A Dream About Why This Way
I had a really interesting dream last night. In the dream, I was outside a building, which was a school or something else associated with Why This Way. The imagery of the dream was quite vivid.
The building was massive, many stories high and stretching very wide, and I could not see into it or around it so I had little idea how far back it went. I was up on a stone wall, made of very large pieces of granite, which surrounded the building. The wall was very tall...perhaps 30 feet or so tall, and I was up on it. I was climbing down, which was a bit of a physical feat in the dream, figuring out a way to climb down to the ground.
It was night, and there was also dense foliage around parts of the building, which was mostly made out of a relatively dark granite, and looked pretty to me. Once I was on the ground (I landed on the outside of the wall) I walked through an opening in the wall and got close to the building, but I could not find a door or entrance. I started looking around and I found that on the inside wall of the outer wall (which was very thick, about as wide as it was tall) there was a directory, marked "Directory", but it was blank. It looked very old, like it hadn't been maintained in a long time. I also noticed that next to the directory was a small door.
I entered the door, and I was inside a little area that had been built into the inside of the outer wall surrounding the building. It had low ceilings...I was in an entryway that was a bit longer than wide, and I made my way to a door at the back of the entryway. This led into a narrow hallway running to the left and right. I went to the right and there was a door. It was dark and there were light switches, so I turned them on and the inside illuminated with a warm light. It turns out that the area through this door was a bathroom.
The bathroom had off-white tile floors and also had low ceilings like the rest of the place. It went the length of the wall, to the right. I looked around, and didn't find anything of interest, and was about to leave...I tried to turn off the lights in the bathroom before I left, but when I flipped the switch, instead of the lights turning off, bodies began to rise from the floor, almost like zombies or undead. I had a moment of panic, and flipped the switch that I had just flipped, and some bodies fell to the ground, but others started rising up.
There were a whole series of switches that I had flipped on when I entered the room, that had controlled different series of lights, and I realized that when I would flip some switches, some bodies would come to live and others would drop to the floor. It was like a math problem, to find the permutation of switches that would make all the bodies come up. I fiddled with the switches and solved the problem, and realized that no combination of switches would make all the bodies stop. So I had a thought to myself--maybe it's not meant to be, maybe I can actually just flip switches that make a lot of bodies pop up and maybe that's not a bad thing.
So I switched the switches so that most of the bodies came to life...I distinctly remember one body that did not come to life; he was a young boy with dirty blond hair. At any rate, most of the bodies came to life, and it turned out that they were really friendly. It turned out that they also knew how to maintain the directory, and they told me that they could tell me how to find the door to enter the building. Then I woke up.
My interpretation:
I find it interesting that when I woke up, I did not have a clear interpretation to this dream. I then talked to Sylvia about it, and still didn't have a clear interpretation. But later, after the Why This Way meeting, I talked to Melanie about it, and Melanie observed that one possible interprtetation was that the people coming to life, and me initially being afraid of them but them turning out to be friendly and helpful, could symbolize how Why This Way creates an environment in which people who might initially seem like they could be threats or opponents, turn out to be really helpful and perhaps even indispensible to the purpose of the group.
Once Melanie had shared this idea, I suddenly felt like I was able to interpret the whole dream easily. It was really remarkable how that one idea shifted my ability to interpret the dream.
I was thinking about how the large, opaque looking building (which superficially doesn't seem to fit with the values of Why This Way, which is all about openness and transparency) symbolizes what Why This Way could become, and that I have this sense that Why This Way is potentially a big deal, something potentially very large and powerful, but I don't really have a clear sense of exactly how or what it would look like in that state, nor do I have a clear idea of how to get there. This seems to correspond to the fact that I couldn't find the door. I also think that the part about the people rising from the dead who initially scared me, but turned out to be able to help me to find the door, symbolizes how other people, including people who may initially seem opposed to the group or who may initially strike me as a threat to the group, actually hold the key to figuring out the direction that the group needs to go in in order to achieve its full potential. I really believe this, and I think this idea is actually one of the essential or defining features of Why This Way.
Why This Way is all about questioning everything about itself, and I think that in order to really live out this ideal, it necessitates a sometimes scary process of confronting things and viewpoints and people who voice those viewpoints, and really embracing them, letting them into the group, and letting them influence the group...giving them power over the group, kind of surrendering yourself to these viewpoints in a sense. It's a bit scary. I can identify this sort of fear, in fact, even today, with respect to certain things that have played out recently in the group. Yet I feel like it's really a key thing for me to confront these fears and move past them.
I also find it interesting that the bulk of the dream focused around the wall. I began on top of the wall, climbed down to the outside of the wall, and then later went inside the wall itself. I think the wall can be interpreted as representing concepts like the distinction between Why This Way and other belief systems, and perhaps more specifically, how Why This Way deals with tension, discord, or dissent.
So...while Why This Way may go in other directions once we have figured out the "boundary" issues more clearly, I feel like the focal point of the group, for now, is clearly in the boundary. It may always be this way.
Emphasis on the subjectivity of interpretations:
I want to emphasize that I believe firmly that dream interpretations are subjective. I even wrote a page on Cazort.net a while ago on dream interpretation in which I emphasize and embrace the subjectivity of dream interpretation. So the interpretation I gave above isn't necessarily about any deep meaning inherent in the dream itself...while I feel it's a deep interpretation, I feel like it's deep because I looked for the depth and found meaning in it.
The building was massive, many stories high and stretching very wide, and I could not see into it or around it so I had little idea how far back it went. I was up on a stone wall, made of very large pieces of granite, which surrounded the building. The wall was very tall...perhaps 30 feet or so tall, and I was up on it. I was climbing down, which was a bit of a physical feat in the dream, figuring out a way to climb down to the ground.
It was night, and there was also dense foliage around parts of the building, which was mostly made out of a relatively dark granite, and looked pretty to me. Once I was on the ground (I landed on the outside of the wall) I walked through an opening in the wall and got close to the building, but I could not find a door or entrance. I started looking around and I found that on the inside wall of the outer wall (which was very thick, about as wide as it was tall) there was a directory, marked "Directory", but it was blank. It looked very old, like it hadn't been maintained in a long time. I also noticed that next to the directory was a small door.
I entered the door, and I was inside a little area that had been built into the inside of the outer wall surrounding the building. It had low ceilings...I was in an entryway that was a bit longer than wide, and I made my way to a door at the back of the entryway. This led into a narrow hallway running to the left and right. I went to the right and there was a door. It was dark and there were light switches, so I turned them on and the inside illuminated with a warm light. It turns out that the area through this door was a bathroom.
The bathroom had off-white tile floors and also had low ceilings like the rest of the place. It went the length of the wall, to the right. I looked around, and didn't find anything of interest, and was about to leave...I tried to turn off the lights in the bathroom before I left, but when I flipped the switch, instead of the lights turning off, bodies began to rise from the floor, almost like zombies or undead. I had a moment of panic, and flipped the switch that I had just flipped, and some bodies fell to the ground, but others started rising up.
There were a whole series of switches that I had flipped on when I entered the room, that had controlled different series of lights, and I realized that when I would flip some switches, some bodies would come to live and others would drop to the floor. It was like a math problem, to find the permutation of switches that would make all the bodies come up. I fiddled with the switches and solved the problem, and realized that no combination of switches would make all the bodies stop. So I had a thought to myself--maybe it's not meant to be, maybe I can actually just flip switches that make a lot of bodies pop up and maybe that's not a bad thing.
So I switched the switches so that most of the bodies came to life...I distinctly remember one body that did not come to life; he was a young boy with dirty blond hair. At any rate, most of the bodies came to life, and it turned out that they were really friendly. It turned out that they also knew how to maintain the directory, and they told me that they could tell me how to find the door to enter the building. Then I woke up.
My interpretation:
I find it interesting that when I woke up, I did not have a clear interpretation to this dream. I then talked to Sylvia about it, and still didn't have a clear interpretation. But later, after the Why This Way meeting, I talked to Melanie about it, and Melanie observed that one possible interprtetation was that the people coming to life, and me initially being afraid of them but them turning out to be friendly and helpful, could symbolize how Why This Way creates an environment in which people who might initially seem like they could be threats or opponents, turn out to be really helpful and perhaps even indispensible to the purpose of the group.
Once Melanie had shared this idea, I suddenly felt like I was able to interpret the whole dream easily. It was really remarkable how that one idea shifted my ability to interpret the dream.
I was thinking about how the large, opaque looking building (which superficially doesn't seem to fit with the values of Why This Way, which is all about openness and transparency) symbolizes what Why This Way could become, and that I have this sense that Why This Way is potentially a big deal, something potentially very large and powerful, but I don't really have a clear sense of exactly how or what it would look like in that state, nor do I have a clear idea of how to get there. This seems to correspond to the fact that I couldn't find the door. I also think that the part about the people rising from the dead who initially scared me, but turned out to be able to help me to find the door, symbolizes how other people, including people who may initially seem opposed to the group or who may initially strike me as a threat to the group, actually hold the key to figuring out the direction that the group needs to go in in order to achieve its full potential. I really believe this, and I think this idea is actually one of the essential or defining features of Why This Way.
Why This Way is all about questioning everything about itself, and I think that in order to really live out this ideal, it necessitates a sometimes scary process of confronting things and viewpoints and people who voice those viewpoints, and really embracing them, letting them into the group, and letting them influence the group...giving them power over the group, kind of surrendering yourself to these viewpoints in a sense. It's a bit scary. I can identify this sort of fear, in fact, even today, with respect to certain things that have played out recently in the group. Yet I feel like it's really a key thing for me to confront these fears and move past them.
I also find it interesting that the bulk of the dream focused around the wall. I began on top of the wall, climbed down to the outside of the wall, and then later went inside the wall itself. I think the wall can be interpreted as representing concepts like the distinction between Why This Way and other belief systems, and perhaps more specifically, how Why This Way deals with tension, discord, or dissent.
So...while Why This Way may go in other directions once we have figured out the "boundary" issues more clearly, I feel like the focal point of the group, for now, is clearly in the boundary. It may always be this way.
Emphasis on the subjectivity of interpretations:
I want to emphasize that I believe firmly that dream interpretations are subjective. I even wrote a page on Cazort.net a while ago on dream interpretation in which I emphasize and embrace the subjectivity of dream interpretation. So the interpretation I gave above isn't necessarily about any deep meaning inherent in the dream itself...while I feel it's a deep interpretation, I feel like it's deep because I looked for the depth and found meaning in it.