Sunday, June 8,2003
I awaken from a dream, and make the effort to record it: “I am in the church that Michael and I were in yesterday. There is a service going on, I think. Two women go up to the priest – he is in the aisle. They want his help, but I from behind one of them say, ‘I know what you need, my dear, and I can help you. But it can’t be right now. This is not to do with you, just I don’t have the time right now.’ This is accepted by all concerned. From within the dream, I am concerned lest it be 8 a.m. when I’m going to awaken (alarm set) but am glad to realize that it is not yet that, but about 3:30 real time. As we were coming out of the church – but still inside, in the aisle, toward the door – there was something. The woman to my left didn’t figure directly in the dream, but the dream concerned the four of us, among so many strangers I did not know.”
I note that the priest and the women accepted that I had the knowledge and ability to help the woman. It was not presumption, nor a vying with the priest. I could help her as he (the church, I think) could not, and all concerned knew it. But not just yet – I had something else to do first. I stressed, it wasn’t her fault that I couldn’t help right away, it was that I wasn’t yet free to get to it. But I would be.
After the dream, I lie in bed and do the “river of life and health” meditation. I feel an obstruction at about my stomach, the will-power chakra. I feel the dried-up earwax in my right ear getting liquid, and I think, “no, not onto their pillow,” and forget about it. (In the morning, after my shower, I find the ear full of liquefied wax that comes out easily with tissue. Only a first step, I think, but a first step.)
Again at 6:15 a.m. I am up to record a dream:
“An experience that was almost suffocating in its intensity. I went into a church and proceeded down, down, down stairs to lower and lower – older and older – levels. I could see I was below the level of our civilization, where the steel foundations for it, the support of the structure, were. Construction was going on and I was concerned that I not interfere or get hurt. At a passageway, a ladder in front of me, a wooden ladder, very tall, of the A-shaped kind. A worker was sitting high up on the wall to the left. The ladder was tilted away from him [tilted onto one set of legs, on the right, its left-hand side in the air] though it was not falling. I gently pulled it down to sit firmly, and walked under it. I came to a level still far above the depths, I thought, though far below our time. But they had a press operating there, though it was not printing, but before printing. They asked if I would lend a hand for a few minutes – and hours later I was happily still there.
“They were not signatures but single sheets 8 ½ by 11 or larger, and were first individually written and colored – in many colors, not just red on black – and the sheets were collated and bound. It was full color printing, before printing, each sheet being individually prepared. [Here I sketched a sheet with the left third of the page being design and the right two-thirds being lines of text.] “The dream ended there for the moment.”
As striking as the dream was the sight of my eyes in the mirror. “The eyes that I see in the mirror here are mine and yet not. They are calmer, more tranquil, wiser, with lines under them as of age and wisdom. Perhaps partly Bertram’s eyes. [He is a priest of the middle ages with whom I am connected in the same way as with David.] This is a fine start to a visit to Iona, is it not?”
At 8 or so I take a little walk, waiting for breakfast, thinking, the trick will be, as always, to bring the results of a transformation into everyday life – or where is the transformation? As I am communicating with a flowering plant, a curious bird comes very near. I could have reached out and touched him, had I not thought he would fly away. He stays with me quite a while as I walk, and I naturally think, “he likes my energy.” But of course it is more likely he is someone’s pet, accustomed to surveying everyone in sight.
When Michael sees me he asks how I slept and I say “great, and I had a great dream,” and I tell him. So we start talking about dreams, and he tells one he had had as a boy that was very affirming and meaningful, though he has never known why it affected him that way. I lead him through it, questioning what each symbol means to him, and much of the meaning of the dream comes clear. I tell him I will send the dream to Robert and see what else Robert can get out of the parts of it that elude us. But what we do get is important. I recount the dream here, as Michael says he has often told this dream to others, including children he has taught.
In the dream, he as a child was in an octagonal room, with a table and a bowl on the table. On one wall ahead of him and to the left was a table on which was a coffin containing an old person. Ahead of him to the right was another table, on which were two coffins, containing two people who had died in the prime of life. He went to each coffin and stared at the bodies with interest, but not with revulsion or fear. In the bowl was a powder made up of ground-up bird wings. He ate some of the powder and knew he could fly. He woke up very happy.
He had known this was a significant dream, and for 40 years, he had prized it, but had not understood it. I lead him through the dream symbol by symbol, asking him what each one means to him. (“What’s a bird?” “Something that flies.”) Then it is merely a matter of retelling the dream using the meanings rather than the symbols. The meaning that emerges is simply that death is not something to fear. He is immortal. And the allusion to flying has another meaning, given that out-of-body experiences are a major interest of his. As a point of interest, the first significant death he experiences – one of his grandparents, I believe – occurs within the year following this dream.
(It is obvious that we miss much. For instance, why an octagonal room? Why two bodies in the prime of life rather than just one? But I have no doubt that Robert will be able to furnish what we miss.) This discussion takes us through breakfast. Then we go to Findhorn and sit and walk around and look in their bookstore. We agree, we’re glad it exists, but it isn’t for us.
We drive to Inverness, have a bit of a time finding a B&B, but finally do, and Michael and I say an affectionate goodbye. I tell him, “I was getting a little tired of paying for everything,” and he laughs, because in fact he hasn’t let me pay for a thing either day, saying I treated him when he was in Virginia. His prodigal generosity is almost overwhelming.