John: So, in this dream I’m driving a heavy, oversized vehicle – like a tank truck or something – up to a retreat center. The truck really slows down on the steep slopes. It’s in the lowest gear where it barely crawls along. Still, it doesn’t make it to the top.
The vehicle can’t navigate the sharp turns, so it comes to a halt. Now, the vehicle is like the meditation I did last night: although I went somewhere deep inside, my connection to that place is still a mystery to me.
In other words, I’m not able to go to this inner space with ease. I’m feeling it, but I’m not necessarily able to hold onto it. There are obstacles that I come up against that stop my progress.
It seems that my intention in taking this truck up the hill is to give it to the teacher at the top. However, the teacher doesn’t want the vehicle. But, since I’ve made the commitment to come to him in this way, he insists that I find a way to make it happen.
The teacher is not accepting of my inability to find the inner power to make the hard turn switchbacks up the steep hill. I’m not allowed to give up.
So this inner struggle began during my meditation and was carried into my dreams. It’s like an energetic mystery that has come out symbolically so that I can get a glimpse of what it is.
I pondered my options for getting the truck up the hill. It’s an electric-powered vehicle, so perhaps the battery was running down? That’s one idea. Maybe it just needs a boost?
In the end, I park the vehicle at a place that is very near the teacher’s place; it’s not quite the top, but it’s almost there. Once there, the vehicle has to be stripped inside so it can be used as a shelter for small animals. Not my animals, but anybody else’s animals.
I just have to abandon it there, next to a hitching rail for horses, where it will provide shelter for the smaller animals.
So, what is going on? This imagery is showing that I’m unable to sustain what’s needed to make a journey to the teacher. The vehicle depicts the challenge I’m feeling about what must be overcome. And it isn’t a small car, it’s a big, tank-like truck!
The dream is telling me that I’m trying to make this journey with something that is unnecessary. But, since I’ve chosen this as my way, I must figure out how to make it work.
Through this scenario I come to learn that what I do embody is a space that can provide shelter. What I’m bringing up with me can be used as a shelter for denser energy (depicted as small animals) that needs to be kept outside for now because it cannot be brought to the teacher in its raw form.
Whatever it is that I still need, or am still holding onto, can be kept in the truck – near the top, but it cannot be brought to the top as it is.
So I’m still carrying some denser animalistic energy that is limiting me – it drains me of power as I approach the higher realms. But I’m committed to figure out what I must do – it’s clear that stopping short of the top is not an option.
And the point I have reached doesn’t depict a total loss, because what I carry can be used as a repository for others who make the journey with this type of energetic. So it can become a place for others to leave their animals – their lower-self nature – while they are given the grace and time to work it out.
The idea is that anyone would have to take it back on when they leave, but they must leave it there temporarily in order to be in the presence of the teacher. For me, it’s like I have left it behind – it’s no longer my concern what happens to it.
There’s also a deeper meaning to this imagery. Using the example of a power station being the source of energy, it’s sent through a system of transformers so that it’s not too powerful when it reaches our homes to power an electric light. In this analogy, the vehicle is like a transformer. It absorbs certain wild (lower-self) behaviors that would be too much for a person to bring on their journey, a journey from the light bulb (an individual) to the power station (the teacher, or higher self).
In such a situation it becomes a type of temporary repository. Whatever can’t be brought into the higher must be left here, until one begins their journey back into the lower, outer reality. It’s not truly dropped – it must be picked back up and carried as a burden that still needs to be dealt with, or refined out of oneself.
For some it’s needed as part of their work at this stage of their process. For others, the lower energies that they cling to remain with them until they advance further, or until they simply let go. Human beings are allowed this freedom of choice, and freedom to proceed only when they are ready.
The lesson I’m receiving through this is that I’m still carrying something that is sheltering lower-self energies – those reactive parts that have yet to let go. Something subtler has to evolve, where these aspects can to be transformed into a purer energy.
All that is revealed by this dream. Although I don’t yet understand the particulars, I’m grateful that it’s portraying them in this symbolic way. I can see that there is something in me that I need to transform, absorb, and release into emptiness.
