Dreams are often about changing emotions and circumstances in your life. The men from her own culture in the dream link to this dreamers realisation that she was returing home to a very conservative culture after spending some years in the west. THE DREAM I am staying in a motel with 5 friends (who are from all over the world) and myself. We were entering the motel after a night out when a gang of large men from my ethnicity targeted me out of everyone else and it probably would have led to assault and rape. I was protected by friends and all of us ran from them but they pursued us up the stairs through the lift into the dark tiled corridors. All through the night I was hiding from the gang under the bed and in the morning we tried to reason with the main woman who is apparently a spiritual leader, with whom I have an altercation. I feel immense pain at a point on the middle of my spine... almost as though someone was poking it. It ends with us leaving the motel. The dream was in shades of grey, black and white.

GUESSWORK The dreamer had just returned to her home country after two years in the west. She now finds herself living with her parents in an oppressed society in which she is seen as a rebel. She felt fear and anger in the dream and a sense of security with the guy who was hiding her. Her society is highly supportive of career improvement but not of socialising and going out.

The "Guesswork" stage of interpreting a dream involves spotting issues likely to cause dreams. For help with this click here

ASSOCIATIONS AND SYMBOLIC MEANINGS
1. CHASED. Often chased dreams result from you being pressured into acting a certain way. In this case that certainly fits reality as the dreamer was being pressured to fit back into a conservative culture.
2. OWN ETHNICITY. The dream features two distinct sides - a group made up of the dreamers own ethnicity and a group of westernised friends from all over the world. The dream could easily fit the reason given in guesswork because it could represent some kind of conflict between the two. It quite literally represents a struggle between one culture and another.
3. PROTECTED. The dreamer feels protected by her foreign friends. That shows that she enjoys her socialising and western cultural links.
4. RAPE. The dreamer mentions the possibility of rape. This is symbolic of reality in that

DREAM ANALYSIS In guesswork the dream was linked to the dreamers problems with people from her own culture. The dream deals with the following themes
- getting along with people from a western culture
- feeling targeted by her own ethnic group

If you weave together the different themes you find that they could capture these thoughts - "I have just spent two years living in the west. I still enjoy socialising but its frowned upon by my own oppressed culture."