Odd dream: Budget long-distance mass transit

I had this really odd dream. I wanted to travel somewhere far away. Like from one coast to another, or some similar far distance. There were these places that provided really budget travel. They were in this area that seemed – I don’t know – it definitely didn’t seem like an airport at all. It reminded me of some kind of faire or carnival-type place if that makes sense (it doesn’t). Some kind of faire or festival that is not new, but you know the rides and the buildings are kind of dated. Adequate for the purpose but dated. That is how this place felt.

To get a ride you stood in a line and you needed some kind of paper which facetiously stated why you needed to travel or why it was important. Sort of like some type of boilerplate piece of paper you would find stuck to a telephone pole with an ad for something on it with those little strips at the bottom with the phone number that you would tear off. You were supposed to give one of these to the person at the budget travel place and they would take it and, in seriousness, they would then grant (or not) approval for you based on the “reason” from the paper.

If it was granted by the person – it was a Filipino person – it seemed like these places were run by Filipinos – then you lucked out because it meant you were in, you got the ride. Then you just had to put your signature on the bottom of a paper and you were allowed into this… how do I describe it?

I guess the feeling or energy was sort of like boarding a Greyhound bus, but it was not a bus. It was some kind of room you went into. It was not at all clear from these rooms how the actual transportation of people occurred. It was not airplanes. But it was some type of technology that was very fast and you would sit in this sort of box-like room and then it would just happen, everyone in the box would end up at the destination somehow.

I seem to vaguely have a feeling of insecurity and worry that something could go wrong. But I think I had a sense in the dream that if this process goes wrong you simply don’t end up at your destination. But I was still kind of worried and had a vague concern about exposure to electromagnetic radiation.

One time I went to this place. I was “accepted” to travel, signed the paper, and checked my small, carry-on size roller which was a kind of maroon color, but then I didn’t get to get in the box. And the Filipino woman who was supposed to be helping me had taken my ticket but then either had forgotten that she did or else was being dishonest. In these budget companies there was basically nothing you could do in such a situation. If you didn’t have a ticket that was it. If you didn’t get in the box they you missed your chance to travel.

I was trying to appeal to another person, this Filipino man, and he sort of heard my plea but couldn’t do much. Even worse, my luggage had disappeared. It did not seem to be anywhere at the facility. I was able to get into one of the boxes but I was not sure if it was even a working box or not, and there was some luggage on racks high up which ran along the walls, but my small maroon carry-on sized roller was not there.

I started to wonder if maybe the roller had gotten transported in the trip that I was supposed to be on. Anyhow I remember then in the dream that I just resigned to go through the process again and try to get a new paper approved. I queued in line and this guy had the paper and asked me a question about why I needed to travel. At first I answered too honestly and sincerely and he seemed to not want to approve the paper for me. But then I remembered the facetious “reason” on the paper that I was supposed to need to be traveling for and changed my statement in line with that and he quickly approved it. I signed the paper and was ready to travel again.

Maybe when I got to my destination I would luck out and find the maroon carry on roller.

A couple final observations about my dream: When it was close to arriving, there was a kind of magical feeling, as if something magical had happened and now we everyone in the box was in a new place.

Maybe my dream was about the spiritual reality of flying. If you take away the particulars of flying – the external details, the specifics that are presented to the senses such as colors, shapes, and all the associated mental formations related to these – isn’t what people do when they fly on an airplane similar?

Why do we fly? Really? Without actually flying, we can have a spiritually equivalent experience if we want to invoke it. It is humans getting together and participating in this shared reality and the sort of main event of this shared reality is the excitement of sitting in this box with strangers and the excitement of arriving at some place new. Externally, people don’t show this excitement, but of course that is what makes this whole process human.

Maybe we humans then can find other ways to create the exact same kind of energy together without having to have airplanes. It is just a matter of our will. It makes me think that from a spiritual perspective we really are capable of doing seemingly magical things once we have the power to see beyond external forms and their associated mental images.