I died and went....???

[pirategirl00]

So I had this dream about 6 years ago and still remember almost everything that happened.
It started out with myself and my fiancee(at the time, now husband) driving in the car, except the seats were reversed, the driver (him) was on the left not the right. We were going down a busy street in Green Bay (which is where we were living at the time) and came to a stop at a red light. Our car was the first one stopped at the light, as we waited we talked a bit and as I looked across the intersection there was a truck with pipes on the top of it. A few seconds later I think someone hit the truck across from us and the pipes go flying across the intersection and impale me (only me, fiancee is fine). I look down and see it for a second, the all goes dark for a few moments.
Then I "wake up" somewhere else. It is kind of hard to describe, but was like a glen/field with a small cliff not far off that has a big, beautiful waterfall going over it. There is lots of long grass and flowers everywhere and a flower covered archway too. As I look around I see many animals that I had but passed away, my horse Roman was there, my cat Baby and many others were all over running around and playing. I looked farther and saw there was a giant standing on the waterfall with a large hammer, I think he was Thor. I also remember everything was pink, not like bright pink but a soft pink hue over everything. I felt so calm and happy and at peace there like I was protected and then I woke up.
I remember I felt very calm for a while after having this dream but I would love to know what it means. If anyone can help me decipher it I would be very grateful. Thank you. I will try to answer any questions as quickly as I can.

[Athanor]

Although I read your dream a few days ago, I hesitated to reply because dreams related to death are especially difficult and are very sensitive to deal with.

However, yesterday by chance on a highway, I passed a large truck loaded with pipes. I thought about this in connection with your dream, and realized that I had rarely, if ever, seen this type of cargo on this very busy six-lane roadway.

Although not at an intersection, I took this incident to be a small nudge and “meaningful coincidence” encouraging me to answer your post (If you’d like to learn more about “meaningful coincidences”, you could read “There Are No Accidents” by Robert Hopcke).

That doesn’t mean that the ideas below are valid in your personal circumstances, but maybe they can be helpful in some way to further explore this important dream.

For example, the well-known psychiatrist C.G. Jung writes in “The Practical Use of Dream Analysis:

“It is notorious that one often dreams of one’s own death, but that is of no serious matter. When it really is a question of death, the dream speaks another language”.

So if we take your dream of six years ago as being symbolical of the “death” of some kind of attitude or outlook etc., it looks like you were at some kind of “crossroads” (intersection) where a “tragic end” could take place instead of continuing forward.

Without knowing anything about you or your husband, the fiancé in the car, it’s hard to say what he symbolizes, but a clue appears in that he is driving the car while sitting on the right side, apparently from the point of view being seated inside the car.

The “right” side in dreams often relates to outer world realities.

For example, your attitude toward your fiancé/husband could be one of “dependence”, a willingness to turn over to him the “direction” of your own life directly and/or indirectly since a car symbolizes a mix of the dreamer’s body along with physical energy and their various interests and longings etc.

Since you are not shown as driving the car and controlling where it goes, from the dream’s point of view, this could somehow lead to a “tragedy”, that is, your “death”.

From a psychological point of view, the image of being dead usually represents essentially being “totally unconscious” and therefore unaware of “what’s going on” and of course, not taking part in “directing” things.

So the dream could be showing the result of this, that is, entering the “after world” or “heaven” which psychologically speaking would usually symbolize being mostly unconscious of the need to develop certain important potentials in your personality.

Your pets are “dead”, perhaps symbolizing the fact that your healthy instinctive reactions aren’t “alive” enough and able to guide you in everyday life.

The pink hazy color might represent a preference for keeping the feeling atmosphere around you very quiet and pleasant with no upsetting “outbursts” related to, for instance, self-assertion in any real way.

In this approach to your dream, Thor and his hammer would symbolize the need for you to leave “heaven” by following the god’s call of thunder toward developing more so-called “masculine” aspects of your personality such as, for instance, focus, critical thinking and assertiveness.

These can act like a hammer to reduce our natural fear of the many chaotic aspects of life as long as use of the “hammer” doesn’t become too aggressive over time.

In the quote above, C.G. Jung mentioned that dreams use “another language” when speaking of death.

In your dream, there might be a hint of this in the image of the pipes which, when joined together in a circuit, could echo the circulatory system, and such “mechanical” images are sometimes the way that dreams point to medical problems and eventual physical death.

The idea could be that, if you happen to be a generally quiet and non-assertive person, unseen tensions might tend to build up over time and affect your circulatory system, including the heart unless you were able to gradually reduce such a possibility.

However, this is just a very general guess as to the meaning of this image and shouldn’t be taken as an accurate interpretation of it.

But if any of these ideas in general seem to make sense in your own circumstances, it might be useful, for example, to hone your assertiveness skills by reading such books as “Asserting Yourself” by Bower and Bower, or “Your Perfect Right” by Alberti and Eammons.

And if by chance you are basically a quiet, inward looking person and feel that this is “the real you”, the book “The Introvert Advantage: How to Thrive in an Extrovert World” by Marti Olsen Laney, Psy.D. could be very helpful in your situation.

You may also like the short but valuable book “Personality Types” by Daryl Sharp because it would help to improve how to orientate yourself amidst the various types of people met with in day-to-day life.

These books can easily be found on a site like Amazon for example.

As mentioned, dreams about death are very hard to decipher, but I hope that the overall approach to your dream above can be helpful in some way.