STORY ELEMENTS AS SYMBOLS

If one looks at the core elements of the series as symbols, a theory using those symbols be created to make some sense of the ending.  The main elements of the LOST story were the island, Flight 815, rescue, time travel and death. Let us examine the symbolic meaning of each element.

Island symbolic meaning:

Psychological meaning of an island can be summarized as follows:

You may have a craving for solitude if you dream a desert island. You may be surrounded by too many problems and need to make a little space for yourself.  The sea often symbolizes the unconscious mind so your desire to remain on an island may suggest a wish to cling to the conscious ego instead of venturing into these unexplored parts of yourself.

The sea is also a mother symbol and can, according to Freudian psychology, symbolize your relations with your mother. If the island is engulfed by the sea this can represent the fear of being overwhelmed by too strong a mother-attachment or by unconscious forces that are out of your control.

Mystical or spiritual meaning of an island dream is that to dream about being marooned on an island is an augury of having many friends. Ancient dream oracles saw this as the opposite of separation, over self-dependence and isolation.

Airplane symbolic meaning:

Being an in airplane may show you rising above your troubles. It is a symbol of transcendence and may be a release for material difficulty. The sky is the symbol for expanded consciousness or higher self. An airplane dream expresses your desire for greater awareness or spiritual knowledge. An air journey may indicate a new departure in your life. Freudians believe the airplane is a phallic symbol for virtue. So one with lofty ambitions may want those to progress quickly. A dream of airplane crashing shows that you are over ambitious and have set your sights too high, materially or emotionally, and may have too much doubt to reach your set goals.

Mystics think airplanes indicate that money is on its way. If you are a pilot, you will succeed in a business venture. If the plane crashes, it will fail.

Rescue meaning:

Rescuing someone in the spiritual sense is saving someone who is less fortunate than we are, whether that is through compassion or otherwise. Spiritual rescue is a technique where the souls of the departed are turned towards the Light – direct knowledge – and helped to move on.

From a psychological or emotional perspective, when we have put others in danger, we are required to rescue them in dreams. We are then able to show a degree of nobility and courage that engenders a feel-good factor and allows us to have the capability to reach for the best within ourselves.  Dreams of rescue signifies sudden success in overcoming a previously sticky obstacle.

Time Travel symbolic meaning:

If you wake up with strong emotions then a dream will usually just be noting this new emotion. A dreamer was thinking about the past and it seems certain that his time machine represented their reminiscences as they travelled back in time to their own childhood.

Whispers meaning:

To dream that you hear a whisper, suggests that someone you know is not good.

To dream that you whisper, predicts that you are to act unfairly in the workplace.

To dream of a whisper, indicates that you are being a victim of fraud or conspiracy.

Dreams of death symbolize many different things.

If the dreamer died in a dream, the dreamer awoken quickly grasping for breath. They were shaken up and they needed to take a moment to get their bearings back. They needed to make sure they were still alive and had woken back up into waking reality. The images or feelings lingered through out the day and the dreamer felt a energetic weight containing space within their thoughts.

If a dreamer witnessed or was involved with the death of someone else the dreamer more often then not awoke feeling sad or upset with what just took place. The dream of death feels too real and the dreamer is left, upon waking, wondering if they were actually part of the murder. Witnessing death within in a dream is a slightly different feeling then being the murderer.

Dreams of dying, being dead, witnessing or killing someone else are intense dreams that are often sending an important message to you about you. It more often then not is referring to one of the following; an aspect you that is dying or needs to go, change needs to take place in some aspect in your life, jealousy or envy you may feel towards another person, or fears you may have surrounding death. Every once in a while a dreamer may have a premonition of death (either a loved one, someone they know, or their animal) but never take this as the first sign of a death dream (unless you have that knowing feeling surrounding the death dream).

If the death is you it may represent the death of an old way of thinking (or acting); or the death of an aspect of your Self that needed to die in order for you to move forward. It is suggested that rather then fearing the death that took place in your dream, embrace what was and let go of it. If you are having a hard time accepting the face that this aspect of you has died, create a special ceremony and honor what was. Light a candle and burn a piece of paper in which you have written this old way or aspect, let the paper light on fire until it no longer exists, say a blessings or prayer to what was. By letting go in waking life, as your unconscious was letting go in dream time, you are freeing up energy and space to invite in and embrace what is new.

Correlation to LOST.

When reading the above symbolic definitions of the core symbols of the show, we find key words used during the program. In the end, we were told that the main characters had to be awakened in order to move on. In the symbolism of dreams of death, that is what happens to a person. If the dreamer died in a dream, the dreamer awoken quickly grasping for breath. They were shaken up and they needed to take a moment to get their bearings back. It is suggested that rather then fearing the death that took place in your dream, embrace what was and let go of it in both waking and unconscious time in order to embrace something new. In the end, that "something new" was moving on in the after life.

The island both houses the fears of an individual clinging to stubborn conscious ego beliefs and the dream of having many friends to share the unexplored parts of oneself.

Flight 815 represented transcendence and a release for material difficulty. The sky is the symbol for expanded consciousness or higher self, a  desire for greater awareness or spiritual knowledge.

Time travel represented the characters flashing back to their childhoods, and gather those memories as the island events mirrored their faults during their lifetimes.

The whispers and mental issues doing their island time could show that their conscious defense mechanisms was trying to tell their subconscious dream state that the things around them were unreal, no good, a conspiracy of frauds in order for them to change - - - something the characters deep down did not want to do.

Finally, when one puts others in danger, it is important to summon the courage to rescue them. But that same courage is also important if the person in danger is one's self. Rescue allows a person to have the capability to reach for the best within themselves in order to conquer what is holding them back and to move on.

The island adventure was a subconscious attempt of lost souls to get rid characters of their regrets accumulated their lifetimes in order for them to accept their deaths, awaken in purgatory, and move on with those who helped them along in their dream journey to personal enlightenment. Whether the souls in purgatory dreamed their island time or were diverted to another spiritual world is immaterial. The whole series could be seen as a large subconscious dream created by spirits who needed to come to terms with deep open issues in their past lives.