photo courtesy of linkbeedf.com
An excellent way to discover how much you acknowledge the
power and value of the waking dream is when it affects your own life. As I’ve
said before, the waking dreams most important to pay attention to are the ones
that leave you unsettled or shaken. In those cases, since these are incidents
in “real life,” the tendency is to become immersed in the drama and to forget
to step back and look at the event as a dream.
In our family, that doesn’t happen. Waking dreams are taken
seriously, and the more they affect our day-to-day activities, the more carefully
they are studied.
That was definitely the case last month when, shortly after some terrible weather, my wife and I were taking an afternoon walk. She
suddenly slipped on the ice, went down hard and ended up with a broken shoulder.
After the trip to the E.R, and after she was settled at home with some “lovely”—if
potentially addictive—opioid pain killers, we knew we had work to do. We took
our time, trying to let the experience settle and waiting for the jitters to
leave us both. But we also knew that there was no hurry. She couldn’t use half
of her upper body, and it was going to be a long, six-weeks of curtailed
activity before she could even begin to function normally.
Rather than sit down and work through the dream in one
session, we allowed ourselves to ponder our memory of the accident over the
next days and weeks. As insights came, we tested them against each other, and
over time, we put together our understanding of what had occurred and why.
Life does not, arbitrarily and sadistically, attack innocent people!
If you’ve been “victimized” by an unfair-seeming, unpleasant event, it’s time to
look at your own circumstances, your own attitudes, the feelings you are
carrying around, and your own sense of inner balance. That’s the key to your
eventual understanding of the incident.
My wife’s dream in
her own words:
We were out taking our
afternoon walk. Even though it was cold, it was also crisp, the sun was out,
and I love the brightness of new fallen snow. We were looking at the natural
beauty around us, but we were also talking animatedly about an exciting book we were both
reading, which we found stimulating. Suddenly, with no warning, both my feet
went out from under me, and I fell, face downward, hitting my left shoulder
hard. I was completely stunned for a moment. Then, when I could finally get
back up, you and I both noticed that my left arm was hanging at a really odd
angle—unnatural. We went to the E.R. they x-rayed and confirmed a break. They
made a follow-up appointment with an orthopedic surgeon (although they didn’t
think I’d actually need surgery). They sent us home with pain killers and told
us how lucky we were that I hadn’t hit my head.
More on Wednesday.
ANNOUNCEMENT
On March 11 & 12
I will be participating in the Body Mind Spirit Expo in the town of Hillsboro,
just west of Portland, Oregon. I will be lecturing and helping with dream
interpretations. Click on the Events page for details.
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