QUESTIONS & ANSWERS:
Dreams Department
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Question
I have the same dream about twice a week. I'm at a field just outside the
Himalayas. I look up and see a pack of flying monkeys. I think they are
coming after me and run. I reach a petting zoo. I pet the animals and am
happy, but eventually one of the flying monkeys captures me. I feel they want
to kill me. I'm taken to the leader, and then tied up in a dungeon. Each
dream the dungeon is different in that I'm always next to a different movie
character. Once it was the Star Wars character, Chewbaca, who said to me
"aaAAAuuUUGHHhh". I'm taken out of the chains and put in the middle of a
circle of monkeys. They appear to be playing "telephone". Slowly, the head
monkey goes to the last person in the circle to see how the story ends. When
the monkey opens her mouth to say how it ends, I wake. Answer
The meaning of a single dream can only be decided upon by the dreamer
him/herself to maintain the premise that we are all the final authorities on
the meaning and value of life. However, we can make general statements about
dreams that can enrich the images.
If this were my dream....
In my dream I'm being pursued by animals
that remind me of the Flying
Monkeys of the Wicked Witch of the West in Oz. I try and stop here for a
moment to review what "monkeys" I have on my back this week. Ugggh, a long
list, and the dream isn't giving me much of a clue as to which one is the
worst, so I look back to the dream.
I see I go to a place where I can contact the animals in a safe way. Ah, a
useful clue. Instead of fleeing, maybe I can tame them? But no, this doesn't
work and I am captured. Because there are different dungeons in different
dreams, I think to myself how there must be several monkeys bothering me. In
one dream, I am taken right up to the leader. For me this is a dangerous but
transformative move. The minions could keep me locked up indefinitely, but
with the leader, something bigger may happen. That I'm taken out of chains
and put into a group of monkeys means to me that they are trying to make a
monkey out of me. Chewbaca being in a cell with me once repeats this theme.
Then the attention is all in the monkey game, is shifted from monkey to monkey.
To me this is how out of control it is being with monkeys. They play with my
desire to escape by circulating the attention around -- monkeying around
with me. Finally the leader is about the speak it when I awake. It's almost
as if the answer to the game is my life. But since the final word is
unspoken, it is I who have to speak it, or have the opportunity to say IT.
I can choose not to and continue monkeying
around, being pursued by monkeys and being turned into a monkey. Not a bad
life, really. Or I can speak the words that monkeys can only whisper between
one another behind my back.
2/20/98
Richard Wilkerson is general editor for The
Internet Dream E-zine, Electric Dreams, and director of DreamGate, the Internet
Communications and Dream Education Center. He writes the Cyberphile column for
the Association for the Study of Dreams Newsletter.
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