Using your feelings to interpret your Dreams

[zuimon]

Last night I dreamt...

The governmental man in a suit visited the farm of an elderly couple. They only had a small farm and the new law being forced on them meant they had to wire up their farm with solar panels to contribute to the grid. They would receive enough money to survive, the rest being taken from them by the authorities. They felt crushed, it was the end of the farm, which although had always been a meagre and pathetic existence, was still theirs.

I was a fly on the wall. I could sense the anger, resentment, frustration and deep pain felt by the farming couple. A lovely man and woman who’d always done their best, always given freely and asked nothing in return. The ‘suit’ was cold, dispassionate, hard, cruel, delighting in the pain he was inflicting and the control and power he wielded - a spine-less man. The usual stereotypes.

And I was raging, I was furious, yet powerless to do anything. Had I been in the old couples place I too would have had to acquiesce unable to even voice a protest, telling myself, oh well as there is nothing we can do about it, we’ll just have to make the most of it.

I wanted to know the truth of my dream, why did I have it, what is it trying to show me. I want to know through my feelings; not with my mind. I’ve never been interested in dream symbology. I want to really know: how does this dream relate to me and my life, to my life as a child and my relationship with my parents where all my patterns, good and bad, stem from.

And I accept I am all the different people in my dream, they are all reflecting parts of me - it is within me, it is my dream. I am the poor farmers as I am also the horrible uncaring man.

And how I use my feelings to help me uncover the truth they are wanting me to see is like this:

- I long and yearn to know the truth of myself.

- I fully accept that I feel angry in the dream, so I start there, with my bad feeling.

- I own it, fully acknowledge it, I am really pissed-off.

- I understand this anger is deeply repressed or buried in me, and now that I’m feeling it, I want to bring it all up. The dream is showing me its hidden within me and I’m disconnected from it, and that’s why I have to dream-feel it. But now I want to bring that unconscious anger up into my waking reality.

- The anger is now pushing up in me wanting to come out, it wants to be expressed. I tell Marion about it, I tell her the dream but focusing on all the feelings I felt. Then I emote and express my anger to her: I let it have its say.

- And whilst I’m expressing how furious I feel, telling her why I feel so bad, and how much I hate the government man, and how powerless I feel, I long as hard as I can to know the truth my feelings are trying to show me. I also ask God: Please God help me to see the truth of my feelings You want me to see.

- And I talk and talk, expressing all the bad feelings I can. And I long and long for the truth to come up so I can see it.

Then the truth starts to come. Instantly, sort of like in a flash, I understand that this ‘suit’ is dad - he was always in his suit. And then I understand how he was the absolute authority in our family being the man. Mum was the immediate authority, but behind her was an even greater power - dad. And then I see I am the couple, I being the child are harmless and helpless. I feel how powerless mum and dad made me feel. They laid down the law and too bad, I just had to accept it and try and make the most of it. They crushed me, they didn’t give a nuts about me, they delighted in the power they had over me. They were spineless powerless people who bluffed their way through life using their children as a power base. They really were the pathetic ones. The one who needs such control over another is really the poor one. However I being still their child, feel very poor. And F@#%ING ANGRY! How dare they treat me like that, how dare they be so unloving!

My dream has shown me more of the truth of myself. More of the truth of why I feel bad. My dream has helped me through my feelings to understand a little more of myself, and to live a little more true to myself.

[sparklekaz]

Hi Zuimon,

A very interesting dream Zuimon. You seem to have understood the messages, information and insight it had for you on many levels. The only thing that I would ask you is this. Why do you think the dream came to you now, at this moment in your life. Is it possible, that there is a situation playing out in your life at this time that remembering and understanding the dynamic from the past, might be helpful to you in some way? As in, the people you are now associating with. Either in a work environment, or within your personal relationships.

Alternatively, and I mean this respectfully. Might some of the more negative personality traits embodied by some of the characters in your dream, be manifesting themselves in your own personality. For example, the authority figure, and manipulative aspects. I know from my own experience, having had a very volatile parent, who could at times be extremely domineering and manipulative. I promised myself that I would never be the same. But on occasion, when I was bringing up my own children. I would catch myself saying and doing things, I said I never would. I would eventually realise what I was doing, and would correct myself. But sometimes in the heat of the moment, when our emotions are churned up, we can exhibit negative traits. Do you see where I am going with this?

I found it very interesting that you were very much the observer in this dream. That you were able through connecting with your emotions to understand intellectually and intuitively, the meaning behind the dream scenes, and understand them. But I do believe, that these types of dreams come to us for a good reason. That they are not just a visit down memory lane. But that they come to teach us something. Or to encourage us through self awareness to grow. What do you think, this dream has to teach you?

A great teaching dream, and a very good interpretation.

Love and light
Kaz

[zuimon]

Hi Kaz, thank you for your rely.

Indeed there is a lot more behind this dream as to what’s happening in my life. I only wrote a little of what the dream means to me as an example to illustrate how I use my feelings to look deeper into myself.

You said: “Might some of the more negative personality traits embodied by some of the characters in your dream, be manifesting themselves in your own personality. For example, the authority figure, and manipulative aspects.” And yes, absolutely, all of them. I am the horrible man as I am the poor farmers, it all coming from my parents, all of which I’ve absorbed and taken on from them. I didn’t write about those more horrible aspects of the dream (of myself) as I thought the post was too long as it was, and I wanted to see if anyone was interested in this approach. And I don’t think I need to inflict all my bad stuff on everyone, most people are put off by the not so good darker stuff.

“Why do you think the dream came to you now, at this moment in your life. Is it possible, that there is a situation playing out in your life at this time that remembering and understanding the dynamic from the past, might be helpful to you in some way?” This dream came now because of how I’m choosing to live my life. I’ve not said anything about it directly on the forum. It is the main element of my spiritual philosophy, something which I am still exploring. It’s very complex, however I will try and give you some understanding of it.

I launched off on my spiritual path wanting to talk to the highest spirits I could. I reckoned they’d know more about things than anyone else, they being over there and surely living them. And I got what I asked for. However I still didn’t feel fulfilled, and more importantly - happy; something vital was still missing. My head was filled with all the new revelation and yet it was all mind stuff, which I wrongly believed would take all my bad yuk and pain away, transforming into a nice, caring and perfect person.

When I met my Marion everything changed. As these things happen, I was begging for it. She said, yes, it’s all very well knowing all those sorts of things with your mind, but what about you, how you feel about it all; and how do you feel, right now in this moment of your life. And to be honest, I didn’t know.

She then helped me to understand that living a true spiritual life was nothing like I thought it was, and that actually we have to want to sort ourselves out, as obvious as that might sound. But what I mean, which she’s help me to see, is that myself (and now I understand it’s the same for all of us), was made right from conception to go against my true self. When our parents interfere with our will, preventing us from expressing ourselves as we naturally want to, they are damaging us, stopping our personality coming into its fullness. And yet we want to please our parents, we want them to be happy with us, to praise us, to love us, and so one way or another we change or adjust ourselves as we are forming to become as they want us to be, which is invariably a false person. This being psychology you’re no doubt familiar with.

So having understood that I was not the real me, that I have been made into a false me, a strange, distorted and perverted person by my false, strange, distorted and perverted parents, I realised I had to heal myself, to change myself somehow back into being the true me. Or perhaps not so much as to change, as I don’t agree with all the stuff about using your mind to change yourself, but to somehow liberate the me, or those parts of me, that are retarded in their self-expression. But how to do that. And as you understand, it requires a lot of intense therapy.

All of this sort of evolved through my spiritual growth, I didn’t want a therapist’s help, I wanted, because I’ve stubbornly believed, I should be able to heal myself, to become my true self, through my own doing. I f----ed myself up (albeit through my forming years and unconscious of what I was doing to myself) so why can’t I un-f---- myself, myself.

Marion introduced me to the term: Childhood Repression (Re: Alice Miller the Swiss psychologist  wikipedia). It being all we experienced during our forming that made us feel bad, and all those bad feelings we’ve suppressed, all because we weren’t allowed to bring them out. So my soul is jam-packed with unexpressed bad feelings and negative emotions all which are causing me all my pain. And I don’t want them in me anymore. So how do I bring them out?

This Marion showed me, and it’s what we are both doing, what we’ve been doing for years now - it being how we live. I decided to follow her, trying to no longer deny a feeling, particularly bad ones, if I could help it. She’s much better at it than I am, and it’s been a hard slog for me every step of the way because my family all but stopped all feeling expression. So to start it, to learn how to do it, has been like trying to get blood out of a stone. I resist all my bad feelings, completely blocking them out.

So the dream is just my daily (or nightly I should say) dream to help me liberate yet more repressed feelings in me, so I can use those feelings to help me move along in healing my childhood repression.

And briefly what we do in our healing is, when we feel bad, in the slightest way, stop, acknowledge it, and then bring it out. We express it to each other. We have made that the priority in our lives. And our lives have adjusted to enable us to do this. So we emote and express and talk about all we’re feeling, all with the aim of trying to use those feelings to take us back into our early life where the bad things happened to us to make us feel bad in the first place, all so we can uncover the hidden truth of why we’re feeling bad. Which then is all to do with uncovering the truth of our relationship with our parents.

And none of it is nice, it’s all dealing with your yuk and bottom line, yet as far as I’m concerned, it’s the only way we can fully heal and liberate ourselves from our untruth. Because as I move along in what I call my Feeling-Healing, my controlling mind is systematically broken down as I come to understand the wrongness I am and the wrongness I’m living. And as I uncover the truth about my yuk, so I am sort of put back together again like Humpty-Dumpty, slowly bringing the real and true me - the me that is hopefully good, true and loving.

So instead of trying to avoid the fire and hell and darkness within me, I am longing for it to come up, to feel bad, to embrace it all, as hard as it is to do; so I can then use those bad feelings to work myself back into myself, to see how it’s all come about: why I am it, and how it’s all making me feel.

So my dreams “are not just a visit down memory lane”, they are the next part in my feeling-healing. They are all very specific, and all to help me uncover more truth about myself.

So for me Kaz, I now see this healing I am doing as my spiritual path. As the truth of myself comes to light through my feelings, so too does the truth of other things and God. This being, so I’ve come to understand, how we are meant to evolve or grow ourselves out of the self- and feeling-denying state we’re in.


And a p.s: you said “I promised myself that I would never be the same. But on occasion, when I was bringing up my own children. I would catch myself saying and doing things, I said I never would. I would eventually realise what I was doing, and would correct myself. But sometimes in the heat of the moment, when our emotions are churned up, we can exhibit negative traits. Do you see where I am going with this?” And this is exactly what I am trying to become aware of in myself and heal. That all my negative unloving behaviour comes from the negative unloving influences of my parents. I didn’t have children because I felt I wouldn’t love them properly (as they needed to be loved), as I’ve never felt truly loved, this all apart of what’s come to light for me through my healing. And it’s in the heat of the moment, when you are out of your normal controlling mind, when you get a glimpse of the horror that you are and you instantly recoil in disgust mustering all your will to ‘not go there’, that I see is the most important part of ourselves to focus on, to stay with it whilst longing for the truth of it, instead of doing what we’ve been programmed to do, banish it or quickly override with our mind. And for me I had no way out. I had to go there, and so that’s what my healing is all about. Stepping in there, into those mad moments of hysteria and liberating all the repressed feelings driving them. And it has been one hell-ride, but so rewarding. And it’s not over yet.

[sparklekaz]

Dear Zuiman,

What can I say.. thank you for such a open and honest reply. Much of what you have said I can completely relate to. You said.." I still didn’t feel fulfilled, and more importantly - happy; something vital was still missing. My head was filled with all the new revelation and yet it was all mind stuff, which I wrongly believed would take all my bad yuk and pain away, transforming into a nice, caring and perfect person". This really struck a chord with me. I truly believed that bringing understanding and awareness to how my upbringing shaped me as a person and what factor it has played in my life choices, would help me. But as you have experienced; understanding it on an intellectual level, helped a bit, but it didn't make the pain go away. If anything it has only heightened my feelings of shame and guilt. You cannot go back and change things, you have to live with the consequences. I couldn't understand how knowing something, didn't just stop you from repeating old patterns. I can see now from what you have said, that it's because mind/understanding and emotional/understanding is not the same.

And that for me is the problem. To explain. I was the eldest of three girls. My parents were both extremely outgoing, charismatic, volatile people. They basically were too much alike. Fire attracting fire, if that makes sense. So our home-life was always emotionally charged. Passionate, violent arguments were the norm. Sometimes they could be quite physical. I was a very sensitive child. Happy and loving, but on reflection, my natural empathy meant I could feel and sense the emotional energies of my parents. So was constantly on edge, and would do anything to calm things down. She had massive mood swings. Happy, loving one minute, and frighteningly angry the next. One walked on eggshells not knowing, what mood she'd be in, so I watched her constantly, sensitive to any changes, that would give me a heads up, trouble was coming. A big burden for a child to carry.

My mother particularly, could be very physical. It was if she took out the frustrations of her life with my father on to us girls. So I would do what I could to deflect her aggression away from my sisters. Often taking the brunt of it. The upshot of this was, I was a nervous wreck. So experienced all the symptoms that go with it. Always catching bugs, stomach upsets and as I grew older, instead of becoming hardened to anxiety, I became even less able to cope with it. Strangely of all throughout life, I have been drawn into similar scenarios. When you'd think I would have avoided them like the plague. This paradox is something that the more I have come to understand it, the more bewildered I've felt as to why I do it. If that makes sense. I coped by trying to switch off emotional pain. So in a way, I created a wall between my mind and my emotions. But my walls regularly get breached and often feel very deep pain. I try to offset this by trying to help others as much as I can. Hoping that in doing this, I will help myself. As you say, this is a deep and personal subject. Who'd think a post would trigger off so much personal reflection.

Thank you again for sharing so much of your life story. It's given me something to think about and look into, with regards Childhood Repression by Alice Miller. I will check her out. I am positive, your post will resonate with others as it has with me. It has really shifted my own perspective on this. So thank you again, for your openness.

Love and light
Kaz

[zuimon]

Kaz, I strongly relate to what you said about being the first child, copping the lot, and feeling responsible for having to keep the peace and protect your sisters from your parents. It’s soul-destroying to think that as little innocent children we are flung into situations in which we are struggling for survival having to defend ourselves against the very people we so desperately want to be loved by.

I too am the eldest carrying such a burden, however as I’ve come to understand, I was never allowed much freedom to actually do anything about keeping the peace and looking after my brother and sister, so I’ve internalised it all, creating a fantasy of it. And during the past year my healing has been leading me to see that all I want to do publicly, even including posting on your forum, is still my trying to keep the peace. I want people - the whole world, which is really only mum and dad, to stop being horrible and mean, to do their healing and fix themselves up, so they will stop scaring the sh-- out of me and instead love me. It’s such a deep trauma in me, that which I’m projecting on the whole world, because when you are little your parents are the whole world. So my patterns became fixed in place back then and I’m still carrying them out now in my adult life, only I fail to see it’s all to do with only my parents as I try to convince the world to ‘See the Light’.

And this brings me to what you said: “Strangely of all throughout life, I have been drawn into similar scenarios. When you'd think I would have avoided them like the plague. This paradox is something that the more I have come to understand it, the more bewildered I've felt as to why I do it.” And in fact it’s actually very easy to understand, it’s just that mostly we don’t want to see it.

You see our formative years, are just that, we’re forming, coming into being, as you of course know. But if you put yourself back into being the child (that you still are), then just as you grew up learning how to walk, it then becoming second nature, so too did you grow up learning how to keep and enact all your psychological and behavioural patterns. So through each of the stages of your growth, they all compounding as you grew, you developed beliefs, these being the structures your mind set in place to enable you to keep living out your behavioural patterns.

So really as you are still the little child, just bigger and pretending to be an adult, and you are still reacting to the world as if it is your parents, so you are still doing the same things, acting and behaving the same way. And you can’t do anything else, it’s all ingrained within you - the patterns are you! And try as you might by using your mind to cover up all the bad parts that come to your attention, as you said, which is because you are sensitive to your feelings, you can’t always keep the bad feelings away. And you never will succeed in doing so, because it wasn’t part of your pattern.

So why you can’t is just another part of your early life pattern. You weren’t allowed to do it, whereas other people were. So you didn’t learn the stills of being able to completely shut off and block out such bad feelings, which although is a real bother when all the cracks start once again appearing, especially having thought you’d managed to overcome such problems, being closer to your feelings, and although making it harder in life for you, will benefit you in the long term because you don’t have such control over your feelings. You’ll learn more from life, because we can only truly learn through our feelings. And when you do come to do your feeling-healing, when you are ready to seek the whole truth of yourself, then your feelings will be readily accessible, whereas for those people like me who are far better at blocking them all out, they will find it very difficult to break through those controlling patterns allowing their real and deeper feelings to come up.

And I say when you come to do your feeling-healing, because that’s what I believe we all will have to do at some point, be it whilst of flesh or in spirit, because as far as I’ve come to see, it is the only way out of our pain, the only way that does help you move back into the formation of those early childhood patterns, fully accept them, and so change them - and all being done through feelings and not with the mind.

[zuimon]

Also Kaz,

You said, “mind/understanding and emotional/understanding is not the same.”, and that’s such a good way of saying it, because that’s the crux of it, the problem I see so many people have, which I certainly had. So many people feel they are growing in truth and understanding and spiritual awareness and are happy with this, however it’s all only mind/understanding, and it’s not growing in truth, understanding and spiritual awareness from emotion or feeling/understanding. And the Eastern spiritual teachers are the most perfect examples of this. All they teach is so very appealing, as it’s all about good feelings and not bad feelings, doing all you can to stop yourself feeling your bad feelings and transcend them; how to use your mind to control yourself to such a degree that you only feel love, no longer feeling all the bad stuff. And yet if they were looking to their feelings to uncover the truth of themselves, they’d be saying things like you were in your post, talking about all the problems and difficulties they had with their parents, as I can’t believe they all came from perfectly loving families. But all they say, along with all the New Agers and religious people in their way say, is no, rise above it, mind over matter, you create your own reality, so use your mind to NOT ALLOW ALL THOSE BAD FEELINGS TO GET THE BETTER OF YOU. And this is all leading you further from the truth of yourself, it’s all adding to your feeling-denial, it’s all taking you further away from your soul, it’s all helping you become even more untrue. It’s actually doing the very opposite of what one believes it’s doing.

You see Kaz, you are feeling stirred up by some of what you’ve read in my post, it’s made you go back and think again about your feelings - and the bad ones, and about your relationship with your parents. And if you use those feelings, talking about all they are making you feel whilst longing hard to uncover their truth, asking God to show you what He wants you to see from them, you will, so far as I’m concerned, be taking far bigger spiritual steps than someone who is sitting on their bum making up pretty visualisations for themselves, deluding themselves they are getting somewhere spiritually and growing in truth because their spirit guide might tell them something like: ‘It’s all about love’. Of course it is all about love, yet what’s wrong with us is we’ve not been loved as we needed to be loved as we formed. And it’s in all those terrible feelings that have resulted from feeling so unloved, all which are still swirling around inside us, that have to be addressed so the truth can be found. And not by repetitively saying some mantra or praying or doing any other spiritual or religious exercise, but by the hard yakka of embracing them, fully accepting them, and then working with them, going with them, to get in touch with ones full misery, pain and agony, all to understand the truth of it.

It’s said, ‘the truth is within you’, and sure, it is, but it’s within all those bad feelings you’re trying to avoid at all costs. And because we’re all doing all we can to avoid them, so the truth is so elusive and hard to find. And yet ironically, we don’t need to ‘look out there’ or ‘climb the highest mountain’, all we need to do is take one of our bad feelings and express it with the longing and understanding that contained and hidden within it is the very truth of yourself you are searching so hard all over the place to find.

The Truth of ourselves, which also contains the truth of nature, life and God, is starring us in the face, we are feeling it all the time, yet it’s in all our bad feelings... and who wants to go anywhere near those!