The Mad Hatter casts a physics spell on us. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

DREAM

I'm at Costco. One of the workers has been expecting me. She takes me aside and lets me know that someone has ground up the bodies of two murdered people and hidden them in my stuff that's being shelved in a section of Costco. 

"Okay," I say. I was prepared for this. They told me this over the phone, and I've spoken with police. 

The store associate takes me to the part of the store where my stuff is stored. I've got the kinds of supplies they might sell at Home Depot in my spot: lumber, wood chips, a mattress. They pull out the wood chips and show me that there's blood in them. I'm scared that I'm going to see chunks of flesh in them. If they're there, they're well ground up. 

The employees show me the mattress. There's a large, human-sized blotch of blood on it. They're going to confiscate these items. 

Somehow, this is connected to my mother's death, and I realize in that moment that she was murdered by a serial killer. I fall to my knees on the smooth concrete floor of Costco and break down in sobs. 

But I'm not actually feeling any of the emotions I'm going through. It's like I'm watching myself in a movie. But I'm also starring in the movie. Maybe it's similar to being an actor, but you're observing your performance while also experiencing those emotions. But even an actor will be viscerally moved by the emotions they're performing. Not me in this dream! I understand that this is very painful, but I'm not feeling what I look like I'm feeling. I'm an observer.

Then I'm in a back yard with my boyfriend. I pick up and hold a white cat. He transforms into a small Mat Hatter.

The Mad Hatter says that I will be perpetually in motion until I understand what momentum is. I have a vision of myself as having to keep running until I understand this concept. The Mad Hatter says that my boyfriend will keep experiencing force until he understands the force of an atom. I'm not certain what this means, but I think he will keep getting hit with something forceful until he understands something to do with the force of an atom. Maybe the force of a splitting atom. Magical lights surround us and I know the spell has taken hold. 

INTERPRETATION

I understand the part about observing emotions to be related to what I'm learning in my yoga certification course. 

In my understanding of yogic philosophy, a human is three parts: sat, chit, and ananda. Sat is your nature as an eternal soul. You were, are, and will always be a part of the universe. Chit is how you are not your thoughts. You are the awareness behind your thoughts. Ananda is your nature as "ever blissful" or always whole. No matter what traumas you endure, you are always able to experience joyfulness or wholeness again.

I definitely felt like the Costco breakdown was me imagining what being the awareness behind the things that are going on in your material body and in the material world might be like. I watched a video that day about how Buddhist philosophy says that we suffer because we are attached to material things. And I wrestle with that concept, because I know that I suffer physically because I try to use the external world (food) for my internal happiness. And I suffer emotionally because I want my stepfather to live forever. His health is failing. And it's hard to maintain his physical body with appointments in the big city 2 hours away on the freeway. But I also know that I can access a kind of serenity in the midst of struggles and suffering. But it's hard, and I don't always understand what I have to do to gain access. Is it simply awareness that negative emotions are temporary as well?

I think I dreamed about a physics charm because I feel as though I'm having to draw on the grit I developed by being someone bad at math who was majoring in physics. I'm struggling with answering phone calls at a new job, and it's a mental battle. It's an internal reorganization of my confidence, attention, mental endurance, faith, and a reduction of the ego, just like doing anything difficult. But the way I really developed the start of some of these character traits is though sucking at math. I still have a way to go with what it means to really endure until you understand. But that's my task at the moment. 

And it's interesting that it's the white cat that forces me to learn lessons in the dream, because in real life, my cat has forced some pretty significant lessons on me. And he's only about nine! We've got many years to go.