As Big as the Universe

Jeane: Let me explain a bit more about how the hot springs worked (see yesterday’s dream, Being at Depth).

There is an area at the top of the hill where everybody meets. At the very bottom of the hill is a room that has a tub and a steam room, but before going in there you have to walk outside and go up on a small platform. There is a bath there and then a series of hot tubs that go up the hill, about five of them. After going through the tubs, you come back down to the steam room.

It was kind of odd. You bathe in the tubs that go up the hill and then you come back down.

John: Yes, you’re describing an unfolding process, in terms of what is able to penetrate the inner depths. It’s similar to how the out-breath works.

This downward motion you describe represents the out breath, which is a big determinant in how you’re able to come to know something as you go into the depths of yourself (down the hill). At the end of the out-breath you are walking around in creation (the outer world), as if you came down an elevator. Then you come sweeping back up on the in-breath (up the hill), which has a lot to do with what you consciously pay attention to in the depths of yourself.

Apparently there are aspects and details of the out-breath that you normally don’t pay any attention to, but the greater the awareness you have of it coming down, the greater the linkage or connection you have with it when you reach the bottom.

In this dream, you have the hot tubs leading up, and after you’ve partaken of that process, when you return to the bottom you’ve attained a new depth, or new octave – shown by the steam room. You’ve penetrated to a greater inner depth. The hot tubs are nice, but the steam room has an effect that purifies or refreshes in a whole other way.

This corresponds to something the mystic Bhai Sahib said about himself: No, I’m not God, but if I focus upon something, I can get an answer. We can do the same by going into the depths of ourselves (connecting to our higher self). We can connect and get guidance in terms of what is unfolding, or meant to be.

So this is a very mystical dream. The out breath leads to an inner depth where you can participate with greater and greater degrees of letting go and be affected by a process that is linked to the top where things can become known to you.

Without the one, you don’t have the other; without the inner depth connection, the higher remains too feathery and intangible. But at the bottom, by going into the depth of yourself, you’re able to get a glimpse of this other, more universal sense of knowing.

There is the idea in Sufism that assumes that what’s really important is at the very top – it’s where the in-breath turns to the out-breath. In considering that, one can come to realize that the top is like a power station, connected to universal energies. Yet it generally seems intangible to us – almost feathery – compared to the density of the lower, or outer world we experience.

Yet through a spiritual journey we are able to go up the hill and bring down more and more of that intangible essence and begin to know it more and more. Through this process of a human journeying back to god, we create a stronger and stronger linkage to that.

It is another way of saying that everything is interconnected. It’s just that we humans generally take the easy route of only connecting to our lesser mannerism – the seductions of the material world. In this way, most of us fail to catch up with our inner depths, which can connect us to a process that is as big as the universe. And that entire universe can be understood as being one breath.

Within that understanding is the truth that everything is just energy in one state or another, from the power station above (Creation), all the way down to the human (the light bulb). And the light bulb, if it chooses, can access its connections all the way back to the transformers and, ultimately, all the way back to the power station.

Being at Depth

Jeane: In my dream there is a group of us. We have all come from separate places to be here. There is a house on top of the hill where we are all staying or meeting.

Down the hill there is a bathhouse, and then a series of small bathtubs filled with hot water that lead back up the hill. Up above, at the meeting place, I’m with some members of a diverse family. Some of them don’t talk to other family members; a young girl is in the kitchen doing something, and a young boy is dressed in an alternative way.

It’s time to go down to the bathhouse and a large group of people wants to join. But I say that just the five women in a group that had been meeting, including me, should go. Otherwise it will be overcrowded.

So, we go down the hill and one person goes into the bathhouse and I go over toward the tubs. Usually you take off your clothes to get in the tubs, and then you go through a series of tubs back up the hill, and then you come down again to the bathhouse – there’s a steam room there.

At first I’m concerned because I don’t think I have a towel, but then I realize I’ve wrapped a blue towel around my head so I’m all set. I get down there first and I step into the bathhouse and lying on the floor is the father of the boy and one of the girls from up above.

Maybe the husband had been exiled, or he hasn’t seen them for years, but he wants me to get a message to one of them. One of them, I think it’s the boy, is to travel with an aunt to Norway.

Then another child of his shows up that wasn’t expected – it’s a girl. I notice her when I go to step in the first tub that leads into the other tubs going up the hill. And then I notice that even though I thought just the five women were coming down, actually there are people all over the place.

John: You’re painting an image that has to do with how you access the depths of yourself. The part of you that’s your higher self is up the hill. In order to gain a better grasp of that higher part, you have to take it down into a depth. Reaching that depth is like burrowing in; it’s represented by the tubs of water that lead you back up the hill. Somehow that combination links to the top (higher self) and helps you pull something through (new knowledge).

In that process, though, you aren’t able to deal with everything at once. You have to deal with certain aspects that have a focus or alignment, and you have to let go of the other aspects or let them subside. That’s why you want only the group of five women to walk down the hill.

So you take those aspects and you pull in all that you can pull in, and you come to realize that, by being in the depth at the base – by accessing through the bathtubs – that this quality of you at a lower level, or greater density, is able to drill deeper, so to speak.  In this way you can catch up with information from the top of the hill that wouldn’t ordinarily be accessible to you in terms of how things are meant to proceed, or to unfold.

Until you go into a depth of yourself, you’re not able to have access to the higher parts. And that which is at the top of the hill (the higher self) will just stay a fluttering energy and not quite tangible. It won’t necessarily reveal itself in terms of how it can direct or guide you to a further enhancement of what is intended. The next unfolding is potentially shaped from, or realizable through, the source at the top of the hill.

So none of that available guidance will penetrate your frame of reference until you go to a depth inside yourself.

It’s interesting how you depict it like hot baths or hot springs. In other words, you drill into the depths and then something greater can bubble up to the surface where you can access it and create a linkage to something that comes from the top.

Getting Answers

John: In continuing the story from yesterday (see That Which is Given), next we spend a week in Las Vegas and I notice what you’re doing, in terms of assessing the possibilities, and I begin to think there really is something to this idea of moving there. On some level, something has been triggered, or invoked. So when I tried to step back as if the idea were insane, it closed down a few of your “screens,” which hurt you because you were meant to have them open. Once they were triggered open, you know, it was game on.

So that opening caused you to compel something from me, so I had to step back to see what was being compelled. As I came back to the idea, I immediately noticed that it opened up your screens again. There’s a power and control to that, and I have to be sensitive to it, even though I hadn’t fully bought into the plan yet. So what I did was I sat and watched you.

You were going around arranging this and that, and I asked myself how it felt. And it felt right. But at the same time, it didn’t feel right when I started overindulging in the idea myself; it was better for me to sit and be pulled along by the process as things were opening up.

This reminds me of a statement you made early in our relationship. You said that things always come to a point, in you, where you’d reach a certain capacity inside, but the masculine aspect couldn’t stretch to the degree that was required for you to continue to progress or open up. It made you crazy because you felt the urge to take the next step.

And I’ve seen over and over again how that pattern happens to you. It prevents you from ever getting too comfortable. I never forgot that statement because when that depth opens up, by whatever means, it has to have the correspondence in the masculine in order to facilitate it and, if it doesn’t, it gets agitated or out of whack. It has a knowingness that is subjective, and it can’t stay in a situation in which it’s not allowed to be how and what and who it is.

That idea connects me to the problems people face when they get on a spiritual path. The problems begin when the teacher recognizes that the student is making the connection. To that point, the teacher may act as if he doesn’t want to lose the student, so he has to cater to them in a way. When the student connects, then the fun can begin.

What happens next is that the means of communication between student and teacher shifts to a level that’s unnoticeable to everyone except the two of them. The student might not even notice it, or will feel that the teacher is ignoring them. That may bother them because they have felt close before.

The student might expect the teacher to be speaking to them, but the teacher doesn’t because they’re already connected in a whole other way on the inner, not in the mundane outer sense.

In other words, when the teacher says that it’s easier to communicate and relate to the student at night, it’s because at night, when something comes through on the inner level, the noise and confusion of the waking state is not a factor. This is literally how it works.

Students who are accepting of this don’t even need to ask questions anymore. The answers are given to them through the ether. In fact, there was a student from Europe who was telling me they no longer needed to tell the teacher their dreams.

In fact, this student felt that at some particular point the questions come to an end and so does the communicating of the dreams because the answers are already inside if a person allows themselves to listen. The answers are compelled to come to a person once they become connected. From an outer perspective the teacher may seem more distant, yet on an inner level the connection is much deeper.

So, as I’m going through night after night of turmoil – sweating because I’m resistant to opening up – there’s a vibration of the heart that says I can do this: I can make this breakthrough. The answer has been compelled to me.

As I seem to be close to making a breakthrough, I give myself permission to go deeper in my sleep. When I do that I unleash what is still pent up and it comes out (I sweat again profusely). It’s emerging in some fashion; it’s working itself out.