Dreaming into Knowing

Maria Petrova

If we were to think of our dreams as little movies, this dream would make an interesting film. It begins simply, in an office, at a new job, and everything seems fine. But then the clues emerge: the decor is strange, the furniture is too low, and then a lunch date who just might be trying to kill her. Then a chase scene, an escape, and a return to where we started. Yet now something has changed, and things begin to fall into place. And, just as in life, it can be the things we learn as we go through a process, the connections we make, that help us sort things out in the end. (At the end of this post there are instructions and a link to download this recording to your computer.)

Jeane: So then the dream goes into the same theme of going back to work, and I’ve gone over to a hospital where the other people I used to work with have been hired. It’s either like I’m being hired, or a job interview. When I get there it’s not like a job interview, it’s more like they’ve hired me – and it’s a Catholic hospital.

There’s a lot of women that run it, and initially when I go there they take me down and they show me an office that will be my office. Well, when I go in the office, I realize it’s a large office but somebody’s put these awful shag rugs on the floor in those awful colors they had back in the 50s or something. And there’s furniture in three or four different places with chairs, but all of the furniture is really too low for me. There’s only one chair that kind of scoots around, that’s still on one of those awful rugs, and it’s obviously just been, you know, grabbed from here and there, and the pieces don’t go together, and I’m not sure how it will work with actually seeing people.

It’s like the size of the room has potential, but the way it’s been furnished is awful. But they almost feel like somebody has accomplished something being able to pull this together, so I don’t say anything. I just make a comment about it, then we kind of go out and they’re still showing me around. I become aware that apparently they hired away the other people I worked with because they pay these very high wages, and then one of the priests, who’s kind of dashing, comes along and I have a feeling he had something to do with why I’m there.

And then someone else takes me out to lunch. when we go out to lunch we go out to another area, and as we’re walking through this area around the hospital I had almost felt like the area around the hospital was maybe a very rough neighborhood, but this when I look around it’s almost a little magical. There’s even this huge carved guitar in front of one of the buildings. It’s kind of got this golden shape to it. It’s rather intriguing to me.

But he takes me past all that, has me climb up on this odd platform where obviously it not the priest, it’s this other man now that’s there, that had taken me out to lunch, and he just wants us to sun ourselves up on this platform in the middle of, it’s almost like this well, or pit, that was even hard to kind of leap up there from this ladder we climbed up. And I’m not that interested in sunning myself, so I start looking around, then when I want to kind of go climb down the ladder the platform we were on turns like almost into like on a windmill or whatever it is that goes around so that, you know, it’s like we start falling a bit, or we can hold onto them, but it’s starting to go around.

And I leap off that, and I’m hanging onto something on the wall across because it is kind of a square pit where we had gone into and then climbed up this ladder onto this platform. Also, I have this feeling right now that he’s trying to catch me, or kill me, so it’s like I do something to break away from that, or even push him, so he falls.

And I go over to the opposite wall and I actually pull down part of the wall and climb in and I’m suddenly in a very kind of interesting area where the wood gleams more, and there’s another priest there. It’s a rather beautiful building. I go out of there and I’m still interested in that area that we walked through, but then I find out that it’s not really that close to the hospital.

I’ve gotten away from the guy that was in the pit. I’ve gone back to the hospital and, although I’ve been told the area around it is quite different, it’s almost up around this little hill and it’s different than what I’ve seen so far, and when I get there I suddenly remember that I tell them I’m not sure, I go into a room where the different women that run the hospital have met, and I said I suddenly remembered that when I retired that I had dropped my license. So I don’t know that they can hire me because I’m not licensed.

But one of the women who really takes charge goes away and gets on the phone and she seems to feel that she’ll just have to pay some sum of money and she can get me my license back.

And what I notice at that point is that, whereas before I had kind of been drifting along like this victim in this dream, I’m suddenly actually quite energized about the idea of going back to work, or even about what’s going on around me. It’s like now I have a feeling like I can just figure out how to redecorate the room myself instead of just kind of being dragged along before.

John: So the dream continues the same motif in the first dream, in which everything around you in your environment is overwhelming, but it’s overwhelming not because it’s too much. It’s overwhelming because of it being kind of out of twang with a flow.

And so you’re having to feel what it’s like to be out-of-twang with something that needs to be unfolding within, in other words, a flow that is important. And you carry this and carry this and carry this, and it’s such a weight and such a burden, it has an exhaustive effect upon one’s nature because you’re held back from being able to be how it is, and who it is, that you’re meant to be in terms of a connectivity inside.

And then finally, at the very end, you are finding the means, in other words, I guess enough oppression I guess is enough, I guess it has run its course, so to speak.

Then something shifted, then something was able to shift, you know, but you haven’t made the transition yet. All you’re doing really is you’re still sensing inside, you’re still in the shadow inside, of what it feels like to be all repressed. And what’s waking up inside of you is the excitement to being able to shift and change.

To download this file, Right Click (for PCs) or Control Click (for Macs) and Save: In the Shadow