As in waking life, considerable emotional charge usually comes with the event of separation, of feeling left out or of feeling left behind in our dreams.  We are traveling with a group, and suddenly we find ourselves left behind and having to make our own way.  We are participating in a group activity with friends, and suddenly we are not included and no one seems to notice or care that we are there.  We are running away from danger with loved ones, and suddenly we have lost track of them or they have lost track of us.  We are together with our significant other, and suddenly she or he is gone, nowhere to be found, or worse yet, gone to be with someone else or to do something unbecoming of her or his spirit.  We feel everything from loss, sadness, helplessness, disorientation, abandonment, desperation and betrayal to frustration, offense, insult, injury, indignation, thirst for vengeance, and rage.

We can look at these moments of high emotion in our dreams—especially those of uncomfortable and distressing emotion—as indicators of the emotional spaces and places where our inner work is to be done. These are the indicators of the inner work we are in the process of assuming consciously.  These are the emotional spaces and places that, when the work is done, will be filled with the elevated emotions that support and sustain new ways of being with, loving, and honoring ourselves and others.

So what does it mean when we find ourselves separated, left out, or left behind in our dreams?

One of the potentially hardest things we will do in life is accept that walking our unique path is a solo act, regardless of how connected and healthily interdependent we may be.  The other hard thing we will do is accept that each person walks her or his own unique path, which is separate, different, and entirely discrete from ours, regardless of our positively loving presence.

Separation and feeling left out or left behind in our dreams are ways in which the unconscious supports us in this great and important work of surrender and acceptance.  In these dreams we are brought to the crossroads where we find ourselves inadvertently disengaged from our connection to and with others, left alone to face whatever it is we need to face.  We are invited to genuinely detach with love, to let go of any expectations and idealized outcomes, so we may fully accept everything exactly as it is in the present moment.

Caring-for-young-children roles aside, we tend to carry the conditioning as adults to assume responsibility for the welfare of other adults—particularly our loved ones; we tend to carry the conditioning to assume we have the right and obligation to control and influence their path, their choices, their life’s calling and purpose.  Even others will expect or convince us we should exert influence and control over them or another as a show of care—even when this is only bound to breed resentment and disappointment, among an array of unwanted effects.  We have been led to believe that to love is to control and influence—under the guise of help and support—and that the proof of our love will be reflected in how they bring about a predetermined, limited expected outcome in or for the other.  We begin to anticipate others will show their care in this way—even when this only makes the exchanges immediately or eventually feel forced, constricted, strained.  We unconsciously look for evidence of our value and relevance, and of the power of our love in whether another will respond to us with the results we expect.

On the other side of this cockeyed tale of love, we have been led to believe that unless another is well, we cannot be well, that if we love we must know and feel what is unhealed and unresolved in others, rather than know and feel our own embodied experience.  Founded on the belief that if we love, we must rescue, help, fix, cure, and save, we focus our attention on the condition of another, investing our energy and intention on improving them so we may feel better in our own skin.

Dreams of separation, of being left out or left behind come to remind us that this is not the way of love or of honoring the individual path at all.  These dreams of loss remind us that we are the heroine or hero of our own journey, regardless of our connections by blood, pledge, or devotion.  In that moment of loss, we are invited to become aware of our position, our resources, our agency, our truth, and our heart’s desire, all which reveal our one-and-only way from where we are to where we need to be, from where we were lost to where we find ourselves and can tap into the truest source of unconditional love and unwavering acceptance.

What we do in response to the separation or sense of abandonment or betrayal in our dreams directly relates to how we are dealing with and how we could better deal with the work of honoring the individual path.  Do we resign to the feeling of loss and discombobulation, or do we trust we will find our way?  Do we persist on being noticed and heard, or do we acknowledge our actions as independent from theirs?  Do we go on a quest to track the other down, do we stay in one place and wait indefinitely, or do we look forward to what is there for us?  Do we feel inadequate, damaged, replaceable, debased, and disrespected, or do we recognize our value, surrender, and accept?

As we disengage our focus, attention, and energy from either keeping tabs on others or requiring specific responses from them, we become free to discover what is required of us to tend to the unhealed and unresolved in ourselves.  The power of our love will then unsparingly reveal the path that leads us to greater health, wholeness, and integration, and we will be fully unrestrained and able to recognize, respect, and honor our individual path and that of others.