Hi,
My take on dreams is quite different than yours. What do you think happens when you go to sleep at night? Here's my take:

* We leave our body with a energy etheric body that actually keeps us alive close to our body and we then use a different energy body to travel around in
* Each night we do MANY different things including experiencing probable futures, working with our many other lives on beliefs we share, being taught, etc.
* Most of our dreams doesn't make it through our belief filters we use to create our personality. That's why, upon awakening, most people wake up and think they haven't dreamt.
* HOWEVER, some of our dreams do make it through the belief filter. My theory is our higher selfs, in our teaching lessons, help us construct lessons in which we us very emotional symbolism and situations such that when we awake we actually recall our dreams.
* These type of dreams don't literally interpret well. They may seem unbelievable on the surface. So, in your case, the reoccurring figure keeps coming into your dream as well as others, some of whom abused you, you dead mother, etc. So who are these people?
* I've learnt from my own dreams that people in my dreams can be:
-Themselves
-Symbols of my masculine or feminine
-Teachers
-Guides
-Over Soul
-Other lives
-Entities I've incarnated with many times
-Aspects of myself
* So you reading this might be wondering how the heck can a person determine all of this? How can a person prove to themselves what I've written above?

The answer is to learn to listen to yourself. Until you do, the troubling dreams will likely continue as a way of you spiritually saying to yourself "Hey Me! It's time to spiritually wake up and listen to myself."

So how does a person learn to listen to themselves and prove what I've written above? There are many ways begin showing ourselves there is much more than our physical bodies...

The old hindi's of 2,500-3,000 years ago wanted to have out of body experiences. They did this by occupying the conscious mind allowing their inner soul to rise. Today, this is called yoga and the OBE portion is mostly an afterthought.

When they were out of their bodies, they saw energy swirling into the body from the sun, from the earth and from the side. They called these main points "chakras". Then they saw that the energy went into small points they called "nadis".

They then did something that amazes me to this day. They mapped 70,000 different nadi points and then it went up to 100,000.

This knowledge crossed over the Himalayas and went down into China. It became adopted as energy meridian lines. Today acupuncture uses this.

On the scientific front, one can read "Life Force - The Scientific Basis" and "the Synchronized Universe" by Dr. Claude Swanson. In these books he documents many different scientific studies about paranormal.

Another way is to actually prove it to oneself. This can be done via meditation, dream journalling and lucid dreams.

On a free website I create a year and a half ago "learningfrommydreams" dot com, there is a page devoted to many different meditation techniques. I use meditation to "connect with my higher self". That's what I use in my own dream interpretations and that of others to discover who's who in a dream scene.

I note that meditation is not easy at first. It requires sustained intent. So, if you're going to give this a try, do it for 10-15 minutes a day, each day, each week, each month, each year. It will take you on a deep spiritual voyage.

Another way is to use the hemisync technology that Robert Monroe pioneered to help people get to the theta state and have out of body experiences. You can go to the Monroe Institute to learn more.

Another way is to go to a hypnotist trained by the Newton Institute. This was created by a psychologist Michael Newton. About 30 or so years ago, he had a woman under hypnosis who went to a place she called her "live between lives". He then found out that many of his other patients went to a very similar place. He then write three books and began to train psychologists how to do this.

Then there is the "way out there' stuff that is not so "way out there" anymore. Some physicists now hypothesize we live in a "virtual reality". The bottom line is we are bits of code. This theory does the best job at explaining things like the double slit experiment, string theory and quantum mechanics. On "learningfrommydreams" dot com, on the resource page, there is a section on science and under it several links on digital physics with some youtube links as well.

So, you are the captain of your own spiritual ship. What you believe is the reality you create.

People often tell me their dreams are so weird and they don't make sense. That requires them to listen to themselves and learn to interpret their own dreams.

Well, enough of me babbling here. I hope I have given you something to think about.

If you'd like, I will assist you in interpreting two of your recurring dreams. If you want to go ahead with this, then here's the work I want you to do for each dream...

First tell me the number of scenes in your dream. THEN FOR EACH SCENE I want you to tell me the following:

Location:
I want you to look in your mind, as the observer, in the following directions and tell me what you see:
1. To your left.
2. To your right.
3. In front of you.
4. Behind you.
5. Above you.
6. Below you.

It’s all right if you can’t recall much. Simply tell me what you see and make sure I know what direction it is from you the dreamer. In my interpretation, you’ll see how this is a symbol itself.

When you are describing what you see, tell me in as much detail as you can recall about it. So things I am very interested in is what are walls, doors, windows, stairs, tables, etc. made of, age/style, colour, etc. The same goes for anything outside. You’ll see in my interpretations how all of this tells us lots about ourselves.

Lighting:
1. Tell me what the lighting was like, i.e. bright, dull, black, cloudy etc.
2. Then tell me where the light was coming from.
3. Can you tell the time of day or season?
Lighting is important in a dream because it’s a symbol of vibrational state. I’ll explain this during my interpretation for you.

Objects:
If there are any objects in a dream scene, then tell me about them as follows:
1. Shape, size, colour and what they were made of.
2. Where the object is in the dream relative to you, i.e. left, right, etc.

I’ve found objects in dreams are usually symbols of things we first need to concentrate on spiritually. I’ll explain this in the interpretation if you had any objects in any of the scenes.

People:
For each person in a dream scene I want you to do the following:
1. Describe them to me in as much detail as you can recall. This includes age, gender, clothes, colour of the clothes, what the clothes were made of.
2. Tell me where they were in the dream scene relative to you, i.e. left, right, below, etc.
3. Tell me if they were lying down, sitting, standing, walking, etc.
4. Tell me what they did with you. Don’t skip the details. Simply tell me exactly what happened.
5. If there are any conversations or thoughts between you and the person or others, then tell me EXACTLY WHAT WAS SAID. This is important.
6. If there were others you couldn’t see but felt, then let me know where you felt they were in a scene relative to you the dreamer, i.e. left, right, etc.

Animals. Etc.:
If there were any animals, insects, birds, reptiles, fish or whatever in any of the scenes, then tell me. Describe them in as great as detail as you can recall. Also let me know where they were in the dream scene relative to you, i.e. left, right, etc. Then let me know of any thoughts that passed between you and them.

Thoughts/Feelings:
This is a very important part of every dream scene. Take your time, go back and tell me the following for each scene:
1. What was your first thought/feeling as the dream scene began.
2. Tell me of any thoughts/feeling changes as the dream scene progressed and let me know where in the scene this occurred.
3. Tell me your last thought/feeling as the dream ended.

I realize this is a lot of work. HOWEVER, I think you might be surprised by how much you can learn about yourself from a single scene.

With kind regards,
Guy