posted May 07, 2006 02:56 PM         

As is so often the case, my memory of this dream is not whole and continuous. But here is as much as I can remember, as clearly as I can remember it:

I was part of a group of friends/acquaintances going to stay (for how long I can't say) in an old house. I remember approaching the door -- there was a concrete porch running the length of the front of the house, and the roof overhung it. The image that stands out from this short scene is that of little stone cherubs (just the head and wings) affixed to the [wall? door? vertical surface]. Their childlike faces were innocent, but their wings were like those of a bat, rather than those of an angel, which lent a gothic feel to them. (The entire dream felt much like a horror movie, the second such dream I've had in the past three days).

...

Later, after settling in a bit, we were in the living room. There were the usual jokes and laughter and cameraderie that takes place in a group of people that know and like each other. I was telling the people in the room about a discovery I and one or two others had made earlier. I pointed out a rectangular hole in the wall, a little above head height and a few inches to the right of the front door, in which we had found several old pieces of paper with writing on them. Apparently the slips of paper had been hidden there long ago; I believe we had removed a vent- or grate-like plate that had covered the hole to find them. There is the feeling that those papers contained messages from a previous owner/occupant of the house, but we hadn't extracted any significant meaning from their words. As we were discussing this, I took a seat in the middle of the couch. There were already three people on the couch, two of them sitting upright and at the end farthest from the wall, someone laying down and covered completely by a blanket. The person in the middle scooted over toward the other upright person to make room for me, so that I sat between him and the blanket-covered person. (Was the blanket-covered person asleep or dead? There is some confusion here.) At this point someone referenced a dead person in our conversation, and then someone else (possibly myself) mentioned the dead person that was in our group, at which point I imaged him in my mind: a corpse lying beneath a sheet pulled down just far enough to see most of his face, which was unnaturally red, and swollen, his lips pulled back in a teeth-bearing grimace and held that way for all time thanks to rigor mortis. Two points of confusion here: the corpse may have been the person beside me under the blanket, and he may have been on the floor rather than the couch. (Ever notice how sometimes two contradicting facts in a dream have no problem being simultaneously true?)

...

I am running through the hallways of the house. Some of my group was just ahead of me moments before, but now I've lost them. Fear builds with the knowledge that I am alone now. I start to pass the entrance to another hallway, leading off to the right from the one I am in. This second hallway is darker, and I instinctively know that to take that path would lead me closer to something bad, which contradicts the fear that is trying to lead me away from it. But I stop, realizing that wherever that something bad is going on, that must be where the rest of my group is. So I turn back and take the darker hallway. Maybe ten or twelve feet down it I pass a doorway, and get a glimpse into a dark room where a starnge and disturbing mobile of sorts hangs from the ceiling. Hundreds of streamers hang from the ceiling, with objects tied to them at intervals. Possibly I remember some of those objects being bones, and maybe little human forms, like dolls or something. Wahtever the objects were, the whole affair had the same feel as the odd wooden structures in The Blair Witch Project, something esoteric and only understood by an alien intelligence. I definitely do not go into this room; not only does it frighten me, but it is not my objective. I continue down the path I'm on, toward... what?

...

Later in the dream. I am outside of the house; it seems to be daytime, and I am washing off a car (actually, a minivan, I think) with a garden hose. There are children around me playing -- but they aren't quite right.

Apparently I have discovered what has happened to the rest of my group, and it is not good, and there is nothing I can do about it. I have accepted it and am handling the situation the best I can. They seem to have been turned into the children around me, and I know that by their very presence and their mocking acts of "innocent" play, they are taunting me, intimidating me. They know I am scared of them, and I know I dare not show it, lest they do more than taunt. I think at this point I spray one of them with the hose, and he/she/it "dies". In any event, I realize that they are afraid of the water. I playfully threaten one of them, a short, chubby male child with curly blonde or light brown hair, with the hose, and he, eyes wide with fear, makes guestures that I know were characteristic of those the adult member of my group that he once was would make, and tells me he was "just kiddin' around, just playin', man," -- to whatever it was he'd said that prompted me to threaten him with the hose.

Same scene, just minutes later: I am an observer for a bit here. Two still-adult, unchanged members of the group are nearing the front door to the house. One of them has the hose in his hand, still running. (Maybe he's watering the flowers?) The other has some special ability, the power to exorcise the group, to remove the evil that possesses them, which would also physically change them back from children to adults. But he doesn't know that he has this ability, yet... I know that shortly I or someone else will tell him. The man with the hose turns to go into the house, and I think, "No! Don't go in the house! If you leave the one with the special powers alone, they'll get him!" But it is too late. Suddenly I am the one with the special powers, watching the other one go into the house. I am calm and unworried, and the next event takes me totally by suprise. Feeling a slight itch on my chest, slightly to the left (right over my heart), I scratch it idly as I turn ninety degrees to the left... to see a young girl standing before me, smiling like the cat that just got the mouse. She's somewhat gothic, pale of skin, dressed in black, with dark hair. In her right hand she is delicately holding a razor blade. A thin line of blood runs down the blade, to end in a drop that by some miracle may never fall. I knwo what she has done, because I have discussed her with my group much earlier in the dream. She is not human as she appears, but a sort of supernatural assassin. She kills by making one cut to a person with that razor, straight through the chest and into the heart, leaving only a thin horizontal incision maybe two inches long. I scratch my chest again, lightly (not wanting to open the wound), and feel the wetness of blood on my fingertips. I know that I will die when my blood comes gushing out from that slit, but first I will have fifteen to thirty seconds to realize the horror of what has happened to me. Long enough for her to favor me with her satisfied smile.

...

posted May 08, 2006 03:45 AM         

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Can you imagine a world in which each person understood that his only responsibility was to give and receive love?

posted May 09, 2006 01:22 PM         

It is good to have you back. I'll have some thoughts for you as soon as possible.

posted May 14, 2006 11:47 AM         

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The first dream started out being about the woman I love, but ended quite differently. I was at home, but it wasn't the little trailer I currently live in; it was a large, somewhat old house with many rooms. I had just gotten home from work, and she had just come over to visit me, out of the blue. She was wearing a short, black skirt (she doesn't wear skirts in waking reality, though they are a certain weakness of mine), and in a darkened, upstairs bedroom that had the feel of being long disused, she tempted me. I won't go into detail, but will just say that we were both well-prepared to do the deed. I was feeling a little dirty, having just returned from work (still in my "uniform"), so I told her to hang on for just a few minutes while I went and cleaned up. Mostly I wanted to brush my teeth, as I can't abide the filmy feeling a mouth gets after so long without cleansing, and would be horrified to offend her with my breath. (Even though I know she didn't really care.) So I went to the bathroom. My parent's bedroom, I knew, was just past it, the two rooms sharing a wall with a door that allowed access. The bathroom sink was strange (in retrospect, that is; it seemed normal enough in the dream): the top half of a wooden dresser was affixed above the large porcelain basin, with the spout sticking out from the center, between the middle and bottom row of shelves. I knew that if the lower drawers weren't shut completely when I turned the water on, it would pour right into them, possibly ruining the items those drawers contained. And this is exactly what happened as I prepared to brush my teeth. I remember seeing jewelry that I knew belonged to my mother in the drawer the water was flowing into. I hurriedly, and with a little difficulty, got the water shut off and the drawer closed. After that I brushed my teeth as usual.

Transition from one episode to the next was either non-existant, or I just don't remember it. The next thing I know, I'm lying on the couch, sleeping -- in the exact same position I was really in while having this dream! That's to say, I was lying on my right side, facing the back of the couch. And the house I was in had become the trailer I actually do live in. As usual, that was accepted without thought for dreaming purposes. I was awakened (in the dream) by the sound of my own voice coming from behind me! It was not yelling, but raised just a little above calm, strong and clear, chiding me for something. I remember one statement in particular, though the exact words have faded from memory; it said something like, "And who told you you could deny it?" When my voice-from-without mentioned denial, I couldn't take it any more. I wanted to get up and run away from it, but I couldn't move. I couldn't even open my eyes, though I was also determined not to actually look at whatever was behind me. A fantastic struggle of will ensued, trying to force movement from a body that wouldn't obey. I tried to cry out "Help me!", but my own voice faltered halfway through, fading to a sort of croaking whisper. Eventually I managed to open my eyes, and to roll myself over backwards off the couch and onto the floor, landing somewhat on my hands and knees but a bit crumpled. I kept my eyes closed at first, not wanting to see the thing that spoke with my voice; I was afraid it might look like a monster, something inhuman and ugly, and would scare the crap out of me. Fighting paralysis, I crawled slowly and with much effort down the narrow hallway that leads back to the bathroom and my roommate's bedroom. But in the dream, it wasn't my roommate's bedroom, it was my parents'. I kept crying out "Help me!", over and over. I yelled with all the strength I could muster, out of overwhelming fear and desperation, as though my life, my existence, my very soul was in danger.

----------

Then I woke up. I'd only been asleep for an hour. I used the toilet quickly, smoked half a cigarette, and promptly went back to sleep.

----------

The second dream was much longer, and had a movie-like quality to it. My roommate and I competed for a chance at some kind of adventure, a mock-up of a currently famous movie or story, during the course of which we would be faced with certain puzzles and challenges. Well, we won.

I remember being underground, in some sort of tunnel system. We came to a place where the tunnel ended in a pit, a deep abyss of pure blackness. There were two hanging chains near the end of the tunnel, each of them ending in a small loop that I knew would fit snugly over one's shoes. I knew that we were meant to step out over the pit and into these loops, then hold tightly to the chains, one in each hand, and that after doing so we would be conveyed along the bottomless tunnel for several minutes to a point where there would be ground beneath our feet again, and our "adventure" would reach its next phase/challenge and continue. I surmised that the ride would be at pretty high speed and probably resemble a roller-coaster ride, but without even the security of a car to sit in. I am very much afraid of heights, and although the chain-rig seemed sturdy enough, I had difficulty facing the challenge. My roommate went first, and I was left more or less alone when it came my turn. (Note that there was often the feeling of a "crew" watching over all this -- whoever was running the game/adventure.) I started to climb into this unusual device, but had a hard time getting one foot completely into its stirrup. Looking down, I could now see not blackness, but a swirling mist. In places where it momentarily cleared, I could see through to a bright blue "floor" below. This was suggestive to me of water, but I wasn't sure if I was seeing the blue through water, or whether there wasn't any water and it was just a blue floor of some sort. In any case, it was less than ten feet below me, yet this knowledge did nothing to abate my fear of falling! The fear got the best of me, and I started trying to get my feet back out of the loops and onto the solid rock behind me. I figured I would just explain to the "just offstage" crew that I couldn't do it, I was too afraid of heights; they'd have to understand, I wouldn't give them any choice. Then I reigned in my fear with a determination born of the feeling that I was tired of letting my fear prohibit me from enjoying things that other, "normal" people often do in life. I was going to take the ride, dammit! (Note that I have never ridden a roller-coaster, or any other carnival ride that goes more than a few feet off the ground.)

...

Once on the other side, my roommate and I were in a very large and well-appointed home of some sort... rather like a mansion, or better yet, a castle. We began exploring it, and I was mapping out the position of various rooms and halls in my mind.

...

There is a vague memory here of me feeling depressed about the current situation with my girlfriend, and one of the members of the "crew" letting me make a phone call to her -- or at least trying, I don't remember if I got through or not -- and then trying to console me over the issue. After which I went back to the game, and the "crew" faded completely into the background again.

...

Then I had to go to the bathroom. This part of the dream puzzles me greatly, because nothing about it was usual, despite being a very mundane and routine task. I used a urinal, not a toilet. And I didn't stand; I was sitting on the edge of some kind of table or counter just a couple feet away from the urinal, my legs horizontal, feet planted to either side of it. I had my, erm, 'equipment' pointed "downward" (well, horizontally, but in any case the same direction as my legs, so if I had been standing, it would have been pointed straight downward). Then my urine started to flow. And flow. And flow and flow and flow! I thought to myself, "Damn, when is it going to stop? Surely I'll fill the urinal and have to flush halfway through, or it'll spill over onto the floor." I leaned forward a bit to look, and sure enough, it was running over the lip of the urinal, as I continued to pee. Somewhat chagrined, I flushed and kept going. I don't remember how this part ended.

...

We continued to explore the "castle" -- I suppose we were looking for an exit or a clue of some kind. We split up to cover more ground, but, by unspoken agreement, kept within shouting distance of one another. I found a doorway to the outside and went through it. (I think there was some feeling of being annoyed by my roommate here, and not caring if he knew where I was. I don't think I told him about the exit, or that I was taking it.) I went out into a desert scene, warm sun shining down on dunes of bright yellow sand.

Here I encountered some strange statues -- or at least that's all I took them to be, at first -- of roughly human form, but very thin, smooth, and featureless. They all seemed female in essence, and their faces were like that of the porcelain masks some people hang on their walls. (Those always creep me out just a little -- I think it's the absence of eyes that does it.) One of them, maybe the largets or closest, or the one in front, "came alive", through a process that took several seconds and is hard to describe. It was a transformation, reminiscent of arrival through a wormhole in the movie "The One", or the death of a Boojum in the video game Alice, but in reverse. There seemed to be a cloud around her, but not obscuring her, as it happened, and she seemed to sort of writhe and twist her way into her new form -- that of a human female dressed all in white and painted just like the "mask" face she'd had as a "statue". She delivered some very stylistic, fateful-sounding prose, pertaining to the game/adventure I was involved in. I had discovered a clue, I had found something I'd been meant to find. She was obviously a member of the "crew" that was running this show, an actress, and while leading me back into and through the "castle" (sorry for so many quotation marks, but a lot of the words I'm using don't exactly describe my dream, and I just want you to keep in mind that these as rough translations, not literal ones), she dropped her pretense, her role, and spoke to me like an everyday person. I think she even expressed her desire to smoke a cigarette!

...

The last scene I remember is leaving wherever this all took place. I was outside, in a group of about fifteen or twenty people (including myself and my roommate). We were all walking to our cars. I don't drive, so I was following my roommate to his car, when one of the other people with us -- a twenty-something in the bohemian dress of today's youth (the kind of people I've always thought of as "my people") -- offered me a ride. I looked into his or her car; it was packed front- and back-seat with similar characters. They were obviously all friends/acquaintances, and wanted me to join them. I hesitated, as there was little room left in the vehicle and I'd have to squeeze in, but after a minute I accepted. I looked over to my roommate, who was already in his car and waiting to see what I'd do, and made a guesture that said "I'm going with them, okay?". The car pulled away, and there was that kind of cheesy 80's feel to the scene, like the end of a movie, that feel-good "everything's going to be all right" ending from the rash of teen movies popular at the time.

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posted May 18, 2006 02:06 PM         

The first scene suggests something that appears to be innocent, is not. (cherubs w/bat wings)

Then we have a communication from yourself about the past, about an old life pattern perhaps, but you have yet to recognize the significance of it as it relates to a current situation. This idea is repeated through the dead guy on the couch ... a 'dead', 'sleeping', or dormant aspect of self which you have difficulty recognizing/understanding. (old papers, messages/can find no significant meaning)

Then it is suggested that recent change in your life (hallways) has perhaps separated (alone) you from some old life patterns (your group), for better or worse, and you are naturally inclined to gravitate towards those old patterns (decide to take the second hallway). The dream suggests that you may not be completely aware (dark hallway) of the "something bad" that reconnecting with this pattern may bring. Or maybe you are aware of it o some level, but would rather not be, and so you head into the 'darkness' anyway. The dark room you come upon could be a warning, one which you do not heed, as if you are not paying attention to the 'signs'.

The last part of the dream suggests that you are 'cleansing' certain aspects of your life (washing car), and that you have outgrown certain patterns, which could include friends, habits, or other life issues (your group are turned into children). As difficult as it is to overcome these patterns, you will find that your current cycle of inner growth can keep them at bay (spray kid with hose and he dies).

The very last scene repeats much of the message from before ... you have the ability to "remove the evil" from your life, but are not yet fully aware of it ("doesn't know he has this ability"). If the inner growth that you are cultivating succumbs to the past (guy with hose goes into house), your ability to fight and "remove the evil" could be short-circuited ("they'll get him").

If this happens, you may be taken "totally by surprise" by what appears to be a "wound to the heart". Who or what this gothic young girl represents, I cannot say with certainty. Have you an idea?

And so, the dream ends with much the same symbolism as it began ... something, or someone, that appears to be innocent or harmless (young girl), is not (dark, gothic).

I am not sure if the nightmarish quality of the dream, including the "wounded heart", is a reflection of your fears about what could happen, or if it is something more of a prognostication.

What do you think about all of this?

posted May 21, 2006 02:24 PM         

You wrote, "...recent change in your life has perhaps separated you from some old life patterns...". This I understand completely. There have been recent changes in my life, quite dramatic ones, and they have caused ('forced' might be a better word) me to drop many old patterns of thinking and acting. I have accepted these changes because I know they are for the better, even though they make my life more difficult. What you say about "cleansing" my life also applies here. The "current cycle of growth" is "keeping them at bay". I don't worry about returning to past habits. I simply won't, I have no desire to do anything but continue along the path I'm on.

And I was taken by suprise, just this morning, by a wound to the heart. But it seems to have nothing to do with the issues of past habits/current growth, other than the fact that I can cope with this wound much better thanks to recent spiritual growth. The young girl has made her cut, but in reality I know that I won't die from it.

So, in one way, I can definitely say that the dream was prognostication. It just seems to be about two separate subjects -- either that, or there's a connection between the two that I just can't see.

posted June 01, 2006 01:39 PM         

Alright, the dreams from 5/14 seem to be similar in nature to the last dream. I don't have time to detail every element, so I'm going to make my comments brief to begin with.

The first dream from the 14th represents an exploration into facets of your psyche (large, old house w/many rooms), and reflects the inner work which is transpiring in those areas. It reflects a cleansing (get cleaned up) of your relationships, including your girlfriend and your parents. It indicates that you are becoming more aware of past "blind spots" or areas of, as your voice-from-without said (which is actually your voice-from-within), "denial". These can be difficult realizations to encounter (cannot run/move, "not wanting to see", felt as though your very soul was in danger).

The second dream from that night continues with the theme of facing your fears, overcoming obstacles, and figuring out how all of this is fitting together in your life right now.

The puzzling bathroom scene suggests that there is much to "relieve" or rid yourself of, and this can prove to be awkward and difficult.

The statue scene seems to suggest that, as you said, you have "found something I'd been meant to find", that you are making progress in the "game" that you are experiencing.

The end of the dream seems to go along with this, that "everything's going to be all right".

That's it, in a nutshell. I barely touched on much of the symbolism, so if there is something specific you wish to address about these dreams, please let me know and we will explore it a bit further.

posted June 26, 2006 02:31 PM         

I'm not sure, exactly. Maybe you have a lot stuff, perhaps emotional, to release. And maybe it is awkward or otherwise difficult. ???