Have you ever felt you've had this dream before while dreaming, but not when you wake up?

[LadyOfAvalon]

Last night I dreamt about a house belonging to some random family. First I was walking down a stony path on a lovely summer's day, and it led to a garden. The garden was sunny and exotic with plants that looked like big palm fronds, or giant thick spider plants. The most noticeable thing was that the garden was decorated with beautiful bright orange stones. It felt familiar, I felt like I'd been there before. I was not lucid, I did not know I was dreaming so I felt like I was really there and recognised the place from having been there before. The orange stones were so beautiful, I desired them intensely. So I went into the garden and picked one up. I heard a shout from above me - the family who lived there were home and watching me take their stone. But I wanted it so much I took it anyway and quickly left the garden and started walking down the path the way I'd come. I was worried the family would come after me but they didn't - it seemed they didn't think it was worth chasing someone for stealing a stone.

I eventually came to a house. The weird thing is, I felt it was the same house belonging to the garden I'd just been in, but I'd walked in the opposite direction, away from the house to get there. Doesn't really make sense. The family were no longer at home and I broke in. I can't remember why. But I felt like I'd done this before, broken into this family's house before. The house was kind of untidy and unkempt inside, not beautiful like the garden. At this point I had a small dog with me, maybe a dog I've owned in the past or my current one. for some reason I don't remember I took off all my clothes and was hanging out in their house nude.

Suddenly the family came home and I panicked, both from the thought of them finding me in their house and finding me nude. I started rushing about upstairs, trying to find my clothes but suddenly the upstairs seemed bigger and more complicated with more rooms than it had before. I rushed from room to room, desperate not to be caught, and caught naked by these people. Eventually I found my clothes and started dressing. I had my shirt and knickers back on but not my trousers, when the two daughters of the family walked in and found me. I think one of the girls was about 6 - 8 and the other was early teens. They caught me struggling to get my trousers on. I was now worried that I'd be accused of being some kind of paedophile for being undressed in front of random children, as well as breaking and entering.

I don't remember how but then the parents were there demanding to know why I was in their house. I made up an excuse - the first thing I could think of - that I'd seen an advert online that there was some kind of public event being held at the house and people were free to come in. The parents showed me a rather sinister looking room in their house with recording devices and things, I got the impression it was an interrogation room. I don't remember any more.

During the dream it felt like I'd been to the house and garden before and when I woke up, for several hours I felt like it was familiar because I'd dreamed those places before. But now I don't feel like I've been there or dreamed about them before. So I don't understand why they felt so familiar and like I'd broken into their house before, in the dream.

 

[Lyn Holley]

This is the house of soul, that is why it is familiar. It is beautiful. You took an orange stone. You might think about your associations with the color orange.
When you broke into the house, you became extremely vulnerable, naked. The two young girls might be young shadows of you. You might consider what happened to you at those ages. There is something threatening, an interrogation room. Is this related to you parents in some way? Or, perhaps your inner critic.

 

[PaulKH]

Hi, Lady. This was an impressive recounting of what had to be a truly impactful dream (those that linger, that feel of meaning/consequence)! Thank you for sharing.

In dreams, the complex feelings of familiarity and strangeness can be blended in combinations completely impossible to our waking selves, and I am certain there are behavioral/acceptance lessons in this (both in your specific dream and in general dreams where places are both familiar and foreign). Since you weren't lucid, you can rule out several lines of self-questioning, because this tells you that you were being shown/led rather than you "consciously" making the decisions (to steal/covet the stone, and to chill in the nude), but it can be partly a dream about consequence. The symbols and action sequences (loaded with many emotions, I am sure) crisply display examples of broad negative actions/impulses (to avoid or else, the dream says to you), as well as some complex analogies/comparisons/interconnections that only you can truly work out for yourself.

Did you feel any ownership/claim-staking to your taking the orange stone (Halloween time, maybe, heh)? Can you remember anything else about the stone that made them seem so beautiful/covet-able to you? Did you have any use in mind for them other than to possess one for yourself? Could that have any relevance/analog to your waking feelings in a heavily materialistic world, where "ownership" is hard-sold for the sake of generating its own cycle of desire-purchase-ownership-consequence? How did taking possession of that stone make you *feel*--this might be where the significance of this part of the vision lies.

One of the most mystifying things in dreams deals with distance/space/movement, and I find it truly helpful to trust in the significance that it is *not* bound by our waking rules. Somewhere in that acceptance is the understanding of how to deal, to *process* meaning when "travelling" places or seeing things in directions/routes that would not line up in the physical world (often, I think, this is our imposing our smaller perspective upon things calling for a much greater perspective).

Also take a keen note that feelings of ownership *are relative*--you can feel right in a place until others with a *greater* claim to ownership show up--I have felt this distinction most clearly and thought long about what it can mean to our own limited sense of "ownership". We often view ownership with a sense of permanence when everything about our (mortal) existence tells us differently. So let me ask a thought-prompting question to you: would it have felt different if you had felt "at home" until others who needed the home more showed up? Would perhaps then you not have been naked/vulnerable during the ending shaming sequence? The shaming sequence in itself is amusingly common, partly because it has *massive* consequences for us and how we learn (ideally we are always supposed to learn in positive ways, but the reality of our stacked dysfunctions is that we tend to mostly learn in negative ways due to how we structure things from classrooms to punishment/consequence-processing). So in a sense, that final part of the dream is the most predictable (while still holding personal learning opportunities for you).

Regardless, this is the kind of dream worth much thought and speculation, and by your writing, it seems you are well on your way to gaining value from it. And so perhaps the next "big one" can be unlocked for you, and with you becoming more capable to understand/learn/grow from it. (Which would be benefit in and of itself.)