefore talk with them. Such dialogue is of great importance and very revealing.

As I wrote in my book, Lucid Dreaming:

No computer, however amazing, can yet do what your mind does in creating a dream. It produces a living being such as a dream character that can have a conversation with you, and in doing so draw spontaneously from huge areas of your experience or memories. Behind the image lies enormous data, emotional response and created patterns of behaviour. So the main thing to remember at this level is that you are in a full surround databank of fantastic information. You can tap this information just as you would with any person, by asking questions and prodding for a response. But, even the trees and animals in your dreams are also enormous reservoirs of information, linking back perhaps infinitely with your potential and experience.

To do this, imagine yourself as one of the characters, animals or objects in your dream. It may help at first to have two chairs – one empty and one you are sitting in. The character or object of your dream is in the empty chair. When you are ready to be that character move from your chair, sit in the empty chair and speak as that character. You really need to let that character speak without any editing. So in the case of your dream, if it is a person you cannot see who is a hidden person, you could say, “I don’t really want to be known, because I like to hide my activity of getting you to feel like you might find out my real motives.”

A quick way of understanding your dream is to realise that the images in our dreams are just emotions, thoughts, fears. traumas, ideas and feeling projecting out of you and appearing as images, people or scenes outside you on the screen of your mind. If you draw back the imagews of your dream to make them a part and become them in your imagination, you might then discover what they represent about you. This is so simple that many people fail to try it, and instead try ‘thinking’ about their dream’. I have found that many people feel sqeemish abouit doing this – but your dreams do it all the time.

If it is difficult to get rid of the image, then take the image into you again – after all it was projected out of you, so taking it back into you by imaging you are it introduces you to whatever caused it. Imagine yourself becoming the image. For more information about doing this see Being the Person or Thing

So after you have imagined yourself as the person, care ot thing and felt what was the feeling underneath it, ask yourself, “When have I felt this before – even years ago? What is the feeling about and what part does it play in my  life?”

That is only an example so let yourself speak freely.

Be playful and curious in doing this. Question the character, and when you move to that role, let whatever your feelings are as that character motivate what you say and do. Exploring your dream in this way unfolds a great deal of information that would otherwise remain unconscious. It also enables you to make real changes in unconscious attitudes or habits, as you are literally dialoguing with areas of character patterning or programming, and can change them.

Example: When I spoke as the new born baby of my dream I really felt as if this was me, newly born. I had had a difficult birth and my reaction was that I wanted nothing to do with life. I wanted to stay curled up like an egg, not getting involved in the exterior world.

The adult observing me could see how this aspect of my inner life had led me to be withdrawn from social activity all my life, so I explained this to the baby me, saying – I need you to be ready to meet the world. You are a part of me and if you continue to withdraw I lack the enthusiasm to get involved with other people.

Back as the baby I felt totally vulnerable and didn’t want to take any risks – No I don’t want to come out of the egg.

As the adult again I said – Look, if you remain curled up this is more of a gamble than actually getting out and taking risks in life. Just lying there anything can get you. I had watched a documentary of baby turtles hurry to the sea, and some of them got  eaten by seagulls.

The view of the seagulls really really got to me as the baby. I could see that simply lying there was more dangerous than being still. I felt a change in me and a readiness to begin the journey of meeting life outside the womb.

This change really made a difference to my everyday activities. A lifelong habit of being introverted gradually dropped away. Trevor P.

Obviously it is important to use this a few times to really feel confident in it. Also do not feel as if you have to be guarded or careful about saying what is  important or ‘true’. None of that matters because only what really connects with you is of any use, the rest you can let go of. In the example of the new born baby, it was what was really felt in the role, and what made a difference that was important.

 

 

 

The Wonder of Imagination

If you are among the few people who cannot ever remember their dreams, you are missing one of the great wonders of human experience. To dream is to discover a virtual reality so authentic, that the people we meet, the sensations we experience, the dramas we are involved in, strike to our heart as deeply as the events we meet while awake. In fact sometimes the memory of dreams may stay with us for years, more potently than many everyday memories.

The realm of sleep and dreams offers us a world so vastly different from waking, that our life may be enriched by happenings and realisations totally impossible otherwise. It has been said that travel broadens the mind. Dreams expand it far more. Without them, and without the act of imagination and fantasy that arises from such powers of the mind as dreams emerge from, we would indeed be impoverished. Without the process of mind that lies behind the inventive fancy of dreams, art, music, drama, literature and architecture would have remained starkly utilitarian. Imagination, in dreams or otherwise, is a divine power which lifts us out of today and transports us to yesterday, or to the future. Consider what it would be like if you could never remember details of the past, or think about what you would like to do in the future. Consider also what it would be like if you could never reshape in your mind or feelings, an event or words you have heard. There would be no comedy, no stories, no art, no drive to build something that is different.

Imagination changes the shape of the world, penetrates its external solidity to transform its shape and its events into innumerable fresh experiences. Imagination sees the wonderful possibilities in a piece of rock, or some coloured earth, and with them creates art. Imagination discovered the submarine and the motor car long before scientific endeavour developed the technology to manufacture them. (4) Even people who appear to lack this divine power while awake, can in dreams spread wings of fancy and find ingenious dramatic creation while they sleep.

Even more than that I believe that Imagination coupled with belief can create a hell on earth, or a heaven here and now. It is what we believe as truth that creates our inner world. This is so obvious in dreams when people run in terror from the creations of their own imagination.

If you are someone who not only remembers, but soaks up the lush dimensions of dreams, then you already know that your visions of the night allow you entrance into strange worlds, new ideas, fresh and sparkling perspectives, as well as horror movies of your own creation.

So why not exercise your imagination by stepping into your dreams in a fascinating adventure.

Being the Person or Thing

One of the most important things about actually understanding your dream rather that interpreting it is to become the dream person or object – to actually completely identify with it. This needs to be practiced as most people feel the dream person or object is something other than themselves and are often hesitant to become it. For instance the Devil in a dream is simply your own emotions and fears given an exterior image. And also Christ in a dream is the same thing. In doing this you can step beyond the imagery of the dream into direct experience of yourself in all its variety and wonder. The Christ for instance become an actual experience of the highest in you.

So do do this the dreamer next choose one of the characters or images in the dream to explore. The character can be themselves as they appear in the dream, or any of the other people or things. It is important to realise that it does not matter if the character is someone known or not, or whether they are young or old. The character needs to be treated as an aspect of their dream, and not as if they were the living person exterior to the dream. So do not attempt to describe them an outside person, but the dream character.

In choosing an image to work with, such as a person, a tree, cat, place, or an environment like the street in the example dream above, it must again be treated as it appears in the dream, not as it may appear in real life. One can take any image from the dream to work with.

Stand in the Role of Character or Object

The dreamer stands in the role of the character or image they are using. So if they chose to be a person they would close their eyes, imagine themselves as stepping into the body of the dream character and describe him or herself as the person they now are.

To do this it usually changes the way your body or feelings feel. As this is done notice any changes in how you feel as that person – or object – speak as them in the first person. Do not say, “I feel as if this person is …” but say, “I feel I am and am doing ..” As this happens watch any realisations or insights that arise and explore the person. Ask question of this dream character until you feel you have realised what is is of you that is being revealed.

I know it is difficult for some people to say ‘I’ instead of talking as if the dream character is someone else. But if you start claiming the dream image as your own in this way by saying such things as, “I am a tree” you will quickly realise you are talking about yourself.

Here is an example. The dream was of a railway station that was an old castle keep/tower. In using the magic word I, this is what he described himself as. “I am an old castle keep. I used to be for defense and repelling people, but now I can let people in and out easily.” The dreamer realised this was a really excellent insight into his character and the change taking place in him.

The Reality of Imagination

Because dreams, imagination and creative thinking or intuition occur in a vastly different dimension than everyday life, we need to take time to reassess it and our use of it. We need to recognise what we are in touch with when we imagine. I honestly believe we are in touch with the future when we have a new and creative idea. For often we are moved by what we imagine and we begin to put it into our activities, in music, art, writing or engineering or technology. Then if we succeed we are now in the future we imagined, for our imagination came before the reality.

Imagination doesn’t necessarily need us to sit and try, making an effort to imagine something. It often arises spontaneously and we catch it like catching sight of a beauty, an idea, a passing feeling of love. If we manage to hold onto the glimpse, then we can craft it and make it physically real, and that is a wonder that something so ephemeral can take shape and be born. But the truth as I see it is that imagination is real and solid in its own dimension, the dimension of consciousness or mind.

But there is another aspect of it that many people fail to recognise. It is that anything we think and believe often becomes a reality. I see those women and men who believe they have no talent, no future, no love, often live a life exactly like that. I know because for a period of my life I lived in those beliefs and was suicidely depressed. And at the time I was so certain that they were true it was extremely difficult to get past them. Yet it is all imagination, for what is truth? Well it can be anything you like – a dark and threatening thing that can lead to constant feelings of despair or failure – or a creative promise that leads into an effortless state of wonder and newness.

Of course turning the corner from darkness to light – or not even that for we live in a world of duality in which there is darkness and light, a daily experience. So learning to exist in the middle of the extremes is a workable way.

A day many years ago, a spent butterfly with tattered wings was trapped inside the window of my house. What happened was a great surge if imagination as I watched it.

I begin to pass
And see a butterfly
In the lowest corner
Still – as in death.
Its wings tattered
By its own earnest
Yet fruitless quest.

I pick it carefully
And place it
Stood upon the very brink
Of that great open void
Toward the sky.
Motionless still
I nudge it toward the space,
Either to fall lifeless
Or to have what life is in it
Called upon fresh.

It falls.
Like a leaf dropping
In the air.
And then it flies
Lifting me with it
On tattered wings
Already spent.

Up, and up yet
Against the dark clouds
Lit from behind
In mighty grandeur wild.
Climbing against sea and sky,
Daring across the wind,
Bold amid the unending
Impersonal immense.

 

Coded Language of Dreams

The Dream Is A Code

It ha been said that the dream can be likened to a cartoon, which expresses or comments upon a situation by symbols. The dream can also be likened to a strange language, which we have to translate to arrive at its meaning. As Nietzsche suggested, it may be that the dream is our own archaic language, which at one time was the universal thinking process of man. To some extent we can easily see the possible truth of this by a simple experiment. The experiment also helps us in understanding the language of dreams, and thus begins the process of interpretation.

The experiment is simply this – try to think without the use of words! To be more specific, imagine that you wish to tell someone that: ‘What most people call prophecy, if looked at rationally, is usually an unconscious analysis of present events, and our projection of their consequences into the future.

I have purposely given a rather difficult idea to use in the experiment, and it should be done now before reading on. Then one finds, that without words, one is thrown back upon the use of images, symbols, dramatisation and depiction of various emotions. It would be interesting to know exactly how the reader has been able, if at all, to express the given idea about prophecy. But here is how a dream has done it.

‘I was looking into a crystal ball, when suddenly I could see a whole file of men walking along some railway lines. I called John (the dreamer’s husband), and said “Look, there is a picture in the crystal!” He looked, but then pointed behind me, and I could see that what I saw in the crystal was only a reflection of what was actually going on in the street behind me.’

This experiment of expressing ourselves without words, is very important. It demonstrates a number of things necessary in dream interpretation. Firstly, it shows that the dream may be our heritage from the past. It could be the method of thought used prior to hamanity’s use of words. If so, it suggests that human consciousness is stratified, and our present type of consciousness is built over and developed from the older level. It also clearly shows how we link up ideas such as ‘prophecy’ with an object such as a ‘crystal’. The complex idea of the future being a reflection of the present is dealt with by the clever positioning of several images in the dream. The difference between speculative and logical thinking is also expressed by the man and woman.

If we explore this idea a little further, we will quickly be able to see how a dream might be able to use common objects and events in our everyday life. Just as we have seen how a crystal expresses the idea of the future, or prophecy, our favourite armchair could express comfort or our sense of relaxation. To understand such things we have to be careful to investigate just exactly what we do feel or think about such things. For instance, our car is something we use to get from one place to another. It is a vehicle. In a sense, a school is also a vehicle, it transports us from ignorance to knowledge. But if we always feel ashamed when in our car, because it is shabby; then the car used in the dream represents our shame, our desire for better things.

Therefore we have to carefully note what our relationship with the dream symbols is. Our dream may not use our car, but just a car; when it becomes just a means of transport, about which we have no feelings. Similarly, if friends or acquaintances are pictured in dreams, then they are used because of the ideas and emotions we associate with them. Therefore, a friend who is always miserable and unsure of himself, represents our own feelings of uncertainty and misery. The warm emotional friend likewise is a symbol of our own feelings.

Sometimes dreams play on words and symbols together. Thus, if we dream of finding an old leather bag which did not belong to us, unlocking it with a key. only to find rotten and evil smelling food inside, this would be a very caustic comment on our sexual relationships. In effect it is saying, I picked up an ‘old bag’, had sexual intercourse with her, but found it unsatisfying and in the end, distasteful.

Although we have said that the dream may be a pre-language thinking, now that words have been added to our experience, the dream will naturally use them. In fact the dream uses any available material quite without our conscious sense of appropriateness Thus, colours, words, images and feelings will all be collected to express the dream. In most cases, however, we can arrive at the meaning of the symbols through our own associations with them. Of course, many symbols, like the crystal, would be almost universal, but they are only universal because enormous numbers of people have the same, or very similar, associated ideas concerning them. If one’s mother had used a crystal ball to hit one on the head as a child, it would no longer associate with prophecy, but punishment. A look at advertisements shows us how often such symbols are used to quickly convey a message without words. Thus a doctor or nurse expresses healing or sickness – a lightning flash is energy, speed and power – a policeman, law, protection or conscience a shapely girl, sexual or emotional pleasures – and so on.

Very often, the dream picks up a theme from the day’s experiences, and uses it to illustrate some inner condition. The following dream is an example of this. ‘I was looking everywhere for some green stuff to eat. I saw a field of cabbages, but, as they were not mine, could not eat the leaves.’ A couple of days before, the dreamer had prepared a salad for dinner, as it was winter, and the family were getting few ‘living’ foods. So we see that the conscious concern over ‘living’ foods has been used as a symbol in the dream. Thus the search for green leaves represents a search for something of her own that is living. The woman had been wondering what her own personal capabilities in life were. As the dream shows, she will not be satisfied or feel happy by simply taking or copying what others have done, or eating the rewards of their labours.

One last thing about the use of symbols and our attempts to interpret. Some symbols may be used a number of times in different dreams. In such cases, or in analysis generally, we have to realise that a symbol is influenced by the symbols it is grouped with, and the way it is used. To understand this, if we realise that words are symbols of thoughts in daily life, we will see clearly what is meant. As a demonstration of how one symbol (word) can alter its meaning due to context, I do not think I can better the efforts of Leslie Weatherhead when he wrote:

“For instance, in Mesopotamia you might have an officer who had blue blood in his veins and who at Oxford had been a blue. Rarely would he be a blue after dark when the whiskey went round, unless of course he went out on the blue on some stunt or other. Then he might be in a blue funk, and the air would be blue with his language. But in time he would recover from his fit of the blues, get his leave and pay, and blue the whole of the latter in a single day of the former, and he wouldn’t spend it on blue stockings either.”

So when interpreting, although we have to understand each individual symbol, we also have to see that symbol in context with the rest of the dream. Only in this way can we understand it properly.

Listing Of Symbols

If we are working on our own dreams, we cannot simply lie on a couch and let somebody else ask us all the searching questions. We have to be the one asking the right questions, and the one on the couch finding the answers. In other words, we have to know what questions to ask ourselves, and also be able to relax and let spontaneous associations and replies come up. Now that something has been said about dreams in the earlier chapters, and the idea behind association of ideas dealt with, we can actually get down to the dream analysis.

So, we have had our dream, remembered it, and written it out fully. Our next step is to start the interpretation. To begin with, one of the best ways to do this is by listing the symbols. I will use a dream to demonstrate this that is fairly simple. Here is the dream: ‘I was lying in the bed that I slept in whilst on holiday. There were a lot of people round me and I had had a baby. Everybody seemed to be certain that I was going to die, and the child or children I had given birth to had been taken away. I thought that I would die (if I was going to die) when I expelled the afterbirth, but I didn’t seem to mind.’ The dreamer added the comment, ‘I had this dream during a fit of depression.’

‘Holiday bed’ is our first symbol. When this is written down, one must now ask oneself what this idea suggests. Some of the ideas that arose around this symbol are that one talks of ‘making one’s bed, and lying on it’. So a bed can stand for some condition that has been created, that we now have to face, This is suggested by the dream showing that it is the ‘holiday’ bed, pointing to some condition that occurred on holiday. This brought up the fact that just before going on holiday, the woman had received a letter from a friend she was deeply attached to. Part of the letter had so hurt her feelings that she had felt depressed all during the holiday. Here we have the ‘bed’ that was slept in on holiday. The dream is, in fact, pointing to the ‘fit of depression’.

Turning to the next symbol, we can call it ‘a lot of people’. This is associated with two things. It is all the parts of the dreamer’s life that are implicated in her depression. Also, all of those about her, who are likewise influenced. Other parts of one’s life are obviously involved in depression. One might usually he active and creative, writing letters to people, cooking extra treats for the family, etc., all of which are left undone during such feelings of unhappiness. Or at least, not done with the same spirit.

Then we come to ‘the baby’. In real life a baby is a blending of mother and father, and all they represent. A baby is a new thing that has been ‘born’ out of us and the circumstances we are involved in. The dreamer said that due to the pain caused by the letter, a new attitude had arisen to the person who had written it. We can definitely associate this with the baby. It had likewise been ‘born’ out of her present self, and her relationship with her friend. In fact, mystics have always spoken of their pupils as ‘spiritual children’. This usually referred to the relationship between the teacher and pupil. But we can see that the dream suggests a much deeper inter-relationship. When we enter the receptive or sensitive part of another human being, we often leave a seed there that develops into a new baby. a new attitude, an offspring of the relationship between us.

‘Death’ or ‘Dying’ is the next symbol. and in the light of what has already been said is not hard to understand. For with the birth of the ‘new attitude’ to her friend, she certainly begins to feel that her old feelings for the friend are dying. As she still associates herself strongly with these feelings, it is as if she is dying. If on the other hand, she could see that the old feelings are not worth holding on to because they were so susceptible to being hurt, her dream might have shown them as the death of an old friend.

The dream ends with the symbol of ‘the afterbirth’. The placenta is that which links our established body to the new growth. The new always develops out of the old – always builds itself out of the elements, nourishment, provided by the old. In this sense, the afterbirth can be seen as the in-between condition within the woman. She could not have given birth to a new attitude unless she was near to reaching those conclusions. It also suggests those parts of the affair that ‘hang on’ within one, even when the affair is over. Not until these have dropped away will the old die, and the new, more vigorous attitude come into its own.

Therefore, our list of symbols will look something like this:

HOLIDAY BED – when one makes one’s bed, one lies in it. The bed is my depression I felt on holiday. The dream is saying this is my bed. In other words, maybe I made this depression and had to experience it because of my own attitudes.

A LOT OF PEOPLE – All the parts of my nature involved through my feelings of depression, and the Outer consequences of this.

THE BABY – The new attitude that has sprung from my pain.

THE AFTERBIRTH – All the feelings that are still hanging on concerning my hurt.

DEATH – The disappearance or death of my old attitude.

From all that, we emerge with a very comprehensive message and analysis of the situation. Although not a long and complex dream, nevertheless, an enormous amount can be gathered from it. If we think of it as a letter to ourselves from our Self, we might write it out thus:

“The letter from P. hurt a great deal. But I could not have felt that hurt if I had not entertained the feelings about him I did. In a sense, I made ‘my own bed’ by thinking about him in that way. It followed that as soon as he did something that did not fit those feelings, they would be hurt.

Yet the hurt has been a positive thing, as it has ‘given birth’ to a new attitude that may help me see P. as he is, instead of as I wanted him to be. Obviously I am still hanging on to the old attitude, but there seems the promise that it will drop away from me. Then all the old attitude, along with its possibility of being so badly hurt, will die.”

Not all dreams are as straightforward to interpret as that one. Some dreams will be only half understood. Others always remain a mystery. The next dream is an example of a more difficult type. Where so many events and objects come into the dream instead of remaining closely bound in the one scene like the bedroom dream, it usually signifies a more complex dream.

In the dream,

‘A girl had been captured by a dwarf – she’d been in hospital previous to this. He was painting and made her help him, but took all her clothes. He made her help him climb on to a big platform. While he was painting someone came up through a trap door almost underneath her, and was shocked to find her there naked and frightened. He took her away, and he and his wife gave her some clothes – bundled her into them. They kept telling her the best way to get to London; but she didn’t really want to go there and kept protesting. They didn’t listen, thinking they were doing the right thing. They took her to the bus terminus and left her there, having told her several routes to London and suggested she either got a bus or a lift. She wandered around hoping no one would recognise her. All the buses seemed to be going to Black-heath. She went to a refreshment stand; the girl in front of her in the queue had orange squash, and asked “Would chips be very expensive?” She had orange squash and it cost 10d. A shop beside the stall was headed, “Christmas cards not decorations”. She went to a cafe – they were selling peas and Brussels sprouts or rolls.’

It should be explained that the dreamer had not been appearing in her dreams. Therefore we see it all occurring to ‘a girl’. The dreamer also made only these comments on the dream: ‘I suppose the girl represents me, or more likely some part or aspect of me. The dwarf seems to stand for ugliness, cruelty – the outside world? But I am obliged to help it. Rescue comes from below – my rescuer finds this part of me helpless and vulnerable – clothes it, but in the wrong things; helps it, but in the wrong way. From this I conclude that help for this part of me will not come from below. The rescuer offers ways but none of these is the right (acceptable?) way, and this part of me is not even sure it wanted to go on a journey – it only wants to keep itself hidden. I have no direct associations with “Blackheath” – except that it reminds me of Shakespeare’s “blasted heath” and just sounds a rather unpleasant place to go.

With its lack of outer associations, and length, the dream looks like a formidable problem to unravel, although this should not put one off attempting it. Even if only part of it is revealed, it is worth the effort.

Let us start with THE GIRL. In dealing with a dream like this, lacking associations, we have to let the dream itself do much of the explaining. For instance, if one saw a man’s hand holding a beautiful bunch of red roses, with a note attached saying, ‘With love’, would it need associations? In the dream ‘the girl’ is not the dreamer. She has also recently been in hospital. So immediately the images tell us that the dreamer has submitted to a healing regime recently, and also that she does not like to see herself mixed up with the things of her dream. For one usually only disguises oneself or appears incognito, if one does not wish to be ‘associated’ with the situation. In outer life the dreamer had just become really interested in her dreams, and we might tentatively associate this with the hospital or healing.

THE DWARF can also be dealt with by looking at it as it appears in the dream. The dreamer’s associations are not satisfactory because they do not explain the dwarf in this dream context. That is stunted growth – painting – undressing the girl – making her help him to a high(er) platform. Taking the image as it is, it becomes self explanatory. It is a part of her that is faced as soon as she submits to the healing regime. It is stunted growth of creative masculine abilities that need her help to lift it to a higher level of expression. In contacting it, however, it unveils her helplessness; it strips away the clothing of pretence and delusion she had swathed herself in. and makes her see how she relates to it – in fear and trembling.

Put in words of a more understandable nature; each of us, man or woman, has something of the opposite sex in us. The logical, cool, constructive male, underneath has a world of emotions, irrational hopes, intuitions and softness usually only associated with women. On the other hand, an emotional, motherly, illogical woman, yet has within her constructive, logical, creative male characteristics. Joan of Arc is an extreme example of the strength and masculine power a woman can wield when her male qualities blend with her female self. While perhaps Schweitzer, with his gentleness, long suffering, and lovingness, is an example of the male female union. In the dreamer, however, this male creative part of her is stunted in growth. (In psychology this male aspect of a woman is called her animus. The female aspect of a man, anima.) This part of her seeks expression in art, in creativity, but has to force her co-operation by stripping off ideas, hopes, etc. This taking away of her orthodox attitudes frightens her; just as it might any person who, settled in a career that offers regular pay and security, suddenly feels a powerful urge to leave all this and take up some less ‘sensible’ job. Most people are ‘rescued’ from this frightening situation by similar means to the dreamer. Their ‘common sense saves them.

Moving on to the MAN AND WOMAN, we see that they fit this role of common sense, mum and dad, figures. They seem to be the easily shocked parents who try to do their inadequate best for the child. They represent orthodoxy, possibly gained from her parents.

But such orthodoxy ill suits her. The clothing fits poorly; the directions are not aligned with the dreamer’s inner desires. That such help arises from below, further suggests that these are orthodox habits of relationship acquired in childhood from home and school. Habits are notably motivated from the unconscious – we do such things unconsciously – without thinking.

LONDON offers a more difficult symbol. It is, in the dream, recommended by the man and woman, so we can gain a little insight by aligning it with their possible attitudes. The orthodox usually prefer the accepted. the safe, known way of doing things. Therefore, if we think of London as a symbol of the centre of commerce, of worldly pleasure; the direction in which most people go when they wish to ‘make a name’ for themselves. Thus the dream begins to resolve into a representation of an inner conflict between two urges in the dreamer’s life. One is her own creative urge which frightens her because it tends to be unorthodox. This she has held back in growth due to her fear. The other urge is that of the orthodox desire to seek a more ‘sensible’ commercial career or at least, to be more concerned with outer life. As can be seen, this is a difficult decision to make due to the inner circumstances surrounding her own creative or inner nature. We can also see that the dream is concerned with very real problems in life, and with practical affairs. For if the dreamer chooses wrongly, she may remain unsatisfied for a very long time. As the dreamer says, ‘This part of me is not even sure it wanted to go on a journey – it only wants to keep itself hidden.’ This shows how we may prefer not to know about our real inner feelings because of the torment of decision they will require.

That the BUSES going to BLACKHEATH follow this, Is very explanatory of what the dreamer senses the consequence will be. All the buses are going to Blackheath, or ‘blasted heath’. This could be taken two ways, one being that any move to commerce or acceptance of outer instead of inner values would be a journey to a very black situation, or that consciousness of the decision cannot help but lead to a period of black despair. Possibly they are both true.

In regard to the last part of the dream, she says she ‘can make no sense’. I must admit I find this difficult also, made worse by not having been able to talk it over in length with the dreamer. Generally speaking, however, any search for food is a search for nourishment. Food and drink ‘sustain’ us, ‘feed’ us. Thus arose the saying, ‘Feed my lambs’, which in its religious setting means to sustain, to keep strong. the spiritual life of the flock. However, our dream does not have a religious setting. The episode of the refreshment stand follows upon the image of Blackheath and the dreamer’s ‘wandering around’. The feelings that arise from such images, if we place ourselves in them, is that of being lost, not knowing what to do, hopelessness. Certainly in such circumstances we would need sustaining, strengthening. If we ask ourselves how we sustain ourselves in such situations we see that some people use an effort of will, some reason about the situation, some pray, some visit a friend who cheers them up, some withdraw or hide the feelings by entertainment or outer activity. Without the dreamer’s comments on this, we do not know what she did, but the dream suggests that she feels the price may be too high, and buys only the least expensive of sustenance.

The next image in the dream is CHRISTMAS CARDS not DECORATIONS. Again we can only speculate on this due to the lack of associations. The fact that it follows the concern over the cost, may help; for Christmas cards are things we give and receive, unlike decorations which simply belong to us as adornment. So the dream image seems to suggest that if we are to receive help we must not count the cost. It is a matter of giving and receiving, of being willing to part with things, that life and events will bring its own reward. We send a Christmas card because we wish a friend to know we remember him. It is a self expression, not a concern over personal adornment, a making of our house, our self, more decorative. Then the decorations, of other people’s cards come naturally. So in applying this to the conflict, it says that in expressing what is in us, instead of simply worrying about seeing we are ‘decorated’ with security, things naturally come to us.

PEAS – SPROUTS AND ROLLS seem even more bizarre until we see that they all have something in common. They are all round objects. Quite simply, a round thing suggests completeness, the full circle, the whole horizon, an ‘all round’ person. So through give and take we arrive at the condition where we can partake of a more complete, whole sustenance, which will, because of its completeness, help us through the decision. This interpretation may seem far fetched until we see, from analysis of many dreams, that a spherical shape often refers to completeness, integration or wholeness.

However, the interpretation of the dream is far less satisfying than the previous dream. This is because it lacks the comments of the dreamer in saying whether or not these interpretations really apply. It also lacks details about the dreamer’s life that would confirm or deny the conclusions. Nevertheless, it is a good example of how we can get at the possible meaning of the dream symbols if we fail to find helpful associations.

Characters or People in Dreams

Harry Bosma, who produces the best selling Alchera dream interpretation software, says of the characters in your dreams:

“There must have been some dreams that made you wonder why a known person appeared in them. This is especially puzzling if you haven’t seen that person for years. I experience this all the time. Everyone I ever met in my life keeps showing up in my dreams. I can’t blame day residue for it. If somebody appears in my dream, there has to be a special reason for it.

“I’ve been entering characters in my symbol book for a long time. Let me introduce you to a few. There’s Peter, one of my strongest helpers. He showed up riding on a horse in my ‘Cracking The Ice’ dream. Riding the horse he managed to crack the ice on a small lake, something I was unable to do on my own. I had to think for a while before I understood exactly why he appeared in my dream. Peter went to the same elementary school as I. One thing I eventually remembered about him was his inventiveness. This led me to realise that I use the appearance of Peter in a dream as a clue to consider whether I need to think of a more ingenious approach to an issue I am confronting.

There’s Frits, whose role I only recently got to understand. I could never see any pattern in the dreams he appeared in. Frits is a high school acquaintance, somebody who was often around, even though we weren’t really friends. I never fully understood it at the time. But it recently hit me that he was especially around when I was rebelling against the boredom of high school. He was having fun whenever I broke the rules, or did something else exciting. With that insight, looking back at the dreams, there is a pattern. Whenever my behaviour in a dream is more active than usual, he is around. He is the part of me that is having fun, because I’m not aware that I’m having fun myself.” 

Inner Characters: An important thing to remember to understand your dream characters/people is that usually we are not dreaming about that actual person but a living image of them formed by your memories, impressions, events lived with them and even your intuitions about them. Such memories are living parts of us and influence us inwardly, so we put them in our dreams.

Apart from defining how you see one of your dream characters, and what relationship you have had to them in the past, as Harry suggests, it helps to simply consider how you feel about them, what of their characteristics are most important or noticeable to you? But occasionally it isn’t what you see in their character, but what you feel about them that is important. For instance a person who has frequently appeared in my dreams is a woman called Ann. I felt a lot of sexual attraction to Ann – although she may have felt nothing for me – and she appears in my dreams whenever loving feelings or closeness are being dealt with.

So, if we really examine ourselves, we have a really wonderful ability to express as a huge range of different types, as shown in our dreams, the master/mistress of drama and expression.

A man I used to work for, Leo, has appeared in dreams where a problem regarding outer activity was concerned. So Leo represents for me ways of dealing with difficulties I face in the world. He is the confidence and courage I have innately to meet things constructively.

But many characters in dreams are not people you have ever met or known, not even characters from films, plays or books. So you can’t look back on them and ask yourself what you observed or felt about them. In such cases it is most helpful to imagine yourself as that character and describe who you are, exactly as you are and how you act in the dream – as the dream character. As an example of this, one character in a dream, an old man, was dying. He was nobody I knew. When I imagined myself as him and described what I felt, and what was happening to me as him, it was clear he represented the experience I was facing at the time. I was letting my old life, a phase of my life, my old self, die. This was difficult but it was happening, and the dream helped me clarify what I was facing. See Being the Person or Thing

One of the most helpful ways to find the qualities of a dream character is to give them a name. For instance you might basically feel that a man you have seen or know slightly seems a practical outwardly capable person. So you could give him the name of Mr. Practical. Mr Practical therefore is your ability in dealing with everyday life, or outward activities. There could also be Mr Sexy, Miss How Do I Look, and so on. Naming characters gets easier if you stand in their role imaginatively as described above.

But remember that a word in a sentence changes meaning, even subtly, as it is placed in a different context. The word light, for instance, can be used by saying, “I switched on the light.” Or we can say, “I felt very light-hearted.” Or even, “There was no light.”

Each of these brings about a different sense of surroundings or events. Similarly, the context of a character in your dream may change what you have defined of his or her qualities. So you must look to the context to get the final understanding as to what you dream character indicates in that particular dream. See Context/Theme

A person who appeared in many of my dreams was a woman named Su. My relationship with Su was one in which I had been trying to learn to love her without being possessive or grasping. So in my dreams she always depicted my attempts to love in that way, or my attempts to learn a fuller love.

In one dream Su is shown paddling an inflatable dingy to a local town, where I am going to meet her. But there were difficulties about this. At the time of the dream I was dealing with a lot of people in very direct relationships, and Su in this dream shows that I still haven’t ‘met’ or integrated the ability to love without grasping or wanting to posses. The difficulty in the dream suggests that I find it difficult to express this more open love.

In a later dream, experienced just after I had led a weekend activity, I dreamt Su was visiting or with us. But she didn’t look like Su at all, being dark, indecisive and a weaker personality. I was talking with her, or just with her, when I realised that Mike (a close friend) was upstairs with my wife. He had arrived back from America. I wanted him to meet Su. I wanted to hug him, but I also wanted Su to see me do this. So although I hug him with love, there was also something of the purposely done thing about it.

Here Su is actually with me, in my house, so this is an entirely different context than with the previous dream. This shows a fuller integration with unconditional love. But the part at the end where I hope Su will see me ‘loving’ Mike points out that I am still moved by desires for acclaim and public attention.

So to summarise, consider each character and discover what qualities, faults, weaknesses or strength they depict for you. Give them a name, as this helps you remember their quality. But look to the context of the dream to find the detailed and changing expression of what the character depicts. See Autonomous Complex; Sub Personalities

Example: Then I slowly became aware of a deeper sense of the discomfort. It was a feeling of being stuck in one place and not being able to move. It wasn’t anything to do with moving physically but was as an awareness. It felt awful and I tried to move but couldn’t. The only way of describing it was as if we are all made out of the same stuff – as an example concrete – and as such we filled all space. So the little space I filled could not move because all around was filled by others. I felt really stuck and wondered what I could do, but there seemed no way out of it. Yet I could not believe this was really how things were.

Most of this was spontaneous thoughts and movement through the experience, so that was how I was led to thinking about my cousin Sid again, and his situation of being constantly linked with his mother even after he died. Then I realised that I was linked with Rita in a similar way, and in feeling that I realised that I could move in at least two positions – me and Rita – because of the loving connection I felt.

Then came a flood of realisation, every person I had loved or experienced was another position I could be in; and then I knew all the animals I had loved and even people I had a casual relationship with. But there was even more because in dreams and sessions I had become or encountered amazing things, people, creatures, the alien beings and others. I knew then that I was FREE to go anywhere and be almost anything, because their life pattern was now part of me. Then with a rush of wonder, I realised that the more people and creatures I loved or had experience of, the bigger I became.

 Couple: Depending on the context of the couple in the dream, they can represent the dreamers parents and the family situation and environment at the age of the couple portrayed; if the dreamer has been married, can depict the dreamer’s marriage situation at the age of the couple; hopes for a relationship; possible outcomes of a relationship; friendship; partnership; some sort of relationship.

Dead people: The influence those people still have in your life – i.e. you are still influenced by them, or your relationship with them, even though they are dead. Feelings about death. Many people are often unaware of the massive experience they take in during a relationship and how it interacts with them when we love someone. In other words the memories and experience we gather unconsciously change us and are not lost. It is part of you and is symbolised in dreams as a person or event. So this needs to be recognised in understanding Dreams about Dead People and also Dreaming about a person I have left

Group of people: A group of people, as in Ivor’s dream below, can depict how one meets the pressure of social norms; public opinion. See: crowd.

Large crowds: Enormous involvement of self in an issue; ones relationship or feelings about the social environment one lives in; in groups we have a feeling of being looked at or on view – how we relate to that may be depicted by what we are doing in the dream group. See: party; roles.

People from our past: Considering that the major part of our learning and experience occur in relationship to other people, such learning and experience can be represented by characters from the past. For instance a first boyfriend in a dream would depict all the emotions and struggles we met in that relationship, and what we learned from it or took away from it in terms of fears. Therefore dreaming often of people we knew in the past would suggest the past experiences or lessons are very active at the moment, or we are reviewing those areas of our life. A woman who had emigrated to Britain from a very different cultural background frequently dreamt, even twenty years afterwards, of people she knew in her native country. This shows her still very much in contact with her own cultural values and experiences.

Because you have taken in millions of bit of memory, lessons learnt, life experiences along with all the feelings or problems met by loving and living with someone and they are what makes you the person you are. The memories and experience we gather unconsciously change us and are not lost. It is part of you and is symbolised in dreams as a person or event.

Several people in a dream suggest: Not feeling lonely; involvement of many aspects of oneself in what is being dreamt about; social ability.

As social relationship is one of the most important factors outside of personal survival – and survival depends upon it – such dreams help us to clarify our individual contact with society. Human beings have an unconscious but highly developed sense of the psychological social environment. Ivor’s dream shows something we are all involved in – how we are relating to humans collectively. Are we in conflict with group behaviour and direction; do we conform, but perhaps have conflict with our individual drives; do we find a way between the opposites? Much of our response is laid down in childhood and remains unconscious unless we review it.

 Example: ‘Walking alone through a small town. I was heading for a place that a group of people, in a street parallel to mine, were also heading for. A person from the group tried to persuade me that the RIGHT way to get to the place was along the street the group was walking. I knew the street did not matter, only the general direction. The person was quite disturbed by my independence. It made him or her feel uncertain to have their leader apparently questioned. I felt uncertain too for a moment.’ Ivor S.

In some dreams, a group of people represent what is meant by the word God. This may sound unlikely, but the unconscious, because it is highly capable of synthesis, often looks at humanity as a whole. Collectively humanity has vast creative and destructive powers that intimately affect us as individuals. Collectively it has performed miracles that looked at as an individual, appear impossible. How could a little human being build the great pyramid, or a space shuttle? The Bible echoes this concept in such phrases as ‘Whatever you do to the least of one of these, you do to me.’

 Example: ‘I was outdoors with a group of people acting as leader. We were in the middle of a war situation with bullets playing around us. Maybe aeroplanes were also attacking. I was leading the group from cover to cover, avoiding the bullets. Paul W.

Despite feeling attacked, either by external events, or from inner conflicts, Paul is using leadership skills to deal with his own fears and tendencies. If a friend told us he had just had an argument with his wife and was going to leave her, we might sit down and counsel them by listening and helping them to sort out the hurt feelings from their long term wishes. We might point out they had felt this way before but it passed – in other words give feedback they had missed. In a similar way, our various emotions and drives often need this sort of skill employed by ourselves. This unifies us, leading to coping skills as in Paul’s dream.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

If they are people I know do I understand what I associate with them?

Do I recognise what I feel about society?

What have my parents left in me?

See – Being the Person or Thing –  The Conjuring Trick – Working with associations – Releasing Your Inner Genius

Carrying the dream forward

Imagine yourself in the dream and continue it as a fantasy or daydream. Consider what it is that troubles you or is not what you want in your dream. Now take time to think how you would alter it and how to have an ending that would satisfy you. Not, in your imagination enter your dream and alter the dream in any way that satisfies. Experiment with it, play with it, until you find a fuller sense of self expression. It is very important to note whether any anger or hostility is in the dream but not fully expressed. If so, let yourself imagine a full expression of the anger. It may be that as this is practised more anger is openly expressed in subsequent dreams. This is healthy, allowing such feelings to be vented and redirected into satisfying ways, individually and socially. In doing this do not ignore any feelings of resistance, pleasure or anxiety.

Satisfaction occurs only as we learn to acknowledge and integrate resistances and anxieties into what we express. This is a very important step. It gradually changes those of our habits which trap us in lack of satisfaction, poor creativity or inability to resolve problems.

These are very important steps. They gradually change those of our habits that trap us in lack of satisfaction, poor creativity or inability to resolve problems.

Example: When my husband died, for quite a few times I had this funny dream. I was walking along a field and saw a lot of sheep guiding me, and I followed them. Suddenly they disappeared into a cave. I went in the cave and a row of mummies were there. One was wearing a medallion on a chain round its neck. The dream recurred quite often. One day Tony came to me and I told him the dream. He asked me to sit in a chair and relax, which I did. Then he said for me to go to the cave, and in my relaxed state I went and walked to the mummy with the medallion. Then he said take off the bandage from the top. As I unwound it the face of my husband was uncovered. I screamed and screamed and came out of the relaxation. Tony then said now let him go. I have never had that dream since. Betty E.

Black Magic, Evil and Dreams

Although thorough investigation of claimed injury or death attributed to black magic has shown the real cause to be malicious aggression or murder, scientific research into the deaths of people who were said to have died as the result of a curse or a voodoo ritual, has shown the victims to have died of fear.

Death through fear is fairly common, and is reported by some doctors in connection with surgical operations, especially in the past. In 1887 Dr. Crile had watched helpless as his friend, William Lyndman died of shock after amputation of both legs. My uncle also died of the shock of losing his arm. My uncle, like William had lost little blood, and no vital organs were injured. Crile went on to develop anaesthesia and blood transfusion to counteract death through shock. But some forms of shock appeared to be outside any physical cause. In 1898 Crile was on an army transporter off Cuba and examined a young officer who was delirious with fear due to facing his first battle. He was as deep in shock as if his legs had been crushed by a wagon as William Lyndman’s had. This led Crile to become interested in exopthalmic goitre, an illness which produces a similar type of anxiety condition. Despite the use of anaesthetics, no one had successfully operated on such a goitre condition. Every patient died. Crile discovered why when he attempted such an operation in 1905.

While under anaesthesia the patients heart rate rose to 218 and the body temperature rose to a dangerous level. Despite no physical injury or infection, the patient died that night with a temperature of 109.6 F. Crile realised from his previous observations that it was fear which had killed the patient. Therefore he told his next patient, a young woman who needed the goitre operation, that he was going to give her a simple inhalation treatment. When she breathed in the anaesthetic, she therefore thought she was having a ‘treatment’ not an operation. She was the first person to survive the operation for exopthalmic goitre. Crile called it “stealing the goitre”, and was so impressed by the influence of emotion on the body he constantly stressed the importance of self control, and taught that calmness is strength.

Crile’s experience illustrates what can occur through threat of a curse or black magic. In our dreams we often portray something we deeply fear as an evil influence or person, or as an awful monster or ghost. Such fears usually relate to our own urges, such as anger or sexuality, but can be about any urge or thought that we have been led to feel is not permissible, or downright evil. A demonic figure or environment might also be connected with very early babyhood experiences. The pain of birth is often depicted as hell or demonic influence in our dream symbolism. On exploring dreams that have a very evident evil force or devil in them, what is discovered is that the ‘evil’ is actually the person’s own repressed or hurt sexuality or urges. See: evil; witchcraft; The Con About Evil.

Because the unconscious will use any belief system or cultural symbols we have absorbed to express a theme, the powerful images of witches or evil characters we see on films or in fiction are often used to depict important experiences. For example a dream in which a spell or curse is placed on one can portray the influence a painful experience has left on ones emotions. If you had been deeply hurt while in your mother’s arms, your unconscious would equate pain with being held close by a woman. This ‘cross wiring’ of associations could meaningfully be portrayed as a ‘spell’ which makes one feel frightened in the apparently loving situation. See Victims; Dream Like a Computer Game; spell.

Aristotle on Dreams

Aristotle, a Greek born in the Ionian city of Stagira (384-322 B.C.) was one of the first writers to attempt a study of the mind and dreams in a systematic way. He was the son of Nicomachus the court physician to Amyntas III, king of Macydon. In 367 B.C. he went to Athens and studied at Plato’s Academy until Plato’s death in 347 B.C.. Along with Socrates and Plato, he became one of the great philosophers who were instrumental in forming the foundations of Western rational thinking.

Although in his early years Aristotle followed the Platonic belief that the soul and the body were separate entities, he later formulated the non-dualistic idea that the body and soul (soul in Greek thought was ones personal consciousness, personal memories and experiences) were polarities of one thing. In his treatise De Anima, part of his mature writings, he defines the soul as that which animates the body, that which quickens it to life. The soul is that which also directs the process of the body’s growth and survival. So the soul is the blueprint that directs the purpose of the material side of human nature. To quote from Search For The Soul (Time Life Books), ‘The oak tree is the purpose that the matter of the acorn serves.’

This concept, without of course detailed knowledge of DNA, is not unlike the present day view of the non dualistic view of body and mind, both linked not only to the blueprint from our genetic material, but also that our being is constantly a dynamic interrelationship between all parts.

Aristotle deals with the subtleties of sleep and dreams in three great treatises – De Somno et Vigilia; De Insomnis; and De Divinatione Per Somnum. (On Sleep and Dreams – On Sleeping and Waking – On Divination Through Sleep.) The views on dreaming are developed out of Aristotle’s concepts of mind and imagination, and his observation of how people deal with sleeping and waking. For instance he saw imagination as the result of sensory and subjective perception occurring after the disappearance of the sensed object. Recognising that the human mind can form powerful and realistic ‘afterimages’ of things no longer present. Aristotle carried this insight into the realm of sleep and applied it to dreaming. He added to this the observation that while awake we have the easy ability to distinguish between what is an external object and what is our imagined object. In sleep however this faculty disappears or is almost completely absent. This produces the sense of enormous reality we have in dreams, and the feeling that we are facing actual events and people. It is what Freud called the hallucinatory property of dreams. See: Freud; hallucinations and hallucinogens; hallucinations and visions.

Dreams were therefore, in Aristotle’s observations, not sent by a god – even animals could be seen to dream – but the product of experiences had while awake, and then used by our imagination during dreaming; or else arising from internal but perhaps subtle sensations such as the symptoms of illness. Because our ‘common sense’ faculty that usually distinguishes between fact and fancy is absent during sleep, we are thus prone to the amazing fantasies of dreams, beyond correction of our judgement or evaluation. However he does qualify this slightly by making one of the first historical references to the faculty of lucid dreaming, by saying, ‘often when one is asleep, there is something in consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but a dream.’ Many authorities quote Aristotle as the first to mention lucidity in dreaming. However, this seems to be part of the mistaken Western sense of superiority. Buddhism, founded in 500 BC, had lucidity as part of its basic goals. Yoga, an even older practice, gave methods to wake up in sleep. See: Greece (ancient) dream beliefs – Buddhism and Dreams – Yoga and Dreams.

Useful Questions and Hints:

See Aristides.

Do I have a common sense attitude to dreams or am I lost in fantasy? If I have a common sense attitude to dreams, does my ‘common sense’ tend to kill out my creativeness?

Aristotle didn’t say much about altered states of consciousness – see ASC’s.

The Archetype of Fear

The images of fear can be darkness; an unknown something approaching you; losing control in some way; a dark and monstrous figure or animal; an obscure but powerful ‘thing’ that is threatening to engulf or destroy you; or death in its various forms such as disease, ageing, or meeting an opponent, etc.

As a human being you are not simply a creature that responds automatically to your environment. Even intelligent animals such as chimpanzees and foxes do not simply responded to their environment instinctively. They learn certain types of behaviour from their parents, from experience, and from their fellow animals. They, like us, are capable of learning. Our own relationship with parents, other human beings and animals during infancy, passes on to us an enormous amount of information through our ability to copy behaviour, through word of mouth, through our own experience, and through reading or viewing. So many of us have awful images or sense of fear haunting us from being passed on.

The instincts that inform us, and the cultural or personal information we acquire, are both the result of enormous amounts of past experience. Instinctive behaviour has developed over millions of years of dealing with survival. In a similar way cultural responses that we absorb are the result of experiences faced by millions of people. Both of these sources can be described by the word archetypal. By this is meant that no one particular person, experience or piece of information lies behind an instinct or a cultural response. Such responses are usually the synthesis arrived at over thousands of years, perhaps millions.

In this sense archetypal behaviour is the synthesis of thousands of people’s response to situations. These archetypes are often more easily seen, not so much in our own personal experience, but certainly in how some things are portrayed in art, in literature, and in popular or group responses to things that we might confront.

However, it is difficult to categorise such responses as clearly instinctive, cultural or personal. If we take the example of pain for instance, some individuals in tribal cultures seem to have a very high tolerance for pain, whereas many people in European based cultures have a much lower tolerance. So we cannot say that a response to pain is instinctive. Even if it is instinctive to remove your hand from something that burns, there still seems to be a cultural element to the response.

In looking at general responses to human situations, there are however particular things that often stimulate fear. Of course, physical or emotional pain is one. There are many other things that are much more subtle though. Fear of death for instance, can be seen as a sort of archetypal response to something that is essentially unreal until we actually meet the experience of death. Watching someone else diving into water is not the same as doing it oneself. In the watching you are only having a subjective response. In doing it oneself all ones body senses and feeling responses are involved. Observing the death we see around us is similar. It is not an experience of death. Only those who have a near death experience can say they have met death.

Another such fear is the loss of what we usually call identity or personality. The illustration of such fear is often portrayed in films as an alien creature, a disease, or an encroaching influence gradually taking over ones body and mind. But this fear is not always expressed in an obvious way. Sometimes it is connected with the losing of what one identifies with. For instance you may be blessed with an attractive and healthy body, and as this ages and loses its attractiveness, you may feel great stress, and struggle with enormous vigour to maintain the features that are slipping away. Such struggles arise out of the fear of losing oneself, or at least losing the sense of oneself connected with appearance, work, success, or financial standing – the loss of identity.

Something that is not as obvious but nevertheless can be seen to cause enormous depression and even illness in human beings is our connection with meaning. As human beings we struggle to give meaning to the world and to our own lives. People often despair if they are not involved in a meaningful task, work or relationship. The meanings we give to our life and the world may be expressed in religious, scientific, or aesthetic beliefs. If these beliefs are threatened or questioned we may experience anger or stress. Enormous effort and expense are often involved in creating an expression of these beliefs in our outer life, and an attempt to support them or their reality. Any threat to them may cause great fear or anger.  This can be seen in religious sects and their fight against anything that threatens their beliefs.

Examples of fear in dreams are as follows.

I go upstairs to a bedroom to get a weapon. When I enter the darkened room, I sense that someone is there. I fall onto my stomach on the bed and there I am paralyzed, unable to move, extremely fearful that I will be attacked while I am in this vulnerable position, feebly kicking my feet, sure that the ‘enemy’ is somewhere in this darkened room with me. I keep expecting to kick someone, but I can’t really tell if I ever do. I am in a state of complete panic. PG.

I dreamt I was sitting on a pier when I suddenly I had a feeling of danger. I safely pulled my feet out of the water when a shark rose out of the water really angry with me for pulling my feet out. I woke up frightened and couldn’t fall asleep again for the rest of the night. ARE dream.

Dreams also show how we can deal with our fears, sometimes paradoxically.

I dreamt that I was being approached by a tiger. I was in fear believing that the tiger would attack me. I decided not to fight or run but instead do nothing. When the tiger reached me, it was friendly. I could hear it communicating to me that if I did not fear it, it would not attack. ARE dream.

The paradox is of not being frightened of what is, in the dream, frightening. Yet that is the way through fear, to face, in the dream or in ones exploration of your dreams, what is frightening. This can be done using the methods given under peer dream work.

Fear is fundamental to life, but for humans, because of our ability to think and hold images of things we are not actually meeting at the moment, fear can become a constant threat. Therefore the facing of fear, the meeting and dealing with the many images of fear we meet, is extraordinarily transformative. See: fear – dealing with. Also see the Dreams are Like Computer Games.

Death through fear is fairly common, and is reported by some doctors in connection with surgical operations, especially in the past. In 1887 Dr. Crile had watched helpless as his friend, William Lyndman died of shock after amputation of both legs. My uncle also died of the shock of losing his arm. My uncle, like William had lost little blood, and no vital organs were injured. Crile went on to develop anaesthesia and blood transfusion to counteract death through shock. But some forms of shock appeared to be outside any physical cause. In 1898 Crile was on an army transporter off Cuba and examined a young officer who was delirious with fear due to facing his first battle. He was as deep in shock as if his legs had been crushed by a wagon as William Lyndman’s had. This led Crile to become interested in exopthalmic goitre, an illness which produces a similar type of anxiety condition. Despite the use of anaesthetics, no one had successfully operated on such a goitre condition. Every patient died. Crile discovered why when he attempted such an operation in 1905.

While under anaesthesia the patient’s heart rate rose to 218 and the body temperature rose to a dangerous level. Despite no physical injury or infection, the patient died that night with a temperature of 109.6 F. Crile realised from his previous observations that it was fear that had killed the patient. Therefore he told his next patient, a young woman who needed the goitre operation, that he was going to give her a simple inhalation treatment. When she breathed in the anaesthetic, she therefore thought she was having a ‘treatment’ not an operation. She was the first person to survive the operation for exopthalmic goitre. Crile called it “stealing the goitre”, and was so impressed by the influence of emotion on the body he constantly stressed the importance of self control, and taught that calmness is strength.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

Have any of my dreams been examples of facing and dealing with fear? If so what can I learn from them?

What does my dream and its drama suggest I am frightened of?

Am I paralysed by my fear, or can I confront it?