Thread: Dream guide search: xmas morning

Recently I've been in something of a dry spell, with only a couple short lucids where I couldn't get any personal tasks done. But this morning I finally had a full feature normal lucid, and found a possible dreamguide.

This was...I'd say my 4th attempt to find a guide. The first two times, I set out to find a very specific character I'd felt after waking up had taught me something as a dream guide, and then I found him twice but didn't remember a word he said. The third time, I wandered around somewhere and asked some animal in a cage if he was a dream guide and he said no.

This time, the "guide" gave me advice (or, perhaps, a fortune) without my having asked for it, and I remembered a couple things she said.

So...I go back to sleep after a spontaneous wake-up-to-pee deal, reminding myself of my intention to lucid dream and being vigilant for hypnagogic imagery, when after a while some imagery appears particularly vivid - imagery of a large room. I waited for weird things to happen to tell me I was dreaming, and first I saw little rays coming out of this cartoonlike blast spot on a vent near the (dream) bed I was in start to move around, and then a little later I saw digital clocks displaying inconsistent times. Pretty soon, I was able to move around in the dream.

First I went to talk to people in this rock band. There was one woman with (I think?) reddish hair, whom I told something along the lines of, "This is my dream, so you must be me." But she totally denied it.

I soon remembered I wanted to find a dream guide. So I started wandering down long empty hallways and shouting for a dream guide. (I'll leave out the details of the flying and passing/trying to pass through ceilings.)

Eventually I got into this room full of people. I shouted to the room, "Is anyone here a guide?" And this little girl answers "yes." She has dark red/auburn hair, a huge head and face for her small frame, and lots of freckles. She looks maybe 8 years old. She sits down on the floor with me and starts ranting in her high voice...not like super-angry, but kind of pressured, maybe a tad angry or impatient, a tough customer. (By contrast, the teacher/guide I sought out in the previous dream, also a redhead, was a grown man with a huge build but he had the calm soft-spoken voice of my stepbrother.)

The first thing she ranted about that I remembered anything about was a rivalry with a redhead. But I was like, "what are you talking about?" Nothing seemed to come to mind to fit that. But she insisted on it, and said something about "Anna Nicole" as the redhead rival's name.

Interpreting after the dream (though this is really like interpreting a fortune - I can make what I want of it), I figured she might have been referring to the redheaded woman in the rock band earlier in the dream whose existence as a separate entity I was denying. Anna was the name of the dream guide of the guy who wrote the Dream Guide tutorial on this forum, which inspired me to look for my own guide. So I wonder if Anna Nicole was the woman in the rock band, and was supposed to be the dream guide of the tutorial author? I interpreted the rock band woman as in her 30s or 40s, though, even though there were no clear indicators of aging, whereas the author of the tutoral was apparently quite young like many DV members. So I'm not sure what to make of this part of the fortune. I guess I'll have to file it as "something a dream character claiming to be a guide said."

But then the little girl went on to me about "the rivalry between you and you," which I immediately took to refer to my self-critical streak, and said something about the inner rivals parting ways. I interpreted this, perhaps even within the dream, as meaning that I was starting to become self-aware and unlearn some of the habit of self-criticism, which I often indulge in with the hope of someone reassuring me that I'm not as "bad" as I fear I am, even when no amount of reassurance is ever enough. I am an on-and-off practitioner of mindfulness meditation as well as lucid dreaming.

So...I'm thinking I'm probably going to continue the guide search in this "passive" sort of way - asking anyone around if they're a guide and seeing what they say. I don't really believe dream guides are anything other than a figment of the individual imagination, perhaps a manifestation of your "wiser self," but I'm curious what the search will yield me, and if this little girl will show up again. Will my expectation that she might be "my guide" cause her to show up again? Or will I get a random result, including only "no" answers to the question of "are you a guide?" or "is there a guide" every time?

What's interesting is that I've been thinking that, in terms of psychological work in dreams, I want to come to terms with child-like issues such as neediness and dependency, and I also want to get in touch with a strong-willed fighting spirit. I was not, however, thinking of either of these explicitly during or before these dreams. Yet my subconscious seemed to remember both of these themes, and sent me a tough-talking child as a guide.

I hope she was right about the "rivalry between me and me" starting to cool down. Or better yet, I want to see if I can fulfill that prophesy. I can picture the little girl ranting at me if I don't.