Ocean Dip
Fiona
Love and Music 1980

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

The details of the dream are vague: always were. However, when I awoke, I remembered that I had seen Simon lying sick in bed. He was wearing the cantorial robes he wore in the synagogue! I was very upset because he was sick. My first thought on waking was ‘Good Heavens! I believe I’m in love with him!’

 ~~~~~~

I was living with my elderly parents, a situation which didn’t suit me at all. They were becoming increasingly dependent on me, emotionally more than physically, and I couldn’t summon up the resolve to make a move. I had known Simon on and off for yeas, but had never given him a thought except as a casual acquaintance. He was unhappily married and had numerous girlfriends, but had never shown any inclination to leave his wife. The general opinion was that he wouldn’t.

About a year before I had the dream, he had told me that he had always been in love with me. I didn’t take much notice until a couple of nights later, when he ‘attacked’ me. I was furious, bawled him out and barely spoke to him for a year. During that time, he was a perfect gentleman.

The fact that I was so upset in the dream because Simon was sick made the biggest impression on me and caused me to reassess my attitude towards him. I think I must always have been subconsciously attracted to Simon but had put up barriers: ‘Don’t get involved with a married man!’, hence my reaction when he made a pass at me. Eventually, in my dream, my subconscious took over.

I could hardly wait for the following Friday evening, when I went to the synagogue where I was a chorister. I wondered how I would feel when I saw him. But when I arrived, the choirmaster said ‘Simon won’t be here tonight. He’s sick!’ The dream was confirmed.

From that time on, I treated Simon differently. My dead uncle came to me in another dream and told me Simon was the right man for me and I’d better not let him go. Having once sent him off with a flea in his ear, I realised I would have to take the initiative. I started to become friendly again. He got the message and events took their natural course. Now we are married.

Everything Simon and I did was in defiance of the laws of commonsense and I have never regretted it for a moment.

Jane’s Interpretation

Interpreting this dream cameo symbolically I would have started by asking Fiona what Simon represented to her. He had offered himself as a lover in the past, and been rejected, so he may have represented a lost opportunity in love, a potential marriage, or Fiona’s ‘inner male’ (Yang: outer world) side. He was also wearing his cantorial robes, so he could have been symbolic of Fiona’s involvement in the choir or the church itself. So many possibilities, and which of these was sick or waning, in need of nurturing, in Fiona’s life? Fiona would have to have decided this according to her gut reaction. To have had the waking thought ‘I believe I’m in love with him!’ was probably a carry-over feeling of unity and identification from the dream. Isn’t it grand, though, to dispense with the complicated symbolism and know that the dream, whether or not an allegory, was actually the beginning of a fairy tale?!

Fiona’s story illustrates another aspect of the life-changing qualities of precognitive dreams. Seeing part of a dream confirmed in waking life is a powerful motivator to making sure the rest comes true too! Zohara had a similar experience, in which she discovered the house and block of land she had seen in her dream, and followed through by buying it.

River 16
Zohara
A Glimpse of the Future 1988

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

I was on a hill looking across a gully to a house. It was small and made of wood. My partner was walking towards me with our three children. They appeared a little older than they actually were at the time. Everyone appeared very happy and the whole scene was edged with a shiny white light.

 ~~~~~~

We were living a ‘normal’ suburban lifestyle and my partner had a secure job.

About six weeks later, while we were on holiday visiting friends, they took us up to see some land near theirs that was for sale. We had no intention of moving there. We walked around and came to the top of a gully. I looked back at the house and realised it was exactly the same one that was in my dream. I had been seeing into the future literally. The dream had given me such a feeling of happiness, and actually seeing it in reality now had an impact. Everything was very spur of the moment. Without even saying anything to Bill, he said ‘I want to come and live here’. I agreed.

We bought the land and moved onto it five months later.

On the evening of the day we first saw the house, we went to some people’s place for a barbecue. I took the baby outside in the night time because she was crying, and I had this most incredible feeling of anger go through me. I’d never experienced it before. I don’t even think I could describe it. I’ve never been a person given to that kind of anger, but I could have cheerfully ripped or smashed anything near me. It just swept over me. Since moving here that kind of thinking has happened on a few occasions with things that have gone wrong. Looking back, it was a pre-warning of things to come. However, at the time the dream seemed like an omen that this was the right thing to do and that we would be happy here.

Although I have grown spiritually since moving, and I believe we were meant to be here, life has been very different to what we expected. If I had a crystal ball, and had seen what was ahead, I doubt I would have had the courage to come here.

We had been excited about moving and looking forward to it, but even on the day we moved I started crying as soon as we left. It was about two hours before I could stop and I wanted desperately not to come here. I didn’t understand it at the time, but looking back, I’d say that maybe I’d dreamt about it but blocked the memory. Maybe I knew what was ahead of me on some subconscious level.

We were dumped down here with no electricity, no power and three children under the age of five with one still in nappies. We still had to build our house. We were here about three weeks when my husband said ‘I’m going to get a job so you’ll have to do all this because I won’t be home’.

The house itself was 20 x 20 foot and we lived in that for about twelve months. We finally got another twenty feet up but we still only lived, the six of us, in a 20 x 40 foot dwelling. Since Bill did go and get his job, I did a lot of the work myself. We hired a carpenter for ten dollars an hour and I helped dig all the trenches, the septic tanks and so on. Perhaps it was symbolic, because it did turn out to be a complete change of life for me: complete renewal on every single level.

After moving we had several car accidents and my partner had a nervous breakdown. He’s a labourer now, no longer allowed to do the managing side because of his breakdown. He’s also developed rheumatoid arthritis, which is really bad. In many ways I was pulled along in the wake of Bill’s situation, because what he was going through led me to anger and resentment.

Zohara mentioned that when she has a dream that is shiny around the edges, she knows she is meant to take notice of it. So why did the dream lead her into such apparent trauma?

I guess, looking back, a lot of things here just happened so that I could experience the dark side of myself. Up until that point I’d probably been a goody-two-shoes, which it was easy to be since I’ve always had guidance. I’ve always had a guardian angel sitting on my shoulders! My dark side has shown me emotions such as anger, even resentment and other feelings that were alien to my nature until we moved here. I can see that you can’t help people in difficult situations unless you’ve experienced them too. It doesn’t matter what it is you’re helping people with, words are empty unless you’ve been through that experience.

If I’d wanted an easy life, I shouldn’t have moved, but I couldn’t have grown to where I am now if I had stayed where I was. I’ve kept contact with one old friend who came down to see us, and, although it sounds a terrible way to put it, she seemed very churchy. I realised how very limited her belief systems were. Maybe I would have been happy to have stayed in those same limitations, but all my life, each time I have got comfortable with a belief system, something has happened to push me out of it, or make me move in some way. I’ve never been allowed to stay static. I’ve only realised that in the last few years.

Now it doesn’t matter what happens to me as I know it’s only for my own growth and my own benefit so I go with it. If you asked me what has happened in the last couple of years I’d say nothing, because I don’t see anything as a problem. I just see opportunities for growth. This attitude makes a life a lot easier.

My whole point of view has changed. I don’t believe we have to go through all this struggle and karma any more. I think things have changed to the point where we can live and come from a state of being in grace, and we can learn through joy and insight. If we can choose to learn through insight we don’t need to go through struggle.

Zohara’s dream and the action she took led to her transformation through difficult times, but she also attributes these deep changes to the challenging nature of the geographical location of her dream house.

We live under a mountain which is definitely a transformational place. Most people who come here last three to five years then move on. We’ve been here for seven years. When we first came I went to the swimming pool one day and someone asked ‘Are you married?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, and they just laughed and replied ‘Well you won’t be in six months!’ When people move down here they’re lucky if one out of twenty marriages last. It’s a place people come, they grow, then they split up and go in other directions. Even older people in their fifties go through divorce here! If they can understand and learn from their growth though, it’s fine.

I have a sense of very deep peace and contentment here. No matter what’s going on outwardly I can just stop, and within two seconds I know peace and contentment again. I also know that I’m not alone.

Jane’s Interpretation

A symbolic interpretation might suggest that Zohara was taking a distant view from above (on a hill) of her life: in other words, she was taking an objective perspective. Contentment, either as a family or on a personal level for Zohara, the dream suggests, could be reached by making life simpler (smaller house) and more natural (wood). The children may have been seen as older to give Zohara a feeling of future happiness. Zohara, however, knew that the shiny white light edging to her dream was a personal sign to look beyond the symbolic. Being faced with seeing the actual dream house later confirmed her feeling.

In contrast to the fast action initiated by many of the dreamers whose stories appear above, Harry pondered the meaning of his dream. His final action was not a physical one, but a mental and emotional conditioning in preparation for the events symbolically predicted by his dream. As his report indicates, this was not a matter of making future events fit in with the dream because there was a feeling, or knowingness, that connected him to the events as they occurred. Linking future events to any precognitive nature of the dream, although not concretely verifiable in scientific terms, was irrefutable to Harry. He was able to withstand the emotional battering which might, without the dream, have exhausted him. In being able to look ahead he was able to change his attitude towards emotional circumstances on his horizon, in ways which ultimately changed his life too. In this way, recognition can allow us to plan ahead and make positive life changes from potentially devastating future events. Fore knowledge, even of exciting opportunities, can affect how we ultimately handle a situation.

In my own dream world I was offered a job, one day a week, with a company of which I had no conscious awareness. Specific details included the day (a weekend day), the hour and nature of the work and the name of the company. Ten days later, in my waking life, I received a phone call from a company with a similar (not exactly the same) name, offering me the same job, for the same day and hours. Without my dream I would probably have jumped at the opportunity, but I recalled that, in my dream , I made the point that I didn’t want to work weekends and that time with my family was more important. I also felt the company was new, untried, and that I would be better to stay where I was. I contemplated the difference between my dream decision and my waking inclinations, discussed it with my family and a few close friends, and turned it down. I’d had the choice, because of a precognitive dream, to consider the job offer from an unconscious viewpoint and then to weigh this alongside my conscious reaction when the opportunity actually presented itself. It retrospect, although I don’t know what the alternative outcome would have been, I feel I made the right decision.

We often stand on the brink of life-changing decisions, moments of action or inaction: go, stay, be bold, reconsider. We rarely know whether the small step we take will lead to big, irreversible changes, or whether the huge leap we believe we are making will result in only the tiniest splash as life blinks an eye and continues undeterred upon its original path. Precognitive dreaming, rather than being seen as a glimpse of inevitability, should perhaps be viewed as providing insight upon which we might wisely calculate, plan and truly create our future. Life change, like the future, is a matter of choice.