Birth

(2) Just possibly it is your own birth you are dreaming about.

If so, it might mean, especially if you are depressed, that you are asking why you were bom. But don’t miss the opportunity to relive your dream and note the emotions - positive or negative - associated with the birth. By ‘reliving your dream’ I mean closing your eyes and taking yourself all the way through the dream again.

‘... the act of birth is the first experience of anxiety and therefore source and model of the affect of anxiety (Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams). This idea of birth as the prototype of all anxiety, which all later feelings of anguish revive and reinforce, was developed by Otto Rank (Trauma of Birth), who singled out the birth trauma as the decisive psychological event and the ultimate origin of all neuroses. So, it may be worth asking yourself if the birth image in your dream could possibly be associated with an anxiety, either conscious or repressed. For example, it might be that such an anxiety-associated birth image is telling you to sort out some unfinished business with your mother - by which I mean what your mother symbolized for you as a child or young adolescent, as well as your real relationship with your mother as she actually is or was. (Even when dead your mother may live on in your psyche, perhaps preventing you from being your own person. In such cases some people find it helpful to ask their unconscious to let them meet their deceased mother in dreams, where they can engage in dialogue with her.)

(3) For Jung, birth, life, death and rebirth all function as symbols of aspects of what he calls the ‘individuation’ process, which is the development of the human psyche to full maturation, wholeness and harmony. In Jungian terms, therefore, birth may symbolize the beginning - actual or potential - of a new phase in your personal development.

If you feel some such intimation of a possible new phase in your life (inner or outer - though for Jung the stress is on the inner), you would be well advised to work seriously and purposefully towards its realization, even if this means giving up something: the death of something - an old negative attitude, old anxieties or guilt-feelings, for example - is nearly always a precondition of new life.

the unconscious and rise again renewed or transformed. Only thus can one grow inwardly, in wisdom and strength and wholeness (see also Sun).

Understood in this way, the birth image may still have connections with mother or mother image (as in (2) above): the ocean commonly symbolizes mother, or simply the feminine.

If you are male, the feminine symbolism may refer to either your mother or your anima, the feminine side of vour personality (for anima, see Brother / Sister, section (4)).

(5) Giving birth in a dream may symbolize the (sometimes painful) process of bringing something new into your life, fashioning a new lifestyle for yourself, achieving a greater degree of maturity, or releasing and expressing in an appropriately creative way some psychic function hitherto repressed.

See also Baby, Child.

• Positive: To dream of giving birth means that the season of preparation that you have been in has come to an end and that you are now ready to walk in what God conceived in you.

• If you have a ministry calling and dreamed previously that you were pregnant and then later dream that you are giving birth, this means that your season of training for that call is coming to an end.

• Galatians 4:19 My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you, • If you dream that you give birth and it is painless, this is positive and means that whatever it is that God is giving you right now, you will enter into it easily.

• If you dream that the labor is difficult, this means that whatever new thing that is coming into your life - you will need to work at it.

• To dream that you did not know you were pregnant, but now are suddenly giving birth, also has a good interpretation.

• It means that although you did not know it, the Lord had been doing a work in you behind the scenes and now you are ready to walk into it. Expect something new to open up in your life at the Lord’s hand.

Negative: To dream that you give birth of a baby that is deformed is negative. This also goes for giving birth to anything that is unclean or not human.

• This means that you have conceived something in your heart that is not of the Lord and has its roots in sin.

• Psalms 7:14 Behold, he is in labour with iniquity, and has conceived mischief, and given birth to falsehood.

• James 1:15 Then when lust has conceived, it bears sin: and sin, when it is finished, bears death.

• To dream of giving birth prematurely and the baby dies is also negative. This means that you ran ahead of the Lord and did not wait until you had reached maturity.

See also: Baby, Child, Pregnant.

A more direct interpretation of this dream may mean that you are nervous about having a child or you are impatient for this to happen.

To dream that you are giving birth to a non-human creature indicates that you have great concerns regarding your child’s well-being. You are being extremely paranoid that your child will be born with serious disabilities.

If you are not pregnant, then this could symbolize anxieties you hold regarding a task or obligation that you are in charge of. You wish to grow to your full potential and be able to defeat any obstacles that may get in your way. In particular, if you dream that you are giving birth to a monster, it indicates that you are not yet ready to communicate your feelings because you feel that others will not consent.

To dream that the mother dies during birth symbolizes a drastic change or alteration.

The dream suggests that you are discarding an old attitude or belief and adopting a new one. This could be a major decision that will greatly affect your future.