I Wrote Down My Very Weird Dream

I had a vivid dream last night; one that felt like a groundswell from my subconscious. I transcribed my description of it right after waking, and rewrote it here.

This is an exercise with no point behind it other than stretching my narrative writing muscles and, perhaps, put something of my subconscious into the world. I spend a few paragraphs on my thoughts about dreams at the end, too.

The train appeared to be cut in half, as though some bureaucrat decided that to cut costs, one should make a half-sized train car. This train car, however, was high-tech and appeared like something out of Bladerunner.

It said “Ethiopia” on the side.

I entered. I projected confidence, but wasn’t entirely sure where I was going. My destination was meant to be Ethiopia. I saw my family and friends sitting on benches, as though waiting for a different train. We exchanged confused looks. The doors closed, with resolve, and the train sped away at speeds only available in science fiction (but this fact did not seem abnormal).

I had the feeling children have if they take the wrong train and are separated from their parents; I knew I could get back to them, but I was confused. Weren’t we all going to Ethiopia?

The ticket master came to check my ticket, and I said I was trying to go to Ethiopia. He said something to the effect of, “We’re the Ethiopian Liner, a train company. But our destination isn’t Ethiopia.” His attitude was one of someone helping a tourist with a common mistake.

Everything made sense. But I was worried, because this train seemed to be going far, far away, and blindingly fast, so any backtracking could take a long time. And I was too embarrassed to ask for help.

I don’t remember concretely viewing the outside world as it passed; except that I had the sense that we were underground, but so deep there was sky—it’s perhaps how the ancients felt under a solid firmament. I recall shades of orange and brown, with landscapes entirely ineffable. Alien; fast moving; and liminal. Like I was stuck in some twisted high-fantasy novel in the style of Dan Simmons or Gene Wolf.

We seemed to travel deeper and father so that we entered a different world; somewhere between—but, again, entirely deep underground.

The train stopped in a cramped area. It was the first stop, though it felt we’d traveled light years. When I got off, I realized I had no signal on my phone—so there was no way to know when the next train would come, or if one would come.

I did not belong.

When I exited, to the right of the train, I felt a bit claustrophobic, like I was exploring abandoned catacombs; lost in a dense jungle millions of miles thick. Separated from friendly faces and Google maps. Intensely lost, as one might feel if they accidentally woke up on Jupiter.

I looked, and behold, a half-finished cathedral like a ruin; it reminded me of the Sagrada Familia, but like half of a used eggshell, opened up to the sky in a crooked manner. It exceeded in size of any cathedral I’d ever seen; it spiraled upwards like a castle left unfinished over millennia, yet upkept in some transcendent way that preserved its function. Elden Ring’s eery setting could capture it.

I remember reds and greens and blues which might have suggested decaying, alien plant material. People in altered states, perhaps not human at all, made some sort of pilgrimage or worship scattered around and in the cathedral. I remember feeling like, if I had traveled to the base of the ruin, I would need to wade through some kind of organic material—like dense bushes or sinking moss. The ground was both red and green. A stray item here and there sat in the material. I remember a token of a sword—or maybe it was a cross—half buried in the dirt/moss/bush.

The manner of perception was impressionistic; colors escaped boundaries of objects, as though the colors bled through and around borders. The undergroundness bent upwards, uphill, toward this cathedral. Clouds clung to invisible firmament, and the cathedral seemed to be at the end of a tunnel.

I felt mildly afraid of the people worshiping; like they might possess zombie-like qualities, or that I would experience unimaginable horror if they turned and showed me their faces. But they were far away. I observed as one safe; as though I was wary and unsettled, but not in any imminent danger.

I left this room (for, somehow, all of this was in a chamber) and went to the next.

Where something more complete and even grander, but not unmoving, was becoming.

Here, a valley of unknown distance (but surely as big as any earthly valley) stretched out from the train station platform. There, a dancing structure centered in the valley’s low point, but it did not seem bound by gravity or any physics. Again, around the valley, there was a firmament, with wild clouds, and it was neither night nor day, neither dusk nor dawn—but if anything, it was an eternal dusk. The clouds were as though they reflected fire, though there was none to see.

The dancing structure in the valley’s center was as large as a mountain; it was a cathedral, but more abstract than the previous one. Instead of pillars, it had tendrils. It suggested some platonic form yet, paradoxically, ever changing. Through, or in, the structure, a hazy sun burned bright. So it was difficult, again, to make out the structure’s form as such.

There were giant bats or demons or people transformed flying in the valley, loosely circling the object.

I still had not signal on my phone.

I thought, worst case scenario, I could break into someone’s compound and explain my situation—and stay with them. For, to the left of the train station were the kind of compounds wealthy people have in developing countries; high walls, sometimes with barbed wire, and large gates with locals (dark skinned) guarding the gate with guns.

I thought I could convince someone in the row of wealthy compounds to let me sleep at their place because, of course, I too was white. This was a distinct and clear thought.

A bit more calmed, I returned to the two world-sized chambers or planet sized tunnels with twin cathedrals out of curiosity. I had my camera. So, awed by these sites, I tried to take pictures. I even risked stepping off the platform to center the two structures.

I struggled to get the aperture correct. Quickly, I realized, it was not the f-stop. There was some impenetrable fog, like a wall, around both structures; in each chamber that the camera picked up but I could not.

However, as I adjusted the settings, I snapped flawless pictures of both the beautiful, decaying cathedral and the luminous, dancing cathedral.

I continued to explore a bit. I realized that under the train station was a tunnel (though the whole cosmos I inhabited was a tunnel). This smaller tunnel was like a drainage pipe. I saw at least two white people exploring it for fun; tourists. I thought this was brave but a little silly, too.

After this, some other ineffable events transpired. But I ended up at the train station platform again. And a tour guide, who was probably originally guiding my family and friends and I, arrived. He was an African man. He wasn’t panicked, but clearly, I was not meant to be here. And getting me back seemed to cause him severe inconvenience. But, he and I mutually recognized that this was an understandable mistake.

Perhaps as part of the dream, perhaps as I slowly woke up, I recognized all of this as a dream; and, indeed, that it felt like how surrealist sci-fi and fantasy read, but I was living in the imaginative world, where wonder and horror blend together (for more, see my recent essay on “Backrooms”).

I possessed the vague notion that this was an imagination of hell or, perhaps, some purgatory. I also, as I woke, recognized themes of racialism.

As a Christian, open-minded philosopher, and wide reader, I’ve decided that dream are far more important than my mechanistic Western worldview might suggest. However, it’s also true that Freud’s methods involving dreams don’t stand up to scrutiny in a therapeutic context (teeth falling out doesn’t might not have a one-to-one meaning). So lets carve a middle path.

First, I want to state clearly: I do not interpret my cathedral dream as a vision. It’s simply a dream I happen to remember quite strongly. There are many visions in the Bible; and I don’t see why God wouldn’t communicate through them in modernity—only, as John says, “do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.” (1 John 4:1 ESV) I expect such visions to accompany a stronger sense of divine presence and weightiness to my consciousness. And, importantly, Yahweh is a God of clarity. No clear message accompanied this dream, and my sensus divinitatis was not tingling.

Second, I believe the power of dreams are in their openness to interpretation. I see no reason to doubt the existence of the subconscious. Dreams seem like an apt window into this realm of the mind.

Finally, I think, as the dreamer, I have privileged access to interpretation of my own dreams. Someone else might better interpret my dream—but I have the final say about it’s power or influence.

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Some dream interpretations seem quite straightforward. My dream about being late to an exam and being laughed at by the whole class probably has something to do with my anxiety about my finals. Research suggests most dreams are “normal” in the sense that they typically involve entities of everyday life. There’s the “continuity hypothesis” that claims we’re probably just processing the day’s experiences. Our mind is doing the laundry. More surreal dreams like this one I dreamt might be rarer.

In any event, I believe dreams can be a source of revelation and truth; but their means of doing so is like how poetry can lead you to truth. Dreams are our minds making poetry.

In this case, I noted my two cathedrals dream involved the concepts of classism and racism. There was, after all, the dark skinned guards, the African guide, and the idea that I was trying to go to Ethiopia (so presumably we were in Africa). The wealthy people in compounds were white, as were the suspect tourists.

I had the vague sense that the two cathedrals represented some duality in hell or about hell—but also, perhaps, heaven. Each cathedral did not clearly have a clear valence (positive or negative) attached to the sight; instead, I experienced intense awe, wonder, horror, and a sense of the sublime.

I could probably do more reading into the dream. I could unpack my subconscious racialism. And what did each cathedral symbolize? How should I interpret the abstractness versus the organic qualities of each? At this point, it might not be revelatory to explore further—certainly not theologically. However, that doesn’t mean it isn’t interesting and nutritious food for thought.

Thanks for reading,

Soli Deo Gloria

P.S., I can’t help myself. I also distinctly associated the dream with that one frightening, existential episode of Sponge Bob where he and Patrick get stuck in “Rock Bottom.” It’s a surreal place that instilled horror in me as a kid. SpongeBob doesn’t seem to be in imminent danger—but he misses the last bus before morning and gets stranded. It was the exact same vibe.