Hi, last night I had a very painful dream.As a background I want to say that I had an argument with my boyfriend who sort of was the whole weekend quite emotionally distant.(he often is and I get the feeling that for him our relationship is not as important as for me).On top of that, I start to really see that his project of a closed three years meditation retreat is serious and he will do it.(This means we will be separated for more than three years).On one hand I am happy for him as this is a great opportunity for growth but on the other I feel, as a woman, betrayed and abandonned.
So;I think the dream refers to him as the real person.I would appreciate some ideas. I feel also trapped in the relationship as his independence makes me suffer alot and sometimes think I should just simply be on my own and not expose my self to all that suffering.
First I dreamt that I was somewhere near a river and sort of sleepy it was night.I fell into the river and almost drowned,some friends had to get me out.Iwas wet and had no clothes to get changed.But strangely I didn't feel cold and the clothes dried quickly.
then I dreamt that my boyfriend got arrested because of some minor thing he had done.I visit him in jail and he says that he had been raped.I wonder how that could be and think of someting to do with a man.He explains that he was raped by a soldier woman who attached him with handcuffs to a tree and did had oral sex with him.I was shocked and asked him if he had liked that and got very jealous and suspicious.Angrily ,I insisted to tell me the truth ,That I didn't buy that story and if he had seen her again afterwards.After some time after my furious inquiries he confessed that actually he knew her from his former lifestyle(he had done drugs)and that they were stoned and did this as a sexual playing.He had been together with her as well before that incident and afterwards when he had told me he just went to the city to visit his mother.I feel so betrayed and mad and just shout at him I don't want to have anything to do with him in the future and I am sure he is not going to do his retreat, without me giving him stability until then when he has to enter next year, but will fall back into his old destructive habits of drug abuse etc.
I feel heartbroken,humillated ,betrayed.Ahh, he confesses the truth after I had spoken with some of his friends who were outside the jail waiting to visit and who,after asking ,told me that the woman was called Milarepa(a tibetan male saint) and I told my boyfriend that I knew her name and that I am going to talk to her.So he confessed everything out of fear that the woman would tell me thetruth anyway.
I appreciate some help with the dream thanks.

margit, not sure if i understand your entire dream, but i have had dreams of a similar nature about my boyfriend cheating on me and leaving. I also have issues around his growing independence. It has been helpfull for me to examine my own fears around abandonment and betrayal, which stem back to much earlier in my life. Also worth looking at was how i saw my "role" in the relationship. I believe that i have these dreams when i am trying to 'mother' him instead of partner him. For me these fears have turned out to be deep and in need of resolution not only for the sake of the relationship but also for honering my entire self. Hope this helps.
edwina

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Yes,I am sure there is an abandonnment issue involved and my own insecurities, and fear of betrayal.thanks alot for sharing your feelings and experience.However I ask myself if the dream is talking to me and trying to explain something I don't know.Because I already know that I feel insecure and afraid that he might find someting else more attractive etc.This also comes from my childhood and I am also aware of that: I read somewhere that dreams normally don't waste time in trying to tell you what you already know.Also the name of the girl must have a significant meaning, as it is very funny for the type of girl she is.
looking forward to hear some more ideas

Hi Margit

Ive just quickly glanced your dream and feel a bit of a cheat lol because ive just cut and pasted a reply I made to a previous interp last month when Maya enquired about the significence of being cheated on in a dream. so here a brief overlay and then looking more specifically at your dream follows -

"Experiencing your partner cheating in a dream can sometimes cut close to the bone and the sense of this happening can feel so real at times.

Our dreams though do tend to really reflect what is going on inside of us, each element of a dream is completely personal to the dreramer, A dream is a little bit like a stage really where WE give the characters in the dream a role, we give them their voices their actions which has come from us the dreamer, and on this mental stage our inner dynamics play out with each other.

Men in dreams indicate our own maleness our thoughts, beliefs and behaviour, and females tend to reflect our feeling, intuitive self.

To dream of your boyfreind would suggest that in some way you have simmialr traits in the way you think, you are similar in your atitudes and behaviour, He reflects really an aspect of your own self, traits you are 'intimate with', within your own being.

When dreaming that our partner cheats on us in some way and it does really depend on the context of the rest of the dream, but generally it intimates that in some way we are rejecting a part of ourself to be with other ways of being that relates to what your dream females convey.

For example if an aspect of ourselves is grumpy or controlling or jealous and we hold that as a main perception of ourselves with which we dont like, our dream then might in some way act this out symbollically. Your own 'beliefs' (inner boyfreind) about yourself are ultimately saying that they want to bond with what ever these dream females are conveying, which incidentally reflect some aspect of your nature too, though hard to see sometimes. If these dream females reflect maybe feelings of selfworth and happiness then what your dream is saying is that a part of you really wants to connect with these more positive aspects of self, but in doing so is rejecting 'you' your current way of feeling at the moment."

However this is a broad overview and on reading your dream something clicked for me as soon as I read it, The feelings in the dream do relate in a real way to you about what is happening in your relationship but it is easy to get hooked on to the externalisation believing that it is all happening out there. Remember the external follows we create from within, we attract those same situational patterns that mirror our inner beings its really quite beautiful.

Imo your boyfreind reflects an inner behaviour or attitude that in some way has been coupling with this dream female, 'Milarepa(a tibetan male saint)' Is this significant of some aspect of buddhism for you? The dream seems to reflect your own relationship to Buddhism in wahtever form of attitude you hold towards it that has been/is at the cost to you rejecting your own essential day to day self, This is the pain for you right here?

Somehow the mind has become imprisoned by the Negative feminine feeling self 'solider woman - boyfriend in jail'. In a reply to one of your previous posts I remember highlighting How the masculine energy is attached to the debilitating feminine, ie Clearing of the emotional/feeling self leads to a change in the Masculine behaviour/attitude self did this make sense then? So now the feeling self of this femine soldier is the motivation behind this Behavioural trait represented by your boyfriend, that is your relationship to buddhism that is not serving you, its not that Buddhism and the meditation is the problem here its how you relate to it specifically.

Thinking that your boyfriend has been mixing with his previous lifestyle (drugs) of sorts is where this paticular behavioural trait you are indulging in is the same to you, for what finding a fix for some one who uses drugs its the same energy, Thats not to say in a disrespectful way, But if you take a moment to imagine your life without Buddhism how would that feel
I imagine it has been there and helped you through many of your hard times, as well as being a source of enjoyment and comfort, its social its completly a personal experience its all these things but another pitfall looms in ones addiction to it and which is at the cost to how you actually betray yourself in this way, betray your own day to day feeling self, your behaioural interest here seems that this does give you some sense of power in your relationhip here, 'Boyfriend recieving oral sex' That is your mind self as a result of your realtionship your spiritual practices does give you some pleasure but it is really serving the mind or gratifying the mind self, at the same time not nurturing you. Your feelings are hurt, anger Humiliation, all this gets projected outside on to your external life/relationship, and manifests in this situational way your boyfriend considering A three year meditation.

Your boyfriend finally confesses because he thinks the woman will tell you the truth, maybe she will, She wil show you all this if you look and listen, the problem is not in your mediation or spititual practices but in the way you relate to them here. Its awareness to this part of self of self that wil help you become conscious of wher you neglect your essential self in life, coming into relationship with the day to day feelings that you carry is where this dream is pointing that you are currently out of balance.

Just my take on things Hope it helps
Best to you Marce

Age & Gender & Location {Required}: 34 uk

Have You Posted Before? Date of Last Post {Use Search and Your Post Name to Help Find Last Post} m

Hi,thanks Marce.Yes, I considered that all dream characters were parts of myself.This is the normal way I consider my dreams.But I also read somewhere that if dream people are very close to you they might represent the real people.
I read your explanation carefully and it makes some sense.So what you mean in short is that my dream Ego would be the part which is betrayed and which I don't "attend" in favour to this"dominant" rival(buddhism).So you mean the dream ego is the feeling self here?And my boyfriend represents my mind,beliefs and active behaviour.
The thing is that I always took my buddhist practice in a very personal way and did my own thing.Let's say I was never a fundamnetalist but always a bit the odd one out,never lived at the centre and always tried to integrate things I found useful into tradtitional practice.At the time being a western Lama and I are experimenting now with and approaching active immagination to the traditional focus.So I think I never got stuck,lets's say.However;buddhism is as important as you say in my life and maybe a "rival" in the sense that my boyfriend does live at the centre and as he is more new to it is much more involved and I often feel that he prefers the general ongoings there to being with me.Ok,maybe I am projecting and it is really all apart of myself but somewhere it doesn't really convince me.I have to meditate a bit more on it.I often feel jealous that he prefers activities there or living there then let's say come and live with me.Even if another part of me prefers being independent and scared of living together.i think for this reason I am tolerating the situation of not living together .Of course;I have an inner conflict of his wanting to do a three years retreat as I feel I shouldn't make obstacles to his spiritual need for inner growth,especially as he has the impression that he has wasted most of his life doing drugs and in an anesthetized state.I do feel furious and jealous(and guilty for feeling so).Milarepa the tibetan saint was famous for living in solitude and doing long solitary retreats. So for him this woman(doing a long retreat) is more attractive than me,I mean in he dream I feel that she just goes for"my"man and abduces him,handcuffs him and he likes it,wants it and betrays me with that.The jail...couldn't that be the retreat hut?I see it as a jail where he is closed away because of that woman? At the moment,I am considering continuing with the relationship or not because the abandonment feeling is so difficult for me to handle.In the dream I shout at him that I don't want to see him again.Couldn't that be the feeling of just wanting to never see him again beacause the situation makes me suffer so much?
Don't you think that a dream simply sometimes wants to draw your attention to how you realy feel about an issue or someone real in your life?Of course I agree that all external circunstances are projections of the mind and that we should generally take the dream as the stage and the characters as parts of ourselves.I always start from that point.But don't you believe that sometimes,when close people are involved,people we live with,the dream just tells us what we feel about THEM and the real situation we have together ?Don't you think my interpretation could be the principal one(even if at the same time your approach also makes some sense but seems too forced on on an emotionally level for me.It is logical and I will observe my feelings taking it into account but it doesn't have a click or emotinonally charged energy in it for me))Looking forward to ideas.....

Hi Margit
In reply to your questions -
"I agree that all external circunstances are projections of the mind and that we should generally take the dream as the stage and the characters as parts of ourselves.I always start from that point.But don't you believe that sometimes,when close people are involved,people we live with,the dream just tells us what we feel about THEM and the real situation we have together"

The answer is Imo both, yes the dream targets how dreamer feels towards certain personal situations these feelings will allways be intinsically tied in with the dreamers personal life, However at the level of understanding self I also believe that the dream is first and foremost about the dreamer and it is from here that we create our own external reality, thats not to say we just Project our situation onto what otherwise would be coincidental events that are similar and playing out in our life, but more that the very energys of our mental/emotional and spiritual bodies actually draw to us, that is we attract to us a physical existence that relflects our inner being. Our true power comes from recognising this that we are responsible for everything that we draw into our life, how do the wheels of Karma turn in Buddhism?

Our spiritual Karma is not an eye for an eye Law it is actually a law that is inherent within nature, it governs how every thing unfolds, and it is only by changing our Karma that we affect our lives weather in a positive or negative way.

Karma is not when we do bad to others, we will have others do bad to us, Karma is if we do bad to others then utimatly we are doing bad to ourselves 'everything is one', and when we do bad to ourselves then others do bad to us, 'the law of attraction'

We pull to us those events, we magnitise to us how we are in relationship to ourselves, it is no coincidence that you have attracted a relationship into your life with these dynamics at play, A being of light, A wonderful star within creation where ones energy unfolds on a moment to moment basis drawing into ones life and touching everything around moulding it to your own soul/mind reflection. As human beings having a spiritual life we know not what our power is, as spiritual beings having a human life we are able to access our power within and affect it for the greater good of all.


You wrote
"I read your explanation carefully and it makes some sense.So what you mean in short is that my dream Ego would be the part which is betrayed and which I don't "attend" in favour to this"dominant" rival(buddhism)."

From my understnding its not that Buddhism is your rival, its how a part of you is relating to Buddhism, tuning into your realtionship, that is your mind thought patterns, behavioural tendencys and listening to these echoes, you may see where you are in turn neglecting/rejecting your essential day to day feeling/thinking self, Or dream ego as you said, but dream ego tends to depersonalise 'you', what is happening for you right now, the feelings that you have, bringing up four children, your stage in life, the fears of losing your boyfriend, I really emphasise with you, its sounds like its been a difficult journey, your dream suggests to turn your minds focus onto this part of you, with all the rose love and affection you hold for buddhism, to hold that light for yourself. Again its in the relating the behaviural attitude suggested also by seeking relief in the escapism of drugs, may be relating to how you escape these day to day feelings in self by thsi focus on Buddhism, your boyfriend reflecting this behaviour in you.

The end of the dream does say a lot in the way that ultimatly you will find the truth and it will be shown to you by a continuation of this Buddhist practice, you just havent seen it in self yet of how this particular unhealthy 'relationship' not buddhism but the relationship is serving to gratify you and keep you occupied from what really needs to be attended to in self.

The soldier prison guard seems to represent again how you perpetuate this bahviour, the mind aspect is imprisoned by a set of feelings that are in some way a catlyst to maintain the way you relate, are attached to this focus, its the 'I' that has the addiction and attachment to what buddhism is, there is no freedom 'in prison' but it is imprisoned by the underlying feelings that motivate this attachment.

The way we sometimes manage our painful feelings is by operating above them through our attcahments and addictions, addictions arnt just forms of behaviour that are related to drugs but are in ways we relate ourselves to our external environment. People who come of the use of drugs even if they are of recreational use, are are not physically addicted but may still have the addictive tendencies, in the way they relate to their external environment, the mind attches itself and finds a false security in this attachment alleviating all underlying fear that the person does not want to experience, The body can be a terrifying place for many.
Peole who have used drugs can change their lives around and never use drugs again but the quality of attchment is maintained by transferring it to another object of focus to keep one in that space, This is the symbology of drugs or drug use in many dreams, its the level of the mind and its attachment, its outward pull away from relating to ones inner most being, because for as long as were in the mind were not in the body! We are not in relationship to our deepest selves, or as your dream suggests your day to day feeling/thinking self.

Just my views Margit and please as allways as you do Go with your own discernment and take what feels right for you.

Best Marce

Age & Gender & Location {Required}: 34 uk

Have You Posted Before? Date of Last Post {Use Search and Your Post Name to Help Find Last Post} m

Yes Marce,now I got the point you want to make with the dream and there is truth in it.As I see now what you say is true.With your first mail I couldn't see the whole picture.But with this added details i think you are right and there is something i have to open up.Your explanation of karma is very profound and in BUddhism there are several schools which slightly more superficial or deeper understandings.Your explanation is very similar to the chittamatra school or even the dzogchen lineage.Yes,I agree with your view that you don't just project onto the object but attract the circunstances and that the outer is the refelection of the inner. So your analysis of my dream is someting to reflect on for me and see how this pattern manifests in my life.I think you opened up an understanding of the inner pattern without contradicting the outer pattern ,which is what i perceived in the dream.Thanks alot.I am really enjoying our conversations