Guest Dreamer: Some Ups and Downs

Tyler has contributed today's dream that ends with a common fear: a crashing elevator.
The Dream: I remember being in a tall building, like a skyscraper. I don't know where we were though. There were a few people in the room I was in, and I remember having the feeling of being trapped there in that room or being held against my will or something like that. I remember I had an opportunity to leave and I took it, running out of the room towards the elevator. I made it to the elevator and hit L for lobby and was pounding on the Close Doors button and just as they were about to close someone stopped the elevator and came in. It was someone who I had recently met and hung out with a few times in a group and he wanted to go up some floors and he hit the button for a floor a few floors up. The doors closed and the elevator started going up a little, then all the lights turned off and the elevator plummeted towards earth. Usually, I'd wake up during something like this, but this time I didn't and the elevator smashed to the floor with both of us in it. I then remember almost instantly as the elevator smashed, that I was in another room looking at the smashed elevator on what seemed like a TV for security cameras and I may have been in a room with a few more people also watching these security camera feeds and then I woke up. It's been bothering me for a few days now because I thought you weren't supposed to die in your dreams.

Carla's thoughts: The dreamer will have to look at what's going on in his life that might have triggered this dramatic dream, but—to get him started thinking about some possibilities, I'll react to Tyler's dream as if it were my own:

I'm in the process of creating (building) something that I hope will enable me to reach great heights. (The building I'm in is a skyscraper.) I need to try to remember who is in the room with me, because there's something about our relationship that restricts me. I need to figure out what these people represent so I will be able to see what's holding me back. To escape this limiting influence I make a dash for the elevator. An elevator, being something that goes up and down, stands for my moods. At times I feel on an upswing, and at other times I go down into a slump. I was planning to escape by going down, but someone I recently met intervenes and sends me in the opposite direction. What qualities does this person have? Whatever they are, they don't seem to be working for me in this dream. My situation seems to improve a little (we go up) but after a slow start, I'm in the dark and out of control altogether. (We smash to the ground.)

Death in a dream often refers to the end of a stage of life—in other words, it is as much about a new beginning as it is about the end of something. In this dream, as soon as I die I'm in another place and I see things from a different perspective. Taking a hint from my dream, I'm guessing that my new point of view is safer than the one it replaced; after all, I'm seeing things on a “security” camera.