The Three levels in dream work (Repetition):

1.: Meaning 2.: Energy 3.: Consciousness

Edited and translated from Jes Bertelsen: Droemme Chakrasymboler og meditation

Every dream can be worked with on all three levels,
but in practice it is only relevant to let important dreams
go through all three levels of integration.

1. Meaning
Most methods of dream work belong to this category. The dream has a text and a language which has to be understood. It is important to know about dream symbols etc. in order to open the dream and understand its meaning; it is characteristic that the dreams is worked with one at a time.
Freud and Jung and Perls belongs to this category.


2. Energy
The aspect of the aura that shows up as light, colours, vibrations and movements, is very closely resembling the energy aspect of dreams.
Thus it is possible through dreams to characterise the individual aura structure.
It could be said that the dreams in their energy-aspect is the aura reflecting itself in the individual.
Many dreams are needed to give a full picture of the aura.


3. Consciousness
The dream is understood and worked with as a dimension of consciousness. On this meditative level, the dream is seen as a dull light phenomena, and the task is to transform the dream to increased levels of light and consciousness.

Balance and Transformation

The personal and spiritual development process, or in Jung’s terminology, the individuation, has two stages.
The first stage consists of a synthesis of the personality, including the shadow, the emotions, the body and sexuality
The second stage, which is more possible and only safe after stage one has reached some depth, is the development towards higher levels of consciousness.
If an individual has not worked particularly with himself, the higher Self is outside the physical body. The higher Self and its symbols can be seen in the radiance above the crown chakra.
If an individual has worked a fair bit on his or her development, there is a connection between the higher Self and the physical concrete personality. The clarity and light from the higher Self is penetrating deeper and deeper into the physical and makes it transparent.
Transparency is appearing as the Self more and more is functioning through the personality. In the end a state is achieved, where the centring of the personality changes, the individual becomes ultimately transparent, the ego is on hold in order to give space to the Self or the essence.
The higher self is the goal of development. A transparent individual has become transparent to his own essence, and accordingly he or she is his teaching.

Dreams are the aura reflecting itself.

A balanced individual functions with a flowing, not blocked chakra system. Difficulties, blockages etc. reveal themselves in the etheric aspects of the chakras, where they create some sort of disturbance.
The aura and dreams are closely related, one could say that dreams are the aura reflecting itself.
The colours in dreams thus has a special interest, in that they primarily reflects the continuous balancing and stabilising aspect of the dream process. The presence, or lack of presence, of the etheric colours shows the degree of contact with the body and its life, and also the balance in the individual chakra.

The 7 Chakras and the 7 etheric colours of the rainbow

Point of Identity, No colour God’s will for you to be
7. Crown, Sahasrara Violet
6. 3’eye, Ajna Indigo
5. Throat, Vishuddhi Blue
4. Heart, Anahata Green
3. Solar Plexus, Manipura Yellow
2. Hara, Swadhistana Orange
1. Root, Muladhara, Red

The root chakra

Root, Muladhara, Red.

Health, grounding

The degree of grounding in a person is reflected in the red colours and symbols in dreams.
People who are too much living within their heads, who are intellectually fixated, whose self image is unrealistic, who are out with the fairies, who in other words are ungrounded, are unbalanced in their energy field.
In order to level out and compensate this unbalance, the dreams will produce certain types of red symbols.
The common denominator amongst these symbols is the red colour and the focus on the root chakra - legs, feet and earth.

The particular symbol that has - is coloured with -in this case the red colour, tell about which aspect of the energy field that is involved.
The physical aspect of the aura reflects itself in naturally red things, stones and earth.
The particular etheric aspect will show itself in plant symbols. Flowers, trees and fruits.
The astral emotional aspect will often be reflected in animals: red cows, yellow lions etc.
the mental aspect will be man-made things - tools,, clothes, houses, etc.
The spiritual dimension mirrors itself in higher symbols - a blue triangle, a red cross, a green star, etc.

The Hara Center

Hara, Swadhistana, Orange.

Suffering, flexibility

The etheric orange energy radiation mirrors the balance in sexuality, in the instinctive movements, walking, rhythm, spontaneity, and in the relationships with the unconscious, particularly the collective unconscious.

Examples of the meaning of orange symbols:
A happy orange fish. Fresh carrots, an orange cat, an orange butterfly all tell about a relaxed and open relationship with the personal unconscious, the instinctive, vegetative, and the potential for sexual transformation.
The fear of the unconscious could symbolise itself in a big dangerous jellyfish, an orange spider, an octopus, etc.

The Solar plexus
Solar Plexus, Manipura, Yellow.

Power

The yellow symbols reflect the whole scale of the emotional in its good as well as bad aspects, and it reflects the whole way from the etheric level up to the higher, intuitive comprehending aspect.
Emotional projections can show up as for example yellow gloves, a yellow bike, a yellow dagger, a happy child in a yellow raincoat. The balancing etheric aspect could be a yellow water Lily, the higher intuitive wisdom could mirror itself in a yellow mandala, or a quietly burning yellow candlelight.

The heart
Heart, Anahata, Green.

Power to live your truth

The green colour is fundamentally an opening towards the light, the Sun (the photosynthesis).
It is through the green vibration, that the higher part of the aura enters into the lower system. Therefore the green colour is also related to the heart center, where the Self enters into the physical orientated, normal ego-consciousness.
Human growth tends towards self unfoldment, towards the Self, essentially. This growth is mirrored in the condi­tion of the plants. Sick, clipped or withering plants tell about prohibited growth and poor conditions for a contact with the Self.
Sprouting plants, a profusion of foliation and big, healthy trees shows the personality’s growth energy towards the Self.

The throat center
Throat, Vishuddhi, Blue.


Creativity versus void

Dark blue:
Stagnant creativity
Light Blue:
Openness within the etheric. An unbroken, whole etheric field, a sort of background colour. Calmness.
This colour symbolises in its positive extreme higher consciousness and healing energy, and in its neutral aspect it symbolises thinking, and in its negative aspect, it symbolises repression and blockages.

The higher aspects in dreams can be the heavenly blue sky, blue windows in churches, blue butterflies. The neutral aspect, thoughts could show up as blue cars, blue geometrical things and figures. Blue colour showing up in lower parts of the body or aura is often a sign of repression, for example blue shoes, blue legs etc.

3’eye, Ajna Indigo Will

Crown, Sahasrara Violet Unity with God


The indigo-violet colour range

3’eye, Ajna Indigo: Will

Crown, Sahasrara Violet: Unity with God

Since the crown chakra and thus the violet colour is not included in balancing work, it makes sense to include the colour together with indigo, in the 3’rd eye, between the eyebrows.
This energy is, because of its fast vibration, both creating unrest and penetrating at the same time.
In its higher, penetrating aspect, these colours reflect themselves in dreams in for example light, in the robe worn by the wisdom figure, in flowers.
In its nervous or unrest-aspect it mirrors itself in unsteady, uncontrollable phenomenon.

The etheric-astral colours mentioned in Alchemy are as follows:

• Black (Nigredo): Positive aspect (velvety black): Fertility. Negative aspect: Chaos

• White (Albedo) Positive aspect: Purity. Negative aspect: Death (Related to the primary white light)

• Red (Rubedo) (colour as in red wine): Life, Essence. Darker red: Life, Gods joy. Rose pink Joy, suffering

An important astral colour, not from Alchemy:
Turquoise (Astral in nature, as it creates structured energy-fields)
Creativity meets growth

Astral colours do not exist on the physical level

Astral colours are characterised by their absence on the physical level, they simply do not exist on this level. The colours in the astral dimension are so quick in their vibrations that they cannot be seen as connected to specific chakras, they reflect a chord a relative balance between two or more of the chakras.

Astral Metal-colours as found in Alchemy

Gold: The will to do
Silver: the will to be
Copper: The will to learn
Mercury: The will (or ability) to listen
Lead: Heaviness, pollution
Brass: Expansion
Iron: Strength and rigidity
Platinum: Will not be reflected, neither on the etheric, astral or spiritual level. If it does, it is a projection (expectation) on the healers behalf.

Spiritual colours

Peach blossom: Connecting to the source
Creamy white: Connecting to the source (further out in the aura)
Pearl: Compassion
Gold: Improving, transform.
Silver: Original unity
(shining silver reflects a by far higher reality than gold)

Dreams and the chakras

A chakra is a focus point for experience, and it is connecting experiences of physical, etheric, astral and spiritual natures.
The chakras are transformers and combine the various energies.
The chakras work to bring energy balancing and adjustment, which corresponds to the balancing and adjusting function of dreams.

The chakras also have a psychological aspect.

They represent families or knots of archetypes, which can be structured as mandalas, as focus points for different levels of consciousness.
Mandala: A Sanskrit name for a magic circle. Jung understood mandalas as archetypal expressions of the Self and wholeness.

Depth psychology and the chakras. From Workshops with Jes Bertelsen 1978 - 86

The classical text on Hindu Tantra’s description of the chakras is
Sir John Woodroff’s famous book: The Serpent Power. Based on the tantric Purnananda text (1577).

According to this book, the five lower of the seven chakras is connected to

1: An element symbol
2: An animal symbol (the five lower chakras only)
3. A geometrical symbol

A Western alchemy text, The Alchemic Marriage
(Andrea, approximately 1614) shows how the western tradition has described the chakras.
These two books, the eastern and the western, from approximately the same period, are the most clear and direct sources, and not least, they seem to be written from self-experience.
According to Jes Bertelsen, it has been possible from modern dream material (30.000 dreams) to recognise the same symbols as these two texts are describing.

The elements and the chakra system

Structural forces, intelligent and vibratory in nature

The cosmic vibration, AUM, structures all physical creation, including man’s physical body, through the manifestation of five elements (earth, water, fire, air, and ether).
Without the earth element there could be no state of solid matter, without the water element, no liquid state, without the air element, no gaseous state, without the fire element, no heat, without the ether element, no background on which to produce the cosmic motion picture show.

Yogananda: Journey to Self Realization

The elements and the chakra system:

In the body, prana […] is divided up in the five elemental currents by the action of the five lower chakras or centres.

Paramahansa Yogananda: Journey to Self Realization

Root: Earth
Hara: Water
Solar Plexus: Fire
Heart Air
Throat: Ether
Forehead: Light
Crown: -

The symbols of the elements:

The element-symbols express a way of experience and structure energy; they show on which level of consciousness the individual is functioning.

Earth

On the physical level the earth element is related to the process of defecation, and to the suprarenal glands.
Earth in dreams represents energy in a solid, physical form, the skeletal structure, muscular calcification, fossilisation and identification with the body.
People centred psychological in the element of earth feel that what is real, that which counts, consists of the physical, that is the highest reality.
Socially, an earth element-attitude will favour communism, the emphasis on material wealth and the equal distribution of these to the masses.
Today’s emphasis on material values and consumerism is an example of how the identification with this level is hypnotic, we can’t get enough.
Psychologically the element of earth represents rigid opinions, compartment psychology, separateness, isolation, attachment to food, clothes, the physical body, house, money, identity by being different, survival.
Development is not possible unless the identification with earth, the body, money, goods, food, fixed attitudes, the others, is loosened, but it is off course important to keep a certain balanced engagement in the physical aspect of reality - grounding in the best sense of the word: The ability to sense and act totally in the ordinary and concrete aspect of reality.

Only when one starts to understand how limiting it is to only relate to the material world, will the dreams start to change. The dreams from such a process may show dramatic or creative changes in the earth element such as dreams about ploughing, sowing, big excavations, landscaping, or more dramatically, these processes of freeing up energy could be shown as demolition of buildings or whole cities, mud slides, earth quakes and other physical disasters.

Transformation in the earth element set free the symbolisation of the water element.

Be as simple as you can be,
You will be astonished to see
How uncomplicated and happy
Your life can become

Paramahansa Yogananda

Water

On the physical body-level, the kidneys, the bladder, and the sexual organs are the water organs.

Water in dreams reflects a level of consciousness where people are more linked together than was the case with the element of earth.
Water is symbolising the personal unconscious (lakes, pools etc.), and the collective unconscious (the sea, the ocean, big waters).

Jung told that water is one of the greatest symbols of the unconscious as such. The personal unconscious reflects itself in dreams with relatively enclosed water-areas, lakes fjords, the collective unconscious is symbolised by the sea or the ocean.

Psychologically water reflects a more flowing and present, less separate being. Like water itself, the person is able to “fill “ the situation without loosing integrity, just like water fill whatever container it is in, and still is water.
Ice and snow are symbols of rigidity and blockages in the
flow.

Martial art and Zen are Eastern development paths emphasising the Hara and water level of consciousness.

The hippie- movement during the sixties and seventies, and in the same period, the emergence of the Master Osho (Bhagavan Shree Rajneesh) might signify a collective movement from the element of earth to the element of water.

A person who is involved in a development process and who are turning more inwards tends to have regular dreams with water in them.

• Polluted water mirrors inner psychic or bodily pollution, emotional chaos, an unrecognised shadow etc.

• Clear and pure water symbolises the opposite, a degree of transparency in the individual.

• Frozen water, snow, will normally reflect frozen and blocked energy or rigid (frozen) behavioural patterns, outworn mental structures etc.

• The purifying quality of water shows up in dreams about bathing, showers, washing, dreams about babtism and purifying or rejuvenating rainfall.

The meeting with the ocean or big waters, means the ego’s meeting with the tremendous unconscious areas in the psyche. According to the attitude of the ego, the sea will show up as peaceful, in uproar, fascinating or life threatening. The risk for the ego, to drown in the unconscious aspects of the psyche, is mirrored in dreams with flooding, the Flood-type masses of water etc.

The sea represents normally the collective unconsciousness.
The collective is trans-individual, in the collective unconscious people are connected with one another from the very beginning.
The ego is a later separateness - an isolation from an earlier primordial unified energy field.

Dreams may end up being so collective, that they represent an element of wisdom. If an individual regularly is dreaming about the ocean, it means that there is an opening towards the collective unconscious. If these dream experiences are processed meditatively, the consciousness may expand, including knowledge about this collective energy field, etheric clairvoyance.

Every lower level of consciousness is dreamlike seen from a higher level of consciousness

Jes Bertelsen

Fire

On the physical level it is reflected in the fire of digestion and in the liver being the hottest organ in the physical body.

Fire has three functions:

1. The destructive aspect
2. The purifying aspect
3. The transforming aspect, or the fire of consciousness (kundalini)

1. The destructive aspect:
Fire is always burning something in order to keep itself alive

2. The purifying aspect:
Closely related to the destructive aspect

3. The transforming aspect, or the fire of consciousness
Fire as a symbol of the force of the development process, the fire of consciousness, and the meditative fire. This aspect is well known from alchemy, where transformation is kept alive by a steady, quiet fire, also known as the fire of kundalini, the serpent fire or the star fire.

When something is burning in a dream, the energy that is or was invested in the burning phenomena becomes visible; this can lead to a change in this investment or a withdrawal from it.
In it lower aspects fire is mirroring sexual lust and the emotional involvement, passion.

First thing is to see and acknowledge the amount of emotional investment one has.

Next step may be the need for catharsis in dreams, it may be depicted as volcanic eruptions, explosions etc.

Finally comes the control and transformation of the emotion.

The transformative fire dreams

The transformative fire dreams will generally start to emerge when the emotional storms are disappearing, and the destructiveness of the dramatic fire dreams is not in the foreground.
A partial transformation of the psyche will in dreams be mirrored by particular and well-defined areas or things that are burning, the car, ones work, a relative or friend, an animal etc.
If large and crucial transformations are about to happen, ones house is on fire, ones mum or dad, or oneself is burning, or the culmination, the whole world is burning, everything around oneself is burning.
The intensity and drama of such dreams is foreboding comprehensive changes in ones total energy-economy, and can include decisive transformation of ones attitudes to life, goals and self.

These dreams are very important and must not be ignored.

If the dreamer does not understand what is going on, and if the ego is not ready for a great amount of flexibility of his or her self-identity, these dreams may be pre-warnings of chaotic or even psychotic conditions.

Transformative dreams use imagery like controlled bonfires, fires in stoves and ovens, Alchemical fires under pots pans and retorts.

When the transformative fire dreams takes over, the developmental goals are being reached.
Transformative dreams use imagery like the technical fire, controlled bonfires, and fires in stoves and ovens, alchemical fires under pots and pans and retorts.
In higher transformation dreams, the Divine aspect of the fire - a burning rose bush, or lotus flower, which in spite of burning, is not destroyed; or an aura of fire around a wisdom figure.

The element of fire is even more intensely present than the element of water. Fire is only in the moment, as it is only visible in the flame. Fire is a process; that quality of awareness symbolised by fire, is an ever changing, ever new present consciousness, free of any attachments, emotions, or past conditioning.

Warning signs in dreams of pre-psychotic or psychotic states

The schizophrenic is drowning in the same waters which the mystic swims with delight

Joseph Campbell, here from Emergence volume 1 no 2

A psychotic state can be defined as being on the astral level of consciousness without being prepared.
A psychosis is an invasion of unconscious material into the psyche, which becomes overwhelmed. It is preventing the individual from distinguishing the astral dimension from conventional reality and adequate social responses.

Warnings of a psychotic build up

In dreams catastrophic scenes with the water element and the fire element, might be warnings of a psychotic build up.
The water element is out of control - huge masses of water are destroying everything, drowning people, maybe even the dreamer, boiling water etc.
In dreams where the fire element is out of control, and where the destructive or feverish aspect has taken over, there is good reason to consider quick preventive actions.
If you are working professionally with a client, you should ensure that the client seeks help from a GP or a psychiatrist.
At this stage the individual might definitely loose his hold on himself.
He can see his own instinctual life and his own archetypes around him.
The mechanism is self-accelerating and self-perpetuating; the fear and/or the fascination is growing, and so are the astral images and hallucinations.
Paranoia arises, and maybe also megalomania, in which condition the individual identify himself with projections of authority. If the Self is involved, the individual becomes inflated and believes that he is Christ, World Saviour etc.

In higher development a controlled psychotic condition is established. In this astral consciousness there is an ability to see the inner world of one self and others. The individual is projecting pictures, symbols, archetypes etc. but knows at the same time who he is and where he is.

The symbols of the elements:

Air
On the physical level the element of air belongs to the heart area, the diastole and systole blood pressure, the heart beat, the lungs, inhalation and exhalation

Belonging to this category are dreams where the element of air is the most important symbol. Flying in aeroplanes in spacecraft or by one oneself. You can fly low or high up in the atmosphere, from where the earth can be seen in its blue-green totality as the symbol of the Self.

Air symbolises freedom and spiritualising.

Genuine dreams with flying is a victory over the physical gravity, a lesser identification with or even temporarily suspended identification with the elements below.

Air symbolises the experience of energy in its free form, no longer linked to its physical aspect.

The following two ways of flying in dreams does not belong to the air element:

1. Flying on sexuality.
In case of a sexual build up without any release, this accumulated energy can be released in a sort of ecstatic flying, as if the sexuality has grown wings.

2. In dreams where there is no escape,
No way out of impending danger. The dreamer is threatened by terrorists on a roof of a house and in desperation he is jumping out and discovers to his great surprise that he can fly. This flying relates to fear and loosing ones grounding.

Dreams with flying might move towards symbols of wisdom, or towards lucid or astral dreaming. (G. S. Sparrow: Lucid Dreaming)

When the process of development leads a person towards a clear understanding of the existence of a higher and superior centre, the Self, the heart centre starts to open, and the person begins to have experiences and feelings related to the level of the heart, to the element of air. As long as the dreamer is experiencing his ego and ego consciousness as the centre in his psyche, as long will the dreamer be attached to the psychology and structures of experiences belonging to the lower chakras.

Sound
The element of sound is, via the voice, related to the throat centre, physically placed in the thyroid area.
Dreams or levels of consciousness from this centre are unusual, and happens primarily for people who have been working on their own development and meditated over a period of time.
It is characteristic that sound has a overwhelming role in these experiences, music, bells, cosmic sounds, the inner voice of wisdom.
The feeling of these dreams or states of consciousness is cosmic.
Phenomena from this level are experienced in their cosmic or universal connection. There is still not unity or oneness, but balance between outer and inner, so that the oneness can be seen.

Ether
The Sanskrit name is akash. Paramahansa Yogananda speaks of the ether as the background on which God projects the cosmic motion picture of creation.
According to Yogananda, space gives dimension to objects, ether separates the images, and thus ether seems closely connected to the dimension of time.
In dreams the element of ether can indirectly show up in the form of OM sounding as if from nowhere. In these extremely rare cases, the dream will open to true prophecy.

Light
Light is connected to the eyes and to the pineal gland. The Ajna Centre has its physical point of reflection in the area between the eyebrows.
Dreams or experiences from this level are filled with light, and they are illuminative. Streams of light or visions with light are defining the dream. These dreams are transcending all known ego consciousness.
Reflections or shades of the light from the ajna chakra can sometimes be seen in ordinary dreams, as for example the sun shining through a window. This higher light of consciousness might in dreams be symbolised by the Sun.

The criteria for whether a dream is specifically from the throat or ajna, is that when the person wakes up from the dream, it feels as if the consciousness in the dream was higher than it is in the awaken state, the dreamer wakes down.

These dreams can sometimes result in a period of depression.
The dreamer might dream he is looking at the Sun. If this happens, the sun will change and if the dream continues, the consciousness that observes will be transformed to a higher state of consciousness, filled with light and clarity.
The seventh centre, the crown, does not have a element, and is not directly worked on. It develops through the balancing and development of the other six chakras.
It has to do with the ultimate transcendence and illumination.

The animal symbols

The animal symbols are mirroring the processes, tasks and changes happening in the basic instinctive, animal like areas of the human nature, together with the development of self knowledge.
As the consciousness is expanding, light and clarity is reaching into the dimly lit, instinctive basis of the collective unconscious.

Dreams and animal symbols:

Crown - -3’eye

Throat

White elephant, special horse

Heart

Deer, Stag, Unicorn etc.

Solar Plexus

Sacrificial animals (lamb)

Hara

Macara monster:
½ crocodile and ½ whale

Root

Elephant, horse

The root centre:

The elephant, and the symbols of

The autonomous nervous system.

In India the symbol of the root chakra (muladhara) is the elephant (Ganesh). This big, heavy, partly domesticated animals reflect that basic area of our own instinctivity we to some degree have under conscious control.
The elephant symbol is similar to the archetype of the horse in the West.
Dreaming about elephants or horses in more archetypal connections (a wild horse, a knight on a horse, a horse in front of the Kings chariot, etc.) indicates that the dreamer has started to realise that amount of libido or energy which naturally is spend in unconscious routine of daily life and in getting things done.
The point is that the dreamer starts to realise that these enormous elephant/horse-powers can equally be used outward in the world or turned inside and upwards towards the self.

Snakes, Insects in huge numbers, reptiles

Numerous traumas and deep impulses are guarded by an automatically working repression or security system in the psyche. This means that often in everyday life - hidden within the psyche - needs, desires and drives are working which, through upbringing and norms, have been made taboos and accordingly have been kept outside the conscious psyche.

If challenging or dramatic incidents happen, or through sudden traumas, or through a steady development process, the psyche is forced to open up for these autonomous nerve processes, powerful archetypal symbolisations are activated in the dreams.

Snakes accordingly are symbolising primarily the psychology of the spinal nerves.
Insects in huge numbers (ants, bees, wasps, and flies) are reflecting the very sensitive specific autonomous nervous system and the reptiles and dinosaurs are symbolising the archaic psychology of the total autonomous nervous system.
Symbols of reptiles - crocodiles, dinosaurs from primordial times, lizards, tortoises, frogs etc. - are activated simultaneously with a challenge or confrontation of the total autonomous nervous system.
At crucial turning points in life, in crises in relationships and work, in case serious physical illness or accidents, the full amount of the raw force of the psyche is at stake.
In these cases the deepest potential for survival is activated and ready to be used.
Reptiles in dreams generally mirror this existential threat in a time frame of plus or minus three months.

The Hara centre:
Maccara
A whale and a crocodile at the same time

In the eastern mythology the animal belonging to the water centre is Maccara, a sea monster which is both a whale and a crocodile at the same time.
This monster symbolises the risk of the ego consciousness to be swallowed or drowned by the enormous contents and amounts of energy released when the earth element starts to become more fluid like. Attitudes, norms, things etc, which so far have been a part of the psychology of the earth element, are beginning to become less obvious for the person, he becomes uncertain, doubting, all over the place. In this condition the danger is that the clarity of the consciousness is dissolving or drowning. Nevertheless one has to confront the fluidity of the unconscious in all its might.

The transition from the root to the Hara centre means a confrontation with the blocked or repressed or simply unknown instincts and energy resources. This confrontation is symbolised by the meeting with the sea monster Maccara (Jonas in the belly of the whale).

This is overcome by a clear and full understanding of what is going on, or by going with the flow, being gulped down, wait, suffer, and allow nature to give rebirth out of the repression and darkness.

Solar Plexus
Sacrificial animals

In Solar Plexus (manipura) fire and sacrificial animals, lamb, ram, bull is combined.
The transition from the second to the third centre, from experiencing reality in a more fluid, flexible manner to experiencing reality and energy phenomena’s more intense and visible like a flame; this transition is not easy and cannot happen without a sacrifice.

One has to sacrifice the safety and unconsciousness, which is connected to living an emotional life.
To live without questioning ones emotions, to live in sympathy or antipathy to divide the world in black and white, good and bad, in what I like and what I don’t like, this emotional lifestyle provides safety and predicability.

Nevertheless if one wants to advance in ones development, then this unconsciousness has to be sacrificed.

Dreams involving sacrifices of animals symbolise the sacrifice of the identification and attachment to the emotions, that the clarity of the consciousness is no longer dulled by sympathies and antipathies and projections of emotional energy.

Emotionality is like a pendulum. If it swings out in sympathy, inevitably it later on has to swing equally much the opposite direction, to negativity. Freedom; non-attachment is to keep it quiet.

The heart centre
Animals with antlers

Animal symbols belonging to the heart (anahata) are animals with antlers,
the gazelles, deer’s, stags and unicorns.
These graceful animals symbolises the quickness and instinctual origin of thoughts and feelings; the mental processes in their evasive hurry and fickle mindedness.

The heart centre is where the mental mirror is being turned
180 degrees, from being mirroring downwards to the collective unconscious to turning upwards to higher consciousness.
Ability to control the mental processes means freedom to chose to mirror earth or heaven, instincts or higher consciousness.
This control is achievable only in meditation, to be without thoughts, without emotions, without images.
The antlers or unicorn symbolises the potential for antennas.

As Jung says - The archetypes have two sides, instinct and spirit. Within our instinctual animal nature lies these potential antennas, the promise of spirituality and transcendence.

Dreaming of these archetypal deer’s or stags with antlers means that the potential for contacting the instinctual nature and thereby the quick and fleeing nature of the unconscious is present.
The consciousness has reached so high a level of vibration, that it is simultaneous with the thoughts themselves, the light-footed gazelles.

The throat chakra
A white elephant with its trunk pointing upwards

This centre is where higher consciousness starts. The spiritual reality is no longer inferior to the ordinary materialistic depended ego consciousness.
The element of sound is a transition to a higher order, a higher common denominator for the material world and the spiritual world; both worlds are equally valid. That is why the elephant is having a comeback here in its higher octave. The materialistic principle, the grey elephant, is now spiritualised as a white elephant with its trunk pointing upwards. There is a mutual penetrability between the material world and the spiritual realms.

Dreams where the dreamer is going through walls, into mountains, - not through doors and caverns - but through the massive rock, dreams where the dreamer is magically changed into plants or animals and experiences their particular level of consciousness - all these dreams reflects the balance, the equality, the inter changeability between the physical and the spiritual.
This may also relate to the aboriginal mythology about the Dreamtime, which seems to be fairly identical with the level of consciousness in the ancient continent of lemuria (as described by for example Rudolf Steiner).

Dream symbols
Higher, domesticated animals
(Dogs, cats, horses, etc.)

The voluntary nervous system, the parts of the psyche that act fairly tamed (the horse may show that the libido (sex drive) is tamed and co-operative, you can ride on it. Problems with horses reflect problems with sexuality or with health).

Wild animals
(Tigers, lions, bears, dingo’s etc.)

More distant parts of your instinctive psychology, fierceness.

Kangaroo: Quantum leap
Rats: Aggression,
Mice: Curiosity, sexuality

Wild and primitive animals (Reptiles, insects, frogs etc)

The most distant parts of your instinctual psychology.
These animals belong to the autonomous nervous system, and as such they represent the most primitive parts of our instinctual psychology.
Reptiles and snakes come from the collective unconsciousness; they are so collective that they also often represent an element of wisdom (the totality). Dreams from the collective subconsciousness can be just as informative (but not as high) as dreams from the superconscious

Snakes: Transformation, sexuality, lust and negative emotions, also the spine and the Kundalini process, wisdom, the time aspect.
Crocodiles: Crisis or challenge + or - three months.
Dinosaurs: Severe crisis (survival).
Tortoises: Positive integration symbol on a deep level; a still mind
Fish: Aspects of the unconscious that are more ready to become conscious, eaten and digested.
Fish as a Christian symbol: Spiritual nourishment, Christianity, (also astrological).
Sharks: Instinctual aggression and destructiveness
Whales: Mother symbol, death-rebirth
Dolphins: Affinity with past culture (Lemuria)
Octopus: The birth trauma
Crab: Hiding
Frogs: Transformation symbols
Insects: Relate to the nervous system and its branches.
Bees: Belongs to the spine and the root chakra, possible the only pure positive symbol at all. Indicates that the dreamers total psycho-physical energy is ready for higher development.
Wasps: Aggressiveness.
Flies: Irritation.
Ants: Loosening or releasing of energy that has been bound.
Butterflies: A higher transformation symbol. Potential for contact with the higher worlds.
Spiders: Negative feminine aspect. The aspect of the mother archetype which is spinning her web, sucking life-energy from her victims

Birds
Related to structures within you that already can fly; spirituality. When birds are negatively presented it means that you are not doing enough for your spirituality.
Eagle: Clarity, higher consciousness.
Peacock: A symbol of the heart. It appears when a conflict you have worked with for a long time no longer is perceived in only black and white.
White dove: Peace
Black raven: Omens
Emus: Mother symbol
Hens: Birds that cannot fly, sexuality.
Kookaburra: Mocking, empty laughter.
Parrot: Empty repetition

Plants
Relating to the etheric

Sunflower: Strength, hope, progress.
Rose: Christian chore
Lotus: Eastern core
Twiner: Spineless being

Some other symbols
Earth/soil: Essence of being physical
Salt: To be chosen (alt of the earth)
Thunderbolt: Intuition
Tornado: Emotions (or premonition/intuition of real tornado)
Nuclear explosion: Deep transformation
Nature spirits: Real beings
Aliens: Multidimensional consciousness
UFO’s: Integration
Angels: Friends, support
Uluru/Ayes rock: A cosmic point, accessible via what Patanjali describes as Samyama, that roughly translates as a concentration and meditation on Uluru, so deep, that self awareness is lost.

Cosmic symbols

The Earth: Our home, our wholeness as physical beings.
Earth axis shift: Change of destiny
The Sun: The Self
Solar eclipse: The dark night of the soul, hardship.
Sunrise: Period with externalised energy and activity.
Sunset: \the energy is drawn within, into the unconscious and is working there; may herald a withdrawn period.
Solar flares: Spiritual longing
Auroras: Spirituality, visible.
The Moon: The ego or mind, that which is absorbed from external source. And thus is not ones own Self or truth.
The crescent moon, (waxing): Starting on a new quest.
The crescent moon, (waning): Towards transformation
Full moon: Ripe, the goal is reached, a journey is finished, transformation possible.
Eclipse of the moon: The time of truth, that which has been absorbed from external sources is suspended
The Solar system: Our Software. The programming that steers us
The Zodiac: Our hardware, what we have at our disposal
Stars: Hope, enlightened energy, the secondary clear light (as seen at the moment of death).
Moving stars: Change of karma or destiny
Moving planets: Change of personality.
Comets: Messenger.
Asteroids: Attempts that failed.