Thread: Strange dream that needs answers

This is of course only one possible interpretation, and may well be wrong, so if it does not sound right, please disregard:

A persistent theme throughout most of the dream scenes is the role of observer who does not get involved in the action but just observes it from the sideline. In the first scene the observer observes turbulent emotions and chaos, but stays detached. In the second scene watching TV, perhaps it is a comparison, saying that this observer is watching life as if it were a TV, not getting involved enough. Then the car accident scene, again it starts out with you just observing the accident and noting that it is nothing special, so as something is happening to someone else, something that is emotionally charged and probably disturbing to them, you watch. But then you recognize the woman, and she changes everything: now, you are no longer willing to be just a random observer and a stranger even to yourself and to others, but you want to get involved, you want to reach out to her. She matters to you, and brings out your desire to be part of the action and not just on the side. The priest's message "If you want to enter deep down,you have be persistent and pay the price" may be about relationship, that you cannot go into a deep relationship with the woman without being persistent and paying the price if needed, becoming actively involved with another person is risky - what if she rejects you? what if she expects of you a more active role in events that you would rather just watch? what if you need to then be in the midst of emotional chaos like a madhouse or a car crash - emotions can become like that when one is deeply involved in a relationship. Or the priest's message may be about your emotions and state of mind that you cannot get to know yourself more deeply, unless you are persistent and willing to pay the price, again becoming actively involved and persistently so, in your own emotional life and your own deep down desires and fears, not being an observer and stranger to yourself. The price of that may be that you may discover thing about yourself that you would rather not know, becoming more emotionally involved and less rationally analytical perhaps?

(I’ve been writing this on and off during the day, unfortunately it became quite a long piece, and now that I’m finished I see that JoannaB meanwhile wrote a post. While her post is much shorter and has little bit different angle, it is interesting to see that there are several conclusions that correspond.)

The young patients in the dream probably represent some kind of repressed energy, perhaps a part of yourself that you (without knowing it) rejects because you think it is not acceptable. Then in the dream there’s outburst of this energy and you run and hide because it is perceived as dangerous. We always have a reason for our repressions, so naturally that which is repressed is something we don’t want to know about and we run away from it in our dreams and so forth.

When the patients are breaking into the same inner room you hide in (which interestingly enough is a “representation” room – does that mean that that which is rejected is unacceptable because it is not something you’d like to “represent”?) the dream switches to something you see on TV. This is a common “trick”, it seems to me, dreams use: It distance the dreamer from the content when it gets too scary by making it something we see on a screen. Instead of having the dreamer wake up screaming, the dream is able to continue with the story because the dreamer is not all that frightened by what it sees on TV.

It is also a very elegant way of changing context, from the outbreak at the hospital to the stranger on the street. I’m not sure how to interpret it, but I find it interesting that you describe your dream-ego in the second part of of the dream as “random”, “a stranger”. In any case, that is your identity within this context, and if looked at personally, you could contemplate in which way, in what streets of your life so to speak, can you recognize this feeling of being “random”, perhaps anonymous, and a stranger.

One could also note that this lack of a self-awareness, being a random stranger, is not something you experience at the hospital; it appears when you are distanced from the hospital. In the first part, you are “you”, in the second part, you are “nobody (particular)”. So when you are at the place where the repressed energy is, you are yourself – when you distance yourself from that part of yourself, you are “nobody”. One could speculate amongst the lines, that the repressed children at the hospital is connected to the “real you”.

This is something that often happens, I would say, that when we repress crucial parts of our self we lose our individuality, and our sense of being our self – we become collective, how we think others want us to be; a representation of the collective, acceptable man. To gain individuality, become who you really are so to speak, perhaps it is necessary to accept and understand and integrate the children – to sort of free yourself. Of course this may be a life long struggle, nothing one does from one day to another. Also, this is mere speculation from my part, naturally I have no idea whether this is true or not; I’m only sharing my associations from this dream.

One could say that you are going up the hill as a man without identity, because that’d be another way of describing your dream-ego. Going upwards is a symbol of spiritual growth or psychological development, or the need for it, or the longing for it, and appropriately there’s a church on the top of the hill, a symbol for spirituality (though your associations to “church” is much more important than mine, of course). Perhaps this is a reaction to the sense of not being an individual, walking upwards to the church can be a symbol for gaining individuality, or spiritual growth, or understanding of one’s place in the world – “Who am I in God’s world?” is a fundamentally human question we all ask in one way or another. The church on the hill can be a symbol for that, contents in dreams are not meant to be taken literally.

The church is also a symbol for the self, or the wholeness of our inner world, and the spirituality of that symbol needs to be compensated by the other part of us as human beings – we are instincts too, and that could be the meaning of the dog. Often when we look for spiritual meaning we lose our human foundation, one need to find a balance between those parts of ourselves, because both are equally important for our personal development, I think.

The thin man can be the other side of the coin. A small, thin man is an “un-phycisal” man, in other words, a thinking man. Perhaps since this is a place of wholeness, the instinctual being at the floor is compensated by the thinking being at your side. One could speculate that you feel more comfortable with your thinking self than your instinctual self, because the he is “trustworthy and long known”.

The priest is a representation of this spiritual place, of your unconscious strife for development – a representation of your “self” in contrast to your “ego”. That he is connected to your potentiality to grow is emphasized by the fact that he appears when you are looking at the garden, which of course is a symbol for growth.

He knows why you are here, but instead of saying that you want to reach high above, you want to enter “deep down”. The journey up, which we associate with our spiritual journey, begins with going down. This is a very common theme in fairy tales, legends and mythology, and the hero’s journey can be seen as the human development, that the journey to self realization begins with a journey downwards, into the underworld. A very famous literary depiction of this is of course Dante’s Divine Comedy, which begins with him going down into the underworld, and then he goes up into heaven. In this case, one could guess that the journey would begin with the children at the hospital, that which frightened the dreamer so much. We must face our dark sides first. So when the priest says “if your want to enter deep down”, he mean “if you want to understand who you are, then you must...”

So if one wants to go down the steps of one’s own self being, which is not an amusing journey, the priest advices, one must be “persistent and pay the price”. Being persistent means that you keep at it over time. Self realization comes over time, if one keep at it. I come to think of a modern literary work, namely The Lord of the Rings, which depicts such a painful journey where the protagonist simply mustn’t give up – just keep on going however dark it gets. If the hero gives up, everything is lost.

The other thing one have to think about if one wants to go “deep down” is that one has to “pay the price”, according to the priest. This could be a reference to the fact that the person who gains individuality loses his or her collective self, and that is painful, because the collective attitude is very comfortable; being “individual” is in a way to be lonely (but it does not distance oneself from others, rather the opposite, because if you don’t know who you are as an individual, you cannot really build real relationships to others.) One could actually once again compare with The Lord of the Rings, if you remember from the book, that Frodo is never the same again, and really never get back home again, to the “old” Shire. The other hobbits are very comfortable back in Shire, but the one “who has seen the eye” can never return, become “collective” or “unconscious” again. That’s the price he had to pay. He could not return to his childhood self.

The church seems to be a place for wholeness, where different contents are balancing each others; the dog and thin man, but also the priest and the church. The church is a feminine symbol and the priest is a masculine symbol. But one curious thing is that there is no woman in the dream, so one wonders where the “inner woman” is at. Then there’s a crash outside the church, a collision which draws attention to the woman.

The "inner woman" is represented by a girl the dreamer fancied. Out inner woman/man naturally is projected unto an outer person who is then object for fascination and all kinds of hopes. One learn about one’s inner woman by the experience of the outer woman (or man), so one can see the other person as a mean to realize who oneself is. And that is exactly what the dream hints at, I believe.

When the dreamer approaches this woman he is actually turning from being a “random stranger” into “my ... true person”. Especially when we are young our self realization is manifested by experiences with other persons. That is why anybody who wants to develop along the path of self realization mustn’t withdraw from the world, but rather the opposite. So this dream seems to say that to gain individuality one must approach the other.

However the dream is “shattered” at this point and the dreamer wakes up. That can suggest that at this point in time, doing so, meeting the other, is difficult because the dreamer is unsure of who he is – he is shattered. So to truly meet the other, or the Woman, with everything that implicates, he may need to go “deep down”, and take care of the repressed energy represented by the children at the hospital, and then come back, to meet her as a more “whole” person, so to speak.

Originally Posted by JoannaB

But then you recognize the woman, and she changes everything: now, you are no longer willing to be just a random observer and a stranger even to yourself and to others, but you want to get involved, you want to reach out to her. She matters to you, and brings out your desire to be part of the action and not just on the side. The priest's message "If you want to enter deep down,you have be persistent and pay the price" may be about relationship, that you cannot go into a deep relationship with the woman without being persistent and paying the price if needed, becoming actively involved with another person is risky - what if she rejects you? what if she expects of you a more active role in events that you would rather just watch?

Hi Joanna,i think you are definitively right about this one.IRL,i missed an opportunity to get involved with a women that appeared in my dream,also i am an introvert person who hides his passions,i like to play safe.Also i now feel that woman is essential role in this dream.So,a part when i became my "true self"is after priests advice,so subconscious is trying to tell me to get out of the shell because IRL that woman has crawled under my skin but i wasn't convincing enough about my feelings.

Originally Posted by Wakinyan

One could say that you are going up the hill as a man without identity, because that’d be another way of describing your dream-ego. Going upwards is a symbol of spiritual growth or psychological development, or the need for it, or the longing for it, and appropriately there’s a church on the top of the hill, a symbol for spirituality (though your associations to “church” is much more important than mine, of course). Perhaps this is a reaction to the sense of not being an individual, walking upwards to the church can be a symbol for gaining individuality, or spiritual growth, or understanding of one’s place in the world – “Who am I in God’s world?” is a fundamentally human question we all ask in one way or another. The church on the hill can be a symbol for that, contents in dreams are not meant to be taken literally.

The church is also a symbol for the self, or the wholeness of our inner world, and the spirituality of that symbol needs to be compensated by the other part of us as human beings – we are instincts too, and that could be the meaning of the dog. Often when we look for spiritual meaning we lose our human foundation, one need to find a balance between those parts of ourselves, because both are equally important for our personal development, I think.
The thin man can be the other side of the coin. A small, thin man is an “un-phycisal” man, in other words, a thinking man. Perhaps since this is a place of wholeness, the instinctual being at the floor is compensated by the thinking being at your side.

I find your description of the church very true,also a thin man,dog and a priest.What i failed to mention in my initial post is,woman in the dream that i have feelings for also exists IRL(as i said to Joanna,i feel like she is a central role in my dream.Maybe i also failed to explain a church a little bit better.That church was small ,old with pink walls,but when i entered whole inner architecture was very illogical and weird and didn't corresponded with church exterior.Also there was no crosses and other religious sacraments which is proving your theory that church represent for my inner self and spirituality(uphill path is nice connection also).I agree that dog represents my instincts, i think dog is repressed sexual desire for a woman or women in general who is "fighting" with my sense of spirituality and inner self.Also maybe there is some meaning in black color,woman's skirt is black,dog is black and a woman is also exiting a black car.Maybe that represents sexual desire towards her but mixed with a lack of courage to open up to her and intentions of covering that with my sense of spirituality and morality.

Thank you for your feedback, interesting points!