What’s Going On in Your Dream House?

When you record your dreams, pay special attention to the dream locations. The settings may be familiar or completely foreign, vivid and sensory or cloudy and indistinct. You may be in a place whose physics appears quite different from ordinary reality. You may be at home with people you don't know in regular life. You might be living in a medieval castle that seems to have been constructed yesterday.
    Again and again, you dream you are in the old place – back in the home you shared with your ex, or the office where you worked at the old job, or at grandma’s house, or in the school yard. Maybe you’ll want to ask yourself: did I leave part of myself behind when I left that old situation? Maybe your dream house is a hybrid, melding elements from places you recognize from the past with novel architecture. The house may seem familiar at the outset, but then proves to have more rooms and more stories than you remember. These may be stories of your life and levels of your psyche or Self.
     It can be fascinating to revisit a dream structure of this kind through conscious dream reentry, and learn more about what is going on. Jung found in his dream of a many-layered house - a dream Freud insisted on misinterpreting - a model for understanding connections between the conscious mind, the personal subconscious and the collective unconscious. In his dream, he started out on a floor that looked like a normal bourgeois home. As he descended through successive floors, he found himself in primal territory, in a dirt-floor basement containing skulls and bones of distant ancestors.
     I find it especially intriguing to go up on the roof of a dream house. Sometimes I find there are levels beyond what I expected. Sometimes, on a roof terrace or garden, I meet a benign figure I recognize as a slightly higher self, a witness self who can give me perspective on my life situation, since he is up above the scrum. I have called this figure the Double on the Balcony.
     I dreamed I was in a house that I used to own, in another reality. It was quite familiar in the dream, but does not correspond closely to any house I have occupied in this world. My dream house was a palace, with sections open to tour groups. It has sweeping marble staircases leading up to what used to be private family apartments and my library. I tried to go up the steps, but they petered out and I realized the library and the private rooms had been long since abandoned and sealed off. I did not give up on my detective work. I took another staircase to a balcony with wonderful views over green forests and meadows. I told ladies I met there, matter-of-factly, "I used to own this house." I know I will come here again. I need to get up that staircase. And I need to understand what life story I am inhabiting in this palace that has seen better days.
    By focusing on a dream location, we have an excellent portal for conscious dreaming, shamanic journeying and astral travel. If you have been to a place in a dream, you can go there again, just as you might return to a place you have visited in ordinary reality. Your dream house may be a place you will visit in the future. I have been guided, in while series of dreams, to houses I did not recognize at the outset but proved to be future homes that I purchased and occupied. We take real estate tours in our dreams.
    The dream house may be a structure that the astral architect in you has constructed for various purposes: as a place for rest and relaxation, as a sanctuary or a study, as a place of rendezvous, as a pleasure palace. Such creations may have their own stability. They may be homes that await you in the afterlife or interlife.    Your dream house may be a place where you are leading a parallel life with people you may or may not know in your physical world. It may be a construction or renovation site, a place waiting for our imagination to raise the walls or put on the finishing touches.
     How about drawing or mapping your dream locales, making floorplans of that dream house? You will be growing your astral geography in ways you will find increasingly rewarding and exciting. You may even find you are claiming some real estate options in this world or the next.

What's that? Your memories of such things are blurry? You can take comfort from Seth, as channeled by Jane Roberts in Dreams and the Projection of Consciousness : "If you have little memory of your dream locations when you are awake, then remember that you have little memory of your waking locations when you are in the dream situation. Both are legitimate and both are realities. When the body lies in bed, it is separated by a vast distance from the dream location in which the dreaming self may dwell.” 

Drawing: "Double on the Balcony" by Robert Moss

Location, location, location

The Realtors' motto is also an imperative for dream explorers. I try to bring back every possible detail of a dream location, especialy when it is unknown to me in ordinary reality. Sometimes I can match it to a physical location that I may visit in the future. Sometimes the dream place exists in its own reality, and what happens there stays there - except in my journal and dream sharing.

In a dream last night, I cheked into a hotel in Germany.I was traveling with my two sons, sons I don't have in ordinary life. They wanted to explore the old city we cound see from the hotel, bt I did not want to drve at night and I told them we wouldhave dinner in the hotel.

I return from the dream remembering, in exact detail, the layout of the public spaces in the hotel, though its namehas escaped me. Lying on my back, head sightly raised agisnt the pillows, I make it my game owalk slowly through the hotel again. I return to the airy greenhouse-likes space where I sat my boys down to study enormous menus under a leaded glass ceiling. The young fair-haired lady at the next table is still looking over work papers.

I pad again through the lushly carpeted lobby where a fire is burning in the hearth. I nod to the very correct grey-suited lady standing guard at the reception desk. I again inspect the formal restaurant with its cherrywood paneling and bright lights - the chefs want you to see their creations - that I thought too stuffy for my boys. The diners are elegantly dressed, the waiters of course wear black tie. A prosperous family is sharing roast goose.

I duck my head into the brew pub with all its pipes and barrels and so many beers on tap. I want tofind a dining area with a view over the water to the old city, the view I amired when we arrived here. It seems none of the restaurants and bars on this level overlook the lake.

I think we are near Munich.

My search inside the dream locale naturally orients my search online. I seek "Munich hotels with a view". I dwell for a while with pleasant images of the Kleinhesseloher See, a lake in the public park known as English Gardens in the heart of Munich. The view from my dream hotel was a little more scruffy. I found something strongly resembling it at the website of The Flushing Meadows, a trendy, upscale contemporary hotel an hour's drive from Munich. Could I go there in the future? Always possible. But not with my sons.

I take a closer look at these boys I know only in the dream. Each has the dark brown hair and the oval face I had at their ages, 8 and 10. They could be Younger Roberts. However, they have different names (that I don't need to share here) and it seems clear to me that they have their own identities. I'll look forward to spending more time with them, in what may be an alternate life.

I seem to be much younger in the German hotel than I am writing these lines. I may be in a different body altogether.

Just-so dreams

 I always note my feelings on leaving a dream. Very often I jot down "just-so", meaning that it feels as if I have been having an entirely literal experience in a another space.That space is other than my ordinary reality in which my body has been lying dormant on the bed,but is no less real. Indeed, in our crazy shut-down time the dream space may feel more real and certainly more vibrant and mobile than the everyday world.
    Dreams are social as well as private, transpersonal as well as personal. We get out and about, far from the basement of the personal subconscious. We make visits and receive visitations. We meet people who are not merely projections or aspects of ourselves. We enter parallel worlds and alternate realities. We travel across time and space, seeing things that may play out in the future and meeting up with friends and strangers far away.
    Let me call as evidence my records from dreaming in the last two phases of sleep overnight. There is nothing extraordinary going on here and no strong feelings were aroused. I felt just-so: been there, done that. My other feelings were mild curiosity and a certain wistfulness over the fact that I can't get out and about in my regular body right now the way that I can in dreams. Nothing stronger. No sense of a call to action.No need to face a monster or call a doctor, to walk a tiger or swim to the moon, to continue a dialogue with a master teacher or bring back a book from the Total Library that has not yet been seen in this world. Had I had to rush to the airport, I might have let these little dreams go. But since March I have only been to airports in my dreams.
    I recorded six small just-so reports from my last two phases of sleep. I am glad I did so because the ordinariness of these vignettes may help to make my main point, that dreams are a field of action and interaction with others. In dreams we travel without leaving home, and can be as social as we please. Any approach to dreams that does not go beyond symbolic interpretation or rests on the narrow theory the whatever is going on in a  dream is a is part of the dreamer is going to miss the panoply of dream experience 

Here are unedited excerpts from my journal reports:

2020 August 8

dream (up at 4:00  a.m.)

New Retreat Place

I am showing a man around a retreat center where I am leading an advanced gathering. Someone comments on how the decor shifts very visibly from feminine to masculine design.  I realize that all the complex travel plans for this year must be abandoned.

I watch noisy kids go into the building in pairs from a pleasant outdoor recreation or pool area 

I lead the man to the dining room. It is very sterile, reminiscent of a diner. There are quite a lot of people there already but they are from another group. I don't recognize anyone from my group all of whose members are known to me because they have come to previous retreats. There is a second dining area. I lead the way there, hoping for a private table and more pleasant decor.

Feelings: Just-so. Mild curiosity.

Reality check: I don't recognize my male companion or this retreat center outside the dream. I could encounter them in the future. It does seem I will have to postpone all my teaching and travel plans for this year in my ordinary reality.

dreams (6:00-7:30 a.m.)

Mountain Loop

Taking a walk on a mountain path. The sun is bright but there is ice and hard packed snow. I decide to go back to the lodge but don't like the look of the ramparts of snow and ice I would need to climb. I think it will be easier to follow the trail making a big loop that will bring me to an easier access point. Walking slowly I am passed by cheerful girl hikers who are delighted by how melted snow sends little jets of water into the air. I have done this walk before but decide it is too long for me now. I turn back. If I need help climbing up I will ask for it.

Feelings: Neutral, curious.

Reality Check: This is a plausible situation. Despite my knee replacement, I have difficulty getting about on rough ground and am scared of slippery slopes. I don't recognize this locale but I could find myself there in the future. It was good to be out in the fresh mountain air. Symbolically, there are passages in life where one may need to be ready to turn back and ask for help. However, this felt like an entirely literal, just-so situation.

Dreamwork at a Table in Europe

With a friend at a big table in a restaurant in a European city. She gives me an update on her activities and we do dreamwork with several dream reports she shares.

Feelings: Glad to see my friend.

Reality Check: I think I know that restaurant. 

Action: Check whether my friend remembers a restaurant meeting from her dreams overnight. 

Deep Reading 

A man talks to me about a plan for deep reading he is following. This in involves reading or re-reading a list of books in a prescribed sequence with parallel reading encouraged at certain points. I suggest he should add Alejo Carpentier's The Lost Steps. 

Feelings: Cheerful

Reality check: Without much of a plan, I have lots of books on the go at any given time, skipping back and forth. I learn so much by re-reading old favorites. I loved The Lost Steps, which I first read in high school, and if I can find my copy in my forest of books I shall add it to my current reading pile. I don't recognize the man in the dream. I am willing to entertain the notion that he is an aspect of myself that approaches things with more planning than I do, but again he feels like another person altogether.

Call to an Author

I have the phone number of a famous author with an Italian surname. I decide to call him. I admire his work and would like to engage his support for a new book project. When I call, it is like listening in on a party line. His wife delivers his eulogy but in a robotic monotone. His son is lively and friendly but has a hard time speaking over the monologue. The writer seems to be taking a nap but when I ask the son to get his dad he says he'll do it without asking who I am. However the man I want has not come on the call when I leave the dream. 

Feelings: Lively curiosity

Reality: I don't recognize the name I recorded (not included here) but I guess I have been given a detective assignment I do hope to birth some new books in different genres, and will be glad of support. 

Action: Maybe I'll manage to reenter to dream and complete that phone call.

As I complete this inventory I see that the "little" dreams are maybe not so trivial after all, and that a couple contain leads I will want to follow in one reality or another. 
    Whatever exactly is going on, all these episodes are examples of "just-so" dreams, leaving the sense of been there, done that - in another room, another land or another world. " They invite exploration rather than interpretation. I often find myself asking detective questions: Who, What, When,Where...Why?
    After a night of a dozen or more of these outings, my dominant feeling may be "travel worn" or "jet-lagged"....

A dream is a place

Most of our dreams don’t play out in a formless void, or some Cloud 9. We were with our dream lover in a certain house, the tiger chased us (or licked our face) in a certain landscape, we lost or found our luggage at a certain airport or train station.
    In regular life, we understand fairly well that if we have been to a place, we can probably go their again, even if we have lost the exact directions and may need to turn to GPS or an old-fashioned maps. It is the same with dreams. If you were in a certain place in a dream, you may be able to go there again, by the technique I call dream reentry, which means taking a remembered dream and using it as the portal for a journey in which you will travel, wide awake and lucid, into the space where the dream action unfolded.
    Why would you want to do this? For all sorts of excellent reasons. To understand your dream from the inside, by gaining access to the full experience of the dream, which is likely to go far beyond your initial memory of the dream. To dialogue with someone in the dream. To solve a mystery or brave up to a fear. To carry the dream onward to a place of healing, beauty or resolution. To go to the place where a part of your vital energy that has been missing can be found and reclaimed, so you can be whole and live a fuller, juicier life.
    We dream of an old place – grandma’s house from childhood, perhaps, or the home we shared with a former partner – and those dreams may give us a way to connect with a younger self, or a series of younger selves, who parted company at the time we were living in that old place, maybe because of pain or trauma or disappointment or bitter frustration over life choices we made.  When we make that connection with a younger self, quite wonderful things become possible. We can bring vital energy and joy and imagination back into our life, with that “wonder-child” or that beautiful teen self we have discovered again. We can reach back across time and be the mentor and cheer leader for a younger self that person may have desperately needed in that time, speaking mind to mind across the years.

Photo: Bench overlooking Thirteenth Lake by RM