a dream fragment Sunday morning
January 22, 2012
I am supposedly in Disneyland, but a very strange underworld dream Disneyland that does not include fun fantasy rides, but weird exaggerations of things in everyday life--storefronts, businesses, and curiously dark dwellings. There are many people on the streets and passageways of this place. Their spirits seem individually festive, but their is a certain sad sense of chaotic silence in the place. I accept it as it is. After all this is a dream.
My mental state is apprehensive, bordering on frantic and desperate. I am trying to do something that is not quite clear. I believe I am trying to sell some goods that I have in my possession. I am in urgent need of money. I wander this dark Disneyland with a sense that time is running out for me.
In my mind I have an awareness that I am in this Disneyland with a group from my church. We are being paid to do something but I'm not sure what that thing is. As the dream progresses, my mission becomes more ambiguous, my mental state becomes more lacking in direction, and I am more confused about where I am and what I am supposed to be doing.
Then I seem to emerge in a somewhat brighter place--perhaps I've gone outdoors now. I come to a well-known steak house chain location. Chris, a young pastor from my church is standing at the entrance of the restaurant. He calmly says to me, "I think we've got a big problem." He doesn't appear to be angry.
He explains that the park management is unhappy with what I've been doing while I was supposed to be working for the park. (Now the park is no longer Dream Disneyland but Knott's Berry Farm). Our church is going to have to return the money the park paid us to do what we were going to do. And now, due to my actions of taking care of my own business on company time we were relinquishing our pay. The explanation is matter-of-fact, coming across to me with no tone of judgement.
I am--concerned--I'm not sure exactly what it all means. And then after I wake up I think I know the meaning of the dream.
That's as much background as I'll give you. You tell me if you think this dream is delivering a message. What is your interpretation of what that message is saying?
All I can say is that I've been thinking about this dream--this message--all day. It got me thinking about my life in general. I've been doing a lot more of that lately. Maybe it has something to do with my impending birthday next week. I won't say how old, but it's older than I used to be. But still I do dream.
And I have miles to go before I sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream. Will my journey be long? Or much shorter than I think? Time will tell. Time is bad at keeping secrets.
...but that's another post for another day.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Thursday, January 19, 2012
The Chicken or the Egg
Image via Wikipedia
Over the past week my dream life has been very active with long bouts of dreaming but little memory of the specifics of the dreams. This lack of memory is not because I didn't have any capability of remembering, but rather due to the fact that upon awakening I immediately went about various activities without dwelling upon my dreams. In other words, I'm quite sure that I could have recollected the dream details, but I chose not to.
I did track the dream content over the course of the dream sleep time because I awoke almost hourly--as I am prone to do at this stage of my life--and checked to see what time it was. Each time I woke up I was aware of the general story line of the dream and at the end of dream sleep time I was aware that the story had been a continuation of the previous dream sleep period.
During one sleep cycle I was dreaming in great length and detail about contemporary Christian music artists and business. There seemed to be a great deal of content that related to the church I attend, various Christian artists, and the business side of contemporary Christian music.
On another night--or perhaps I should more accurately say morning since this is when most remembered dreams occur--I was dreaming in continued ongoing segments about blogging and things related to that activity. These dreams continued over a period of several hours. Nothing in particular seemed to be happening in the dream as far as action or story, but their seemed to be purposeful intent in the ongoing dreams.
I can directly relate the influence of each of these dream sequences. The blogging dream is obvious since I spend so much time blogging or thinking about blogging. The Christian music dream I can connect to my waking activity of researching and writing about the topic of contemporary Christian music on the preceding day.
One might come to the obvious conclusion that my dreams were merely recreating a dream story based on the previous day's experiences. My mind was compartmentalizing data from my day and evaluating it before it was stored into the inner recesses of my memory.
Then again, my dreaming mind might have been using familiar ideas to symbolically tell another story entirely unrelated to the actual activities of the previous day. It could be that my dream was reinterpreting my preceding day to process it into something of greater relevance to the bigger picture of my life circumstance.
Is a dream about blogging really about blogging or is it actually related to something entirely different and on a much broader scale? If I am doing research about a topic like Christian music and writing about that topic and then later have a dream about that same topic, is the dream in reality about that topic or is it something else.
My fault of not taking the time to evaluate the dream, write it down, and remember its details, has caused me to forget the relevance of the dream--or dreams. Many dreams are lost in this same way. Does it matter? Should we be listening more carefully to our dreams and trying to understand them better?
That might make me be inclined to ask: What comes first? The dream or the action? Is the dream an interpretation of things past or does the dream prognosticate things to come by teasing us with symbolism? What is the truest state of things? The dream? Or that time in which we think we are awake?
As one finds in the header blog description of one of my favorite bloggers:
“We have fallen asleep in God's embrace, having a nightmare that we are elsewhere."
Maybe this says it all.
Related articles
- A Mystery Explained (afarawayview.blogspot.com)
- Dream Code (afarawayview.blogspot.com)
- I am a dreamer (afarawayview.blogspot.com)
- Can you dream? Really, can you?... (dreamcatchercharm.wordpress.com)
- Weirdly Relaxed Sleep & OMAGOSH I Don't Remember Last Night's Dream (ashscrapyard.wordpress.com)
- Dreams Decoded: What Your Sleep Says About You (bellasugar.com)
- What's Behind The Dream (socyberty.com)
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Dynamic Flow: The Dream
Art by Ada Z |
On one particular morning I woke up with a complete clarity of mind resulting from an elucidation delivered through a dream message. A consummate comprehension of money and the workings of wealth had been explained to me. My confidence concerning my personal economic status swelled as I realized that money would no longer be something that I would have to worry about.
The concept that was given to me in the dream I intuitively recognized as "Dynamic Flow". I cannot say if the meaning of this term was verbally explained to me, demonstrated in some way, or something that I just knew. But I did know the meaning. Dynamic Flow is the theory that states: Outward movement of money will result in an incoming flow of money.
My mental state soared as I believed that an age old secret of wealth had been bestowed upon me. It was early morning as is the usual case in this stage of my life when I wake up. Per my custom my first action of the morning was to check the computer. But before checking through my emails or blog, I immediately opened up a new post window and entered the title "Dynamic Flow". I then went to the text box and entered: Dynamic Flow is the theory that states, "Outward movement of money will result in an incoming flow of money."
As I continued through my morning--eating breakfast, doing morning chores, checking through emails--the essence of the dynamic flow concept stayed with me, but my enthusiasm waned as I no longer understood all that had seemed so clear to me when I first woke up. And now I have a vague idea about the dream definition of dynamic flow, but it no longer seems so amazing and life changing as it did right after having dreamed it.
I have had dreams like this on occasion. I will dream of a concept that seems revelatory and profound, leaving me with a belief or delusion of great life-changing discovery. Then as my mind becomes distanced from the dream I begin to face reality? Lose the truth revealed in the dream? Realize the lie that had been presented to me? I'm not sure what the answer is, and I suppose it could be any of these depending on the dream.
The messages of dreams are not always clear nor are they necessarily overtly true. If dreams are messages from the subconscious mind then the truths may be disclosed by lies of symbolization of dream images that are tangible and intangible representations of things that we know in waking life or they could possibly be misinterpretations that we have made about things in waking life as we have seen or experienced them. Or are they lies that come from some place or being outside of us? This would be the most frightening thought.
Have you ever awoken with thoughts of apparent genius until you thought them through and realized they made no sense? Have you ever awoken with a brilliant idea that did make sense and you were able to apply in some useful way? Have you ever had dreams that you believe could have been planted in your mind by some outside evil force?
Thursday, January 5, 2012
"Stairway to Lenin" from "The Orchestra"
Image via Wikipedia
In the future we will look at the topic of surrealism, but today I wanted to share a film by Zbigniew Rybczyński, an award winning Polish filmmaker who has created some incredible avant garde visions of surrealism. I was pleasantly surprised to find that "Stairway to Lenin"--an excerpt from a longer work called "The Orchestra"--is available on YouTube so I wanted to share this piece with you here.
The music is the compelling dreamlike and hypnotic "Bolero" by Maurice Ravel. The fifteen minutes that this film takes to watch is well worth your time if you appreciate this piece of music, surrealism, unique film vision, or all of the above. Make sure you enlarge it to full screen for maximum effect. Unfortunately the resolution is not as clear as it would be on DVD, but you get a good idea of this amazing piece of film making.
You can find the DVDs of this and other works by Rybczyński at his website Zbig Vision.
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