John: What my next dream shows is that there’s this particular quality that’s meant to awaken and open up in me, so I flash back into it as if it’s fully awakened – but I don’t know how to use it. This imagery reveals that there’s a pattern or mannerism in my nature, which is very backward, that I use over and over again as a defense mechanism to keep myself from even knowing that I’m meant to realize something.
While out with some friends I learn that I can experience in my heart what they share as pain or grief in their life. I can just feel it. In talking to someone, I can see they have a certain pattern of misery they’re coming from. The conditions of the outer world are such that it’s torn them up and they’re walking around in pain.
I see that I’m able to go into that pain and absorb it. I can take it into my heart. Your dream indicated that you could take some wildness in you (the young girl) and absorb it in some fashion so that it didn’t have any effect upon you being able to do the overall work.
In my case I can come into a scenario that has its peculiarities, in which there’s a certain pain, and, rather than dwell in the pain energy, I can take it in and find a part of my heart that softens it or appreciates it as it is. So I can feel what they feel when they are hurting inside.
What I see, as I pick up on someone’s grief, is that I can touch their pain, but it doesn’t have its effect on me. It makes me feel closer to them rather than more distant because I can accept it. I have the strength to absorb it and I can reach a soft place of forgiveness or heartfulness within, and it feels so tender it’s like I could cry.
This is a state of being able to send it somewhere, as if it’s a prayer. Although we don’t often think of it that way, that’s one way prayer works. What I was doing was inadvertent. (I say inadvertent because I wasn’t given permission to do it, I just suddenly discovered that I could penetrate a dense mannerism that a person held.)
In taking this into my heart, though, I was too obvious in terms of how I did this process. The other person could actually see that I was doing it. That recognition touched off a defense mechanism in them, which was my fault because I didn’t hold the inner space in a quiet, silent, inner way.
Instead, what I did visibly penetrated their space – a space that they held as a defense mechanism. The reason they were in pain was because it was part of their process, and by going through that pain I was violating their process a bit. When you have such an exchange with another person, there’s bound to be collateral damage, because what can be liberated in them, and rise up, can be too much for them to handle.
One minute I was kind feeling all chummy with these friends – we were best buddies – and the next minute I’m being accused of making a disparaging remark about a person’s mother and I’m about to be beat up. His friends are in agreement with this guy as well; I’ve overstepped some boundary.
In the next image I see them towering over me as if all of a sudden they’re big and I’m small and they’re all ready to just really knock the crap out of me. So I have to scramble. I have to get humble. I have to pull back from the appearance of things. I have to pull away from the way I have affected the space and explain that it was all a mistake.
Tomorrow, we will examine the implications of this dream imagery.
