Hi Eli

This is a lot to take in, I must digest it all.  It is wonderful to get a view from a different perspective, and it certainly has painted the dream in an interesting shade.

I can certainly understand the idea that dream interpretation is a learned skill, and is more about knowledge of symbols and their application together.  I think the main thing that triggers the 'psychic' view of dream interpretation is the association with this forum and its psychic contents.  Perhaps this has influenced me, along with having read about it and associating it with the 'psyche' hence 'of psyche' hence 'psychic'.

It might also relate to my unwillingness to openly discuss dream interpretation with those who know me in the flesh, as it seems out of the ordinary and my concern that they might react as my colleague did in the dream.  That is related to my 'poor thinking' I believe.  Everyone dreams, so why is it so unordinary?

You asked me to look at this dream. I know Eli has given you extensive insight already, and what follows is not necessarily a contradiction. This is just my interpretation, and it may be flawed... but to give this interpretation, I have to start at the beginning and delve into the dream and see where I end up, because the first image always represents the setting, and the rest clarifies it.



A resort is the ultimate place of relaxation... a place of temporary fantasy far away from daily life where you can feel waited on. So, to dream you are in such a place denotes a need to escape and relax from daily life. The swimming pool explains why you need this moment of escape: you have a need to dive into your emotional world to understand them.

But there are two conflicting images in this scene: there's a colleague present and you're wathching television. The first represents a world you try to momentarily escape from, and so the dream shows that you are unable to let that part of life go. Meanwhile watching tv is an act of objectifying the mind, rather than diving into the subjective emotional world. You are imo trying to resolve the issue in a doubtful manner... objectifying the subjective can either lead to dissociation from the self or rationalisation (which is not equal to being rational). The start image warns you that you are going about it the wrong way.

Contradiction persists in the setting of your dream: it's a "reality" show about "psychics". And the way you mention the "weakest gift voted off" I'm getting this "weakest link"-quiz image (LOL). While I'm personally not denying that psychics exist, as symbol images they can be regarded to be in the same opposition as the "resort-work" and "subjective emotions- objectifying".

The psychich subject within the TV show reveals what you desire to understand: the unknown, fate and hopes of future life. The "weakest link" element makes it almost comical... as if you think of your possible fate and hopes as factual options to test and query and then discard. You have a hope or you don't. And whether or not you believe in fate, but when something's said to be fated it can hardly be queried and tested beforehand, nor discarded as "weak".



Seeing yourself on TV shows a need to declare yourself to the world, to broadcast something about yourself, more particularly, you wish to expose your sensitive and intuitive side. But as soon as you recognize this need in the dream, you feel ashamed of the daily world finding out about it. Once again the contradicton: you allow yourself to be yourself in daily life or you hold back. If you can only be yourself in the privacy of your fantasy world, then basically you don't allow yourself to exist. It shows in the dream (place of fantasy and escape) because daily life, false self and objectifying the subjective cannot even be avoided in the resort of your dreamworld.

Seeing your face in a dream indicates the persona you show to the world: a profile is first of all one-sided, and then you mention the camouflage. You hide certain parts of yourself (even from yourself) and other parts you put in the spot light.



The colleague asks whether this is "you"... and you reply "yes". But you are in fact lying. The dream has already shown you that you are broadcasting a camouflaged false persona, and yet you insist that this false persona is you.

Now you are confronted with the results of this contradictory behaviour, of your efforts to present a false image of yourself into the world:
a) the work colleague walks away and avoids you. Can you blame people for this? When you are untrue to them, you show them distrust, and then they have every right to reject you.

Of course not everybody needs to know everything about you. You are allowed to keep certain things private. That is what you may be trying to do, but that's not what you're actually doing. You are camouflaging, even within the safety and privacy of your own mind - the dream - and people tend to notice this.

b) you're basically kicked out of the place of relaxation... The dream was the moment of escape, of relaxing, the chance to dive into your emotions. But even in your dream you could not let go of daily life and tried to objectify. Since you're not taking advantage of this opportunity, the dream kicks you out and make you understand in a different way.



Instead of luxury and fantasy you get sent to a hotel-of-hell, the hotel that will ruin anyone's holiday... the last place on earth to seek relaxation and rest. This hotel personifies the inability to let go of your daily nitty gritty worries - AC not working, filth, missing towels, ... There's comfort to know that you are not the sole person having the problem to let go and relax.

(Heck, even I as a fully experienced yearly 2-months-in-a-row traveler who only needs a bed and running water sometimes need two weeks to fully relax and then I get so embroiled in the temp life there that eventually I need to escape back to my real life, or get a holiday from a holiday.)  

The remark about having to shut down if this doesn't work, is a direct warning of your dream state... if you don't recognize your problem in this part of the dream, then the dream will have to "shut down" and give up.



The dream hired a part of you that recognizes and knows your more hidden self (the psychic) and hopes that in a confrontation it will get rid of your outdated mode of thinking and behaviour (ghosts) that disconnects you from the world (ghosts) and as you have already seen in part I of the dream scares people away.

You judge this method as 'pretend magic'. Sceptically, you do not believe it can have an actual result. But at least you finally take decisive matters in your own hands.



Despite your doubts whether this part of the dream can actually have positive results, you are able to confront the ghosts who try to slip out undetected and unknown/unrecgnizable through the backdoor (you are the psychic now). What's more, you have the courage to ask them to leave - your old methods of keeping things private about yourself in the daily life, which were dishonest camouflage methods instead. Is it a surprise how they attempt to camouflage themselves from you too?

So who are your ghosts? A caretaker and seemingly two innocent and to be pitied children/victims. They even give their reason for being so reluctant to leave... they're worried. You camouflaged yourself from the world with this idea that you were protecting the world around you from the real you, with a cloak of caring and innocence, so to thwart your authoritive part, which they regard as aggressive and dangerous, but is in fact your higher self (hence upstairs). You don't need to fear the "violent father" imo, because these are the ghosts' worries... it are these 3 in the disguise of caring victims who are outdated and disconnected... they wouldn't be ghosts otherwise.



They name themselves to you and now that you are seeing the problem more clear, you start to investigate, wanting to know in which part of your life they come from. The dream (owner) tells you that you can find out for yourself if you check the ledger... a ledger is like a register... your memory.



A monster in a dream is a part of yourself that you are afraid of, that you are unwilling to show and integrate. He is blue because he stands for your true self, for wisdom, for your higher self. The Frankenstein monster is the typical image of the misunderstood monster... he is in fact a kind being, but the scared reactions of others frighten him and make him act violently and do harm without wanting to. So, to see your unrecognized self that originally scares you as Frankenstein's monster already shows you are starting to realize that this part of the self is but a misunderstood one. Your actions emphasise this... you immediately recognize him, call out to him and accept him as a friend, instead of a dangerous enemy.

And the final act is you teaming up with this long denied and feared higher self and resolve the situation of your camouflaging to the world (the ghost = old outdated method that disconnects you from the world)



And so the dream ends, having been able to make you recognize what you were unable to in the first part of the dream. You've done what you were supposed to do.

Wow.

Holy *expletive*

I am re-reading this but that interpretation blew me away.  You hit so many nails on the head it was like a slap in the face each sentence I read, not in a bad way, in a "wake up" sort of way.  What you have said is so true about me, and I completely understand the primary issues that I think you have raised:

That being protecting people from the other parts of me, out of fear that they will see the real me, which is a lil' bit crazy, where my persona is of a completely sane person.  In the past I have always tried to seem 'normal' and I often wondered why people would walk away form me mid-conversation...  I'm no fun.  Where my real self is funny, witty and fun.

The angry father...  I bottle up anger.  I don't let it out.  People say I am incapable of anger, but the truth is I hide it from the world.  Just as you stated and I can't believe I didn't see it in this dream until now that it is all spelt out.  And perhaps as you say my anger is not something to be feared.  That is, again, something I was raised to  hide.  I was 'taught' to bend to the world.  On more than one occasion I have bent till I have snapped.  Not snapped in the angry sense, snapped in the painful emotional sense.

The source of the ghosts?  The mother and two children, my mother and me and my brother?  I was raised I suppose in a middle class family trying to be upperclass where I don't like the stuffiness of all of that, I like to be happy and fun and free.  But the persona I play in society is still that 'high-value' upper crust.  It has earnt me perhaps a bit of respect but its cost is disasterous on my soul, I know that not just from the fact that I am dreaming about it.  And to be perfectly honest if I were my true self in public I would be more liked, and perhaps respected all the same but for different reasons.

Powerful Sweetsunray, powerful.

Glad this interpretation has been helpful for you to understand your dream. While the dream was a wake up call on this situation, the dream has a beautiful ending and shows the process of self acceptance and integration was already started. Even if the dream mystified you in a conscious sense, you had already learned its lesson in your subconscious and already started working on it.

In my experience, people can tell when someone is not honestly themselves... they know it's not you, even if they don't know you yet. And they do not wish to spend time or energy with a persona who doesn't really exist. Sure, if the true you comes out, there will be people who will reject you, and might have been rejecting your camouflage self anyway before that. Those who do are hardly worth your time. But meanwhile you will gain many people who will accept and like the true you. By being true, you will attract and gain the right people in your life, and thus the right opportunities.

With regards to anger... every person has a right to the emotion of anger. Anger is a natural feeling that rises when somebody does not respect your individual boundaries: like an alarm bell. More, you have every right to stand up for those boundaries. We all need to learn to express it in a way that we make people respect ourselves as well as at the time we pay respect to them. By bottling up anger you will either turn it onto yourself (starting with allowing others to ignore your boundaries), or it will erupt uncontrolled and cause more damage than you bottled it up for.

The way we deal with our emotions (especially hiding them) is a taught process... Though not always easy, we can also learn to deal with them in a different way. For you I imagine... you will need to learn to recognize having the anger feeling when it's there, learn to accept the emotion and still think of yourself positively, and lastly you will have to learn some assertive communication. You can find lots of info out there on assertive communication. This type of communication involves: identifying how you feel, what behaviour of others caused it, why the behaviour makes you feel that way, and what others can do to avoid making you feel like that ever again. Don't worry if you're afraid to communicate these things... even the most assertive people need to prep themselves for such a communication time and time again when it comes to upset feelings. But you can exercise this type of communication too when people do something that gives you a nice feeling - which will be easier.  

Good luck. I'm sure you will feel better and happier if you take your dream's lesson at heart.