Issue 98, October 2006
A Fine Tune
©Jane Teresa Anderson, October 2006
I treasure my body. It’s the vehicle that gets the real me about in the world. I do my best to look after it, to keep it in good repair, to give it the best of fuel, to drive it to wonderful, inspiring and sometimes challenging places that will do my spiritual being good instead of puttering around the same old easy routes. You get the picture. Like you, I’m a spiritual being having a human experience, and if I want to make the most of this trip I need to keep the vehicle working for me.
Sometimes, though, I drive it too hard. I forget. I get excited by a new idea, an adventure. I miss the signs. I don’t hear the spluttering engine, don’t feel the reduced spring in the tyres, and don’t recognise the need for a tune up. I expect my body to perform like a jaguar while treating it like a 24-7 taxi.
And so it was that a cough lodged itself in my lungs, leaving me spluttering, and the spring went out of my step, leaving me asleep for most of 14 hours a day for a whole week. And while I slept, I dreamed.
I dreamed of a room full of angels, each seated before a full sized harp, arms uplifted and fingers flying over the strings, exquisite music floating on air. They didn’t look like angels. I didn’t see their wings. I guess they were spiritual beings having a human experience but the harps were a bit of a giveaway.
I looked closer. Standing behind each angel was a young man gently yet firmly massaging beneath his angel’s shoulder blades, at the point where wings would have been if only we could have seen them, at the point where each angel’s muscles were taking the strain from her uplifted arms and hours of plucking harp strings. Or is that heart strings, for their music surely plucked at mine?
“Ah, the wind beneath their wings,” I thought, in the dream, “that’s what the young men are.”
I saw all of this from behind. The young man nearest to me stopped his massage. I realised he was tired and needed rest. Where, or who, was the wind beneath his wings? He laid his head on my lap, like a tiny child, and slept while I too rested. I was glad to be able to give him that sustenance.
I woke up feeling rested, and thought about my dream.
That place, right under the shoulder blades, where wings might be, where arms get tired from constant uplifting, that place is right behind the lungs. My cough and cold had left me spluttering for air, for wind in my lungs, for wind beneath my wings, for energy to uplift and let my spirit sing, to play my part.
I reminded myself of that basic rule of dream interpretation: everyone in a dream represents something about the dreamer. I saw that my support system (young man) was run down, unable to sustain the constant draw on its energy, in need of support and nurturing of its own. My immune system was run down. The cough and the cold were in confident residence. This vehicle was spluttering. It needed a fine tune because it certainly couldn’t play one any longer.
The moral of the dream story is simple on one level: remember to keep life in balance, to support and receive support, to create and to rest so that you have the resources and vitality to create again.
On a deeper level dreams provide enriching contemplation. Remember that your dreams reveal your perception of the world – as you see it today, based on all your experiences to date. If you are open-minded, your perceptions shift and change as your experiences change, and your dreams reflect this, night by night. They are windows into your ever-changing view of what life is all about and how you see yourself fitting into the big picture.
Look into your dreams and ask yourself questions. Contemplate the answers. For example, in my dream, who was playing the music? Was it the angels or the young men? What were the musical instruments? Were they the harps, the angels, the young men or the whole harp-angel-young man combo? Who called the tune? Did the angels unlock the harp’s inner music? Did the harps play the tune of the angels? Did the young men unleash and energise the music deep within the angels? Or was the beautiful music that filled the air totally directed and conducted by the young men’s hands and hearts?
Your answers to these questions may be different from mine, but there is still great value in sharing the contemplative questions our dreams pose.
If dream music be the food for thought, play on. And listen. And change your tune, if you wish. Dreams provide us with that luxury to contemplate the questions they pose and find new meaning among the many answers they inspire.
For me, my dream reminds me that as spiritual beings having a human experience we need to make sure that our human form, our physical life, is the very best instrument it can be, finely tuned so that we can each play our part to our highest potential according to our reason for being here.
Oh, and by the way, there’s one last question. Who were the real angels in my dream? Were they the ones playing the harps, or … was there more to those young men’s cherubic good looks and loving healing hands than met the eye?
Jane Teresa Anderson
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