A thought on dream interpretation (no actual intrp)

[mythopoet]

Hi Jacqui,

Thank you for expressing your own point of view regarding dream interpretation. If you read this strand carefully, you already surmise the nature of your own dream psychology, that is, how you, yourself approach the dream. It is good for each of us to know how we gain our meanings when we dream or when the dream dreams about "us" and relays to us what we look like to the unconscious (or as V. says the soul life)... and, looks with what does this looking without ever meaning (anything). V thinks this soul "means" and this meaning fullness is specifically prophetic. I do not think there is this kind of intentionality per say. I think this is only one mode of consciousness among several in which a dream may be received.

I would also call this kind of knowing your own dream psychology suggests, and the resultant meaning you seek a dream or dreams to "mean", a knowing from where you already know what you already know even though you did not consciously know that you knew it. This kind of knowing sits contradistinct knowing from where you don't know and from an "I don't know" (a nobody, a "dream" or "soul" perspective.)

This latter kind of understanding is difficult to grasp because it means losing a fleshly, autobiographical perspective. One must accept the loss of a dayworld perspective. One could imagine we dream to lose this very way of seeing. This is to say, one must be about losing a three-dimensional reality (a conscious, material, literal understanding) in favor of seeing and knowing through a psychical reality in a two-dimensional space. The Greeks called this movement or "knowing" skia or "shade". Seeing "the inner shades" or shades "in" (the attitudes that go into our own make-up) is like trying to see shadow moving in pitch darkness. Soul is dark. Soul is black. And, we are in the realm of "space". Look up into a moonless night sky and then think 'way down inside it' space. Seeing a shade in movement through this space is the difficulty.

I went back to your dream post to update myself on the exchange going on in it. To understand what V said to you, to understand V's dream psychology seems to be the challenge at hand. One reason understanding is hampered has to do with English being a second language for V. Acceptance or rejection or some combination of the two comes in second and only after one begins to "understand" or see the way V sees in the first place.

What you want to do is try to see the beliefs about "soul" going into V's picturing. V has actually done a very good job of delineating her own ideas or beliefs about "soul".

For instance, there is an ancient understanding that goes way way back that says when we go to bed at night and dream, the soul wanders away from the body. The soul journeys like the shaman journeys. Sometimes the soul doesn't come back and the person comes back without it. This is the basis for shamanic healing practices. This seems what V may mean when writing "if the soul goes a head body wasn’t get back and if soul gets back the body won’t go ahead ". In such a case when viewed from a shamanic perspective, the shaman will go into the soul of the dream and recover the skia or "shade" (or 'soul') and bring it back.

This is like going into a dream after what a dream means. We have lost something, a sense perception and we have gone in search of it. The something-loss is no thing (nothing)...and I now know I don't know what this dream 'means.' Shamen retrieve such soul and come back blowing it back through its three dimensional form. The ancients understood that the soul is not in the body. The body is in the soul. (Heraclitus) Hence, V goes on to say"with the soul the happiness comes and with it the ache is received if a sense is damaged the soul is remained but if the soul is damaged senses can work properly."

The alchemy of the dream must happen in the depths of the psyche or "soul" an this alchemy requires re-visioning our dream psychology all the time.

In sharing this very long post with you I am not trying to say I agree with V's "interpretation". I am trying to encourage your going back to try for more of an understanding of what attitudes and beliefs about soul go into V's outlook and that form the foundation of what V "sees" and "knows" about the dream.

Your own knowing is valuable and your expression today so very enjoyed and received with much gratitude.

Many Blessings,
mythopoet

[Varzandeh]

Hi,
If the interpretation are based on the holy books ( The Bible and Quran).So the problem will be solved there is a unique source.
In the Bible and also Quran there is 7 stories about dreams and more than 14 verses that if all of the verses about 6000 are about all the trials and the reasons so the share of the dreams seems important.

[blueberrysummer]

Hi there Ive enjoyed reading the continous posts to this thread over the past few days, I must say they have been very thought provoking.

What I have come to understand over the years of visiting this board on and off is the plethora of approaches to dream interpratation, what mythopoet calls dream psychology, each of us having a way in which we relate to the dreaming consciouness and its expression, different view points will be expressed but each view point through the eye of the beholder will resonate and sing to our being this can tell us something intimately about ourselves and our mode of operandus.

What I often wander is if there is one true way that is one pure truth and purpose to dreams and what they represent, our own 'dream psychology' is tainted much in the same way as putting on a rose coloured pair of sunglasses and seeing the world in a different hue. The way we look at dreams I believe is often akin to looking in a mirror, and in a similar way you could say to how we percieve the world around us.

Though our individuual expressions and sense of perception may be coloured with the many differnt hues that make up both our conscious personality and unconscious patterns I do believe that there is a uniquness and a universal 'truth' that exists beyond each of our individual personalitys and a truth that is common to all of us regadless of culture and time.

Something that Mythpoet wonderfully expressed in an earlier post -

"The symbol is truly expressing what it is. Although this may have 'meaning' for us, the symbol in itself does not mean. It simply expresses isness."

In this sense the 'truth' that I refer to is the same as the isness. Within buddhism this concept is often portrayed in different ways and young monks quite often meditate on this as a form of practice to pentrate truth.
Looking at hills in the country side from the hills point of view they just 'are', and exist beyond time and space it is only to our three dimensional consciouness that we hold the lable for hill that gives the hill its character, meditation in buddhism is to empty oneself of all preconceptions and labels and to just experience truth itself.

Similarly the symbols within are a differention of truth or isness and have an 'energy lablel' that is a hue of expression which is what I base my dream psychology on

Mythopoet in your quote -
"My brother with whom I worry about my father's business in a dream is neither my actual brother nor the older, sombre, responsible traits that slow and weigh me down. My dream-brother, because he is now a shade in the underworld, is an eidola, a purely psychic form, and our interpretation of him must also make this move from the everyday to the mythic. -quoted from James Hillman, Dream and Underworld p59-60"
really helped me to understand more about the greeks and their approach to understanding dreams I had to read your posts several times before I got a sense of what you were expressing, though we share the same language, the language used in your way of understanding dreams was new to me.

From an esoteric perspective again another language would be used an eidola or a purley psychic form would be a part of the astral body in esoteric thinking and to those who have the gift of higher perception the astral realm is the place of dream conciousness and the watery world of emotions it also serves as a gateway between the physical body and the higher spiritual vehicles.

In esoteric thought the higher spiritual vehicles are an expression of truth itself the purest quality of love that which I believe is a guiding force in our lives and also that which unconsciouly we ache to return home to, this guidance from my own beliefs filters into our dream vehicle helping us to open ourselves to a richer way of being and understanding so as well as encountering in dreams our own psychic forms that are held in the astral the higher energies of love, support and guidance and truth also filter into our dream world making our dreams a rich playground with which to explore.

have a good weekend all
Happy dreaming Marce

[mythopoet]

Hi, V-

I understand. Your offering grounds the dream in a unique source -the sacred, and here I must accent the sacred nature that is empasized by your naming it. It is also source that is nameable.

But there is another point to "knowing" anything. That is to open the mind up to what it doesn't know; to know by way of an unknown. Where you know by way of a known (source) you come to what is already known. When you come by way of an unknown source, you come to something new.

There is, you see, a point of view that opens the ground of the sacred again where the mind plunges alone into the ultimate experience of the sacred that is not nameable. Joseph Campbell calls all myths a penultimate knowing and not an ultimate knowing. It is a nameable way to understanding through such sacreds that already exist.

To know the dream by way of the dream psyche is to plunge into the no thing of the dream and try to see from its point of view. The dream sees with images. Images express psychic reality which is two dimensional not three. One point, however, you nicely bring forward in your own expression, is that it is through our religious metaphors in which our psychic world is often casting the dream.

Hi, Blue-

I really am enjoying your posts! They are truly thoughtful turnings of dream imaginings. Thanks for sharing your insights and also for mentioning where ideas of others (ideas that I have discovered in the works of others) are deepening your own understandings of psyche's voice.

Where you write From an esoteric perspective again another language would be used an eidola... you are getting my point which is that the dream talks in eidola. What I am saying is that eidola are metaphors or poetic expressions. The poetic expression is casting the dream reflection. How you interpret it is not the point. The point is THAT it cannot be understood except via the way we understand our metaphors.

Many Blessings,
mythopoet

[mythopoet]

Originally Posted by blueberrysummer

...Something that Mythpoet wonderfully expressed in an earlier post -

"The symbol is truly expressing what it is. Although this may have 'meaning' for us, the symbol in itself does not mean. It simply expresses isness."

In this sense the 'truth' that I refer to is the same as the isness. Within buddhism this concept is often portrayed in different ways and young monks quite often meditate on this as a form of practice to pentrate truth. Happy dreaming Marce...

Hi, Marce! (Blue)

I wonder if you would be so kind to unfold more around the state of "isness" and the Buddhist practice or practices that move the mind stuff in penetration of "truths"?


Bless,
mythopoet

[unclesirbobbyrobson]

Well I tend to treat dream dictionary words in the same way as the words that we read in ordinary dictionaries. An ordinary dictionary uses the same word in several different ways and contexts. Think of the word soldier for instance

"I need to soldier on with my project even though I am getting no help "

"You need to act more like a soldier - follow orders down to the letter"

"I have been thinking about my times in the army"

So a dream may use such a symbol in roughly similar ways. It may capture thoughts connected to you... or to someone else(close to you).

A dream may use symbols in various different ways to express thoughts.

Try this page on money on my site

Dream symbolism and dream dictionary interpretation - The meaning of Money in dream analysis
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Freud often used to connect dreams to fantasies. That is a rather negative way to look at dreams. In some cases the fantasies that we have get out of control and bear no relation to reality. In that case your dream may bring you back down to earth and will represent ways in which your fantasies are unrealistic. But in many cases its best to use the term motivating rather than fantasy. So for example if wake up with a highly positive dream where you are in your workplace and getting things done then you could see this dream as evidence of your own positive outlook. In real life look for signs of such the positive outlook. You may have been thinking about clearing away past failures or trying to connect and communicate better with people. In what ways did you lie awake thinking about the day to come and how things will be getting better soon.

Try understanding dreams by using the following links

Dream symbolism and dream dictionary interpretation - How to interpret dreams Interpreting dreams
Dream symbolism - How to use dream symbols Triggers for dreams
A dream dictionary that explores the variety of meanings in a dream symbol Dream dictionary

[mythopoet]

Originally Posted by unclesirbobbyrobson

...A dream may use symbols in various different ways to express thoughts...


...Freud often used to connect dreams to fantasies. That is a rather negative way to look at dreams. In some cases the fantasies that we have get out of control and bear no relation to reality. In that case your dream may bring you back down to earth and will represent ways in which your fantasies are unrealistic. But in many cases its best to use the term motivating rather than fantasy....

Hi USBR,

I want to respond as respectfully as I can to two ideas in your recent post.

The first is your comment on language. The way ego/consciousness uses language is not the same way dream uses the language of ego consciousnesses. We think that we use words but it is really the soul of words that use us. They carry metaphorical ideas in the etymological images that made them up to mean and you can trace that by finding where a word first enters culture i.e. that narrative is their real fiction and it is metaphorical of another side, one that cannot be spoken and which resides in the irrational.

Your mention of symbolic language generates an acknowledgement by consciousness itself [via allusion] to the existence of the unconscious reference upon which our spoken language itself alludes. A symbolic language turns images in consciousness over into images of psyche by deconstructing the is-statements of beings into as-statements in be-ing without having to be in beings themselves to be able to operate. This 'soul' is not in the body but transcendant all bodies (Plato's forms of sensible thought).

Psyche's logical language step (psuche logical is the language of psyche and where the term psychology comes from) is a negation but it is not negative in the sense of creating an oppositionalism (positive/negative, right/left, on/off, up/down) i.e. a pair of opposites. The step toward metaphorical language opens a third space Plato calls soul. It is here soul-making takes place. Where is that? Freud discovers one "no where" is the space-less, timeless dimension of our dreams. Jung goes on with this in a wholly different way as do many others and there are many many understandings for how to approach the groundless ground of our dreams. Also, there is a prior history to the phenomenology of dreams before Freud. His work is grounded in this body of research.

This brings me to my second concern regarding your comments around The Interpretation of Dreams, the major work of Freud published before his seminal work, Totem & Taboo . I do not think it enough to make a sweeping generality regarding Freud's understanding to substantiate a point of view as true or as revealing something truthfully. For one thing, that book is scarce. For another it was not written in English. One has to use a specific and careful translation to understand Freud's ideas regarding dream interpretation. You do not show you have an understanding in what Freud understood about "fantasy". Put simply, there is a difference between the imaginary and the imaginal life of the psyche.


Keep in mind psyche is no thing. Psyche is nothing i.e. a ground of be-ing. Heraclitus said of this space you will not find the end of it so deep is it's law. Dream takes us into that kind of house. The image of the house that houses no thing constellates the embodied psyche as it will have appeared in our dreams which are making this appearance both nowhere and now/here.

The moment you turn this imagination back over into the day residue out of which the metaphors of the dream are at work soul-making psychic reality is the moment you kill the dream and the healing powers in its voice that is imaginal (irrational) order in the first place & not the rationale of our egoic and personality preferences for order.

Bless,
mythopoet

[vee]

Hi Bentone, Mythopoet,Blueberry Summer and Jacqui,
I have enjoyed reading the discussion on interpretation. I agree feelings do play a major part in our dreams. Also it sure is hard to interpret when you dont know if something led up to the situation. Which may play a major part but was never mentioned leading up to the dream. I sure dont interpret too very much. If I feel that I have some understanding I'll try. But I dont look up any symbols for their definition. I also feel that dreams are about (NOW) and not about the future. I would say, if I decide to interpret one it is more like "Backporch interpretation." Which is nothing more than my sixty years of intuition with a little experience floating by once in awhile. Anyway, your input is amazing. Are you guys going to start interpreting? I sure do hope so. There sure are not very many interpretors right now are there.
Thanks for the enlightenment.
Vee

[unclesirbobbyrobson]

Hi mythopoet

I would not call myself an expert on freud. In fact quite the opposite. I am not really a big fan of his. I much prefer jung.

as I understand the matter freud believes that dreams use a hidden symbolic code. This hides the true meaning of as dream. So therefor if a dream means that "you realise that you acted in a totally stupid way" then it hides the facts from you. Yet deep down you do realise that.

I think that a dream does speak in a symbolic language but for a different reason. Its just storing concepts in the brain. Its not trying to hide difficult ideas in a complicated symbolic way. It just speaks a ddifferent language. A computer uses binary code because thats the way that it needs to store information. It does not use binary because it like to confuse people. It just uses it because it has to. The french do not speak french to confuse us. They basically do it for other reasons.

Dreams use symbolic language. yet we have happy dreams that use an equally confusing symbolism. WHY? There are no embarrassing truths there

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Always look out for Questions in dreams. They are very good clues. You may ask yourself a simple question in the dream such as WHY DID I DO THAT? It is very likely that this was a question you have just aksed yourself. Perhaps even from the day before. Try the following page for some helpful clues on understanding dreams.

Dream symbolism and dream dictionary interpretation - How to interpret dreams

Also try the following page as it features dreams which have been understood. This really is the best way to learn.

Dream interpreting - the police and security forces and their symbolic meaning

[mythopoet]

Originally Posted by unclesirbobbyrobson

Hi mythopoet

I would not call myself an expert on freud. In fact quite the opposite. I am not really a big fan of his. I much prefer jung...

...as I understand the matter freud believes that dreams use a hidden symbolic code. This hides the true meaning of as dream.

I think that a dream does speak in a symbolic language but for a different reason. Its just storing concepts in the brain... A computer...

Dreams use symbolic language. WHY?

HI USBR,

I am responding to your comment about the contribution of Freud to dream psychology and your question on dream's use of symbolic language.


A very good source to understand Freud and Dream is Henri Ellenberger's The Discovery of the Unconscious. It provides a whole section on the research upon which Freud's ideas are grounded, his original titles and best translations and after Freud is a whole section on Jung and Dream. This will allow examination of differences between the two men's way of seeing the dream.

As is often the case many find that someone preferring Jung's way of seeing the dream will devalue Freud's contribution to understanding dream psyche and those preferring Freud's contribution to understanding the dream will more often devalue Jung's regard for dream thinking.

Long before Freud, Heraclitus (5thC BCE) told us "Nature loves to hide" Our brains are not computers. They are works of nature.

The language of the brain has a consious side and an unconscious side. This language is Nature's language and Nature's way of talking the animal human and the spiritual human will have its is-statement in the day language of French, English, German, Dutch, Spanish, Hopi, Dine, African, et cetera, et cetera and its as-statement where one foot stays in the day language and the other foot steps into the night world where the universal language of the race -which is the dream will open a space-less space called psyche.

When we dream we enter the night world and share a universe together called psyche. We can understand each other there because our work of nature, our brain is pretty much what it was way, way back in the beginning of the race. Brain structure and development has changed little. But how we see this brain and its structure has changed. What we are using to see with and tell with is what Freud means when he says "myth". Our symbolic life has to do with our nature and the myths we live by.

What Freud discovers when Freud works out his dream theory is that our conscious lives are grounded in a mythic one, an imaginal or fictive ground. Jung will call this ground "the unconscious". What Jung means by this term when he first uses it is simply "I don't know".

Jung's psychology is different from Freud's psychology even though both psychologies are first called analytical psychologies. This is because Jung, in discovering the unconscious, discovers the archetypes. He spends the rest of his life working this out. His psychology is a psychology of the archetype. His myth is a myth of meaning.

Your preference for Jung over Freud gives me what Nature loved to 'hide' in the other sense of hide, where Nature hid within the surface skins an animal hide in the night you the other language, the one that "dreams" you and makes "you" up in symbols.

Bless,
mythopoet