A frightening, yet philosophical dream.
I had this dream about three weeks ago and it cannot seem to leave my head. I've been puzzling over its significance for quite some time and--finally!--I think I've unraveled its true meaning.
Some background: I'm re-reading Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series (absolutely thrilling, epic, GREAT fantasy if anyone's interested). Well, in the books there are these creepy things called Diggers. These are gnarled little gnome-like men, completely mindless, that travel under the ground. At night, when travel parties are camping out on the plains, they silently come out of the ground with their rusty little spades and start hacking into everyone. Even though each of them are small, slow, and easily killed, they surface in such huge numbers that they usually win out and kill the whole party. Completely frightening, disgusting little things...almost like zombies.
Tad Williams really has a knack for thinking up utterly convincing new lifeforms, so much so that the memory of these guys formed the center of my dream, even though I have yet to reach the part of the book that first
has them in it.
So anyway, the dream:
I was in a village, newly returned from a long journey. I was remembering the night before, in which all members of my traveling party (except for Ari and I) were killed by the Diggers. The two of us had fought back and managed not only to kill all the Diggers, but to remain unscathed. I was a very good, confident fighter and knew that I could do it again, with anything. Still, I feared the forms that we were left with.
We had brought the bodies of the little things back to the village because I had a feeling that if we left them unwatched, they would morph into an evil too powerful to overcome. So here I was--with all members of the village around me ignorantly celebrating some holiday--contemplating how to end the evil within these bodies once and for all. I was afraid that they would be touched; it felt like the evil would spread like a virus if they were. I knew that I must burn the bodies, so I set them afire in a steel pan.
Instead of turning to ash, these little things burned down to an evil-looking liquid with spots of black and luminous red. I had no idea how to dispose of this concentrated evil safely, and was still puzzling over it when I finally woke out of the dream.
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Indeed, I've been puzzling over it for weeks--it's felt so significant! I am realizing now, though, that it was trying to show me that no matter how hard one tries to rid the world of evil, it can never be destroyed. Much like matter--which changes form but cannot be created or destroyed--evil will always exist. So instead of trying desperately to destroy evil, we must rather find ways to minimize its effects. In the dream I was contemplating ways I could dispose of it to leave the least damage. Time and again I realized that it would always find a way back into the world when it wanted to. The important thing, then, is to anticipate what should be done when evil does find its way out into our midst. There is always a way to deal with it, and there is ALWAYS a way to survive it.
Some background: I'm re-reading Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series (absolutely thrilling, epic, GREAT fantasy if anyone's interested). Well, in the books there are these creepy things called Diggers. These are gnarled little gnome-like men, completely mindless, that travel under the ground. At night, when travel parties are camping out on the plains, they silently come out of the ground with their rusty little spades and start hacking into everyone. Even though each of them are small, slow, and easily killed, they surface in such huge numbers that they usually win out and kill the whole party. Completely frightening, disgusting little things...almost like zombies.
Tad Williams really has a knack for thinking up utterly convincing new lifeforms, so much so that the memory of these guys formed the center of my dream, even though I have yet to reach the part of the book that first
has them in it.
So anyway, the dream:
I was in a village, newly returned from a long journey. I was remembering the night before, in which all members of my traveling party (except for Ari and I) were killed by the Diggers. The two of us had fought back and managed not only to kill all the Diggers, but to remain unscathed. I was a very good, confident fighter and knew that I could do it again, with anything. Still, I feared the forms that we were left with.
We had brought the bodies of the little things back to the village because I had a feeling that if we left them unwatched, they would morph into an evil too powerful to overcome. So here I was--with all members of the village around me ignorantly celebrating some holiday--contemplating how to end the evil within these bodies once and for all. I was afraid that they would be touched; it felt like the evil would spread like a virus if they were. I knew that I must burn the bodies, so I set them afire in a steel pan.
Instead of turning to ash, these little things burned down to an evil-looking liquid with spots of black and luminous red. I had no idea how to dispose of this concentrated evil safely, and was still puzzling over it when I finally woke out of the dream.
---------------------------------------------
Indeed, I've been puzzling over it for weeks--it's felt so significant! I am realizing now, though, that it was trying to show me that no matter how hard one tries to rid the world of evil, it can never be destroyed. Much like matter--which changes form but cannot be created or destroyed--evil will always exist. So instead of trying desperately to destroy evil, we must rather find ways to minimize its effects. In the dream I was contemplating ways I could dispose of it to leave the least damage. Time and again I realized that it would always find a way back into the world when it wanted to. The important thing, then, is to anticipate what should be done when evil does find its way out into our midst. There is always a way to deal with it, and there is ALWAYS a way to survive it.