I am with my girlfriend, we are both about 12 years old, and we are looking at movies we can watch at a movie theater.
This is a dream fragment from a longer rich dream I don’t remember.
In the dream, I am someone different from who I take myself to be in waking life. This is again a reminder of how what I am – consciousness – can take itself to be anything within the content of experience, and any idea or identity.
The reason the consciousness I am tends to take itself to be this particular human self, is that he is around just about all the time in waking life, so it makes practical sense.
Why am I that young in the dream? Since I don’t remember the rest of this dream, apart from that it was a rich world and story, it’s difficult to say. Obviously, I have that 12-year-old in me.
I have been rewatching Stranger Things, so that may also be a reason why this came up. The kids are about that age (young teens), and girlfriends/boyfriends and movies are part of the story.
Saturday night, I saw Meredith Monk in concert, and although she is 82 years old, I was struck by how childlike she seemed, both as a person and in her music. Maybe that too was a seed for this dream.
It may be a healing dream. In my life, at that age and in my early- to mid-teens, I had a lot of social anxiety, and I felt like an outsider (like the kids in Stranger Things). I did go to see movies with friends, but they were not all good friends (some were bullies), and I definitely did not have a girlfriend. In the dream, all that seemed easier and healthier. I seemed more carefree and free to live my life.
It may also point to a healing of that age in me. My inner 12-year-old may be more healed and whole now than he was at that time. He has a girlfriend and is enjoying his life. I have connected and dialogued with myself at that age, to invite in healing.
The photo is of me about that age, at a flea/antique market in Paris.