Hi Smiley and T,
I love the way doctors explain that conflictual dreams are a result of the drugs without realising what this really means:
The body is 'invaded' by chemicals or drugs and so our dreams capture this symbolism often through the 'good guys fight the bad guys' dream scenario. Of course we usually need the drugs to help us recover (though perhaps not always), but as far as our dreaming mind is concerned, this is a violation of the natural healing processes. But there's more:
You're usually in hospital because your physical body is out of balance (you're ill) or because you're in for surgery. Surgery is totally invasive and our dreams reflect this invasion. The dreams usually present as a dilemma: a fight or struggle reflecting the 'illness vs cure' struggle. The dream also reflects our unconscious questioning of the method of cure (surgery, drugs ..) just to complicate and intensify the dream battle.
The illness which brings you to hospital in the first place (or the body imbalance which requires surgery) is often reflected in dreams as a struggle, conflict, war or invasion.
Dreams of having your house invaded or burgled often come up when your body is first invaded by a virus or by bacteria. (Usually a good pre-flu warning dream.)
Looking at the subject at a deeper level, if the physical body reflects our mind/emotions (my understanding is that the body reflects the mind), then dreams of conflict or 'good vs evil' add details which can help us to identify the inner emotional struggle which is reflecting as illness.
In the case of your asthma/ pneumonia, Smiley: these conditions leave you stuggling for breath and are often seen, symbolically, as reflecting feelings of drowning, or feelings of being less worthy than others (unable to breathe the same free air) or of feeling claustophobic and hemmed in. Dreams would reflect this and look at the emotional thoughts and conditionings which are being expressed as asthma or pneumonia.
The 'god vs the devil' dream usually comes up when we reach a crisis point which pushes us into a corner and makes us face our beliefs about what is good and what is evil within ourselves. We all have differing beliefs about what is good and what is evil, usually according to our religious or traditional upbringing. Life will often bring us to that wonderful oppportunity, through crisis, where we can make a free choice to determine our beliefs, rather than be restricted by those of our conditoned upbringing.
So - time for doctors to take an extra step and say, "Yes, dreams while you are in hospital can be full of conflict and battle because that's exactly what's going on within you now, body, mind and soul. Would you like me to send in our dream interpreter to help you interpret the details and pin-point the basis of your disease so that we can accelerate your healing?"
(And of course, as many of you know, this is where medicine began: around 300 BC with Hippocrates who was both the Father of Modern Medicine and a Dream Interpreter. He interpreted dreams to find both cause and cure.)
And yes, T, I agree! I want to hear about the spooky part - I guess we all do.
Smiley?
Jane Anderson |
