Hi, I'm new to this board and was hoping you guys could tell me what you think about this dream.

First part of the night (or so it seems like that) - I was late to the airport for a flight. I couldn't remember where it was to when confronted by someone who worked at the airport but remembered it was to Venezuela. I've never been there, and am not ethnic in the slightest!


Later
I remember there was lots of mold, and there was a very musky feeling in the air. There was a long hallway, and I felt rushed in this dream. I felt like I was in my old school, and that people I knew were in the area. I felt afraid to breathe because of the mold and weird things in the air.

Later
I was walking along the and past a new outhouses, 1 of which was open and there was a mom and son inside, but I kept walking because there was what looked like an outhouse in front of me. The outhouses looked more like wooden homes than an outhouse. There was some crowd and recording artist Jewel was introduced along the national mall.

I had to go to the bathroom and entered the woman's room my mistake, and saw women peeing like men with no doors on the stalls. When I figured out I was in the wrong room, and ran away very quickly and hoped that no one saw me. My mom was also in there.


Then I entered a building and there were a few guys and 1 kid. For some reason the guys got satisfaction of scaring the kdi with masks, and one guy - printed off from a computer a scary alligator mask with a big mouth and pink lips.

Then me and these guys (who were like 30) played some soccer game in a "4 year old ping pong room". I remember seeing 2 ping pong tables - including one my cousin used to own but got rid of. One guy talked to me one on one with the side of his mouth. we played some modified version of soccer, with a foosball ball, but it was more like rugby.


Then there there was like a row of doors. If you opened them there were toilets, showers, and a urinal. I opened one door and there were 2 bathtubs, one on top of the other. Water dripped on me and this area had the same feel as earlier. It was moldy and disgusting. One guy came into the room and asked for the key to get into the bathroom. I had no idea where it was. He kept insisting on using that bathroom and something told me he was bad news - maybe even a pedophile of sorts.

Then I woke up. As a side note, I've never been molested, or anything like that and I never felt threatened by anyone in my dream, but didn't necessarily feel safe either. I just recently started college and am having trouble with privacy as well as the challenge of beginning new things.

I had a dream about a year ago about a specific place burning down and it happened within the next few weeks so I believe in this stuff and would like you to share what you think.

Regards,
C

Age & Gender & Location {Required}: 18/us

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CarlB,
Being late to go somewhere is a common dream that reflects waking life experience. But perhaps in this dream the expectations are as much about the inner as it is the outer life {being 18 the usual focus would be on the outer when looking at your dreams}. Let's see where the rest of the dream leads us. Foreign soil can symbolize new realizations {new destinations}.

Perhaps the mold and old school are pointing to past experiences learned, yet not applied. You may be in too big of a rush and are not applying these past lessons.

Outhouses may be much like bathrooms. You now have the chance to relieve yourself of unconscious aspects. One is open, perhaps this is pointing one particular complex you possess. Jewel singing on the mall. Song {music} is an expression of celebration, you are presented with an opportunity to realize something about yourself.

Feminine psyche is coming into play. Perhaps you want to express yourself {women are better at that than men} but you are afraid to do so. Instead of confronting this you run away.

You are frightened at what others may say {the men folk}. Again the possibility of being afraid to express what you really feel.

Combat, competition. I am beginning to see a pattern here. Masculine is in, expressing yourself would not be what men are expected to do. Especially if you are man {30}.

One particular bathroom. This gets back to the above observation of one particular complex you possess.

Ah!Ha! Privacy! A new situation in your life {college} and a fear of sharing your space with other guys. Is this the complex? It may be you are not the competitive type and the expectations in college is that you must be in order to be a MAN. The pedophile may be something your mother warned you about. Mother has instilled these feminine principles and in a MAN's world it is difficult to express them.

Gerard

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Well yes the dream you had abut the building burning down could have been a premonition. But remember that just because one dream was a premonition it does not mean that all your dreams are. Many dreams are simply representations of our internal thought processes.

Dreams can represent internal thought proceses. What I prefer to do is take one or two internal thought processes and see if your dream could represewnt that in some way.

For instance you say

"I just recently started college and am having trouble with privacy as well as the challenge of beginning new things."

Well how could the dream represnt that. Well firstly you are in some far away place. In real life you have started some new college and feel a little awkward here. Its rather FOREIGN to you so to speak. Maybe thats why you are in venezuela in the dream.

Also the dream features toilets and several bad people. Perhaps that links toi the exact same thing in real life. Toilets could then be symbolic of your need for privacy. Its not a use I have ever thought about. Indeed I think that you are correct. That this is some very personal act and that it could mean that.

So yes your dream could represent what you mention. If this theme was very prominent in your mind the day before then thats especially the case. Dreams do seem very strongly linked to things that happened the day before. Try to first establish if a dream could link to things alive in your mind befopre jumping to conclusions about premonitions.

Personally I always loo for the rational link to things in our minds. Then if no solution and link to reality is found then try to establish if the dream is a premonition. Think especially if the day of the dream featured something that was surprising.

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TOWARDS A THEORY OF DREAMS

In understanding the dreams we have we must first study what the dream mind actually does. The dream mind or unconsious mind as it is popularly known is linked to the intuition. The intuitions that wew have are critical to our mind. Life is full of situations were we do not have the information necessary in order to make a rational decision. We constantly have to make a "best guess". For instance we may make the following judgement - "My son is nearly ready to walk to school on his own. I know he wants more independance but I am still worried about some of the older children being a bad influence on him. But I cannot hold on to him forever. He will have to go out into the wider world sometime.".

Dreams and the intuition also look at things in a wider sense. For instance a mother may have the following thoughts "I know that my son is nearly ready to walk to school on his own. Maybe its me. I am not ready to let go of my son. He is still my little baby".

The intuitions that we have then deal with that inner voice. That conversation we have with ourselves. Those graphic and personal thoughts. Those thoughts which are even more personal than a diary. They may link to fantasies , paranoias or to simple ordinary thoughts. Here are a few examples.

"I really am living the dream. I have started to succeed now. I have my new suit and my new car and I felt really confident when I went into the board room. I really convinced them I was the right man."

"I can see that they were feeling sorry for me. They pity me. I could read it in their eyes."

"My colleague is really not qualified. She rambles on about nothing and just seems to drift off in no coherent direction. I rerally am in a very poor team.I am getting sick of it"

"I am going to kill her. I hate her now. I will kill her in front of her stupid friend. She will be begging for forgiveness. I will just laugh in her face."

"I have got to start being more careful. She is starting to sense that I don't love her anymore. "

"I think I have know how to improve my surfing. I sudied how my mate coped with this big wave and I will try to copy that."

"I wonder if policing is the right job for me. I really did not vcope yesterday. I was trained for that exact kind of crissis. yet I just stood there and did nothing"

"I am just going to ignore him next time. He did not make eye contact. I thought we had a good thing going. I mean we were having sex hours before and now he just treats me as if I were nothing. I will just ignore him and act as if he means nothing to me."

"that thing on TV disgusted me last night. That guy treated his girlfriend like dirt. I am determined that I weill never ever ever ever fall again fgor someone like that"

"I have got to drive more responsibly. I just fly off trying to impress poeople. yet I nearly had an accident yesterday. Driving is dangerous. I got away with it but it could have been so different."

In short the dreams we have are linked to the thoughts that dominate our minds and the conclusions we are coming to about life in general.

So we need to realise that dreams will in some way link to the main function of the dream mind - the intuitions and judgements that we make in ever day life. Dreams are not easy to decode yet we know that in someway they would - if translated - link to exactly to the kinds of quotes listed above. The conceptual feelings and intuitions that dominate our lives. The graphic and often extreme thoughts that create our moods. The ever changing emotions that come and go like the english wheather.

The best way to translate a dream is to try to reduce it to the types of quotes that are listed above. They link to conceptual thoughts and mind processes. Its much easier tyo simply quote some conceptual feeling than go into some lengthy explanation.

So how exactly can we translate dreams into conceptual thoughts. Take for instance the following dream

THE DREAM - I am a soldier. I am with sharpy - a fictional character on TV.

The dream then is only very short. What could it mean? Surely its just random nonsense! In truth this short dream captured a key conclusion the dreamer had about the previous day. He had destroyed a vital piece of equipment by acting recklessly. He was convinced that things could not go wrong. yet the dangers were obvious in how he acted. The fictional charcter Sharpy was an invincible soldier who took many sensless risks and always ended up the hero. In dreaming about Sharpy the dreamer was realising that he was acting recklessly. In reality life is not like the world that sharpy inhabits. If we act like sharpy in real life then we will get into real trouble. So if we were to try to translate this dream into a conceptual thought then it would perhaps translate in the following way - "I was stupid yewsterday. I acted ina very irresponsible way. In truth if I act like some fictional war hero in real life taking enormous risks with equpiment then its going to get me into trouble".

Just one simple short dream and yet it contains one powerful message that truly captured some key conceptual thought process from the day before. Now try taking a look at YOUR THOUGHTS from the day before. We need to empahasise the issues and thoughts that are dominant right now.

Freud and Jung tend to empahaise the big issues and the deep pyschological problems. They tend to try to summarise our lives in general. Yet the dream mind or intuition does not really concentrate on these issues. Do we really dwell so much on these issues that plague us. Yes we maybe troubled about thisng that haunt us. Yet we need to understand that dreams will only touch on long term issues when they touch on our lives in some modern context. To truly understand a dream we must understand the thoughts and moods that triggered the dream. Yes a woman maybe troubled by an incident when she was sexually used and then discarded that happened many years ago. But she would only think about it if the issue was again triggered in some modern context. Say she met a new friend who was describing her boyfriend. Something that she says reminds her of how she used to act and how she was used. So the dream is not about this issue endlessly reguritating in her mind. In fact it was about this issue having relevance in her current life. That she recognised something in how this woman acted and how it was similar to how she allowed herself to be used and abused by her old boyfriend.

By studying the issues and way the intuitional mind works then we can make some basic assumptions

1. The dream mind is conceptual and deals with ideas and conclusions about life. It refines thoughts and makes judgemnts about the issues that dominate in our lives

2. The dream mind tends to be caught up in the present. It dwells on the moods and thoughts that we have. The paranoias and fantasies that we have as we lie awake. The worries that we cannot let go of. The projects that we are trying to think through. the relationships that we are thinking about and trying to improve. It will draw on the past but only when it is directly relevant.

So expect our dreams to work in a similar way to the intuitionbal mind itself. The dreams maybe difficult to understand and hidden in deep metaphors but try to look and second guess what issues the dream mind is going to dream about. Its that simple.If something big happens the day before then you will almost certainly dream about it. The bigger the issue then the greater the certainty. The deam may not obviously link to reality in any way. It may not feature any people involved. But work on the assumption that dreams link to big recent issues that you are thinking about from the day before.

If you are trying to work out a dream first try to write down some quotes that highlight what is important to you right now. Second guess what the dream mind is thinking about. Write down quote like the following.

"We had real problems at work yesterday. My boss was acting just like he always does."

"My sister was acting strangely yesterday. She does not seem her normal self. I wonder if she is hiding something. I think something is wrong."

STUDY THE SYMBOLS AND MAKE ASSOCIATIONS

The next step is to study the dream and the symbols within it. Some symbols will have text book meanings whilst others will tend to have very personal meanings. Look through the dream dictionary and look up the symbols. Its a fairly small dictionary but it features the most common of dream symbols. If the exact symbol does not appear then try to look for something similar. The dictionary features quotes and questions which are designed to help you trace the source of the dream. Rather than provide answers they give you ideas for possible meanings.

Try to make associations. If a dream features a beach then think back to anything that links with beaches and coastlines. Even if you just watched a TV program that featured a beach the day before. The deam maybe about that. This program may have got you thinking.

If a dream features people then try to compare them to other people. Does the man behaving over confidently remind you of someone the day before. Perhaps you were overconfident? Perhaps it refers to someone who was over confident? Just try to make loose connections. By making such a loose connection you are not directly linking the dream to this incident or person. You are merely thinking laterally. Take the following dream

THE DREAM - I have a recurring dream that I am back at school. I am taking my french oral exams.

This is the dream of a DJ and radio presenter. Its very simple to understand this dream. But you have to think laterally and make associations. The dream features an oral exam. What possibly could that symbolise? Well an french oral exam involves the obvious link that you are being tested on the ability to speak french. Thats the most obvious association but thats probably not the meaning of the dream. French oral exams also test something else - the ability to speak fluently. We then make a connection to real life. The dreamer is a a DJ and TV presenter in real life and one of the main aspects of his job is to speak confidently and fluently in an entertaining way. He works at a very high level and so his standards are expected to be high. So in real life the dreamer is constantly expected to pass the test of speaking fluently.

Some dreams are easier to interpret than others. They may feature a very striong emotion. In such cases try to make a connection between that very strong emotion and real life. Take for instance the following dream.

THE DREAM - I am on a long march. The road appears to be endless. I am tired.

Here the symbols obviously seem to work together sp look for some connection to this pretty obvious and coherent metaphor. In real life the dreamer was involved in a long and difficult work project. It was very tiring so the dream merely captured his current mood - his despair and frustration with the work project. In many ways such dreams are very similar to poetry and are therefor very easy to solve. They hang together well and the storyline seems to make sense.

However, many dreams use many symbols and join them together in a rather random way. The metaphors that they use seem to jump about in some rather disjointed way. The story seems to be totally bizzare. Sudenly you are in a countryside setting for no reason. Then parachutes appear and then a tiger is being swallowed by a snake. Such dreams do have meanings yet many people just give up and laugh at the bizzare nature of the dream.

DREAMS AND SCIENCE

From experience, it seems that dreams seem strongly linked to the day before. People and places from the day before often appear in dreams. Why should this be? Well if dreams are linked to the mind and to virtal brain processes then it would seem logical that they are connected to the thought processes and feelings that are dominating our mind. Dreams then are likely to link to key moments within our feelings and new cvonclusions about the changing circumstances in our lives. They should link to the projecxts that we are undertaking and the ways in which we are tackling them. They will link to the relationships that are troubled or the ways in which we are trying to read the body language if those around us. They can link to our paranoias and fantasies. They can also strongly link to the ways in which we are trying to motivate ourselves to deal with coming problems.

Studies of the brain would seem to support the link between dreams and the day before. Human brains are constructed in a very efficient way. Evereything that we experience during a day is stored not in long term but in short term memory blocks. We only truly begin to learn at night time. Thats why we get improved results after a nights sleep. If we had to process information during the day our brains would have to be so much bigger. Instead we process information at nighttime. Dureing sleep vital brian waves apopear - thetawaves. These represent the brain reordering information.The mind thinks through the events of the day before and new feelings. It then integrates them into long term memory blocks. The short term memory blocks get whiped ready for the day to come.

If we suffer from sleep deprivation then the human mind ceases to work. We do not have enough space to store new information. Our brains are overloaded.

DREAMS AND LONG TERM CHANGES

It seems that there is a strong connection between dreams and recent events. There is also a strong link between dreams and thoughts about events that are just about to happen. But some of the most difficult dreams are linked to long term cghanges. Some of these are easier to spot than others. If we are undergoing major changes in our lives then we are likely to have dreams which represent the changes in circumstances. If major long term relationships have ended then we are of course likely to dream about these events. They after all dominate ourt livces. Even if major events occur then we are still likely to be thinking of those major long term changes. If you are saddened by the end of a relationship then even if you go to a party then your thoughts will link to how you miss your ex boyfriend or girlfriend. You will compare mnew boyfreinds to your ex. You may stiull be haunted by the hurt or simply not ready to move on. So yes dreams will link to long term events. But the dreams will still be in the here and now. They will deal with how our thoughts change and how circumstances are changing. There is still usually some trigger. Some event that is provoking some new response within us.

PREMONITIONS AND TELEPATHY

Premonitions and telepathy are certainly hard to prove. Dreams by their nature use metaphors. Students of the english language constantly argue over what inspired writers and poets. A dream is very similar in that an atom bomb exploding is very difficult to link to premonitions. That atom bomb may simply link any number of causes. The fact that some terrible event took place the day after an atiom bomb dream does not directly prove anything.

There does seem some evidence to support premonitions though. Personally I believe that premonitions exist. I for many years link events to dreams that took place the day before. Then one day I woke up and had a dream that left me thinking something terrible wouold soon take place. After analysiung the dream it seemeed connected to one person. On that very day that person died. So personally I have never been a non believer since then.

There seems no good reason why this takes place. Many people seem to have dreams that predict terrible events but it does not stop them happening. It is not easy to develop such skills so that we can call on telepathy or premonitions at will.

Premonitions ndo seem to have somethimng in common with normal dreams. They seem to be very much in the here and now. Some people claim to have had premonitions deep into the future. But many people seem to link premonitions specifically to the day of the dream. So a premonition can often capture some strong event that takes place that day. It may not be something particularly life changing.

I often try to put some perspective on matters. Many people from a science background have much stranger views on the world than pyschics. A pyschic merely thinks that we can see into the future. Those who study the nature of time and the beginings of the universe think on a completely different level. They suppose that many dirfferent worlds exist side by side. Each time some random event occurs the whole universe xcreates two different copies each of wehich continue on seperately. Ask the question - who is the craziest one? One day we may begin to truly understand the nature of time and space. Then premonitions and telepathy may be understood. Those who close their minds to the existence of premonitions may then be exposed. Many people of a sicenetific ature will never ever debate with pyschics. The pyschics are equally as bad as they will often close their minds off. They turn the pyschic world into some quasi religious experience. It maybe that premonitions and telepathy come through in a completely random way.

There is one thing that will always be true. It is totally impossible to explain a dream with 100 percent accuracy. We can make reasoned guesses. We may link it to the day before . We may be able to argue that a dream is a premonion of some event. But no one can truly prove any dream has a particular cause. The pyschoanalysts can only present argumnents in the same way as pyschics can. In the end the dream mind retains its mystery. You mayt guess but its language is not clear. It talks in poetry yet never ecxplains its metaphors claerly It may use some simple metaphor or a much more complex one. It may be about yesterday but may equally be about something that is about to occur. For instance if a couple are continually arguing then who is to say what a drea about arguing is linked to? It maybe about an argument that just took place. It maybe about one about to take place? It maybe about an argument that we fear may take place. Our understanding of fdreams is just not that good to understand the cause of such dreams.

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