DREAM INTERPRETER

Dream meanings - enabling you to interpret your own dreams

Tony Crisp

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ANCESTORS The intricate web of cultural and family influences, physically and psychologically, that your body and personality arose from. If it is a particular ancestor, then the personal associations with that person need to be explored.

For instance an uncle may have been renowned for womanising, so would represent that tendency.

Ancestors can also link with deeply buried tendencies we have unconsciously inherited from the long past. Sometimes they point to the karma we are dealing with - the difficulties or traits that arise in our life, that we cannot honestly see have been developed or collected in this lifetime. See: dweller on the threshold.

Useful questions are:

What am I learning or feeling about the ancestor?

Does the theme of the dream point to a facet of my life my ancestral connection is linked with?

If I imagine myself as the ancestor or ancestral dwelling, what arises in me? (For help doing this see Stand in Role under peer dream work.)

ANCHORSome part of your make-up that holds you firm to a task or code, such as determination, love, etc. But it has a deeper meaning, for the anchor reaches the sea bed, or deepest part of your unconscious self, or inner self. Thus it suggests a power of resolve coming from deep within. Or it might suggest being tied down.

By itself the anchor represents stabilising influences, hope, steadfastness, perhaps attitudes or qualities, or even a relationship, which bring about the ability to ride changes and destabilising influences.

The anchor might also suggest reaching deep into the unknown of the ocean - the unconscious. See: boat.

If the anchor is not holding firmly or is not sound in any way, it suggests weaknesses in ones ability to meet changes and currents which influence the dreamer. Influences that are weakening your security, or difficulties in meeting the influences pulling at you.

Useful questions are:

Is your dream anchor secure or shifting - if it is, try to determine what powerful influences are influencing you?

Has something given me a greater feeling of security?

Is something preventing me from going places?

ANCIENT This often relates to the experiences in your life that have become deeply buried, or even forgotten, such as childhood experiences, or the person you were in a past relationship of work. It can also represent the deeply unconscious wisdom you hold in your body, or in your racial memories or family traditions. A part of self relating to biological knowledge of the cells, instincts, that are older than the personal self. Occasionally it suggest aspects of self from previous lives. In general it is knowledge, or wisdom of life gained through long experience. See: ancient.

Useful questions are:

What impressions am I getting from the ancient place or thing?

In what way am I relating to it or identifying with it?

Does the period in history it suggests have particular interest to me - and if so can I say why?

ANGEL When we are very small, someone who loves us appears to us to be an angel. So the angel can represent the positive side of relationship with your mother.

The Hebrew word for angel is malak, meaning messenger. As a symbol it would therefore represent your intuition of a wider truth than that encompassed by your present personal experience.

So dreams often use the figure of an angel to depict information, intuitions or knowledge being given us from a wider awareness than our waking life.

An angel can also depict religious concepts; feelings or intuitions about death; a need for a parent figure to guide or instruct you in decision making; or wisdom arising from your wider awareness. Of course angels are often associated with death or dying.

Traditionally there were many angels, and some of the greatest were said to be messengers for particular things, like the angel of death, or the angel of love. Such archaic concepts still hold sway in our unconscious, so it is helpful to consider if the angel in the dream has some particular quality, or is communicating a particular message.

Also consider whether you are in accord or in conflict with the angel. If in accord it suggests that some deeply felt intuition is accepted by you. If in conflict then something that is powerfully influential deep within you is being rejected and is creating an internal conflict.

Idioms: Guardian angel; like an angel; on the side of the angels; fools rush in where angels fear to tread. See: religion and dreams.

Useful questions are:

How does the angel appear and how?

What is my own belief about angels?

Am I aware of receiving a message or information?

Did the angel, even without words, communicate something to me?

DREAM INTERPRETER

Dream meanings - enabling you to interpret your own dreams

Tony Crisp

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ANGER/ANGRY - Whether you show or repress anger in dreams is important. This is because like any other basic or instinctive response, anger uses tremendous resources of emotional and physical energy. The repression of emotional energy can be a key factor in the breakdown of health, and in the lack of positive and creative self expression. Blocked emotional energy tends to attack your sense of well-being and body if it is stopped from external expression.

In some dreams enormous anger is expressed, but it is accompanied by a sense of frustration because the anger brings no satisfaction. This may indicate it is still linked with childhood dependence, when our personal well-being was intricately bound with our parents, and we depended upon them for our good feelings. Of course, in some extreme situations in adult life, such as being a prisoner who is maltreated, our anger may actually be incapable of changing things.

Anger may be a way of hiding ones vulnerability or real pain. In this case, it is important to feel the anger and discover what is underneath it. Sometimes deep feelings from childhood emerge once the anger has been felt. Such a surfacing of encapsulated emotions usually brings about deep insight into why certain traits are so powerful in your nature.

Holding the idea that you do not need to restrain your anger in dreams can produce enormous changes in your dreams and in your everyday life. Tests with women who had dreams in which they failed to express anger, and who, in everyday life were passive in situations calling for assertiveness, showed that when they learned to express anger in their dreams, they became more easily assertive in daily life. See: hostility.

Useful questions are:

Do I satisfy my anger in the dream? (If not it is worth expressing it in some way while awake. Use a rolled up newspaper to hit an armchair or cushion with. See if you can get the feelings in the dream flowing.)

Can I feel what this anger connects with in waking life.

Is there a way I can assert myself without destructive anger?

ANIMA - See: anima

ANIMAL As a baby you were a small vulnerable animal, with all the natural instincts to feed, to survive, and to bond with your mother. This natural and spontaneous part of your nature is the foundation of what you have become now as an adult. Not only were you born with an enormous natural wisdom about survival, relationships, parenting and finding a mate gained through millions of years of evolution, but your newborn self also carried protective responses such as fear, anger, and sexual longing. These are all built into your nature without any recourse to a self-aware personality. But your animal self has the inherited wisdom about . There is a lot to learn from it, and it is a wonderful resource.

These inbuilt traits are represented or depicted in your dreams by various animals and the situations your dream process places them in. Without feelings of fear for instance, you would, especially during childhood, enter into situations that could be life threatening. These dream animals illustrate the many natural responses you have to events and people you confront. Because we see animals in so many ways, such as the cunning of the fox, the strength and mystery of the elephant, the loving fierceness of a lioness with her cubs, and the almost unconditional love dogs give us, the animal in your dream can express a very wide spectrum of meaning.

Animals depict these things, often stripped of human social restraints. Animals are one of the most frequent symbols that appear in dreams. Also, because we project these characteristics onto animals, we may dream of an animal to represent the feelings we have about a person. An attacking dog for instance may be used to depict our own or someone else's aggressiveness. Thus dream animals are complex symbols, and they portray many shades of meaning.

Therefore, some animal dreams may display such diverse associations as personal need for affection, desire to be touched, or the need to care for another creature and thus feel needed; or even the function of pregnancy and parental caring. Look at each entry for the various animals. But remember to find your own associations with the animal. Pets, for instance, have given each of us very different experiences. We therefore have personal associations and feeling responses to pets we might dream about.

The animal can also portray your relationship with the fundamental life processes in you. Dreams depict these processes as intelligent and responsive, not just as chemical actions and reactions as modern medicine so often does. Therefore our conscious attitudes influence these fundamental living processes in us - processes that maintain health, digest, beat our heart, rebuild damage and fight infection. Negative feelings or attitudes can cause these 'animals' is us to despair or lose motivation, and thus lead to depression or illness.

See: Larger entry on Animals.

ANIMUS - animus.

ANKLE - This might relate to the ankle or to the Achilles tendon, both of which are vulnerable areas.

In some dreams this is where one is bitten by a creature or hit, suggesting being got at in a vulnerable area. But it is also a part of the body near to the ground and so open to either being out of sight or injured. Having a damaged ankle would not be incredibly disabling, but would certainly make it more difficult to get around, and this is probably the meaning in the dream.

Useful questions are:

If this is disabling in the dream, what does it suggest about my daily life?

Is this just a little thing saying that there is an influence that has entered my life, but it is not serious?

In what way am I vulnerable, and what is effecting that vulnerability?

ANTIQUE See: Ancient.

ANTS See: Insect.

DREAM INTERPRETER

Dream meanings - enabling you to interpret your own dreams

Tony Crisp

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Back to 'A' Index

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ANUS - The area of our nervous system around the anus and genitals is highly sensitive in babyhood. So it may link with the self expression, the pleasure, and the feelings of deep connection the baby feels in this area. As it also links with the huge experience of learning self control, and how ones parents dealt with you going to the toilet, so it can also connect with holding on or letting go; control or relaxation; pleasure or guilt. This in turn could involve feelings of success or failure. Therefore it associates with your WILL. feeling punished and treated like a child, to feelings or arousal and sexual pleasure.

The anus also deals with what we get rid of that our body does not use. So it can link with the experiences or the attitudes that we want to or need to get rid of. These are the waste products of our life.

If relaxed: Easy self expression. If tense: Not letting go of feelings you might be judging as 'shitty'; feelings to do with being hurt or holding back. The holding back might link with sexual pleasure or performance.

If playing with or being entered by penis or finger: Introverted sexuality; self pleasure; narcissism. Perhaps self examination. Excrement: The negative emotions and ideas we might not want to let go of; sometimes money; worry over something judged unclean; a cleansing or need for cleansing of inner feelings, such as guilt, inhibitions, resentments, hate, worry, or fear.

Holding or letting go: How we give of ourselves; whether we can 'let go'; our generosity or lack of it.

Idioms: Talking out of arse; pain in the arse; an arsehole; head up the arse; disappears up; all tits and arsehole - no ability to reason. See: excrement.

Useful questions are:

Does this in any way relate to childhood feelings, and if so what are they?

Is there any connection with sexual pleasure in the dream?

Is anything emerging from the anus, and if so what does it suggest I am discharging?

ANXIETY See: Fear.

APARTMENT- In general the same as house or home, but may have a slightly different significance if you have lived in an apartment or flat. In other words it depicts your life style, the way you live, whether you are alone in life or not and how you care for yourself. See: house.

Useful questions are:

Does you dreamer share the apartment with others? If so what does that feel like? However you describe this defines the dream apartment.

What is living alone or sharing like?

What does the apartment mean to you?

APE See: ape.

APHRODISIAC - Stimulating someone or being stimulated sexually. If taking an aphrodisiac, possibly showing that you have been sexually stimulated by an event or meeting with someone. This may be something like going to a party and seeing someone who arouses you, or watching a film or reading a book - or possibly that ones imagination is doing the stimulating. It could also suggest you are feeling you need stimulus or that your natural sexual drives are lacking or low.

Useful questions are:

Is my dream about feeling turned on or needing external stimulus?

What is it in the dream that is the aphrodisiac, and what does that suggest?

Am I meeting something new sexually here?

APNEA - See: sleep apnea.

APOCALYPSE - See: end of world.

APOLOGISING-APOLOGY - Remember that apologising is different to saying sorry.

Dreaming of apologising: This suggests a feeling of inadequacy in some department of life; feelings of having acted against, or thinking of acting against your own strongest drives; a sense of not having lived your best; a sense that you are not living up to other people's expectations, or that you are not liked by, or not as good as, other people; realisation of a mistake or lack.

Being apologised to: A recognition that some aspect of a relationship or experience has been, or is, unjust or unwarranted.

Useful questions are:

What am I apologising for and does this apply in any way to waking events?

Is this an apology I am giving or receiving, or is it an expression of guilt?

If being apologised to are you accepting or rejecting the apology?

APPARITIONS - ghost.

APPENDIX - Something within yourself that may become a problem; an internal problem; possibly referring to the appendix itself.

If you have had appendicitis: Feelings you associate with that time.

Having appendix out: Inner pain or problem needing attention or being attended to.

Useful questions are:

What am I vaguely aware of that might be a grumbling problem needing attention?

Do I have actual discomfort in the area of my appendix - lower right abdomen - if so maybe I should have a check?

What do I need to remove from my attitudes or from my past experience?

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