Spooky Angel tells Us:
I was going to a big building with a friend (no idea who it was, just aware of their presence). The building looked very old and scruffy outside, but when we went inside it was like a huge museum. It was beautiful and ornate, not at all like its dingy exterior. I said to my friend how wonderful the place was and how I could spend the whole day there. In fact, I think we did. We kept wandering around the different rooms and everywhere I went I noticed the thick and richly patterned carpets. There were beautifully ornate banisters around the impressive staircases and I was aware that there were lots of rooms to look around that I hadn't seen yet. I kept getting tantalising glimpses of each room from the main stair way and wanted to explore every bit of the place. I saw some stuffed animals in one huge room. They were in cases and I remember seeing polar bears and brown bears, a whale, maybe a tiger.
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(Another dream interpretation attempt from me
(Full Disclosure Confession: Spooky mentioned to me that this dream occurs at a particular time, usually when not feeling well. So I have a starting point in this attempt. In a dream group (Jungian,) that I used to attend, we would have the "dreamer" recount the dream, & we would ask questions of certain aspects and then interpret it. So I'm keeping the fact that this dream comes up when feeling unwell in mind.)
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First off, the building, which is your view of your physical self is "scruffy." This would fit into the fact that you said this dream pops up when you feel ill.
You are probably not a hypochrondriac and consider colds or the flu a limited inconvenience, since in this dream, you recognize, that even though the "outside" may be "old and scruffy," your persona, (yourself, who you see yourself to be, that is,) is very interesting to you, as a person, because you have envisioned your "interior" as a museum, and a pleasant one, at that. This is not a form of conceit, but just means you would probably like yourself as person, if you met yourself on the street.
You don't connect the physical portion of yourself with who you are as person, it would seem.
The faceless "friend" who has come along with you, (who is really an aspect of yourself,) reinforces the possibility that you enjoy your own company and find satisfaction in being alone, or discovering new ideas and information for the sake of learning. Had you given this friend an identity of any sort, I would have said that you were projecting those identities you want to disown in yourself, onto this friend, but this friend just seems to be a "twin" in your adventure, someone to share the musem with; in other words you like to share adventures alone, or with yourself. (Maybe you are a lifetime student, or a teacher of sorts.) In fact, I bet you're the type of introspective person that might even welcome a sick day at home in order to catch up on reading or some kind of educational pursuit that you have as a hobby.
You say you "could spend the whole day there," instead of the whole night. Day is the productive time for most people, and it also the illuminated portion of our lives. (The fact that you chose a museum leads in this direction. For two reasons. A museum is a storage house of artifacts that are suppose to educate. Your subconscious could have chosen a department store, during evening hours, to spend the time in for example, but didn't. I could guess at what the significant differences in these two places, and the hours chosen, would be for you on an individual level, but on the surface it would appear that they would be universally identifiable differences, in any case.
The museum being primarily to educate and store intellectual facts for the future; the department store, for instance, supplying goods for the present, on a more physical level.
The overall ambiance of the dream setting would indicate that your ego has a very free-flowing connection to all of your levels of consciousness. Your subconscious is connected by "ornate bannisters," and "an impressive staircase," to your higher realms of consciousness.
You describe the embellishments as "beautiful," so this would mean that you approve of and are comfortable with, the architectural aesthetics that your subconscious has designed in giving you access to the many rooms in your psyche. The "richly patterned carpets" supply a padded, interesting route, which also facilitates travel throughout your dreamscape. In other words, your subconscious has many things for you to explore in its museum, and has supplied ample means of access via stairs and carpeting. And it is taking very good care of these items or issues by placing them carefully in cases. The environment, as comfortable as it is, indicates you are more than willing to examine them...no fears here about buried pasts; on the contrary, you relish the exploration. (The "cases" could also be a visual pun...any lawyers in the family?)
Now. What are the objects in the cases, and what do they symbolize? They are in your beautifully decorated, multi-layered, many roomed "museum," (your subconscious,) packed in "cases," which must have been a transparent material, since you see them. These could have been in boxes made of some opaque material, where you couldn't see them without some work. This seems that you have no secrets from yourself. You deal with things out front, openly, I would guess.
As for the individual meaning of the objects....this is where I would ask you, "If you were talking to someone from Venus and they had NO IDEA what a polar bear, a whale or a tiger was, how would you describe them?" Even beyond words like"animals" because the Venusian has no inkling of what an "animal" is...you must give explicits as to habits, temperaments, physical descriptions, etc. This way, you discover the personalized meaning of the objects your subconscious selected. You can try jotting down some descriptions and see where that leads you.
The animals, even though stuffed, (I would guess this means that they are truly "symbols" of your issues in the subconscious, and fully in your control, unlike they would be had you chosen to make them "real" and living, unwieldy animals in the dream.)
My generalized interpretation of the polar bears for instance, would be that being an animal that dwells in a frozen climate, they may represent an issue you've stored (put on ice, maybe) to deal with later, and realize it is still lurking in the background, but blending in with your life's 'landscape.' Since Polar bears do just that, with their white coats. But Polar bears have some size to them, so it's probably a fairly important issue, just not one you are too concerned with, and you may take your time with. Frozen things keep until you decide to de-frost them. This issue will keep, also.
The whale, another large mammal, lives underwater. Going into water or underwater generally symbolizes delving into the subconscious. Here, in the subconscious, (in your museum,) you have another layer of deeper subconsciousness. But you are still aware of what's dwelling there. After all, you could have, in this dream, placed the water in a tank, with no visibilty...but you didn't. The whale is a sizable issue within the subconscious. it breathes air, unlike fish, meaning that this issue surfaces frequently (to breathe, to live.) It could be a reference back to the dream popping in during illnesses. If you have a recurring, aggravating chronic illness, this whale could be it.
And the tiger.......a very big, hungry instinct roving around the museum...even though "stuffed," I would say he is your hunger for knowledge.
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Thanks for letting me attempt an interpretation of your dream today, Spooky Angel, it was a pleasant aside from studying for my architectural drafting test...<ugh>
-Sudi