posted June 15, 2014 08:36 PM            

Just so you know, when I went to this library as a teenager in real life I once saw some terrifying men in black type phantoms outside late at night (I was inside the library).

But anyway, I ran as fast as I could and made it! But right after I got in a man came in and I knew he was a vampire. I sped ahead and tried to catch up with a girl ahead of me being Lilly Truscott of Hannah Montana (the show) as she appeared in the first episode (a show I'd never even heard of until years after I moved away from where this library was). It didn't seem strange she was here and we all (me, her and a friend, the vampire following us) ended up settling in a "food court" area that then turned into a lecture hall with a black professor (I mention his race as it might be significant given the 2nd dream) that talked about the various gods around the world, one that I found fascinating and included the WHY such gods appealed to each culture, and how the cultures shaped gods as much as religion shaped culture, there was no dichotomy between them despite not always being in synch, and that if there is some divine force that it's dimly perceived at best through our cultural lens.

I ended up walking through mostly empty halls after, not sure where I was going, and I'm afraid this part has been removed from my memory...but I came across a skeletal dead woman and I knew who she was (in the dream).

Well couldn't have that, scary men in black came to take away my memory of it and I ran with them behind me, relentless and terrifying.

And then I woke up (heart racing) and I could sense them on a glass pane looking at me, unable to reach me into the waking world. I silently stuck my tongue at them and said I was going to post all about the dream online which I could feel upsetting them real bad and then wondered if I might have some real life MIB encounter over it (many MIB encounters are surreal and not limited to UFO encounters).

I decided to get up since I was having nightmares but instead fell back asleep (and I guess that's when they got my memory, dammit!).

posted June 15, 2014 08:38 PM            

Then a very detailed, prison worthy shakedown was done on the homeless shelter by the cops (including dogs) and we knew we were busted so we ran while we still could (heh, lucky for them we didn't just pull that hardware out and start using since they were set up for a drug search, not that ). We ended up spending the night in the park with some minor nuisances common to that and the next day I was trying to find papers and even borrow phones to look up news on the shakedown and if our names were listed (with luck someone screwed up and didn't recall our names exactly right, it's not like shelters keep meticulous records or remember every face...).

And in my searching I managed to annoy a dragon of some sort, either an oriental dragon or a feathered serpent, not sure which (had pale rainbow colorings) and it was frighteningly intelligent and powerful. "Do you really want to know?"

It made us climb onto his back (not sure why, but he felt like a he) and flew with blinding speed to the homeless shelter, and people would react about how you expect when a giant feathered serpent comes in, especially one that radiated sentience and intelligence that made humans feel like lesser beings in comparison. Oh yeah, they'd found our stash. Not sure if they'd connected them to us, and the dragon picked up on my thought and responded with a feeling of like "we shall see" and flew off with blinding speed over streets, many that were flooded, and it was a bumpy ride as we flew low.

We then started flying through a building of long halls looking for answers when the dragon felt scared, said there were hogs we had to leave. I heard the squeal and they were huge, more like boars, and I tried shutting the door to buy us time but it wouldn't shut.

My BFF called me to hurry so I ran to another door as several boars ran through and I was able to shut it (knowing it would only hold against the voracious boars for so long) and back onto the back of the impatient dragon. Instead of my Russian American friend my BFF, who is black (pay attention, that becomes important later), was there instead. Once on we were off again and having to dodge boars with being inside a building forcing us to stay low (the dragon could handle one boar, but scores of them attacking like piranha were another matter) and then we ended up getting knocked off and rolling into a huge cafeteria (the food court from the first dream?) where a black detective (and he'd been the professor in the first dream) was eating at a table and said, "There you are."

He wiped his lips and told my BFF that she's under arrest for the weapons cache and I was like, "Damn, Vee, those were our guns and you're still the one to get arrested for them, even by a black cop! I wish I knew how to bottle being white so I could give you a potion of privilege about now."

"I don't want to be white! I don't want to be defined by race at all!" (She said that before in real life, btw, it's even how she got one of her nicknames of "V" for "Violet" to escape racial definitions and that she once colored her hair that, still streaks it that way at times.)

"Are you saying if I was able to bottle it you wouldn't be in the market for it right now?"

As the detective approached her she looked to be considering.

And then the point became moot as the dragon reappeared...and the cop remembered another appointment he was late for as he hurried away cursing. The dragon telepathically told us to get on, we were leaving and we didn't argue.

We flew with blinding speed again while hanging on to the fur/feathers when a woman told met us in a hall and showed us the way out and then said, "That's the way out, but if you want to escape then it's up into the clouds. Hurry!"

A huge blue eye of an even bigger dragon saw us (I recognized her as female for some reason) and she was going to kill us (including the dragon we were on). The dragon we were on burst out the door pointed and we were up into the twilight sky with a moon out. I looked back and saw the other dragon after us, but also the dragon we were on determined. He could find his true name, and we, too, could find out who we are beneath all the social labels and conditions.

As moonlight reflected on our skin I thought, "Of course, she changes everything she touches, and everything she touches, changes!" (An old Goddess chant.) Then I looked back at the bigger dragon closing in (and thinking of the Crone, the Goddess that eats all things before they're reborn from Her cauldron) and I wondered, "Is learning the truth of who we are worth dying for?"

And then I thought YES, even if only for a brief moment, it was worth it, to know ourselves beyond the cultural lens and just maybe a divine force that the professor had talked about, and I shouted excitedly willing the change to happen, the dragon and Vee just as determined and willing to pay any price, even that of our lives to KNOW...

And then someone woke me up. AAAAARG!

I got up and did what I had to do but then 2 thoughts brought goosebumps to me:

One, that hallway where the woman told us how to escape was the very same hallway that I found the dead woman in that the MIB didn't want me to remember...and just maybe the woman who gave us direction was the one who was dead! (I'm getting goosebumps again as I share that.)

And two, maybe the purpose of the dream was to give permission for some huge change to come to my life. If so, is it just me (that is my Russian American friend and BFF just aspects of myself?) or is this change coming to them as well? We did all once belong to a Discordian cabal...

posted June 17, 2014 04:37 AM            

Wow! That is quite a dream, and very interesting.

I do not have time to go into any detail at the moment, but I wanted you to know that I have read it and will offer up some thoughts just as soon as I can. You seem to have a reasonable understanding of the energies at work here, so if there are any thoughts you would like to offer, I'd love to hear them at some point.

This dream is about self-realization and shedding light upon some rather dark areas of your psyche. There is something hidden within your mind/memory/psyche, something dark, something you have chosen to guard/defend against, perhaps necessarily, which remains unacknowledged. But change is in the air.

Like the dragon asked, "Do you really want to know?"

To answer your question, yes, I think your friends are reflections of aspects of yourself, so this change is entirely about you.

posted June 18, 2014 12:20 AM            

The Russian American is a lesbian atheist from a deeply devout Russian Orthodox family who would feel betrayed and there is a gulf between them, she doesn't want them to know and it makes her depressed and (IMO, but she disagrees) agitates her alcoholism. (She also has criminal relatives in Vladivostok who have shown up in America before and she gets angry that she feels she has to hide from her family more than the criminals do.)

My BFF has faced horrid racism growing up including from her own family and community who called her an "oreo" (black on the outside, white on the inside) just for being herself. Actually, for all our differences she and I come from almost "equal but opposite" families with remarkably similar values (though both our families would angrily deny it if we pointed it out to them) and we've both caught flak as kids for being TOO divergent in our respective ways.

And I've seen how people sometimes react to her and sometimes it gets outright absurd (at least once I actually laughed as it was so surprisingly silly by someone taking herself and her preconceptions way too seriously). Though probably unrelated there's also something of a history involving us and guns, though nothing major (or like in the dream). Like my Russian American friend she's a brilliant Aquarius but in her case she combines that unorthodox brilliance with the psychic mysticism of her Pisces moon and can blow me (and our mutual Russian American friend) away with her ideas, concepts that tend to alienate people when she shares her ideas and musings with anyone else (her Christian family hates that she's a Taoist, too).

Like both of them I tend to hide secrets from my family (though my being over a thousand miles/two thousand kilometers away with my family being very rural with minimal access to computers makes it pretty easy) and it has caused stress, plus disappointment in one I confided in (maybe why "we're" in a homeless shelter in the dream?). So I can relate to both of them in that way, and in other ways besides. All 3 of us have played with some pretty wild ideas and theories on the nature of reality that didn't shy away from surreal territory.

Yet it doesn't feel right! Drawing such a connection is logical and deductive, yet I feel that I'm missing something vital that would bring the picture into sudden focus if I only had that missing piece (maybe it's too bad the MIBs stole my memory of why that dead woman was so significant...). I can say that some of my recent writing has been involved in how culture & religion affect each other but I still can't see how that applies to the dream or why the professor would then become a cop to arrest my BFF.

My intuition says my seeing Lilly Truscott is a clue...I was into skateboards at about that age and I used to have terrible nightmares of vampires back then (and it's been a long while since I had nightmares of vampires like that) so maybe the clue is from back then, something in my childhood or upbringing. (I'll watch the first ep again soon where Lilly looks exactly as she did in my dream and see if it gives me any insight.)

The show Hannah Montana (which Lilly is a major character) was indirectly responsible for how I ended up in the sitch I'm in now so maybe it's saying I feel I've made too many compromises though I don't think that's true...though I realize some conflicts are destined to happened (barring anything tragic beforehand) in which I don't know how they'll play out, and I do have some conflicting desires on what I ultimately want, all of which would hurt someone no matter which way I went and maybe some part of me is finally making a decision...

That doesn't feel right either. This was epic, majestic, felt life changing in some transcendent way, not some simple stresses and hard decisions of life.

I feel if I could remember who that dead girl was then I'd know!

I also feel that our flying low over flooded streets is a clue that I'm just not getting, too.

posted June 18, 2014 09:35 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by PixieJane:
My intuition says my seeing Lilly Truscott is a clue...I was into skateboards at about that age and I used to have terrible nightmares of vampires back then (and it's been a long while since I had nightmares of vampires like that) so maybe the clue is from back then, something in my childhood or upbringing. (I'll watch the first ep again soon where Lilly looks exactly as she did in my dream and see if it gives me any insight.)

---

Saw that ep last night where Lilly was dressed as I saw her in my dream. She was being blind to something obvious that was right in front of her (Hannah Montana, whom she was obsessed with, being her best friend in disguise).

Could this be a hint that I'm not seeing something blindingly obvious? If so then it's something to do with the library, learning, and/or the lecture...or maybe even the divine that the lecturer talked about being seen dimly at best through a cultural lens (though I'm not particularly interested religious worship, just understanding things, especially as I see dogmatic religion as a distraction from the truth at best, at least when accepted simply because one was raised in it so that it's more tribal than spiritual, just as my 2 friends in my dream also see it).

That I'm overlooking something obvious does seem to be a repeating theme here, as is danger (be it a vampire, boars, MIBs, cops, an even bigger dragon than the one me and a friend was on...). Presumably...this knowledge might threaten the foundation of something I take for granted.

Or could I be overlooking a danger right in front of me?

I'm not entirely certain that this is it, though I think it's close.

posted June 19, 2014 04:37 AM            

I'll be back!

posted June 23, 2014 10:27 PM            

But on thinking about the flooded streets in my dream again I did get the impression that the flood waters represent the collective unconscious on which society (the city) is built, which would fit in with the professor speaking on how religion and culture are intertwined.

posted July 08, 2014 04:32 AM            

The dream begins by suggesting that past fears are having a draining effect upon your energy/psyche (vampire), likely unacknowledged or unconscious (night/dark). Again, there is a connection with your past (Truscott), a "dark" lesson, or an experience which remains hidden/unconscious (black professor).

You are searching for something, making a transition (walking through empty halls, unsure) and encounter something "dead" from your past, a "skeleton" in your closet, so to speak (skeletal woman), but you are not ready to consciously acknowledge it (MIBs remove memory) … it causes great fear and anxiety (run terrified).

You are dealing with an unsettled pattern or a part of yourself (homeless), and there is a need for defense (weaponry). You are running from a "shakedown" occurring within yourself. You are still not ready to directly confront it, so you are looking indirectly for clues/information (find papers/borrow phones to look up news).

Your "good" dragon symbolizes wisdom and strength, hidden knowledge, especially as regards your developing self. He is the guardian of your psyche, protector of your secrets, and revealer of inner power and energy. The "bad" dragon symbolizes powerful, negative energies within the psyche that threaten to destroy. You nailed it with your "Crone" analogy.

The flooded streets represent emotional energies that have flooded your path, and possibly from which the dragon has been protecting you.

The hogs represent negative unconscious energy/material, precisely what the dragon has been protecting you from. The dragon felt scared because this unconscious material is gaining momentum in its attempt to enter your awareness (door).

The black detective represents the unconscious material mentioned before when he was a professor, and suggests that this material has gained power/authority within your psyche (just like the hogs).

In talking to V, you are talking to self about your willingness to change from "dark" to "light", to reveal that which has been hidden.

It is difficult to escape the repeating theme.

So, this dream suggests that you are just on the edge of discovering something about yourself, just on the edge of acknowledging something that has long been lying within your unconscious, out of the reach of your conscious memory, buried.

Do you have any inkling as to the possible content of this unconscious material? Any feeling about it? Is this something you wish to investigate or divulge in this public forum?

What do you think?

posted July 09, 2014 05:22 PM            

But the next day was weird, it felt as if the teenager I once was had awakened and asked how the hell I got to where I am today...more bemused than anything, but contrasting it, wondering if it's a good thing or not, and it was intense enough I couldn't do much of anything requiring deep thought. For the first time in years I even took a close look at a scar for a couple of minutes (glad to see that it's faded, I think many could easily miss it if they didn't know where to look). I felt like I'd been talking to my teen self all day. I wasn't upset or depressed but there was some haunting angst & pensiveness. I had to give up writing that night.

And then it seemed to pass but one thing in particular from then that began working itself into all my stories was how people who were said to be helping...may have even thought they were...were actually manipulating someone. And now I see that was a mirror for something I didn't want to see from the times I'd just talked about to that author.

A blatant example easy to understand is that some adults used a krew of runaway kids I belonged to. This being Texas kids get no help at all if they're on the streets, they can't even spend the night at a runaway shelter without parental consent and/or alerting the police (that's not to say it never happens, but it's a crime to do so that can get them shut down) and coming from backgrounds of dysfunctional families and abuse and/or a system without our best interests at heart adult criminals used that to appear sympathetic (possible some actually believed it) to get us to orbit them so they could exploit us. Putting underage girls into a pimp's stable is about one everyone knows but it's not just that.

After I didn't want to turn tricks an adult said I was small enough to crawl through a window of a house he'd been casing for awhile so he jimmied it open and told me to go open the backdoor for them. Still somewhat naive I took him at his word but I realize now (not then) he was using me as a "canary in a mineshaft" in case there were vicious dogs, for example, and also on the belief that if someone WAS home and faced me that they'd be a lot less likely to shoot an obviously underage waif of a girl (not that they'd have come to my rescue if any harm was done to me). But luckily all was clear and I let them in without problem and the guy leading us on this burglary instantly took command.

As for me I wrestled with not only fear as I crawled through that window but also guilt at the thought of stealing something that couldn't be replaced (even if insurance replaces the items it can't the memories associated with it) and just hoped we grabbed some electronics and got out ASAP. But it wasn't long before one of the rooms we entered had all the makings of a meth lab and he ordered us all out and practically ran. As for me I went through too much to leave empty handed back where I started needing to do something for the Krew and saw a machine pistol (in retrospect I believe it was a MAC-11) and grabbed it knowing it would be worth something.

Well he happily points out that if I take it to the fence that they might take me as well (girls are worth a lot) so I have to wait outside while he trades it for $50 worth of pot which he then has our krew roll up (to get a few extra dollars) and sell for him. And because I'm a girl I'm even more dependent on him. We kids took most of the risks to survive but the adults took the lion's share of the proceeds. (Meanwhile, he also started to express a crush on me...)

In contrast I now realize as an adult that the adult world and system was not our enemy when I was a kid. Granted, it wasn't our friend either but I could've given my younger self and then BFF much better advice. For example, when a teacher put bruises over my arm and I shoved her into the wall, I got called in to see the principal and that teacher the next morning and as both had contempt for me and never a shred of mercy I couldn't understand why they call the cops as they threatened to. Today I could tell my younger self because I had bruises on me while the teacher had nothing to verify any such story and that I should call the police instead (which was unthinkable back then, the police were with THEM, the courts and schools, the bad guys who'd never help me), the cops may have shrugged their shoulders at it but I shouldn't be in any trouble and they might have done something.

Likewise, I should have pointed something out to mom that would've caused a lawsuit that would have helped shut a place down that the principal was threatening to send me back to. And though the system failed my best friend when she reported abuse (and showed her bruised face and spot where her dad ripped out her hair) I could've told her report him for drugs when he was drunk and violent, that would get the police down there stat and even without the drugs he'd almost certainly become hostile to the cops who might even trump up charges against him (if she really wanted to be sure then she could even plant some--the guy deserved it and in an unfair world you sometimes have to take unfair actions so that the world can be unfair in your favor) and then she could've lived with her grandparents instead of in constant terror. And I could've been with mine by choosing to live with Dad (so he didn't have to pay child support, the only reason he wanted me) who'd happily send me to live with Granny with Dad's family never saying anything, and while it wouldn't be the feel good story of the year my life would've been a lot different. I marvel that such didn't occur to me back when I was a kid!

x

No adult "wanting to help" told us any of that. Why? Because that didn't benefit them. Whichever side of the law they were on they told us whatever they felt they had to in order to control us without regards to truth or any respect for who we were (so in that regards we were right to not trust adults as they were untrustworthy).

I knew my mom didn't support me, she used me for child support which she then spent on her addictions, and when I was a runaway she didn't report me for fear of losing it, and told me that straight up, and she also told Granny that I didn't want to speak to her anymore when Granny had called for me (and I was on the streets, Mom couldn't let Granny report me missing, she'd lose her booze and smoke money, er, child support) and then told me Granny didn't call me while I was gone so I thought she didn't care either. I knew Mom didn't care about me but it still hurt to realize how alone I was, and it was a pain that haunted me for years.

And when a runaway once again I was eventually taken in by some "interesting" people. I don't really want to go into detail but suffice to say they played me. I don't think it was entirely manipulative, at least not in every case, but it was far more manipulative than I realized at the time and I now cringe at how easily they played me with me thinking I was too smart to be played like that. And some of them were people I formed strong emotional attachments to and it also hurts to think of how they essentially earned my trust (which wasn't easy) to expertly betray me and make me love them for it. In the end only a bit of luck (that I thought of as terrible at the time but now recognize as a blessing) saved me.

posted July 09, 2014 05:30 PM            

Mirror, what's inside me?
Tell me, can a heart can be turned to stone?

Mirror, mirror, what's behind you?
Save me from the things I see
I can keep it from the world,
why won't you let me hide from me?

Mirror, mirror...tell me something
Who's the loneliest of all?

--Mirror, Mirror as sung by Casey Williams for the RWBY Soundtrack

My stories where this theme has popped up more and more was my mirror, and by putting it into fictional terms with fictional characters I was being able to keep myself from seeing it within me.

What confused me was the "loneliest of all" as I wasn't even lonely for the most part, but it's been coming to surface in my conscious mind now just how used I was by people who I thought cared for me when what they really cared about was what they could get from me or get me to do on their behalf (especially if they could get me to take most of the risk while they took most of the reward as happened over and over to me as a kid by people on both sides of the law) so that I wasn't as supported as I thought...and ultimately was not only being betrayed but was alone when I thought I was being helped.

If it hurt like hell to realize Mom exploited me for child support that she wouldn't even report me missing (but then I knew she didn't care, yet for some reason that shocked me), then what happens when I realize people who I thought DID care were using me just as Mom was? It's upsetting.

I don't mean to say it was all bad, I did reap some benefit out of it (purely coincidental and also due to luck) and like anyone they could be nice for the sake of being nice (as long as it didn't interfere with their own goals) but to realize people I thought cared had cynically manipulated me and how fast they dropped me when I no longer mattered to their personal agendas...It hurts to realize the contempt they must've felt for the foolish child and has made me see my past in a whole new light.

So yeah, that's pretty much it. Brilliant dream analysis. The question then is who am I supposed to become?

posted August 09, 2014 01:31 AM            

Wow. What a story. You deserve recognition for what you have been through and where it has led you. You have my utmost respect. The journey you have so far undertaken is epic. Karmic. I can relate, to a lesser degree.

Who are you supposed to become? I cannot answer that, but luck has nothing to do with it. What you call "luck", I call karmic, and you are fortunate enough to realize that your experience in life has led you to where you are. You are here, in LindaLand, as a moderator, and that says a lot about how you have persevered and grown as a person. You are overcoming the severe challenges you set forth for yourself.

Good job. (That's an understatement)

Thank you for sharing your dream and your experience.

Walk in Peace

posted August 17, 2014 03:37 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Randall:
Thought I was going to read about dragons and got a bonus--a vampire!

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I thought about this comment when I read a vampire story by a guy named Randall, hehe.