A strange recurring dream- any thoughts?
Shastania
Pileated woodpecker

Joined: 17 Feb 2008
Age: 36
Gender: Female
Posts: 193
Location: Dublin, Ireland
For the last year, on and off, I have been experiencing a reccurring dream that is quite vivid and quite surreal.
Some could even call it frightening but having experienced this dream several times over, it's lost most of its' shock value.
This dream involves myself standing in a pristine white corridor filled with doors. Some of them are locked, some are missing handles, some have just a slot for mail and some open onto pleasent memories of my life.
Walking onward, the corridor stretches on for what seems like infinity but it is not all white for the further I go, the grubbier things appear.
The white changes to grey, then to a bleak, bunker-type corridor filled with worn corrigated iron doors. Most of these are locked though some open onto mildly unpleasent memories- these doors tend to stick, though and are heavy, requiring some force to open.
Moving onward, these corrigated iron doors give way to doors caked in rust and decay. The walls take on the appearence of chipped plaster and are splattered with dirt, grim and what could possibly be blood.
None of these doors will open- most of the locks either click or fall apart in my hand.
Until last night, I had never reached the end of this corridor.
According to some dream analysis books, dreams of endless corridors represent an unresolved, repetive cycle or chain of events, the gradual decay meaning that the situation will only worsen over time.
I cannot think of anything physical in my waking life that could possibly be an influence on my dreams.
It could be a reflection of my mental state owing to being bpolor but I've never had freaky dreams like this before.
When I got to the end of the corridor, this is what happened:
There was huge rusty iron door smack in front of me. It was ancient-probably old as time itself andbarely hanging on the hinges. There was the sound of laboured breathing coming from inside.
I immediately felt like turning back down the corridor as there was a sense of forbodding about it.
Before I could do anything, though, a light shines through the cracks in the door and lights up the darkness.
I turned the handle and the door swung open into a huge room clad in grubby white tiles. The floor was tiled too and there was a huge drain with a rusty metal grate in the centre.
The only furnature was this weird looking radio-type-thing with a tesla coil sticking out of it and a little dial like a metronome ticking away slowly.
There was also a large hospital gurney .Strapped into it was a woman who on closer inspection was a version of myself. She had a shaved head and no eyebrows. Her skin looked as though it was painted white and her was a HUGE gash on the forehead that was shoddily sown shut like a labotomy patient in a B-movie, I guess...
She looked at me and just stared for a while. Then she smiled and all her teeth were covered in blood that oozed down her mouth in a congealed mess.
I step into the room and look down upon her. She starts laughing but there's no sound other than a soft gurgle of blood her throat.
Then all of a sudden, this huge shadow steps into the room and grabs me by my front. It stares into me and I see that it has no face- instead, just a junble of white scratches moving like white nose.
It's grip tightens and the me on the bed stops laughing. She looks terrified.
The shadow then throws me out of the room. I land back in the corridor and the door slams shut in my face. Then all the walls melt away and there's just this big, empty white space.
That's when I wake up.
...Do you think my mind is trying to tell me something?
ValMikeSmith
Veteran

Joined: 18 May 2008
Age: 55
Gender: Male
Posts: 977
Location: Stranger in a strange land
I don't know, but I am surprised by the collection of archetypes in the dream, most of which I've only heard discussed by people that learned them from myself. Except that I don't have very many bloody dreams.
edit:The dream seems to be a metaphor for life but I don't know what it could possibly say.
Did you try to open all the doors or skip some of them?
(Either way you eventually get to the last one.)
That is an awesome dream and packed with archetypes and symbolism as the man above me said. The coil and infinite doors reminds me of the infinite doors of perception. I would say this is a spiritual dream. The woman was you? Do you feel she is a past you or a future you?
I like Tony Crisp's dream dictionary, here is a link to help you interpret it.
http://www.dreamhawk.com/d-dic.htm
Let us know your interpretation when you feel like you solved it.
_________________
As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other.
-Pythagoras
So many symbols to interpret...I don't see blood in a dream as a negative thing. The ancient saying (Arab, I think) is 'if blood has flowed, the danger has passed'. Sometimes it can represent sacrifice, when we sacrifice part of ourselves for whatever reason (it doesn't 'fit' with how we want to see ourselves maybe) Did the shadow hurt the woman (you)? There is life/energy there, even though it is an uncomfortable image, the teeth with blood on them. The 'whiteness' of the dream, could be a too white/pure/rationalistic view of yourself or the world. Maybe your darker side wants to be explored and understood? Perhaps it is showing the polarity of white/black, is this how your moods feel? Do you feel that you identify more with the 'ups' than the 'downs'? I have no answers really, just questions I would ask myself if I had a dream like that.
'Owning Your Own Shadow' by Robert A Johnson is a small but very interesting book that might be helpful for you to read.
I often have dreams of 'whiteness' and a Jungian friend says 'that's too clean, you need to get into the dirt'! hehe. Looks like that is where your dreams want to lead you
ValMikeSmith
Veteran

Joined: 18 May 2008
Age: 55
Gender: Male
Posts: 977
Location: Stranger in a strange land
New thoughts: MAYBE... (well don't take this seriously because I made it up.)
Whiteness is "newness" or novelty in life experiences (the doors and rooms).
Seeing white noise is confused fear of change and not knowing the future.("full of nothing")
The lobotomy room is your unchanging comfort zone, but it (old life support machine) wastes intense energy, and you made yourself happy there BUT you are NOT healing.
All that vital energy has just always gone down the drain.
You want to be healed, that's why you are painted white.
Noise Face wants to cast you into an unfamiliar "NEW" place where you can heal and forget about old stuff. You are bound to the gurney by familiarity and dreadful fear of change.
This sounds like an anxiety sort of dream to me. If you take the hallway as sort of a timeline with early years at the beginning it seems that you are looking at the earlier memories rather fondly, idealistically. Things were easier back then, less to worry about perhaps? That the doors wouldn't open or are heavy might indicate to me that you don't want to deal with the more unpleasant issues-- the heavy stuff, if you will. Life is dirty. Not so black and white as we get older and the frontal cortex becomes fully myelinized and we able to think abstract thoughts-- at that point we able to think in shades of gray. I think seeing the future you with the blood and so forth is an anxiety thing. Blood tends to be. Strapped down in a gurney with a scar-- you are worried about being helpless. Bloody teeth also indicates that. Teeth in dreams tend to relate to anxiety. Dreams where teeth fall out, for example, are dreams that typically relate to fear of death or general anxiety. Bloody teeth is probably a violent sort of image. What are you afraid of? Are you afraid of hurting yourself? Other's hurting you? You hurting others? Most people worry about those sort of things and we tend to each have our own specific versions of stuff we hone in on. Maybe you are worried about your mental health and functioning. Or else you need to stop watching scary movies before bed.
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