Monday, April 23, 2007

Two birds

This dream took place in Buffalo, NY where my son was living when he was killed. He and I were on opposite sides of a fence. We spoke but I couldn't be sure that we really were. Then I had to cross a hazardous parking lot. That's when I realized someone had given him a container just before he died. It remember seeing the design of two birds on it.

I was never able to understand this dream. Over a year later, though, we were in Buffalo. There were a number of dreams between this one and when we went to Biffalo which seemed to be eerie premonitions of what was to come.

Over time I got used to speaking with Gabe in dreams, even though our lips never moved.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Suggestion....

Someone e-mailed me with the following suggestion...

To fully develop your abilities for useful dream interpretations, I'd strongly recommend your becoming familiar with the work at the Percept Institute. http://www.theperceptinstitute.com/mainframeset-1.htmA workshop with these people would be a revealing way-point on your journey as well as enhancing your ability to assist others. They teach a method of owning your thoughts & dreams in a way which makes them very useful in one's personal journey.

If you visit the site, or are familiar with Percept Institute, please let me know what you think.

Rich

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Neil's Visit- Judy's Dream

The Visit: July 5, 2002

I am following my son, Neil, into an unknown country. He stops at the border and explains that he is going into the country to find his brother who is missing. The border guards look at his papers and let him through. I am invisible. There is no sense of portent about this although I understand that Scott is missing somewhere in this unknown terrain that feels like somewhere in the Middle East. I feel comforted that Neil is still concerned for his brother, even tho’ Neil is now dead.

I follow him through narrow, winding, cobbled streets, outdoor markets, crowded squares. He seems to know that I am there behind him but he is on a mission. He seems confident.

Eventually we leave the village behind and are on a narrow dirt path/trail. He stops to have his lunch. He sits on one side of the path and opens his lunch. I sit facing him on the other side of the path. He looks at me and smiles. His whole being seems to radiate. He looks into my eyes unwaveringly and says “If anyone had told me 2 or 3 years ago that I would be in the place I am, I would never have believed them”.

What is this dream about?

This dream for me is clearly a visitation. This rarely happens in dreams, but I’m convinced Neil came to me to tell me that he is okay and happy where he is.

The dream took place the morning that I was leaving to fly to Calgary, Alberta, and from there take a trip in a helicopter with one of the men who evacuated Neil’s body from the Wapta Ice Fields. The friend who was taking me to the airport awakened me just at the end of the dream.

This dream tells me that Neil is still in the family, that he still cares for Scott and is still a part of the struggles that Scott deals with in his life. Neil was Scott’s best friend and during his life was very concerned for him. I am hugely comforted to believe that Neil is still here, a part of our family, and someone who remains with us around family crises.

The unknown country is where Neil is (for me) and I believe that this dream came to me to help me accept that Neil does not struggle with knowing whether he is alive or dead. When Neil died and his body was up in the mountain for 8 days, I was tortured that he might not know he was dead. I don’t know where this came from, but it was very real to me, and lasted until I had this dream (so almost 3 months). I would talk to him every day and tell him what I knew about what had happened, why they couldn’t get his body out right away, weather conditions, etc. Because the weight of his pack caused him to go over the edge head first, he was unconscious very quickly, and I was terrified that he didn’t know he was dead. I had this need to help him understand that he was dead so that he could find peace. Not because I have a particular belief in the afterlife (I still believe it is a mystery and should remain so), but because I was driven to connect with him and love does very peculiar things.
Again we have the road/path/journey. It’s significant that he is on one side of the road and I on the other. We don’t touch in the dream, and awake I remember clearly that we are in separate countries – we didn’t sit down side by side as we might have when having a picnic. That we are on opposite sides of a path is fraught with significance.
I went to Calgary, and Lake Louise, and up into the mountain with so much more calm because of this dream, because Neil made it so. The relationship never ends.

Being Driven- Judy's Dream

Being Driven – May 4, 2004

I’m driving to a cabin in the mountains with my childhood friend, Irene. It’s a 4-5 hour drive and we’re driving at night in Ontario. Irene is the driver. I am in the passenger seat and she is in the trunk. I think it’s strange that she is driving from the trunk and that I can’t see her, but I’m not nervous. I feel safe with her driving.

We are close to Toronto and another 1 or 2 hours from the cabin. I am trying to get Irene’s attention to ask if she is tired and suggest we stop, perhaps stay at my sister’s and then continue the next day, but I can’t see her and she apparently doesn’t hear me as I’m not getting an answer.

Now she’s in the driver’s seat but falling asleep. We stop at my cousin Ally’s to call my sister. Her phone has a call box attached to it that must be fed money in advance of the call. When I get through to my sister (older sister) she tells me she and her husband just returned from Florida and there are parcels and luggage everywhere, but if we can clear a space we are welcome to stay. I tell her I’m with Irene who she knows is my childhood friend. But when I arrive at my sister’s home I am actually with a different friend and I feel foolish. How do I explain that I confused Glenda with Irene?
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Making sense of this dream:

I am on a journey, and interestingly a journey to the mountains, tho’ I don’t know of any mountains near Toronto. But Toronto is where I grew up and this dream has a lot to do with family baggage (going back to childhood, hence my childhood friend), and in times of crisis, family baggage has, for most of us, a way of becoming very obvious. My son, Neil, died in the Rocky Mountains and so in some way I am trying to journey to him.

I am not in the driver’s seat – ie: I am not following my own path. I am being driven by an invisible driver who I believe is really my dead son, Neil. It is certainly true that since his death, my only passions have been related to ensuring that he is remembered and some would say that I have been ‘driven’. It makes sense to me then that the focus of my driven-ness is Neil and it is with him or to him that I journey. I am not struggling with who the driver is in this in the dream. I accept that’s where I am and where I need to be. My struggle is more with speaking and being heard in the real world.

There’s a lot in the dream about baggage and communication difficulties – the baggage at my sister’s, having to pay to speak on the phone. There have always been communication problems in my family of origin and a price to be paid for speaking up. Now, since Neil’s death, nobody speaks of him unless I bring him up. They don’t call me on the anniversary of his death or on his birthday like my wonderful, loving friends do. So it feels like in the dream, the baggage/luggage is a barrier to communication.

There is another thing about boxes/containers that comes to mind. These have come up in many of my dreams since Neil’s death (one in particular about a precious chest). The last time I saw Neil he was contained in a box, so boxes sometimes have a very ominous connotation to me, and sometimes (as in the precious chest dream) they have a feeling of great beauty and attraction. In “The Unknown Driver” dream of Rich’s, the “huge, box shaped warehouses that sit glistening white by the bay” were an echo of images in many of my dreams. However, in this dream, they seem to be more about barriers.

In the end, I’m with Glenda, not Irene. Glenda is a friend in the last 20 years of my life. I’m back in the present, standing in my sister’s house, with my childhood baggage of feeling not understood, my sister’s baggage piled up around the living room, creating a barrier. And I think how can we ever communicate if I keep getting it wrong? Here’s where the dream reminds me that I am both of these people – the child in relation to my older, only, sibling, and the adult that feels alone in my journey.