Contents

Introduction

Dream Interpretation

Understanding Dreams

Recommended Foundations

My Dream Journals

Context

The Journals over the Years

The Characters

Dream Locations

Locations I Regularly Return To

Physical Locations

Blaine House

Oberlin College

Tank

The Atlanta Tower and College

Descriptions

Astral Locations

The Dark Tower

Descriptions

The Great Hills

Descriptions

Arcology Hill

Descriptions

Arcology Hill Stadium

The Tower on Arcology Hill

Descriptions

The Catacombs

Mass Transit Malls

The Woods Neighborhood

Descriptions

New Town

Descriptions

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The Spiritual Foundations
The Law of Dreams
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Introduction

Dream Interpretation

Throw away your books on dream interpretation. They’re based on two incorrect ideas. 1) The idea that dreams are subjective hallucinations, and 2) the bizarre idea that your subconscious is trying to communicate with you in a secret symbolic language you don’t even understand. This is a well-meaning attempt to make sense of experiences that can seem entirely random. Dream interpretation is essentially what I call “The Metaphor Game” — a game in which you look for meaning in things around you. You can do it with anything. The next time you go for a walk, write down all the details of your surroundings. When you get home, run it through dream interpretation. Could the results be interesting? Certainly. Would they accurately describe why those surroundings exist? Was everything you encountered on your walk a secret symbol meant to communicate something to you?

Understanding Dreams

The key to understanding what’s going on in dreams is to remember as much detail as you can; to remember not just what happens, but how it happens. Take note of what you were thinking, what you were expecting, and pay close attention to the transitions in dreams — where one scene changes to another.

To understand dreams, you must first understand how consciousness works. You must understand the place of the physical world in the greater reality. Dreams are our adventures in a more fluid reality, in the dimensions of consciousness. Here the laws of reality are different, but we are still ourselves. We share stories, go on adventures, socialize, play, explore, experiment.

In the dream state, our primary focus is our dream self, a focus where we understand the nonphysical laws of the dream state intimately, but where we have trouble understanding some details of physical reality.

Our waking self sometimes awakens within a dream, thinking the dream state is physical life, and often reacts with strong emotions to what is going on. At these times, dreams are the adventures of our waking minds in an objective but malleable shared world with an entirely different set of natural laws.

At other times we are experiencing others’ stories and experiences in full wraparound 3D reality, jumping into characters, making our own decisions, changing the plot, and then coming back out. This is the dream state equivalent of watching movies, reading books, and playing video games.

Communicating formless experiences to the waking state is done at one level by overlaying the closest forms from our own experience. For example, if the dream story was about someone’s mother, the character would appear as your own mother (or the person most closely approximating that emotional meaning to you). At another level, the unknown character is seen, but there is a simple knowing involved (see “How We Understand Others’ Memories” in communication.php).

Recommended Foundations

In order to understand what we experience in dreams, you need to understand the nature of consciousness and the dimensions of reality. This is build upon an understanding of Unity of Consciousness, Attention, The Holographic Mind, Thoughts, The Energy Bodies, The Planes of Reality, Out of Body Experiences, Higher Sense Perception, Communication & Interaction, and The Movement of Consciousness. These lay the foundations for understanding our experiences in the dream state.

TO DO: Summarize these sections to reduce the amount of reading needed to get a general picture, and to make it possible to begin here with a general idea.

My Dream Journals

Context

I was born in 1974. I recorded a few dreams here and there as a child, but began my dream journals in 1988 when I was 14 years old and in high school. I was (and still am) very into fantasy, science fiction, comic books, and video games. These contributed to the library of my waking mind, with which the things I experienced my dreams sometimes clothed themselves so as to be familiar and relevant to me.

The Journals over the Years

As I became more and more familiar with the world of dreams, the way I wrote down the dreams changed. In the beginning you’ll see a series of characters and events without much thought to the details and transitions. As time passes, I became more adept at remembering the important details; the transitions, gateways, thought-forms, and my thoughts and expectations. These details help explain the directions my dreams take and reveals much about the nature of the dream state.

The Characters

TO DO: Only include those which are mentioned in the final version. It might be good to reference who the more rare ones are each time they’re mentioned. CONSIDER — dreams are mixed into various other earlier sections now. How to reveal the characters there?

It would be helpful to have a general understanding of the characters in my life that appear repeatedly in my dreams.

me: Benji (Sam)

girlfriend/wife: Buttercup

kids: Bodhi, Gwen

mother: Emma (Emma)

father: Wadsworth

sister: Ruby (Ruby)

once girlfriends: Kayla, Raven, Avery, Bridget, Sophie

pets: Isobel (dog), Finn (Finnegan) (dog), Trixie (cat), Boomi (dog)

friends: Juno, Rand, Hazel, Bard, Dom, Jen, Manville, Mordred, Quentin, Vortigem, Peter, Breanna, Brit, Sid, Brendan, Ranier, Eve, Paige, Nika, Melody, River, Sam S, Guido, Alexandra, Gabe, Lance, Julia, Leonard, Lisa, Summer, Brandon, Valentine, Kai, Anne, Rachel, Wilson

uncles: Ezra

aunts: Tara, Abbey

in-laws: Wilson, Justin, Fiona, Bruce, Laura

Dream Locations

The following are settings that I frequently visit in the dream state. Each is consistent in appearance and mood. In some cases, the time of the night that I go to these places has a consistency as well. Our dream life has cycles of activity and continuity as real as our waking life. I’ve grouped these locations into related areas below.

TO DO: Merge this section with the following “in detail” section together. OR merge the details entirely into the overviews.

Locations I Regularly Return To

Physical Locations

These are the astral versions of physical places. I’ve included the most frequently-visited locations. Other physical places that I visit are the other places I’ve gone to school or lived while growing up in Minnesota: Westwood Elementary and Jr. High, Spring Lake Park High School, and Southwest State University.

Blaine House

This was the house where I grew up, from approximately age 4 to 17. My Wadsworth built it with the help of friends and family. It was in Blaine, Minnesota, out in the boonies about 40 minutes north of Minneapolis. The houses were about a block apart, and it was surrounded on two sides by endless sod (grass) fields.

It’s a place I frequently go in dreams and one of my most well-defined dream areas. Each area in the house has a different feel to it. The gazebo Wadsworth added on to the house in the months before he sold it is never a part of this location. My astral Blaine House was built through the attention I poured out onto it while growing up.

The front view of Blaine House

Blaine House from the back, standing in the huge grass field behind it.

Oberlin College

I transferred from SSU to Oberlin. I had the best times of my life there. I lived in South Hall first, then briefly lived in Tank, then moved to Banana House for the rest of my time there.

South Hall at Oberlin

Banana House

Tank

Tank is a co-op I lived in for a few months in Oberlin.

Tank Hall Co-op at Oberlin
Image credit to Oberlin College

The Atlanta Tower and College

The Dark Tower and the Tower on Arcology Hill eventually gave way to the Atlanta Tower as my most common 4 AM dream location. The tower is thick and wide, made of gray concrete, and filled with auditoriums and classrooms. It has a spiraling hallway around the inside of it so that you can see out over the city as you wind around from level to level (this is similar to the upward spiraling pathway in the Dark Tower). There are open parking decks on the lower levels. It seems to rise from the physical plane to the astral planes, reaching up into the smooth caves and higher realms at the top.

At its base is a college with a large, spherical auditorium. The college is sometimes deserted with the lights out, but sometimes brimming with activities — classes, events, performances.

Around it is a modern town that I’ve explored quite thoroughly. Everything is over-extended, like playdough extruded through a square hole. This is probably due to the hill effect.

It’s in the area just west of Midtown Atlanta, in the vicinity of Georgia Tech, Turner Broadcasting, and Atlantic Station. I worked for a time at Turner Broadcasting, but the center of this area is Georgia Tech. Though this location is linked to a physical one, it differs from the others in that I don’t know Georgia Tech at all, and have only driven through the area a couple times. This place is located in an astral region sitting just above Atlanta.

Descriptions

Astral Locations

These are astral locations that have no known correlation to places in the physical world.

The Dark Tower

The Dark Tower serves as a school for dreamers, but with very few who are lucid. I seemed to go here almost every night early in the sleep cycle for a few years starting in 1996. Inside, there are classrooms and libraries. It’s run down and cluttered. An upward spiraling hallway has water flowing down troughs along the sides. The Dark Tower is similar in form to the “Castle of the Crystal” from the movie “The Dark Crystal”. The Dark Tower has a name — something like Anabestos.

In my early experiences here, the sky was covered in dark storm clouds, and the sun was orange. The horizon beneath the cloud was a deep red. It often had the look of a sunset and the land was in eternal twilight.

There are farms nearby, among forests which were alive, though the foliage was dark, dry, and patchy. There was a row of dry, dark green hedges along one side and barrenness as well. There was a parking lot in front of it.

Anabestos — The Dark Tower

It reappeared in popular culture in 2025 as Venca’s castle in “Stranger Things”. In this case, the surrounding landscape and sky is a nearly perfect match, while the castle itself is less so. The above rendering is an edited combination of the two:

The castle from the Dark Crystal
Image credit to DNEG, Netflix
Vecna’s castle from Stranger Things
Image credit to Netflix

Row of dead or dark green hedges, dark brown sky, barrenness

Inside, it has the stairway, the balcony, and Aughra’s orrery of the Castle of the Crystal. Circling up the main tower are classrooms and dorm rooms.

Exterior of the castle from the Dark Crystal
Image credit to DNEG, Netflix
Aughra’s orrery from the Dark Crystal
Image credit to olivegunni

While my first experiences with the Dark Tower were in this dry and rather desolate environment, later experiences showed the return of water and life. In one dream, the area around the Dark Tower appeared as one of many islands, and in time my standard approach to it was on winding roads through green trees along a riverside under a blue sky, and the greenery surrounded the tower itself.

The Dark Tower gradually became greener

The drive at sunrise to the Dark Tower
The upper and lower road to the Dark Tower

The Dark Tower is at the end of the road winding along the river or lake. There is an upper road and lower road to get to it. Right before they split is the Dark Tower. The Dark Tower is the first, main building you see upon arrival. The roads are like parkway roads, with trees all about and open spaces. There are huge square grates all over the lower road. Near the Dark Tower, the road was a changing patchwork of brick tiles.

There are a lot of buildings along the parkway. The buildings are a tan-brown color, and made of brick. They are dusted with black dirt. I go to them from time to time. Mostly I spend time in the Dark Tower and the next, squarish building over. It’s big but not as tall. Things aren’t as dark seeming.

Often my room in the Dark Tower takes the form of my room at Blaine House, complete with the deck and yard outside.

Descriptions

In my dreams, I’m at the Dark Tower when I think about doing work.

The Great Hills

The Great Hills is a recurring dream location encompassing two huge forested hills, a valley, a lake, a river, several long, winding roads, ridges, and the ocean. The larger of the two hills might be Arcology Hill. From the ridge road, the large hill on the left looks to have twinkling pinkish lights, like a city under a forest. Buildings in the forest are houses of gray wood, seeming somewhat abandoned and run down.

There are a lot of places in the dream world with these round-topped mountains. These hills may be the result of an intensity of focus causing strange gravity-related effects there.

The Great Hills
The shape of hills
Similar hills in Acadia National Park
Round-topped hills in the Super Mario games

Descriptions

Arcology Hill

This is the round-topped, steep-edged hill upon which The Tower sits. There are other similar hills nearby. The gravity is more or less intense depending on where you are on the hill. There is housing along its forested slopes, and a city on the top, at the center of which is The Tower.

An academy from the anime, Blue Exorcist, which bears a striking resemblance to Arcology Hill.
Arcology Hill has scattered houses along the sides, concealed by trees, but their lights can be seen.

An interesting fact about these round-topped hills is that gravity pulls inward, not downward. A house on the top appears normally, but one near the base of the curve will have its roof facing outward, not upwards. It’s as if the structure is actually the top half of a sphere, but is translated in terms of physical landscape as a hill.

The name is based on the overall shape of the arcology from SimCity 2000, though instead the land conforms to the shape of the glass dome.

The shape of hills
Re-rendering of an arcology in SimCity 2000
Image credit to Inuya5haSama

The round-topped hill could be a physical representation of the mind sphere within my head, described as the “Sphere and Beam” model. In this case, in the dream state I am the tiny astral self going from zone to zone along its exterior, going across property lines (see below) as I climb up the sphere / hill to the summit.

This is great, with the trees and lights peeking out.
This shows the many property lines better.

The round-topped hill could be a physicalization of the mind sphere within my head.

If the round-topped hill is my head, it reflects the sphere of the “Star Field” I’ve sensed at times in the dream state. Each star would be a specific focus, a specific property on the hill, positioned according to its orientation and distance from the Source.

The mind sphere, and its focal points in the star field (hilltop) around it.

The mind sphere may be rationalized in physical terms as a landscape that can be explored.

The sphere in physical form (though it should have hundreds of properties)

But a sphere hanging in the air isn’t possible. It must be a hill.

The sphere as a hill

See “Our Focus Within the Sphere” in flow-into-us.php and “The Star Field / The Sphere” in nature-of-dreams.php.

Descriptions

Arcology Hill Stadium

This is a stadium or amphitheater at the top of Arcology Hill where games and challenges are played. It has a most unique thing — an emitter of pure thought-form matter, which is used extensively in the games there. I’ve visited here at least twice.

Astral matter emitter
The stadium

The Tower on Arcology Hill

The Tower on Arcology Hill is the most incredible dream place. I sometimes refer to this as just “The Tower”. It is always a great struggle and challenge. The Tower sits atop Arcology Hill at one side of the city. The Tower itself is a place to go to face your deepest fears, to peer into yourself. This is an entirely different Tower from the Dark Tower.

Location near the Tower

The Tower on Arcology Hill

I suspect that The Tower is a passageway to higher frequencies, and to reach them, I must overcome my own blockages, which are presented as challenges in The Tower.

There is also a similarity to the satori tunnel mentioned in “Extending Space” in into-dreams.php. There is more than a passing resemblance of this landscape to the images below, with the hill itself being the head:

A 3D representation of satori.
Naota gets a bump after being hit by a guitar
in the excellent anime FLCL (Fooly Cooly)

Descriptions

The strange thing about the Tower on Arcology Hill is how many different forms it takes on the inside. At different times, the inside is a gothic masquerade, a high-tech building, a plush mansion, and more. What’s consistent is that it’s a tower shape (when seen from outside), it’s at the top of Arcology Hill, and it’s a place of facing difficult challenges.

The Catacombs

The Catacombs are a seemingly endless underground maze of chambers. They are composed of hundreds of connected rooms of all shapes and sizes, most often made out of concrete, or carved from earth and stone. After traveling through these endless rooms and chambers hundreds of times, night after night in the early hours of the night around 4 AM, my Dream Self knows the seemingly endless routes through them intimately, and also calls them “The Catacombs”.

There are entrances to it everywhere; under overpasses, stairways or ladders downwards, even from a sunny path through a carved grate. Almost anything that takes you downward into underground chambers is an entrance.

Different routes lead to different locations across the astral planes.

Mass Transit Malls

Mass Transit Malls are immense, bustling places that are a cross between a huge, multi-level indoor mall and mass transit that can include airplanes, shuttles, trains, and futuristic ships. They’re always crowded with people. The transportation leads to all kinds of distant places. When I’m traveling longer distances (across states) I usually end up going through one of these.

The Woods Neighborhood

There’s a house in the Woods Neighborhood that I had and lived in for a while. I’ve been there hundreds of times. The road is a winding road through thick woods with unique houses interspersed along the way. It feels like a low area, topographically. It feels somewhat like our house in Midway Woods, but combined with some aspects of the areas north of Blaine House, including the stores. It’s south of a main road like Highway 65. There are similarities in layout, but everything is different. Up on the highway is a small grocery store (which looks like a liquor store) and behind it is a row of shops in a big parking lot. This commercial area is not especially beautiful. Across 65 a road splits off and raises up into the air towards a large city that I spend a lot of time at. I’ve taken these roads countless times and know them well. I dream here A LOT. It’s been one of the main locations over the last 15 years or so.

The road to the north lifts up into a big city.
I’ve been in this grocery store dozens of times.

Descriptions

New Town

I have a couple houses in the astral that I regularly visit. I started visiting them around 2021 and go back regularly. I consider the house at New Town my primary home now and have various adventures there.

It’s in a little town. I know the streets well from all my time there. I often go up into an overview of the streets and then descend down into a new location, or sometimes take the streets at a bike-like speed. The neighborhood is a set of east-west streets with smaller streets going north-south between them. There are some parks and schools to the east. To the northeast a few blocks is the town center with larger buildings. To the west a block or two is a busier north-south street with some businesses on it.

Descriptions