Thursday, April 22, 2021
5:40 a.m. Malk? Not only do I now know what malk is supposed to mean, now I’ve lost the dream context. But it was very clearly malk, not mall. And in the dream I was driving very fast – too fast, leaving too little space between myself and others. I cut in to the right, the car ahead of me was too close, was stopping, I cut out to the left, then I was seeing from above my body, and realized I was in a massive car wreck in process. Then I was parked on the left shoulder, and the car was either unharmed or was harmed only slightly, but there had been this massive 70-something-car pileup along six or seven lanes of this freeway. I wish I could remember what “malk” means, or what its context was.
A little help, here?
You often describe your life as a train wreck; this is a pileup. You didn’t cause the pileup, but you were moving too fast, cutting too close, for safety even in ordinary conditions. The fact that you escaped uninjured and unhurt – if you did – would be inexplicable good fortune.
Oh, I got the sense of being dead and not yet realizing it – the out-of-body perspective, the inexplicable segue from being in the middle lanes while things were piling up to suddenly being at rest on the side of the road. Is that what this was describing? A sudden end? Or driving with insufficient caution? And what is malk and what was the context?
The better the question, the better the answer.
What’s wrong with the questions? I am asking, what is the meaning.
There are better questions, such as Why this dream now?
Consider it asked that way.
You have been reading about Jane Roberts’ final days, skipping ahead to see where she died, and being somewhat disappointed that Rob Butts kept his privacy about her final time and his reaction.
All about death, yes, I see.
An appropriate follow-up question, should you choose to ask it, is, What is Jane Roberts and her experience to me? Why am I drawn to it?
All right. And – ?
Beyond the obvious – her exploration, her long interaction with Seth (and, by the way, her even longer interaction with Rob!) – is this: She was an artistic person interacting with the world, a situation that has its difficulties. You may learn something about yourself as much from the differences between your situations as from the similarities.
Such as.
Well, such as that she chose not to have physical children, concentrating instead on the children of her mind and spirit. Such as that she and Rob worked together, and that her explorations formed a common bond between then, rather than separating her from him. Such as that her work met success and was intended to, even though the extent of that success (1) at first escaped their attention, and then (2) surpassed their expectations and almost their belief. Such as that she moved down a dark path that constricted her, and him, increasingly, until her only way out was to leave the 3D entirely. Such as that she didn’t even have to give thought to who would carry on her work and give it a firm foothold in the world, because they both knew that Rob would continue to be her rock after her life as he had been during it.
Yes, that’s interesting, and does throw light on my life by reflection. But I’m pretty sure there is something to be learned from that dream that we haven’t gotten to. Given that I don’t know the proper question to phrase, I fall back on “what would I ask if I had enough sense to know what to ask.”
A part of your mind is asking: Am I nearly out of time? Am I driving too fast, too recklessly? Is a huge pileup about to happen?
And of course a better question is, What should I be doing right now? What should I be aware of, conscious of, oriented to, right now?
A better question any time, yes. If you are about to be involved in a major car wreck not of your own making, slowing down and driving carefully won’t necessarily save you from it, but it certainly won’t make anything any worse. In other words, it is the safe thing. It is, to coin a phrase, “Common sense,” regardless how uncommon in practice. But maybe you would be better if you weren’t on that road at all.
Competition? I suddenly get the racing down the road, cutting in and out of lanes, as a metaphor for competition. But is that it?
You do remember? (We smile, as obviously at the moment you do not. At the moment you are forgetting): Symbols never have any one meaning. They are always seed-pods, packed with more than any one potential. What you can find is well and good; there will always be more to be found.
Seems to me you are being unnecessarily (and irritatingly) cryptic. Both, then? Impending pile-up and a description of competition?
It is – or could be taken to be – a description of competition as experienced by you. Certainly not by a John F. Kennedy or a Hemingway, or by any who thrive and derive energy from competition. Your attitude
Is more tike Jane Roberts had! I get that.
It is a different path entirely, you see, calling for different skills and different attitudes, leading to different results.
But I had the sense that the pileup wasn’t my fault, even though I wasn’t helping matters by my aggressive driving. It had started far in front of me.
Not a question of fault but of consequences. Is the middle of a pileup where you want to be?
So stay off the superhighway.
Or if you find yourself there, at least drive very differently, leaving yourself reaction time, and room to bail out of an emerging situation.
Now, are we talking about a social situation – a massive currency inflation, say, or a civil uprising, or something? A war, even?
Let us put it this way, and we ask that you and any who read this slow down and hear this carefully.
Recalibrate. Okay.
What you call “hard times” continue to concatenate. Things don’t get easier, as you don’t go backwards in your ability to cope with them; they get harder, as you move through what must be experienced for you to arrive beyond them. Please re-read that sentence carefully, allowing yourselves to reflect what it may possibly refer to.
“Hard times” manifest in various ways to various people, depending upon who and what they are. Remember, the “external” world will give you what you are, because that is what will resonate in your life. What may be a problem to someone else may be seemingly nonexistent to you, because you have no need for it, no need to grapple with that particular aspect of life. But what may be nonexistent (functionally) to others may be a big thing to you, because it represents something you do need to grapple with.
But the common thread is that “hard times” can’t be avoided, even though they come in seemingly different forms.
They can’t be avoided, and – this may be a new thought – they shouldn’t be avoided; in fact, you shouldn’t want to avoid them, but should welcome them as you welcome any new day. Like the rest of your life, they do not arrive “at random.”
Final thoughts I should consider about my dream?
You wanted to know what the dream is telling you. It says, “Stay awake! Stay aware!” And it says, by implication, “If you don’t want to be in the middle of a huge pileup, don’t get on that road, or, if you have to be on it, drive conservatively and hope for the best.
Which we do by staying awake.
No, there’s a nuance you aren’t getting. Given certain circumstances, you pass a point of no return.
Ah! That’s Jane Roberts’ situation! Somehow she went too far into illness, and the only way out was through it, into non-3D.
That sentence contains many wrong assumptions and errors of interpretation, but you do have the nub of it: You can wind up with no way out. This is not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing. But you see, here is another connection to you reading about Jane Roberts and your having a dream that at first seems entirely unconnected to her.
Then to finish the statement you began to make –
If you don’t want to wind up in a certain place, a certain situation, it would be well to move out of it before you reach the point of no return.
And this statement will mean different things to different people, depending on where they are in life.
It is never any different. There’s no way else it could be.
Okay, well, thanks very much. Or – something else?
Only that we wouldn’t like to leave this with a penumbra of doom hanging over it. This is not about doom but about fate, which is a far different thing.
You can’t leave us with that. A bit more, please.
What is fate (that is, what can’t be avoided because of the net weight of so many decisions by so many people over so long a time) may at first blush look pleasant or not, survivable or not, fortunate – even heavenly – or not. What is common, always, is that from your own perspective, you are the center of its meaning. You aren’t the center of what unfolds, but from your point of view it necessarily unfolds as if you are the center. This is how it must be, by the nature of things. So, when what comes to you arrives, greet it as a friend; from your point of view (or rather, when viewed in relation to your life) it was fashioned specifically for you. It is, in a sense, a gift, even if often a difficult one. It is not a mistake, certainly not a punishment, not an accident.
And that is enough for the moment.
All right, thanks again, and we’ll see you next time. (6:50)