Afternoon of August 13, 2015. Thursday.
In my first entry in this series I went on and on about hay and haylofts and in the second, shared some personal connections regarding symbolic and metaphorical meanings and associations. Here, I will take a look at an unusual feature common to some of my dream types; one that has occurred throughout my lifetime to this day and is something I now refer to as a “station”. I have a fair number of documented dreams that include what I refer to as such.
First of all, what is a “station” and where do they come from? Doing extensive research, I believe I have come up with at least a partial connection or explanation. It may go back to when I was reading the “Peanuts” comic strips over time when I was very young. It may resolve to the following information: “Lucy’s psychiatry booth is a running gag in the Peanuts comic strip by Charles M. Schulz. In a parody of the lemonade stands which are operated by many young children in the United States, Lucy van Pelt operates a psychiatric booth. Other characters come to it to tell Lucy their problems. She responds by spouting useless advice.” Its first appearance is said to be on March 27, 1959. When I was much younger, I sometimes held beliefs that legitimate psychiatrists possibly existed somewhere (though not in the sense that they could “interpret” dreams in any way). I no longer believe that. Typical human interaction often falls into passive and dominant roles, where a passive person places himself in the role of allowing control over every little facet of his thought (not caring at all about being continuously lied to or even being able to discern it as such), while a dominant person wants control over everyone, regardless of any inherent truth or potential of the dominated individual. Having such understanding does not make me a true misanthrope, as otherwise I would not have a loving family and spend so much time in educational networking. There are always those people who are neither, yet are greatly puzzled by these other two types.
Does this mean dream characters always give “useless advice”? I would tend not to think so depending on the person and the dream. Here, I will take a look at a few dreams that utilize this concept and any possible meaning. Regarding the character (often unknown), I will refer to as “keeper” and the dream-rendered boundary as “edge”.
“Giant Tarantula”: Keeper is passive and trapped and wants me to save my own life, the edge being the ocean (that blocks me from my mate). In this atypical form of the station, it was in the form of two Y-shaped sticks holding up an isolated “hammock” made of spider web that a very old man (the keeper in this case) was trapped in. In this case, the keeper told me to go on and leave him, saving my own life as the giant spider approached. In this dream, I also have to stop and can go no farther due to there being nothing but ocean beyond. This is also a recurring situation (where I need to get somewhere and am blocked by the ocean - this being a direct clue that my life partner would be on the other side of the world).
“Not Quite Snow White”: Two keepers in conflict (rare), each wanting to be my mate claiming fairy-tale-like prophecy, the edge being the literal vastness of space just beyond (where the world “falls away” beyond that point). This was one of my first dreams of the precognitive link between Susan R and my “mystery girl” (wife-to-be) - the only two people I ever “saw” or “heard” at any higher level (my wife being the only one I “heard” to a greater extent within - almost like the literal feminine form of my own consciousness - thus “twin flame”). It confused the story of Rumpelstiltskin with Rip Van Winkle as well. It also featured Bobo C (a mentally handicapped classmate who for some reason, decided to befriend me and even defend me in the strangest of circumstances). As with the previous summary, stations sometimes imply an “edge” of the world itself. The previous has the ocean and this one has a literal edge (where you could actually fall off if going beyond the station). Bobo however, being mentally handicapped, cares not about falling off the edge of the world. He simply climbs an invisible “staircase” into the depths of space and the stars contained within. In this association, I think it may relate to “not getting visible support” in the real world (and not caring as such). My father used to joke about people successfully doing “impossible” things simply because they did not yet “know” (or hear from others) that it was impossible.
“Patches”: Keeper is a kidnapper who sells Bibles (of both white covers and black covers in some versions) from his station (who had kidnapped my “dream girl” in the form of Brenda W, the “stand-in” for my real wife-to-be, sometimes as part of a crowned goddess-like composite), where I see her tied up and gagged and kept hidden inside the station, which suggested that my wife-to-be would not be Christian and be negatively influenced by a small church - and this is exactly what happened to my wife when she was young). The edge in this case is also the ocean, and the three “magical” bats alter the song “Patches” to begin with “down by the sea” (instead of “down by the river”), implying my “chosen” (or predestined depending on how you view it) wife is across the ocean.
“Alley of Dreams”: Keeper is a young black male who wants to sell me (or just get for me) special mixes of paint at the end of an alleyway, where all the colors (“waste water” left over from his apparent products) are forming into an amazing, swirling pool, running out from his station at the edge of an alleyway into a parking lot, where I come out at the point of heightened consciousness. In this case, his station looks much like a large lemonade stand in some ways and in this case, I also vaguely associate Lucy’s booth and Timothy Leary.
“Two Tigers” (meant to be titled “Tigers in the City”, though I never changed it online yet): Keeper is an unknown female who seems concerned about the tiger behind my wife and I, though at a distance from us (and on the other side of the street) and not seemingly threatening to us, yet where she has another one approaching her from directly behind her that she is not aware of at all. Her station is like Lucy’s booth, but very close to the busy street near an intersection (in this case, the intersection being the edge, which likely represents the paths of people with opposite beliefs, goals, or attitude towards life itself). This seems to be some sort of metaphor where “everyman” tries to “warn” the dreamer (relating to possibly hypocrites or the uninformed in reality) about something that is not that threatening when they themselves are on the verge of dire straits (though here, I wake before anything happens to the keeper), therefore such advice or projected beliefs are pointless, even counter-productive.
Once again, this is only a very tiny example set of this concept. One might also see it as the “information booth” of the mind, where a dream character gives out maps (metaphorically) to the dreamer.
Predestination is not so unusual a concept at all, at the spiritual level, regardless of low-minded or inexperienced individuals. A plant, after all, grows its roots and stems into the most nurturing directions and paths from the start of life (that is, tropism, a real biological phenomenon). That does not mean that we do not have free will. It simply means we are conscious enough to decide for ourselves where to go, viable or not, good for us or not. However, trying to convince a healthy, fruitful plant (and all the other plants around it) that it did not grow in the direction it thought it did is not a very sane objective (this in regard to the sandbagging that comes about on some Internet sites and forums).
Assuming this station theory is true (and it is only an educated guess based on years of personal research and reflection and thousands of documents, both personal and public) regarding the “Lucy’s booth” influence, that would mean that certain aspects of dream situations start to become rendered at other levels from a very young age. Over time, however, these foundations of internal “worlds” take on new forms and patterns, hopefully, in the way that benefits the dreamer.
