Abandonment

If so, your dreams will probably include direct or indirect references to your parents. Alternatively, the feeling may be of more recent origin. Whenever the feeling originated, it has to be dealt with now. The first and most important step is to look at the feeling as objectively as possible, as something that is living inside you but is not essential to your being. You can choose to nourish it or wave goodbye to it. What is the point of nourishing it? Self-pity is negative and destructive - though this is not to say that you should be hard and unsympathetic with yourself: you should offer love and understanding and forgiveness to yourself as well as to others.

Realize that you are not identical with your feelings: you can change them at will, and by changing them you change the quality of your life. NB To say you should look objectively at your feeling does not mean that you shouldn’t employ the Gestalt tactic of identifying imaginatively with the abandoned one in your dream and thereby reliving the abandonment. Such identifying and reliving, however, are helpful and therapeutic only when they enable you to see the feeling as something vou can say yes or no to, as something that is a part of you but does not have to be a part of you (for this Gestalt tactic).

(2) The abandonment may signify a loss of external guidance in vour life. Perhaps circumstances have caused a rift between you and your father or mother or some other ‘authority figure’ from whom you previously took vour moral code or other values and attitudes. The authority’ in question may have been some religious or other ideological set of rules and sanctions that you have now discarded.

Some people throw ofT one authoritarian code of conduct onlv to embrace another. However, if you have rejected such externally imposed codes outright, this probably means that you have become aware that you alone are responsible for vour life, for any choices or decisions. Ultimately’, you are the sole authority in vour life: if you let someone or something (pope or guru, or social conventions, or whatever) have authority over you, it is you who choose to give them that authoritv. This is not to say that it is wrong to allow them that authority, only that it is you who decide whether it is right or wrong.

It is no use putting the blame on people or things outside you - the Church, or the government, or some external fate or circumstances. You create yourself, you create your own happiness or misery, success or failure. Of course, there are some things that impinge upon your life that you cannot remove, but although the things themselves are beyond your control, your reaction to them is always within your control: you can succumb or not, become angry and embittered or not. There is perhaps a kind of‘destiny5 or life-plan; but it is grounded in the centre of your own being, and fulfilling your destiny simply means being - or, rather, becoming - yourself. And that entails getting rid of anything that has no positive or creative role to play in the unfolding of your true nature, and nourishing and developing those parts of you - feelings, attitudes, aims, desires and so forth - that can and should contribute to a full and rich blossoming of your true self.

(3) The feeling of abandonment may be the result of the death of someone you relied on (consciously or unconsciously) for your own feeling of worthwhileness, for a sense of purpose or meaning in life.

If so, again - as in (2) above - you should look within yourself for meaning and worthwhileness and strength. (This does not necessarily mean a slide into extreme subjectivism. What I am recommending is a subjective method of finding the meaning of life. This does not mean that what you find by this method is a purely subjective truth, something that has no reality’ outside your own imagining and is true only for yourself and not for others. There may well be a meaning and a purpose - a destiny - in all things, in the totality of existing universes. However, for all but a few - e.g. advanced physicists - the experiential grounding for such meaning is to be found in themselves, their own destiny and meaning within the great cosmos.)

(4) The forsaken one in your dream may represent a neglected part of you, be it an instinctive drive or a desire or ambition, or some unrealized potential.

If so, trv to identify’ it and, having identified it, trv to find an honourable and appropriate place for it in vour conscious life.

‘LETTING GO’, THROWING OFF INHIBITIONS

If the abandonment in your dream is a state of licentious abandonment, the dream is cither expressing feelings or desires that you arc conscious of having, or telling you that at the unconscious level of your psyche there is a demand for greater freedom, for throwing away the chains with which you (or, more precisely, your guilt-feelings) have shackled yourself. In other words, you need to let yourself go in order to find yourself.

In most cases such dreams will be referring to your sexual life (or lack of it). Please understand, therefore, that licentious behaviour in a dream is usually an instance of how dreams may use exaggeration or hyperbole as a tool for penetrating the conscious ego and forcing it to give attention to something in the unconscious that is rightfully demanding proper scope for expression in the dreamer’s day-to-day life. Obviously, to let oneself go completely and continuously and relinquish all self- control may well lead to the loss of self.

Dreaming Lens: Who abandoned you in your dream? What were the circumstances around the abandonment? Were there legitimate reasons for being left? What was your emotional reaction to being abandoned? What did you do as a result? Did you collapse? Did you take action? Were you the one doing the abandoning?

Personal Focus: The concept of abandonment is a fear-based illusion. The feelings that come up when someone has left us are personal and rarely about the one doing the leaving. The fear of being left alone is primitive and has its roots in infancy. If the loss resonates deeply enough, the emotional reaction taps into a deep reservoir of historical injuries and is experienced as a painful abandonment. The essence of this experience is connecting to what it feels like to be alone with ourselves in moments of vulnerability. Thinking that you do not have the ability to face life on your own, especially in moments of adversity, is a falsehood born out of fear. Overwhelming emotions are often accompanied by irrational thoughts that are focused on our weaknesses and invalidate our strengths.

Dreaming of a circumstance in which abandonment is a primary theme is likely to be compensating for something in waking life that is triggering the thoughts, whether consciously or unconsciously. By processing these feelings in the dream state, we are better prepared to face the world when we wake. Pay close attention to who is doing the abandoning as this will factor powerfully into the interpretation.

In a dream, we may be examining ways in which we abandon ourselves. Even if the dream mirrors a life situation where someone you know is not available to you, use the concept of the Character Aspect as a mirror. It may be that part of you is currently inaccessible to your sense of self. For example, being abandoned by a boss might indicate a lack of inner authority available to handle a difficult situation.

The value of any abandonment, in life or in a dream, is that it forces us to see how we can survive when stripped of what we perceive as necessary for our existence. To feel abandoned is to accept a myth that we are not okay without the assistance of others. A dream that allows you to suffer an abandonment and find the strength to continue on that journey may be helping you see where you are not trusting your own instincts and resources.

Dreaming of being abandoned generally predicts problems and difficulties; it means you feel uncared for or emotionally neglected. It may be due to a grudge you have kept since childhood. Usually, it reflects a need for self- expression or being understood by others.

If the person who leaves is your mother, these problems could be of material nature; however, if the one who leaves is your father, it usually means unwillingness to achieve your goals. You may also be seeking advice about an aspect of your life or someone with authority to show you the way forward. In contrast, if it is your partner who says goodbye, you must face all kinds of problems of your own making.

When abandonment is the protagonist itself, the dream indicates insecurity caused by the desire to possess the person who is turning their back. Finally, if it is you who abandons someone or something, the unconscious is pushing you to change environments or habits, because you are too attached to certain principles or settings. When this kind of dream comes after the death of a loved one, it means you are starting to recover from pain and to accept your feelings of anger, depression, fear, or even abandonment.

If you leave something unpleasant, you will get good economic news. When you leave someone you value, the times ahead will be difficult.

If you are the one abandoned, reconciliation will arrive soon.