I was up in the middle of the night, initially feeling quite unwell and oppressed as I tried to keep up with the troubling news from Egypt, visiting many international news sites to get some global perspective.
When I returned to bed in the early hours, as soon as I closed my eyes I had the vivid impression of mountain walls rising high into the sky, in a desert landscape. There was the strong sense of a firestorm coming, as if the air is filled with a combustible gas that a single spark will ignite. Above the mountains, I saw demonic figures rear and whirl, not fully substantial yet, but taking form.
I don’t often see demons. My guess is these desert demons are ifrit, the worst of the djinns in the demonology of the Arab world. Their substance, as I recall, is fire. I have no desire to help them materialize in the noosphere now, and bring in the burning times. So I banish this image, washing my inner screen with light.
My thought returned to Egypt, and I wondered whether I had been give a glimpse of forces at work in the reality that is hidden from ordinary perception.
Sleep took me, and I dreamed:
Over the Arch of the Bridge to Happy Adventures
I am with a group of very fit younger people. They are wearing dark blue crew neck sweaters and matching pants and watch caps. They may be Special Forces, though I don’t see weapons.
I follow them up the rise of a great arch above a very long bridge. The shape of the arch is reminiscent of Sydney Harbor Bridge. As I go higher, I find that the material of the arch is flimsier and flimsier. There are gaps through which it would be easy to fall. Sometimes there is just a loose flapping panel, inside the outer rim, between one section and the next. I can’t keep up with the young people. At the same time, my dream body is operating much better than my physical one.
At the high point of the arch, I realize I must be dreaming, but don’t want to test this by letting myself fall to the water far below. I notice that there now seems to be no bridge surface below; the arch would therefore be the only way of crossing without taking a different route or mode of transportation altogether.
I get across safely. I am now involved in a whirl of conference and workshop activity in a city among mountains and connect quickly with wonderful new friends.
I wake much restored, physically, emotionally, mentally.
My dream of crossing the bridge reminds me a bit of a dream at the start of the financial crisis of 2008 in which I am in a high performance car and find myself plummeting down a near-vertical descent with no chance of stopping or turning back. Eventually the slope levels out and becomes a floating bridge. My car slows to a stop just before crashing through the plate glass windows of an upscale retail center. I took that dream as guidance to sit back and let the money crisis work its way through. The Arch dream also comes out okay, but here definite action and forward movement are required.
I am especially interested in whether others are dreaming into the current world crisis. "As within, so without"; it is sometimes difficult to sift what in a dream is about our personal world and what relates to the world out there. The same dream may involve both.
17 comments:
This is interesting Robert. I had some dreams a while back, before I read about Egypt. One little piece, from memory, was around me walking down an unfamiliar street. Two guys talking about something I couldn't really understand but I felt a sense of "flurry" in the air around them. I start waking up more in the dream. Not liking where I am, turning a corner, cars are on fire. Fire is every where. I trip and start falling, falling into a sense of "furry" and fire. I'm saying breath Patty breath (always helps me) and realize I'm falling up. It hurts, I can't breath, but I keep saying breath, breath. Then I say, I'm falling up and that means to me that I can fly. Then I feel wings waving, waving and away. Then smoke and clear and I am gone from there.
I have been thinking this might have been around Egypt. It is a country that I know in my dreams and those remembered dreams take place in some past and/or altered time. Of course I know it from movies, stories friends have brought back and the news also.
Patty
PS I think it took me a few nights before I went into a restorative dream. It was about a tree. Thanks to you and a few others from the forum, tress are rich in healing and meaning for me.
Now I'm thinking about how you have said ask your dreams. Another easy powerful technique I will no longer disregard! Just ask your dreams!
Patty
Patricia - I can certainly see a possible link, if these were my dreams. The streets of Egyptian cities are full of smoke and fire, as one building after another is put to the torch.
Patricia (2) - It is wonderful to have a special tree in the imagination (even better if it's in nature as well) where one can put oneself for grounding, centering and healing. I start nearly all my workshops by helping people to find or rediscover their personal Tree Gate, as described in my book "Dreamgates".
I visited, either waking or in twilight sleep, an Egyptian student whom I met under trying circumstances in college in 1969. I saw him back in Egypt, taking refuge behind a burning white van near the museum. I'm sure, in my dream, that he was one of the demonstrators but with no clear purpose except trouble. In reading your dream, after the news and after this brief excursion into the current life of an acquaintance with no moral or spiritual boundaries, I find hope in your dream. In my dream of yours, although I'm feeling I'm on somewhat shaky territory with the gaps and not seeing a bridge below, I land safely. There are young people involved in this dream, and hopefully special forces that are on the side of a sustainable future in these dangerous places. I would like to know that they have the staying power to turn things around in world events. I'm glad, in my dream, that I have the power of light with me as demons emerge who have the power of fire. There is a strong demonic force at work but there is also a strong force of light available globally and personally to us. We need to consciously bring it in.
Wanda - This is most interesting. If it were my perception, I would certainly be open to the possibility that it was spontaneous remote viewing of what my unsavory Egyptian acquaintance was doing - and an insight into the true character of some of those making most trouble in the streets. Yes, there is hope in my dream of crossing the Arch, and I hope that it forecasts the emergence of a new group of younger people who can help to bring a sustainable future.
It seems there are "demonic" forces that are forever active, seeking to feed on human hatred and violence. And yes, we can and must call in the Light.
The most disturbing fact to come out of the news reports yesterday was the sacking of the Cairo Museum and the most uplifting was the human chain formed by citizens to protect it. Where else in the whole world does the past have such significance - nowhere I can think of as I recall the sight of the Baghdad Museum after the US invasion. If this were my dream I would have to think of relocation, the facts of not being able to keep up with 'the young' and 'Crossing the Great Water' via a bridge seemingly only likely to last long enough to get you one way as you find yourself being left behind, then the celebration of being in a city surrounded by mountains (pos. Canberra?) with new friends and commencing work again etc. all seems to indicate relocation to me. In fact the tone of this dream seems very different to the other one you compare it to about the US financial crash. Could it be you are 'seeing' more than you are willing to accept and could it be the cause of your deep agitation before going to sleep. Hope I have used the correct wording and acceptable manner of saying how I might view this dream if it were mine...I have not tried to write this sort of thing before and would not wish to offend.
Cobweb - Though I am willing to hear and respond to calls from my native Oz, I must tell you that if I thought I would be going to Canberra, that would be the source of the very deepest agitation! One of the greatest frustrations of my early life - as someone who loves the water - was that I spent all of nine years, from the age of 13, in that waterless administrative/academic capital.
I see I sowed some confusion by comparing the arched bridge to Sydney Harbor Bridge. I really don't think it is the Sydney bridge; that was just my quick way of conveying how the arch looks.
I always welcome feedback on my own dreams, and always learn from it. And it is imperative that we not only start by saying "if it were my dream" but sustain that mode throughout our comments. You shift pretty quickly into sounding as if you are telling the dreamer how it is, by saying "you, you, you" instead of "if it were my life" etc. If you missed it, please read my recent post at my other blog on the necessity of playing the "If It Were My Dream" game; you'll find that here -http://blog.beliefnet.com/dreamgates/2011/01/if-it-were-my-dream.html
And perhaps you are missing the depth of restored hope and energy from which I emerged from the sleep dream. Feelings, feelings, feelings - always our first and best guide to what is going on in a dream.
Nina - If your fire dreams were mine, they raise, as so often, the quandary of decided how much is personal versus transpersonal, and literal versus symbolic. The scene of the man burning the flag with the Star of David could play out just about anywhere in my world - it's on TV all the time. I would be concerned if, in the dream, this scene was being enacted in my neighborhood.
I'm inclined to view the scene of the fire above the trees in a more symbolic way. I'm with my parents, who are sorting our baggage, so it seems (for me) that there is some family history to be resolved. The fire heats the soles of my feet, so I take off my flip-flips, and in this part I feel a connection with "soul" and I also here a play on the English phrase about "putting my feet to the fire". Is there something here that challenges me to reclaim something of soul, for myself and/or my family?
Nina - Thanks so much for sharing. I wish your brother well. I've found in my life and my practice that whenever a child is lost through miscarriage or abortion there is soul healing to be done with not only the survivors but with the spirit who did not make it through this time.
There is a theme that emerged in one dream yesterday that perhaps is reflective of the goings-on in Egypt.
I dreamt of a friend who felt (he does in real life) trapped in his work situation. The workplace he was in comprised a dark, windowless & doorless room. There was little light in there. All of the staff were working in small cubby holes with no privacy. There was a solid fence around this enclosure. I came up to my friend from the outside and noticed he was in a wheel chair, weeping bitterly. This was when I awoke. I did return to the dream to put some light into the situation - a window and door that looked out upon a luminous landscape of possibilities. My friend and I went out into this landscape and spoke about choices...
I've come to recognize the wheelchair as the "disabled will" of individuals and the collective. In Egypt, there seems to be a rebellion against the collective disabling of their wills through a repressive regime. I think in terms of the individual and the collective wills, the lines can indeed become blurred and difficult to discern.
If it were my dream, I would see your bridge building as an effort to help Egypt's youth/people to cross over into a realm of empowerment of both their individual and collective wills.
If this was my dream I would be intrigued by the concept of 'special forces' not as a special military group but as forces that are special to the situation. So special are they, that they take me to the highest point to help me/us make the dangerous crossing.
Very uplifting indeed (if it were my dream).
Suzi-q-song: I am moved by the dream scene of your friend confined in that dark prison-like space, and for the metaphor you find between the wheelchair and a "disabled will." If it were my dream, I would be glad that my dream self was able to open a door and window to bring in light, and I would look for ways to do that in everyday relations with my friend. The friend's condition in the dream might lend a sense of urgency to doing that, and I would probably need to ask whether there is any risk that he could find himself in a wheelchair, for example through an accident or impairment.
I see how the metaphor could be extended to a whole population whose will had been "disabled", though I think my own attention here would be focused on my friend. Perhaps I would ask myself whether there is any sense, in regular life, in which I may need to do for myself what my dream self is doing for him.
Thanks for the lovely thought about the possible significance of crossing the arch. May it be so.
This morning I dreamed. I was in a small group of men who were held prisoner by the Egyptian military. We were being held in some kind of warehouse. It has been about three days. There a few women prisoners in a separate room.
An order came to get "rid" of us. I am an American spy, Robert, who looks and acts Egyptian. The military guys have small spray cans of knockout gas. They try put each of us out. I hold my breath and fake passing out. I'm groggy but it does not last long.
The leader of those soldiers has been persuaded not to kill us by one of our group. I too had the impression of "special forces" standing by ready to extract me.
Outside this building the streets are in chaos. Soldiers and protestors are marching and running in a panic. We all decide to make our way out of there. The women in the other room join us. One woman is going crazy. She is screaming about being a general's daughter. One young man in our group decides to give her a lecture on how everything in her life and in Egyptian society has changed. Then I wake up. The metaphors of bridge and special forces are definitely apt!
Battlebauble: If this were my dream, I would be open to the idea that I had slipped inside a scene that is playing out, or will play out, during the crisis in Egypt. My dream self is not my present self; have I entered the perspective of another person who could be in that situation, or of an alternate self who - in a parallel reality - could be there? Or some future cinematic version?
Dreams have many levels, and a dream can be both personal and transpersonal, so I could also play the "what part of me?" game with this one, asking myself what aspect of myself each character and element may represent, from the me who may keep his true identity hidden, to the "general's daughter" who is slow to see how the world has changed, to the crack team that can free the prisoners.
Thanks for sharing.
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