This dream from John’s meditation shows again the great subtlety we are dealing with in ourselves. And it has to do with the idea of steering aspects of life, because part of us is always thinking we can make “improvements” to what is happening. It’s a form of “we know what’s best.” And, of course, we don’t. When we involve our ego in that way, we lose our connection to the flow. We learn through our experiences, and sometimes we need to learn things we wouldn’t necessarily choose for ourselves. (At the end of this post there are instructions and a link to download this recording to your computer.)
John: It’s tricky, this dreaming that went on last night, because it all had this subtleness to it.
In my meditation dream, I’m seeing that I’m learning that an outer dynamic is slowing down little by little, the more that the process keeps shifting off to the left, which means it keeps doing that more and more to the left.
And I can see that each time that it deviates that way, it’s losing a speed, or an acuity, and access to insightful information inside of itself. I can tell that. I can see that. And I can actually speed it up a little bit if I want.
And if I do, and in the dream, it’s like I become somewhat of an expert on what to expect because the pattern has existed for so long that I know I can make an improvement—a change, a shift, a bigger opening up.
When I caused it to move back a little bit to the right, or to the left, or whatever is the opposite direction, and by getting it to shift back to the left a little bit, it gains a better access. It’s thinking that it needs to shift to the right because that’s how it sees itself.
And, in my higher self-consciousness, I know that it shouldn’t be doing that because it’s closing itself down. It needs to be shifting to the left. When I do that, the dilemma is it enables me to establish an edge in some fashion. And that then can go to one’s head. In other words, you look good and therefore you draw the attention of however it is that something is able to watch what is opening up and occurring.
So this can be a very subtle kind of ego boost. So, what is going on, and is a kind of meaning to this, is that my doingness, that I think has a meaningful consequence, really doesn’t. I haven’t really taken a natural observation and dealt with this from what I seem to naturally know or have been shown.
The credit for this understanding isn’t mine; it’s to an awakening that has made the difference. I am just happening to be the beneficiary – in terms of the outer appearances only. The dream is showing, however, that over time, the ego can come in and take credit.
As this is happening, instead of knowing how to reflect from within where this is coming from, it’s very easy for the ego to come in and take credit as if I’m the doer. I need to drop the need for recognition. To not do so causes the energy going to the head, instead of the heart where it truly can do some good.
To download this file, Right Click (for PCs) or Control Click (for Macs) and Save: Taking Credit
What is the elephant in the room of a spiritual journey? Our identity, or our ego, however we choose to say it. Working with the universe is an act of service that cannot be accomplished with a personal agenda or motives. What we need to shed to elevate our journey are all the aspects that are ego-driven, because that is what prevents us from developing. And with each step we take in one part of ourselves, we’ll discover another part that isn’t quite so willing to let go. But, ultimately, we’ll have to let go on all levels. (At the end of this post there are instructions and a link to download this recording to your computer.)
Jeane:In the first dream, it feels like I’m in a little café and somebody else and I started redecorating and fixing up this café to run it, but some other people have come in and they want to take it over. I think two or three couples.
So she and I decide we’re going to let them do this. The first thing they do is they get something and they whitewash the walls, which is kind of fun for them because they take away the yellow paint layer and create a white paint layer. And then they’re going about whatever the next thing is that they’re going to do.
There’s one person I feel is not working as well as the others and I want to motivate them. And it feels like to do that I go over and they have a sack, and in the sack are these little stick figures and some gold coins and things. So I take a handful of things out of the sack, which upsets them a bit, but it’s like I’m removing it to hold aside to motivate them, because I’m just not sure where their energy level is on motivation yet.
Then I step back to see how things are going and notice that the couples do seem to be working pretty well together getting the things done that will set the café up to run. And then she and I are getting ready to move on.
It seems like I go away from that dream and I come back, and when I come back to the dream she and I are having a discussion about whether or not, when we move on, we’ll be sort of starting over. I kind of ask what she’s invested in the café and we have a discussion about whether or not we should charge them anything to take over the café.
But she indicates she doesn’t think we should, we’ll just kind of start on fresh.
John: So this is like something that you have, a café, right? And that you’re looking to have other parts of yourself run the café. And initially what you have to do is you have to determine if you have to provide some sort of incentive or something for them to realize why they need to do it.
Then after you’ve gotten beyond that, you’re contemplating as to whether or not you should charge them, because that wasn’t an issue to begin with. And then you realize that you can’t be charging them, either.
Charging them would have something to do with personal involvement in what is taking place. You just make the determination that they run the café and that you move on, which seems to suggest that you’re catching up with a particular part of yourself that seems to have a limitation, you’re imposing a limitation, in terms of a conditionality, in terms of what needs to be done.
And that when you learn to let go of that, then something more just naturally occurs. When that naturally occurs, then whatever that is that naturally occurs is you coming into new frontiers of yourself that aren’t possible as long as you are having to feel that you have to, in some fashion, micromanage the unfoldment.
Jeane:And in this last dream, it feels like I’ve gone to some kind of a compound that’s run by a man – I almost feel like it’s a Mormon cult or something. And when we enter – I think there’s my dad, you’re around, and somebody else is, too – it feels like we’re given different vehicles by which we travel, maybe like in one case somebody’s riding an elephant, for instance.
I see this elephant kind of comes up to the window to where I am and I look and I look to see what’s on the back of the elephant. There are some things that are put on the back of the elephant, something that’s written. I can’t quite recall what it was.And then the elephant kind of runs off.
I seem to be walking with you and observing more. It’s like we’re trying to investigate something that’s happening here. I realize everybody will probably go off to some kind of a meeting and maybe we’ve done something to individually stimulate the elephants, you and I.
But you’ve gone over, there’s a body, you notice a body over to the side and you go over and you’ve taken a shovel and you’ve actually kind of chopped the arm off the body. It’s kind of bleeding, because it’s like you want to investigate what’s going on there, and I can see that this disturbs the cult leader.
I’m kind of looking to see what we do next, but I think that’s when you told me we should do dreams. It was like I was still kind of somewhere in the twilight zone with this dream.
John: The elephant represents something kind of ancient that is trying to fit in, or surface, or be in a present scenario. And a cult leader represents a conceptual, spiritual illusion about how something is. And the sorting out that’s taking place has to do with recognizing, in terms of what you’re going through, how it is that what you’re going through facilitates the unfoldment of some part and aspect of yourself that needs to unfold.
The greater acuity comes from the elephant. In other words, it’s like the elephant ran off and that signified something was unbalanced. And then, in terms of how something is being investigated or probed out, that kind of continues in the element of imbalance because from the perspective of yourself, you’re weighing.
What you’re doing, you’re playing with a type of the heart. You’re trying to weigh up, weigh these things out. In other words, the elephant running off holds a vibration that’s important in some element, in terms of how it is that you have a sense of balance, in terms of what is in front of you, and what is taking place around you.
And then the endeavor to investigate or determine things also is something that suggests or indicates an imbalance, because you can see that something isn’t right. You’re still following the energy out of whatever it was that caused this crackup, or this lack of balance, in terms of the scenario in which the elephant, or this ancient part of yourself, kind of went into revolt.
The first dream indicates you’ve taken on a responsibility, or a quality, or an unfoldment, but in the second part of the dream you’re questioning it again. In the second part of the dream, you’re finding yourself derailed, in other words. There’s something that has disturbed this sense of balance.
The first part is where you have little issues but you slowly learn to set those personal issues aside. In the second dream, you’re part of a scenario now. In other words, the way the energy is in the first dream is it brings you up to a particular point where you’re now part of something. And now that you’re part of something, the question then is that there is something unbalanced yet in terms of what you’re part of, in which something about what is unfolding you haven’t been able to sort out.
It’s as if some part of yourself got chopped off. And the elephant running off and the thing that has to do with the arm are correlated. The elephant running off was like the first indication of something where there was a retraction, or shutting down, or closing down, or withdrawal inside. And then the chopping off of the arm and whatnot is showing that there’s something about the wholeness of the package of things, of the flow of things, the unfoldment of things that’s missing.
So it’s kind of a dream that portrays a kind of doubt. The theme of the dreaming from my way of describing it had to do with looking at what vies for the heart, and trying to distinguish, or sort out, in relationship to how it is that the heart is able to embrace what lies before it.
And in your first dream you had a few density issues that involved basically a personal entanglement and you learned to go through that, and so the sense of that dream had a whole airy, freedom sense. It left the image of the sky’s-the-limit kind of possibilities.
But in the second dream you have the reactivity, that has come back into the equation, that is shutting off the access that is needed. It’s quite a contrast. I mean, one minute you break through, and then in the next minute you don’t get a chance to enjoy the breakthrough because now all of a sudden you’re having to contend with some mannerism that’s creating a distortion or a distraughtness.
The elephant running off, the image of an elephant running off, is an image of something going berserk. And then the idea of trying to calmly figure out what is haywire by finding a body and chopping an arm off and whatnot, is kind of an aspect of figuring it out, but the big issue has to do with the berserkness of the elephant.
The other is trying to claw back and untangle the web of things, but it’s all said and the whole thing has to do with the mannerism upon which something went berserk. And what is there in that berserk element that is shutting something down in some huge degree?
The investigating of it to try to claw back or come back is secondary. It’s looking at bits and pieces and components. The whole issue is that elephant running off. That’s the main dilemma that was like a type of stabbing to such a degree that there were reverberations from the stabbing that you can take and explore, and probe, and investigate, but the degree to which something got hurt like that, that’s where the huge issue is.
To download this file, Right Click (for PCs) or Control Click (for Macs) and Save: The Elephant in the Room
John: In my dreaming, the theme was having to deal with the parts of oneself that need to open up.
What prevents us from opening up to our inner connections is our indulgence in the senses, and our ego-identity, and all of our psychological mannerisms that we have learned to present to the outer world. This creates a shallowness that chokes off the depth we have inside us.
Another way to say this is, we can feed our egos and our personal needs, and feel ourselves separate from the universe around us, or we can experience our spiritual connection, through a greater inner depth, to everyone and everything around us. They are mutually exclusive. The degree to which we allow our old patterns and psychologies to dictate our view of life, is the degree to which we cut ourselves off from our innate universal connection and spiritual guidance.
So, how can we constrain the ego-based aspects of us that we use to navigate this cultural society? It can be compared to an unruly child who has to be taken under the authority of a parent in order to stop its willfulness.
As any child grows, they begin to question which limitations are important and start to find their own way. As they emerge from the shadow of their parents, they come into their own, in a combination of what they have been taught and what they naturally have inside them. They learn to function within the greater design.
That’s what we see as a normal process, in the outer, in terms of growing up, but it can be stated in another way in terms of the inner, which is what my dream does.
In this dream, a person has financial resources available to him. He’s not yet an adult. His parents monitor his development. The resources, over time, have diminished and he comes to feel the loss of that stability. In other words, his parents are always pruning him and guiding him (his funds are diminishing), and the day arrives when he has to be allowed his freedom.
Under the guidance of the parents these financial resources were not allowed to consume his identity. He wasn’t yet at a point where he knew how to handle them without getting lost. Over time, the degree to which the indulgence is still a latent pattern that he can’t shake off, there’s a sorrow over the loss, i.e., he has trouble letting go. He gets increasingly frustrated with his parents.
The time arrives when all this young man has left, just before he’s on his own, is $10,000. Clinging to that resource he unconsciously realizes that he’s distancing himself from his parents.
Finally, his mother says to him, “I know you feel you know more than your parents and are angry at us for what has happened, so I have decided to quit interfering. You can do what you want with the money left. You’re on your own.”
Isn’t that a strange dream?
The dream is causing me to see that I’m overly involving myself with current financial conditions at the expense of my inner development. I used to do that much more than I do now but, then again, to what degree do I still allow that indulgence?
That’s always a question: I may have come a long way, but what greater depth am I still cutting myself off from? What I’m cutting off in myself by this mannerism is the linkage to Creation – to the feminine. So a frustration has set in.
The frustration comes from me (the young man), yet at the same time, the parents (also part of me) realize that at some point I have to break free because that indulgence closes things off. The feminine sees this more than I do.
In other words, I’m letting the indulgence dictate. We all do this: we cycle around and create an internal dialogue with one of our psychologies and we go around and around with it and it has a hold on us.
The time has arrived where I have to take this inner state and own it, as something which has been handed out to me as the thought of God. In the mishandling of it (the money and the psychology), it becomes my curse, so to speak, to do with as I want.
The challenging question is, can I take that step and not let go of the connection I’m meant to have with Creation that’s of utmost importance? Because one has to manage do both.
What is the elephant in the room of a spiritual journey? Our identity, or our ego, however we choose to say it. Working with the universe is an act of service that cannot be accomplished with a personal agenda or motives. What we need to shed to elevate our journey are all the aspects that are ego-driven, because that is what prevents us from developing. And with each step we take in one part of ourselves, we’ll discover another part that isn’t quite so willing to let go. But, ultimately, we’ll have to let go on all levels. (At the end of this post there are instructions and a link to download this recording to your computer.)