Dream Theme: Finances (restaurants) and Class (Parasite 2019)

Hey, I thought I would share my last week's dream adventure.

Context: I was raised by very thrifty parents. They taught me to save but never taught me to spend. In the later years, I have begun to learn to feel at ease with moderate spending, but I remain sensitive to it.

Dream last week:

After a great expression of anger in the face of a tiny injustice at someone else's expense, I walk out of a group unable to contain a sincere smile of catharsis. My grandmother takes me by the arm and tells me a few wise soundings things and lets me go. I walk away on a path surrounded by nature. To my right, there is a wooden restaurant. It's big, cozy, and I can hear live music coming from within. The doors are open and I can see people eating inside. It is objectively welcoming but I think "this place must be too expensive for me" so I continue on the path toward an old shack and later a dark place under a hill where people go to harm others with knives, where I kill someone in self-defense and fly off to avoid the others already too close.

This dream was impactful and I spent much time studying it, the anger at injustice, my grandmothers speech, the restaurant, the shack, under the hill... But this week was about the restaurant. I thought, why did I avoid this welcoming dream! I could have had a nice time, instead I decided it was inaccessible. Nothing about the dream hinted anything else than that I was welcome there. Instead, I went to dark places.

I realized it was my sensibility to spending that blocked me. And then I realized that almost all my restaurant or food dreams include this spending sensibility. I always either avoid food, or use the knowledge that it's a dream to steal the food "it's a dream --> it's MY food" but the dream character owners never agree with that.

I really had never stopped to think about this pattern. How I was blocking myself from these pleasures, even in my dreams, where there really is no money.

At this point, I wanted to ask, what are your patterns with spending in dreams? But I didn't take the time to post on here then, but I'm still very curious about how we all experience spending in dreams.

For my part, I did a few visualization-meditation sessions concerning this theme. I wanted to address my spending anxiety so first of all I started with logic: Can I afford those things? In those dreams, could I afford buying the foods there? And the answer is yes. My financial situation permits me moderate spending, which is all I am tempted to do anyway. Then I tried to address the emotional part. What I did is I started to visit as many memories as possible of myself buying food. Taking my credit card and giving it to a server. Scanning my credit card. Giving cash. I just started sliding past all the memories I had of going to cafes and restaurants, buying food at food trucks. Sometimes asking the logical question: "Are these spendings reasonable? Yes." And I kept going for quite a long time reinforcing in my mind all these experiences. I also created a symbol of my financial ease for moderate spending to put in my memory temple. I chose a money tree with red leaves like my credit card, with gold veins like the writing on my card. To reinforce the symbol, I visualized burying my card in the earth where the money tree sprouts from. I also visualized my restaurant dreams, me paying for food with credit cards or with my money tree leaves. I decided, if in a dream, I have a great spending, even one that I couldn't afford in real life, I can use my money tree rather than my card because the money there is symbolic and not just pretend lucid dream money (I do see a distinction between the two, haha).

Anyway, at the end of the week, last night, I had two relevant dreams, one at a street store and one in an opening restaurant. Would they be spending anxiety dreams, or something else?

The first dream:

I'm at a street store in Latin America, speaking Spanish with the vendor. My friends all buy something and now it's my turn. I don't hesitate. i want to buy something but looking at each souvenir, I don't click with any of them. I tell the vendor "I'm actually more of a spiritual person. Would you have something for me?" She says she has the thing and leads me behind and into the store. I'm very receptive to buy whatever it will be. She gets me seated and gets a needle to pierce my ear. I'm a bit afraid and the sensations feel vivid although I feel no pain. She gives me a white plastic piece to put in the hole so it doesn't close up. In reality, I think it would enlarge it really because it was thicker than an earring but it fit well in my earlobe. I cut a few details out of the dream and in the end I didn't get to where I bought the thing the vendor was leading to but I think that's a characteristic of dreams not having a planned ending. What matters to me is that I didn't feel stingy, and this led the dream to give me an actual interesting experience. Instead of having a dream about spending anxiety, I had a dream about body modification and I definitely felt in the dream she was going to gift me something that was sacred to her culture's spirituality. So it did feel like a spiritually satisfying dream to me.

The second dream:

I was in a new restaurant. They were just opening their doors this very day. It was a humble place and I suggested they have Hamburgers on their menu. I was the first person to buy it. In this dream, not only did I not feel the stingy feeling that leads me to feeling unwelcome, I felt very much like I was welcome, and even a participating member of that community.

To conclude, meditating over my spending anxiety has allowed me to have two dreams where I feel I belong in a community. I know this chapter is not over in my life, but this was definitely a turning point, I'm sure. I'll keep my money tree in my mental temple so I can be reminded to maintain my sense of peace around moderate spending.

I guess I should end here, but this little adventure has made me remember another dream theme I have noticed that I think is related. Since I was young, I have often have had dreams where I was in a rich person's house. Perhaps my family was visiting this rich family or it was just me visiting this rich family. What's constant in these dreams is that the mansion is the top of luxury and I'm never alone there/ I'm never the owner. The owners are always there and it's always at least two people, but most often, a whole family. I noticed this pattern but never thought much of it. Until I watched the the Korean film Parasite (2019) which is pretty much my dream theme: a poor family con their way into a rich person's house. It's an exploration of the class divide, how the poor are like parasites to the wealthy... and the wealthy also parasites to the poor. In my dream, I don't con my way into the rich family's house, I'm just there. But having watched Parasite and read the analysis of it, I realize my dreams must be about my perception of class and how I see myself below that rich class, living in the same space but belonging there less than them.

I haven't gone as far as to do a visualization-meditation to transform this dream pattern but I thought just sharing it was one step and I'm for sure interested to hear if you have similar dream patterns or completely different dream patterns about finances and class.

My head is a bit "ugh" at the moment though I do still want to try and go into the spending/stingy thing. Maybe I'll be able to come back to other bits later. :D

I can't recall off the top of my head any dreams involving money or currency, but looking through my DJ I can see I have had at least a few and there's probably others that aren't tagged correctly (wish I could have more than ten tags). At the very least in waking life I tend to be pretty analytical about money and the potential financial value of a given object and while I'm stingy like you, I am generally not bothered about a wealth divide in a typical sense.

Over the last few years I started adopting a position more accepting of these divides simply being an inescapable part of contemporary life and this led me to put to rest many feelings of jealousy or envy I might have ever had. That's not to say it doesn't happen, but it happens a lot less than it used to, especially because I also partly think about how some people (that I've known/seen) only spend money on frivolous and possibly quite ephemeral things that will bring them only a short enjoyment, it just makes me feel like they could spend part of that on other stuff that's more interesting for their own life but either way, people really are free to (generally) spend money on whatever they want and how I may feel about any of it won't alter that.

My own context is that I was not only taught how to save but also to spend, by being given an allowance when I was a child and which I spent freely. This meant I made mistakes and learned of the real value of things on my own, often finding out that I could have made better spending choices. I personally never feel excluded exactly for my being stingy, the only thing it results in really, is me wishing for something because there's plenty of things I'd like to buy (more art, games, books) but that in reality I cannot justify buying since I don't have disposable income like people with regular jobs. Ironically, just as I was writing this I put on a track all about wishing for more... :cheeky:

I did think it was interesting that even when lucid you would essentially steal food or whatnot from dream characters. In a dream setting, a trade not based on currency would also be a good alternative for acquiring something in a non-dominating or more equitable way. My gut feeling is that at least for my dreaming, characters would probably be open to more unusual trades, e.g. trading a story for an object or vice versa or even simply materialising something the character desires in return for whatever they have that you want. I would love to try stuff like this. I can imagine it going the way of what happened in that dream where you were to go into the backdoor part of the store.

are you afraid to spend money, on some "luxury" items, or are you ok mentally, to do that, as your own choice?
are you able to .. financially .. to splurge a little bit, at a restaurant where the prices maybe a bit out of your comfort zone ?
being stingy would suck .. being thrifty can be wise ..
however, there is nothing wrong with spending money on something such as luxury, when you do so a few times.
what i would be questioning, is why would someone constantly spend money on luxury, when that person doesn't necessarily have to.
do you have a budget ?

Off-hand, the only dreams I can think of where I actually exchanged money for things were lucid dreams, but there must be others further back where I at least thought about it. I know this because I went through my records once to see whether my dream-self could correctly calculate currency exchange rates, and it turned out that, contrary to popular wisdom on being able to do math in dreams, I could. And also get the exchange rates correct.

Looking through my transcribed records, there isn’t a clear pattern, and relatively few actual exchanges compared to waking life. I do see a tendency to look at things but not buy them, but that was at a time of my life when I really didn’t have much money to spare and was living out of a backpack and/or suitcase anyway. Having to physically carry all your possessions around has a way of making acquiring more of them seem much less appealing. There are a couple memorable dreams, but those definitely seem to call out for a figurative reading, so there isn’t much point in going into them here, I think.

I guess the natural conclusion would be that this isn’t a fraught area of life for me – and it really isn’t. I recently went through the whole “I’m going to optimize everything about my finances” thing during the time of uncharacteristically practical activity that was 2020 for me, and it was OK. I’ll definitely make more informed decisions going forward, if not actually different ones. But I’ve just seen too many financially comfortable people, or even wealthy ones, leading unhappy lives to be able to put a high value on simply having money.

DarkestDarkness, I did think someone would find it interesting that I resorted to stealing in lucid dreams. The thing is, although I know I am dreaming, the characters will retain their role. If I want, I can go through walls, but I generally still treat walls like walls and still perceive shop owners as shop owners. And even if I know there are no consequences to me just taking a cookie from a stand and eating it, I do still expect a shop owner to dislike that action. Like if I'm playing an open world game like Grand Theft Auto let's say. I know it's a game and that there are no consequences to my actions, but I still do expect the characters to run away and the police to come and arrest me if I start killing people (even if those things didn't happen in the game). This is also because of my own attitude and I could for sure change this, but knowing I am dreaming also comes with the belief that I have no possessions as at all so exchanging money or trading an object of value to a dream character seems insincere to me during the dream. I know any object I give them is simply something I just manifested and will cease to exist as soon as I give it to them. But I do agree these are self-imposed limits and that's why I sat down and meditated on creating a symbol (the money tree and my credit card) which I did not only associate with real physical money but also my sense of having earned financial power through my labor, having participated and contributed in my community through my job. So if I'm ever lucid at a store, I can pay with that feeling that I have earned financial power through working. That way, it feels more sincere to me. Right? And well, given my thought process, I'm surprised LeaningKarst is specifically more likely to exchange money in lucid dreams. Just goes to show it's all in my head!

Aussiemusician, oh, I'm really not talking about things that would affect my budget, but mostly the kind of spending I might make in social context (ice cream, coffee, an activity...)

does it matter whether it affects your budget or not ?

It really is interesting – although I can’t say for sure that it really happens more in my lucid dreams than in non-lucid dreams. It may just be that the lucid ones are more memorable. I’d never really given it thought before, but I think it’s mostly that paying for things I take just seems like a nicer way of interacting with characters, which makes the dream a more enjoyable experience. And there was the fact that in my first year or two as a lucid dreamer, I found it very helpful to carry a physical object around to keep more of my senses engaged and to keep myself from waking up too soon, and so looking for a suitably tangible object was often my first impulse upon attaining lucidity. And depending on where I found myself, the nearest stock of suitably tangible objects might have been a street vendor or such.

I don’t really need to do that anymore – but maybe next time I think of it, I’ll try asking what the person I’m talking to would like in exchange for something and see what happens.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LeaningKarst

I don’t really need to do that anymore – but maybe next time I think of it, I’ll try asking what the person I’m talking to would like in exchange for something and see what happens.

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I'm not sure whether I had this thought when I replied here before. Now I'm thinking that it would be interesting to know if what the dream character wants could tell us more about what that part of us as a person also wants, what it needs for survival or what it desires for growth, since currency can be used for both purposes.

i.e. in everyday trade for food etc. (survival) vs. trade resulting in personal fulfilment (growth). It could still be completely random, but I can imagine some meaningful exchange or interaction could arise from this perspective.