Commencement at Alma Mater

from last night's dreams:

I am walking across a campus with a host of people arriving for a big ceremony, something like commencement. I feel wonderful, young and fit and strong. 

    I am a young professor, no older than my early 30s. I am a celebrity, and the college kids are so excited by my presence. They look at me as if I am Indiana Jones. I am wearing well-cut “donnish” clothes – tweed jacket, slacks, shirt and tie. I consider the impact it will have if I turn up later for a lecture I am scheduled to give in a trench coat and broad-brimmed black fedora, which are also part of my wardrobe.

    There is special seating reserved for me in a vast auditorium.

    However, I first go to see a wise woman – wise beyond her apparent years, since she looks to be in her mid-thirties, a little older than my dream self. I present a card. It looks like a tarot card. It is brilliantly colored. The central figure wears a costume patterned in sky-blue and orange lozenges, with a big floppy Renaissance hat. He could be the Fool or the Magician, but I want to call him the Troubadour. The card glows in my hand, casting rays of light.

    When she sees the card, the wise woman reveals a whole set of cards. I am charged with excitement. This is the real deal. These images hold real codes of life and manifestation. I will consult them when I teach courses at the university, where I have been given a special, highly prized, appointment.

Feelings: Delight. I wanted to stay in this dream, and did so, despite the morning light spilling through the windows.

Bernart de Ventadorn

Reality check: The dream felt entirely physical. The body was definitely mine, but not the one I am living in right now. I was a very young professor (of ancient history) long ago at the Australian National University. This is a different college. The buildings are older, and the campus is larger.
    I work with tarot and have taught courses in "Tarot for Dreamers".
    I was introduced to Troubadour songs that spoke to me deeply when I was teaching in southern France earlier this month. One was from Bernart de Ventadorn, the meaning of whose surname ("Adorns the Wind") is already a poem. Another was from Guilhem de Peitieu, Count of Poitou ((1071-1127), who has been called The First Troubadour:

Farai un vers de dreyt nien....

qu'enans fo trobatz en durmen

sobre chevau.

I made this song from pure nothing...

It came to me when I was sleeping

on a horse.

    I cannot immediately identify the wise woman.
    I have seen myself teaching in a pleasant college in the afterlife in dreams and visions over many years.

What do I want to know?

-          Is this an alternate reality?

-          Is it a glimpse of a life I might inhabit after death, in an Alma Mater – School of Mother Soul – where I have seen myself teaching in dreams and visions over decades in this current life?

-          Does it reflect energy and presence I can claim right now?

-          All of the above?

Action: I will study the Troubadour song I was given. I will reflect on the significance of the combination of blue and orange. I may try to reenter the dream, talk to the wise woman, review the rest of the deck of cards, and find out what I am teaching at this nonordinary university.

Bumper stickers: 

1. Live in blue and orange.

2. Indiana Jones is a professor!