The Dream Book of Self-Knowledge
- a painful, but very helpful transformation of being, since with grief and sorrow comes internalization and therefore anyone striving for a better existence should welcome sorrow with open arms and fully experience and feel it to find the painless truth beyond the grief and sorrow.
- the birth of the universe's life was painful and sorrowful, but only so that all creatures and all life is able to someday recognize the opposite – pleasure and bliss.
- sorrow and pain is not here so that we drown ourselves in sadness, despair and self-pity but so that we become more vigilant; without sorrow and pain, vigilance is not understood by people, especially if their life is easy, comfortable and pleasant.
- once we create dissonance in our own life with our normal way of living, we also have to bear the consequences of this ill-considered act and feel in dreams the pain and sorrow that, however, disappear in the proximity of flowing water or in water alone; the emotional nature of dream pain and psychological sorrow is therefore plainly obvious. The unconscious is alerting the dreamer to the need for catharsis*69 and for the discovery of warped emotional relations.
- pain and sorrow caused by a mysterious or veiled person: attempt at self-improvement has separated the so-called shadow from the dreamer's regular life. This shadow needs to be assimilated and not refused or even hated (see Shadow archetype).
- if the sorrow concerns the heart, we have in compassion the chance to discover a spiritual dimension; just as water helps to remove the pain from the body in a dream, so does compassion help to remove pain and sorrow from the heart.
