Have you dreamed in the other gender?

[Shadesofire]

Hey David


hehehe oh boy does my consiousness ever shift! I'd have to say it shifts into different things all the time, perspective, reality, dream, persona and energy. I particularly have trance shifts where everything is relating all at once, waking world and dream time and it can take me a while before I can come back to feeling like a normal state - like I must be channeling? I don't know what it is yet, it's a shift I can't really help, it happens. Many times when I am coming into new openings of concepts and understanding and visualization. My biggest problems have been getting so into a mode I can't escape it and I've only recently in years been able to tell the difference between myself and empathic of someone else.

urm, but yes, I can 'be' the male within me. I have way too many things I could go into here with this.

I'd make a great introspector if anyone ever wanted me with a question. Saying that makes me feel like an 8ball LOL! I think I'd make a perfectly good 8ball, I don't see why not


I'll go check the link ... if there isn't a tarot deck of the Hindu dieties around I bet I could draw that. I really like the whole thing about them. It all started with Ganesh.

 

[Shadesofire]

oh, no I haven't seen Andromeda. I don't really watch that much tv I was just very attracted to Farscape.

Your experience is a wonderful story, I'd like to add the link to my own pages I'm still working on in Many Things, the link to it is in my shoebox below my FS Tarot.

I've gone through that as well. I was domunantly masculine until I started gathering the same things you did from my guidance about the femunine. I realized I was supressing my femunine side into oblivion and wasn't developing this very important part of myself. I knew and was trying to work on things but didn't really gather the full concept of what I meant until I encountered a fictional character - Chiana on Farscape. Strange, wonderful and yet terrible all at the same time. When this feral faerie spark started pouncing around on my tv I really fell in love - with her - with myself in her - unhidden like that. It made me feel like I could be unhidden too.

If I can't say this around here please let me know and I'll edit this out.

Some of my working with developing my femunine has been sexual, changing my fantasies from abuse and domunation to role switching constructivley. It's still fantasizing bondage but willing and trading and trust, like a real relationship with respect and I think from there I'm able to continue to grow into something wonderful, open, giving and dynamic. I want to heal my own wounds of abuse bad enough to let anything go and face any shadow. Before I ever saw Chiana, I didn't know how to - express exctasy. Sometimes I need an example like that than just words and she could do that - show me in sigh and movement what that feeling is. Wonderfull, wonderfull, delicate and sensual. In a tomboy.

 

[Sophie-David]

Hi Shadesofire

I don't want to go too far off topic here but yes, I know that it is quite common for women to lose touch with their feminine energy, although its not nearly as typical or as extreme as it is in men. Growing up in a patriarchal society will do that. I Googled Chiana and I can certainly relate to what you are saying. Having worked on raising the feminine for some time, lately my dream work has focused on an internalization of Aragorn from Lord of the Rings to balance back into masculine energy.

BTW, I lost my Internet connection earlier, but I just wanted to add that the Roots of Asia Tarot and Tarot du Roy Nissanka are on my wish list. They aren't quite what I had in mind for an Indian deck, but I think I would enjoy them.

I wasn't quite clear if you currently have a website, but if so you could add it to your profile, or PM to me if you would like. Anyway, back to topic!

Blessings - David

 

[Sophie-David]

Many Thanks!

I want to express my thanks for all the helpful response to this thread - as usual the ATF has been very supportive! As a point of interest, I'll just mention that I also asked the same question at the Joseph Campbell Foundation Forums. Surprisingly enough that meeting place seems very left-brained, with a large majority of male participants. It has been over a month now, and there has been zero response! Silence can also be very eloquent, and in its own way just as useful in providing information.

 

[TenOfSwords]

Very interesting reading through the thread to see such plasticity (great word *lol*) in people's dream identity.

It's interesting because I know that I've always had a very strong sense of identity, of being me and of my sexuality, in waking consciousness, so thinking about the gender-in-dreams issue made me realise that I've never had a dream (at least not that I remember) where I was anyone but myself. Might be relevant in that context that I'm heterosexual.

It's just never been an issue at all, which seems interresting in light off this thread, so thanks for the thought provoking.

 

[Sophie-David]

Hi TenOfSwords

I don't think we've chatted before - welcome to the forums!

Personally I don't think sexual orientation has too much to do with this phenomenon. For example, being gay does not usually equate to feeling that you are a woman or want to be one. And those who are transgendered, a much smaller minority, would generally not feel comfortable at all in identifying with the gender in which circumstance had at first characterized them. In any event, most clinicians suggest that sexual orientation occurs within a spectrum of values, rather than being a pure polarity.

The poll figures are themselves of limited value, but the narratives, as you suggest, are very thought provoking. But I do see a trend, especially when the non-results from the Joseph Campbell site are taken into account, that women are much more likely to dream in the other gender than are men. It is a scientific fact that the corpus collusum, the neuronal fibres connecting the left and right brains, are from 10 to 33 percent more developed in women than in men. This higher potential for bilateral processing may correlate with the experience of dreaming in the other gender, but that is pretty speculative.

Our Legend Study Group had an interesting discussion of the male and female minds here: Legend: The Arthurian Tarot - The Emperor.

Cheers - David

 

[TenOfSwords]

Hi S-D thanks for the welcome.

Regarding the sexual orientation, I was thinking about the cultural pressure most (in reality all) people feel to be their "biological" gender, before potentially discovering or developing or expressing (depending on the view on the origin of homosexuality) their adult sexuality and I was linking it to how "static" your sense of identity is, meaning that if you are homosexual by nature, you would feel a pressure from your surroundings to have another gender than you really have and that may loosen your sense of a static identity and in turn make it easier to "change identity" while dreaming. Hope it makes sense what I'm getting at, lol. This is why I commented on me being heterosexual.

I think that the speculation about the effect of the higher bilateral integration of the female brain (you don't happen to know what the variation within each gender is? I'm curious about that) is pretty interesting in that relation because it would make sense in a way that a more "wide" consciousness allowed for more movement of the identity feeling than the more "narrow" male consciousness.

If you include the male tendency to be less integrated bilaterally as a genetic trait and view homosexuality as also having some genetic component, along with the dream-gender issue, then it suddenly becomes interesting to link the probability of identity change in dreams to the "solidity" of sexual preference in males and it makes perfect sense that I don't change identity at all in my dreams and that I'm a heterosexual male...

I do sound terribly male writing like that don't I?

Sorry for the rambling, guess I like to speculate. lol

I'll definately take a look at the link, it's an interesting subject.

 

[lynn]

iam a woman, i have dreamed i was a man, a policeman shooting the bad guys.fighting and kicking there butts. lynn

 

[rachelcat]

I am a (hetero) woman. I have dreamed I was male at two specific times in my life.

When I was young, I always dreamed I was a boy. I also identified more with boys in children's literature. I think I was avoiding gender/sex issues and was identifying myself as a "generic" kid . . .

When I was first married (first having lots of sex), I often dreamed I was a man having sex with a woman (very graphic). I thought it was really interesting and cool, but when I told him about it, my husband was kind of turned off by it . . .

 

[Moonchild1721]

I can't remember ever dreaming from the point of view of a man. That would be an interesting dream though!
Samantha