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It may seem as is everything is infused with hidden meaning
When we start working with dreams it may come as a surprise that the symbols we find in our sleep have an equally powerful meaning when we are awake. As we start to understand the hidden meanings in objects and actions, we may start to notice them everywhere. It may start in films, TV shows and the books we read, but before long we may start to realise that even simple every day items and behaviours have more meaning than we initially realised. You may notice you always wear black when you are feeling a bit down or yellow when you are happy, so these colours in waking life are symbolic to you. Or you may notice how you always have a shower after work even though you aren’t exactly dirty, because you want to wash the frustrations of the day away, so washing is a symbolic.
Soon it can seem that the symbols of our dreams spring to life around us. A tree isn’t simply a tree anymore, it a a representation of growth and renewal, or strength and support. The road we drive home is not just tarmac, but a means to express our journey through life.
When we can start to see the the world in this way, it is like our eyes have been openned. Everything is infused with meaning, the world seems richer and more alive, even hyper real. Every object, every action and behaviour tells a story. And every story is somehow linked to all the others.
This is realising the fundamental inter-connectedness of all things, and is a very profound realisation indeed. When we realise all things are connected, the importance of using our dreams to gain understanding is magnified. And our ability to connect via our dreams not only becomes more enticing, but ever more reachable.
Is there somewhere in life you want to let you hair loose?
Our feelings towards our hair are very personal and intimate, often running very deep and associated with our sense of identity and how we wish the world to see us. To dream of hair can often be tied to our feelings of confidence or insecurity.
If we dream of cutting or colouring our hair, it can be sign that we are breaking away from an identity we have outgrown and trying to create a new one for ourselves, and discarding that which is no longer useful for us. We can understand if this new direction is a positive one by looking at whether our hair is healthy, indicating a “healthy choice,” or alternatively by examining the feelings that arise in the dream. Does changing your hair make you feel liberated and free, excited and confident, nervous or brave, younger or more mature and responsible, maybe more practical or more attractive? We can also look at how we would describe our hair, then use those words to describe ourselves. Is the hair in our dream unruly or easy to manage? Is it wild, or well-groomed? Is it tied up or flowing free?
Hair can symbolise our “crowning glory,” that which are most proud of in our personality, our appearance or our achievements. Hair in dreams can also relate to our feelings of sexuality and sensuality, our desire to be admired, and our wish to enjoy the sensuous side of life. But some of us use our hair to hide behind. Could a dream of hair be asking us to reveal our true selves?
Hair has played important roles in history and mythology. Samson’s hair was a symbol of strength and virility, and when his hair was cut he lost his power. Lady Godiva covered her naked body with her long flowing hair. Dreaming of lost, falling or cut hair that creates a negative feeling may indicate a sense of loss of power, or maybe of feeling exposed somewhere in waking life.
Some hair dreams are not about the hairs on our head, but may be about hair growing in places that we would not expect, that we do not like, or hair that it is unusually dark, wiry or strange in some other way. These kind of dreams can be disturbing, but generally have rather benign meanings. They may indicate a new idea cropping up in a place we weren’t expecting, or can be a sign of a wilder, untamed side our personality seeking expression. Hairy things are often scary to us, such as hairy monsters or hairy spiders. Hair showing up in a dream this way can be asking us to confront something we are afraid of, or reconsider something we may find unattractive at a surface level and ask us to look beyond appearances. Either way, there is a lesson to be learned from things we have an initial aversion to if we stay long enough to see what else might be going on.
If we dream of grey hair or long beards can often indicate age and all that we associate with that. We may think of age in this way as the acquiring of wisdom and respect, or as of the gradual loss of capacities that we fear in old age. It may even be we have a reaction to age that is a mixture of these too extremes. To dream of going grey or growing a long beard may ask to examine our feelings towards aging, gaining experience, or playing a more senior role somewhere in our life.
Do you feel that time has bestowed the mantle of wise elder upon you?
To understand dreams of hair, it can help to look at where on the body the hair is (see the posts on different body parts) and if necessary, what colour the hair is if that seems significant (see post on colours.) We can also see if the hair seems wild and unruly, or lustrous and beautiful, to indicate how we feel about our image, and what we are projecting to the outside world.
Dreams of hair invite us to look inside and see if what we show the world is what we really are, and to check how we are growing and caring for ourselves. Dreams of hair ask us to consider our confidence and our vanity, and how strong, seductive, exposed or vulnerable we may feel.
Sometimes we have a dream where something really special happens. A dream that touches us, that makes us feel close, intimate, connected. Such is the dream of the embrace.
To understand the meaning of these kind of dreams, it can help to understand who it is we hugged, held closely or embraced, and what they meant or mean to us in waking life. We can ask ourselves if this person represents the mother inside us, the wise older person, the strong brave leader, and so on. (You can also try exploring the other posts about people to see how people represent certain qualities in our dreams.)
To dream then of embracing this person can be a profound symbol of integrating a new aspect into our personality, of learning a new way of living, a new set of skills, of maturing and becoming ready to play a new role in life. If we dream of embracing our mentor, for example, it can be an indication that we are finally able to accept not only the lessons of our teacher, but also the responsibility that comes with playing that role. It may be time to finally stop being the student and step up to be a teacher, or master ourselves. To dream of embracing an enemy, or person we didn’t like, can be symbol that we are beginning to accept ourselves for who we really are, and forgiving ourselves for the behaviour or thoughts in ourselves that we didn’t really like. To dream of embracing an enemy can be a powerful symbol of making peace with ourselves. If we look to what this “enemy” represents to us, we may begin to understand what part or our personality we are learning to understand and accept.
Another lesson the embrace dream may be teaching us are lessons we were not ready to learn from the person we dream of when we first met them. Perhaps we met a wise guardian in our teen years, but were too busy growing up, testing boundaries and finding our own way in life that we didn’t pay real attention to the wisdom they were sharing with us. Or maybe this advice came at a time when we were too busy coping with a difficult situation to be able to sit back and absorb the wise words being spoken to us. But we still heard, and our subconscious remembered. And now that we are older, and have more quite time, or maybe the message is just that more relevant, that our dreaming mind will remind us of that special knowledge that was shared with us all those years ago.
We can also look at the feelings an embrace dream gives us. Is it one of peace, forgiveness, love, connection, intimacy, acceptance, calmness, wisdom, fulfillment, joy, nurturing, protection and so on..? Only you will know what this particular “holding close” dream means, but often it can be extremely cathartic, maybe a closure on a relationship, a saying goodbye to someone we never had the chance to, a saying thanks to someone we wish we had appreciated more, or a realisation of how important someone was to us.
Such an encounter can be profoundly moving. We may dream of people who have passed away, of loved ones not seen for many years or valued teachers long lost from our lives. The embrace dream reminds us that valuable lessons will never be forgotten, that those who guide and teach and love us will always live on in our hearts, and that in our dreams, we can always reach and feel the profound connection to those who are most important and life changing in our existence. But more than that, embrace dreams remind us that to learn a lesson we must change something inside us, and that the greatest growth comes from learning to love and accept who we really are.
What problems can you solve by sleeping on it?
It is not unusual when we start a new job, take up a new hobby or begin a new course of study, to find that we vividly dream about our new activities in waking life. one of the theories about why we dream is based on this observation, and the fact that children and babies sleep much more than adults, giving them more time to dream and so process the huge amounts of information and skills they are learning.
We can use this knowledge to our advantage by making sure we get enough sleep when learning new skills to give ourselves the maximum chance of subconsciously processing our new skills and making sure we retain them in our long term memory, as well as integrate the skills so they become “second nature, ” which basically means they thoughts and skills have moved from conscious thought into subconscious reactions. Anyone who has learned to drive a car will understand how to begin with, you have to think about every little action: how to brake, when to signal, when to check the mirrors and so on. But after a while, you don’t think about it anymore, it just seems to happen “naturally.” This is our subconscious taking over.
But we can go even further than this, and take our learning and problem solving skills to the next level by actively engaging our dreams. This simply means asking our dreams to help us. We can write our problem on a piece of paper before sleeping, or simply concentrate on what is bothering or concerning us before sleeping. But the important thing then is to let it go, give up trying to consciously struggle with the issue, and relax and let our subconscious take over. our subconscious mind in our dreams will show us connections we may never have noticed when we were awake. This is not so strange as it may seem, many scientists, mathematicians, artists and writers have had breakthroughs on important issues in their dreams. We just need to learn to trust, to let go go, and then to listen to our dreams. We don’t need to passively wait for our dreams to help us, we can actually start to train our dreams to help us.
There is a very good reason when we are struggling to understand something, we will receive the advice to “sleep on it.” Its what happens while we are asleep that is the fascinating part!
What part of your wild nature do you need to release?
Interpreting what animals mean in our dreams is a very personal process, but some animals can create such strong impressions they may seem to overwhelm our logic. This can be a good time to step back and try to understand the animal as a symbol before we go the next step of applying our own personal layer of interpretation.
One animal that is often a such of such confusion and power is the wolf. Feared, worshipped, maligned, misunderstood and revered, the wolf is a potent symbol through-out much of Europe and North America, and now thanks to cultural diversity, through much of the world. Wolves star in folklore and fairy-tales from many generations ago, and still capture our imagination through popular films and television today.
Wolves in dreams may be scary, threatenning and viscious, they may be noble, protecting and wise, or they may be something else entirely – mysterious, elusive, wild. To understand the wolf in our dreams, we can start by understanding the wild nature of these animals, and the very attitudes that society has to them can reveal much about our own wild selves.
Wolves can represent all that is wild and “uncivilised” about ourselves. This can be a scary thing to confront. What is wild is what our polite and safe day to day behaviour does not want to let out – what is wild can damage, hurt and upset. But what is wild can also free, excite and release. Wild can be untamed and bad mannered, but wild can also be pure and uncorrupted. Sometimes a wolf dream will be guiding us to find our true, authentic nature that we are afraid to reveal as we try to conform, but sometims a wolf dream will be a warning that we are behaving too wildly, that we may be threatenning something else that is important to us.
The behaviour of wolves in their native environments can give us clues as to why we might be dreaming about them. Do you long to feel part of a group, or seek the support and kindred spirit of a pack? Do you feel a need to protect something that is important to you, and need the fierceness of a wolf mother? Do you need to approach a situation carefully, using the stealth of a wolf to get close without being discovered? Do you feel a need to express your true self more freely, let go of inhibitions and howl at the moon?
The She-Wolf can be a fierce but also caring protector
Looking at the role wolves play in fiction, folklore and films may also give us insight as to what the wolf means in our own personal dream. The mythical She-Wolf who nurtured Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, as well as Mowgli from the Jungle Book, can help us understand how wolves in our dream can be a sign of us seeking or offering nurturing, care and protection to a part our selves or someone else. The Big Bad Wolf in “Little Red Riding Hood” may be sign of our own wild nature, or it may symbolise a person who is threatening or bullying to us, or even how we might be acting that way ouRselves. The wolf may also be associated with a predatory nature in a sexual sense, so those who have suffered abuse, or fear some sort sexual overtones they are not comfortable with may dream of wolves in this way.
Wolves can appear in our dreams when we fear or are experiencing loss, especially of a material or financial nature, stemming from the old saying that “to keep the wolf from the door” indicates security and not going hungry. Wolves may also appear in dreams when our subconscious has picked up something is not quite right, and is trying to warn our conscious mind that we should be careful of what or who we trust, that there may be a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
But no animal itself is inherently bad, and these values that we assign to them are the result of years of cultural associations. Remember when we dream of animals, they also represent a part of our selves, and we cannot understand what our dream means simply by looking up a symbolic reference. We always need to go the next step and aks ourselves, “what does the wolf mean to me?”
Are you ready to confront what is threatening?
Wolf dreams challenge us to confront what we are afraid of, and to not lurk in the shadows of our own subconscious. Wolf dreams offer us the gift of strength, freedom and the ability to fiercely protect that which is dear to us. Wolves in our dreams invite us to claim back our own power, to run freely and live our most authentic life possible, without fear, without shackles, without shame.
PS. I have mentioned this book previously, but it is also relevant in this post for those who may have missed it – a very empowering and insightful look at how to live wildly and freely:
http://www.amazon.com/Women-Wolves-Clarissa-Pinkola-Estes/dp/0345409876
