Toxic substances, such as cigarette smoke, controlled drugs and alcohol and other environmental toxins that can make you ill and pollute the environment often represent emotional toxins that render situations poisonous to you.
If you do not smoke in everyday life and find yourself lighting up in your dream and enjoying it, this suggests an addictive pattern in real life that may be related to unhealthy eating patterns or even relationships. In some cases, the image can represent unhealthy thinking patterns, such as anger, jealousy or obstinacy.
Knowing that your unconscious has sent you this warning should be enough encouragement to take a look at what is trying to control you and reduce the risks involved. A desire for sex may be expressed in the dream imagery of a cigarette placed between the lips and cupped in the hands when being lit, whilst a stubbed-out cigarette may signal the end of a love affair. Lighting a match could express the dreamer’s desire for enlightenment and spiritual love, matches that refuse to light express spiritual doubt and dead matches symbolize loss of faith. A cigar’s oral and masculine associations have been related to latent male homosexuality, although the cigar-smoking Freud discouraged overdoing this sexual symbolism with his famous comment, ‘sometimes a cigar is just a cigar’.
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