Evening,
I have a constant recurring dream-theme - that I am my current age (29) and I am back at school, being forced through the cogs of age cira 16-18, but at the same time I have what I have going on in my current real life, which is being financially successful, self-employed and enjoying my work. And I feel angry that I am at school, but am unable to muster the personal strength to get myself out of school. Thus I am wasting my time in school, which would be much better spent on doing what I am now. In my dream I do what I do now outside of school. Or at least that is the conception in my mind. In this dream-theme, the psycho-emotional feeling of being smothered is stronger than sensory perceptions.
To give you some background, when I started school I was in the top tier of the class. By the age of 6 I had completed all the maths books for my age and was doing maths books for 8 year olds in school and 10+ at home in my spare time. But as time wore on, the school curriculum did not stimulate me and I lost more interest in school with each passing year. From age 11-16, I went to a private school where the lessons became even more formal, structured and imposed. I was forced to do French and music, which I thoroughly didn’t want to do; and I tried to get out of for as long as I did them. However, there were a few subjects I liked and did well in. Thus I got good grades in some lessons (A-B) and bad in others (D-E). At the end of my second year, in the twice-yearly exams we did I got two As and two Bs; and then some lower grades including Ds and Es in subjects I didn’t want to do. When I returned for my third year at the school I was put in the B-set, or the class for “slow” (they really want to say dim) people. There was only an A and B set. Some people who were straight C students who had to work hard for those grades were left in the A set, which was due to the inherent favouritism in the school. There are two things that have happened to me in my life that have angered me to levels far beyond anything else I have experienced; and this is one of them. I was told if I worked really hard and got good grades I would be put back in the A set. So I did, and got good marks in class and more-or-less put my hand up to answer every question in class. But when my first of six grades came in for the year they were less than expected. We also got grades for effort (1-5) and there were people who did nothing of note who got much better effort grades than me. Again, the inherent favouritism of certain pupils. The second batch of grades I got were the same - lower than they should have been. However, in the exams I did well, even in subjects I despised like French. So they had little choice to put me back in the A set. At the same time they put my best friend into the B set, even though there were several people who were left in the A set who underperformed him; and he went on to do better than most in the A-set in the exams at age 18 without a huge amount of effort. Again, favouritism based on personalities. After this I essentially gave up and did the bare minimum. The next year, we chose nine subjects to specialise in; and I had no interest in any of them. By the time we came to do ‘important’ exams at age 16 we were being bombarded with homework, which I had stopped doing and was under a barrage of aggressive and sometimes tyrannical abuse from teachers. I was repeatedly told I would fail in my exams and life. My exams results were BBCCCCCCF, which I see as disappointing, even though it is above average. The F was in my last exam, which I had no patience for, so I just wrote about hemp legislation in the United States.
After leaving that school, I would describe myself as being emotionally fraught from the suppressive, forced and unfair nature of the ‘education’. I went to another school after that, where you chose 4 subject to specialise in. I had no interest in any of them and quickly found out that I could more or less get away only going to one of the classes. I faced regular assaults from the authorities, who sought to get me to buckle down. On one occasion I was forced to phone a university to get on a course I did not want to go on. I forget all my first year grades, but in one I got a U (unsuccessful) and in the other a B. I didn’t go to two exams. The next year I only did one subject. I was told I was the first person in the school to ever do that and my form tutor washed his hands of me. In this year in particular I had found an interest I worked on at home and for the first time actually developed good skills: basic web development and related fields and written English. I developed these as I had to and I was genuinely interested in the subject.
For a while, maybe as long as two years I stayed at home working and learning; and if I had the knowledge I had now I would have been able to make at least half a living from what I was doing. After that my mum got me a job as a web developer at a hopeless company operated by a lazy schmo. I learnt very little there, but started learning a lot in tandem with a friend. Eventually I left with two other people from this company to start up a web design company, which was a bizarre journey, which I made nothing out of due to the sheer amount of madness and criminality I was under. I eventually left because of that, even though there was a lot of potential in the company. And again I was emotionally fraught, or devastated, having spent about 2 years of 80-hours+ / week work and having nothing to show for it. After a while I started working on something that I got to a point where I could have earned a considerable amount from, but I had a mental block – I thought I could not do the work as a results of my ‘education’ and then the bad business experience. I didn’t feel I could do it without anyone else. And I did start this work with someone else, though they did nothing. I then started another project with them, in which I put in a huge amount of work and they did nothing. Some time later I started up a business, but when I got it up to earning the equivalent of about $5,000 / month I just couldn’t do the work any more, which was partly due to my disgust of the actual work (SEO).
I spent about 15-months after that doing nothing, so far as I can remember, then I started doing some personal work, which I threw myself into almost all day, every day for 2 years - there was no money in this. This continued up until a convergence of two situations, one of which meant that my situation of living at home at my parents would come to and end; and the other meant I that I would probably never be able to go back to what I was doing with work and would loose my favourite past-time, cycling. I was in intense physical pain during this period. As far as I was concerned it was do something or die. Just getting an average job was not an option for my personality. So, using the skills I had acquired over the years, I started a project, which I saw through multiple hurdles and others’ doubt and even disdain. The only reason I think I saw it through was desperation. And it turned out one of the aforementioned issues that led me to do it was actually a mistake. So I have continued with this, for almost 4 years now.
For the last month I have data for my earnings were almost $18,000 (quite a bit above the real mean); with no staff and yearly costs of about $600. So now I know I am capable and have lost all the doubt that was drummed into me by the suppressive conveyor-belt that is the education system; but I am now having the constant recurring dream mentioned in the first paragraph. Before that I would have dreams I was back at school that were generally filled with a feeling of discomfort and a sense of being unwelcome. In a lot of these dreams I was naked from the waist-down and highly concerned about this. But I am not sure what this dream actually means. Any ideas on either the past or current dream-theme?
I know I have latent anger from numerous specific occurrences that happened in school and school in general. My overwhelming take-away from school is: injustice and suppression. To give you two examples: when I was about 7 one of my friends committed suicide, because of the obtuse bullying of our aloof teacher. Essentially, like myself he didn’t fit the mould and their hammering of this gentle soul was seen as good medicine, but broke him. The teacher’s behaviour was brought up by numerous peers, but the school blamed it on a girl and the school gypseys, who were all innocent. Another case happened when I was about five. There was a special needs boy in my class, whose entire family were special needs. He could not speak words and on one occasion his grandmother, who also could not speak, came to collect him. I said to me friend, “Boy’s nan is outside.” (no condescension) At this, the grandmother attacked my friend with an umbrella. The teacher arrived on the scene and she insisted that we verbally abused this grandmother. She then got out of me the names of some people who at one time or another made some comment about the special needs boy, though he was never specifically bullied. All our parents were brought in, we were all shamed in front of the class and sent to be told off by the daemon headmistress (a la Uncle Buck). Despite my insistent protests my innocence was not accepted by anyone.
The last point I will add is that my first lucid dread (age 16) was being called into a senior teacher’s (worst academic bully I encountered) tiny office (about 1.5m2), which in my dream was a plinth of floor with no walls or roof. He was giving me an aggressive lecture when I realised I was dreaming. I got a surge of energy, the type of which I have read about in LD literature on becoming lucid, but never experienced it again.
And a point I would make to others: “Life presents your best experiences disguised as your worse nightmares.” - Icke
