On a spiritual journey, we can’t remain students forever. Why? Because studying a path, or understanding the ways of the universe, are intellectual processes. That’s not how spiritual growth happens. It happens by putting into practice those understandings. And the best way to do that is by living a life in the world, but with a new and focused attention on the reasons why we are doing things, and for whom. (At the end of this post there are instructions and a link to download this recording to your computer.)
Jeane: This is a dream I had during a treatment with the Taoist healer this morning, and in this dream initially I’m at some kind of a university.
And as I go into the room where I take the class it has a certain free flow to it, and it feels like I always go to the back of the room where there are some lockers and find some black-and-white like sandals or slippers there, or shoes that you put on. Or sometimes I will go and take them off, but that seems to be the first thing to do as I go into the room.
It feels like there are several sessions of that going to the class, and being in the class, and then as I go out into the university hallway it feels like there’s something that’s going to be occurring and other people, even feel like that Sufi groups are going to be coming and visiting, or different people anyway are going to be coming and visiting.
But during this it’s like I leave the university briefly. I go out through a small town to a countryside to an area that I think is more like a place where there’s a little bit of an exhibit or a museum that you go into, and there’s a couple that is also going there to see it there. They look a little more like a motorcycle couple as I would call it, but nice.
And as I go in there, instead of it being like a museum I find myself in kind of a room that has glass around it such that if you look up you can see this log cabin people live on in a kind of pretty valley just up a ways. And then I see to the left that there’s another cabin where maybe guests can spend the night – when I had thought I was just going to be briefly looking at things in a museum.
And in this round room is kind of a glass top with a hole in it, and the couple is also in this room, well then this big bird flies down into the middle of the room, through this hole in the ceiling, it’s a glass ceiling. This bird looks like a huge owl that’s red with almost like horns and a huge beak. It’s a strange looking bird. It eats something in the middle of the room, or is pecking at it, and the couple is really kind of fascinated with this bird.
And I know there are a couple other different kind of birds nearby, too, but I suddenly feel this urgency that I have to get back rather than pay attention to the bird, and I go outside and, sure enough, there had been some water along the pathway. I mean it’s almost like where water came up to the shore there, and it’s starting to rise all of a sudden. It’s even covered the easier pathway, but I see some places where I can get a foothold.
The couple holds back. They may even stay there. But I feel like even though I get pretty wet, and the water like rises up the legs and everything, that if I grab onto the bank and keep my feet where I can see some footholds then I get around a little bend and can get back then on a normal path and get into town.
I go into town. There are a couple of people there that we suddenly have to kind of climb up on something and inch our way along to get past another part that’s like a railing, and somebody that was behind me pushes in front of me, and I think I step on her foot a little bit, but we just joke about it because I’m just in a rush to get back to the university.
And when I get back to the university I realize what I’m concerned about is I don’t seem to have my shoes. I feel like I go into that room to find my black-and-white shoes, and the room is elongated, it’s even running into another classroom now, and it’s expanded out another way, and the professor that’s always there is not there today.
Another professor has come in, and I go out into the hallway and I hear that there are three professors that have disappeared. No one knows what has happened to them. One of them was mine. And then I also go back into the classroom, then, because I know my professor has disappeared but I get a little bit of that sinking feeling of, what if suddenly they’re going to give you a test?
I can’t remember if I’ve taken the book home and studied it. Maybe I need to do that. And at the same time, I can’t seem to stay in the classroom because I want to come out in the hallway and know what’s happening and where the professor has disappeared to.
So, that’s the dream.
John: So you put on shoes to do the spiritual practice, and you take off the shoes to be natural in the outer, and then something gets removed with the bird coming down and eating and devouring something while you’re in the outer, but your whole attention is to get back to the classroom. This is all opposite, you know.
It’s as if you’re being thrown out of the classroom. In other words, it’s like you can’t hold onto the classroom. It’s not that you’re thrown out, you just can’t hold onto the classroom, you can’t hold onto that process.
And you have to go out into the outer, and you actually go out into the outer in kind of an interesting way because you don’t have your shoes on, which denotes respect, and in that process something gets removed or taken away. But you don’t seem to pay much attention to that because your attention is thinking you have got to come back to the classroom. And when you come back to the classroom, there’s nothing for you to find. You can’t find the teacher, can’t find the shoes.
It’s an opposite dream than what you would be inclined to expect conceptually. What you would be inclined to expect conceptually is that there is something to the classroom that’s important, to have to come back to the classroom, to always keep gaining something more and more and more. But it’s almost as if that’s taken away, or isn’t feeding you, and so you’re being thrown into this school of hard knocks.
That’s what’s causing something to change, or to advance, or at least something that changed in terms of something getting removed. And when one goes back, tries to go back to that, it’s very, very confusing. It’s like a type of dream where you’re no longer under the protection. That was what I thought of right at the very beginning even, you’re no longer under a type of protection.
In other words when you’re under a kind of protection you’re being shown, and you’re being told, and it’s kind of a safe place. But now when you’re going out into the outer, it’s the outer that seems to be working on you, in other words, as the greater teacher.
Another way of looking at it is, it’s like you are going into the outer, you’re going out from the classroom, and something awakens, or the process continues in that regard, but you can’t go back to the inner to find it. When you go back to the inner you can’t find your shoes, you can’t find your teacher or anything.
Now, the other thing that’s odd about this, because it doesn’t make sense that one would be at this point, but it is said that at some point the teacher releases the student, in other words, is giving them back all of their karma, and then they have learned what they needed to learn, or grown in the way that they needed to have grown, and now they have to contend with things in the outer.
And it’s the outer then, that shapes them, that’s the greater teacher. But for the longest period of time one is under the threshold of the teacher, of the classroom, of the safe place, and to try to cling to a safe place that’s no longer safe can be very discombobulating.
Can’t find the shoes and can’t find the teacher, and yet something goes on in the outer, yet your attention is to try to come back to the school, to the university, although the action is happening outside of the university, and that there is nothing more to be found at the university. You seem to be able to hold a heartfulness, or go into life in a particular way, when you go out without the shoes, and you go out and in that way of going out into life, something changes, something gets removed.
Complete opposite image, isn’t it? In other words, a person that sees themselves on a spiritual path would be looking at this in a complete opposite way, where they would be, somehow or another, taking their shoes off to come into the university, putting the shoes on to go out. Yet you’re finding the grace with the shoes out. You’re showing the respect in the outer. You’re giving it its proper due.
I do not know if that’s scary or not, because you give the outer a lot of respect, and I have a feeling the outer is going to be breaking down and carrying on in a lot more ways here very shortly.
To download this file, Right Click (for PCs) or Control Click (for Macs) and Save: Into the World
