Thread: This detailed dream has many parts and scences that baffle me. Fog, hidden knowlege, old parchments

Hi again, I read some of the other dreams/interpretations and noticed there was a request to know more about the person and circumstances before the dream. So I thought it best to tack that on. I am in my 40's a mother of 5 with 4 of them being adults and one a preschooler. My mom treated me differently then my younger sisters and I got accused of being a bad preteen - teenager. My friends and psychologist confirmed it was not me but how I was treated. We got along much better as adults. In almost all dreams I have had of my mom she ends up being angry, embarrassed of me or makes me feel guilty. It's usually without cause and always catches me off guard.
Over the last week I have been trying to learn and practice meditation. I have high blood pressure because I have sleep apnea and I also suffer from insomnia most nights. The night of this dream I did listen and fall asleep to a 432 Hz Frequency Music for Sleeping and Deep Relaxation: Healing Music, Sleep video. My dream occurred hours after the video had stopped. I'm anxious about an upcoming move, health, my blog, time and money.
I usually dream about a man in the shadows. Sometimes he makes me nervous. He never speaks to me and usually is there to observe. It's not necessarily the same man every time and he usually feels like a black shadow just behind me. Sometimes he takes on the roll of characters in my dreams but still never speaks. Such as he is always among any beings I feel with me, such as when I entered the large building where I sensed my family, the man in the hall, on the elevator, and the one behind me when I got off the elevator. BUT again I never have felt it was the same man or even different ones. Sorry I know that sounds weird. I hope that helps.

Hi again, I read some of the other dreams/interpretations and noticed there was a request to know more about the person and circumstances before the dream. So I thought it best to tack that on. I am in my 40's a mother of 5 with 4 of them being adults and one a preschooler. My mom treated me differently then my younger sisters and I got accused of being a bad preteen - teenager. My friends and psychologist confirmed it was not me but how I was treated. We got along much better as adults. In almost all dreams I have had of my mom she ends up being angry, embarrassed of me or makes me feel guilty. It's usually without cause and always catches me off guard.
Over the last week I have been trying to learn and practice meditation. I have high blood pressure because I have sleep apnea and I also suffer from insomnia most nights. The night of this dream I did listen and fall asleep to a 432 Hz Frequency Music for Sleeping and Deep Relaxation: Healing Music, Sleep video. My dream occurred hours after the video had stopped. I'm anxious about an upcoming move, health, my blog, time and money.
I usually dream about a man in the shadows. Sometimes he makes me nervous. He never speaks to me and usually is there to observe. It's not necessarily the same man every time and he usually feels like a black shadow just behind me. Sometimes he takes on the roll of characters in my dreams but still never speaks. Such as he is always among any beings I feel with me, such as when I entered the large building where I sensed my family, the man in the hall, on the elevator, and the one behind me when I got off the elevator. BUT again I never have felt it was the same man or even different ones. Sorry I know that sounds weird. I hope that helps.

From what you’ve written, it looks like the dream is trying to give you some advice that could help to lessen your worries over the many things that are going on in your life right now.

For example, the huge old building in the first part of the dream could unfortunately be showing the presence of your long-standing anxieties about “not being good enough” as a person.

As you explained, your mother treated you badly at an extra important transitional period of your life, and sadly, you even now struggle with the upsetting results of this.

So it’s possible that the building, with its large empty spaces, feelings of confusion, fog, and a kind of well meaning “mad scientist” running around, symbolizes this old, ongoing state of affairs along with some attempts to “get out of it”.

For instance, it could be that the scientist with lots of papers under his arms represents how the rational and logical explanations of your psychologist and friends, while quite true, don’t seem to work very well in finally allowing you to leave behind maybe a feeling of a lack of self worth.

This is shown by the dreams where your mother suddenly turns critical of you and also by the “man in the shadows” who makes you nervous.

Since you had better relations with your mother in later life, her image in this and other dreams starts off well, but soon the old criticism returns. This could possibly show that your own “self mothering” and feeling acceptance of yourself is still too shaky at times, just like your mother’s treatment of you swung between the two poles of acceptance and rejection.

In the dreams of a woman, a negative male figure usually symbolizes a tendency towards allowing certain subtle, ongoing and self-hurtful thoughts and judgments about herself to go unchallenged in waking life.

She accepts them as “true” and allows herself to be cowed into submission by them too often.

It might sound unusual, but in these cases, a woman should try in waking life to catch any such negative thoughts etc., and respond to them as if speaking to the man who spoke them. She can simply say “That’s not true”, or “I’m not falling for that one” etc.

Something about this technique can be found in Jungian analyst Robert Johnson’s book “Inner Work”.

In your dream, you’re in a place where experiments are done to reach other worlds, dimensions, or time.

This might possibly be the dream’s way of commenting on your recent attempts to learn meditation, the implication being that this could potentially lead you too far away from the “here and now” at this time.

The dream seems to say that the main thing is to get out of this building which probably could symbolize “too much mind stuff” and not enough “feeling stuff”.

This could be what “you know but shouldn’t know”, along with the “truth” which the scientist wants to tell the world.

That is, accepting any such idea would probably mean less “doing” (e.g. learning about too many things) and more of just “being” (e.g. by feeling your way into self-acceptance more often).

Too often, we can fall into needing to “prove ourselves” all the time by various activities and self-sacrifices etc. when what’s needed is just a reasonable mix of doing a good enough job while resting on a bedrock of basic self-acceptance.

So the dream seems to say that you should strongly feel this need to leave an old habit of maybe thinking too much (e.g. the flying cars), and embrace a new way of behaving that’s more attuned to your true feelings about yourself and others.

Otherwise, certain unpleasant reactions of your nervous system (as symbolized by the dinosaurs) could unfortunately tend to keep your worries and insomnia too active.

The next part of your dream seems to expand further on these ideas.

For example, the possible old habit of too much thinking reappears in the form of another old building, the high airy ceiling, the fog, and the small room that’s brightly lit with artificial light.

In this section of the dream, you’re looking for your family which might possibly symbolize a kind of united group of your own skills, abilities, talents and experience etc. which can give a pleasant sense of self-satisfaction.

But something goes wrong at first because you’ve apparently come in on a funeral service.

This might symbolize the fact that some part of you is “missing” and “unconscious” (i.e. “dead”) too much of the time so that a union with your “inner family” can’t easily take place.

A clue about what is missing could be found in how you come across your son as a child.

The image of a male child in the dreams of a woman often represents a sense of adventure, curiosity and enterprise etc. that isn’t held back by feeling negative about oneself. For example, it might be time, after years of dedication to your family, that you should explore your own unique talents etc. that probably had to be left behind in the first half of life.

In order to help in this process, brushing up on one’s assertiveness skills can be very helpful, so if this seems that it could to apply to you, a couple of time-tested and reliable books could be useful, namely, “Your Perfect Right: Assertiveness and Equality in Your Life and Relationships / Edition 9” by Robert Alberti and Michael Eammons, and “Asserting Yourself” by Sharon and Gordon Bower. These are available on such websites as Barnes & Noble and Amazon for example.

Your young daughter probably symbolizes your unique self which you have to “care for”, “nurture” and “bring to maturity over time”.

In the dream, something happens which in the end turns out to be negative. That is, you hear your mother calling from the back left side of the big room. At first, all goes well. You’re glad so see each other and you hand over your daughter to her.

But usually, anything connected to “back” and “left” in dreams refers to influences from the unconscious mind.

In this case, the next section of the dream where you find your unique self again (i.e. in the form of the cold egg which needs maternal warming), soon has things going wrong.

This happens because you turn over your egg to your mother’s basket where a sort of mechanical process causes it to disappear under the other eggs.

This might be some kind of an echo of how your “egg” was not as favored as those of your sisters in your earlier years.

Apparently, a usual pattern clearly appears where your inner mom is “angry” and “yelling” at you, making you feel guilty and embarrassed even though there’s no obvious reason why she’s acting like this.

The next part of your dream takes place as if in a basement classroom with neatly arranged chairs. A basement in dreams again suggests the generally unhelpful influence of unconscious beliefs, opinions and emotions etc.

In this negative context, your mother is friendly with the woman wearing the ’80’s dress. The latter is whispered about, soon becomes “psychotic” and is removed from the room.

This situation was blamed on the “Disney princesses” which could possibly suggest the idea of how you might have tended to try to be “completely perfect” just like a Disney princess is in order to be liked and accepted.

If so, the problem would be that your real emotions and instinctive reactions might have tended to be locked out too much of the time. Any such situation could lead to feeling upset and anxious too much of the time because your instinctive side was “angry” with you for not standing up for yourself.

The final part of the dream apparently returns to the first building again.

The important theme about the need to somehow get out of the building is strongly emphasized, probably representing being able to make the potential “you” real in the outside world through active dedication that’s mostly free from inner self-doubts etc.

You’re very determined in the dream to go out the door but then, you too easily “sacrifice” this wish in order to please the teacher/scientist who wants his package delivered with no chance whatever that you’ll go outside the building.

This might show that breaking some long-standing beliefs, opinions and ways of acting etc. won’t be easy to do at first.

The man gives you a large envelope containing various papers and parchments, maybe which symbolize the “sacred word” of certain fixed principles and doctrines etc.

If so, the salt crystals that form outside could possibly symbolize the occasional appearance of some understandable anger, irritation or hostility as a result of clinging too close to the “word” while ignoring, for example, your real emotions too much.

In this part of the dream, even the elevator is a classroom which again maybe suggests a certain preference for generally collective ideas and approaches as opposed to more individually orientated ones.

A man appears who makes you nervous and you’re both dressed essentially the same in heavy dark coats.

You feel over dressed, maybe because sometimes there’s a hint of an over reliance on “wanting to look warm” (i.e. in a heavy coat) when you don’t really feel “warm” to others on various occasions.

If this is the case, it might cause some “loss” of your “real self” as also symbolized by the ring.

In your mind, you imagine the lost ring as being an old decorative large gold ring with a ruby on top, “more like a king would wear”.

In reality, the lost ring is a smaller lady’s one with a ruby which you recognize as being your own.

It could be that the “king’s” ring symbolizes a certain adherence to a “masculine” way of orientating yourself through thinking and the intellect.

If so, the dream could be suggesting that the smaller and more “feminine” one could be more appropriate because less directly relying too much on just the intellectual side of things.

In the end, you take a powerful step in breaking away from whatever the building and the elevator represent, ending up near the “outside” by entering the parking garage as the next step towards total freedom.

What seemed so urgent and important to the man who gave you the package turns out to be of no real worth because the other man just looks at the contents and throws them all away.

This time, the group of documents might be adding the ideas of “dryness” and being “old and worn out” to how certain habits are seen from the point of view of the dream.

The word “telekinesis” comes to mind and you wake up. This word means “the movement of a body at or to a distance by paranormal means”.

So it’s possible that you have to gradually realize that you can’t move any such dry approaches out of your life by “magic”, but only through gradually expressing your true emotions over time.

Anyway, I hope these ideas about your important dream can be helpful in some way.

Please feel free to comment on, or to ask any questions about, this particular way of looking at your dream.

Athanor, I want to thank you for taking the time to go over each section of this dream and thoroughly giving explanations for each. Thank you I appreciate the time and effort you put into it all, also, thank you for the book suggestions. For the most part I think you hit the nail on the head. Most of what you mentioned I have known but you were able to add things that brought it together in a way that I hadn't been able to work through. I have some knowledge in dream symbols but I tend to have a hard time understanding them in the context of my own dreams. There were parts of this dream that felt really important but I just did not have the knowledge to interpret for myself. I feel that you did an excellent job of interpreting most of them. I still feel that there is more to the ruby ring, the salt crystals and the main parchment (I should have described the main parchment wrapped around the jar as ancient, powerful knowledge that was just out of my reach of understanding. Something important for me but not necessarily anyone else. The other papers were unimportant, at least concerning myself. Now that I think of it I believe a key was missing).
I tend to feel negative emotions intensely and to avoid spiraling down the road of depression I have tried to cast them aside as quickly as possible but, at the same time this is difficult for me to do and end up thinking and analyzing it for too long. Meditation has been helping me fall asleep and not fall down the hole of analyzing and overthinking. It wasn't until I started to try positive affirmations that I realized how much of my subconscious was negative. I haven't fully incorporated mediation and positive affirmations into my daily life but it seems to be helping over hindering when I do them. I am definitely much more aware of my underlying thoughts as I go through the day.
I suppose when it comes down to it the dream was telling me things I am definitely aware of, you were able to clarify others that I needed a boost of knowledge about and the rest will remain a mystery or hidden until I work through some things. Sincerely, Thank you! This was very helpful to me.

I’m glad that I was able to help in some way to work through your very long dream. Dreams often try to show the dreamer various situations from a different angle in order to help to clarify what’s going on and to make progress easier over time.

You’re right about there being more about the ruby because I realized from what you said that I forgot to mention its most important symbolism (I’ll blame that on how long your dream was and the amount of symbolism I had to get through!).

It’s safe to say that any precious stone symbolizes what is basically a paradox. That is, it represents the core center of the personality while also representing the totality of the personality at the same time.

It’s also the mix of unique potentials that make up an individual which then have to be made real in the outside world.

This is the same idea that the egg symbolizes in your dream.

From what you’ve said about the parchment as being ancient, powerful knowledge, it too symbolizes this center of the personality, partly because it represents something important for you and no one else.

Symbols usually have various layers to them, so while my description of what the salt represents is possibly still partly true, the deeper and fuller meaning can be found by looking at what various cultures over the ages have believed about salt per se.

For example, in Christian teaching, salt is linked to the figure of Sapientia or “Wisdom”. Similarly, it’s also connected to a special or distinguished personality in general as in Matthew 5:13 “Ye are the salt of the earth”.

A paradox again appears in the fact that salt also symbolically represents a kind of undeveloped, loose mass that has to be coalesced into some kind of clear form. This signifies once more the idea of innate potentials in a person being made concrete and real in the outside world.

So all of these images basically represent the same thing; that is, a kind of sacred core of the personality that needs the ego’s attention and dedication to become present in practical ways.

The famous psychiatrist Carl Jung called this inner figure the Self and you might like to read about this and his other ideas in the book which he edited called “Man and his Symbols” that was directed to the general public.

The “key” to basic contentment is somehow developing the unique mix of ways that an individual can use to connect with this inner figure in an ongoing way.

It looks like the way you’re currently using meditation is helpful, so maybe the idea is to make it just one of various arrows in your quiver to help you to sleep better.

You might also like the Jungian approach to dream interpretation if you haven’t come across it. It’s covered by Jung in the first chapter of Man and his Symbols, as well as in the other book I mentioned, “Inner Work”. In addition, “Jungian Dream Interpretation” by analyst James Hall is also very clear and helpful.

And if you keep using positive affirmations each day, you’ll probably see a change in how you handle the “shadow” men in your dreams much more assertively over time.

Anyway, I hope these additional ideas can be helpful, and please don’t hesitate to ask any other questions that might come to mind.

My inner psyche seems to have been trying to get my attention on this for sometime. Looking back on past dreams they now seem to relate to the same symbols. Thank you for the added insight and suggestions. It means a lot to me that you spent your time on this and were so thorough with each aspect. I really needed an outside influence to bring it together. - I was actually wondering if some of my empty classroom dreams represent a desire to work with/bounce ideas off of others but are empty because it represents my real life isolation.
Once our move is over I plan on giving this insightful information some attention and try to work on the issues and feelings that arise. Thank you doesn't cover my gratitude but words escape me to cover all that you have done for me here. Thank you! Blessing to you and yours.