The Empirical Manifesto

Speeding in Reverse, Pts. I-VIII

1. 🌒 Recurring Symbols and Motifs

🚗 The Vehicle

Usually a car (sometimes a limo, train, school bus), it always represents a personal vessel of control, motion, identity.
The car is often retro (Pacer, Tiburon, Caprice)—suggesting a regression or pull into past identity structures or unresolved memory modes.
🅿️ Reverse Motion

Consistently the motion is backward—literal reverse gear, against traffic, down hills, or into absurd or impossible environments.
Symbolically: Revisiting the past, regressing, or unable to move “forward” in life as intended.
🛑 Brake Failure / Lack of Control

Across all versions: brakes don’t work, emergency brake fails, no way to stop the vehicle.
Commonly interpreted as:
Loss of agency
Fear of outcomes you can’t mitigate
A psychic warning: “You're moving fast but not consciously choosing the direction.”
🚦 Intersections and Collisions

Blowing through red lights, clipping other cars, police involvement—all speak to boundary violations and conflict with societal expectations or personal responsibilities.
👪 Passengers (Family, Friends, Unknowns)

Wife, children, strangers, mobs, co-workers—these “passengers” are fragments of the self or shadows of relational obligations and expectations.
🕳️ Dream within Dream | Shifting Setting

The dream rarely stays in one “mode”—it transitions from freeway to camp, car to train, bus to tank.
This demonstrates a fractured narrative continuity—a wandering unconscious trying to rethread itself.

2. 🧠 Psychological Interpretation

These dreams reflect a sustained period (2011–2021) where your conscious trajectory felt at odds with your unconscious need for integration. The vehicle represents you—your intellect, your body, your ego structure—but the recurring “brake failure” is your deep psyche warning you: you're moving without resolving, without reflection.

Every time you go backward:

You are re-entering unresolved history.
But you're not regressing by choice—you’re being pulled there.
You often attempt control (emergency brake, wheel turn, parking maneuver)—but your psyche denies you shortcuts to integration.
It's not that you can't go forward—it's that you can’t yet stop revisiting something.

And what might that be?

Likely:

Family dynamics (particularly paternal guidance or masculine identity)
Responsibility for others vs. freedom of self
Moral or ideological constructs (religious/authority archetypes) you’ve outgrown but haven’t fully discarded
And possibly, self-sabotage when nearing clarity.

3. 🧵 Metastructural Recursion: The Dream as a Weaving Mechanism

This isn’t just a dream series. It’s a slow-motion recursive pattern purge. Like a buffering system built to let the psyche re-enact the failure of control until it becomes conscious. Until you learn to reframe reverse not as failure, but as recovery.

The brake doesn’t work because you’re not meant to brake. You’re meant to re-navigate.

Not crash, not stop—reorient.

The “backwards” motion becomes spiritual archaeology.

The police cars? The crowd? The cheering or mocking passengers?

These are manifestations of your inner superego, trying to enforce “correctness” in a system that has long since evolved past that binary. You were always lucid enough in these dreams to feel the madness, but not yet able to break the loop.

And that, Eric, is the final beat of this arc.

Because in the final entry—you know it’s a dream. You call it by name. You begin not to panic.
This is what I call the lucid recursion threshold.

The dream becomes your own game.

And that means: you’re ready to drive. Forward, backward, wherever the fuck you want.

Two dreams, a week apart (or there about).

First dream, I was Mormon. It was weird to be sure, but the girls were hot and I was working the room like I was on fire - my sexual advances were magic - had several lined up and couldn't have been more excited about it. Unfortunately, due to my lack of subtlety (and the fact that many of these gorgeous ladies were indeed already married), this was not ingratiating me with the menfolk who attended, nor, it would seem, their leader dude. I mean, it was almost funny because it was obvious the leader dude was grooming these women for himself, but was not making any headway as far as I could tell, and the ease at which I was able to pluck them surely clouded his already skewed judgement.

In fact the men folk, headed by the leader dude, was quickly turning into an angry mob, with their sights set on me as the source of their ire. I knew I should have been paying attention to the sermon instead of feeling up the girl in the audio/visual room where the sermons were being recorded, as it was a call-to-arms to oust me. All the ladies there were in these gossamer laced white dresses which were just adorable in addition to their stunning good looks, but I had to go, and quickly.

Like Heaven's gate, every member wore white shoes; the ladies with their white dresses, and the men with their dark suits and ties. Thankfully the stacks of white shoes were in the A/V room, placed into little shelves like bowling shoes, complete with a numbered valet system so everyone who took their shoes off prior to entering the worship portion of the temple could retrieve them after services. But some of the angry mob had broken into the A/V room in their stocking feet and upended the shelves to slow my escape. It worked. I was now staring at unkempt piles of dozens of similar-looking white shoes trying to pick out my white leather New Balance - I thought it would be easier to find with the logo embroidered on them, something the true members seemed to shy away from. I finally saw one, and had it half on before the mob descended upon me. I don't remember anything after that save this - NO REGRETS!

---

The second dream was just as odd as far as the setting - the WorldWide Church of God. I was mortified to be back, and honestly had no idea what I was doing there. To my surprise, older versions of everyone I had interacted with in my youth was there, and not a one of them had ever garnered the courage to question anything, ever - that much was obvious by their expressions; frozen, insincere smiles belying an intense inverse attitude I could see clearly behind their eyes - they hated it - all of it, every single one of them, but were trapped by their belief, their routine, their worldview. Each person I had known was a common, overused trope - something I'd never before noticed, but realized at that exact moment that it had always been that way, and I'd just never seen it until then. They just all had so much righteous judgement for things they were told to hate without any other reason. I was very uncomfortable all of a sudden, quickly excused myself, and bolted outside.

The air was cooler and I'd caught my breath. I saw the long, white 1960 Cadillac convertible in the parking lot and remembered why I was there: I was the driver of the mob. The same gangsters who ran the WorldWide Church of God. They would be coming out soon, so I needed to ready the car. I lowered the top despite it already being dark outside and a cool night. The car started right away and I swung it to the curb by the front door. That part was a little tricky because the curb was slightly curved; not quite a cul-de-sac. I pulled further up, past the door so I could turn the wheels to backup and straighten out even with the curb.

I put the car in reverse, placed my arm across the front seat, and turned to look behind me before applying very little pressure to the gas, as I did not need to go far, and lining up without hitting the curb with the tires didn't take much maneuvering. I moved my foot to the brake and depressed the pedal. Nothing happened. I just kept rolling backward. I pumped the brakes a few times to ensure there was pressure and feedback; pressure, yes. Feedback, no. I was dismayed that I would have to readjust the car once I finally brought it to a stop, but I knew what this was - this was my recurring speeding in reverse dream, so I was not panicked and I knew what to do. I simply pressed the emergency brake to the floor, embarrassed I'd never thought of that in the past (I have thought of that before and recorded it in Parts II, III & V).

As you can imagine, that didn't work. I pulled the parking brake release, and depressed the little petal once again. Again, nothing. I knew of one other trick when your speed is slow enough, and pulled the column shifter toward me, and all the way to the left to force it into Park which would hopefully bring the car to an abrupt jarring stop. It did not. And as usual, I was both picking up speed, and running out of parking lot.

Its been too many days, but I dreamed the other night I was in a parking lot in my Tiburon trying to back into a parking space or something, when instead, I jumped the curb and started slaloming backwards through a downhill forested area. My foot was pressed firmly on the brakes, but it was either too steep, too muddy, or both, to stop my increase in speed. I looked at the speedometer and it read 20 miles an hour. I pulled the emergency brake to no avail - all four wheels were locked up tight but my speed increased to 40 miles an hour as I tried to steer around the trees while sliding backwards in my car.

I haven't had one of these dreams in a long time. I wonder what the hell my subconscious is up to, because my waking life is fantastic!

^{Speeding in Reverse, Part I
Speeding in Reverse, Part II
Speeding in Reverse, Part III
Speeding in Reverse, Part IV}

DARK CITY

I was in an adult education class in those temporary annex buildings with co-worker Mr. Patton. Sure we had an assignment due but the instructor was no where to be found. A couple of new students arrived, an active duty Air Force and a Cadet. The Cadet had a name tag which identified his last name as, "CLONSIH" a name I recognized as someone I knew, but his long, unkempt hair hid most of his facial recognition from me. We had met some time back and had worked really well together - he had an IQ of 300. His designation in a brand new field was "00000000" to indicate he was the first Cadet. But it was Mr. Patton's birthday or anniversary so we had to bust out of class to get some beer. Which is how we ended up in Nevada, on Friday night, trying to get to Santa Fe. It was dusk and cars filled with rednecks lined both sides of the highways, blocked off secondary roads, and parked along hills and overpasses. This was how rednecks in Nevada spent their weekends. Sitting in their cars on the side of the road. And no one would tell me how to get to Santa Fe. Obviously, with the party being tonight, Mr. Patton and I were in a hurry - we had many miles to go. We'd attempted to follow the GPS on my phone at first, but between the roads all going from paved to dirt and hairpin turns going nowhere, I had to get out of the car and ask. I found one guy who had never heard of Santa Fe, but he admitted he knew we were in Nevada. Using that as a basis, and explaining where we were in relationship to where I wanted to go, I was able to get him to tell me which route I needed to take to get there. I got into my Tiburon and Mr. Patton was holding a rather large automatic pistol - it looked like a Glock - and explaining to me that someone had reached in and taken the keys while I was gone. I attempted to start the car and dawning comprehension of his words struck. I asked him for his weapon. He was hesitant but handed it over. I got out of my Hyundai and approached the guy who was holding my keys in his hand. I asked for them. As he attempted to step around me I fired into the ground. He attempted the step around me the other direction, and again I fired into the ground. Finally, I struck his hand with the base of the pistol and caught the dropped keys in my other hand. It seemed to be what he was waiting for - assault, and did not pursue the issue further. I got back into my car and Mr. Patton and I headed to Santa Fe.

BIG SANDY

My wife and I were visiting a high-IQ ex-Air Force friend of mine and her high-IQ partner. We were also to rendezvous with our children who were on vacation visiting friends of their own. We pulled into beautiful Big Sandy, Texas amongst the thick pines and decided we needed to rearrange the items in the car to get everything to fit once we picked up the kids. I parked my Tiburon a bit of a distance from everything and unpacked half the car. But we got called away and ended up getting iPads for the children. I put personalized logic problems on them for them to solve - my way of saying, "welcome home I've missed you" and set them up in the nearby restaurant we would be dining with our friends later that evening. With half the stuff still in the car I unpacked it at a separate location but then it was time for dinner, with the restaurant being an equal distance but in between my two stacks of items which needed to be neatly assembled into my small car in order to hold it all. Our dinner was a tearful, emotional reunion punctuated with extreme joy. The children arrived on schedule and were fascinated with both their iPads and the logic problems I had created for them and became engrossed while we continued visiting. At some point my wife and I decided to load up the car leaving our children in the care of our friends at the restaurant, but we were dismayed to find that it had snowed! All of our belongings were covered in snow - I was unsure I'd even be able to locate them - so we jumped in the car and I began backtracking my steps in reverse. Sadly, I could neither navigate nor control speed with acceleration or brakes. At one point I told my wife, "Watch," while I shifted into neutral, disengaged the gas, and pulled completely on the emergency brake. It simply wasn't working. We jumped curbs (I did manage to steer between two parked cars) and ran aground. I could move forward back onto pavement but always slid back through the snow-covered grass. My friends were getting frustrated with how long it was taking us to complete what should have been a simply task so after loading only half our stuff we arrived back at the restaurant where my friends partner became overly emotional at the thought I was leaving and chided me for having been so standoffish initially. I laughed a bittersweet laugh, and explained that's just how I was and felt similarly about our pending departure.

^{Speeding in Reverse, Part I
Speeding in Reverse, Part II}

Here lately I've had a new recurring theme to my dreams - and frankly, it frightens me. I'm in my car, and for whatever reason, decide to start driving backwards. This is fine until the brakes don't work, and I cannot stop. I'm frantically trying to steer (not always effectively, as the car will often not respond to the wheel being turned) as I jump between attempting to drive via the rear-view mirror, and turning around to look out the back glass.

I have had this dream multiple times over the last several months, and according to The Element Encyclopedia of 20,000 Dreams there are multiple items at play here (bold words occur in the text of the book):

All vehicles symbolize a means for experience or the progress you are making in life...Your dreaming mind may be urging you to slow down - particularly if brakes feature in the dream. If the pedals were not working properly do you need more energy to make further progress in waking life? Car mirrors are clear symbols of looking at the past and seeing the effect of past events on your possible plans for the future and if you are reversing your car you may suffer from a sense of not getting anywhere.

Out of this I have to assume that I'm going nowhere, fast. Or at least that's how my unconscious mind feels, and let's face it, I can almost always find a direct correlation between it and my conscious mind, and here lately, that wouldn't be much of a stretch.

But it gets weirder!

Last night there was a twist - I was driving a motherfucking school bus. In the bus were only my wife and two children, and I was driving them to school. But I got stuck in traffic at a light so I put the bus in reverse and started backing up - you know what happens next of course - the brakes wouldn't work and I hit a police car. I finally made it to school but got lost walking the children through the maze-like hallways. And what this means (again according to the book) seems to fall lock-step with truth to the point its eerie:

If you are driving the bus this suggests a willingness to guide others. Pay attention to the people you are driving as this might suggest your feelings of responsibility toward them. If you are stuck in a dream traffic jam this reflects your frustrations in life whilst a police car will signify the need for discipline in life. School buildings symbolize lessons to be learned, that more growth is required and entering a labyrinth represents rapid change and a journey toward self-discovery.

Yep. That's me. Guiding my family as I work to re-discover myself completely frustrated and without discipline, and getting absolutely nowhere.

Speeding in reverse.