Shifting Allegiances of Dream Spies

I dreamt that the dream guides set up a little stage play to teach me something.

Two former spies met each other after decades of separation and chance encounters. The man looked like the actor Daniel Craig and the woman like the actress Julianne Moore. They were in the working-class kitchen of a stage-play flat whose only furniture was a kitchen table and two chairs.

I don’t remember the details of what they talked about, only my conclusions as I tried to reconstruct what the context of their conversation was. They were meeting for one last action or campaign, but each was a mistrustful of the other. Neither was sure who was proposing the real campaign and who was merely pretending to go along in order to manipulate the other into participating in an unspoken campaign. Neither actually proposed anything; each seemed to be sounding the other out.

The problem seemed to be that they had changed passports and allegiances so many times, their real allegiances had become opaque to all observers, and fluid to even the spies themselves. The reason is that a spy needn’t renounce one allegiance for another, but can rather play one sponsor off the other. The problem is compounded by the fact that even the spies become a little confused. Each time, one must ‘believe’ a new identity because one must remain in character when genuinely surprised by something. Constant rehearsal of character through inner monologue is essential to a spy’s longevity, but it is also damaging to one’s sanity.

Even though Daniel and Julianne appeared middle-aged, they had been active in their careers many decades, and the number of identity changes of each was beyond the limit of memory. They were now unsure who they were or what their true motives could be. Each was operating on habits and reflexes acquired over many identities, but neither collection was attuned to any particular reality. Both characters had therefore become partially lucid and partially mad from their experiences. Each was trying to determine how far to trust the other, in a situation in which trust has no meaning.

It was like dream guides had set up this little stage play, which even looked like a stage play, in order to teach this lesson. I can see how this relates to the Buddhist notion of reincarnation, although I continue to reject the idea. I rather think that this about the problem that must necessarily arise when one is in a dream inside a dream, in a labyrinth of dreams.