My whole life was changed by a dream, or what seemed to be a dream anyway, that repeated itself in many variations at an age younger than I even remember, yet at least sixty years later it is still working on me.
I still have dreams that are vivid, as you know if you have read here before. Sometimes I cannot identify who I am, or who I am watching at all. A recent dream was extremely disturbing and I have not figured out why it came to me yet. But I digress. Today I want to relate that first dream, not from a future self, but maybe a past self.
Keep in mind, I only managed to understand what I was hearing as I got a little older, but here is who these first dream messages were from and what he showed me that changed my life.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I am living in a cathedral. It is always dark, lit with candles. I can hear voices singing. A droning sound it is, and it means the time is coming when they will arrive. I am afraid, because they will expect me to teach them. I have been given heavy responsibilities somehow and I know I am unworthy of this position as a leader, but I also know it is my fault that I have this duty and responsibility, as unskilled as I really am.
I live a nightmare, certain to be found out and reveal to be fake. How much I wish it was possible to be a child again and know how wrong it is to pretend to understand. When you fake your way forward into a position of power, you will eventually be found out. So much better to admit to your ignorance along the way, and seek out knowledge than to pretend to be capable and live in fear of eventual disgrace.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
That dream, sent in variations over a period of years never left me. To this day, if someone is showing me how to do something, and I don't understand yet, no matter how long we have been at it, or how embarrassing it will be to ask to be shown some part of it again, I never hesitate to say, "can you show me that again please?" if I need to. And when someone asks, "Do you know how to .... ?" the only way I will say "Yes, I do" is if I really do.
Was I that monk-teacher in a monastery in a past life? That is one explanation. One thing that seems impossible is the idea that it was the product of my young imagination. This dream started coming before I could read or even talk. These visions and memories, so real and vivid had to come from another aspect of myself, or from some outside influence entirely.
Perhaps in dreamtime, this current version of me will somehow meet that fearful, but wonderful teacher again. If I do, he will know that his warning, this one lesson he really could teach, was received and appreciated.
Dreams are notoriously difficult to interpret. In the end, any interpretation has to be down to the individual concerned. Or so I believe.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, there are those who have not a little skill at interpretation; I am thinking in particular of C.G.Jung. I recall his saying that on one occasion, a young woman (or perhaps teenager) came to him with a dream. I cannot remember chapter and verse unfortunately. It became clear to him that in the dream she forecast her own early death.
As things turned out, she died in her early twenties. The point I wish to make (against a background of my fading memory) is that I think your dream may indeed be a product of your young "imagination". Who is to say that the unconscious mind, which in my experience seems as much at home in the future as it is in the present and the past, could not have been responsible for bringing something into consciousness, even before you could read or talk?
I strongly suspect your teacher already knows you have learned his lesson. For your sake, it would be nice if you did meet him again.
Maybe you have a similar thought here to one that occurred me not long after I hit the publish button.
DeletePerhaps Aadi has been with me way longer than I have been aware of her.
Thanks Tom.
Fascinating post, Halle, and much food for thought.
ReplyDelete== Cass