Dream School

Last night I had a wonderful dream; one of those that I feel is worth risking losing sleep over by writing it down right away, even at 3:26 AM.

I'm in a class. I love this class; we've got a great teacher. He's passionate, learned and resourceful in his teaching. We're reading from erotica magazines he's ordered for the class. He's a maverick, risks upsetting the authorities by choosing such a risque curriculum; I admire him. He loves to teach and cares for his students. He asks 3 different women to read the same sentence on page 3, to give their dramatic interpretation of the reading. I'm ready with my reading but he doesn't call on me, which doesn't diminish what I learn from hearing the other women read. As I walk out of class I hear him sigh as he moves to his lectern by the window at the left front of the class; "Oh, the dependence of women."

I have another class with a young woman teacher next; also at the end of class I hear her sigh the same thing to herself. I turn and tell her how amazingly synchronistic her saying that is and why.

I wake up delighted to have a synchronicity experience in a dream and to hear such a loud and clear message. I title the dream "Oh the dependence of women". Dream schools are one of my favorite dream locations. They alert me to the fact that there's something I have to learn or something I am learning. I've also met some amazing teachers in dreaming that have helped me learn big lessons for my waking life. I recognize many lessons in this dream and many keys that may help me open doors that are blocking me in waking life. This is a very good dream and I'm grateful for it.

Also relevant is that yesterday I received one of those fowarded emails from a friend who thinks differently than I do; it was about how feminism has ruined life for women and reminiscing about the good old days when a woman was pampered and kept by her husband and had it made without going out in the world to work, the way our grandmothers had it made. Well, I don't know about her grandmothers, but one of mine died very young, poor, dependent on family and ill, leaving her children to fend for themselves at an early age, and the other died relatively young, maybe in her fifties, years before my grandfather, after 18 pregnancies, 13 children.

Obviously my dream source agrees with me. Yet, it touched so perfectly on my own dependency, giving me so much to think about, that I thought I'd share it with you. Any thoughts?

Some Dream Games and Meet My Cat

When I'm going through a dream dry spell, I turn to my journals from years past and play some dream games; this way I don't obsess about not remembering my dreams. Plus, the perspective that time gives me about the meaning of past dreams is one of the major marvels of working with my dreams.

For instance, I'll go through past journals and make note of the images in the dreams of a particular month. I write summaries of each under the dream dates on a new page which I then install at the beginning of that month. When I go back to that journal the next time, each month's summary page sparks more understanding for me of my life journeys. I recognize personal struggles with love and fear, my health and my spiritual development; they're tremendously relevant to me now. Often an image makes me laugh while, at the same time, it's opening my eyes to something difficult for me. This is a convincing proof to me that dream messages come from some divine source of Love.

For instance, today while perusing my 2001 journal, I opened at random to the summary page for the month of September. The first summary describes a dream where pairs of my shoes are scattered across the bedroom floor; my note reads, 'The many different paths I've walked.' I also note that one pair is 'baby shit brown' and I wrote, 'very old shit'. I think that's a wonderfully funny way to point me to childhood wounds which might still be holding me back.

As I write this I realize that I chose September, 2001, a time that shook our collective world. I remember that I had several dreams dating from July 4 of 2001 up through September featuring terrorists. Robert Moss has written about how many people from around the world reported precognitive dreams with elements of the fateful 9/11 catastrophe in them. I'll take a closer look at mine; perhaps it will give me something to share with you in a future post.

Back to dream games, though, this illustrates how re-reading old journals often uncovers dreams of the future which weren't recognized as precognitive at the time. That's just what happened with the arrival of my wonderful cat Sunny.

After the death of my cat, Lucy, in 2005 I decided I didn't want any more pets, I wanted to be free to travel, etc. My husband kindly accepted my wishes, though he'd always rather have animals around him. One early morning in August of 2007, I opened my back door on a glorious day to find a beautiful gray and white Maine Coon under my lilac bush, skinny as a rail. He looked up at me and MEOWED! I knew he was saying, "Feed me; I'm hungry," so I put out a can of tuna and he let me pet him while he ate. It's a very long story, but it was love at first sight. Now he's installed as the grand pasha of our home and we're both very happy to serve him.

What I couldn't figure out is why I didn't dream about him ahead of time; with my past cats, a dream had foretold their coming. I went back in that year's journal and, sure enough, in June I found a dream entry telling how a dear friend (who in waking life was always threatening to drop off a cat for us) had brought us a Maine Coon kitten. The last line of that dream report is, 'And I couldn't believe how much I love him.'

I often tell people this; we dream the future all the time, we just don't pay attention. If we write dreams down, we learn to pay attention. Using dream journals for self-reflection, meditation and personal growth is not only rewarding, it's fun. I hope these ideas are of some service; I'd love to hear yours.