Ocean Dip
John
In the Still of the Night 1968

~~~~~~dream~~~~~~

It wasn’t a dream in the sense that it was like a picture, but it was just a blackness, and out of the blackness came a voice, ‘Jill is pregnant’.

I was twenty-six years old and living at home with my parents. I was working in insurance and my fiancée, Jill, was teaching in my home town. She was boarding with us. We were planning to be married in August the following year.

I woke from my December dream protesting quite vigorously, although I knew it was right. I didn’t distrust it at all. The same thing had happened some months before the dream in question. The voice was there and her period was late, but it was extraordinarily heavy and it caused her in an inordinate amount of pain. I protested to God and said "I’ll never do that again’, but you know what you’re like when you’re young! Having had that first experience, I suppose, when the second one came I didn’t bother to argue.

~~~~~~

When I told Jill about the dream she told me she missed her first period. I think it was only about a fortnight later. We went and checked it out and found that she was indeed pregnant.

I’m a slow learner but the dreams gave reassurance of God being there, and of His forgiveness, but one has to live through the results of one’s own actions.

We acted straight away. We didn’t have much time. The prospect of having a child while not being married, being brought up in that era when it was just not done, was a real fear. We were married in the February. I have no regrets as we were planning to get married anyway, we just brought it forward. We divorced years later, but it wasn’t because of that.

This was not John’s first experience of the dream voice:

I had one some time before when I was a teenager, about seventeen, I think. Again it was just black. A voice called my name three times. I knew it was God, a God who was calling. I don’t know why, but sometimes you just know. Some other people would probably call it another power or something, but for me it was God and He was calling me. I really didn’t know why specifically He was calling, except that I had quite some years before then, from a very young age, been aware of the presence of God in my life. Through sermons and various people he seemed to be seeking me to be one of his clergy.

It was in the early seventies, after we moved to Australia, when He put His finger on me for the last time and after a long battle I gave up, shall we say, and sought to offer myself for ordination. It was from about that point on that the relationship with my wife began to fall apart. She couldn’t see herself as a clergy wife. It was one of the most painful things that’s ever happened to me.

By the way, we never did tell our parents about the pregnancy, although, knowing what I know of life now, they must have been awake to us! We were married in February and my son was born in September. They kept referring to him as a miracle boy! Our daughter was born four years later.

Jane’s Interpretation

As the information presented by the dream turned out to be correct, it needed no interpretation. Who or what was the source of this dream knowledge? What is God? Was it a feeling based on the previous experience? Was John tuned into his fiancée’s unconscious mind, which would have had perfect awareness of her physiological state? These are interesting questions, but on a practical level, if you feel a dream is giving you warning information, the most sensible thing to do is to check it out, as John did.

Ocean Dip
Anne
My Awakening 1992

~~~~~~dream~~~~~~

A man, dressed all in white, but I particularly noted the long white jacket, touched me on the shoulder and said ‘Your time is coming, Anne’.

~~~~~~

I was at the lowest I could possibly be. It was January 1992 and I still didn’t have a teaching job. I had finished my degree over a year before, but there were just no jobs.

I was back being a secretary and I had a love/hate relationship with my job. It became more difficult because Andrew couldn’t handle the overtime I had to do. Our relationship was sliding downhill real fast. I felt our life had to revolve around Andrew’s needs and mine didn’t matter.

The crunch came when I was lying on my bed contemplating my life. A thought came from nowhere and it frightened me terribly. My thought said ‘God, if you don’t do something I’ll go to the devil’. As soon as the thought entered my head I freaked. I ran down to Andrew crying madly, telling him I was going crazy, going out of my mind. I was frantic. I had thought that by becoming a teacher I was doing what God had in mind for me.

I was so scared that, before I went to bed that night, I sought out the Bible! I opened the book to the Old Testament parable about the man who went out into the desert to find God’s will and an angel came to him and said that God’s will doesn’t have to be found. (Jacob’s Dream: ‘Faith in God replaced devious schemes for finding God’s perfect will for his life’.) For the first time in a decade I felt God spoke to me through the Bible.

That night Anne had the dream.

I awoke feeling confused, because it seemed so real, as if someone really did touch me physically. My interpretation was that Jesus was reassuring me that I was OK and that there would be a time when it was my turn. I felt that my life did have a purpose and I didn’t feel so alone any more. I remember feeling calm after that dream and knew that my life would be fine and that I didn’t have to worry any more. God hadn’t abandoned me or rejected me for having such a ‘wicked’ thought. In fact, I felt embraced by that dream.

The changes to my life, as a result of that one dream and the ‘message’ in the Bible, were almost immediate but slow. I took the steps very slowly, integrating spirituality into my life calmly and slowly. I suppose I started a spiritual journey.

I went to church on a more regular basis and I started reading self-help and creative visualization books. Women Who Love Too Much by Robyn Norwood was a major factor in my journey towards emotional health. I started counseling, firstly with Andrew for a short time, and then on my own. I changed my attitude and tried to live in the present and enjoy what I had.

At the time of the dream I had back pain and chronic problems with my reproductive system. Within three months of the dream my health was in better order with the help of a naturopath.

Looking back I feel wonderful about what happened. I regret that Andrew couldn’t handle the changes and that we couldn’t work things through together. I became more assertive and wanted, and got, my needs met, which was difficult for him to accept.

And Anne’s teaching job? It came eventually!

1992 was a big learning year after my dream experience. Patience was the main lesson I learnt, while I worked for a couple of child care centres as a casual. At least I had started to work in the right area. Finally, in December 1992, I was offered a teaching position, which began in January 1993.

Jane’s Interpretation

The sensation of being touched in a dream is extremely potent. We certainly experience the full range of our waking life senses in our dreams (once we become practised at good dream recall!), but being touched by a special person seems to leave a sensory imprint which lingers well into the next day. Of all the dream senses perhaps it is the sense of touching an object or a person, which makes us feel the dream was real – that we were actually there.

If I were looking at Anne’s dream symbolically, I would concentrate on the point of her body which received the touch: her shoulder. Shoulders in dreams tend to represent responsibility, a symbolism which we carry through into our daily language when we talk about ‘shouldering responsibility’ or ‘a weight has lifted from my shoulders’. We mentally rid ourselves of responsibility by shrugging our shoulders, and become tense and sore in the shoulder area when we feel we are bearing more than our fair share. Anne’s dream, symbolically, suggested that she needed to focus on her responsibilities to achieve her just rewards. As Anne’s report shows, this is exactly what she did. She took back responsibility for herself by identifying her needs and then getting them met, while releasing herself from other unnecessary responsibilities. The figure was dressed in white, which generally suggests purity, spirituality or wholeness (being the sum of all other colours). Anne would need to reflect on what a long white jacket means to her, since this stood out in her dream. It’s important to focus on individual objects that seem to jump out of a dream. Meditating on the object, writing a poem about it, constructing a list of personal associations or recreating it in art often reveals its particular symbolism to the dreamer.

Symbolism apart, Anne’s dream experience was spiritually charged and gave her the strength to review and renew her life and her spirituality in the knowledge that her time would come. Was Anne touched by Jesus, or did she get ‘in touch’ with her spirituality as represented by the man in white? Interpreting a single vision, or a snippet of a dream, is difficult unless it is highly symbolic. I feel it is best to go with the feeling of the dream and with the message that it inspires in the dreamer.

Ocean Dip
Rowyn
Reality 1990-94

~~~~~~dream~~~~~~

One woman who spoke to me claimed to be a relative of mine who had lived and died in the nineteenth century. She provided me a date, which I subsequently researched and found on the family tree.

~~~~~~

There is no one particular dream which stands out from the rest as many have assisted in reshaping the way I live my life. Yet if I had to pinpoint an example, it would be talking to people in my dream who I later find are related to my past. It is dreams like the one given here, where I can verify by fact the existence of an afterlife, that have altered my views on existence.

Years ago, when questioned on religious beliefs, I would have replied the standard ‘Church of England’. Not a particularly religious person, I adopted my baptism status as a means of defining my religion. I was unaware of astral concepts and spirituality.

When my dreams started to teach rather than just entertain, or perhaps when I finally understood the messages, I began to research and self-teach in all areas of parapsychology. It was as if I were being shown the way to go, and so I followed. The moment I fully understood the direction I found an inner peace which, despite life’s hassles, keeps me going.

There really has been no need to interpret such dreams. I think it’s the timing in my dreams, which has had the most impact on me. I’m a fairly statistical person and if the information provided can be verified, I’m convinced. The changes to my life have been immediate: once I had confirmed the facts the rest simply followed.

I feel positive within myself and confident I have chosen the right path spiritually but I must confess that at times I feel as if I am leaving others behind. It’s like you possess this inner knowing of how events will change or affect others but they don’t ‘feel’ the same sensation. Sometimes it’s a lonely feeling. They can’t, or won’t, comprehend your experiences, dreams or situation, and most of the time if you voice a dream or a feeling, they reply in ridicule and suspicion.

The last ten years have seen massive changes in all areas of my life, quite dramatic changes, most of which were far from welcome. The dreams offered an escape and I guess hope. I would hate to think that all this suffering was wasted. I like to believe that we experience good and bad for a reason and that we are meant to learn from each experience, not just suffer.

In the past I have always been an extremely athletic and competitive individual, full of vitality, and besides the odd complaint, relatively healthy. Since I began to dream, however, I am no longer the same person. I’m constantly tired, drained and suffer easily from stress. My body is failing in many areas. My hearing and sight are deteriorating, my immune system is low, my blood is diseased and my muscles are being attacked by arthritis. Within the last four years my height has fallen from 165 cm to 158 cm. I am twenty-nine years old. Rather than challenging myself physically I am now forced to challenge mentally. I have returned to university and where once I was an average student I now succeed well in all areas of academia. It is the dreams that have brought me this far and it is the dreams which will guide me into the future.

Despite changes and challenges I do believe there is a purpose to all this madness. This is a phase, a test perhaps and one which I am determined to see through. I ‘know’ that I will live a long and happy life, I ‘know’ that it will not be alone, I ‘know’ that I will live in another country, write three books before I reach fifty and teach and lecture in life. I see when I dream and I feel when I am awake. Don’t ask me how I know – I just do.

Jane’s Interpretation

We never know how much information we unconsciously absorb, filing away conversations overheard, perhaps even as a tiny child. At the same time, I do believe we can access information from the past through the collective unconscious, or perhaps through parallel existences or other inter-dimensional communications. Dreams such as Rowyn’s beg to be followed through, researched and proved, disproved or left unproven. Such dreams may occur to educate or push the dreamer into questioning ‘reality’. If, on the other hand, the information was resourced in sleep from forgotten details in the unconscious, then such dreams require more symbolic attention. The dreamer may wish to question all living relatives to build up a character picture either of the person who appeared in the dream, or of the family line they represented. These characteristics may be symbolic of aspects of the dreamer, which are under consideration.