a dream

[mantis]

alright, this may or may not be the place to put this but my journal is dead so...

 

i had a very interesting dream last night in which i murdered several people, over what appeared to be several life times (i gauged this via the method of killing - grenades, machine guns, strangulation for the last one). a recurring theme throughout the dream was that i was killing people because i couldn't feel anything, i'd become completely numb (this has some bearing in reality) and hoped that maybe killing would make me feel something, anything, other than the bleak numbness.

 

i never got caught for any of the murders and felt nothing, incidentally. i recall in vivid detail actually attending a kind of police-city meeting in which the police decided homicide was highly improbable in one of the people i killed for various reasons etc and feeling completely unaffected. i obviously saw myself attending this meeting and was in a rather birds eye perspective. this led me to killing others to live for the thrill since i felt nothing else.

 

something interesting to note was that i told my mother i killed someone and was crafty enough to rationalize it so that it didn't really bother her, i don't know if this is showing me a part of me i don't realize exists.

 

near the end of the dream a voice told me i had gone too far, it was a female voice, and that i must die. the following sequence was of me standing in front of an extremely vast sea without a single wave and some kind of female figure, presumably mother nature or something of the sort, reassuring me as i died. i don't know exactly how i died but it wasn't a bad thing, very natural feeling, and i didn't wake up startled at all but actually felt overjoyed and calmed.

 

i reincarnated or something as a young korean girl in school but kept some memories and ideas of my past, nothing of the murders however. my mother was telling me she'd let me have a boyfriend and i was helping her prepare food (as the school girl).

 

can anyone who is well versed in dream theory etc give me any idea what this is inferring? i found it a bit odd that i dreamt of killing people in a reasonable quantity and woke up relieved, mostly at the fact i was killed (?)

[Gemstone]

Did you pay attention to the people you killed? How they behaved, personalities etc?

It may be a time for you to leave parts of yourself behind. Parts that are no longer useful.

No need to carry dead weight.

Simplify..

[BaguaKicksAss]

Mantis, if you would like your PPF to be woken back up, or a new one made (I didn't look at the status of it yet) just let me know .

[de_paradise]

Im no certified expert, but I do spend alot of time watching my dreamscapes while semi-awake. I think the murder plot line was borrowed from some t.v. show that you watched, but the wily, kind of sociopath is an aspect of yourself. If it were my dream, I would be concerned about the type of wrangling and slipperyness to get away with the behavior. In society, we can get away with things, we can be bad or selfish and get away with it, but in "reality" we dont get away with it. The cultivation path takes you from insincerity to sincerity, and this entire dreamscape is a kind of negative karma resolving itself with the mother's voice and the rebirth. But there is some pretty strong karma exhibited in this dream, so it will likely need more resolution in the future. Maybe there is some aspect of your life you are requiring a resolve to more sincerity, less self-serving dealings.

[BaguaKicksAss]

If it were my dream (how I was taught to approach talking about anyone else's dream, since you are not me, maybe DP was in my class hehe) I would think it was me killing off a bunch of unneeded ego aspects. Then eventually I had done enough for now, and then "I" had to die. If I had been doing extra spiritual work lately this might be the case. If however I was really angry lately, I would interpret it more as me trying to destroy aspects of myself which anger me, or perhaps illusions.

[liminal_luke]

Hi Mantis,

 

The part that really stands out to me is the numb feeling that you say has some relation to your waking life. And how the murders seem motivated by the desire to feel, the desire not to be numb. I'd start there. Perhaps do some journaling or active imagination of sorts (reenter the dream as kind of a daydream in waking life and see where it takes you) focusing on the numbness.

 

Numbness is interesting because it represents a kind of psychic edge. There's a defensiveness there. You feel numb because a part of you, anyway, doesn't want to feel. The big question, of course, is what lies beyond the numbness. What would you feel if you were willing to feel into the numb areas? You might be numb, but at least you aren't numb to your numbness if you get my meaning. You are willing to be aware of the numbness. Dreaming about the numbness seems to suggest that you are ready to go beyond whatever this numbness is in your waking life.

 

Several people have alluded to the idea that you might be murdering parts of yourself. One of my favorite ways to look at dreams is to imagine that all the parts are parts of ourselves. In other words, it's all you. Can you see a part of yourself that's the korean girl, the mother figure, the voice, powerful mother nature figure, etc? As well, of course, as the murderer and the murdered.

 

Can you locate these parts of yourself? What associations do you have with each of these characters? Do you see yourself in any of them in your ordinary life? Are any of these characters, perhaps, hidden--up till now--aspects of yourself that your dream is asking you to develop? To be...um, less numb to?

 

And who, in particular, is that Korean girl you morph into through the process of rebirth? Perhaps you don't need to wait until you die for the rebirth to take place. Just a thought.

 

Liminal

[liminal_luke]

A few further thoughts...

 

One of the aspects that seems to particularly strike your waking self in relation to the dream is the kind of sociopathic quality of the murders. You don't feel guilty. Interestingly, sociopathy itself is itself a kind of numbness. A person should feel something--guilt, remorse, etc--but instead feels nothing at all.

 

It's very common for people to treat themselves with less concern than they treat others. We often do things to ourselves, ie murder, that we'd never do to other people. Is there a way you are hurting yourself, perhaps even killing off parts of yourself, that you haven't, until now, been aware of? Are you numb to your own self-harming tendencies?

 

Just a thought to explore.

 

Liminal

[Stosh]

Its probably about sex don't worry about it.

[mantis]

you raise some very interesting points liminal luke, i'll have to inquire within on those.

 

i don't watch television and the characters were far too sporadic and lifeless to translate to anything, at least on the surface.