In John’s dreams, he sees himself caught in transition between the familiar worlds of the outer, physical life, and the deeper inner worlds connected to all that exists. (At the end of this post there are instructions and a link to download this recording to your computer.)
John: In my dream I kind of have to report on what it’s like to have to be strained with kind of a focus and attention upon an innerness, that one knows is important, and that, until it comes through, it’s almost as if that is at the expense of an outward understanding.
Because it’s as if I’ve gotten the inkling that that is what is real, so as a result, the outer things that one would normally do and think nothing of it, is no longer possible because I have come to know that it goes nowhere. It’s not that I judge it. In fact, I find it kind of interesting as a flow, and find it interesting how the collective seems to be quite fine with all of that, but it doesn’t reach into the beyond of the beyond. And as a result, I’m somewhat estranged from it.
Describing it like this in words like this kind of make it too esoteric. The actual depiction portrays it.
In my dream I have gone back to a gathering of high school friends and these are all guys that I’ve gone back to see, and they’re all grown up and accomplished in whatever it is that they do in the world.
And it’s as if we’re getting together in a place, which has a setting that’s able to be casual enough so that we can all just go about being who we are and portraying our individual interests to each other. And what is amazing is each of these interests, because they’re all outer interests and we each have a slightly different, by we I mean they, not necessarily me, an interest that is slightly different. Yet because they’re all outer interests there is a cohesion or a collective flow that comes together.
And so I’m impressed and pleased to see how easy going these guys are able to be in relationship to each other, because what they have in common is this outer linkage, or a linkage to the reflective, though, but I don’t have that, and so I’m feeling off, or out of place, not able to fit in.
But they don’t see life like that, that there’s something else going on in me that’s different. They see everything in an outer context so they just accept me – so they don’t see my problem. And I like what I see in terms of them and how they seem to flow nicely with each other, but I can tell, at least in terms of looking at myself because I’m looking at something of the innerness instead of just the outerness, I can tell that I stand out because I am identifying with this innerness, or at least am trying to.
And my identification with that has me listening within, and therefore, I’m estranged energetically from them. I have lost a freedom in the outer that they still have. I am stiffer in that regard. I look and carry myself as if I have a responsibility that they do not have to relate to. I cannot help but notice that there are many things they each can casually do individually and collectively that I seem to struggle with. The separation I carry is because I find what they are doing naturally, to be awkward for me, and it’s become awkward for me because of the indulgence of my attention is somewhere else.
The meaning is that at first glance, these others, which represent the collective outer, appear to be… you know, if I look at them as the way to be, or something, that there appears to be something wrong with me. That gets accentuated as possibly so, because I can’t help but note that I come across, at least in my own eyes, I mean they’d accept me because they don’t see this other part, but I come across in my own eyes as being too serious by comparison and not able to free flow or casually relate to the outer aspects in life like they do.
They collectively fit in with the physical world. This is what they know, so there is no confusion for them. Each is putting forth, in a casual way, the appearance in the outer that best portrays who they are and what they do and that then all fits in a collective way.
It’s kind of like how it is when you go back to a class reunion or a reunion of some sort. Each person, they don’t go around complaining about how bad life has been to them, they all try to put their best foot forward, and so they give each other permission to all put their best foot forward. They don’t complain a lot. It’s kind of like an ego thing a little bit.
But in relationship to that, I stand out because I don’t have a best foot to put forward. I do not identify with life in this manner. I see myself as being separate from them in a way they aren’t able to perceive, and so I can’t even explain that to them, although they know that I’m somehow in the outer, so they accept me as I am.
But I’m only trying to relate to something else. They’re each going about doing what they do best and integrating in a collective flow and I am touched. I’m impressed even, by the fact that there is something sweet about that free flow. It just isn’t for me. I can’t help myself not being like that. Even though they look at me and are ready to accept me in an outer way, I’m not able to reciprocate because my attention seems to hearken to something that is another kind of pressure or inner responsibility.
They can’t see that, and where they are at collectively I must leave alone because that is for them. I can’t tell them, I can’t explain the gap, I’m just at a point where my focus is upon an inner attention that has caused me to see myself as estranged in a world that relates only to outer appearances and mannerisms.
I’m no longer able to be temporal. I therefore lack the outer understanding which for them is meaningful. In that regard, I’m a bit helpless. I am distinguished from them in that I carry an inner responsibility which affects me from within, and invokes a responsibility I am still seeking to reach.
I don’t feel like I’ve reached it and so, in that regard, part of the awkwardness is my bewilderment. In other words, for as long as this remains more than I’m able to access, I remain a bit tense and stiff. If I were able to live the inner aliveness, as a Oneness, I would be able to fit in with the collective reflections, as well, of my high school cronies.
I haven’t gotten there yet, in other words because I’m still trying to get there, still trying to attune to it so I’m bewildered between this and that. So I haven’t gotten there yet in terms of being at home with the inner aliveness. So there is an imbalance that causes me to see myself as being out of touch in terms of everyone and everything in the outer.
In the next dream I have been away so long that the mail I get at the post office in this old place is no longer happening. Yet in this dream I have traveled back to this place and it’s a place where I still have relatives that are living there as if nothing has changed.
For me, though, everything is different. The services that I used to have here no longer exist. It is as if I am shut off from that past as if I never had it. On one side of the street there’s the post office where I supposedly used to get the mail, but there is no recollection or memory or anything like that because it’s so long ago.
But when I cross the street, it’s kind of hard to describe what it is. It’s like a kiosk-type building. In other words, it sits out there in the open. Anyone could walk in to it. It’s not like it’s a door or anything. Anyone could walk into it. It’s got a little bit of a cover on it from the rain or elements, but in there is just a whole bunch of papers just flying around by the wind that could still whip through it.
It’s kind of a thing that no one pays any attention to because it doesn’t mean anything to them and these papers that are piled up, are piled up from long ago, blowing around and loose and everything. They do not seem to correspond with anything anymore, as far as they’re concerned, so nobody bothers them. They just leave them there. They’re ancient or something.
But for me, I walk in there and it’s different. This place is a clue to my lost and forgotten past. And somehow I know that I’m meant to find a tractor. I need a tractor or a tractor that I can sell. I need something about a tractor, and so I’m seeking to find it. But it’s a little ridiculous because it’s just a little kiosk kind of thing – there can’t be any tractor in there. There’s just a bunch of scattered papers.
Well, as I have gone inside Dan is outside, totally unable to comprehend why it is that I am so preoccupied inside this abandoned kiosk building that no one pays any attention to. So to begin with there’s no rhyme or reason sense to it, but I know that there has to be more, so I keep looking. I almost have the illusion that a tractor is going to be underneath all of that, but that’s totally impossible.
Suddenly I see papers that refer to the tractor I seek. I yell this out to Dan who is waiting for me to come out. He replies that the tractor that I’m referring to is quite old and there isn’t any marketable value for such a thing like this. Even if I were to find it, it would be almost like a waste of time, that’s assuming I was able to locate it and retrieve it.
My reply is that if that is the way it is, then I will just keep it because it’s still viable and functional. There’s nothing wrong with it operationally and I’ll figure out how to put it to good use in some way that is appreciable at this time, or can be appreciated at this time.
Suddenly amidst all of these loose papers I see some Priority Mail envelopes. There’s a wonder they are there, in this out of the way, in the open place, that everyone pays no attention to and is abandoned, everyone as far as I know.
Apparently someone knows that this is the last known whereabouts to leave things that are for me. How that is known is a mystery. It’s a good thing because if this weren’t done my mail from somewhere unbeknownst to me, would be lost forever.
In other words, this is an image now of something still coming through on a regular basis, and somewhere else as one lives in the outer. Anyway, these Priority Mail envelopes, they close the gap between here and the outer, and there and the inner.
I open one of these envelopes and I’m suddenly excited to see that there is $150 worth of stamps that I had ordered from long ago. I find it to be amazing that I’m able to have received this, and that no one else had found this because if anyone else had come in, pondered around, seen these envelopes, disturbed it in any way, then this would be gone.
But everyone in this place now thinks that this kiosk building of no consequence has just a bunch of rubbish papers of no meaningfulness whatsoever to them, or to the present even. The even bigger mystery for me to sort out yet in this outer world, is how did this get through from either long, long ago, or from somewhere else? And who knew that this is where to leave the mail that is needed so that I am able to close the gap between inner and outer, between something from wherever it was, to how things are that I’ve gone back to? There’s a gap that has to be closed.
So what is going on is, pulling the two dreams together, in the first dream I learn that I have gotten out of touch with the outer collective and its outer reflective way because I have been focused upon an innerness that is astir in my nature.
This innerness that is trying to come through has consumed my imagination. As a result I no longer have the outer mannerism that everyone else experiences collectively and reflectively.
In the second dream I have gone back into the outer world that I left long, long ago, so I get to reconcile that which is missing, in other words the gap between the two, because light and sound are actually one. That’s another way of saying something between inner and outer.
To my surprise, I’m able to see that when I take in the inner that is there for me to see, that not much has changed. Outward appearances from the passage of time affect things as you would expect, but the inner linkage to all of this remains the same.
What I am to realize is that this inner awareness is all that there is, that time and space are an illusion. To be this is to be everything, because around this essence are just outer reflections that emanate outwardly.
Those reflections may provide a hint to what is real, but they aren’t what is real. As an analogy they are like a smoke to an everlasting fire. They are like a thread which denotes that an essence and fire exists and that it is the essence of fire that is meaningful and real, not the smoke, and that it is always present.
As a deeper meaning the smoke can be seen or dealt with as a kind of a symbolism to the fact that there is nothing but a nothingness. In other words, you take the smoke away and there is nothing even reflectively. But this is a deeper consciousness, that for now I have a long way to go to catch up with.
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