A dream I had this morning...any ideas what it's about?

I wonder if there's anything you're building in your life, metaphorically, which your dreaming mind might devalue, or think that your waking mind invests too much value in.

I'd say it reflects a desire at the dreaming level to stop constructing artifice in your life: which could be in relationships (I'm thinking of nesting), it could be in your world-view; but it seems to me it represents a desire to return to a primative, intuitive, present way of dealing with the world.

The desert represents a barren wilderness, where one can be isolated -- in this context, in a good way: the dream reminds me of the tendency of prophets to go to the desert for spiritual purification and to bring themselves closer to God. The shifting light perhaps represents many different perspectives which can validly illuminate this wilderness, all beautiful:

I think the junk houses, falsely ostentatious, represent the intellectual impulse to theorize, to tame the wilderness and keep it out. Your dreaming mind doesn't want that; it wants to experience the wilderness, it wants you to throw yourself into it.

The fact that it was broad daylight means this is something you see clearly; that is, the message is one that you're more or less in touch with.

The woman you talked to was a stranger, but friendly: so this is a part of you which you don't "know" about, but yet are on good terms with. A lot like the desert, in contrast to the houses -- wild, yet unthreatening and beautiful. The conversation means you're beginning to communicate with this part of yourself: you're open to the message.

I'd say in the first part of the dream, you demonstrated acceptance of the dream message by having an emotional response synchronous with the emotion of the dream -- the junk McMansions upset you, too. In confronting this, you rest -- that is, you surrender yourself -- hah! to rest your feet/your soles. I really think this has to do with the spiritual.

Because you accept this, your dreaming mind takes the next step, manifesting the message more clearly in the person of this woman. (Had you fought the message, I'd expect the dream would have turned sour.)

So this woman (who is a version of your Self seeking expression) bums the cigarrette you're smoking. Fire very often represents passion: you deal in passion, but you keep it at a distance -- the filter. By smoking from the lit end, she says, No: don't filter the passion: she wants to put it directly in her mouth, unmediated, raw. Even a little dangerous. Images of the mouth -- in this context, I'd say it bears the emphasis of more appetite than nourishment. With the cigarrette itself, there's even the implication of intoxication. So here the dream comes to a transgressive image: perhaps resulting in an alarm -- too much for your waking mind to handle all at once.

So, I'd say the dream overall reflects the desire to take some kind of plunge, to stop distancing yourself and throw yourself into something. And with the only objection to that, the alarm, coming toward the end of the dream and with it being a relatively weak objection, I'd say you're very close now to taking whatever the message means into your waking mind, to taking action in the correct way that your deep mind desires.

Conrad.

ps - Ahh, I see. I had thought it was some kind of fire alarm. (Ha -- an entertaining error: to put things outside the dream into it.)

Well, then it seems you're entirely open to the dream meaning -- a good place to be!

Cool dream, btw. Thanks for sharing it.

C.

Oh my! I think you will grow up to be a architect, editor, or building inspector.