AstralVagabond

This is a non-lucid dream that I had four days ago. I had recalled and recorded other dreams from that day; but this seemed like the most interesting to me.

I was in a large, tall building, sealed off without windows and multiple levels of giant rooms, which I knew to regard as a great kindergarten. That’s what I thought of it as, although it was more like a giant playground, as there were no teachers or supervising adults there - nor were there any other children. I can’t remember my surroundings in good detail but I know that the lighting was fairly bright and the walls were a gold or gold-ish colour. In contrast, imagined play equipment was painted in varying and vibrant colours.

I don't recall actually spending any time playing here; instead, I remember meeting my mum and agreeing with her to go somewhere else in the playground. I didn’t actually realise until just then that there were multiple levels, when we went down the stairs one floor (I think I'd been at the top floor initially) and then looked down and saw that there were still several floors beneath. The structure of the building was such that every floor was built at the edges of the room, with railings at the edges and a hole in the centre of each floor.

Then, I believe we jumped off the ledge, as we skipped all the levels and dropped down to the bottom floor, but with no expectation or reception of injury. The bottom floor was an empty one, save perhaps one piece of furniture and one or two doors. Then I found that I was looking to leave, so I asked my mum where we could leave the kindergarten, even though I already had an idea of where it could be. I thought it was the door – or one of them, as I simply knew which one – in that same room. My mum confirmed that it was the door I was thinking of.

I started walking to the door and going to open it; but as I did so and as it was opened by my mother instead and I saw the outside of the kindergarten palace and she walked out there, I felt taken aback and no longer wanted to leave. The kindergarten as I was there previously felt so warm and safe and insular and childish, reinforced in this sense by the quality that there were no windows to the outside world and nothing existent except a lot of indoor playground rooms.

I saw that leaving this place, I would not return. Not ever. It was as if I had spent my life in this kindergarten previously. And leaving it felt like it represented leaving childhood, as a child lives so heavily insulated from the dynamics of the real world by his own home and school and wherever his parents take him, knowing hardly anything of it but play... to maturity, which was full of difficult and confusing ideas and choices that would never end, after which I could never go back.

I thought that this was just like something that had happened to me in real life, when I was a child and I physically left a more realistic but still literal place in just the same way for the life that I am living now. Even though, of course, no singular, literal event like this truly ever happened.

That's right. I thought that this was identical to something that had happened to me 'in real life.' However, despite imagining such a thought, I didn't even think to couple it with the thought that I was dreaming. It was as if I was operating on an extremely low level of lucidity; or I had very closely, almost entered a lucid dream but not quite. (Not to mention that the event I imagined happening in real life never actually happened, which further shows how unaware I was of reality in this matter.)

I saw, in this imagined event, me being in my motherland, where I had lived up until I was six but no longer do, and the place I entered as I exited through this doorway was a street from that country. In fact, it may have been the street where my old home there was situated. For a moment, that's also what I saw outside the doorway where I was just then. Immediately after this, though, I saw a Western front porch, with some potted plants and a bench on a swing, where my mother went before I could catch up with her.

I wanted to tell her, without going outside myself, without setting foot through that doorway, about how I was feeling in order to garner sympathy from her. This is a childish endeavor; and the reason for which I was so avoidant of stepping through that doorway was that it felt like it would force me to surrender my childish ways. In retrospect, I think this may have been symbolic of when I left my homeland when I was 6 years old - and, at the same time, graduated from kindergarten and went on to begin school in the country where I currently reside.