Failure to rationalise death and suffering?

[Ed2]

Hi all, I have joined this forum as I have had a couple of dreams lately that I have been unable to accurately find interpretations for. I will give some background information about myself and the nature of the dreams. I am wondering whether these dreams are borne from me failing to rationalise frequent death and suffering to which I am exposed. My name is Ed, I am 23 years old and I reside in the West Midlands, England. I am a registered Paramedic and I started a new position working in a rural community on my own in a rapid response car. Previously at work, for the first 3 years of my career I worked on a double crewed ambulance and was always with another member of staff. After all jobs we would naturally debrief and talk things through. This would always afford me the opportunity to rationalise some of the death and suffering we see 10 times a day. After all, working in health care you rarely come across folk who aren't ill! Another major life style change is I've moved in to a rural community. I have found myself going to huge extremes to feel fulfilled. Recently I jetted off last minute to Australia for 3 weeks alone to have some excitement. Before that I flew to Turkey for a week alone, which I booked the day before. I feel my new for spontaneous adventures could either be worry that I'm 23 and in a career where I rarely get to socialise with anyone and spend 48 hours a week sat in a small office alone with no human contact other than 2-3 patients daily. The other thing of note is whilst in Australia I saw a very close friend. She moved to Australia 10 months ago backpacking. She's intending to travel the world. I always wanted to do this and unfortunately this isn't possible for me now due to my career. I felt very empty and had serious conscious reflective thoughts on my life decisions and felt, for the first time, regret of how I've chosen to live my life.... This was a few days before my first dream. So could it be that these dreams are a reflection that I am not coping with the deaths I have seen recently? Or could it be weird dreams because I resent myself for getting stuck in a black hole at 23 years old where my routine is get up, go to work, come home and eat, then sleep and repeat? Dream number 1: I have an old childhood friend, Toby. Our mothers went to all maternal appointments together, went in to hospital together, his mother was present at my birth and 4 days later he was born. Since then we were best friends up until the age of 11 at secondary school. I went a bit cold towards him then as he wasn't as fun as other people but we still had the same friendship group and saw each other every day 5 days a week. At 16, he went to another college and we lost contact. Now 7 years later, having had no conscious thoughts about him before the dream, I did have a dream, one which was the most vivid I have ever had. He died. That was a detail my dream skipped past. I didn't dream about his death, only his funeral. I remember that the funeral was at a typically English church. Only, atypically to the English traditions, there was an open casket. This is something that we see in American movies but never before have I heard of an open casket in the UK. Now, after the funeral, which began normally and as expected, it all turned very weird. People took it in turns to take his dead body from the coffin and to hold him up and ballroom dance with him around the alter in the church?! This went on in the dream for what seemed a very extended time. I was very frustrated and angry. I was trying quietly to stop it and protesting that it was very disrespectful and that he wouldn't want that to be happening. Nobody would listen and I felt powerless. This made me think of two things the next day. One was a strong feeling I would be called out to him through my role as a paramedic, and a strong feeling he was going to have one of his epileptic fits. This was a conscious worry for a few hours and recurred the next day. This was about 10 days ago. The other thoughts I couldn't get rid of was of a patient I had around 4 weeks before. It was a few days before I flew to Australia. It was an elderly lady, 86 years old and a retired Doctor. She had spent 86 years on this earth but when I arrived at the Nursing home she was alone in a single bed, in a small room, immobile and that was what her life had become. It soon became apparent she was dying. And rapidly. I asked for an ambulance crew as the highest priority back up to get her to hospital. In the meantime I sat her up, gave her oxygen, assessed and treated her. There wasn't anything I could do and she died before the crew arrived. Alone. Confused. Frightened. In my conscious mind I went to Australia and pushed it to the back. I never took the role to rationalise it and working alone I didn't have opportunity to debrief with my colleagues. That week I also sat either a terminal cancer patient and her husband of 50 years as she died. My role was to make her death more comfortable. Neither are nice situations as I'm sure you will appreciate. Dream number 2: I dreamt last night that I was eating a tuna sandwich. The first mouth full seemed fine. Then when I tore a little bit off to eat more, a maggot fell out only the floor. I inspected this piece of sandwich and ate it. Then I looked at the remaining piece of sandwich and it was literally saturated with hundred of maggots. The very weird thing about this, and what really confuses me, is that the maggots weren't normal maggots. They had legs like centipedes and animated smiling faces... But they were maggots otherwise identical to those I use for fishing. This woke me up and I found myself feeling repulsed. I'm consciously aware of some issues in my life, such as my regret I didn't travel and living a dormant lifestyle which is lonely. I'm worried that these dreams stem from something else. Something more sinister. And something, more worryingly, that I haven't recognised as an issue! One last thing, I'm not sure if it's relevant, but I remember the faces, environments and circumstances of every dead person I have seen - probably about 50 over 3 years! Thank you for any advice and interpretation!

[Ed2]

Sorry for the several grammatical errors - my iPhone has had a field day "autocorrecting" and changing words to different ones.

[Wakinyan]

Death of somebody is often a symbol of death of some part of ourselves. That you dream of a childhood friend at a time in your life when you feel you’ve gone down the wrong road and don’t know how to get out of it is typical. Since there are no progression of your psychic energy right now, no way to keep flowing with time, the energy turns the other direction; one could call it a regression of the psychic energy. It finds contents from the past that is relevant at this point in time. To contemplate one’s past and even picking up things from the past when the now isn’t working satisfactory is natural, if kept at a moderate level it can heal and help find a path forwards. So your unconscious has turned and picked up your childhood friend. He is a symbol of what you used to be, before you ended up here. You could contemplate who you were at the time, what your dreams were, were your energy was, and see if something is valuable to pick up now. You think that the boy (you) of your past is dead, but other parts of you do not accept that. Parts of your inner self is picking it up and dancing with it, almost to revive it. Dancing is an expression of energy in harmony. While “you” might think that that “inner boy” of yours belongs to the past, something inside of you doesn’t accept that, think otherwise, and tries to move it into life. That would perhaps be good. Not as a way of life, but for some time to reattach to that which you thought was lost because it may be valuable right now. There are times to drop things and times to pick it up, only to drop it again to move forward. If you wonder exactly what "part" of yourself the dream is discussing you could write down a little description of your childhood friend and things you come to think about when you contemplate your relationship with him -- it may become a piece that describes that part rather accurately. The second dream is about eating. To eat is to integrate. That which you are about to integrate is maggots. Read about maggots to find the meaning behind the symbol if you haven’t got associations to it that are personal – if you do that is probably more important. – Maggots transform, so transformation is needed. Maggots are also used in medical treatment, according to Wiki, so the transformation may have a healing quality to it. However, there are two things which makes it impossible to integrate at this point in time. (If it was, it wouldn't be depicted as something repulsive.) One is that that what you “need” is too alien to integrate right now. I suggest that because 1) the content is depicted as repulsive objects highly different from you. The boy in the first dream is closer to your ability to understand at this point in time, otherwise it wouldn’t be displayed as something close to your understanding and your experience. 2) The maggots are not ordinary maggots; they have legs and faces. When animals for instance are strange in the dream, the dream is unable to create an image which we “know” (a maggot is a known species), it must add things to the image. If I dream about a snake it may mean my instinctual self for instance, but if I dream about a snake with three eyes and two legs, it is not my instinctual self, but something else, something more, which the dream cannot display without adding to the picture; that is a hint that the content is very far from my ability to read it right now. -- So the content is too alien at this point in time, but may not be so in the near future. I would suggest that you keep down this path of yours, contemplating, perhaps expressing your thoughts and dreams, and most likely you come about a solution which makes the energy of yours flow forwards again. Judging from these dreams and the background information I’d say there is no need to be worried and certainly no need for any “resent”. You are going through a healthy reorientation, that's all. And your dreams are trying to help you. That's fascinating, isn't it?