i am in the desert with my sensei, itom, and he is teaching me of mysticism and performing acts of great power. its a challenge to describe what happened since for the most part i could only bring back the feelings and certain snapshots of the things we did. his body was about 5 times the normal size and he was made of the starry sky with the occasional strategically placed nebula cluster. he maintained his large midnight blue body throughout all that i can remember.
he kept eye contact with me intensely, transmitting telempathic information about... i do remember the four directions being felt for the first time with my sixth sense, and i even awoke with it and still have it at this moment. i could feel that with each direction, he would transmit understanding about an elemental. i felt like a baby. i remember mostly that he held my gaze intensely and that the edges of his silhouette became static and fluid, almost rippling out over the desert landscape. i could feel that he was immensely patient and compassionate with me as i attempted to assimilate the transmissions into my consciousness.... and there was warmth and this truly timeless companionship in the way he looked right through me.
To remember something in your dream, indicates that you have learned something significant from your past mistakes or previous experiences. The dream may also serve as a reminder of something important that is occurring in your waking life. You are so worried that you will forget something that the preoccupation has made its way into your dream.
It has a profound and clear-cut symbolism. Berthelot observes that
the Biblical prophets, in order to counter the agrarian religions based on fertility
rites (related, according to Eliade, to orgies), never ceased to describe theirs as the
purest religion of the Israelites ‘when they were in the wilderness’. This confirms
the specific symbolism of the desert as the most propitious place for divine
revelation, for which reason it has been said that ‘monotheism is the religion of
the desert’ (7). This is because the desert, in so far as it is in a way a negative
landscape, is the ‘realm of abstraction’ located outside the sphere of existence
(37), susceptible only to things transcendent. Furthermore, the desert is the
domain of the sun, not as the creator of energy upon earth but as pure, celestial
radiance, blinding in its manifestation. Again: if water is associated with the ideas
of birth and physical fertility, it is also opposed to the concept of the everlasting
spirit; and, indeed, moisture has always been regarded as a symbol of moral
corruption. On the other hand, burning drought is the climate par excellence of
pure, ascetic spirituality—of the consuming of the body for the salvation of the
soul. Tradition provides further corroboration of this symbolism: for the Hebrews, captivity in Egypt was a life held in opprobium, and to go out into the
desert was ‘to go out from Egypt’ (48). Finally, let us point to the emblematic relationship of the desert with the lion, which is a sun-symbol, verifying what we
have said about the solar symbolism of the desert.
To dream that you are walking through a desert, signifies loss and misfortune. You may be suffering from an attack on your reputation. Deserts are also symbolic of barrenness, loneliness and feelings of isolation and hopelessness. The desert landscape may also be a metaphor for feeling deserted and left behind.
To dream of wandering through a gloomy and barren desert, denotes famine and uprisal of races and great loss of life and property.
For a young woman to find herself alone in a desert, her health and reputation is being jeopardized by her indiscretion. She should be more cautious.
Travelling across a desert shows the inevitability of a long and tedious journey.
Accompaniment of sunshine indicates successful journey.
Dreaming that you are walking through a desert means loss and misfortune. You may be suffering from an attack on your reputation. Deserts are also symbolic of barrenness, loneliness and feelings of isolation and hopelessness.
At times a desert in a dream symbolises the unconscious and represents the dreamer's sense of separation from it. Deserts are generally barren with little vegetation or animal life. The desert in your dreams could be bringing up issues of stagnation and periods of little growth in your life. Also, the desert could represent your loneliness and feelings of isolation. However, if you live close to the desert or love the desert, this may be a positive symbol. For some the desert may be a place where they can commune with nature and feel a sense of peace.
To dream that you are a patient, suggests that you are going through a healing process. Alternatively, this dream may be a pun on your need for patience. Remember that good things come to those who wait.
Dreaming that you are a patient, suggests that you are going through a healing process. Alternatively, this dream may be a pun for you to be more patient.
Logically speaking it may be deduced that the countryside—
landscapes of all kinds—is the mundane manifestation of a dynamic complex
which in origin was non-spatial. Inner forces are liberated to unfold as forms
which disclose in themselves the qualitative and quantitative order of their inner
tensions. Thus a mountain crest becomes a graphic sign. Let us take, by way of
illustration, landscapes as they appear in dreams. Leaving aside the phenomenon
of memory, reminiscence, or the complex association of various sense-data, the
scenes and towns which figure in dreams are neither arbitrary and indeterminate
nor objective: they are symbolic—that is, they well up in order to illuminate
certain momentary experiences called forth by varying combinations of influences in varying degrees of intensity. Landscape-scenes arising in the imagination
in this way are sustained solely by the validity, duration and intensity of the
feelings which aroused them. Form—just as in physical morphology—is the
diagram of force. Now, what we have said about landscapes in dreams can be
applied also to an actual landscape, seen and selected by an automatic response of
the unconscious, which detects in it an affinity that gives us pause and makes us
return to it again and again. This, then, is a question not of a projection of the mind
but of an analogy whereby the landscape is adopted by the spirit in consequence
of the inner bond linking the character of the scene with the spirit of the observer
himself. Subjectivism concerns only the act of choosing. The intellection of the
significance of a landscape is, then, wholly objective, as is the grasping of the
symbolic values of colours and numbers. The Chinese saw this with the utmost
clarity: as Luc Benoist has observed, Chinese art has always placed more emphasis upon landscape than upon man (as a figure, that is to say), and upon the
macrocosm rather than the microcosm. ‘If the superior man loves the countryside,’ to quote the words of Kuo Hsi, ‘why is this so? Hills and gardens will
always be the haunts of him who seeks to cultivate his original nature; fountains
and rocks are a constant joy to him who wanders whistling among them. . .’ (6).
It is a well-established tradition of symbology that the different worlds (or zones)
are strictly only different states of being. Hence the fact that the ‘chosen site’ is
the enshrining image which arises out of it. The ‘trysting place’, when it truly
possesses that character, and is not merely arbitrary or fortuitous, signifies a
meeting or ‘conjoining’ in precisely this same sense—that is, transposed into topographical or spatial terms (26). However revolutionary these assertions may
seem, they are nevertheless confirmed by the findings of the psychology of form
and by isomorphism, since it has been shown that it is not possible to distinguish
between psychic and physical formal processes—other than externally. In support of all this, there is the comment of Mircea Eliade that ‘In point of fact, man
never chooses a site, he simply “discovers it”. . . . One of the means of discovering
one’s situation is by orientation’ (17). Now, in order to grasp the symbolic sense
of a landscape it is necessary to distinguish between the predominant elements
and the merely incidental, and between the character of the whole and the character of the component elements. When the predominant element is a cosmic one,
its effect is to bind all the other components together, and it is this cosmic
ingredient which makes its influence felt over and above that of the individual
features of the landscape. Instances of such cosmic features are the sea, the
desert, the icy wastes, the mountain-peak, clouds and sky. It is when the ingredients of landscape-symbolism are varied and evenly balanced that symbolic interpretation is most needed. The interpreter must, then, look for the following: (a)
a spatial pattern organized within particular limits which endow it with a structure after the manner of a building or a work of art. By spatial symbolism we
mean, in the first place, the symbolism of level, that is, the disposition of the
zones of the landscape according to the three levels of the normal, the lower and
the higher; and secondly the symbolism of orientation, that is, the position of the
accidental elements in relation to the north-south and the east-west axes. He must
then bear in mind (b) the form—the pattern or the shape of the terrain, whether
it is undulating or broken, steeply sloped or flat, soft or hard; (c) the positional
relationship of the particular area chosen to the region as a whole or to the zone
surrounding it—whether it is lower or higher, more open or more enclosed; and
finally (d) the natural and artificial elements which make up the organized pattern: trees, shrubs, plants, lakes, springs, wells, rocks, sandy shores, houses,
steps, benches, grottoes, gardens, fences, doors and gates. Also important is the
predominating colour, or the clash of colours, or the general feeling of fecundity or
barrenness, of brightness or gloom, of order or disorder. Roads and cross-roads
are of great significance, and so are streams. About the objective meaning of each
of the factors we have listed above there is much that we could say; however,
since the more important factors—such as the symbolism of level—are dealt
with under separate headings, we will here add no more than a few notes. Steepness indicates primitiveness and regression; flat country denotes the apocalyptic
end, the longing for power and for death. There is a Persian tradition that, when
the end of the world has come—when Ahriman is vanquished for ever, the mountains will be levelled and all the earth will become one great plain. Ideas cognate with this are to be found in certain traditions of Israel and France (35). It would
not be hard to point to the history of architecture and town-planning as evidence
of the subconscious application of these principles. Furthermore, there are some
aspects of landscapes which have a symbolic air about them that is very difficult
to analyse intellectually. For instance, the following descriptive passage from
Dante’s Commedia has always seemed to us to evoke an atmosphere of profound
mystery: ‘Around this little island, in its lowest reaches, there, where it is lashed
by the waves, reeds grow in the soft mud’ (Purgatorio I, 100). Independent of the
cosmic significance of landscape, there may also be a sexual implication. It is also
essential to bear in mind that this is not strictly a matter of symbols as such but
of complex, symbolic functions. For instance, in scenes depicting low-lying topographical features, the following factors may be at work: (a) depth in the sense
of what is base, comparable therefore with the wicked and infernal; (b) depth in
the sense of what is symbolically profound; (c) depth as it pertains to the material earth itself, implying a chthonian and maternal symbolism. Only the context
can help us to tell the essence from the accessory—as is true also of the vast
majority of symbols. Here we must bear in mind the primitive concept of the
archetypal ‘ideal countryside’. Schneider has observed that the fact of there being
so many identical names for rivers and mountains in different parts of the world,
suggests that megalithic ways of thought must have led to the custom of naming
the topographical features of different regions after some ideal model. This model,
it may be argued, could be the product of the lasting impression made upon the
mind of Primitive Man by a particular environment endowed with such unity and
variety as to prevent him from ever wishing to leave it; but it could also be
explained as the projection of a psychic order founded upon laws comparable
with those governing quaternary patterns, or the mandala, etc. Man’s attention
was first drawn to the contraposition of heaven and earth by topographical
features, and he gave expression to this in the struggle between gods and Titans,
angels and demons, and in the opposition of mountain and valley. Next, he set out
to explain the earth’s surface by means of the laws of orientation, taking the four
points of the compass from the apparent orbit of the sun as well as from the
human anatomy, and identifying them as ambivalent forces—ambivalent because
they are at once hostile to things external and the defenders of their limits. As
Schneider adds: ‘To preserve cosmic order, the gods fought with the giants and
the monsters which had from the very beginning of creation sought to devour the
sun. They stationed the heroic lion on the celestial mountain. Four archers’—the
tetramorphs—’are continuously on guard day and night against anyone who
attempts to disrupt the order of the cosmos’ (50). The stockade, the wall or stone
enclosure, comments Eliade, are among the oldest known parts of the structure of temples, appearing as early as in proto-Indian civilizations such as that of MohenjoDaro and also in Crete (17). They owe their origins to the same basic, primordial
idea of the symbolism of landscape—its representation of cosmic order. The
mountain with one peak is symbolic of the One—of transcendent purpose; the
two-peaked Mountain of Mars stands for the Gemini, the world of appearances
and the dualism of all forms of life. Both these symbolic mountains find their
symbolic complement in the general pattern of archetypal landscape—also, incidentally, an image of the year; this pattern is composed of the river of life (denoting the positive phase) and the river of oblivion (the negative phase) which flow
through the sea of flames (expressing infirmity) and well up from a single source
(birth or the Origin). According to this scheme, every landscape has a disastrous
and a felicitous tendency, corresponding on the temporal plane with the selfevident distinction between ‘coming’ and ‘going’ which in turn is analogous to the
two halves of human existence. But, quite apart from all this, the symbolic
interpretation of a landscape may be determined according to the laws governing
diverse and individual correspondences, as well as the overall significance derived
from the complex of meanings afforded by its separate features. By way of an
illustration of the many possibilities of interpreting the significance of a landscape, we will conclude with some comments on Vallcarca with its characteristic
low-lying features. The gardens are at a lower level than the city proper, and
screened from it by the vegetation, which has something of the archaic and oriental about it. The main street leads north towards an open plain, signifying the
process of disintegration. On the other hand, those streets which lead towards the
mountain are on the favourable axis. In this case, the interpretation is obvious
enough, as it is in all instances of scenes where it is possible to identify the
essential features of archetypal landscape.
To dream of various landscapes in your dream, represent where you are in your life or in your relationships. How do you see yourself with respect to the rest of the world and those around you? Consider what is going on in the landscape and how it may parallel your own waking life. In particular, a barren or dry landscape depicts dissatisfaction in your love life. According to Freud, the dream landscape symbolizes the human body. A landscape with gentle contours symbolize the female body, while a rocky landscape represents the male body. Also consider the feelings that the landscape invokes.
To dream of ever changing landscapes, indicates psychological transitions or emotional progress. It represents the various stages in your life. Alternatively, it may be offering you various viewpoints in looking at the same idea or situation. Something may be slipping away from your grasp. Look at the symbolism of key elements in the landscape.
Dreaming of various landscapes in your dream, represents where you are in your life or in your relationships. How do you see yourself with respect to the rest of the world and those around you? According to Freud, the landscape symbolizes the human body. Dreaming of ever changing landscapes indicates psychological transitions or emotional progress. It represents the various stages in your life. Alternatively, it may be offering you various viewpoints in looking at the same idea or situation. Consider the symbolism of key elements in the landscape.
To feel static in your dream, depicts your magnetic personality and how you are able to draw things to you.