The Silent Listen

Mall Dream

"I find myself inside of an office cubicle inside of a large building. I keep examining the place it it starts to look more like it was converted from several different suites, into one big single one. The whole of the inside of this office building, is part of an even larger building that used to be an old school mall" 

The client tells the therapist about his strangely profound dream. He is sitting or rather laying on a sofa in the therapists' office as the doctor silently listens and takes note of it all, letting the client speak without interrupting. They share nearly no eye contact as the client goes on relating his experience.

"Right away I was very very very out of sorts because I knew that I didn't belong there and it scared me that I could not remember how I had gotten there at all so I started to make a scene inside of the office almost like I was having a panic attack." The client prattled on and on unceasingly. The dream contents seemed profound to him, however he poured them out in a flood of words that made it difficult to make sense out of him.

"Others around me started to come around and look at me, instead of reprimanding me though   they tried to comfort me and tell me that things were okay, and that I was not really dreaming, but I think it was because my dream sensed that I was becoming aware of the fact that I was dreaming that it tried to calm me down and keep me from becoming lucid."

"You know I have had lucid dreams before doc," the patient sat up as he told his therapist. "I know how it is supposed to feel when your mind becomes awake inside of the dream. And I know that I was starting to become lucid, but the dream fought back and did not let me become aware I was in a dream, or at least it tried to stop me because even though I went along with the dream I was still half aware that I was really in a dream."

The patient lay back down. "For some reason I remember thinking I could not find my shoes. And since I was apparently at work I panicked. Why would I have come to work without shoes? I asked myself but the more I did, the more the world around me seemed to fight back. It was using the very environment to reduce my awareness of being inside a dream." He pauses as if deep in thought. His therapist says nothing.

"A coworker walks up to me as I am panicking and tries to calm me down" he continues. "She asked me a strange question too. Referring to her butt, she tells me this must be the real world, because I could never forget a booty like hers could I? As if that would convince me that I was dreaming. Also she was an elephant. I may have turned into an elephant too, in the strange way that dreams do, they change in order to make sense of the world. And to bring me out of my lucidity."

"For some reason I cannot explain I agree with her and say it must be reality then. I find several pairs of shoes then. They are all new shoes and none that I have ever worn before. Even a couple still have their sales tags on them. It is as if the dream bought me these new shoes as a reward for staying within the dream without waking up."

"Then the boss calls us for a meeting at her desk right before we are closing for the day. The office we are in looks like a cross between a sales floor for a clothing outlet and an open floor layout for an office filled with desks. I cannot concentrate on whatever the meeting is about. I am still busy questioning within myself whether or not I am dreaming."

He turns to face the therapist and asks, "Sort of like in real life, right? We can never be sure whether or not we are dreaming or not."

Sitting back again into the sofa and looking up at the ceiling he continues. "The more confused I look the more that the dream characters try to pull me back into the scene. As if they want to prevent me from looking around carefully at the surroundings. Because then I will notice the weirdness of everything around me and realize I am dreaming." He stops to rub his face in his palms. "Like this one guy standing next to me. He is a big man, bald and black, looks like a videogame character all bulked up. Tapping my shoulder he asks me a question about what is being discussed at the meeting. It seems like he wants to involve me in the conversation and asks whether or not I can believe this crazy stuff the boss is saying. I can only nod wordlessly, then I politely excuse myself."