Dream Guides

Wisdom is not intelligence. It is the repackaging of the obvious. It is the PR department of truth.

Dream guides are characters who attempt make obvious truths manifest through parable and allegory. It appears, at times, that they construct entire dreams as the sound stages of their lessons. Other times, they seem to exploit whatever dream is currently running. This is certainly true for me, but I believe that it is also true for others who simply don’t expect it. They have bewildering dreams and they shrug them off. This blog post is intended to alert its readers of this phenomenon.

Parachute tent dream

One of the earliest dream guide dreams I can remember found me inside a tent that was something like a parachute that had been inflated on the ground. As I can to awareness, I was simply standing in this bright and colourful environment, wondering how I’d got there. I felt an hand on my shoulder. I turned, but no one was there. Then I felt a hand on my other arm. Again, no one was there, but I could still feel the hand. I was very agitated. I pulled it off.

Then came another hand. I pulled it away. Then another. And another. I pulled them off frantically. When hands began to land on my face, I began to panic; I could not breath.

The hands came faster and faster, out pacing my ability to remove them. At some point, I realised that the hands were familiar. They felt like my hands. I realised I was dreaming.

I knew that I could not suffocate because there is no air in a dream. I had nothing to do. And yet, I could not ignore the panic. I struggled desperately with the hands until I convinced myself to try again. My calm lasted only a few seconds, ceding once again to the panic. I tried several more times.

Finally, I was able to stand still for ten seconds. This seems like a very short time, but when one is panicking, it is an eternity. I opened my eyes.

I was standing at the foot of a sweeping marble staircase of a mansion. Before me stood the front door. Accompanying me were a young man and a twelve-year old girl. To my left were two middle aged men, one back and the other native American. They were wearing the casual clothing of day-labourers. They were talking about how well the girl had done. She had a natural talent.

They notice that I could see them and they smiled. It made me wonder how long I had been standing there, and indeed, whether I had been anywhere else. One of the men said, “We thought that you had become so in love with yourself that you were never going to finish!” They laughed, but we students did not.

Bewildering Breakfast Invitation

I dreamt of being in a village that was in the form of a shopping mall. People were gathered to watch some performance or to attend some meeting; I don’t remember because I was immediately approached by a husband and wife pair in their 20s who spoke with a heavy Slavic accent.

“Do you want to come with us?” the woman asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” I replied. “Who are you?”

She began to lead me away by the arm, and I immediately resisted. Then she grabbed me forcefully; I beat her back forcefully. The escalation continued, and at some point, a knife entered the fray. I don’t remember from where it came, but once I got control of it, I stabbed her; she fell, mortally wounded.

This whole time, the people in the mall ignored us, as though we were ghosts.

Then the woman stood, as though she had merely checked her wrist watch. Her husband grabbed me from behind. He broke one of my arms. While I was screaming in pain, his wife stabbed me, then began cutting and slashing with a fury. It was a painful, bloody, nightmare.

I was released. I did not fall, but rather looked at my unharmed body in wonder. I realised that I had imagined the pain as a response to what I perceived was happening.

“Now, do you want to have breakfast with us?” the woman asked.

“Yeah, okay.”

Without transition, we were immediately in the kitchen of an uncoloured artificial apartment. The furniture was very simple — for example, the kitchen table was a flat 3D rectangle on 4 tall 3D rectangles. The whole kitchen was comprised of very simple, featureless white objects.

I was somehow convinced that we were in the apartment of the man’s mother. I don’t remember seeing food, but I nevertheless had the sense that she was serving us breakfast. I also do not remember seeing her, but her presence was completely obvious somehow. The man and woman were trying explain something to me, but I can’t remember what it was. All I can remember was the woman, who was seated next to me, blossomed into a scaffold made of many arms and legs, without torso or head. This was part of what was being explained to me, but it was beyond the limit of my comprehension; I awoke.