Dream Companions
Some dream guides do not actually guide, that is to say, they do not teach. But they do accompany. I imagine it like finding a child wandering around the neighborhood. I would accompany it to make sure nothing happens.
When I dream of a dream companion, about 80% of the time, the companion is female. Sometimes, the companion is one I’ve never seen before. Sometimes, the same character acts as companion for all dreams on a given night, where there is a companion at all. Other times, I’ll have the same companion for months on end.
Most often, the dream companions are silent. There have been a couple incidents in which the companion intervened to protect me from other dream characters, but the threat was beyond my comprehension; I never felt personally threatened. Seemingly, they have to do with exactly what is beyond my comprehension.
Four Brazil Nuts
I became aware that I was standing in a room that looked like a reception hall of a hotel. There were a hundred or so men and women standing around in evening wear. Based on the women’s dresses, I’d say we were in the 1950s.
Dinner was announced. We were to take our places at tables that had somehow appeared, or which I had not noticed before. I asked my companion whether there were a vegan menu. She showed me a special menu printed on a sheet of white paper. I immediately noticed that one of the entrées was merely four Brazil nuts, and commented on how odd that was.
Interestingly, this dream occurred in the early morning because I had insomnia that night. The next day, I ate four Brazil nuts and it brought about an emergency nap in mid-day. I have since been able to use that trick to deal with difficulty falling asleep at night.
Shabbiness
Here is an entry from my dream diary during a particularly low period:
I remember dreaming of being in a New England mill town at night with some female companion. I was thinking of how beautiful it was, and how I shall ever remain foreign to it. It was rather symbolic of my loss of access to the dreaming world. I wept. My companion dropped behind and was eventually no longer with me.
Dream companions (at least mine) do not tolerate shabbiness.
Separation Anxiety
My memory begins during the transition from one dream to another. I was in an old, dark, Victorian mansion, like the kind in horror movies. At the moment of transition, my companion separated from me. It was at that that instant that I realised that we had had some common consciousness in the previous dream. Now, however, I felt some mild apprehension about the house, and she had to distance herself from me.
We ascended a square stairwell. I could not see her, but felt as though she were just beyond my peripheral vision. On the next landing, I thought I saw a ghost and felt a burst of anxiety. My companion was propelled far away, as though my anxiety had been a palpable explosion. I could almost ‘see’ it happen. When I realised that the ghost was merely a beam of sunlight interacting with some smoke or fog, I set off to find her, but I could not.
Locality
I dreamt that I was in an top-floor apartment building in Germany. I was looking out the window and I noticed that there was a piece of stückwerk that ran the length of the building top to bottom, and that it had pulled away from the wall at the top. I told my female companion that I would have to abseilen to fix it. She asked, “Abseilen?” I said, “To go out on a rope.”
I use German words interchangeably with English words, especially if the German word is more to the point. I have the habit and I have the expectation that people around me should understand. It is therefore noteworthy when someone literally inside my head should not understand my diction.
She didn’t understand German. She is not local.
One might suspect that this is an isolated incident, but it is not. During my career, I have observed that where dream guides and dream companions are concerned, language matters. For example, when arriving in a new country, there is a long delay before dream guides appear in my dreams, and then, they speak the local language. Over the following months, more English speakers appear, until finally all guides are native English speakers.
Interestingly, when I dream in Europe, the English speakers are largely, but not totally, English. All of this I find unexpected. It is as strong an argument for locality as dreams can provide.
The Customer
I dreamt that my dream companion and I were visiting a home for peculiar children. I thought we were visiting because I was applying to be the concierge. The building was some large 18th century estate house or school. We were brought to a guest room by two young women, whose appearance and style of dress I curiously cannot remember. One interviewed me informally and briefly about my waking life.
After they left, my companion and I began to put away our things. My companion looked inside a small wooden jewelry box left on a table. Some tentacles, which looked like wet spaghetti, came out tentatively. I had the intuition that this was merely our peculiar roommate. My companion did not seem at all curious; she left to use the water closet or some such banal enterprise, leaving me with the open and now empty box. In retrospect, she left for the very purpose of letting me deal with the contents of the box.
I next noticed the thing on a nearby wall. It was just a bodiless insect with several soft strands of spaghetti for legs. Then in an instant, it was on another wall. It was clearly a supernatural being.
When I heard the door start to open, it immediately occurred to me that the thing had been put in a box for some reason, that it could be constrained by a box, and that the room was merely a bigger box. I called out to my companion, “Please don’t open the door please don’t open the door please don’t open the door!”
One of the two hostess appeared magically on my side of the door and asked what the matter was. I explained the situation, but she did not seem distressed. I asked what the creature was. She said, “We call it the ‘customer’.”
In retrospect, this was another irking dream. The hostesses had some kind of symbiotic relationship with the customer. They could use it to test the students, and the customer fed off any resultant fear.
The result of my test was ambiguous, as usual. I had no fear of the creature, but I was distressed that the hostesses should be taxed by our incompetence. So, both pass and fail.
Psychological Bunker Study
I dreamt my dream companion and I were to participate in a psychological study about bunker living, where all participants were stooges, except one real subject per bunker. There were 4 sleeping places in ours. In it was a woman who went to bed early and a Italian man from Saratoga. I immediately looked up Saratoga on my (dream) laptop. He showed me where his kids’ daycare was — in some desertified region. In reality, there is no Saratoga in Italy. `Saratoga’ is an Iroquois word. A little waking-world research revealed that it was a 19th century resort town in the state of New York.
The man next recounted his history as an artist. At one point, his mouth came uncomfortably close to my ear, which unsettled me. According to his tale, he ended up making sculptures using pee to dissolve away the unexplained soft material he was using. He showed us a museum installation of his work, and then began making a new piece, about fist-sized, right there. Urine splashed everywhere, including on me. I said, “Dude, that’s enough.” I left to clean myself. I awoke while wiping myself off in the WC.
I was not angry, but annoyed enough to qualify as `irked’. I had gotten irked. Fail.
I thought I was part of the staff, but it turns out that I was the subject. I love the subtle irony of telling a person that he is participating in a study with a single naïve participant. I recognise this as dream guide humor. They tell you full well what is going on, knowing that your arrogance shall cause you to misinterpret the message.
Interestingly, since there was only one subject per study, it implies that my dream companion is part of the staff. In other words, she appears in my dreams because of she is part of the orchestration and not because of any relationship with me.
Wetlands
I dreamt that I was in a Ukrainian wetlands with several female companions. There were ponds and causeways all around. I was sitting on a stone with my hand in the water. I felt an alligator brush against my arm, but I couldn’t remove my arm from the water; it was paralysed. For some reason, I was not afraid. It just seemed odd. The next time I felt something brush against my hand, it was smooth — some kind of dolphin with a big forehead and a short snout. I decided to scratch it and give it a tickle. The creature seemed to like that. Magically, the whole scene shifted to dry land and the dolphin became a female fox lying on the ground. I continued to scratch her tummy.
In my career I have encountered dream characters that are sufficiently alien that their appearance is unstable. They don’t look like anything we know, so the human mind tries to map them on to anything and anything that is known, however long it might hold. There is a degree of alieness beyond which the dream character simply is not noticeable.
The fox was very happy. She didn’t say “I can’t believe this!” but I had the impression that this is what she was communicating. I had managed to notice this magical being, and in doing so, experienced affection instead of fear. Unheard of.
My female companions approached and the dream ended. Test passed.
Pink Elephant
My dream companion brought me to a parking lot in what looked to be 1970s America. There was a large Cadillac before us, typical of the era.
“Wanna go for a ride?” she asked mischievously.
“Er… is this your car?” I asked.
“Not a problem.”
She took the driver’s seat, which is very very unusual for a dream companion. I begged her to keep track of everything that she touched and left fingerprints on, but she hadn’t the least care. We headed for the highway and were soon zooming across the countryside.
We pulled into a service station and went inside. There was a uni-sex lavatory in back of the store area. Inside, a man and his girlfriend were quarreling inside a toilet stall. The man had become quite aggressive, but not physically violent. The girlfriend was terrified and crying. My character took out his smartphone and began recording the scene. I say, “my character,” because in that moment, I found that my perspective had shifted to a point above the toilet stall. I could see my character, a suburban college-aged man, who looked nothing like my waking appearance, holding up his smartphone.
The boyfriend told him to stop, and when my character persisted, the boyfriend’s anger turned toward him. At that moment, my companion returned with a pink baby cartoon elephant at her side. The elephant punched the boyfriend with a little fist at the end of its trunk. The boyfriend was uninjured, but was very surprised. Addressing my companion, he held up his hands and said, “Respect, respect.” He left. In that instant, I resumed my character’s perspective and understood all that had happened. My companion had brought me to observe the girlfriend‘s dream. The boyfriend was a sentient dream character who was irking her. When the boyfriend turned on my character with perhaps real hostility, my companion defended me by demonstrating her magical ability. Apparently, it exceeded the boyfriend’s because he left without a fight.
“C’mon,” my companion said nonchalantly. “We need to return the elephant.”
Not Love at first sight
Here is a tragic tale regarding a dream companion. For about two years, I had a single dream companion, one whom I had never properly seen. I would often have the impression of seeing her, but upon awakening, would have no memory of her appearance. I recognised her by ‘feel’. She was simply always by my side, and I took that for granted as I went about my adventures.
In one dream, I was standing in a circular 19th century ball room of an estate house. There was no furniture and no people. Beyond the tall windows were meadows and a distant forest. I remember that I felt the presence of my dream companion, but could not see her at all. All I could perceive were dim echoes of her singing. I turned, and there she was, like 30 cm away! She was present in crystal clear detail, somehow overwhelmingly present. I was shocked and confused. She was elated that I could finally see her. She was so dazzlingly beautiful, I concluded that I was the object of some kind of trick. I don’t remember what I said, but I withdrew from her with apprehension. She was heart-broken. The dream ended.
When I awoke, I realised that I’d made a huge mistake. No one who had invested in me that long could be a predator. I began looking for her in subsequent dreams.
After about two weeks of dreamscape-trekking, I found her in a village in 1940s Ireland. She was living with her adult brothers in a well-kept, but very modest, stone cottage. She was dismayed upon seeing me, quite at the point of tears. She told me that she couldn’t bear being haunted by me. I was so disturbed, I awoke. I never saw her again.