A Dream And A Promise

I had a dream that I wanted to share.

The dream I had was of the type where you know you are dreaming because it feels so true, and yet it is so vivid at the same time. In this dream, I was in a forest with many trees and many animals. It felt like watching a movie or my own personal nature documentary. There was no one around besides me and the animals, but it never occurred to me to feel afraid or lonely in any way because I remembered how peaceful everything seemed from my outside perspective looking in.

I cannot remember all of what happened next but what I do remember is that throughout the forest there were piles of keys on small sticks poking out from between fallen leaves and tree bark. In the center of each pile were two keys still connected to their respective locks. I looked at the keys and I could see that they were all very old; some appeared to have been around for hundreds of years, others for thousands. The locks themselves were rusty and looked like they had never been unlocked from their time spent in the forest.

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The next thing that happened was that a few men walked into the forest, one wearing what appeared to be a suit of armor with red boots and a spear in hand. He started walking toward me and then he turned his head toward his companions and said something about me seeing them approaching them because they knew he was coming.

The men then started talking to one another and seemed very confused by their surroundings. They asked one another where they were, where they had been and where they were going. They looked around and walked up to a few of the keys on sticks to see if they could unlock the locks but they could not find a key that would work. Instead of being discouraged by this, however, one of the men began to laugh. He laughed so much that he fell backwards onto the forest floor laughing at his own misfortune; his laughter perhaps symbolizing that it was not the keys but their owners with which he had been unable to unlock any doors.

Another man began to laugh as well but he stopped laughing and said, "we are all going to die here!" The first man got up and said "I know but we will die with smiles on our faces knowing that we have lived more here than some people do in their entire lives."

As they continued talking the man with the spear approached me again. I looked at him and asked him where he was going because there were many keys in this forest. He looked at me in a strange way and told me that they were not his keys; they were mine. He took two of them off the stick and gave them to me. He then walked away. I looked at the keys wondering what they were for and also wondering why they had never been used up to this point.

I took the keys in my hands carefully and began to walk through the forest. I walked into a clearing where there was a field of flowers; beautiful lavender colored wildflowers with black stems that swayed from side to side as if they were dancing to some unheard melody. The wind was so gentle that it felt like cradling me in its arms. I walked through this field of flowers and started walking through the forest again. I looked at the keys, one of them was gold and the other one was silver, but again I did not know what they were for.

I continued walking as I had before. The forest was very beautiful and peaceful, but now there were fewer animals because a storm seemed to be approaching from the distance. I kept walking until I eventually came across a little girl in a white gown with long brunette hair who appeared to walk on air; she looked like an angel. She asked me if I had seen her brother but when I told her that I had not she began to cry and ran off into the woods. I followed her and she asked me to follow her into the forest to save her brother.

She asked me to carry her but I could not because the keys were heavy. I carried them anyway but they kept getting heavier and heavier. The longer we walked, the heavier they became until eventually they became too heavy for me to carry and slipped out of my hands. I looked at the keys and I realized that they were the keys to the locks of a huge metal door that seemed to be in the shape of a flower. There was a doorbell on each key and I rang them. I heard something that sounded like an alarm being activated and doors opening and closing very slowly as if on some sort of timer.

I walked through the forest looking for her brother but she did not come back with me and suddenly she was gone. There was nothing left of her except for some wet grass where she had been sitting not too long ago; it had been washed away by the rain, leaving only mud where it had fallen. I looked around and the trees were dying and their leaves were turning brown; many of them had already fallen to the ground, making an impact and yet some still clung onto their branches, not letting go until they knew that it was time to leave. I began to cry because I knew that I could not save her brother. The rain began to get heavier until it felt like a hurricane, but then suddenly it stopped. I could barely move my feet because they were so heavy but when I looked at them there was no mud clinging onto my shoes because the mud clung onto the trees instead.

I woke up from this dream feeling sad yet happy at the same time. I am not sure why I was sad, but I do know for certain that I was happy because of the beautiful dream that I had and the fact that a group of people had entered in my dream who were able to realize themselves as well as others.

As far as what this dream means, it is hard to say and it is even harder to understand without actually having experienced it.

References:

http://www.nderf.org/NDERF/~joshua/dreams_currentevents_20041016.htm (Accessed Feb 10, 2009) http://www.egyptianmythsdreams.com/ (Accessed Feb 10, 2009) http://www.consciousreminder.

Conclusion:

The evidence that I have compiled above shows that the tradition of the dream warning stems back to ancient times. Even today dreams are still interpreted by shamans and seers as a means of foretelling the future or giving advice; and now it seems likely that they have been interpreting them this way since time immemorial.

I found it rather interesting that both my research topic and question were brought up during a dream; it seemed like this dream was God's way of telling me to do some research on the subject.

Would dreams warn us about things such as natural disasters if we were able to develop some sort of 'dream decoder'? How much does inspiration come from dreams? Do movies, books, music etc.