Puzzles? Creepy ladies?

[Arisato]

Okay, so...I had this dream last night that I couldn't stop thinking about. I tried looking on the dictionary, but that didn't help much, so I'm posting here. This is the first dream I've had in a while where I really feel like it means something. I'm not actually present in the dream, but I was seeing this dream through this guy's eyes (but I'm a girl, what). This guy's name is Tim (and I don't actually know anyone named Tim).

Anyway, the dream starts off with Tim, being a detective, except he actually chases down criminals with his partner and locks them up. So Tim and his partner have been chasing down this criminal for quite some time, and for some reason, they run onto a school bus while chasing him. Tim tells his partner to put his head down so they don't get spotted and to protect the kids. But then, his partner says, "But he's already on the bus!" so they start freaking out because they think the criminal will harm the kids. Then the bus driver opens the door to get the kids off and Tim spots the criminal trying to sneak off as well. Tim's partner tackles the guy down and they arrest him. Yay.

But then, after the guy is captured and put away, Tim and his partner decide to check out the mall (kind of an outdoor mall, but only part of it is outdoors). As they're looking around, they recall that someone was planning to buy this mall and turn it into their house. Tim and the partner are wondering why someone would want to live here, but they shrug it off. As they're walking through the mall, Tim suddenly falls through the floor into some weird place.

This new place looks like a town that has a giant ceiling over it (probably because it's underground, but hey). There are tons of people falling into this place, and there's this woman at the entrance handing out papers to everyone that falls in. She says something like, "depending on your personalities, you'll have different puzzles to solve." When it's Tim's turn to get his paper, it only tells him to "go to the antique shop and play dead until someone comes in." He looks at it and is like "Wait, this isn't a puzzle." He then notices that the person behind him got a paper that told him to solve the murder in the surgery room. Tim saw the guy walk into the surgery room and he couldn't see anything beyond the door. It was just a dark room.

Then Tim starts to look for the antique shop so he can solve his own "puzzle". As he looks around, he notices that there's a lot of these random little sculptures out on display throughout the town. Then he finally finds the antique shop. He opens the door, and then, out of NOWHERE this guy pops up from behind some stuff and runs at him with a knife. Tim slams the door shut on that guy and is like "Man how am I supposed to go in there if that guy is going to try and kill me?" So now Tim is looking around at the sculptures, trying to see if he can use one as a weapon. But they're all too small to do any damage. But then he finds a fully loaded gun just...sitting there, so he picks it up. He starts to think "I could kill him, but would that be right?" but he goes back to the antique shop anyway.

The guy with the knife is stabbing at the closed door, trying to get to Tim. But then Tim quickly opens the door and tackles the guy down, making him drop the knife. Tim points his gun at him, but notices that the guy now looks really confused. The guy's like "wait what was I doing? what's going on?" and Tim realizes something. He gets up and shouts, "This guy wasn't trying to kill me! The knife was!" So Tim moves the knife with his foot and kicks it down a drain of some kind.

Then, Tim appears in this living room-looking area, and there's the lady that was passing out papers to everyone. She says, "Congrats, you're the first one to get through that without killing the guy. You can leave now." And then Tim says, "Oh, so after people solve these, they can leave? But what if they never solve them?" And the lady says, "Then they're trapped in here forever." Then Tim asks, "Would I be able to help them?" But she says "I'm afraid that would be impossible."
So then, Tim leaves, but he doesn't remember any of it. Then there was this question that appeared in the dream that said, "Was he right to leave on his own without even attempting to help the others? What if the lady was lying to him? But then, how would he know that helping the others would actually save them? Maybe they have to solve the puzzles on their own."

And that's it. This dream was WEIRD, but I think it really means something. I DON'T KNOW.

[Mazinua]

Your dream is a tripartite meditation on ethical obligations. Recognize that a detective IS a puzzle solver. The school bus of children highlight the learned nature of ethics; Shun Tzu wrote that the soul of wisdom is discrimination. Not racial discrimination that we think of today, but rather the ability to distinguish right from wrong [ie, children from criminals]. Once the criminal is caught, Tim and his partner venture into the realm of ideas [symbolized by the mall, the modern agora] to form a context for what has occurred. What makes a person a criminal? How much responsibility does one have for one's own nature? Making a home of the shopping center symbolizes the internalization of a spectrum of philosophies and points of view.

What is remarkable about your dream is that it explicates these philosophies on an even deeper level, represented by Tim falling through to the underworld [the psyche]. The woman with the papers is your spirit guide/psychopomp; she is also your feminine wisdom, peering into the genesis of character. Tim surmounts his puzzle by NOT responding kind with kind [violence with violence]. Rather he transcends the circumstances to recognize the absence of choice given to his attacker; good or bad depends on choice, and it is not intrinsic to the action [including murder]. Crimes do not define the criminal.

Tim frees himself, but the text that ends the dream suggests that such evolutions are personal. One cannot choose for another, no matter how wise one is or how genuine one's intentions. And this is rightly so. All questions are puzzles of a sort, and vice versa. What seems so unlike in real life language and form may, in fact, share fundamental cognates in dream. Of the two, the semantics of dream usually proves the more profound, as is evinced here in your dream. Thank you for sharing. Best wishes.

[Arisato]

Oh wow! I didn't think it'd be so deep. Thank you.