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Relevant (Personal) Dream Symbols Part 1 of 7

Night of July 21, 2015. Tuesday.

Here, I will relate specific details I know about my dreams and in-dream metaphors throughout my lifetime, though this information may not mean much to anyone else, as everyone lives a different life with different experiences and associations. Typically, I leave out a lot of relevant information in my online journal, especially clearer interpretations and explanations, as my entries are usually too detailed and long as it is. This will not be in any particular order, but, as with when I post older entries, whatever comes to my attention at a particular time. I am mainly doing this to bring together numerous dreams with similar concepts.

This entry only includes the hayloft and hayloft composites for the most part.

I tend to interpret this setting (and related composites) as a metaphor for being in the dream state itself for a number of reasons. Firstly, because the expression “hitting the hay” means going to bed, thus a part of my mind knows I am asleep. My recurring “Cobra in the Hayloft” setting from 1966 likely implies the same thing, even though I was lucid and making my first in-dream tulpa, though I stood within the barn on the floor to manifest it and was not in the hayloft at any particular point. In fact, this entire dream can be resolved to the tulpa metaphor. I am trying to create an animal in my dream, and bringing it forth “in my dream” (hayloft) but also placing this dream goal “above” me (with conscious will).

This relationship also seems to regard recurring composites, usually where I live in an unusual house (in present time, usually with my family) where one needs to climb a sometimes rickety ladder to go up to a hayloft-like region which is supposedly the “living room”. Certain King Street dreams also featured a rickety ladder going up to my apartment (rather than the staircase which had a mid-floor landing). For some reason, this composite setting has recurred with every place I have lived except for my Cubitis home (where I lived the longest).

More notably, these composites seem to have changed slightly to where I now become quite frustrated at the idea of having to climb up a ladder at the front of our house to get into our living room (which sometimes seems too cramped anyway) and in one of the more recent hayloft composites, gave up and came into our house from the back entrance, which then shifted into its normal (real-life) appearance to some extent (though with a fictional flight of stairs on one side going up to the implied fictional second floor), even though I was aware at one level of the others successfully gaining entrance upstairs from the front of the house.

Other possibly related concepts:

In “The Nest” from November 1969 (recurring in several forms), it usually starts out by me flying over the northwest corner of my school’s playground and the one large tree (in my “orb” form, which became less common as I got older) and seeing myself as less than two inches high and sitting in a nest of Spanish moss on a branch that was sheltered by a larger branch. I usually entered my other dream-self’s form (though I spent more time watching myself in this scenario). Originally, my companion facing me (I always faced west) was a female classmate (Linda; Caucasian), though later was “replaced” by the “mystery girl”. I felt a deep sense of love and timelessness from something I cannot explain. This feeling peaked just as “giant” raindrops began to fall (though neither my “orb” self or my dream-body was in any danger) and I flew slowly above the scene (leaving my dream-body while still “watching myself” involved in “playing house” in the “giant” Spanish moss cluster) in awe and deep peace, feeling that this scene would somehow continue forever (and I was also aware of the mood of the change of the season). Spanish moss may be metaphorical for aging (due to its appearance), though there are probably other visual associations.

In addition, there may also be links to hay itself (which likely also represents the freedom of restful sleep even in non-lucid scenes). The three witches (originally in an Easter dream) “appeared” (though actually invisible in this case) in my main “House of Straw” dream (listed online as “Night of January 22, 1972. Saturday.” though likely into 2 am or after into January 23rd as I typically did not record exact times and this was definitely a very early Sunday morning dream in part due to the “lamp unto my feet” association). Even though I am mostly just running through featureless halls of hay (even feeling occasional strands of hay slapping my face with a tangible stinging sensation from the doorways), the amazing beauty and clarity (and sense of freedom) was astounding and with a luminous inner glow (though some of it from lanterns in other sections offset from the main hall; where the walls are not complete and can be seen through).

As I find myself emerging from the back of this extremely long house of straw after running for what seems like a long time, I look back and see it is actually the rabbit shed in my Cubitis backyard (by association only - it feels more like typical dream-setting bilocation). A tyrannosaurus appears (as a tulpa by my in-dream intent) but then I realize that this was probably a very bad idea. Thus, I deliberately become “invisible” by going into the tall weeds near the railroad tracks and “melting” into them - becoming the tall grasses though at this point with even more clarity of my dream’s environment even though my eyes are now closed in-dream, and I am on the threshold of waking - very common at this age in lucid and semi-lucid dreams, where I “waited out” my transition as my dream’s setting “dissolved” while also vividly feeling physically bilocated until fully awake. This amazing transition (regarding awareness of “both” my physical bodies) no longer occurred as much as I grew older.

It is probably important to note here that this dream was directly influenced by an eerie scene from the television movie “Something Evil” with some major differences. In the movie, she was distressed and running through a dried up vineyard in the greenhouse ruins while in my dream I felt totally free and yet somehow with a “mission” to get somewhere, with no sense of the occult whatsoever. The movie also featured a hayloft. Still, my dream had the exact same overall sound of wind and essence otherwise.

There are also at least a few more recent dreams of old nests (sometimes of very dirty old straw), sometimes human-sized, but I will not address that here.

In conclusion, though it is possible the hayloft, unlikely “nest”, and hayloft composites (the very unusual facades of some in-dream houses) are solely linked to knowledge of the dream state (again, lucid or not) and the play on “hitting the hay”, it may also be relevant to my time in a hayloft in real life (only up until age five). It likely has layered associations. There are also a few dreams where a (unknown) girl (though possibly a younger version of my wife) lived in a “giant birdhouse”, climbing up a ladder in an otherwise hayloft-like setting in going up into a smaller space, though in one case a singular flight of stairs.

I would be interested to find out of other people having same or similar situations, such as a flight of stairs in an otherwise familiar setting being replaced by a (sometimes problematic) ladder.

hay as equated with dreaming
dream dictionaries
hayloft as dreaming metaphor
dream dictionaries
symbols of dreaming itself
dream dictionaries
hitting the hay means sleeping
dream dictionaries
stairs replaced by ladder
dream dictionaries
theta b3.0
random dream...
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