Posts Tagged ‘repressed sexual needs’
Sex while asleep
This fairly common dreaming experience demonstrates powerfully how dreams are an expression of a self regulatory or compensatory action in the psyche and body. Charles in the example below says he had been restraining his sexual activity. This shows the enormous gulf which can exist between what we will to do as a conscious person, and what our being needs to do or wishes to do outside of conscious decision making and cultural or religious morals. The ‘glamour and fantasy’ Charles describes are regular features of how these deeper needs make themselves known, or attempt to coerce the conscious mind, into fulfilling the need. If we reject the fantasy, the unconscious processes will attempt a more radical approach, as in actual physical movement while we sleep. This may have given rise to ideas about possession or devils in past ages, when it was not understood that we can split our mind and urges by such conflicts. Fear of the ‘possessing’ influence actually heightens its power through suggestion. Much better to understand what your needs are and seek an acceptable fulfilment. See: Abreaction.
‘Many times in my adult life I have woken to find I have made love to my wife while asleep. Or I wake to discover myself in the middle of the sexual act. At such times I have usually been avoiding my sexual drive and it has burst through to fulfill itself while I was asleep or under the sway of dreams. For instance most times this happened I have been in the middle of a dream in which there is a sense of absolute imperative that I must make love/have sex. It is like being lost in a storm of glamour and fantasy or vision in which I am totally involved. The whirl of the ‘dream’ is towards the wonder, totality of the need to have sex. As this imperative is expressed in my still spontaneous, dreaming physical action, the experience of sex is also visionary and enormous.’ Charles W.
Wikipedia reports this quite differently and treats it like an illness:
Those who suffer from sexsomnia have confusional arousals and are more often than not amnesic of the event. People who have a history of doing other sleep activities such as sleepwalking or sleep talking are more likely to exhibit sexsomnia episodes. Factors that may increase episodes of sleep sex are alcohol, sleep deprivation or even sleep apnea and other sleep disruptions.[1] Sexsomnia episodes could be triggered by the contact with bed partner.[2] In some cases sexualised movements during sleep could be caused by sleep related epilepsy which results in sexual arousal, thrusting and orgasms. Simple sexualised movements could be also associated with REM sleep disorders.
This seems to make it a difficult thing when the people like Charles and his wife find it a way to extend their experience of sex.
Researchers are struggling to understand a rare medical condition where sufferers unknowingly demand, or actually have, sex while asleep, New Scientist magazine reported on Wednesday.Research into sexsomnia — making sexual advances toward another person while asleep — has been hampered as sufferers are so embarrassed by the problem they tend not to own up to it, while doctors do not ask about it.
As yet there is no cure for the condition, which often leads to difficulties in relationships.
“It really bothers me that I can’t control it,” Lisa Mahoney told the magazine. “It scares me because I don’t think it has anything to do with the partner. I don’t want this foolish condition to hurt us in the long run.”
Most researchers view sexsomnia as a variant of sleepwalking, where sufferers are stuck between sleep and wakefulness, though sexsomniacs tend to stay in bed rather than get up and walk about.
Relationship and dreams
Most dreams depict relationship in one form or another. Some dreams however, specifically show you in a particular relationship. Such dreams are usually highly significant in that they reveal aspects of what you are doing in the relationship that you may not admit or realise consciously. It can therefore be transformative to gain insight into any dreams that show you in relationship with present partners or lovers. See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Example: I was with Lorna, a woman I was having a relationship with but not committed to. She told me she was pregnant. I said to her this was impossible and it couldn’t be my child. She looked at me and shrugged saying ‘Okay, I’m not pregnant’. Neal C.
On exploring the dream Neal realised the enormous feelings involved. He had not realised consciously that Lorna had completely offered herself to him in their relationship. The dream shows him rejecting this complete offering of her sexuality and womanhood, and her turning away when he rejected her. This had actually happened, but Neal had not been conscious of what was occurring between them. The dream enabled him to realise how he pulled away from a woman’s full flow of self expression, and begin to change this. In the world of dreams our most intimate fears and longings are given an exterior life of their own in the form of the people, objects and places of our dream. Therefore our sexual drive may be shown as a person and how we relate to them; or given shape and colour as an object; or given mood as a scene. Our feeling of ambition might thus be portrayed as a business person in our dream – our changing emotions as the sea or a river; while the present relationship we have with our ambition or emotions is expressed in the events or plot of the dream. So any dream shoiwng a relationship needs to be looked at as if the drama and people, even the objects in the dreams, as if they are words in a sentence.
Example: I was in a very loving relationship in which I had developed powerful emotional links with D. We communicated many times each day while apart at work, etc. But one day there was no communication. I felt tremendous anxiety and emotional pain and shock, really frightened that she had dropped me. In fact she hadn’t, but my fears were very real and difficult to deal with. A real shock.
The feelings of being left or dropped, even if not real, are difficult ot deal with. Looking at ones dreams can give a real insight. Looking iwth the eys of truth.
Relationship is a vital part of life
Relationships in their various aspects, are one of the most vital and fulfilling parts of your life. Every dream you have has as its key theme, or as an underlying fact, an experience of a relationship. The quality of your relationships is vitally important, and determine how another person, or society, rewards or rejects you, what your dreams reveal about the hidden side of how you deal with other people can transform your life.
Relationship can be joyful of painful – but dreams can smooth the path of love
Also, love, whether for children, for a marriage partner, or a lover, can be a source of great joy. Or it might be experienced as conflict, or pain. The insights dreams can bring concerning the way your love flows or is blocked, can change conflict or pain to a feeling of wholeness and satisfaction. Relationships are made or broken by passions, pains and responses, many of which lie hidden, and arise from the very foundations of what we experienced of love, or its absence, in infancy and childhood. The present grows out of the past. The past pain of broken trust can still disrupt the trust we feel in our present love. The insights dreams give you can enable you to understand such influences, pinpoint their source, and move beyond them. Dreams do this by using mime and drama. While in a loving relationship that was sometimes painful to him, and thereby provoked doubts, Vincent had the following dream.
“I was visiting a children’s hospital for two days, and in my dream I woke in the hospital and saw a book placed carefully by me on the bed. I knew that Diane, my partner, had quietly come while I slept, and left the book as a gift. I picked up the book and the title was, ´Flaming Heart´. I felt very happy, and knew the book was about the power and fire of love”
Vincent’s pain arose from the fear of being abandoned by the person he loved. This was from childhood wounds, at times making Vincent wonder if he was really loved by Diane. In his childhood, Vincent had twice being placed ín a hospital. Each time he experienced a terror of being abandoned. So dreaming that he was in a hospital shows him revisiting those feelings. And they are feelings that had been disrupting his relationship with Diane. The book suggests that from his connection with Diane, Vincent has become aware of an as yet unexplained — unread — experience of love. There is no suggestion of hidden problems in the dream. Therefore Vincent felt he should trust the positive side of their love, and patiently allow unfoldment in himself. Through such imagery and feelings as Vincent met in his sleep, dreams guide us towards greater love and satisfaction in our relationships. See Dealing with Husband or Ex; Integrating An Ex; Beware of Love; Surviving Love and Relationships; Ages of Love; Love Sex and Desire.
Many of us get stuck in life situations
Many of us get stuck in life situations from which we may never emerge. The situation might be one of never establishing a full and satisfying sexual relationship; constantly feeling hurt by the actions of others; existing in a state of depression or anxiety; forever having to seek activity or company to deal with one’s own inner emptiness; experiencing enormous jealousy or anxiety in a relationship – the list could be endless. We need to ask our self the question as to why we maintain such an awful relationship with life. To quote a woman’s’ words, “Is your mind or awareness so tiny that you have never realised the forces and processes of your own body are beyond anything you understand? Can’t you see that your very existence is brought about by things so far beyond your knowledge that it is only a statement of your impoverishment to suggest an awareness of God is an expression of some sort of smallness and failure. Have you never understood that? Have you not seen that religion is not only an acknowledgement of what we fail to understand and yet depend upon, but it is also an opening to it, a willingness to relate to it? It can also be something far more even than that. It can be an active loving relationship with what gives you life. And such love is an exchange, a sharing, and a way of merging one with another. It is an exchange – a sharing of bodily fluids – the very substance of life. Imagine that; a glorious love affair with the very spirit of life! A love affair with the invisible and forever indefinable. Is that something you are afraid of?” I think the woman was not talking about religion as the massive organisations and often dogmatic creeds they promote, but as the human recognition that neither we, your mother or father created you. Sure you mother was a host, but she was in no way directing the intricate workings of pregnancy and the forming of your body. It was the processes of Life directing it. Of course many people feel that is all automatic and without purpose, but that is because they have never woken up to and explored the unconscious and its workings. They have never realised that they have a relationship with Life and have to do their inner housework and activities of growth. See Makes Inner To learn to relate to Life you must remember that you are a living example and manifestation of Life, so in a real sense you have to listen to Life in YOU! But most of us are so focussed on relating to the outer world through their senses, trying to earn more, watching TV or hoping for the next sexual exploit they forget how to listen to themselves. Listening to oneself is often called intuition, and to hear what Life has to share with you, you must turn your attention away from the world, quieten the noise of your thoughts and emotions, and listen. I have called it at times learning how to become a virgin – See How I Became A Virgin; Using Your Intuition Of course we often think of relationships being sexual. In that case see Sexercises – Sex and Identity – Sex and Dreams – Energy, Sex and Dreams – Tune in to the sexual power of your pelvis Also we see relationships as being about friends, relatives and our children. So see Love – Love of self – Learning to Love – Surviving Love and Relationships – Teenage Girl’s Love Dreams – The greatest love story in the world – Love Sex and Desire – Beware of Love – Archetype of the Lover
Archetype of the Devil
In Western culture there is a long history of struggle with sexuality. Even to dream of sex was considered a sign of the devil’s influence.
This internal struggle with one’s own drives is still a large part of life for many of us. The image of the devil represents this struggle, and also a force of negation which pulls us down, away from the possibility of personal happiness and transformation.
Jung felt that an urge to evolve or move toward personal growth was inborn in all of us. Certainly it is a potential we all have. In connection with this the devil represents all those forces within and outside of us that war against this power of positive life and change. In Freudian theory each of us meet enormous resistances to meeting the very experiences or insights which would lead to healing. In this sense the devil or Satan embodies all our habits born out of the pains of our childhood and the ignorance of the culture we imbibed. The resistance we feel to change comes about because to change means to move into the unknown, into a sort of ignorance. It also means letting who we are at the moment die. It means acknowledging the impoverished aspects of oneself, and being willing to let go of them.
Grof, in observing the experiences of many people facing the agonies of their birth during therapy in his book – Realms of The Human Unconscious – noticed the imagery that often arose was of being in hell tortured by the devil. When these same patients moved toward pleasure, the images became heavenly or cosmic.
The struggle with and fear of one’s own natural drives – the resistances to change and wholeness – the fundamental pain of life in birth – all of these have a place in the archetype of the Devil or Satan. The following example graphically describes some of this.
It seemed I was fighting against the Devil for hours in my sleep last night. I was with a group of people doing this. The only parts I can remember clearly are that we had got hold of the Devil’s sword, put it in a church and locked the door. We had then thrown the key down a well, thus preventing the Devil from getting his main power or weapon. At one point he was forcing a man down the well and under the water to get the key, but he didn’t get it. I think being forced made the operation difficult. In another scene I was in a dormitory with the group of people. The Devil attacked a woman. He was invisible. The woman turned black as he raped her. She didn’t die. At this point I woke and went to the toilet. On returning to bed I continued the dream, particularly wondering what I was in conflict with in the image of the Devil. I found it disturbing and frightening to be confronted by such a powerful opponent. Partly because of the rape, I realised it was my held back sexual needs. I then approached the ‘black’ woman with tenderness and this transformed the Devil into available energy, sexual or emotional. I tried this again and again. Each time it worked, and I could observe the connection between the Devil and how I repress my sexual needs.
The Devil, as in the example, is usually connected with repressed natural drives, particularly sexual (one can express sex physically yet still repress sexual longing and feelings of real connection and tenderness). It is what is unlived in us – ‘devil’ is ‘lived’ spelt backwards. The reason the devil is such a useful symbol of our struggle with our own urges, is that if you have a conflict with an urge such as eating or sex, you can make up your mind to stop, but if you do so it feels as if a force other than your own will pushes you in another direction. This otherness/Life is depicted as the devil. This is still very much in action in everyday life and business. When I was writing a new version of dream dictionary all words such as breast, vagina, sexual organs and many others were banned for publication in the USA.
Any code of conduct, whether accepted from parents or peers, leaves aspects of our total self unlived. The struggle with paternal authority or power within oneself is also often represented as the devil. If we change our code of conduct, we may meet the devil because we release the previously unlived area of self. Of course it only appears in the image of the Devil or Satan if we are frightened of or disgusted by this emerging aspect of ourselves.
Example: I was in an outdoor environment. It seemed a bit dark, or maybe morbid is the right word. I was with other people but none of them stood out to remain in memory. There was a definite awareness though of being near to a place that was haunted, and that a man was in trouble in the haunted place.
I decided to go and see if I could sort out the problem. I walked down a slope to where the centre of the haunting existed. It was an open space with an old double-decker bus in it. The only person on the bus was a middle-aged man who was sitting on the top deck leaning out of a window on the right hand side of the bus. I stood beneath him and looked up. He was staring in a glazed way and didn’t see me. I could see and feel that he was being hit by fantasies or hallucinations by whatever was the source of the haunting. This invasion of his mind was grabbing his attention so fully that he wasn’t aware of his surrounding or of me. I was sure that if he went any deeper into this mind stuff he wouldn’t be able to pull out. I waved my hand in his line of vision and banged my hand on the bus to make a noise and get his attention. At first it didn’t seem as if I would bring him out of it, but after a while he looked at me.
I shouted at him to pull out. I said that he had a wife and some more years of his life to live, so why lose himself into this entrancement. This didn’t seem to grab him so I shouted again and said that he would eventually slip into this empty mind world anyway – at death – so why not live with his wife the remaining years of his life. I was sure that if he lost awareness he would let himself starve.
I was aware that what he desired was to slip away into the void, into the awareness of the one life in which he lost any awareness of self. But I banged and shouted and he became more ‘present’. I then felt I had to confront whatever was the source of the powerful ‘haunting’ that was pulling him into the inner mind. I turned away from the man and saw just to my right a short distance from the bus an animal that was the ‘haunter’. It was a mammal of no particular type – a bit like a mixture of dog, rat and guinea pig. It seemed very ordinary and tame, and stood looking at me. I walked toward it and stretched out my hand. It was a tan colour with short fur and gave a feeling of being okay to approach, so I touched it to stroke. This was okay and I was thinking there was no problem when the creature leapt at my throat in a flash of movement and ripped my throat out.
This sounds disturbing but I simply observed this and thought to myself that stroking and trying to be friendly was no way of dealing with this thing. It was as if I was in command of the imagery in that I simply formed another body. The creature ripped out my throat again and dived into my body to eat it. I woke at this point and went for a pee. When I went back to sleep I carried on with the dream.
But later I explored the dream and it aroused a great anger and hatred for what my mother did did to me, which led to this wild devouring anger inside me. It took a while to release it using what Tony describes as Lifestream, but when it was finished I felt I understood why my mother did what she did and I felt forgiveness. See Dreams are a reflection of your inner world
As Pan: the same, except that Pan represents losing oneself or abandonment to the natural urges. See: devil and The Secret of time and Satan.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What relationship do I have with my own natural urges such as sex or eating?
Have I turned my own urges back on themselves, transforming ‘lived’ into ‘devil’ by a reverse process?
Can I dare to meet this devil and release the repressed energy as living flows of personal life and love?
Please read Dreams are Like Computer Games and Acting on Your Dream