As a follow on to Jeane’s dreams from the same night (see A Very Deep Dream), here John is confronted with having to wait, or hold an inner space, until what is unfolding becomes more clear. What these images show is that, by being able to maintain a balance while in the unknown, we are better able to make the shift that eventually will arrive. Otherwise, we can be overwhelmed by the change. (At the end of this post there are instructions and a link to download this recording to your computer.)
John: The theme and the context of the dreaming has to do with a sense of something that should be there, that isn’t quite there. And so there’s the apprehension about it, there’s a suspense about it, and then there’s the waiting – knowing that it should be there.
This dream starts off with me waking up with the statement: I just need to hang out and wait for when something can happen. Now this is an inner conclusion that I draw, because the image that I’m carrying inside me is that I’m in a spiral staircase, and there’s a person in the spiral staircase with me, but there’s a third person that needs to be there who is missing, who is part of that. And so nothing can move or unfold without that person, who is expected but isn’t there, and one has to wait for them.
So I’m having to contend with the sensation, in which I feel something needs to unfold but it can’t unfold, because I am stuck with having to just wait. So that then creates this apprehension, or suspense.
The meaning of it is, I’m holding a space, waiting for the time when what is to happen is possible. In other words, I can feel it in my bones, I have a full sense of it, I can even see the image of it, but to snap it across it isn’t quite there.
And so the dream characterizes that the something that is missing is likened to the fact that there’s a person that has to arrive that brings in the missing piece of the equation, and pulls it together. Or basically it’s more like an unconscious part of me that hasn’t quite come through with its knowingness from within, or linkage, or hearing connection.
And so I sit and I wait. I have a sense of it, a part of me knows it, but I’m not quite ready . You know, it can’t quite come through and change. The scenario is I feel I’m doing this with the rental space across the street because I want to act in a particular way to bring something about, but I need to wait to see how a realization and recognition comes together. Because that’s all part of the equation. And what I feel in terms of what needs to be designed or shaped, lies in an energetic space that is kind of like a transition step that’s dormant and hasn’t quite unfolded.
I do not know how things are meant to be, and how that goes is going to have an affect upon where the attention of things can be placed. And so you just have to wait there, and you have to hold the space to get there. And if you don’t hold the space right, then that can contaminate or undermine what is a suspense brewing, because there’s a missing gap.
As I go back to the image, I see myself in this spiral, unable to communicate with this other person there. Which is essentially what I knew from the first, I couldn’t go forward and there was like a gap. Well, in this case it’s more succinct. I can’t communicate with this second person until this third person, who is supposed to be there, and he’s expected to return soon, but just when I don’t know. And so in the meanwhile all I can do is hold the space with an inner suspense that I carry as an unfulfilled apprehension.
So, I hold it as an unfulfilled apprehension and it’s easy to flip out and blink away from that, and you hold it as an overall responsibility in terms of having to try to figure out how to absorb in all levels, and you carry a pattern of something that cracked you, where you took a step back, and therein lies the pain that you have to contend with. And you’ve factored that in and caught up with that in your dreamworld.
Technically the image between us is, I’m still trying to jerk through and bring something through, and you’re holding a space from a memory that has a different way that the amnesia awakens because it’s almost like you’re closer to, you’re fresher to, the step back space than I am and, as a consequence, the memory of that leaves a residue of a type of sadness and the type of sadness can easily be misinterpreted and lead to one then doing the step back again. It’s a repetition on that level.
Sometimes my dreams start off where I have to hold a particular statement. The statement of the first dream was: I just need to hang out and wait for when something can happen. And then the second statement, the question then, or the issue then, is: will what is in motion change my position, or steal away my role?
In other words, you’re never sure because it could change something where what was meant to be, you drop it or something, or you lose it.
So, in this dream, which is louder than the first dream, because I’m in a basement bathroom and I am looking at this toilet and the way it’s situated. Somehow it doesn’t quite look right to me, so I bump it, and I move it a little bit. And so as a consequence of moving it and bumping it a little bit, when I flush it the water overflows; which means it used to work fine but I jostled it out of position.
So that broke some sort of tenuous balance there, and the water, instead of shutting off properly, it just keeps running and running and overflowing. What it does is it overflows and there’s kind of a sump hole that it goes into, and I suppose it eventually evaporates or goes into the ground. But I get it stopped.
This whole sump hole is full of water and there’s like a scupper bucket that I can raise out of that. And so I lift that out and along with that, of course, is junk and debris that has gone into this hole too.
And a short distance away is another open hole, and this open hole is like an access port to a water under the ground. And this water comes up and goes down, comes up and goes down, because there’s a movement under there.
And this is familiar to me from a dream before in which I used to see it as rising and falling water, coming out of a hillside, one minute being just not there, and then suddenly it turns into a creek right there and the house is right next to it and whatnot, and it can actually be a bit overpowering for the situation – but it’s always been on the outer.
This time it’s in the inner: it’s in the basement. It’s an awareness that you have this unconscious aspect – because that’s what this water is, it’s an unconscious aspect – that is deeper and more than what you can keep up with and comprehend.
And there’s always the suspense, incorporating the first dream. There is the suspense or the apprehension that that could somehow rise up, by forces that are out of your control, and swamp the place, or flood the basement bathroom.
So, I take this overflow that has occurred from the toilet overflowing from having jostled it, I take the scupper bucket out to the hole there, rather than let it sit there, and I pour it into this open, more active, waterway in which there’s a lot of water moving at a depth, even though on the surface it’s kind of still and just kind of rises a bit and goes down a bit. And then I realize that I’ve got scum and stuff like that in it from the scupper bucket, and so I’m trying to skim that off.
And then I suddenly am a little shocked because it seems like this other hole, the open hole, the water has risen higher than I’d realized and am used to seeing it. It’s like within an inch of the top. Well, that’s pretty scary. It can’t go much higher or it will overflow. And then of course that triggers this dream memory of how the unconscious can swamp (from prior repeat dreams).
I turn my back for a split second, and when I turn around, sure enough, it’s overflowing and it’s flooding this whole bathroom. I go upstairs. I meant to go up earlier and ask my dad if this was going to be okay, but now I definitely have to go up.
And when I get upstairs the whole scene upstairs is different. There’s furniture moved around and everybody is prepared to shift, or to move, and they’ve got it all kind of in place so it’s easy to pick up to take and move out. And so I realize: I guess we’re not going to have to contend with this after all. We’re actually moving.
But what this is really saying is, in terms of incorporating the holding of a space, like in the first dream, the holding of that space with apprehension and suspense inside, in which you’re rolling that around and rolling that around to figure out how to sustain yourself, that leads to a shift. And then that shift takes you out of the scenario.
And so the meaning of this, in terms of the bigger picture is, yes, things are sitting kind of in a tenuous point. It’s an opening to their unconscious nature, and they’re unsettled as a consequence of it. Well, it’s going to become overwhelming, and for most people who aren’t paying any attention to it, it’s just going to be overwhelming. For those who are paying attention to it, they’re able to just naturally shift. It’s not like they get caught in it and lost in it. They have already somehow or another harbored inside of themselves the apprehension and suspense, so it’s as if they have nurtured a state inside of themselves, so that when the time is ripe, they can just naturally shift.
Thus avoiding whatever the breakdown or the change is going to be that can affect other parts of yourself. A part of yourself has taken it into account to such a degree that it has a way of coping with it, when other parts, which are trying to hide or pretend or be amnesic towards it, don’t.
How this dream kind of applies to your dream is that I’m looking at it in a specific way, in terms of something that I see, that I’m trying to watch or wait or hold in suspense, or in a space, and then that harbors a transition.
What you have to be careful of in your (dream) is in holding the suspense and the catalytic change agent quality inside yourself, in that you don’t draw a conclusion, which can be justified by a type of sadness, and then try to take a step back. Because it can appear to be an answer over the short-term, but over the long-term, because you have seen something and it invokes something in you that you had good reason to say okay, no I don’t think so – did you really have good reason or was that reason colored by the fact that you were drawing conclusions about something that you couldn’t quite absorb?
And this is what it starts with your first dream, where you were reverbing back and forth trying to absorb this and, when you’re at your wits end, and you’re exhausted, and you can’t quite contend with it, you could take a step back.
Like the teacher says in the process, that a person just has to keep on keeping on, and eventually you do it. But if you stop, you stop. And of course your dream is saying that if you stop, you try to take something with you. And on this deeper level, you get caught in a reverb thing that now correlates to the sadness. And so you don’t really have a good answer going forward, but you certainly don’t have an answer going backwards.
To download this file, Right Click (for PCs) or Control Click (for Macs) and Save: Awaiting the Shift
