My Dreams – Back to school

Last night I dreamt that I was taking part in some kind of work experience in a primary school. I can remember very little about the dream – mainly snapshots of the classroom. I remember the distinct feeling of being like a child myself in the dream despite being there in an adult capacity. I was intimidated by the teachers and felt underqualified and, I think, somehow ashamed as they looked at me.

Towards the end of the dream my sister was about to put herself into a similar situation as a helper at the school. I remember driving her to there and giving her advice.

Next I remember a fire drill. I have visions of the interior of the school although at this point I am watching my sister. The children rush to doors all throughout the school. I remember watching them as though they were uncaged animals and everyone seemed unable to guide them towards a safe exit.

I remember nothing else.

There are many mirrors of reality in this dream. Firstly, I am currently applying to volunteer as a student helper in nearby schools. I think the negative feelings of shame and particularly that of being underqualified are a portrayal of my worries about my future career – that I wont be good enough to become a lecturer etc. I feel that my sister appearing in the dream is particularly appropriate because she is in the process of following in my footsteps at university to study Mathematics. I do remember a particular regret about her choosing to follow my path into the school throughout the dream, and this mirrors my fear of her following my choices at university, school and so on.

My Dreams – The Recital

Had a dream that I was in the audience of some performance. Two of my friends from high school were there and they both seemed to be related to the little kids in a choir. The choir were a shambles, couldn’t position themselves, didn’t know when to start singing and then ran off half way through the performance. Some people sitting around me were saying that my two friends were cheating because they were secretly singing along and trying to make the choir sound better.

Eventually everyone left middway through the performance and moved into a large kitchen and dining room which seemed to be directly behind and adjoined to the room of the performance. The two older girls had now moved to lie down behind the curtains continuing to sing the childrens parts.

The dream ends as we’re leaving the house and I remember walking with a friend from university who tells me suddenly that he is the son of the priest and is in fact a priest himself. I remember thinking about how I could compare him to another girl that I used to go to school with and laugh about it with my friends.

The two friends that appeared in the earlier part of the dream were friends at high school and had both a bit of a reputation for being attention seekers. One of them in particular was a girl that I really didn’t get on with. I think that explains their portrayal as cheaters in the dream.

Dreams – The Archers

It seemed to be like a war game. At first I think I was just observing but towards the end I joined in as me, my boyfriend and some of his friends defended a medieval landscape. All around us archers were appearing and starting to destroy the place. It seemed to be our job to kill them while making our way to certain locations within the city. As more and more of them appeared a mist decended making it more and more difficult to find where we were going. On our last attempt the place became surrounded in mist with archers appearing all around us. Finally a large word appeared (I can’t remember exactly what it was) signalling our defeat, as in a game.

The dream I expect came partially from a memory of my boyfriend playing some kind of war strategy earlier in the day. Despite appearing as a game in some parts of the dream especially at the final scene, it seemed as if we were really walking through the city. I don’t remember killing any of the archers myself though I do remember knowing that the others were and that this was our goal.

Dreams – The big drop

Had an absolutely terrifying dream recently.

I was in the car with my boyfriend and we were becoming increasingly lost as he was ignoring my directions and arguing with me. As we turned a corner I spotted our destination round the corner and shouted at him to turn left however he ignored me, driving faster as he got increasingly angry with my shouting at him. Eventually he shouted, “Right this is the right way!” and turned at great speed into another street.

As we turned into the street I caught a flash of trees and a dark wooded area. Then, in the car, we were falling. I could feel the sensation of dropping extremely quickly in my stomach. Everything went a horrifying black and I remember thinking that this is what it will feel like to die. As quickly as I realised I was about to die I began to come to terms with that fact and accepted it. I accepted that this was the end and we hit the bottom of the drop.

I woke quickly, and shot upright in my bed. I was sweating, crying and breathing heavily. I continued to cry from the shock of it for at least 20 or 30 minutes afterwards. I have never felt so scared in a dream. The fact that I could clearly remember my acceptance of the fact that I was about to die was shocking to me. I conclude that the dream showed me what it will be like to accept death. I truly believed I was dying. It remains a powerful memory to me and the idea shocks me nearly to tears even as I write.

I don’t know where the dream came from however it put into good perspective the small arguments that I have with my boyfriend.

Dream Moods

Found a good forum today where lots of people have talking about their dreams. It’s part of the site Dream Moods and I found some particularly interesting information about people that seem to exercise control over what they dream of:

I was having a dream, and it was similar to normal life only there was a large crowd outside of my house, just sitting, not waiting for anything. About 10 minutes (dream time) into the dream I asked myself whether it was a dream, and realized it was! However, unlike some lucid dreams where I’m basically God, I only had control over time, and as you know dreams are timeless, this dream only took an hour but I somehow made it a month. And life in the dream just went on, there were times when I was bored and such. I’m a guy who usually spends a lot of my time on the computer, but in the dream I knew there weren’t consequences so I did anything I’d want to do in the real world and walked around the “world” in my dream. By the end, I was eating peanut butter cookies that I made and a person outside in the crowd yells out “HEY FAT ASS!” I knew it was a dream and knew there weren’t consequences so I was going to kill the person, but instead i started dancing and woke up in a very good mood.

by Hypocrite

This guy seems to have built up an astounding amount of control over his dream state. For more information about lucid dreaming and much more why don’t you go ahead and visit www.dreammoods.com. Check out the forums to see what people are dreaming about. Maybe you’ll find something someone with similar experiences to yourself!

Dream – Haircut

Simple dream today. I walked past the hairdresser I work near and saw a guy who I think was my boyfriend’s sister’s best friend getting his hair cut. I walk in and he asks for some advice about how he wants his hair done. I suggest blonde. He goes and gets it blonde just to see what its like. Spurred by his ability to go for something new I decide on a new haircut that I would like (a little shorter with a fringe and some red highlights). I phone my dad asking for the cash. I realise its an expensive hairdresser so I decide to ask him for £30 pounds and I’ll pay the rest (though i won’t tell him that it costs any more than this otherwise he’ll be mad). Anyway, I think and think about the haircut but in the end I don’t have the courage to get it done.

There’s part of me that associates this simply with my ongoing wish to just go and get something new done for my hair but I think this also speaks of deeper issues of insecurity.

Dreams – The Hostage Dream

I’ve heard of people having hostage dreams before. I couldn’t tell you what the real significance of these are but here’s how my shockingly detailed dream went last night:

Me and many other people were in this building (almost like a hotel) and then it was suddenly evacuated… for some reason, as this evacuation took place, I remember the building being on a slant – the lift was moving sideways and i had to, literally, climb down the stairs. Soon everyone was running out the building and, as the three other people i was with came running out, the building started to fall over. They had to sprint to openings so that they wouldn’t be crushed.

After evacuating the building I was told that there was some kind of terrorist that had made threats about the building. Upon hearing this information we all moved away from the building and it was soon blown up true to the terrorists word.

Then I ran to get out of the field surrounding the building (jumping over a barbed wire fence in the process) then on the outer barbed wire fence (there were two that seperated a small path round the edge) there was a masked guy pouring petrol over the last fence. Someone following me then told me of his plans to torch the field. Everyone began to gather in the surrounding path between to two fences and then just seemed to stay there. I thought that we should move away from the petrol covered fence and stand in the middle of the field so that the fire would take less time to reach us and the helicopters could land to pick us up.

There was a brief bit, after I had moved into the middle of the field, where i was watching people far away run around in fear and was frustrated that they didn’t realise that they could jump over a small amount of fire and live instead of stay where they were and die. Anyway I stayed where I was and a helicopter landed on the ground in front of us.

As the helicopter lifted off I looked back onto the field and saw a massive group of SAS soldiers around the perimeter walking towards where the terrorist was throwing petrol. I saw one of them carrying the biggest gun I’d ever seen which rather than being a sniper rifle like I first assumed turned out to be a rocket launcher. The guy then started to shoot rockets at the other helicopters in the sky.

Meanwhile, I was taken up in the helicopter and was put in charge of some kind of gun. I was shooting at things around us in the sky and the pilot was telling me I was doing great. Then the pilot started to talk to us about where we were going and I noticed that one of the passengers looked really suspicious, almost looking as if he was going to kill the pilot… so I shot him in the head. He just looked at me, shocked, but continued to speak and move. I realised that the gun I was holding didn’t have real bullets in. I remember feeling gutted that all of my efforts at shooting from the helicopter had been meaningless.

Then after all that we landed in some kind of army barracks. After our ordeal they seemed to do training excersises on the same field so that they could be better prepared afterwards. I remember watching the same event from a television screen but in this time the people kept hostage seemed to be millionaires and were flinging money up into the air so that the captives could take it.

Wow, what an event filled dream. The first vivid dream I’ve had in a while.

House With No Glue

This is a fabulous print by Donna Fenstermaker who bases all of her paintings and artworks on dreams that she has had:

I have, for many years, been recording and using my dreams in my art. The work represents an
integration of my art and my dreams: writing down the stories of them, then making drawings,
books, prints, paintings or sculptures about them.

The drawings in the books and subsequent pieces are not illustrations but a way of telling
another aspect of the dream. I have done dream drawings from which I’ve continued and done more
than 40 subsequent drawings. Each drawing is a continuation of the original image and also a
deepening of the impact and meaning. It has a relationship to the earlier image discovered in
the dream work and also it has its own story to tell…

Donna Fenstermaker

This particular painting, she tells us, came from a series of dreams she had when a very good friend to her was dying. She says that he was central to her group of friends; he was the glue that heald them together. I find this symbolism very effective and the painting, with this added piece of information is so powerful. I hope you enjoy her work.

‘The Bridge’ – Iain Banks – Carriage Stand-Off

More of my thoughts on the book ‘the Bridge’ by Iain Banks.

In the second part of the book ‘Metamorphosis’, we begin with chapter one. It is a dream sequence, and its seeming irrelevance to the introduction to the book threw me for a while. However upon reading and reading I have found correlation between this and the initial crash scene. The first person, who’s identity we are not yet sure of, drives a carriage which is forced to a stop when, on the single track road they travel, a similar carriage meets them.

I believe that this scene is a symbol for the crash scene which causes the main character to fall into a coma. The idea of the carriage’s headlights startling the driver, white horses which relate to the white Jaguar, the feeling’s of utter terror that the driver has… they all seem to relate.

There are other ideas which I find quite powerful included in this scene. The man in the other carriage, in dream-like surreality, copies the personas every move however he does not look the same and does not speak the same language as him. I think that this symbolises the persona looking into his own personality, which because of the coma, he cannot fully remember, but has a terrifying feeling of familiarity with which he cannot explain, symbolised in the mirrored actions of this man: ‘Sir! If you please, go-” I halted. The other driver had spoken – and stopped speaking – just at the moment I had started, and then stopped.”

There is also a feeling of frustration and anger from the persona, as well as the threat of violence shown by the gun, which gives the idea of anger at being unable to relate to this foreign character. There is a suggestion that in trying to remember who he is there is the same kind of frustration and misunderstanding.

This scene also contains some fantastic descriptions which I think are very important because dreams are very visual things:

“The last tendrils of the mist stroked past the gleaming flanks of the horses and the strapped sides of the carriage like nebulous fingers reluctant to let us go. Above, the stars shone”

Wow, this description leaves the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. If there’s a reason to read this book, there it is!

Overall Banks has written a fantastic dream sequence which I think relates perfectly the kind of surreal ideas which fall into one another in a dream.

[to buy the book click here] [to read more on 'the bridge' click here]

The World’s View on Dreams

Some people have some fantastic things to say about dreams and the dream-world. Here are just a few I have found:

“Dreams are free, so free your dreams.” Astrid Alauda

“When we are dreaming alone it is only a dream. When we are dreaming with others, it is the beginning of reality.” Dom Helder Camara

“All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.” Elias Canetti

“Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” Gloria Steinem

“Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.” Goethe

“Dreams are free therapy. Consult your inner Freud.” Grey Livingston

“Dreaming is an act of pure imagination, attesting in all men a creative power, which if it were available in waking, would make every man a Dante or Shakespeare.”H.F. Hedge

“No person has the right to rain on your dreams.” Marian Wright Edelman

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” Mark Twain

“Dreams are illustrations… from the book your soul is writing about you.” Marsha Norman

“Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.” Virginia Woolf

“Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.” William Dement

“Dreams are answers to questions we haven’t yet figured out how to ask.” X Files

“A man’s dreams are an index to his greatness.” Zadok Rabinowitz

What do dreams mean to you?