The Color of Bad Weather

  If concrete is essentially, the color of bad weather, then being penned in on all sides by the thick unforgivable substance can be much like being caught in a storm. But storms can be tricky. Especially when dreams are involved.

  Things are rarely as they appear in dreams. A friendly environment can quickly turn hostile. An uplifting spiritual experience can take a sharp downturn. Take the following dream, for example:

I dreamed I was in a square room, super tall with concrete walls stained with blood and dirt. I was sitting cross legged with three other people. We were all touching knees and I felt we were doing a ritual of some sort. Beautiful classical music was playing. Suddenly, I found myself floating up out of my body and I could look down on myself. I could also see myself from a distance.  I floated all the way up to the top of the room and when I was about to reach the concrete ceiling when really loud hard rock music started to play. I was instantly afraid and fell head first to the floor. I stopped within a few millimeters of the floor.

   When I first heard this dream I immediately noticed the contrast between the hard, cold concrete setting and the dreamer’s experience. If we separate the dreamer’s experience — sitting cross legged, participating in a ritual and the TM experience of leaving her body, from the environment she’s in, this dream appears to be a positive. The dreamer shared with me that at the time she had this dream she believed in ‘the universe’ and many tenets of the Buddhist religion. Her dream experience goes hand in hand with her spiritual beliefs. Then, when she reaches the top of the room things take a dramatic turn. Nightmares often have this fearful twist at the end. Things appear to be normal when a killer clown with a butcher knife shows up, or the dreamer spots Slenderman watching them from somewhere off in the distance.

  The setting determines the context of the dream. Everything else filters through the dream’s context. So, I’m saying that as soon as I heard that the dreamer was surrounded by concrete I knew that everything that followed would have a negative tint to it. A cold, hard, unfeeling concrete floor is not the best foundation on which to build a spiritual life. Nor is it a safe place to land when you take a fall. Concrete is the color of bad weather, in a metaphorical sense, the entire experience of the dreamer takes place inside the walls of a storm.

  But there’s much more to the meaning of this dream.

  In the course of speaking with the dreamer I found out that she’s claustrophobic. This place she found herself in was so confining that everyone in the room had to touch knees. There wasn’t any room to stretch out and be herself and experience freedom. The spiritual beliefs she’s embraced may have a surface appearance of being all inclusive and open minded freedom, but in reality they are anything but.

  The other thing about this confining place the dreamer finds herself in is that the walls are covered with blood and dirt. This is not a clean place. It needs to be washed clean from the inside out. The blood also insinuates that the others that have been here before her did not have things turn out well for them. In essence this place she’s practicing a ritual in is surrounded by death. I love these kind of nightmares, the ones that give away the truth about an aspect of a dreamer’s life that they could have never figured out on their own. Yet, another great reason for you, dear dreamer, to keep track of your own dreams and pursue interpretations.

  EB