On dreams and dream interpretations

•I interrupt our regular programming with something that's been, well, disturbing.

 •I've been having strange dreams lately, sometimes ending up in my consciousness waking up before my body, thus giving me the impression that I can't move, often prevented by something... or someone.

Has that ever happened to you before? You wake up, and you can't move any part of your body? Endless supernatural stories have been told around sleep paralysis, although science tells us it's only a case of the mind waking up before it can tell the body to activate muscle contraction.

My version of a dream diary is my Facebook account, where I post as statuses my strangest dreams. To sample some:

August 9. "Weird and dorky dream: Last night, I dreamed that a UP student had been shot at Philcoa (he survived), and had dropped some of the contents of his backpack while he was being whisked off to the hospital. Some hours [after the shooting], I scavenged for the pens he had left behind in his trail, delirious with joy that they were mostly PaperMate pens and also oblivious to the lurking perpetrators of the crime."

July 12. "Last night, I dreamt that I was having dinner with a tall and dark man who had two young boys with him, could be his sons, probably adopted. He sat beside me, and I felt the hair on his skin as it brushed against mine. He kept smelling my hair. He seemed weird, then suddenly normal, until I felt like I liked him and he liked me. Then he was going to ask me out, so he followed me up my flat, his two kids in tow. The stairs were more like ladders, and the stairwell got narrower and narrower, until we got to the elevator, the doors of which you had to squeeze through, on all fours, to get in and get out. Somehow, I managed to get to my apartment, but I had to hurdle another obstacle to enter the hallway to get to my door: something like a net fence that I had to crawl through again. We managed that. Then I saw my apartment door: a tiny, tiny hole. He was telling me he wasn't able to buy something because it was expensive in the Philippines, but that he had a lot of money back at home, when I woke up."

July 4. "Last night, I dreamt you were going to ask me out, and I climbed several flights of stairs to your bar, only to find out it was burning, possibly with you inside it. Later, I surveyed the site, which had been cleaned by the building owners, and I didn't feel you gone."

June 18. "I dreamt that you asked me out for coffee, had me climb 10 floors down the facade of the building like Spider-man, and, in the end, I didn't show."

Yesterday, a friend sent me an instant message and asked me if I wanted my dream interpreted. He then asked me three main questions concerning the main elements of my August 9 dream:

What's the first thing that comes into your mind with [main element, like, say, "UP student"]?

What would you have rather the [main element] done?

If you were the [main element], what would you have done?

And voila! A pretty sensible explanation. Apparently, I've been feeling like I'd lost something, saw it in someone, and now wondering if I should go through all the trouble of getting it back, especially with someone who may or may not be aware he is being a hurdle. All my answers to the third question pointed to how I would prefer things to be: peaceful and easy.

"But, of course," my friend said, "the best person to interpret your dream is you!" Still, I think he was pretty spot on. And he had a spreadsheet for my answers too!

The next time I have a vivid dream, I'm going to try his dream interpretation process.

Let me know if it works for you!

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