I’ve been dreaming a number of very dark and scary dreams over the past month. In one it’s a cold overcast day when a young toe-headed boy loses his head in a guillotine while in another dream several young women are in a cold-water cistern that is draining rapidly and they begin to circle the drain before going under.
The toe-headed boy may be my own innocence being decapitated as well as the morality and values of the country that are being thrown out as the people vote against their best interest for people who promise them something they’ll probably never give.
The women circling the drain may represent compassion, caring, and inclusiveness dying all around me in a world gone mad with populism.
It has become a very dark world where the light of the candle is sputtering and the fire near the hearth barely crackles, leaving the room to grow cold.
Politically and socially, it is the ‘winter of our discontent.’ In Steinbeck’s novel of the same name a man seems willing to give up his morality to his desire for success through unethical means. Our world seems ready to do the same and is taking frightening form in my dreams.
May the new year bring less frightening dreams as well as less frightening events.
Over 5000 dream descriptors with everyday dream images and image interpretations of the Zodiac and Tarot that show up in dreams. The book also includes a section on nightmares and current research and treatment for excessive nightmare dreams.
Learn the possible meanings of snakes, witches, and death in your dreams, kittens, wise old men/women, or angels. What might it mean if you’re being chased or shot at, drowning or trying to find a bathroom, or just standing out in the open naked?
There’s also a section on how to remember your dreams.
See the ordering picture link on the right-side column.
There are many ancient myths of those who entered the underworld to save a loved one e.g. The Sumerian myth of Queen Inanna-Ishtar who went to save her sister, the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice who wanted to bring back his wife from the realm of the dead, and Adonis who was sent to Hades by his mother who then recanted and had to make a deal with Persephone of the underworld to retrieve him.
These myths are examples of the dark night-of-the-soul activity that is archetypal of all humans where we descend into the darkest parts of the psyche to retrieve disowned or lost parts of oneself. In a way, this descent into the darkness and process of resurfacing is represented in the death and resurrection of Jesus that Christians celebrate during Easter named after the Proto-Germanic Spring Goddess Eostre who brought the world out of the cold death that is winter.
One’s nightmares also serve this function: they come from the dark unconscious mind seeking the light of consciousness.
The dark night of the soul refers to a painful period in one’s life, a sinking into the darkness i.e., depression. Depression can often bring nightmares to one’s dreams. However, as with most dreams, they come in the service of one’s health and well-being. When one takes on or confronts one’s nightmare there can be resolution and healing which is why I use the play on the words ‘Knight’ instead of ‘night’ in the title of this blog.
The process of individuation that Carl Jung saw as the process of self-realization and discovery of life’s purpose on the way to knowing and living who we really are is often forged during these dark-night ventures in both our waking and sleeping lives. Though I don’t usually experience nightmares, when I do I try to engage rather than flee from them to get an idea of what they are trying to bring to consciousness so that I can deal with the issue(s).
Occasional Nightmares can offer renewal or even the ‘rebirth’ of your core self and sometimes a spiritual rebirth through introspection and reflection. Note that one’s descent into this darkness can be quite scary and should not be taken lightly especially if one is experiencing frequent nightmares. If having two or three or more nightmares per week over many weeks one might seek professional help to assess meaning and develop a healing strategy.
I had a nightmare last night where I experienced a human skull biting my foot and though I tried shaking it off violently it would not let go. As I tried to wake up I found myself barely able to breathe and paralyzed.
Sleep paralysis, though scary, isn’t abnormal in that the body motor system tends to shut down as you enter REM sleep and as you come out of it. REM or rapid eye movement sleep is the primary dream stage of sleep though one can have dreams during the other four stages of sleep as well but often not as vivid. This stage occurs roughly every 90 minutes or so after entering the first stage. The body shuts down the motor functions as a form of protection so that you won’t hurt yourself while thrashing around in your dream.
Though normal, if you awake during this stage the paralysis can be quite disconcerting and may be, if experienced too often, a sign of some sleep problem or neurological issue.
As with any aspect of a dream, paralysis can suggest a feeling of being out of control, signify coping issues, a resistance to change, or a feeling of being trapped in some situation in your waking life.
Being bitten may have something to do with feeling vulnerable to someone or some situation that you haven’t dealt with adequately. For me the whole dream sequence may represent what I’ve been feeling regarding all the hate, lies and cheating going on in my country today as well as the out of control feeling associated with all the gun violence in my country and the wars being fought in various parts of the globe. I no longer have a sense of safety and belonging in my own country due to the hate and disruption coming from the extreme right wing of the social-political-religious spectrum. This stress and anxiety show up in my dreams as a nightmare from time to time.
Though the biting of my foot can be about an attack on my ability to stand firm on my own two feet and even refer to my own penchant toward self-criticism it may also have been an artifact of some neuropathy I’ve been experiencing lately and need to see a doctor about.
The truth is that a dream can reflect several different layers of meaning simultaneously. Our job is to analyze and parse the meanings out.
I’ve written many blog postings about nightmares over the years (see a listing at the end of this article) and dedicated sections on both my website and a section in the book, Morpheus Speaks: The Encyclopedia of Dream Interpreting.
But I want to draw a distinction between nightmares that are born of the need for our health and well-being and those that are reenactments of trauma e.g., the kind many people identified as suffering from PTSD. How you treat them is significantly different.
Nightmares come from the unconscious psyche trying to gain your conscious attention usually because there are events and stressors going on around you or at a subconscious level that you are not paying attention to but can affect you negatively if you don’t act on them. Frequently this kind of nightmare will show up repeatedly until you finally act or until the danger has passed. This type of nightmare can often, though not always, be adequately dealt with by going back into the nightmare while not fully awake or enlivening them after one has awakened, gleaning their meaning and hidden message(s) and or changing the narrative and bringing them to a more satisfactory conclusion. This can be done either on one’s own by looking for the positive in the dream or looking for the environmental triggers that may bring them about. Often this can be done with a friend or even in a dream group.
Being continuously bathed in negative images from TV shows and the news media can often be triggers for recurring nightmares. Limiting one’s exposure to these triggers can prove cathartic and helpful in lessoning or eradicating most recurring nightmare sequences or reduce the number of nightmares over time.
However, those who have suffered extreme trauma e.g., having been physically attacked, raped, intimate partner violence, repeated psychological or physical abuse, experience of extreme events of death, near death, or causing the death of another, or extreme uncontrollable and recurring chaos can sometimes relive these traumas over and over again ad infinitum and require medical and therapeutic help to deal with reoccurring and unrelenting nightmares. These relived or replicative moments of trauma through almost nightly nightmare dreams are symptomatic of those suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress and require professional help in dealing with them. To continually relive them can become physically and psycho-emotionally debilitating and fall into the category of a disorder.
My nightmarish dreams of late seem to be ones of struggle, fear, turbulence, upheaval, escape, and are full of disappointment and limited solution and purposelessness. What’s the point of life I’ve wondered?
Over the years I’ve had these mind-blowing epiphanies, seemingly profound insights, spot on intuitions, dreams of the divine, imaginative stories, and magical moments. I’ve suffered, experienced joy, been hurt, soared with success, and fallen into the dark abyss of failure and loss. I’ve lived my life to the fullest I knew how. So what?
And try as I will, I can’t answer the ‘so what’ question. I guess I expected something to happen that never did, that there would be a profound understanding at the end. But nothing? I didn’t see that coming. Paul of the bible walks down a road and has an epiphany that not only changes the direction of his life but creates a whole new religion. I have an epiphany, several actually, and nothing, ho hum, just another day at the office.
What the hell!
I have what by accepted definition are profound life altering mystical experiences and what do I get? Nothing, nada, nichts. Everything’s the same as always only I no longer see the world in quite the same way, but the joy effect eventually wears off even if the change in perspective doesn’t. The only difference is I now don’t seem to fit in anywhere. And my so-called mystical experiences amount to what? I can’t even claim to be a mystic. Again, so what?
Here I am at the end of it all and all I’ve got is a big so what. I remember a Peggy Lee song where she sang, “Is that all there is?” wherein she exclaims, “Then let’s keep dancing.” Like for Peggy, I find myself disappointed but it’s a disappointment only because I thought there was some secret purpose to it all, but it seems that the dance of life has only one purpose and its not enlightenment, or to gain deep knowledge of the mysteries of the universe. The purpose may just be to dance, and to experience it as I go for no other reason than to dance. Maybe this is all God wants me to do. Who knows why? But I spoil it when I try to make it something else.
So, what am I learning through these musings? Well, could it be to sing while I’m singing, cry when I’m crying, and dance when I’m dancing? Can it really be that simple?
Maybe we’re all just God having an experience that can only happen through a body and every experience acknowledged or not is what God wants from us and what it wants from itself. In this way how can I/we disappoint? How can any of it be disappointing?
Once again, it seems that it’s the ego-self that likes to overthink things and create a ground of being for disappointment, but even that too may be part of the purpose for our being. Hell, we/I can’t lose!
It appears that the ‘what’s so’ of my life is also the ‘so what’ and together they make up the whole of life.
I’m sitting on the floor in some strange place I’ve never seen before. It’s like a tunnel or underground bunker/cellar. A man comes out of nowhere and reaches behind my neck and rubs something on it. Why am I being targeted, what are they going to do to me? I know that I will soon be unconscious, so I slash his throat and start to run off to find some place to hide.
Interpretation:*
Do I not feel safe from my own inner dark side, my own unconscious mind? Do I need to protect myself? Am I letting myself become too vulnerable? Do I need to pay better attention to the darker parts of me? Do I need to focus more on the brighter aspects of myself and avoid burying myself too deeply into my darker aspects? Am I killing myself, my psycho-emotional self i.e., my self-esteem? Do I need to be more positive about myself and reign in the self-critic? What am I running from?
The underground is often symbolic of our unconscious mind trying to communicate with our conscious ego self through our dreams. Death in dreams is often referring to the end of something or the ending of a way of being. Being threatened often comes from feeling vulnerable or helpless.
Running away and trying to hide is an avoidance response to some action, danger, or event. Being myself, what some would call the authentic self, often results in me worrying about being rejected. But keeping the crafted persona or the mask on can be stultifying and limiting.
The slashing of the throat could be about regretting a communication and wanting to cut off communication or the fear that some communication has threatened me or should be ended in the future. The throat or neck is the connector between the intellect and the body or heart. Slashing it severs the communication between heart and head, the fearful thoughts and the loving heart. Out of the fear of being rejected this what the head wants to do.
Recently I shared with a group of men parts of myself that I know are not necessarily acceptable or embraced by most people and after having hit “send” I almost immediately regreted having made myself so vulnerable and began to beat myself up for having shared so deeply. I tried to center myself but found that this wasn’t working. I read and reread the message I sent out trying to convince myself that this wasn’t a giant mistake. It wasn’t working either. The dream seems to be a response.
This kind of dream often shows up when I make myself vulnerable or spend too much energy criticizing myself and worrying if I’ve presented myself with too much information. When the mask comes off is a very scary place to be, freeing, but scary.
“By virtue of our ancient roots, we are all instinctively disposed to respond immediately to threatening and fearful stimuli. We do this in both our waking lives and in our dreams, often through the intervention of nightmares. In a very real way, nightmares tell us that all is not well in our outer or inner worlds.” (Cole, RJ, Pg. 543) *
Along with recurring dreams that seem to show up when there is something going on that may be critical to our well-being, nightmares seem to be an evolutionary and instinctive adaptation to peripheral threats and should not be ignored.
Lately, I’ve been experiencing a dream that incorporates both recurrency and nightmarish qualities.
In this dream which showed up across three nights I puncture a large cube-like container that starts gushing water. I try to stop it and get sucked in feet first but get stuck moving forward as I try to pull myself out. I struggle mightily but eventually give up and let it suck me into the cube in hopes of overcoming it and then swim my way out. As I find myself underwater with little chance of escape, I begin to panic and frantically thrash toward the entry hole letting the water that’s escaping through the hole suck me back out into the air.
Whew!
Water overwhelming and threatening to drown. As a metaphor for strong or overwhelming emotions that were threatening my well-being this cry for help dream definitely caught my attention. So, the question is, what’s going on right now that is overwhelming me emotionally? What I noticed upon reflection and not going into details was that I had for several days been experiencing a general background malaise, anxiety, and despondency that had been spoiling my ability to enjoy the good things that had been going on and making me feel ill and listless, sort of ‘Bah, humbug’ if you will. I had also fallen into the cynical “everything is meaningless” trap that was making every color turn gray. Given the current circumstances in the world and in the country where I live this attitude had become my defense against the fear, violence, and hate i.e., it can’t hurt me if I render everything as meaningless.
But it robs me of the joy in life, the love, and compassion because if I render it all meaningless then they too are taken away. As in the dream I’ve let the malaise take me over in hopes that by stopping my resistance to it that it will let me go. Dealing with it is not, however a passive act, it requires an active participation.
This post as well as a number of other activities (such as watching corny Hallmark and Netflix movies) is my way of swimming up toward the hole and escaping the overwhelm.
Being attacked by self, events, and/or others can leave us feeling helpless, angry or depressed.
A sea urchin with no spines is attacked by an ugly toad intent on the urchin’s destruction. But the seemingly defenseless urchin sends out tentacles from beneath and wraps them around the toad’s neck. I am appalled and grossed out as I watch this aggressive dream.
“What is going on?” I wonder as I awake from this nightmarish scene.
As I review this dream trying to gain some insight to its meaning aggression and conflict seem to be the main theme. I am both the urchin and toad, the attacker and the attacked, the aggressor and the victim. The usual suspect comes to the fore i.e., my penchant for self-punishment. But it’s more than this same old, same old story.
As I watch helplessly the political realities of certain egos plotting to dominate the government with little or no regard for people’s lives, countries making invasion plans for no other reason than to dominate and make themselves important, random mass shootings for the same reason, and in my own tiny corner of the world a violent incident that has pitted well-meaning people against each other I am feeling overwhelmed with things that I can do nothing about but watch.
Add to all that my own self-criticism for not living up to my own standard for being and I create the inner turmoil that this dream represents. The dream brings to the fore what I try to ignore, the feeling of helplessness and depression that keeps me angry at the world and at myself.
For some reason facing this anger helps me to settle, for the truth is I have a right to be fearful and angry but need and want to also face the fact that am not totally helpless in that I can change what I do with that fear and anger. I can resist the tendency for my emotions to take me over and still do what is right to do with what is in front of me. In short, I need to be gentle with myself in all things and not give evil for evil.
As I finish up this blog, I am reminded of the poem by Max Ehrmann, the Desiderata.
Desiderata
GO PLACIDLY amid the noise and the haste and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
•Racing around town on a self-propelled scooter at breakneck speed and weaving and dodging.
•Men jumping without looking into deep holes, crevasses into the underground.
•I’m walking into a room. It’s greyish and dark, dank, cold, and empty. It feels lonely and abandoned. I see no windows with the room feeling small but unending.
•Someone is attempting to stab me in the stomach and then shoots me with a rifle.
Lots of internal conflict and warnings about being too reckless. An overall malaise seems to have enveloped both my waking and sleeping dreams. A sense of being attacked by others and by myself permeates these dreams.
I have not spent enough time exploring what’s going on with me, so my dreams take over to focus my attention. I’ve been too harsh on myself lately as well. This has created an unsafe place and empty void within me. I need to let up on the self-attack and focus on what I’m doing.
“Being kind to yourself is one of the greatest kindnesses”.
The Dark Knight of the Soul 