“I don't use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough.”
-M. C. Escher
At some point or another in life almost everyone has experienced a nightmare. The word nightmare derives from the union of the English word “night” and the old English “maere” or evil spirit. Originally the word was used to describe a specific type of bad dream where evil spirits (at least from a medieval perspective) tried to mate with humans in their sleep. Over time the word became generalized to include all bad dreams.
These emotionally charged frightening messages from the night tend to wake us up rather abruptly. This is the Dream Maker’s way of telling us, “You need to pay attention to this one,” since we are oft in the habit of forgetting dreams. In other words, a nightmare is often a warning dream, giving us a heads up of some future situation that needs our immediate attention, requiring us to attend to some part of our life where we are unawares, blind. This area could be our health.
Certain types of nightmares are usually indicative of serious health issues. Let me provide a few examples. Studies of patients with cardiac disease (Ziegler, 1980) have shown that cardiac problems are often preceded with dreams of bullets or other weapons piercing the area of the chest. In fact any dream where bullets are seen puncturing the skin and entering the body or targeting some body part should be taken seriously. The bullets could very well be alluding to an area of our body that is weak and susceptible to disease. The message here is that the target area is literally “under attack.” The problem is under the surface, deep. Where does the bullet in the dream lodge is what one should be on the lookout for? Similar to the bullet nightmare dreams are the battle field dreams (Kasatkin, 1967). These dreams often accompany illnesses where there is fever or infection involved. A fever indicates that the body’s immune system has kicked in. An internal civil war is being waged between the good guys (white blood cells, antigens, anti-bodies) and the bad guys (invading germs such as viruses and bacteria). Another dream theme in this category is an animal biting some body part (often rats). Once again the targeted area may be vulnerable to attack by a foreign agent (Kasatkin, 1967).
A milder form of nightmare body related dream (more disturbing than shocking) is the sewage or toilet backup overflowing dream especially in our world of poor eating habits (I’ll go eat some potato chips right now to prove my point). Here the backed up external plumbing is symbolic of our plugged up internal plumbing also known as the gastro-intestinal tract. The particular part of the internal plumbing system that is the problem will depend on the presence of other symbols in the dream. For, examples if you see sausages in the dreams it probably suggests the intestines (shaped like a string of sausages) is where the problem lies. Once again it is the Dream Maker warning us that our system of elimination is being compromised and we might want to do something about it.
One of the most universal nightmare themes involving body parts is the teeth falling out dream. Maybe you’ve experienced one of these. This could be purely symbolic, an indication that some event is really shaking you up on an emotional level, on a financial level (a common association with teeth falling out dreams in some cultures), but it could also portend a health warning, indicating that our structural integrity is compromised in some manner; meaning we may have severe problems relating to our bones, skeleton, jaw or teeth (Garfield, 1992).
Another modern universal nightmare dream involves cars and vehicles breaking down. Not to be confused with erratic driving patterns which have a very different meaning altogether. It’s the former that usually indicate health problems or body related issues as it is the body of the car that is impaired, symbolic of our physical body, a vehicle for the soul, journeying through this life (Sabini, 1981). A malfunctioning engine therefore could indicate stomach problems as the engine is where the car metabolizes its fuel (combustion) correlating with the stomach where our food is heated up and initially broken down. A plugged tailpipe could be indicative of an obstructed windpipe. Running out of gas might indicate we are physically depleted. Fluids leaking from the car could be indicative of their corresponding fluids in the body. For example I once had a dream that a green liquid was oozing and pooling underneath my car and I knew upon awakening that is was related to bile production, bile being a yellowish green fluid produced by the gall bladder. This made sense at the time as I had been noticing that whenever I ate fatty greasy foods I would feel nauseous the next day and bile is needed to break down fats.
Of course, dreams are multi-functional and multi-dimensional. There are many other roles that nightmares play. Here I’m trying to stick to the one’s that impact our physical health but many of you are probably aware of the term PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). With PTSD a haunting dream pertaining to a traumatic life event keeps repeating itself. People exposed to severe trauma such as soldiers returning from war or women who have been raped often suffer from this condition. Here the Dream Maker may be attempting to alert us the to the fact that we haven’t fully digested the traumatic situation that was experienced as there is a tendency to want to bury traumatic events, cut off from them as they are often too painful to come to terms with (Taylor, 1992). Yet burying the feelings could stunt psychological growth. For example, death on the battlefield is an emotionally charged event (probably death anywhere is an emotionally charged event) that needs to be processed and yet soldiers have been trained to disregard their feelings. The needs of the psyche to acknowledge and integrate a difficult life experience butt up against the professional training a soldier receives to ignore these very same feelings and remain focused on the mission. This can lead to tremendous inner psychic tension that erupts into waking life in the form of a nightmare. Here the nightmare acts as a facilitator in the emotional release and integration of the traumatic experience.
Yet another function of nightmares that concerns us or will in the upcoming weeks has to with nightmares acting as a gateway to lucidity (LaBerge, 1990). We will be learning how to lucid dream (become aware that we are dreaming while we are dreaming) or for those of you who already do, up their frequency. Here the Dream Maker might use a nightmare to shock us into an alternate state of consciousness. These nightmares are usually of a milder variety. In hindsight, sometimes even comical. For example, I once had a nightmare that I was trapped shopping in Walmart; there was no way out. I eventually realized that I must be dreaming and became lucid as I would not be caught dead shopping in Walmart in waking life, let alone be trapped inside of one! Once lucid, I was able to punch a hole in the wall of the store and make my escape. Many dreamers who started dreaming lucidly early in life report this kind of nightmare phenomenon. They learned to leverage their nightmares to trigger lucidity. It’s an option some of you may choose to avail yourself of when we get to the lucidity section of the program. More on this method in a future post…
Further Reading:
Training Films for Spiritual Warriors by Jeremy Taylor
http://www.jeremytaylor.com/dream_work/training_films_for_spiritual_warriors/index.html
References:
Garfield, P. (1992). The healing power of dreams. New York, NY: Ballantine Books.
Kasatkin, V.N. (1967). Teoriyasnovidenii [A theory of dreams]. Translated by Doorn, S. (2015). Breda, Netherlands.
LaBerge, S., Rheingold, H. (1990). Exploring the world of lucid dreaming. New York, NY: Random House.
Sabini, M. (1981). Dreams as an aid in determining diagnosis, prognosis, and attitude towards treatment. Psychosomatic Psychotherapy, 36, 24-36
Taylor, J. (1992). Where people fly and water runs uphill: Using dreams to tap the wisdom of the unconscious. New York, NY: Warner Books.
-M. C. Escher
At some point or another in life almost everyone has experienced a nightmare. The word nightmare derives from the union of the English word “night” and the old English “maere” or evil spirit. Originally the word was used to describe a specific type of bad dream where evil spirits (at least from a medieval perspective) tried to mate with humans in their sleep. Over time the word became generalized to include all bad dreams.
These emotionally charged frightening messages from the night tend to wake us up rather abruptly. This is the Dream Maker’s way of telling us, “You need to pay attention to this one,” since we are oft in the habit of forgetting dreams. In other words, a nightmare is often a warning dream, giving us a heads up of some future situation that needs our immediate attention, requiring us to attend to some part of our life where we are unawares, blind. This area could be our health.
Certain types of nightmares are usually indicative of serious health issues. Let me provide a few examples. Studies of patients with cardiac disease (Ziegler, 1980) have shown that cardiac problems are often preceded with dreams of bullets or other weapons piercing the area of the chest. In fact any dream where bullets are seen puncturing the skin and entering the body or targeting some body part should be taken seriously. The bullets could very well be alluding to an area of our body that is weak and susceptible to disease. The message here is that the target area is literally “under attack.” The problem is under the surface, deep. Where does the bullet in the dream lodge is what one should be on the lookout for? Similar to the bullet nightmare dreams are the battle field dreams (Kasatkin, 1967). These dreams often accompany illnesses where there is fever or infection involved. A fever indicates that the body’s immune system has kicked in. An internal civil war is being waged between the good guys (white blood cells, antigens, anti-bodies) and the bad guys (invading germs such as viruses and bacteria). Another dream theme in this category is an animal biting some body part (often rats). Once again the targeted area may be vulnerable to attack by a foreign agent (Kasatkin, 1967).
A milder form of nightmare body related dream (more disturbing than shocking) is the sewage or toilet backup overflowing dream especially in our world of poor eating habits (I’ll go eat some potato chips right now to prove my point). Here the backed up external plumbing is symbolic of our plugged up internal plumbing also known as the gastro-intestinal tract. The particular part of the internal plumbing system that is the problem will depend on the presence of other symbols in the dream. For, examples if you see sausages in the dreams it probably suggests the intestines (shaped like a string of sausages) is where the problem lies. Once again it is the Dream Maker warning us that our system of elimination is being compromised and we might want to do something about it.
One of the most universal nightmare themes involving body parts is the teeth falling out dream. Maybe you’ve experienced one of these. This could be purely symbolic, an indication that some event is really shaking you up on an emotional level, on a financial level (a common association with teeth falling out dreams in some cultures), but it could also portend a health warning, indicating that our structural integrity is compromised in some manner; meaning we may have severe problems relating to our bones, skeleton, jaw or teeth (Garfield, 1992).
Another modern universal nightmare dream involves cars and vehicles breaking down. Not to be confused with erratic driving patterns which have a very different meaning altogether. It’s the former that usually indicate health problems or body related issues as it is the body of the car that is impaired, symbolic of our physical body, a vehicle for the soul, journeying through this life (Sabini, 1981). A malfunctioning engine therefore could indicate stomach problems as the engine is where the car metabolizes its fuel (combustion) correlating with the stomach where our food is heated up and initially broken down. A plugged tailpipe could be indicative of an obstructed windpipe. Running out of gas might indicate we are physically depleted. Fluids leaking from the car could be indicative of their corresponding fluids in the body. For example I once had a dream that a green liquid was oozing and pooling underneath my car and I knew upon awakening that is was related to bile production, bile being a yellowish green fluid produced by the gall bladder. This made sense at the time as I had been noticing that whenever I ate fatty greasy foods I would feel nauseous the next day and bile is needed to break down fats.
Of course, dreams are multi-functional and multi-dimensional. There are many other roles that nightmares play. Here I’m trying to stick to the one’s that impact our physical health but many of you are probably aware of the term PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). With PTSD a haunting dream pertaining to a traumatic life event keeps repeating itself. People exposed to severe trauma such as soldiers returning from war or women who have been raped often suffer from this condition. Here the Dream Maker may be attempting to alert us the to the fact that we haven’t fully digested the traumatic situation that was experienced as there is a tendency to want to bury traumatic events, cut off from them as they are often too painful to come to terms with (Taylor, 1992). Yet burying the feelings could stunt psychological growth. For example, death on the battlefield is an emotionally charged event (probably death anywhere is an emotionally charged event) that needs to be processed and yet soldiers have been trained to disregard their feelings. The needs of the psyche to acknowledge and integrate a difficult life experience butt up against the professional training a soldier receives to ignore these very same feelings and remain focused on the mission. This can lead to tremendous inner psychic tension that erupts into waking life in the form of a nightmare. Here the nightmare acts as a facilitator in the emotional release and integration of the traumatic experience.
Yet another function of nightmares that concerns us or will in the upcoming weeks has to with nightmares acting as a gateway to lucidity (LaBerge, 1990). We will be learning how to lucid dream (become aware that we are dreaming while we are dreaming) or for those of you who already do, up their frequency. Here the Dream Maker might use a nightmare to shock us into an alternate state of consciousness. These nightmares are usually of a milder variety. In hindsight, sometimes even comical. For example, I once had a nightmare that I was trapped shopping in Walmart; there was no way out. I eventually realized that I must be dreaming and became lucid as I would not be caught dead shopping in Walmart in waking life, let alone be trapped inside of one! Once lucid, I was able to punch a hole in the wall of the store and make my escape. Many dreamers who started dreaming lucidly early in life report this kind of nightmare phenomenon. They learned to leverage their nightmares to trigger lucidity. It’s an option some of you may choose to avail yourself of when we get to the lucidity section of the program. More on this method in a future post…
Further Reading:
Training Films for Spiritual Warriors by Jeremy Taylor
http://www.jeremytaylor.com/dream_work/training_films_for_spiritual_warriors/index.html
References:
Garfield, P. (1992). The healing power of dreams. New York, NY: Ballantine Books.
Kasatkin, V.N. (1967). Teoriyasnovidenii [A theory of dreams]. Translated by Doorn, S. (2015). Breda, Netherlands.
LaBerge, S., Rheingold, H. (1990). Exploring the world of lucid dreaming. New York, NY: Random House.
Sabini, M. (1981). Dreams as an aid in determining diagnosis, prognosis, and attitude towards treatment. Psychosomatic Psychotherapy, 36, 24-36
Taylor, J. (1992). Where people fly and water runs uphill: Using dreams to tap the wisdom of the unconscious. New York, NY: Warner Books.