This dream scenario unfolds like an action movie: a boy separated from his father, a gang that wants to chase him, a switch to the 17th century and then a dramatic last-minute turn of events. Yet this adventure holds a deeper thread, in that when we are on a spiritual journey, we, by definition, have to step into the unknown. How can we go somewhere completely new without leaving our comfort zone? As is shown here, we often find that we have everything we need inside to help us navigate the twists and turns our path with take us through. Learning to trust that inner connection is a huge leap in our story. (At the end of this post there are instructions and a link to download this recording to your computer.)
John: So that aspect of letting something be like that, actually I come to learn through this next dream, is part of a consciousness or aliveness – a connection to the creator. I have never thought of it that way.
Instead the fact that I feel that, throws me around; I’m inclined to think that I’m in rebellion. So this next dream has to show that there actually is a linkage that way, it’s not what I think it is.
So in this dream – it’s a long dream – I’m like a sixteen-year-old boy and I have gotten kind of purposely separated from my family who are in this city that I don’t have any familiarity with. And by getting separated, I am deemed lost, and instead of hanging out where it’s possible to be found, I actually go where it’s difficult for my father, who would be looking for me, to catch up and find me.
And the reason I seem to do this is a type of rebellion in me, where I’m feeling rejected or something, where I don’t fit in. So I’m not doing anything to help him out in terms of finding me – I actually go off the beaten track.
And I get hungry. And I find myself in a bazaar where the main item that’s sold there is a very wonderful prime rib. And there is a group that’s there, part of a wedding party or something, and one of the people in the wedding party takes a very large piece of prime rib. And I looked at it and it looked enormously, phenomenally delicious.
And so I ponder it but I don’t really have a lot of money on me, and the problem I have is if I get the side items, like the potatoes and this, that, and the other, I’ll only be able to take in a smaller steak. And in a roundabout way, it’s kind of a specialty to be able to order the large steak, anyway.
And the person who prepares that, the chef, he’s just kind of assuming that I’m part of this wedding party that this is for. I malinger there and malinger there pondering this, and it’s when I choose to get the steak and nothing else is when initially he assumes that I am part of that, and I say that I’m not.
And then the cook says that the steak I want still has to be cooked. And so I act dejected and start to walk away and he says, here, you can have this piece. It will be ready when you get your plate and fill it with the other things you want to eat.
But I can’t find a fresh plate. So I see this plate on a table where the person who had used it had already eaten one of these really large pieces of prime rib and the grease is all over it. It looks like, as far as I’m concerned, the plate is empty, it’s clean. It’s just greasy prime rib. So that plate’s good enough for me.
So I go over and grab the plate and so I come back and I get the steak that’s cut, and it doesn’t look the way that that original, wonderful piece looked that I was mouth-watering for, it looks like it’s not as thickly cut. It’s a little bigger, maybe it will be fine if I start eating it, because I notice that it cuts real easy just like it’ll melt in your mouth or something. To begin with it seems okay.
But then when I look at it more closely it’s still sizzling, and the fat inside of it is popping. And I think, omigosh, how am I going to eat all this, this isn’t all meat, it’s all kinds of fat – oh my!
I have to give it a go though, so I’m walking about with this steak, aware that it’s getting later because the whole time I’m feeling the fact that I know my dad’s looking for me and he’s running out of time. It’s starting to get late in the day, and he’s probably getting desperate that he hasn’t found me. And I’m a little bit concerned that I’m not helping him in any regard to find me, in fact still acting peeved or something like I’m on strike.
So it’s kind of like I’m sacrificing my well being. So as I go about looking for a place to sit, I come across where there are these gang members and they’re torturing another person. So I cringe at the sight and look to go elsewhere, but they notice my flinch and decide that there’s something about me that they have to now turn their attention toward.
So I try to act nonchalant, and I go over and I sit down at a table, invite myself to the table like I belong to the table where there are others sitting – but they’re mostly kids – part of a larger family, so they’re no threat to this gang.
And this doesn’t seem to impress this gang leader at all, because he sits down at the table and I have to give him some of my steak. So, I know he’s going to want more, so I’m gobbling down the rest as fast as I can, eating the best parts of it because it wasn’t ideally all meat, like the one that I’d seen before.
And when there’s this kind of peculiar condition, the steak doesn’t seem, you know I’m not as picky about it, it’s not hard to eat at all as I ravenously devour the best portions. And then at some point I get up and I leave the area, leaving what’s left on my plate for him to pick over or something, thinking I need to figure my way back to where I belong with my family.
But I’ve gotten this gang’s attention somehow, and even though I go off to one side away from where I’d think they be paying attention and following me – which is also not in the direction I should go if I expect my father to find me, I’ve actually gone into a worse part instead of a better part. And the gang is following me, as if I am a person that they have to stop.
And so I’m standing at kind of a railing, and the gang is approaching, and they have a knife or something to cut me. And right at the last minute I flip over the railing backwards and I drop down to a lower level.
And that very act of doing that intensifies the image of it being like a 16th of 17th century setting, because where I find myself, it’s different, but no matter what corridor I go up, the rest of the gang members seem to really reside and there are six or seven approaching from all directions.
And so there’s no where that I can go to – I’m essentially trapped. So I realize that there’s no choice but to just pick a direction, accept my fate, there’s no getting away. And so the direction I choose of course is face on into where six or seven are coming as a direct assault. And they all have swords, and I’m unarmed – this whole thing is hopeless.
But just before I get to them, there’s something embedded in the ground that’s like a chain that’s razor sharp like a sword itself. When I pull on it it comes right out of the ground and goes right over in the direction where they are, kind of as a shock to them.
And in pulling on this it shifts me at an angle, instead of head-on it puts me at a 45-degree angle. And this change in the direction in which I’m facing them is the difference that is needed in order for something to change in what had been a hopeless position.
Even though I don’t see a sword, I am aware that I possess a weapon that is formidable. In other words I now feel that I can break through, and it’s supported by a voice that hear that says, “If this is what it took to get me into a position where I’m able to take on fearlessly and confidently what lies before me, I guess it’s all worth it.
At this moment I’m no longer concerned for my well being, which I had been before, because I just know everything is okay.
So what is going on is, because I am not willing to accept the simple conditions I find myself in, the effect is to reject father-figure control and being underneath the umbrella of that. I’m at that slightly rebellious age, but at the same time I need to know better, especially when we’re on this adventure in someplace that I’m not familiar with.
I have purposely run away and hide from detection. In other words, the whole time I am rebelling, I am aware that my father, who is well meaning and good-hearted, and is a guide for my development, is looking for me.
Because I have some issue with where he is coming from, and am afraid of losing some sort of identity I still want to cling to, I feel I need to find for myself, I purposely stay off any beaten track. This is where the raw energy resides – not staying within the comfort zones. And the neighborhood in this way is full of danger.
And in my conditioning, by myself, I’m bound to draw attention because I don’t have the security or the safety of that which I’m part of, especially because I take more than I can eat and more than what is a fair share.
I’ve chosen this mannerism and I hide it, so it kind of throws me out there a bit on a tangent. I do it on purpose and it causes me to get into even more trouble and become even further lost. Or so is the appearance.
When it is nearly hopeless, that is when I am slightly shifted and able to see that it took all of this to shape me into a force of nature, capable of standing alone upon my own two feet. I come to see that this is what it was all about right from the beginning.
This is how I’m able to be shaped into an inner force, or inner presence, which otherwise wouldn’t wake up. My path is more one of going into a raw energy and figuring my way out in such a mannerism that others would purposely ignore. And by all appearances, take on, or put on my plate, or bite off more than I can chew.
Yet in the end it does come together, because for me it is what it takes to become truly free and real.
And then there’s the deeper meaning: In having to feel that which is trying to be a part of me, but not able to bring it into fruition, as long as I remain purposefully lost in the image of remaining separate from a natural connectedness, I come to know that there I can find a completion. Appearances are only appearances on this path.
I never really stop feeling the presence of my father within. This doesn’t mean I discontinue the rebellion as it may appear, because I’m still feeling something inside that’s coming from somewhere else and that’s what’s important.
That is a connection. That connection that one feels as a heart fullness, so I purposely go out on a limb where I have to find the deeper centeredness within the intertwining.
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