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.

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