DREAM GALAXY

Research case · Cities & buildings

Walking Between the Dining Hall and Lakeside

Not stated · Date unknown · contemporary study

Umm... I was in between the dining hall and lakeside, on that path with the trees, um and we were wondering if we could cut through. It was day time, I could see everything pretty clearly, I could see I was by the dumpsters, I don't know we were cutting through, we weren't going to do anything, we were just walking, it was just me and one other person, not sure, couldn't see the face, um, but... I guess that's it, that's everything. I'm done.

Original text — Zhang & Wamsley 2019 dream EEG reports — krank curated text-only release v1, Jing Zhang and Erin J. Wamsley (research); Erin Wamsley, Jing Zhang and Megan Collins (archive); Remington Mallett / krank (text curation)

Open this dream in the galaxy →

Source
Zhang & Wamsley 2019 dream EEG reports — krank curated text-only release v1 — Jing Zhang and Erin J. Wamsley (research); Erin Wamsley, Jing Zhang and Megan Collins (archive); Remington Mallett / krank (text curation), 2019 study; 2025 curated release. Curated text-only release, de-identified report 199
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
Record type
Research case
Place
Not stated · American
Date
Date unknown · contemporary study
Uncertainty
Moderate — De-identified sleep-mentation report; the source does not establish a calendar dream date. Chinese title and translation are AI-generated editorial drafts, not human-verified.
Imagery
Lake · Road · Tree · Time · Faces
Feelings
Wonder

Another way to look at this dream

Notes on the images in this dream from psychology, myth, folklore and semiotics. Each names its source.

Water

Was the water clear or muddy, still or rising? Which water in your own life — a place, a swim, a flood — does it bring back first?

Jung · The unconscious

Jung called water the most common image for the unconscious: something deep, below the surface, that we can look into but not see through.

C. G. Jung, “Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious”, Collected Works 9i

Classical Chinese medicine Historical medicine

The Lingshu pairs dream images with the balance of yin and yang: when yin is excessive, one “dreams of wading through great water, and is afraid”. This is a historical theory about the body, not medical advice and not a way to diagnose anything.

Huangdi Neijing, Lingshu ch. 43 “Yinxie Fameng”

Hebrew Bible; Babylonian myth Myth & scripture

Several creation stories begin with primordial water — “darkness was upon the face of the deep” in Genesis, the fresh-water Apsu in the Babylonian Enuma Elish. Here water is what exists before order.

Genesis 1:2; Enuma Elish I

All perspectives on water →

Road

Were you heading towards somewhere or leaving somewhere? Did you choose this road?

Jung · Individuation as a way

Jung often spoke of individuation as a path one has to walk oneself; no one else’s map fits exactly.

C. G. Jung, “Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation”, Collected Works 9i

Upanishads Classical text

The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad says that in dream “there are no chariots, no harnesses, no roads — but he creates chariots, harnesses and roads”: the dreamer builds the way as they go.

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.3.10

Tang tale Literature

In “The World Inside a Pillow”, a young man on the road to Handan lives a whole career in a dream while millet cooks — the source of the idiom “yellow millet dream”.

Shen Jiji, “The World Inside a Pillow” (c. 780)

All perspectives on road →

Tree

What kind of tree was it, and was it alive, bare, or in bloom? Does it remind you of a particular place?

Jung · The philosophical tree

Jung collected trees drawn by his patients and found in alchemy, and read them as images of slow growth — rooted below, reaching up.

C. G. Jung, “The Philosophical Tree”, Collected Works 13

Norse myth Myth & scripture

Yggdrasil, the world-ash, holds the nine worlds in its roots and branches.

Poetic Edda, “Völuspá”

Tang tale Literature

Chunyu Fen falls asleep under an old pagoda tree and dreams of a kingdom; on waking he finds it was an ants’ nest among its roots.

Li Gongzuo, “The Governor of Nanke” (c. 802)

All perspectives on tree →

Exploration notes, not a diagnosis, a prediction, or evidence of real events.

Dreams that share its images