(1) Who is being buried? If it is someone close to you - for example, your partner - then some unconscious, buried resentment towards that person may be expressing itself. Don’t be alarmed by the discovery that your emotions towards the person are ambivalent: emotions often oscillate between opposite poles. Just ask yourself what it is you resent.
If it is something actually in the person, have it out with him or her. But is it something you have projected on to that person - some resentment against life in general, that has perhaps been with you since childhood? (For projection)
(2) Is it a (recurrent) dream of the actual burial of a real-life person - mother or father, perhaps? If so, you probably need to clear your emotional system of any troublesome feelings attached to that person - guilt, hatred, or whatever.
It is all right for the dead to live on inside you; but don’t let them disturb your peace.
If you love the person, there is no problem.
If you hate the person, learn to forgive: he or she probably did the best he or she could.
If the feeling is guilt, forgive yourself. Why expect the impossible?
(3) Is it you who are being buried in the dream? This may be a symbolic expression of a fear of being overwhelmed by unconscious forces.
If so, the first step should be to get (better) acquainted with any repressed emotions that are threatening - or seem to be threatening - to take control of you. This done, the next step would be to establish control over them. But this does not mean simply burying them again.
You may wish to trace the emotions back to their origins, to the experience that first gave rise to them. It may be that an objective appraisal will rob the emotions of their menacing power. Should you feel unable to cope with the emotions, consult a psychotherapist or an understanding friend.
(4) If it is you who are being buried it may be that the tomb is a w omb. That is to say, the burial may symbolize a mother-attachment that is preventing you from achieving a proper independence and fulfilling your individual ‘destiny’.
(5) The burial may represent a need for a radical reconstruction - a death and resurrection - of the self. All creation involves destruction: in order to shape the clay into the desired form, the potter must first destroy its existing form. The same applies to personal reconstruction: the old self must die - sometimes painfully - if the new’ self is to be born.
- *
(6) Even if it is someone or something else that is being buried, that person or thing may symbolize some part of yourself that you have rejected and buried in your unconscious (for repression and suppression)