Prison break

[Jones1981]

I had a dream this morning that I went to prison. Initially I escaped on the way to prison, but was caught quickly one state over. Taken to prison, then shared a cell with a friend. Waited for my opportunity for months and then escaped again, only to be caught in the same place where I was caught the first time. I was being tracked by all the security cameras everywhere. What was strange was the passage of time while in prison waiting to escape. Lived out weeks and months. I don't know why I was there in the first place, but I only had a short sentence of like 6 months. I remember hating all these people cheering that they caught me when none of these people knew me or had any idea what I had been through. I also remember that once I escaped I had no plan of where to go and had a hard time deciding between North or South .
I'm still upset 20 minutes after waking up. Can anyone shed some light on this for me ?

 

[unclesirbobbyrobson]

Dreams capture your thoughts and emotions in the here and now. Your dream could have a simple meaning such as "I have been very depressed and bored at work. I wait for the time to pass and so I can escape". Dreams about prisons can often be linked to responsibilities which you feel trapped by. In this case you are aware of the wish to ESCAPE but think of something that you know can escape but which that feeling of being trapped returns.
Try this page as it deals with prisons in dreams PRISONS IN DREAMS

 

[oliverwedgwood]

Thanks for sharing your dream!
Do you share your feelings openly, or tend to keep your feelings to yourself? Prisons show us that we keep our heart behind bars so that others cannot get close to us. If people cannot get close they cannot hurt your feelings. Over time you can become so good at suppressing feelings that you do not even acknowledge them to yourself.
So your dream is asking you to be more open with your feelings. I used to have lots of prison dreams until I worked on this aspect over time, and then they stopped.
Does this resonate in any way?

P.S. You're best going South, which symbolises moving into the heart - into your feelings.

 

[Lyn Holley]

I had a dream this morning that I went to prison. Initially I escaped on the way to prison, but was caught quickly one state over. Taken to prison, then shared a cell with a friend. Waited for my opportunity for months and then escaped again, only to be caught in the same place where I was caught the first time. I was being tracked by all the security cameras everywhere. What was strange was the passage of time while in prison waiting to escape. Lived out weeks and months. I don't know why I was there in the first place, but I only had a short sentence of like 6 months. I remember hating all these people cheering that they caught me when none of these people knew me or had any idea what I had been through. I also remember that once I escaped I had no plan of where to go and had a hard time deciding between North or South .
I'm still upset 20 minutes after waking up. Can anyone shed some light on this for me ?

Something is holding you bound. It might be a living situation, or an inner struggle. Do some journaling about what it might be that is holding you back.

 

[Lyn Holley]

Dreams capture your thoughts and emotions in the here and now. Your dream could have a simple meaning such as "I have been very depressed and bored at work. I wait for the time to pass and so I can escape". Dreams about prisons can often be linked to responsibilities which you feel trapped by. In this case you are aware of the wish to ESCAPE but think of something that you know can escape but which that feeling of being trapped returns.
Try this page as it deals with prisons in dreams PRISONS IN DREAMS

I am just curious. Where do you get your dream information?

 

[unclesirbobbyrobson]

I just learnt how to understand dreams by building up my knowledge. I first became interested in dreams after getting a precognitive dream about the death of Princess Diana, of the British royal family. It had so many connections that I became convinced that dreams have a psychic connection. You can read that dream here Psychic dream of princess diana

Since then I have become more interested in day to day dreams which just represent your thoughts. I am especially interested in dreams when you have been only thinking about one thing. I think that you can guess that any dreams you will get in such circumstances will be about that one thing. I have built up my knowledge of dreams by collecting together dreams of this type. Then you can study dreams which are about a particular topic( a dream symbol) such as prisons. So you can build up a dream dictionary based on real background knowledge. Altogether I have about 1300 dreams which I believe linked to particular background information that the dreamer has provided. So then you have a dream dictionary based upon real dreams. I only include dreams in my collection if I am convinced that they link to the background information provided. If people give background info it will usually link because most dreams link to the types of thoughts you might tell a best friend or write down in a diary.

I strongly believe that dreams link to the here and now. They can link to personality issues but even those dreams represent your thoughts about personality issues within the context of the present. I just think that dreams represent your thoughts - it is just a matter of working out the symbolism.

 

[Lyn Holley]

I just learnt how to understand dreams by building up my knowledge. I first became interested in dreams after getting a precognitive dream about the death of Princess Diana, of the British royal family. It had so many connections that I became convinced that dreams have a psychic connection. You can read that dream here Psychic dream of princess diana

Since then I have become more interested in day to day dreams which just represent your thoughts. I am especially interested in dreams when you have been only thinking about one thing. I think that you can guess that any dreams you will get in such circumstances will be about that one thing. I have built up my knowledge of dreams by collecting together dreams of this type. Then you can study dreams which are about a particular topic( a dream symbol) such as prisons. So you can build up a dream dictionary based on real background knowledge. Altogether I have about 1300 dreams which I believe linked to particular background information that the dreamer has provided. So then you have a dream dictionary based upon real dreams. I only include dreams in my collection if I am convinced that they link to the background information provided. If people give background info it will usually link because most dreams link to the types of thoughts you might tell a best friend or write down in a diary.

I strongly believe that dreams link to the here and now. They can link to personality issues but even those dreams represent your thoughts about personality issues within the context of the present. I just think that dreams represent your thoughts - it is just a matter of working out the symbolism.

I ask because I so often disagree with what you are saying. I have been studying dreams and major teachers for 25 years. Dreams may occasionally be for the here and now. Often, the dream is seeking to digest old memories or show us our shadows. And you state that dreams come from conscious thought. If that were true, we wouldn't need dreams. All these things would be in our conscious thoughts. Your very dream about Diana shows this isn't true. This dream came from, the collective unconscious. Also, symbols are of vital important. The dream master within chose those symbols for a reason. We can really impoverish dreams if we dissect them with our egos. They are so much bigger, stranger, and more meaningful than that.

 

[unclesirbobbyrobson]

I ask because I so often disagree with what you are saying. I have been studying dreams and major teachers for 25 years. Dreams may occasionally be for the here and now. Often, the dream is seeking to digest old memories or show us our shadows. And you state that dreams come from conscious thought. If that were true, we wouldn't need dreams. All these things would be in our conscious thoughts. Your very dream about Diana shows this isn't true. This dream came from, the collective unconscious. Also, symbols are of vital important. The dream master within chose those symbols for a reason. We can really impoverish dreams if we dissect them with our egos. They are so much bigger, stranger, and more meaningful than that.

I know I am going against the grain when I say that dreams link to conscious rather than unconscious feelings. But I just believe that the term unconscious is not very helpful. It suggests that there is something deeply mysterious about dreams. I believe that dreams represent our thoughts but the are hidden in a language which is not easy to understand. But that is how the mind stores information. It uses a symbol like "prison" where the waking mind might use the word "trapped". It features a "rape" when in real life it is expressing words such as "humiliation" or "powerless".

Most dreams link to the here and now as we use sleep to transfer memories from short term into long term memory banks. Once the short term memory banks are cleared we feel fresh to start a new day. If dreams link to the mind and our thoughts then it seems logical that we should think about mundane and seemingly trivial subjects such as a program on TV that had a big impact on us.

I believe that understanding dreams is not important. We do not have to understand the inner workings of a TV to appreciate and enjoy a TV program. During sleep and dreams our memory banks are turned off. That is why we do not remember dreams and if we do they are soon forgotten. But the message within them is communicated to our waking mind. Yet we still wake up saying we had the strangest dream.

Yes dreams can work on a higher level. You use the term collective unconscious whereas I just use the word psychic. We are probably talking about something similar or even the same. Yet not every dream is psychic - most dreams are related to our emotions or logical thinking. I have had had many such dreams. They often get things wrong.

I just try to collect together dreams which have followed on from a night when we were thinking about just one thing. I remember one dream I had when I was writing a history book. I was only thinking about one thing that night. I got totally engrossed in the subject. I kept writing and rewriting the book until I felt I was getting it right. So I believed that any dream I got that night would be connected to that one topic. If dreams are about one thought and just one thought which is dominating your mind then it is merely a matter of understanding the symbolism. The dream I had that night was short and it took place on a golf course and then someone was stabbed. For ages I could not understand what the symbolism meant yet then it struck me - golf is a sport where you get "closer and closer" to a goal. So that was a symbol for my history writing that previous night. I got highly engrossed in the subject and each time I wrote and rewrote the story so that it got closer to the target. The stabbing was a symbol for delving deeply into a a topic.
So the dream seemed totally incomprehensible yet once understood it was linking directly to the subject that was dominating my mind.

 

[Lyn Holley]

I know I am going against the grain when I say that dreams link to conscious rather than unconscious feelings. But I just believe that the term unconscious is not very helpful. It suggests that there is something deeply mysterious about dreams. I believe that dreams represent our thoughts but the are hidden in a language which is not easy to understand. But that is how the mind stores information. It uses a symbol like "prison" where the waking mind might use the word "trapped". It features a "rape" when in real life it is expressing words such as "humiliation" or "powerless".

Most dreams link to the here and now as we use sleep to transfer memories from short term into long term memory banks. Once the short term memory banks are cleared we feel fresh to start a new day. If dreams link to the mind and our thoughts then it seems logical that we should think about mundane and seemingly trivial subjects such as a program on TV that had a big impact on us.

I believe that understanding dreams is not important. We do not have to understand the inner workings of a TV to appreciate and enjoy a TV program. During sleep and dreams our memory banks are turned off. That is why we do not remember dreams and if we do they are soon forgotten. But the message within them is communicated to our waking mind. Yet we still wake up saying we had the strangest dream.

Yes dreams can work on a higher level. You use the term collective unconscious whereas I just use the word psychic. We are probably talking about something similar or even the same. Yet not every dream is psychic - most dreams are related to our emotions or logical thinking. I have had had many such dreams. They often get things wrong.

I just try to collect together dreams which have followed on from a night when we were thinking about just one thing. I remember one dream I had when I was writing a history book. I was only thinking about one thing that night. I got totally engrossed in the subject. I kept writing and rewriting the book until I felt I was getting it right. So I believed that any dream I got that night would be connected to that one topic. If dreams are about one thought and just one thought which is dominating your mind then it is merely a matter of understanding the symbolism. The dream I had that night was short and it took place on a golf course and then someone was stabbed. For ages I could not understand what the symbolism meant yet then it struck me - golf is a sport where you get "closer and closer" to a goal. So that was a symbol for my history writing that previous night. I got highly engrossed in the subject and each time I wrote and rewrote the story so that it got closer to the target. The stabbing was a symbol for delving deeply into a a topic.
So the dream seemed totally incomprehensible yet once understood it was linking directly to the subject that was dominating my mind.

We will agree to disagree. I could never accept such a mechanistic framework for dreams. I follow the work of Carl Jung, Edinger, Comforti, Marie Von Franz, and others. In the dream about the stabbing your ego just imposed a meaning that you liked on a dream that may have meant something else entirely. I just worry that you speak with such confidence to others about your theory of dreams. To me, it impoverishes dreams. That being said, that's enough debate.

 

[Al1ce]

Prison to me refers to feeling stuck or trapped in a situation in waking life, dreams are always very symbolic and rich, so I wouldn't over think this, maybe just analyse your life, what obstacles could be blocking me from moving forward? I had some great advice from a Buddha once he said “one must heal the outside before the inner” this for me referred to the relationship I was in at the time, and I had a similar dream but it wasn’t a prison, more like a tower I was trying to escape from, my life changed so much for the better, when I got out of my relationship, I’m not saying yours is related in the same way, but I do see this as a blockage, something is restricting you and only you can discover what this block is and remove it to clear the path to your freedom and authenticity.