River 3
Sarras
Life: 'Live in Fear Every Day' or 'Live in Faith Every Day' 1992

~~~~~~dream~~~~~~

I went to a hospital to visit a man I knew. When I got there, he was not in his bed, but his belongings were scattered all over the floor. I was down on my hands and knees trying to pick everything up. I looked up and over to the next bed and there was this huge, massive white chook.

I was scared at first, then I noticed its eyes. They were jet black and so full of love and tenderness that I was just going into this feeling. As I felt this love, the feathers all melted away and the chook disappeared, and in its place was the most beautiful face I have ever seen. It was full of love, peace and tenderness. It was very spiritual. I just wanted to stay there in that love.

~~~~~~

I was a mess. I had sole responsibility of my mother who had dementia and was having a series of small strokes. The dream was in May and she died in July. I was also going through a very difficult separation from a guy who was threatening to kill me and following me, and I was having hormonal problems during menopause.

Although the dream had great impact, it took two more months and a series of crises - including losing her job because her ex-lover turned up at her workplace and threatened to shoot people, the death of her mother and  subsequent feelings of loneliness and guilt, her nervous breakdown and, finally, a suicide plan that almost succeeded - before the true force of the dream stepped in at the crucial moment to turn Sarras’s life around.

The guy I was separating from (and who was the character in my dream) was a real Rambo sort of person. He had about 90 guns and also rifles. I didn’t realise until later that there were loaded rifles in the wardrobe. One night he had one out and was threatening to shoot me. He had bows and arrows and numbchuckers: he was a Karate fellow into violence. When I wanted him to go and he wouldn’t, I said I was going to get the police. He said ‘If you bring the police in, I’ll take as much ammunition and guns as I can and I’ll take as many with me as I can’. You see, you don’t know. I’d spoken to the police and they said it’s up to you, you know him better than anybody, which way he’ll go, but I honestly didn’t know.

I had been looking after Mum for about two years by the time she died. She was in a home nearby and I used to bring her out on weekends and go down every two days. Before she got too bad I used to take her shopping, or we’d go and sit by the river.

Before Mum died I wanted to know just exactly what was wrong with her. I thought her problems were due to her medication. She was on anti-depressants, uppers, downers, you name it! I took her to see a psychiatrist. Later I decided to go and see him. I went for about three or four visits, but felt that this form of treatment was of no benefit.

Sarras was able to appreciate the meaning of her dream, but sometimes it takes time and a number of violent reminders before we really get the full message.

I can still see that face in the dream, and feel the feeling that went with it. You know when you see a magnificent sunset or something and you just stand there in awe of it? That was the feeling of the dream. It was like looking at a spiritual picture. I am not a church person, but it was like a religious experience and a knowing that fears can be found and removed. The feeling of being surrounded by love was the start of it all.

My understanding of the dream was that I was always trying to rescue people and get their lives in order, trying to pick up bits and pieces, as in the dream. As a child I was attacked by a large rooster so I had a fear of chooks. I was scared, but when I looked into the eyes the fear fell away. It meant if I could face my fears they would go away, and it was as if I saw the face of God and felt I would be taken care of.

Months later I was introduced to different books and things: intellectually you understand something and say ‘Yes, I know that’, but it’s not until you have the feeling that goes with it, or the actual understanding that you can do it. People can read it ‘til they're blue in the face, but you need to feel it to know it. The difference is actually doing it in your life.

While Sarras can put her understanding into practise now, she still had to experience more before she had the courage to take the dream’s message into her life:

All my life I didn’t learn my lessons, so it was like ‘We’re going to give it to you all at once!’ I can look back on it now and realise this.

Mum died in July. I just felt my world was finished. I was broke, Mum was dead and it was a big drama going up north for her funeral. I had to be pall bearer and Mum and I weren’t close, so I felt really guilty because I felt what I did for her over those two years was done out of duty, not out of love.

I came back from the funeral and found that I didn’t have a job.

Apparently while I was away my ex-lover had gone in and created a scene, threatening the manager and threatening to shoot people. I was asked to take some time out, without pay, until he settled down. I had a mortgage so I was financially strapped too.

The guy had met another lady, but he was still hounding me. When it came to the crunch I got a police protection order and he just turned to jelly, but he still used to rang at 3 am, leave messages and spy on me.

I just felt everything was gone. I was standing there one day and I had a handful of money and I couldn’t work out what it was. I couldn’t count it and I panicked. It was a real panic attack: you know you’ve got money, but how much is it? I looked up at the clock and I couldn’t tell the time. It was just awful.

I went to the doctor and just burst into tears. He diagnosed maximum stress. When I went to see him the next morning he said I might have had a little stroke because one side of my face was different. ‘That’s breakdown material’, he said. I wasn’t sleeping or eating: I couldn’t even drink coffee. I was just existing on nothing. He started me on hormone replacement but wouldn’t give me sleeping pills, because, I think, of the state I was in. He gave me very mild sleeping tablets that pilots can take, but he’d only give me two at a time. I had to go in every day and get another two. He must have sensed the shape I was in, but they just weren’t helping at all. It was that weekend that I considered suicide.

I had it all planned out. I was going to gas myself in the stove. It was winter and I had the wooden fireplace going. I wrote a note for the kids and thought ‘This is a real cop out but I can’t stand it any longer’. I was lying on the floor and was ready to do it, crying my eyes out. I went and turned the gas on and suddenly the dogs came in and then the cats. I’ve got this big old German Shepherd. I was sitting on the floor crying and he was stroking my face with his paw. The animals being there made me realise that the gas build-up would cause an explosion and would kill them as well. I knew I couldn’t do it like this.

I was lying on the floor saying ‘Please Jesus, help me’. I’m not a religious person, so I was thinking ‘Where did that come from?’, but I guess that’s the point you get to. It’s the only thing you can think of, to ask for help.

All of a sudden I remembered the beautiful face from my dream.

That was my rock bottom. I thought ‘The future's got to be better, I’ve hit rock bottom, now it’s up’. I was really proud that I’d worked it through. I already had an appointment booked with the psychiatrist for the next day, so I went in and told him what had happened, saying ‘I’ve decided the future’s going to be better. That was the lowest point of my life and now its upwards’. He replied ‘Oh, not necessarily’. I honestly felt like walking out and straight into a semi-trailer, so I never went back!

I am now a totally different person. It was uphill from then on. I have a few hiccups every now and then, but I always seem to remember my dream face and can get back on track. Also I seem to be presented with a dream every now and then to keep going and reinforcing my new path.

It took me two months to put the dream into action. I started attending a meditation group and people started coming into my life who got me involved with others who helped me in various ways. It was like a spoke pattern, branching out. Looking back, all these caring people were on the spiritual path. Some were there for a short while and others have stayed really close friends. I feel wonderful about all the steps I’ve taken since then. The title of my dream was given to me by one of these wonderful people.

I’ve had dreams that were clearing out and reinforcing and I had some nice dreams about six months after Mum died. She had her jumper on inside out and I went and straightened her jumper out, because she was always putting her clothes on back to front and I was always sorting them out. I said ‘Oh, your jumper’s on back to front’ and I gave her a big hug, which is something that I had never done in real life.

No-one can believe the changes in me. I look younger physically. I used to be so thin, just strained, drained all the time. I’ve gone back to being a kid again. I really enjoy life now. I never enjoyed life before: everything was a drama and a big burden and struggle. Now I just have fun. I do things I would have been too scared to have done before. Going on the roller coaster, for example and scary rides. I don’t seem to have any fears of any description.

One of my biggest fears was of being on my own. I had such a low level of self-love that I only felt good when I was with someone who needed me. After the dream and the feeling of love in it, I now know that I am never alone and the inner peace of that realisation is just indescribable.

I used to be worried sick about money, but now I just think ‘Something will turn up’. It always does. Any hassle that comes into my life I just say ‘OK, there’s no point worrying about it’. That was one of the things meditation classes instilled, that you’re wasting energy by worrying about something that you can’t do anything about. My new way of dealing with everything now is to ‘Let-Go-Let-God’.

Up until about six months ago, my ex-lover would still ring for things, or threaten to sue me, but then one day I did a visualisation of cutting any ties that were still there. I imagined ribbons between us and I cut them all. If he rings now, I don’t have any fear. The last time I spoke to him I was just normal and I haven’t heard from him since then. Once my fear had gone, he drifted out. The fear was the connection that was holding him in.

Sarras came to see just how much her pattern of trying to sort things out for other people, to solve their problems for them, was holding herself, and them, back.

My dad was an alcoholic and I’ve always had this thing about rescuing everybody. All I wanted to do was make everything all right. I used to say if I had a magic wand I’d make everyone live happily ever after. I was married twice and both husbands had really bad hang-ups about their mothers and their rejection, so everyone was in my life at that emotional level to a certain extent, but I always thought ‘I can fix them’. Even in the dream I was still trying to pick up all my ex-lover’s bits and pieces, all his junk that was all over the floor, and try to get his life back in order, and that’s exactly what I tried to do with all my relationships.

With the kids, when I was in a relationship with their dad and stepdad, I’d be torn, like the ham in the sandwich, trying to keep on both sides of the fence. I used to wear myself out just making sure everyone was getting what they wanted. I had my first baby at eighteen and went straight from my mother to a husband who was exactly like her, who told me when to breathe and so on. When I look at my life, it’s only the last twelve months or so that I’ve really been an individual.

People would come to me with problems and I’d try and work them out for them. I used to get emotionally involved. I’d go to bed, unable to sleep, worrying about how I could do this, or what I could do for them. Other people’s feelings and what they needed were more important than mine. It’s been a big thing for me to put myself first. It’s all about loving yourself. I could never come to grips with that before. I thought I liked myself pretty well, but until you come to that within yourself, you’re incapable really of helping anyone else.

Now, if someone comes to me with a problem, I’ll sit there and have a listen, then just say ‘Well, look, this is how I see it, but what do you think about such and such, and what do you reckon?. I try to suggest things, but it’s not my trip. This is their learning process. I’m there to help, but I don’t have to rescue anybody any more now.

I realise now, looking back at my journey, that no-one could do it for me. I had to do it for myself. People used to say to me about my ex-lover ‘Get rid of him!’, but I couldn’t do it until I was ready. No-one else can really do anything for you until you come to that point in your own life.

This message seemed to be constantly reinforced for Sarras:

One of the meditation classes I attended after the dream was run by an ex-buddhist priest. He left the monastery and he has an alms bowl and just does talks. About 100 people go every week, but whatever you need is in the talk he gives that day. After a period of time, one day he gave a talk about not wanting to be a guru, that he’s just there to help and you’ve go to do it for yourself. He doesn’t want to be a crutch, whereby you have to go every week.

I went to a hypnotherapist and ended up doing his hypnotherapy course. He said it would probably give me more benefit to do it for myself than to have it done.

Being able to see her mother and her ex-lover in a new light of perception was a major step forward in Sarra’s transformation too:

Mum was a total victim sort of personality. It was a great lesson for me, having her with me, because I can see, in hindsight now, I was becoming like her. You know, you blame everyone else: ‘it’s their fault I’m like this’. The ex-lover was so possessive and dependent and then I realised that I had a lot of those qualities too.

I look at them now and people say, ‘Oh, you must really resent that guy for what he did’, and I say, ‘No, I don’t’. I can send love in a meditation really genuinely and I thank him because if it hadn’t have been for what had happened, I wouldn’t have been where I am now.

I can now feel unconditional love for everyone. I had read books about it and talked about it, but now I am living it. My way of expressing this love is first to accept everyone for who they are, what they are and where they are coming from and not have any expectations attached to them.

Jane’s Interpretation

Sarras’s dream is a parable: ‘In facing fear we discover peace’. As a child Sarras had been attacked by a large rooster, so the massive white chook (the dream going for large-scale impact) represented fear. Fear can grow way out of proportion and it is often the case that confronting this fear and disarming it is easier than living with it. The act of gathering up the courage to face the fear is often sufficient. The feared person or event can disappear in a puff of insignificance in comparison to the strength gained through plucking up the necessary courage. In meeting our fears we come to understand ourselves and life more clearly, and in so doing, become more at peace with ourselves.

Sarras’s dream revealed her tendency to pick up this man’s bits and pieces (put his life together) out of fear. (‘One of my biggest fears was of being on my own. I had such a low level of self-love that I only felt good when I was with someone who needed me.’) The hospital setting probably represented the potential healing inherent in this insight. Taking the dream interpretation a little deeper, the man, though known to Sarras in her waking life, could be seen as her own ‘inner male’ who was scattered in relationship to the outer world. Sarras’s outer world was in bits and pieces and she had been trying to clear it all up and make sense of it. The dream showed that her task was to face deeper fears, heal herself and move forward, rather than to concentrate on trying to put the old bits and pieces back together again. What Sarras needed to address in her inner life was playing in front of her eyes in her outer life, in her relationship with her ex-lover.

Each dreamer was asked to describe their life situation before the dream and also any particular changes in health or stress around the time of the dream. From their replies I perceived six of the forty-five dreamers to have been in a state of ‘major crisis’. When I compared their dreams, I discovered that five of these people had intensely spiritual dreams.(Lorna, Francoise, Nellie, Sarras and Dee). The sixth dreamer in ‘major crisis’ was Wraith.

Wraith was very ill, hospitalised with hepatitis at the time of her dream. While her experience is not directly spiritual in the usual sense of the word, her vision led to her decision to return to her spiritual path and evolve further. Wraith’s crisis situation, it would appear, was the necessary state for the sowing of the seed.