When we think about addicts, or of being addicted to something, it implies that when exposed to a certain thing a person can no longer be trusted – they can’t control themselves. On our spiritual path, we are trying to elevate, and elevating, or being finer, means that we can’t be as “coarse” in certain ways (determined specifically by the territory we are approaching). This dream lays out this scenario, in that the dreamer is trying to control herself during a probationary period. (At the end of this post there are instructions and a link to download this recording to your computer.)
Jeane: So I had a kind of long dream and, in this dream, it seems like I was something like a probation officer. And initially I get called down to, I think it’s something like a halfway house, to talk to this girl, or woman, actually, because I think I’m like middle-aged in this, to start working with her so that she won’t end up back in jail.
I have to meet with her, check out who her friends are, and is she actually going to work and getting a job because half the time they go back to doing whatever they were doing before that ended them up in jail. That seems to go okay.
But then some time goes by, and I’m called down to start working with this man, who maybe stole cars or did something that’s ended him up in jail. And it’s partly a problem for me because I find him quite attractive. So I try to avoid being alone with him. But I seem to end up working with him, at times, where he lives. And he lives in a household with women, like an aunt, and mother, people like that. And I go over to visit him once, and it’s like he has to hide me in the closet because I don’t want anyone to know I’m actually going to see him in his room, even though I’m keeping my distance from him. And because the aunt and the grandmother come in the room I kind of check them out, and some of them seem to see me, and some don’t.
I have a sense that I’m married, and maybe I’ve even become a judge, but I still continue to do some of his probation work, and I’m still working with him. And there’s still a strong attraction between the two of us. I’m still not sure he’s staying away from activities that would end him up back in jail.
So as a move to make sure that doesn’t happen, I have him almost like kidnapped or taken to this island, and on this island they run some kind of really strict program that they put you through and it’s a type of program that would keep you out of jail. But I can’t seem to handle the separation from him, so I go to the island to be with him.
We go off by ourselves, and we want to go swimming in a certain area. And suddenly there’s this boat of people we know coming to rescue us because we didn’t know it, but the area that we chose to go swimming has sharks in the water. And the sharks have actually attacked us and cut both of us up, but our friends get there in time to save us. That was the whole dream.
John: So this is a dream in which there’s a part of yourself that is in what’s called a testing zone, or probation zone. In other words, it’s like where you’re able to have certain experiences inside of yourself to see how you handle those experiences. It’s a probationary area because you haven’t let go of all of the things that one has to release, or be still and move away from – before one can be in this area in a non-probationary way.
And the dream is pointing out that the reason why it continues to be a probation is that there is a part of yourself that you can’t trust, that has an addiction, or an affliction, that somehow or another you hold on to. So a part of you sees something, recognizes something, but can’t fully stay with it, or be with it; it’s of a probationary sense because there is a part of yourself that still is holding out in some other capacity of a type of need, or desire, or want and then it never goes away. That it will draw it and, if you put your attention to it, it draws you into isolation and into danger.
And the idea of something like sharks, or whatever, it’s a quality of danger that is associated with a mood or a mannerism, that you’re holding on to, that triggers this kind of reflective imagery.
So it’s an interesting dream because it’s pointing out that it’s almost as if there is a type of dispensation that enables something to be experienced, but it’s not something that can be experienced in a long-lasting way because you have a wayward nature that keeps flickering in the background. And when and if that were to live itself out it would take you back into a type of amnesia, or loss of recognition, of a quality of depth that you flicker and play with in a probationary way.
In other words, the two don’t work hand in hand; one tends to veil the other. Or the understanding of one causes a revealing that comes as a sacrifice to the other. And this contrast, this tug-of-war contrast, doesn’t seem to be something that subsides.
To download this file, Right Click (for PCs) or Control Click (for Macs) and Save: On Probation