Dream Symbols - Seperation & Wholeness

By Sowelu –  While I agree that the personal meaning one attaches to symbols is quite significant, I also have experienced that there is a more universal, underlying “logic” to symbology that exists whether or not one understands it, believes it or has ever considered it before. The value of this concept has intriguing possibilities of its own, no?

In fact, the very experience of life in all its myriad form and detail springs forth from the very same pool of What Is that this symbolic language we encounter in our dreams does… in my experience. Thereby linking us all in a far more objective reality than our subjective experiences would seem to imply.

Caution, this is a long one as this is not a simple or easy concept to capture with words. In my experience and sense of things, this objective reality concept I mentioned is not “other”, in the sense that it doesn’t exist as an elsewhere source that we sometimes tap or only applies to this or that aspect or level of Being (i.e., humanity). It is the foundation of ALL expressions witnessed in Creation. Regardless of the “angle” from which you’re perceiving.

If you shatter a mirror into a million pieces, each shard still reflects the whole from it’s “broken” status… it’s this idea that I mean. The one holding and looking into the shard may not “see” All That Is within the shard’s reflected image with fully clarity, but it’s there to be seen, nonetheless.

As example of the unifying foundation seen in all expressions in Creation: There are males and females in human form to tangibly express the two directions of the flow of life force energy that make up all of Creation – the masculine and feminine, the outbreath (exploration into matter) and inbreath (the return to essence of being), the light and the dark, Knowledge and Potential.

These two essential aspects of the One, which I call ”masculine and feminine energy”, when combined in certain ways, produce offspring. We see it as baby humans in the human form, of course, but we see it also in the formation of new ideas, new galaxies and universes, creative art, the outward form a human life takes on here, etc. But notice that just as a child cannot be produced without both masculine and feminine energy (even in a laboratory), nor can anything else in Creation.

It is the combining of Knowledge and Potential that generates new form. No “child” can exist without parents. At higher {energetic frequencies} levels of existence, where matter is less solid or non-existent, the two parental energies are One. Here on earth, they SEEM to be in two separate bodies, but this is merely a gross outward expression of the truth that exists within each life form.

This fits the model of progressive growth and understanding that is inherent, as well. We begin in ignorance and grow to the fullest Knowledge and Awareness like climbing a ladder. So “down here”, there are males and females to symbolically represent the two energetic flavors inherent in the One.

This realm is the place of integration, so we must start with the two essential energies in seeming separation. We must “believe” the illusion of separation in order to creatively come to an integration of it that has value to the Whole. Our relationships are the myriad ways we explore ”how to make a balanced, harmonious Whole from these two parts”.

The point being that the essential cause for any form, be it of matter or thought, has its source in the objective truths from which all manifestation is birthed. There is only One, expressed in myriad form. There is nothing not of the One. Any sense of separation is a product of a veil over the ability to Know in the perceiver. This veil allows separation to be explored even though it is not “truth”.

So if there is only One, and yet there are many, what would be the truth? “The many” are reflections of the One, made through the One’s two energetic directional forces (masc/fem). The One is the truth, the many is the illusion. A vital illusion for the experience, but an illusion nonetheless. Rumi says, “I am that, you are that, all this is that, and that’s all there is.”

In a very real way, every aspect of material reality is ”just a symbol” of something more true. Just like our dream symbols. Once this is understood, one can begin to “read” life as they “read” dreams. The only real difference between the two symbol sets is that one is more tangible or solid than the other. One is “caught in time”, the other not.

From this idea, we can see that this or that culture on a human earth is merely a variation of understanding, completely unified with the One in it’s unique way. Every manifestation of “evil” or “love” is also a variation of understanding, completely unified with the One in it’s unique way. The perceiver or perpetrator or experiencer is the filter the One chose in order to express that unique understanding. None of it is “other”, all reflects the awesome and infinite Oneness that is.

So… how does that apply to anything of value at this level, including dreams? If we chance to explore the level of knowing that I mentioned above, we can literally feel the connection between all things. We literally can “see” that there is an inherent logic that acts as the foundation of every symbol, whether that symbol appears in a daily human life, or in a dream.

Though the myriad form expressed in Creation is vast, the essence of inspiration for it is constant, accessible, and used with or without conscious awareness in every moment, by every one of us. Becoming conscious of it, as much as possible, is how we begin to “see” the underlying, unifying logic inherent in all life, and all symbols of living.

But to get conscious of it one must dare to feel, not just think. This has been the rub for eons here. Consciousness is not a product of the mind, but this world has not yet truly embraced this idea. The “feminine” is the inner, feeling, emotional, intuitive, instinctive part of self. And it’s a full half of what makes us who we are. Our consciousness is made up of our masculine and feminine energy in total. “Down here”, most of the feminine has been in suppression for eons, which has twisted or skewed the masculine “down here” too, so that our “children”, the products we manifest in the combining of our two forces, are also “twisted reflections”, so to say.

(I am not implying that our human children are twisted, but that our understanding of what we produce is filtered, limited or “twisted” by the very veil that prevents us from knowing who we truly are, in essence. So we undervalue, underestimate, misunderstand and restrain our “children” according to the very same limited mind and suppressed emotional self that gave birth to the child to begin with. Never realizing that the child is as much “The One” as anything ever is, and has inherent within it all that is needed to fully realize itself without restraint.

As ”parents” to our children – and a “child” here can simply be a creative idea – our role is to guide it gently, knowing it has a life of its own to explore. Our role is not to grip it fiercely, cling to it and force it to comply with the life we deem is proper for it. This is strangling the inherent ”god” within form, but most of us do this anyway, thinking it is “right”. Imo.)

Most understand that to truly know something, it must be experienced. Well, to truly know the feminine, one must experience it on its terms. This means feeling, validating and trusting intuition and instinct, and allowing emotion to flow unimpeded. This is very difficult for humanity. Many dream symbols (and life circumstances), in fact, are explications of this very “fact” being experienced by most human beings, but also by half of Creation! The feminine in suppression.

The mind is merely a tool, as is the human form and the emotions. Tools that afford full awareness to become realized at this level of existence. Becoming master of these tools requires knowing them intimately. If we seek to know the mind, and we seek to know the emotions… who or what is doing the seeking?
The eternal essence of our being is not the mind or the emotions, it is far greater than either of these or even the combination of these, and it is always with us, guiding us. And what it guides us to is a certain proper use of these tools so that we come to know that center, our eternal essence, in a true way.

And it is from the center of that essence of our being that we can know the underlying, unifying logic that acts as foundation for All That Is, seen in dreams, seen in the situations and circumstances that make up people’s lives here on earth, seen in the cosmos, etc.

Most of us get glimpses of that center long before we master the tools, though, which is a blessing indeed, and evidence that the mind and emotions that “lock us into illusion” are not more than our eternal essence, and therefore can be pierced when the heart of the seeker is aligned properly.

All of that to simply say that all of life is symbolic of  The One struggling to know itself through the illusion of separation. From that foundational understanding, all symbols become clearer. In my experience and current understanding, of course.

In my own searching, “The Dream Book”, by Betty Bethards touches on this underlying universal symbolic language the best. Not to say there aren’t others, but that’s one I recommend because it’s the one I encountered.

Namasté, Sowelu