John: This dream begins in a place that, by the end, becomes an island. At first it’s just an area near where my father has a house. I see myself on foot trying to get to the house – I have no transportation.
His place is on the other side of a river; at some point I plan to cross over. I’m not sure how, exactly, as I have not really thought it through. I come across a friend who lives nearby. We just greet each other and I continue on towards my dad’s house.
I reach a point where the streets are flooded; the river is raging out of control. The river isn’t even visible yet, but I realize that I may have to swim just to go down the street. It’s not sensible; I don’t know if I can swim it.
At least I weigh my options (my tendency is to just push forward once I set my mind on a particular course). I stop. I turn around. At the first place I reach, a restaurant, I hear a voice calling out my name.
I turn around, and partly hidden behind a few things, my friend is rummaging around. I am surprised, and think “Amazing! What is he doing here? Who would have thought that I would meet him again?”
He has a car that can go to where I need to go. I explain my predicament and he is about to volunteer to drive me, yet some part of me thinks that I’m free and independent and I’m going to figure out how to do this on my own. It’s a very personal thing for me to go to my dad’s place.
Even though I can sense he is about to offer me help, my independent striving shuts this off. If I had listened a little more closely, I would have known my friend also lives over on the other side, so it wouldn’t have been too much of an inconvenience.
I don’t get it, so I stay in my usual process of thinking and doing, rather than being quiet and listening. I don’t accept his help. He asked me why I was there and I told him my father had died and that I was on my way to his place to handle things. I did not stop and listen and accept his offer of help.
All of this is a synchronistic opportunity that I completely dismiss. I end up going off on foot again. I don’t recognize the serious plight I’m in – I just keep finding out the hard way that I don’t have any viable options on my own.
In other words, I’m not going to swim this river and it’s way too far to walk around.
I’m off doing my best and at some point I end up with a vehicle that is like a huge bus. It’s large and awkward to drive. It works best if I keep it on the straight roads, yet I seem to think that I can take a short cut.
I go up a hill – straight up this hill instead of around the hill. This makes no sense as I am going up and over the hill and my father’s place is down closer to the water.
Now what ends up happening is that I run into snow. This great big vehicle is not designed for this; I reach a point where I can’t go any further.
I’m frustrated and angry now. When I get out of the vehicle I don’t properly secure it and the next thing I know the vehicle is rolling away. I’m so upset I almost don’t care whether it rolls away or not.
And yes it does. It rolls away and it doesn’t stop and it’s a bad scene. Now I have added a new problem. That was a rental vehicle, so how do I handle that? Plus now I again have no way to get to my dad’s house, even if I had good directions.
I thought I could take the short cut instead of going around the mountain – which would have been a more gentle approach – and the vehicle might have been able to navigate it as I would have stayed below the snow line.
I wake up realizing that if I give up on trying to get to my father’s place and blame it on the weather – flooding down below and snow up high – then I can catch a ferry that will take me back to where I live.
This place is a city on the coast. If I catch the ferry that goes by each day, it will end up there. So in this dream I find myself at an island that is a fair distance from the terminal.
Tomorrow, we will look at the internal struggle depicted by this dream.
