Date of dream: Monday, July 28, 2008
Level of Lucidity: N/A
Level of Cohesiveness: 
Lucid Intent? No
This dream has been viewed 4699 times.
I don't remember this too well by now, but I take it down because it seemed oddly meaningful.
It might have been part of a bigger dream. I was in some sort of class with a bunch of other people around my age (high school/college?). It was an actual room with walls and such, but for some reason I feel it was a bit "freer" than regular classes, so maybe either there was easy access to outside or this was summer school and the rules weren't as strict as regular school or something. Unsure. I believe it looked like a typical high school/college classroom with the white tile floor and cinderblock walls and tiled ceiling and fluorescent lights, but I think the ceiling was lower than usual, and the lights seemed to be turned off toward the back or corner of the room since it seemed dimmer back there, and the desks were all jumbled/mashed together so it was crowded. I think we had just gotten here from somewhere and were just settling in. I seem to recall that one of the other students was Brian C., a student I knew from elementary school through high school but was never close to; he was sort of a class clown, especially in my high school art class.
Oddly, the teacher seemed to be my current psychologist, whom I'll call JM (referred to in an earlier dream, "The Secret Bathroom & Friendly Diane," as J.). This didn't seem strange in the dream, it just was. *shrug*
We were all figuring out where to sit and such when JM started to explain the work we had to do today. I think it was a final of some sort, so maybe that's why the atmosphere seemed "freer" than usual. The assignment, from what I could gather, was to write a personal essay about the psychologist Carl Jung.
This intrigued me, since I find Jung's theories quite interesting and his work has influenced my personal thoughts and fictional writing. JM explained the assignment in more detail. Basically, our essay had to be a reflection on what we personally thought of Jung and how his ideas had influenced us, or something similar to that. It was a personal essay, of our thoughts and opinions, just about Jung. I thought for sure this would be quite easy since I love writing and reflecting and I already had some thoughts on the subject matter, so I was ready to get started.
There was a bit of confusion here when a male student apparently arrived late--I think it was Brian C. or whoever he seemed to be--or something, so that he was at a disadvantage regarding the assignment, I'm not sure how, since we all started work at the same time. In any case JM gave him a slight break in that he would just have to create a piece of artwork like a drawing or something instead (though I think it would still be related to Jung, not sure). I was a bit envious, but that's just the way I am, I wasn't angry or anything. The thing was, I felt I would have SO MUCH to write about my thoughts that it'd be hard to contain myself and get the essay finished in time! There was no worry about me not having ENOUGH to write.
I'm not sure if this stipulation stood for the entire class or just for me, but it seemed to be specific to me, so I can't say. JM added that my essay had to be more specific in that there had to be inclusion of my thoughts regarding Jung's ideas in relation to my own death or something like that. It's hard to explain. I think it had to do with either suicide or just wanting to die, maybe as in having to choose a time at which to do so (for myself). I would have to relate what I thought of Jung's ideas to this very personal matter and include that in my essay.
JM then let us set to work, and, with Brian C. nearby doing his own thing, I started writing. I was using a pencil on lined paper, just like old days in school. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote, all the while worrying that I'd never get it done in time!
After some time had elapsed, I realized that I was meandering off topic. I was still writing about my personal feelings on Jung's ideas, yes, but I still hadn't touched on the subject of what this had to do with my own death. I stopped writing, wondering if I should just kind of leave off where I was on this particular subject and move on to that point. But JM walked by and said something, and/or I looked up at the clock, and saw that I had an hour and a half still left, so I decided that I would try to continue writing about what I wanted to write about, then I would explain my thoughts on the more specific subject, as I would come to it eventually in my essay. In short, just keep writing, let it meander as I liked. I seem to recall I was just about to get into Jungian ideas about my fictional characters, maybe as they relate to archetypes, and this thought really excited me. So I would still do that, and I'd write about my death in a while.
If there was more then I can't recall it.
Personal associations and clarifications: I have no real opinion, positive or negative, on Brian; he seemed like a decent guy but we weren't really friends. I do recall that he made fun of my laugh once in art class and that really hurt, but I know it wasn't intentional. Still, it made me not want to laugh out loud there anymore.
I feel like I'm at an impasse again with my psychologist in real life--she's a nice person, but she keeps telling me to "try harder" and "take risks" in my life, not seeming to know that I've done this my whole life--not HUGE risks or anything, but for me, just facing life each day is a risk! I want to point this out to her but I feel she'd just think I'm making excuses. I'd like to open up to her more about things, even just the things that interest or motivate me like my writing and beliefs and such, but she's not shown any interest and so I don't really know what to say to her anymore. I don't want to stop therapy since I honestly have nobody to talk to, but if we're not getting anywhere, I fear she won't want me coming in there anymore. And honestly, we're not getting anywhere, that I can see at least.
I do not know my psychologist's personal thoughts on or knowledge of Jung. She did make a brief comment about a Jungian-themed book I was reading once, indicating she at least had a vague understanding of him, but I don't know more than that. The subject has never come up.
At the moment I'm reading a book about Jungian approaches to dream interpretation and Active Imagination, which is basically talking to the various "parts" of yourself for therapeutic purposes. It's something I'd like to try with my characters, since I feel I used to at least be connected to the fictional parts of myself, but I severed that connection slowly over time and am now not really connected to anybody, much less myself. I'm still leery of trying it though lest it just be some sort of wish-fulfillment or make me feel too stupid.
Regarding my "death" or suicide, having to commit suicide at a certain point in my life is a matter I think about frequently--it's not something I WANT to do, but I feel like I might have no choice--and it's something I've been wanting to talk about with my psychologist but the time never seems right ("Today I'd like to talk about my own suicide!" seems kind of lame), plus I feel like I'll again just be told, "Keep trying" or something else trite that doesn't help.
Add Comment |
Add Interpretation
Date of dream: Monday, July 21, 2008
Level of Lucidity: N/A
Level of Cohesiveness:
Lucid Intent? No
This dream has been viewed 4672 times.
Just a vague fragment that I recalled when noting down the following dream ("Angels, Dark Matter, & Time"). I was at home with my mother and I guess it was daytime, early afternoon maybe, as it was light in the house but muted like the windows were covered with curtains (which we don't have). I don't recall what we were doing but Ma came to me and she was in a strange mood; she was very set on going to Texas or something to pick up some sort of book to use against Dad, maybe...I really am not sure. I believe it was a religious text of some sort, and I think she'd had it in her possession before, or maybe a different copy of it, but now she needed it again. I don't know if she and Dad were in a lawsuit or if it had magic spells she wanted to use against him. Oddly, I didn't seem very concerned about what she planned to do with it. I just couldn't believe she wanted to go all the way to TEXAS or whatever just to pick it up!
I kept asking her what the heck she was talking about because she just kept muttering these little short phrases in a very mechanical manner, like, "Have to go get the book. Have to go to Texas and get it. Don't care how, just have to." She wasn't angry, just determined and completely oblivious to everything around her. When I kept asking for clarification, or why the heck we had to go all the way to Texas, she wouldn't answer, just kept repeating herself. And for some reason she needed me to go with her. No way was I going all the way to Texas just for some stupid book!
"I'm NOT going to Texas over this!" I snapped at last, too frustrated to keep asking for information. "You're the same person who complains when you have to drive me downtown, and now you want to go all the way to Texas?" (Granted, I think a trip to the airport was mentioned, but it's true, she complains about having to use gas but her complaints are noticeably stronger when I'm the person she has to drive.) I think I said "hell" or "damn" in one of my retorts, I was so angry. (I don't swear in real life.) "Go there on your own!" I said when she kept insisting, and when that didn't deter her, I finally exclaimed in exasperation, "Why don't you just go on eBay and try to find a copy of the stupid book there?!"
At last I seemed to get through to her. She halted in her pacing and her face lit up. "eBay," she said. "That sounds like a great idea. Can get the book there." And she started pacing and planning again on how to get this book, whatever it was. I think it was controversial, and I know it had to do with religion somehow. It was all quite odd but at least we wouldn't have to go all the way to Texas to find it!
Add Comment |
Add Interpretation
Date of dream: Monday, July 21, 2008
Level of Lucidity: N/A
Level of Cohesiveness:
Lucid Intent? No
This dream has been viewed 4679 times.
Okay, now, this is a VERY weird, deep kind of dream, very untypical for me. The stuff brought up in this dream is stuff I don't even bother wasting time thinking about, it's too over my head. But here goes.
It started out with a group of people and myself, playing some sort of cross between a board game and a roleplaying game. Each of us played a different character represented by a piece moved across a large board spread out on the floor like a folding mat. It might have been checkered; if it was, it wasn't black and white, but maybe tan and white or something. We were in a room in some building like a school classroom, I guess. Most of the people were around my age, though I think we were college or high school students. I don't recall how many of us there were but there were perhaps eight to a dozen gathered around the board in various places, participating. There were at least several other girls, and one girl, maybe with sandy hair and glasses, possibly similar to Jennifer H. (a girl I knew long ago in elementary school), seemed to be in charge of the game. She was moving more than one piece, but this was only because she had control of several other users' pieces. Not because she was bossy or literally controlling the characters, she was just doing it for convenience since I guess not every player was able to move the pieces. She was just moving these and making decisions in their place. *shrug* I think the pieces were made of glass and were about paperweight size, big enough to hold in the hand but not tiny little game pieces either. I seem to think of a deer, so perhaps some of them had animal forms.
I believe I was too shy to get right in there and control my piece, so my game piece was one of those which this girl was controlling by proxy. My character was an angel. Now, here I must explain a bit. In real life I recently finished reading the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman, and this series deals with things like angels, the authority of God, the corruption of organized religion, the nature of matter and consciousness, etc. Rather deep stuff. It's a fantasy series aimed at children or young adults. In the story, some angels don't have physical form like humans and it's mentioned that they long for material being like we have. There's a pair of male angels in the story named Baruch and Balthamos, and the first one ends up killed early on while Balthamos dies near the end of the story; Baruch was once human while Balthamos was always angelic. Dark matter, I believe, is also mentioned in the story in connection with a substance known as "Dust," which is drawn to human consciousness. That's the simple version of it. Anyway, my dream seemed heavily influenced by this series even though I finished reading it some time ago. My game character was an angel like those in the books, and I guess I didn't have physical form like humans do. Thing is, I guess that in the dream, angels could somehow be given physical form in connection with the game. There was one angel who had been burned to death, possibly an execution or torture, but this wasn't as horrific as it sounded. For he had been given material form shortly before this, because otherwise he couldn't have been burned to death. This meant he felt every bit of the pain. But at least it was physical pain, and since this angel had longed for material being his entire life, being burned to death was actually a wonderful experience for him, and he died happy (even if in excruciating agony).
My turn came for a move, I guess, and the girl controlling my piece (she was kind of kneeling on the board on hands and knees, moving the pieces around with great purpose, thinking carefully over every move) started pondering what to do. The rest of us were standing or sitting at various places around the board. I watched the girl with a kind of detached...it wasn't exactly worry, but more like concern. Like, was she going to make the proper move? I was too shy to speak up to correct her if she made the wrong move, so I did hope she got it right, even though I had no idea how she would since we were pretty much strangers. She took my piece and placed it somewhere and recited the name of the move or else its purpose, since each move had one. I can't recall specifically what it was but it was something like "sacrifice for justice." Meaning, my character would be willing to make a great sacrifice if I felt it was for a just cause. I mulled this over a bit and at first I thought, that doesn't sound quite like me, but then I thought, "Well, I'm a Libra, and even though I believe in trying to see both sides of things, I do tend to focus on what I consider just. I really might be willing to sacrifice something for what I believe is right." So I sat back and silently agreed with the move. I was rather surprised and impressed that the girl knew me so well. (I'm not sure if this was in the dream or just in my recollecting it, but there might have been a vague worry that I was thinking too highly of myself, though I shoved this aside. Again, I don't know if I felt that in the dream or if I'm just feeling it now because this part of the dream makes me feel self-righteous.)
Another angel, who was very tall and seemed to be encased in some sort of weird cover like cardboard armor or a body mask or something, was quite upset, possibly at the death of the angel who had been burned. In this respect I think this character was like Balthamos of the books and the burned angel might have been like Baruch. In my notes I wrote that he was upset that he had no body, but I really am not sure of the exact reason why. I get the feeling angels were rather ambivalent about this issue--they longed for a material body, but at the same time they were afraid to get one since it would be so different from what they were used to. I think that's what the problem was here. This angel had had no body and I think that upset him (possibly in relation to the dead angel), but now I think he'd been given one, based on what happened next, though he might not have been aware of it yet. I decided to comfort him and convince him that he did in fact have a physical body; maybe this would help him feel better.
I hadn't had physical form at first either, but I think that I too had been granted a body just recently; I went to the tall angel and took his left arm, holding it in my own. He was so upset that it took him a moment to notice that he could feel me and I could feel him, and he was surprised. I hugged his arm to me, then we all got up to leave this room, and we were then walking down the hall of my old elementary school, heading toward the gymnasium/cafeteria. I held the tall angel's arm to me the entire way. The thing was, now it felt exactly like I was carrying a furry toy or animal perched on my right arm and clasped to me, like a tall silky toy cat or something; I liked the feeling of it but I had to remind myself this was serious roleplay and I was supposed to be comforting an angel, not carrying a toy. It's like I was "really" carrying a toy but pretending it was the angel's arm. I even remember pretending mentally that I was a character in a movie or something, and there was soundtrack music playing in my head, and I walked a bit differently as if I were on camera, feeling rather dramatic. I think my name might have been "Serafina" or something (which, although I don't think I recalled it in the dream, was the name of a witch character in the His Dark Materials books--in the dream I think I just associated it with angels, like "seraphim"). Maybe I was even pretending I was going to be in a movie based on the books I mentioned.
We went to the lunch line passing through the kitchen. I looked at the food on display and was so hungry and tempted to get some (I don't think I would have to pay), only to then remember that I was supposed to be an angel and again I didn't have physical form, hence I couldn't eat. (I know I'd had physical form earlier, but now I didn't; perhaps it was temporary or limited.) I sighed in disappointment as I stared at the food. There was a tray/bin with wads of mashed potatoes coated in brown gravy, maybe some vegetable dishes, and toward the end, for dessert, there was this big tray or bowl with this puddinglike confection in it; it had two layers, the top layer being light and creamy, the bottom layer being the pudding layer; it was the color of butterscotch and had peanuts in it, so I assumed this stuff was peanut butter flavored. It looked so good! I might have even sniffed at it. I think there was a stereotypical lunch lady, stout and with a hairnet, manning this, but of course I couldn't take any. Oh well, at least the other angel with me wouldn't be able to eat any either. (Here, I think the tall angel had been replaced by a similar angel in a similar role, like Balthamos, but who again didn't have physical form; I believe the tall angel was like Balthamos after Baruch died, whereas this one was like Balthamos before that happened, and was rather snooty and reserved.)
We now entered the gymnasium, which was also the cafeteria. It was busy in here. I was in the company of at least one other person (the angel?) and we went to a table near the stage--the tables were lined up perpendicular to it--so I sat near the end which was further away from the stage, facing the entry into the gym. (In reality I would probably have faced the other way.) So the stage was to my left and the main area of the gym to my right and behind me since I was closer to the entrance. I think there were boys at the table when we arrived and they moved over for us; one might have been Robert/Bob B. (student I knew in elementary school). More people from my group were arriving, in pairs I think, and I recall that I and the person with me had to shuffle closer to the stage a few times to make room, although there seemed to be empty space to my right where nobody sat. Finally one or two people from my table got up and simply climbed onto the stage to sit there, right nearby; one of them was Jessi W., an old best friend of mine who I haven't heard of in years; another might have been a little girl. The people in the group seemed to be of different ages--maybe some children--but again, most of us were student age. Everyone seemed to be in a cheery mood. The other angel now sat down on the stage too I think, or rather on a step or something leading up to it (I think the lights on the stage were on), and I saw that he had food! "Why did you get food?" I asked, surprised and dismayed. "You can't eat it."
He shrugged and made a sort of noncommittal comment, maybe like, "Just because." Here, it was again kind of like this was the game or pretend and we weren't really without physical form, so he was sort of breaking the rules by eating. I guess he hadn't been able to resist temptation when seeing the food; I felt kind of upset and left out because everyone else was eating except me. Of the two of us angels I was the only one who'd followed this rule, so I wouldn't get to taste that food. :(
"What flavor is that?" I asked the angel, seeing that he'd gotten some of that lovely pudding stuff.
He tasted it and looked thoughtful, then said, rather uncertainly, "Lemon, I think."
"Oh," I said, both disappointed--I'd thought it was peanut butter--and placated--well, at least I wasn't missing out on peanut butter!
For some odd reason, the subject of "dark matter" now came up. I had a small model of "dark matter" in my hand. It was vaguely tooth (molar) shaped, though it was mounted on a flat surface so there were no roots or whatever there would be on a tooth. It was wider than it was tall, maybe four or five inches along a side and two or three inches in height, roughly square, though the edges were greatly rounded off and there was an indent in the top middle, like a tooth would have. It was vaguely reminiscent of a somewhat flattened tomato or something I recently saw in real life called a "saucer peach." It was dark dark gray in color, maybe with dull glints to it like slate or stone or something. I was holding this in my hands, turning it about and looking at it as we talked.
I asked the angel what dark matter was. He gave me a definition. I then tried to give the definition back to him in simplified form, to make sure that I'd understood him correctly. "Are you saying," I said, "that dark matter is matter without time?"
He shook his head. "No," he said, his eyes rebuking me somewhat.
"Dark matter is time without matter--? No, wait," I said, shaking my head. "That's backwards. What I mean is, you mean dark matter is dark matter without time?"
Finally the angel nodded. "Yes." The first time I'd recited back the definition, I'd left out that one word, and even though the rest of it was technically right, I guess that changed the meaning, at least to him.
So, here is what "dark matter" was in my dream--it was (dark) matter without time. In my dream, I believe that matter and space were roughly equivalent since you couldn't have a space (location) without matter, so the two main states at work were matter/space and time. And dark matter was matter without time. That was what made it special.
I mulled this over, then held up the model and put my finger on it. "So that means that anything within dark matter is timeless?" I asked, indicating that objects could reside within dark matter as if it were a space in its own right. (One reason why space and matter seemed equal in my dream.)
The angel nodded. "Yes."
I mulled this over again, finding it interesting. Then it struck me. "Wait a minute," I said. "Dark matter has to have been created at some point, hasn't it? There was a specific time when it came into being. So when was it created? It can't have always existed because God is the only thing that's always existed."
I knew that the angels had another name for "God," but I decided to just keep it simple. The angel's eyes widened as he (he seemed somewhat beyond gender so I should more properly say "it," but I'll call him "he") stared at me; he was both stunned that I would say something so potentially sacrilegious, and surprised that I would bring up the issue of God at all, since religion is a touchy subject with me. I too felt I might be treading on dangerous ground here, bringing up the subject of God with an angel, and I found myself uncertain if I truly believed that God had always existed, in anything more than a metaphorical sense. (I do believe in God, and I believe He's always existed, but that's the point--I BELIEVE, I don't KNOW. In the dream I made the statement like I KNEW this for a fact, and that made me uncomfortable, since I don't think God is knowable in this manner; to claim such knowledge is to put oneself on equal footing with Him.) But the angel believed in God, and in His eternal existence, so that was what mattered in this argument. I awaited an answer. How could "dark matter" be truly timeless (always existent) if only God could claim this condition?
Around this point we all got up to leave the gymnasium, apparently done eating. We walked back up the hall, which seemed kind of cluttered and narrow like the inside of a trailer home. I still carried the model of dark matter in my hands, and I kept questioning the angel, almost pestering him for an answer. "I know God can do anything, even if it's completely contradictory," I said as we went. "But I still just want to know, because I want to learn about this."
The dream started to derail a bit here as I now found myself in some area with a few others, the angel probably among them, and I was sorting through some digital photos of mine, though they seemed to be in open air, maybe "hanging" on lines like clothes, not on a computer monitor. The photos were of a pond or something, some water with numerous lilypads; they were kind of small and had stems or something connecting them here and there across the water's surface. One early photo had the sunlight hitting the lilypads in such a way that they seemed almost like stained glass, reddish maybe, though in the later photos they were just green and normal looking so I started sifting back through the earlier pictures to find the prettier ones again; most of the photos were of the same spot and were quite similar so I guess I was trying to pick one or two to format and post online or something. (I do this in real life, including recently.) I tried to tell which photos I liked more. As I looked at them more closely, they seemed to become alive or turn into video rather than still photos, because the water between the lilypads in one--it was dark and had a kind of scum or tint to the top of it so it wasn't as shiny as water usually is--began to move and roil a bit as a large frog peeped up from beneath the surface and swam around a little. I wondered if I should use the image with the frog because it was different and interesting. One photo had the kind of scummy look to the blackish water; in another the water was shinier. I think during this whole time, I was still talking to and questioning the angel, though I never got an answer from him.
I looked up "dark matter" following this dream and all that I could understand is that basically, dark matter is the name for matter that doesn't seem to behave like the rest of matter, and we can't see it so we can only judge it based on how other matter around it reacts. *shrug* I could not comprehend the rest of what I read. I'm fairly certain I've read of dark matter before, so I knew what it was prior to the dream, but I can only assume that my dream didn't mean the literal meaning of "dark matter," since that wasn't mentioned anywhere, only that "dark matter is matter without time." That was its correct definition in my dream. My unconscious probably used the term since it was mentioned in His Dark Materials, but even there, that was not the definition given; my mind seems to have made that up on its own, so I don't know WHERE the idea came from.
One early association I made with this definition was my fictional creation Manitou Island; it's an Island that exists between dimensions, and time acts very oddly there, so it does seem like "matter without time," or at least, matter not constrained by time. But who knows.
[Odd additional note: While proofreading this entry much later, I wanted to clarify that the tooth shape of the dark matter was in fact "molar" shaped and I accidentally typed in "moral"! Unconscious punning?]
Add Comment |
Add Interpretation
