John: Our dreams have been giving us a sense, or an understanding, that what’s currently occurring is more than just the existing moment, i.e., it has to do with a greater picture that’s unfolding.
What you dreamed had to do with finding a balance between the overall and the present moment (see Things To Do Today). I too dreamed about how something’s in the moment, but my imagery showed that I was more indulgent than you were, in terms of how it needs to be, or could be, in the future.
I lost the earlier part of the dream that set the whole thing up, but it had to do with me coming to understand that the way things currently exist is not the way they’ll be in the future. I knew that something was going to change, but I was still going along with what I saw in the present, though not taking it as seriously as other people might.
So whatever I was doing in the dream, I was just passing time. It’s just like some of my relatives who think that the worst of times are coming. It gives them a particular bias in how they approach life. Well, this type of bias can exist on spiritual levels as well.
So I have a particular perspective of what’s going to take place, and what I was shown was how to go along with the way things are, even though I have a knowledge of something more. If we ignore what’s currently going on and dwell only on this “something more,” then it’s like we put ourselves out on a lonely stretch of road through a desert where there’s no one to pick us up. It isolates us.
The way things are is the way things are, and we have to go along with them even though we might know better in terms of what’s meant to be. Timing is everything. This is a repetitive pattern that human beings are guilty of, whether it’s expecting the return of Christ, or the End of Days, or anything like that. No matter how much a person might believe it will happen, they still have to stay, and live, in the present. We can’t ignore the present.
In the dream, I address this issue a lot differently than you did. In your case, you’re wounding yourself in terms of your overall sense of knowingness, by accommodating something that you know you shouldn’t accommodate (procrastination). And I’m hurting myself in terms of my overall knowing by holding a conviction (projecting) toward something that hasn’t yet arrived.
Therefore, I’m not being completely attentive to the moment. I might think it’s okay to skip over the top of certain details because my perspective is upon what’s yet to come. To a certain degree it’s okay to base current decisions upon that which is yet to come, but not to the degree where I get overly indulgent and disassociated from what currently exists, even if the world around me is all based in dead energy.
We’re meant to hold onto both – the present (however it is), and that which might occur (because we don’t know the timing.) This is also a dilemma for a spiritual teacher. They can look at a student and see how that student is going to evolve; this might be characterized as “looking it up in the Book of Life.”
But what a teacher doesn’t know, and can’t know, is the timing. In which lifetime is this person going to attain what the teacher sees in them? Is it going to be this lifetime, or a future lifetime?
I may feel that I’m able to sense and see some of what’s coming, but the teacher takes it another step and can actually start to look at the timing. There are even people whom I can see divine traits in, but I can’t tell you when, if ever, they’re going to catch up with them. A good spiritual teacher is probably able to gauge that.
So my dream last night is basically saying that if I go off and try to base a life or understanding in terms of what I see on the horizon, I’m very apt to dishonor how I exist in the here-and-now.
Said another way, I’ll lose a certain humility towards the here-and-now based upon a transcendent perspective. The fact is, I have inner psychologies that still predominate and they are part of the “now.” So, if I go off into the future and then, all of a sudden, get drawn back and have to face those inner patterns without being in balance, as I need to be, I could be in for a big shock.
