Universal Landscape: A process of creating socially acceptable states of being.
Dreaming Lens: Were you bathing or was someone else? What types of structures were involved? Were you in a private or public place? Who else was present if you were not alone? What parts of your body were you washing? What was the state of the water?
Personal Focus: Regular bathing is a relatively new phenomenon in modern Western culture. Many older civilizations had bathing as a regular part of day-to-day living, however, early Christianity discouraged the practice as a way to deal with the perceived sinfulness of the naked body.
The impulse to bathe connects with a desire to be socially acceptable. Human beings are the only animals on the planet that actively remove their natural scent. As civilization began to modernize, we found it desirable to smell more pleasant and the practice has stuck. In this way, the primary symbolic meaning for any kind of bathing connects to this desire to be clean and available for social interaction with others. This can connect to unconscious feelings of dirtiness that are both literal and metaphorical. In what ways and in which areas of your life are you feeling unclean and in need of purification?
The health-related advantage to being cleaner was an almost accidental result of the practice of regular bathing. As such, this offers a secondary shade of meaning for this symbol connected to safety and the precautions needed to stay clean in all of your affairs.
Finally, remember that anything that involves water in a dream is going to connect somehow to issues of emotions. Using water to bathe might point to a need or desire to immerse yourself into the realm of your feelings in order to cleanse yourself of the pain that life sometimes brings.
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