Experienced, wise part of self; actual images of parents (may determine your relationship with parents).

Basic meaning: Wiser, more mature masculine aspect of self; straightforward representation of your father.

(1) For men, father may be a conscience figure. If this is the case, bear in mind that your father's prohibitions and commands will probably represent either conventional moral options which may have no relevance to your true nature or "destiny", or irrational fears and feelings of guilt that began to take shape in you in early childhood.

(2) For a woman, father may figure in a dream as one who generates affection.

(3) The presence of your father may be a straightforward representation of him, or of the way you see/remember him (which may owe more to your subjective distortions than to what your father actually is or was). In any case, the reason for your father appearing in the dream will be shown by the part he plays in the dream story.

(4) If your father features in the dream as a protector, it may be that you need to "grow up" and rely on your own resources. After all, life can hurt you only if you let it, only if you identify with your emotional self instead of with that deep layer of yourself that is immune to life's pains and perils.

(5) Father may be an animus figure representing a womans(unconscious) masculine qualities. In this case, the dream may be suggesting that she should cultivate this countrasexual side of her nature.

(6) Frequent appearances by eithet parent, or both, in dreams may be a sign that you have not thrown off an infantile over-dependence on them. Jung cites a young man's dreamin which the mansfather appeared as a drunken driver, smashing his car into a wall. This is the exact opposite of the real father, who was a most respectable person, rightly - but too too much - respected by the son. What the unconscious was doing through the dream was dethroning the father in order to enable the son to achieve a proper sense of himself as a person in his own right, with his own unique destiny and values.

Reference: Eric Ackroyd

Basic meaning: Older, wiser, more experienced part of feminine self aspect; the unconscious; intuition; natural and instinctive life; your relationship with your mother.

(1) A dream about your mother may be telling you something about your relationship with your mother. Mother-attachment may be so strong that the development of your own individuality has been prevented. Inner independence of mother is the first great step towards realizing your true self.

(2) In a mansdream, mother may symbolize the feminine side of his psyche.

(3) Mother may symbolize the unconscious; intuitive self; natural instinctive life; the source of nourishment and growth for the psyche.

And Childhood Recollections

{1} If the child in your dream is you as a child, the significance of the dream may have to do with a childhood experience. But don't be too ready to understand it this way {see Childhood Recollections at bottom}.

{2} The child may be a symbol of your true self, that which is essentially you and which you are capable of unfolding. That fact that your real self is represented by a child suggests that your true self is a beautiful unspoilt product of Nature; that it is worthy of unreserved love; and that it needs the nourishment of your love if it is to grow and unfold all its loveliness.

{3} If the child has some divine aura {e.g. if it is the Christ-child}, waht is symbolized is as in {2} above. The aura represents the transcendent nature of the self: it is much more than your conscious ego or your present image of yourself; it holds together the opposites that are within you {e.g. conscious and unconscious aspects, "head" - intellect and "heart" - intuitiveness and compassionate giving, extroversion and introversion, masculine and feminine}, and it is your ultimate goal and fulfillment.

{4} The child may represent {the possibility of} a new beginning, a new development in your psyche - a new attitude to life, a new set of values, a new balance of your psychic forces, a new reconcilation of previously conflicting forces. The child in you is the growing-point in you.

{5} There is a child in all of us - our emotional self - that often needs reassurance, to be told that all is well and there is no cause for fear, or anger, or guilt, and that love makes all things good and dissolves all pain. At the same time the child sometimes needs to be chided and corrected if it is eventually to - as it should - grow up.

Childhood Recollections

{1} Many dreams repeat or allude to childhhood experiences and impressions. Nearly all such dreams have a therapeutic purpose, giving us a clearer view of ourselves, perhaps showing us some attitude or pattern of behaviour that has been with us since childhood, and perhaps, even showing us the original cause of it.

Unfulfilled instinctual desires provide the energy for many of our dreams, and the fact that an instinctive desire remains unfulfilled may be connected with the traumatic experience in childhood. That experience has probably been repressed because it was traumatic - causing guilt, anxiety, fear of punishment. See Repression Your dreams may, therefore, be helping you to uncover the source of these blockages which inhibit the free flow of the natural forces within you.

{2} Recurring dreams may represent soem psychic disturbance or problem that orginated in chilhood. Here are some examples:

Dream of being naked may sometimes represent recollections of, and perhaps longing for, the paradise of childhood when one walked around unclothed without embarrassment. {Sometimes these dreams, as Freud said, express a deisre for someone of the opposite sex to present himself/herself in the nude, and stem from sexual frustration}.

Dreams of flying or falling may derive from childhood enjoyment of swings and see-saws. They may express straightforward yearnings for the remembered joy of childhood, but they may also reflect one's problematic adult life. A problem is not a thing; rather, it is a relationship - for example, a relationship of conflict either between your external circumstances and your inner wishes {in which case the solution consists in either removing yourself from the circumstances or modifying your wishes} or between one part of your psyche and another {in which case the solution is to integrate the part that has been neglected}.

Dreams of failure stem from childhood fears of disapproval from parents. However, the fact that your dreams contain these recollections suggests that you have programmed yourself for anxiety. If so, begin by loving the child that is still within you: reassure it, tell it that everything is all right and that there is no such thing as failure where there is love.

{3} Dreams which contain recollections of yourself as a free and happy child may indicate a desire to find your true self. The child is then a symbol of the complete and permanent inner freedom and joy which are enjoyed only when you have become acquainted with all the forces within you - both conscious and unconscious - and have established harmonious relationships among them.

{4} The child may represent the primitive psyche {see Archetypes}which your conscious ego needs to get acquainted if wholeness is to be achieved. This primitive psyche is the mind of humankind in its infancy, before the development of self-consciousness and reasoning. This original awarenes is stil within us, but buried in the unconscious.

Reference: Eric Ackroyd

{1} Many dreams repeat or allude to childhhood experiences and impressions. Nearly all such dreams have a therapeutic purpose, giving us a clearer view of ourselves, perhaps showing us some attitude or pattern of behaviour that has been with us since childhood, and perhaps, even showing us the original cause of it.

Unfulfilled instinctual desires provide the energy for many of our dreams, and the fact that an instinctive desire remains unfulfilled may be connected with the traumatic experience in childhood. That experience has probably been repressed because it was traumatic - causing guilt, anxiety, fear of punishment. See Repression Your dreams may, therefore, be helping you to uncover the source of these blockages which inhibit the free flow of the natural forces within you.

{2} Recurring dreams may represent soem psychic disturbance or problem that orginated in chilhood. Here are some examples:

Dream of being naked may sometimes represent recollections of, and perhaps longing for, the paradise of childhood when one walked around unclothed without embarrassment. {Sometimes these dreams, as Freud said, express a deisre for someone of the opposite sex to present himself/herself in the nude, and stem from sexual frustration}.

Dreams of flying or falling may derive from childhood enjoyment of swings and see-saws. They may express straightforward yearnings for the remembered joy of childhood, but they may also reflect one's problematic adult life. A problem is not a thing; rather, it is a relationship - for example, a relationship of conflict either between your external circumstances and your inner wishes {in which case the solution consists in either removing yourself from the circumstances or modifying your wishes} or between one part of your psyche and another {in which case the solution is to integrate the part that has been neglected}.

Dreams of failure stem from childhood fears of disapproval from parents. However, the fact that your dreams contain these recollections suggests that you have programmed yourself for anxiety. If so, begin by loving the child that is still within you: reassure it, tell it that everything is all right and that there is no such thing as failure where there is love.

{3} Dreams which contain recollections of yourself as a free and happy child may indicate a desire to find your true self. The child is then a symbol of the complete and permanent inner freedom and joy which are enjoyed only when you have become acquainted with all the forces within you - both conscious and unconscious - and have established harmonious relationships among them.

{4} The child may represent the primitive psyche {see Archetypes}which your conscious ego needs to get acquainted if wholeness is to be achieved. This primitive psyche is the mind of humankind in its infancy, before the development of self-consciousness and reasoning. This original awarenes is stil within us, but buried in the unconscious.

Reference: Eric Ackroyd

Parents may appear in a dream in the guise of animals. It then would represent a love-hate feeling toward that parent. May represent other people in which the meaning would symbolize a slyness or aggressiveness that is characteristic of that person. May be symbolic of some primitive or animal part of your psyche; thus the emotional response to the animal would represent a fear (if the animal in your dream is feared) of an instinctive urge. May represent your animal nature; aggression or anger buried in your unconscious. Perhaps you need to pay more attention to your instincts instead of listening to others.

May be telling you something about your relationship with your mother. Mother may symbolize the unconscious, especially the spiritual aspect (goddess). See Father-Mother

Your super-ego (the conventional morality assimilated from parents and society), functioning as an internal sensor, prohibitor, inhibitor and standard setter (Freudian).Some of its commands/prohibitions/expectations may be irrational and arise from a childhood trauma.

The judge may represent a different sort of conscience, an inner guide that tells you what you should be doing to fulfill your individual "destiny".

May represent being too judgmental.

See Also Rooms

Basic meaning: The self; your self image

(1) The house or other building may be a symbol of yourself. Going upstairs may mean going into the "head" - that is, the layer of the mind where rational thinking takes place. Cellars may represent the unconscious. Different parts of the house may be different ages, different emotions, different complexes, etc., the modern representing the conscious ego, the oldest the deepest layers of the unconscious - what Jung called the "collective unconscious").

If the house feels cramped, this might indicate frustration. Is some part of you not developed, not yet integrated into consciousness? What is keeping this or that instinct or emotion repressed?

(2) A house may represent your self-image: how you see yourself, or how you want to be seen by the world, or what you want from life.

(3) If the house is your parental home, what you feel in the dream may say a lot about your childhood feelings - about your parents, for instance.

(4) The different rooms of a house may symbolize the different emotions or complexes. Not being able to go into a particular room may indicate there is some aspect in your life that is not yet open to your conscious mind. When you acknowledge these emotions, you will be able to enter into the room in your dreams.

Reference: Eric Ackroyd

(2) Male god figures may represent the animus in a woman's dreams, and goddess figures may represent the anima in a mansdreams. They may lead you to deeper into your psyche.

(3) Sometimes god/goddess may represent father/mother, functioning as a part of your own (unconscious) psyche. In such cases it is likely though not invariable - that your feelings towards the parent are ambivalent, with fear or awe as well as affection. A stern Old Testament type God may symbolize your super-ego, whose origins often lie in irrational prohibitions imposed on oneself in childhood as a reaction to real or imagined threats of punishment.

(4) God / goddess may represent your true self, your potential wholeness.

(5) The god figure in your dream may be God! Don't be surprised if your unconscious comes up with god images from a more ancient tradition than the ones you were brought up with: the unconscious seems to have a memory that reaches back to humankind's remotest past, and even beyond (universal dream images such as that of God are from the primitive unconscious, therefore images will go beyond the traditional images you know from religious teachings). At a certain level of your psyche you may go beyond everything that is merely individual and experience oneness with life itself: an experience that may cause you to live authentically - for inner wisdom/ values - instead of merely role playing.

From SpiritCommunity

Gold Dreaming about gold could be a reflection of concerns that you have about your most precious valuables or a reference to "alchemist's gold" which is usually spiritual in nature. If you are losing gold in your dream, it may express your anxieties over a missed opportunity. However, remember "All that glitters is not gold." Your unconscious mind may be reminding you not to judge things on appearances alone.