Dreaming : 02/04/2016 : Nadja the Faceless
***PLEASE NOTE THIS DREAM WAS A NIGHTMARE AND MAY HAVE TRIGGERS IN IT. PLEASE EXERCISE DISCRETION IN CHOOSING TO READ. IT IS NOT MY INTENT TO SCARE OR TRIGGER ANYONE, BUT RATHER TO BRING EVEN SCARY DREAMS INTO AWARENESS SO WE MAY WORK WITH THEM, LEARN FROM THEM, AND HAVE AN OPEN DIALOGUE ABOUT DREAMING AND NIGHTMARES IN GENERAL. THANK YOU.***
It’s well into the evening on this chilly February day, but I couldn’t find the time to write about my dreams earlier. Truth is, while visiting my mom here in Austin, my dreams have been super vivid. Also, they have been predominantly nightmares. I normally write my dreams in a dream journal, but I’ve wanted to write them and file them on computer for awhile, so I suppose this is a good time to start trying this process. I haven’t had nightmares in a long time. It took me awhile to find the courage for dream reentry for questioning this morning, and I didn’t receive a lot of answers. Anyways… the dream…
It starts with a dream about an old friend. (I won’t be mentioning names when I type public dream journals generally speaking for privacy reasons.)
I’m having difficulties pulling out the specifics right now. This person is there with a group of friends- all female. There is a beautiful mostly naked girl lying on her back seductively across a cold cement table. There is a white cloth covering parts of her. We are in a room that is made of cement and everything is cement. I tell the girl something which I am thinking was about my friend, I think, although I am unsure what now. Someone shows me list that is reminiscent of a restaurant menu of what dreadlocks are selling for- how many inches and all. Like 4 feet is $400 or something, etc. as I make my way outdoors.
I am in a forest with a balding, old, white beatnik man with an ample belly in a white bathrobe. What remains of his scraggly, brown medium length hair is tied up at the base of his neck. Other people are there; I believe from the cement room. And another girl is with me who has loved (cared deeply for) my friend. The beatnik man approaches me and tells me I am still saddened by the thought of this friend because I felt betrayed. I said, “Betrayed? No! It is because they lied to me!” He says, “It is because you felt betrayed.”
He looks at the girl next to me and says, “You felt hurt by this friend, but you have forgiven them so you have moved on.” (I did try dream re-entry here as well, and I do not recall what he told me then, but upon awakening I realized that this means part of me has forgiven my friend, but part has a hurt which feels like betrayal. I tried to go a bit into that feeling this morning and also to explore the lying aspect and how they were connected, but felt lacking in answers, and this morning got hectic real fast. *I would like to try to explore this again as it seems to be a pretty recurring theme.*)
I look up and see the man (?) throwing something maybe a golden ball (?) and have a flash of a forgotten dream, or another time I have been in this spot with a much younger boy with sandy blonde curly hair who was very handsome. I believe the younger man was throwing in a golden coin. I am recounting this to the beatnik when we see what appears to be a pair of old, polished, dark green shoes disappearing beneath the brush and I believe some roses were starting to appear. I say we should go look down to see what is going on- if someone needs help. The beatnik looks down a bit but cannot get a good view. So he and I the other girl, and maybe another girl walk around to this old golden gate that is like an archway, but it is beat up and forgotten and covered in vines. And I see a golden bow and arrow hoisted into position at me. I shrink back a moment and then realize I mustn’t- that I need to clearly see what is going on. I see a small green hand purse attached to a golden chain around the wrist that was drawing back the arrow. And I realize it is a girl and feel somehow safe in this. I recognize this bow and arrow, this purse, this wrist. I look up and see a girl with hair like mine is now- short and blond. But she stands taller and straight-backed. She is wearing white robes with a pale green fabric in parts, and a gold rope is wrapped haphazardly around her waist below her breasts, but it is all very beautiful. I say “Nadja!” But Nadja’s eyes are sunken and I realize her face is dark around the edges, as if it is hollow behind the skin, and as if her face is a mask merely placed there briefly in attempt for me to recognize her as a friend, and not foe. She falls backwards down the stairs she has just climbed. I rush to her and everyone else is afraid, and they stay behind. She is bleeding from her head, and around her face. Maybe it was a trick of the eye, what I saw before. But is she dead? She has a message for me. It was why it was so important for her to come- to stand with bow erect- so that she could get to me. But she is unresponsive to my pleas. I call to the others for help. Reluctantly the other girl who was with me approaches and holds Nadja up for me so I can feel for signs of life- a pulse… anything. But nothing comes. And then perhaps something like a faint pulse comes in. But I am quickly distracted by the brush again sounding off alarms of someone nearby. I ask the others to hold her, while I inspect. I walk slowly down the steps and I see a man barely turned towards me, standing. He is a Chinese man in a green uniform. There is a pond or lake of something that appears to be made of blood, but upon closer inspection is red rose petals. I get the feeling it is much more sinister, but that a block in my mind wants to prevent me from seeing this for what it is. He lays something into a rickety old canoe in front of him. It is an old baby doll. Maybe it’s from the 40s or 50s? I am not sure but it is old. And he is not gentle with it because it is lifeless. And I realize once again that my mind is trying to protect me and it is a dead baby. And he stacks “baby dolls”, rather carelessly and in a drone like fashion, one on top of the other, as the pool of roses raises the canoe closer to him. And I wake up.
*UPON AWAKENING*
I am first a bit shaken to go back into the dream to question, but this is maybe my fourth nightmare this week, and although nightmares were once a staple in my nightly snack, they rarely visit these days. Needless to say, I’ve gone back into all of them but one (the previous night), and I only did so reluctantly, and starting with the earlier parts of the dream. But I couldn’t go successfully in fully as the outside world was clamoring to get in touch with me. I googled Nadja on my phone, but my sleepy hands pressed the wrong buttons and “Nedjma” a book popped up with a similar feel to the dream I had. I read the blurb about
that, and felt it was telling me something and so I can look it up in the future it is: “Nedjma”, by Kateb Yacine which is an Algerian book written in French about French Algeria and colonialism and was written in 1956. I proceeded to look up “Nadja”, which also gave me a similar feel to the dream, but the first book felt like it touched aspects of the second part of the dream, and the second book “Nadja” was reminiscent of the first part of the dream. I am sure they all correlate in message somehow. The book “Nadja” for future reference was written by Andre Breton in France and is a French surrealist book in 1928, and begins with the question “Who am I?”
I also learned that the name Nadja is of German origin (if the sources were correct) and means HOPE- which I immediately thought of my “Year Significator” Tarot card: THE STAR.
As an aside, I have never heard the name “Nadja” to my conscious knowledge.
*Dream Reentry*
I take care of a few things, and try dream reentry again. I remind myself that of all my “selves” in that dream (I believe all aspects of my dream are parts of me trying to communicate), my self-self, was the one brave enough to follow suspicious feet, to try to find Nadja’s attacker or see if someone else had been attacked, and to watch the drone-like Chinese (military?) man, so I MUST be brave enough to go and speak to them all. I successfully reenter by going in a little earlier and speaking with the beatnik man. I believe he says the betrayal is the lie and the lie is the betrayal. Essentially, that I feel like I was lied to and betrayed, and that is the aspect I need to heal to move forward. But that most aspects that maybe had hurt me at first, I had healed. But I wasn’t looking at this aspect properly, which is why I haven’t been able to heal it even after a very long time. I asked him who he represented and who he was but I couldn’t remember when I came out again. I tried to locate the young boy, but couldn’t. I studied the green shoes more closely and tried to ask them what they were and represented, but fear was starting to rouse me awake as I was heading to approach Nadja next. I tried to get her to speak. Her pulse quickened. I told her I really wanted and needed to know what she had to say. I told her I was ready, but still knew that wasn’t entirely true in my heart. I tried to become Nadja so I could understand her message, but I was too afraid. I went down to the Chinese man. I realized I was less afraid of the man with the dead babies and bloody pool than I was of Nadja. And yet, he was relatively clear to me already. And he was things to come. And I knew I could ask him questions with better results because I was less afraid, and I also knew his message wasn’t the most important for my personal evolution. I went down and was speaking to him but my alarm went off and I can’t remember what he said.
*Dream Song*
(I try to always note the song upon awakening, the feeling I had upon awakening, any numbers, or any words that are randomly coming in- even if seemingly unrelated to the dream. I almost always have a song or set of lyrics playing in my head that directly relate to the song when I get up.)
I realize sooner after awakening that song has been playing in my head since I originally woke up. It is an America song. I can’t remember which one, and it was specific lyrics that came up. It was like it was just sitting below the surface, a coin in a wishing well, shining brightly so I would reach in and pull it up. It made so much sense and now I can’t find it. But I am listening to America to see if one …strikes a chord… (After listening to my America album I would hazard a guess at “Sandman” but I will see if anything comes up tonight in the dream realm to help me clarify.)
*Dream Tarot*
Overall Dream Meaning: Knight of Swords:
I’ve only ever pulled the Knight of Swords once from this deck, and it was for someone else’s reading. But I feel the energy behind it in the dream, even this evening far removed from the deck. I feel like I read it here more like I would read from the Waite deck (I am using the Fountain Deck currently). For me here, the Knight is bringing forth a message. The dream is a message that is moving swiftly towards me. It is trying to bring me clarity and understanding and sharpness of mind in preparation for what is to come. I have been having premonition dreams since I was a baby. When I was very young they were clear and straight-forward. As I began to believe what I was always told by others in the world, that 
they were “just dreams”, the dreams became more and more symbolic as opposed to literal. I’ve been into dream into dream interpretation in a surface type way for awhile. By that I mean, I have sporadically done dream journals my whole life, but over the last 8 or 9 years or so I have increased to recording maybe 70-90% (depending on the time in my life) of my dreams, and in that I find my dreams still include premonition dreaming, and I am getting better at understanding when those are. This dream has a mix of all past, present, and future (which makes sense if we got into a deeper discussion about the illusion of time). This week has had a lot of future stuff in it. I asked my pendulum if these things were very personal or things on a global scale. The portion of this dream I asked about was the end of the dream, and it says it was more on a global scale, and that I could not do much to prevent the energy that has been building up behind that future potential. Anyways… not totally about the Knight, but the end of this dream, as the nightmare the night before were premonition dreams, and the Knight wants me to heed the message and prepare myself mentally.
Nadja: The Empress:
I honestly think this helps me to understand that Nadja is a bit of my RELATIONSHIP to “The Empress”- the thing that separates me from “The Empress” within. It took me awhile to get there, because I am pretty far removed from that aspect of myself. And I certainly recognized Nadja as an aspect of myself. And personally, I don’t connect to many aspects of “The Empress”. I was recently discussing this with a friend who had channeled my great-grandmother for me, and she wanted me to know I AM a nurturer as much as her and my grandmother have been. She was explaining how, and she repeated later the word “allowing” many times. But I never had children, and do not want to have children, and that always made me feel separate from (perhaps society’s version of?) “nurturer”. I really thought this would be better described as “The Empress” reversed, but as she is not I will be looking further into this correlation and how it could also touch on perhaps me not wanting to look at my creations, or being fearful of action. I may make an update once I go further into this.
The Beatnik: 9of Swords (Rx):
I have to first say, since I was in high school, this card has kinda freaked me out. I made peace with it last year and wrote a ton about it. I don’t have that journal here, but will type it up at some point for a more in depth look at this from my Freedom Perspectacles. Here I feel what the card in reverse wants to say that the beatnik (btw I don’t know why it was a beatnik and not a hippie or something, but he was decidedly beatnik to me in my dream, even in his current garb- I’m sure I’ll be thinking on that more…) is trying to help me wake up from the nightmare illusion. That this hurt I have been holding can be easily released, once I see it in its true Light. Once I move out of the dream like attachment to the feeling I’ve been holding for years and see it for what it really is. He is a bit of a wake-up call, if you will.
Chinese Man: Ace of Cups (Rx): This one stumped me on the surface initially. But this man was totally empty like an upside down cup. There was nothing there. No emotions. No thoughts. No anything. No creativity- a cog in the machine, if you will. No person could do what he was doing and touch emotion. A person touching emotion could not perform what he was performing. While I do believe everything in my dream life is an aspect of my Self, which is easy from my perspective because I believe in Oneness, I see this as also some part of the collective that I do not necessarily have the ability to go in super easy and work with and then the healing happens as I do many of my dream characters. There was something different here. Like I could work on this aspect of myself, but it won’t be enough for JUST this third dimension me to fill up the cup. All the souls connected in Oneness must fill up the cup. There are a lot of things I want to go into here, but it is not the place, so I will just leave it at that.
If you’re still here reading, thank you for taking the time, and much Love to you.
Yours in Oneness <3 Freedom