the garden of eden – Dreaming into Knowing

Jeane: In this first dream I’m in the city and I’m walking home. My mother is there and she hasn’t visited for a while. I seem to be walking barefoot.

As I’m walking, a female friend distracts me. I walk up to the top of a very tall structure, like bleachers in a stadium. At the top my friend and I are looking over the edge and my friend is talking to me about the children of some people we knew in the past who are living in the area. It feels like I’m estranged from these people.

I go from one part of this structure to another where there are some loose bricks. I toss some bricks down. I feel like this action has caused harm to someone. That makes me feel a certain shame and I become defensive about it. My friend and I just continue our dialogue and then I leave.

I’m carrying some shame about what I’ve done. It feels like I’ve stolen something or killed something. I don’t know what I’ve done for sure, but I then go into a simple home that seems to be where my spiritual teacher lives.

I’m sitting on the floor with someone else and the teacher is talking, but because of what I’ve done I don’t want the teacher to get too close. I feel like I can hide because he’s allergic to dogs and there are two dogs in the room that almost cover me up; I think that will keep the teacher away.

The teacher is sitting cross-legged on the floor. Then he comes over and just takes me in his arms – I can’t hide at all. He’s whispering to me. I feel really lost because I feel like I can no longer hide anything I’ve ever done…

John: The theme of this dream has to do with responsibility, in the sense that you have an inner recognition in terms of what’s meant to be and you feel a responsibility to help it reach fruition. The first image of you heading home to visit with your mother gives you a glimpse of this wholeness.

Your home is a place where everything is known and complete. On the way home, however, an aspect of you (the female friend), which lies between you and the state of wholeness, causes a distraction.

In other words, this distraction is a part of you that hasn’t caught up with the sense of knowing – yet. So you try to reconcile this part of you, and your sense is that you need to establish a better vantage point, or get a better perspective. In other words, you’re trying to rise up – you go to the top of the stadium.

You take this spiritual step with the idea that it will help you get oriented, but what it ends up doing is the opposite of your intention, i.e., instead of making a connection you end up inadvertently losing contact with that other part of you. That’s because your spiritual step is tainted by a spiritual illusion. You’re trying to bring something together by gaining a better view, but it doesn’t work.

What that’s showing you is that deep down you thought you could handle this transition on your own. Instead, you embarrassed yourself. Your attempts we’re not quite clear enough, or strong enough, or conscious enough to follow that inner sense to fruition, so you’re ashamed at having let some aspect of it go.

Said another way, you have a certain sense that knows what’s meant to be, and you believe that you have the connections to be able to help what’s meant to be reach fruition. However, the dream is showing you that this isn’t going to work. You still need help.

So the help you need comes in the image of the teacher who is the go-between to enable you to realize and recognize how you have veiled yourself. You’ve veiled yourself as a result of shame. You find yourself needing to hide because you’ve failed to uphold what you know or heard deep inside and felt you could maintain or sustain in terms of the process – you thought you could find your own way back.

It’s unusual in that it has a whole Garden of Eden modality about it where the fruit of something in life, when eaten or taken in on a personal level, causes you to think that you are independent and can do it by yourself. But that illusion (because it’s ego-based) causes a shame to rise up to the point where you want to hide. The consequence is that you have been thrown out of what is natural and a part of who you are (i.e., banished from the Garden).

John: Now there’s another way we can look at your dream (see The Manuscript and Hiding in Plain Sight). In it you’re acting like there are certain little things that need to happen, but a part of you knows better than that. There’s the symbolism of the office, and the author is a depiction of a type of wealth – books, universal wisdom, or however you want to look at it. The wealth of that aspect is opening up, but it can be grounded just as quickly. At some point earlier for you, this energy was opened up but it didn’t go into your life in the right way, so it had to be shut off because otherwise it was an abuse.

There’s a very interesting way of looking at this type of abuse, or misuse. For example, when Adam ate of the Tree of Knowledge, he was banished from Paradise. In the end, it was said that this was part of the Will of God, because what was important was that Adam become God’s deputy on earth. Adam wasn’t meant to sit in Paradise. So in a sense he had to screw up so that he then could be on earth, yet still have the deputy quality inside. And so his journey back to God is one of redemption, surrender, and forgiveness; turning towards the real all over again. That would not have been possible had he stayed in Paradise.

That’s why it’s said that the closer, and higher, you get to a particular quality of realization inside, if you misstep, the devastation of the fall is that much greater. At the same time, the devastation of the fall, and the veils that come with it, are all part of a greater plan and understanding. As you then work your way back, however long it takes, to where you had fallen off the pinnacle, you then bring in more gravity, more clarity, and more appreciation. You take on an expanded or evolved role. That’s the development journey.

So that’s the flip side of the setbacks that take place. Each one causes you to build a more refined and stable overall beingness, which has the quality of, and relates to, a very deep thought – man being just a thought of God in its truest essence – that then works with all other thoughts or onenesses without deviation. Whatever it takes to create that appreciation and awareness is what tends to happen.

In Adam’s particular case, he felt guilty and he grieved. He slunk around as if he could actually hide himself from God. He went through all kinds of gyrations that did nothing to help his predicament, and for long periods of time it actually made the situation denser, until he finally reached a turning point where he could find forgiveness.

Of course, this process was very confusing because nothing like it had ever been seen before. Before this, the angels were in a singing-the-glory-and-praises modality. Then they were tasked with service toward man, to bow before man. Adam is walking around, an abomination, and yet the angels were supposed to recognize that there’s something more going on even though they didn’t understand it.

It takes a long time before it can be recognized that something more is to emerge as a result. If you look at it from the angelic standpoint, it could look like Satan won the battle. But no! Satan only has a role to play as part of this whole thing. And Satan can more perfectly play the role because he too is linked to Creation, because his roots are in the high plateaus of Creation. So he can be effective in a way that the angels can’t. He can be a worthy opponent against man, giving man something to stretch against as part of opening up this greater dimension. The stretching and the struggle can cause man to take on more of the deputy role.

So that’s kind of an overview of the whole thing. The same pattern exists when you are coming back to this huge inner dimension of yourself: you fell, and now you have worked your way back and are ready to assume the mantle again. We even experience this process as simply as when we’re walking around and we’re perturbed or dense about something and we can’t shake it off, and then suddenly we’re feeling gleeful and happy because we can sense that we’re very close to something, you know, on the verge of breaking through.

This is the territory your dream is playing in.