Category Archives: Bathroom

Dreamwork With Prisoners: Broken Toilet in Parent’s House

A prisoner recently told me this dream and then he said, “there you go. You can put that one with all the others.” So I’m sharing this dream as a part of the Dreamwork With Prisoners series.

I go to the house and find my brother has taken and thrown out all my stuff and special valuable things that belonged to our parent who passed away. Then I went into the bathroom to take a piss but the toilet was broken and I had to pee into a hole in the floor.

Houses in dreams are metaphors for the Self. Since this is a parent’s home, this dream is about the qualities both weak and strong which the dreamer & his brother inherited from their parent. His brother deals with life differently so even though he may have inherited some things he chose not to acquire the positive traits so that’s why he’s metaphorically throwing them out in the dream.

Urine in a dream is a metaphor for anger. when the dreamer finds the toilet broken this means his parent did not have a good and effective way of dealing with anger and so has he this weakness because his parent had it.

The solution to a dream like this is for the dreamer to do two things. First he can remember all the positive qualities about his parent and he can recall all the ways he is positively similar. Those skills and talents can help him solve the problem of too much anger. To fix the plumbing, or in other words to become more effective with processing and releasing anger. The dreamer can notice when he gets angry and then let it go.

He can do the positive opposite of his brother. His brother is getting rid of the positives and hanging on to negative so the dreamer can hang on to the positives and get rid of the negatives. It wont be too easy to do but will work in time. the quality the dreamer needs is probably something like peacefulness, patience, and awe or wonderment.  His parent likely had an abundance of these and the more he remembers to call on them when facing challenges the more they will develop in him too.

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If you’d like to explore the concept of inherited, acquired and learned qualities in greater depth, you can read more by Richard Hastings at this link on Dreams For Peace.

Dreamwork With Prisoners is an initiative which enables prisoners to share their dreams & nightmares and receive an interpretation which can support inner transformation. The development of new qualities can support them during their incarceration, trial and probation. It can also bring out Patience and Enthusiasm for those who have longer sentences. The key to this work is releasing all judgement and seeking for the positives.

If You Dream of a Clogged Toilet, Start Looking For Better Ways to Let Go of Your S*&T.

17 September 2017

One of the most misunderstood metaphors in DreamWork/Changework is theIMG_0874 BATHROOM. Using a bathroom in a dream can best be understood by first noticing where is the bathroom? Is it in your home? Or a public location like a restaurant or school? Is it in an unusual place like an open field? The location of the bathroom in your dream can give you clues as to the message of the metaphor.

The problem with writing or talking about bathrooms in dreams is because they are the most private parts of a home or a public space. A bathroom dream symbolizes the most private parts of the dreamer. How the dreamer deals with anger, jealousy and embarrassment will show up as a dream about using the bathroom.

The positive message about a bathroom dream is that every human being experiences anger, rage, jealousy or embarrassment at one time or another in their lives. Since the purpose of life is to continue growing and developing skills & capacities it means the best way to live is in a constant state of change. Sometimes change is messy and sometimes it’s embarrassing. That is completely okay and to be expected. The better a person gets at working through their anger, jealousy, disappointments, anxieties, etc the better they will get at making their life really work out in amazing ways.

In my dreamwork this morning I was reminded that I have a tendency to hold things in and not want to share the very most private parts of myself. People might chuckle at this, given the very public nature of The Dreamwork Blog but believe it or not, I tend to be more of an introvert and there are parts of myself which I really don’t want to share publicly.

This goes for everyone, no doubt.

If you dream of a clean bathroom which is easy to use, it means everything is working well with you right now and you can just keep doing what you are doing.

If you dream of a clogged bathroom or toilet it means there is some work to do to unclog the way you express your emotions.

So if you dream of a dirty or broken bathroom then you can ask yourself: Where in my life am I holding back some negative emotions and how can I express these things in a better way?

Consider where in your life things are messy or complicated or uncomfortable. Wherever you experience a high degree of stress in your day-to-day life then you can notice that this is the problem area showing up in your dream and you can take steps to make the challenges go away.

The right way to deal with negative emotions will have something to do with your own natural gifts, skills and capacities. The things which come easiest to you and which you have been doing all your life will be a hint at the way you can continue growing by repeating your positive strengths. When you do that, you’ll find bathroom dreams keep getting better and better and maybe stop showing up altogether.

Dreamwork: Daughter Driving a Car

21 August 2017

In the dream, I am moving out of an old, run down house and I also visit a friend who is also moving. Her house is in even worse shape than mine. The house doesn’t have working toilets, has broken floor boards, and is over-run with grit & filth. I found she has a new toilet in a closet but she won’t bring it out to install.

As I am moving, my mom seems to be going back and forth from house to house. She pretends not to have anything to do with me but in the meantime is watching & reading everything I do and write. She talks in really negative ways about me which makes it impossible to work with her or associate with her so I just keep on doing my packing & moving thing.

At one point, I bring over a pair of shoes to the friend’s house. My mom thinks what I’ve done is a lot like what I used to do when I was younger and she tells a story. She’s wrong though and I just chuckle it off.

Later in the dream, I am in the passenger seat of a car and my daughter’s biological father is driving. We discover she is driving my car and we see she turns a corner to the left but fails to come to a complete stop. We are in the Crescent Park neighbourhood where I used to live when I was 8 years old to twelve.

We decide to follow her and I decide to take notes on where she has driving infractions so I can help her improve. We talk about how she is only 12 but has the skills of a 16 year old but also how she shouldn’t be driving yet and we let her go too soon.

The dream ends with us just driving around the neighbourhood watching her car from a distance.

Daily Dream Journal

October 07, 2016

  • In the dream I am eating at a table with a friend & his wife. I see she has separated her noodles from the sauce or her cereal from the milk & she looks sad. So I offer her some of mine and put it on the plate in front of her. She looks happier. So I give her some more. Then she tells me she lost Chris. She repeats herself, “I lost my Chris.” I understand she lost her son and I wonder if he died or was kidnapped. She wrapped her arms around herself and rocked. I wondered what to say to make it better.
  • In another part, a man was kidnapped. He had rope around his ankles and was being dragged. There was a toilet attached to him. A small girl was watching out of the back of a camper in the yard and she saw the kidnappers. I could tell that later she would be able to identify them and help solve the murder.
  • In another part, my words were being read on the mainstream news. There was a woman reading my words on the news. She stumbled over a part and I felt bad that my grammar was not more smooth.

 

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Positive Dreams Mean Just Dive Right in!

04 September 2017

Positive dreams are positively wonderful! They do not need work to transform or flip. You can just have a playful attitude and dive right into whatever life is offering you.

Playfulness is something which comes easy to children but adults sometimes have forgotten how to play or feel playful. Children do not have a lot of negative memories so they can easily play and feel safe. Adults, on the other hand, have accumulated years of negative memories where they wanted to be playful or do something which brings them joy and instead find themselves shut down. Eventually, some adults just stop trying to even have playfulness in their lives.

With dreamwork, however, Playfulness is a wonderful virtue which emerges especially after an issue has been dealt with. The lightness and joy which replaces what used to be fear and worry is quite remarkable. 

The dream I had last night is a good example of this. After working through some serious issues which showed up this week as ghosts and violence, it is so refreshing to have a happy dream of playing on a waterslide! The effort is so worth the reward!

Here is the dream:

21270863_10159400625215595_8931026667273683921_nThe setting was a waterpark and I was riding the tubes over and over with my daughter and a friend. At one point we got to a part of the tube where the water was rushing fast like rapids and there were several directions the mat could go. I stood up on the deck looking down at what was to come and realized I was happy with whatever happened one way or another. I dropped my hat and watched it flow with the waves in a certain direction but then when I got in and went down I went down a different path then my hat had gone and I was okay with that.

Inbetween rides I went to my Taekwondo club and used the washroom. I went into the males’ washroom because the women’s was being used. I noticed how grimy the floors were and the sink was not clean. When the women’s washroom became available I went there and then noticed it was really clean. I wondered if I could help by doing some cleaning for the club. It was quite, as it is on Saturday mornings. Not too much going on.

Back on the water slides, I was considering which way to go next and a man approached me about doing promotion for their website. A fellow Martial Arts student was standing behind him and started to give advice. I just looked at him right in the eyes and told him, “I’ve got this,” and showed him it wasn’t his place to interrupt here. That this was “my thing” and he was surprised at first at my assertiveness and wasn’t taking me to seriously and I stood up and moved forward towards him a slight bit and jokingly said, “stand down, my friend. I said I’ve got this.” And with that he turned his gaze back to the plate he was holding and continued snacking on whatever was there.

Then I returned to the conversation with the website guy and it seemed like things were going to work out well.