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.
