River 20
Andy
The Winds of Change 1994

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

On the other side of the stream the grass wavered up to the base of some tall trees and many miles in the distance behind the trees was a mountain range which ran up to a huge snow-capped peak. A thin wisp of cirrus cloud hung overhead and I watched as the wind raced up the right-hand side of the peak and blew the snow and ice off the top: an incredible sight. Turning back to see what the others were doing I noticed the position of the sun and how warm it was. I could smell the snow....

Deb walked down the hill between her boyfriend and the Maori (all were in their sleeping bags). She came up behind me and, to my delight, lay down, put her arms around me and cuddled into my back. I looked over my shoulders and she was looking at me, smiling. I turned back around, smiling too and feeling content. She did what I was hoping she would do.

A few seconds later we began to slide headfirst down the hill. I couldn’t move my arms or legs as the sleeping bag was tied up around my neck. Deb held her arms tightly around my waist. I could feel the moisture from grass spears dripping down my face. We stopped at the bottom of the hill and lay there, laughing. I removed the sleeping bag as Deb slowly rose to her feet.

She put her left hand up, the back of her hand facing me and wiggled her fingers. ‘I’ve lost my ring’, she said. ‘We have to find it’.

In the centre of a small gorge lay a large, flat rock, diamond-shaped. The stream ran down through the gorge then split and flowed either side of this rock. Deb removed her top and lay on the stone, feeling the warmth of the sun, while I searched some more for the ring. At the foot of this stone was a small pool where the stream re-joined after flowing around the stone. I took off my shoes and walked over to it, feeling the icy alpine water which was crystal clear to look into. I searched for Deb’s ring in the pool below her feet. On the bottom of the pool lay small pebbles of different colours, shapes and sizes, all smooth and rounded. I pulled out one small pebble: it was light green, like jade, and had a distinct small notch in the top. It had been worn smooth over the years by running water and sand.

I held this stone for quite some time. I rubbed it, turned it over, and watched the sun glisten on it when I held it up. At that moment there was a mental thought, a message in a girl’s voice, saying ‘Give it to Deb,......’

When I turned around, things had changed. I was looking at a beautiful snow scene. In front of me were glistening smooth boulders, about two feet high and all strewn around an area of about twenty square feet. Behind them were pine trees, all heavily laden with pure white snow. The boulders were covered in beautiful mosses and lichens of greens, greys and reds. I was still looking for the ring, now among the lichen. It was rough, but not difficult to pull back. I could feel a rumbling under my feet and could hear the sound of running water.....

I came to a gorge, about sixty feet deep and eighty feet across, where a huge, powerful, rumbling waterfall of snow and water poured down. On the other side of the gorge was the most magnificent alpine forest running up to the base of another huge mountain, this time only a mile or so away. Again I watched the wind blow the snow off the peak and swirl it around.

I stood with a feeling of contentment, at one with myself and what was around me. I was alone standing there. No-one else anywhere was witnessing what I was. I could feel the cool refreshing spray and mist on my face as it came up the side of the gorge...

Admiring the lichen, something else caught my eye. Two young deer were watching me: a young stag with small velvet covered stumps on his head, the beginnings of antlers, and a smaller doe. We watched each other for a few moments. The stag made a move towards me, just a couple of steps, put his head out towards me, sniffed the air, then stepped back to the female. They walked towards me, side by side, not frightened by my presence at all. They danced off over the boulders and disappeared under a pine, knocking the snow off a lower branch as they passed.

I stood reflecting for a moment and was about to turn to leave when I was hit in the face by a snowball: it was Deb and she looked beautiful. We felt happy to be together, joked about something and began to ski off. I was first: I had no skis, only boots!

~~~~~~

Andy’s dream, as he wrote it down the next morning, was twelve foolscap pages long. The above is a series of excerpts, necessarily edited for inclusion in this book.

I have had vivid dreams in the past but none more than this. The clarity and ‘realness’ was incredible. I can remember this dream more clearly than I can remember a recent trip to Sydney. Although it was not lucid, there was nothing in the dream to indicate it was a dream. There was nothing bizarre. Nothing strange or surreal occurred. In short, nothing out of the ordinary at all happened. And that is exactly what really stood out. It was, and I can’t say it any clearer, ‘too real’. When I woke up it took me a few moments to realise it was a dream. I lay in bed thinking I had just come back from holiday; and, in a sense, I had. All my senses were very much alive and throughout the dream I was very clear-headed. I knew what I was saying, doing, thinking and feeling, but I did not know it was a dream, not for one second.

Three days after the dream, while walking to the beach with my flatmate, Phil, we came across a large, blue-green jellyfish which had been broken up by kids. I noticed something in amongst the broken jelly: it was a shape that caught my eye. The dream came back to me straight away as I picked up a small piece of blue-green glass, worn smooth over the years from water and sand. Its shape, dimensions, weight, everything was exactly as the pebble appeared in the dream. For a couple of days I rubbed this piece of glass over and over in my hand, looked at it from every angle and held it up to the light. I knew I had give this to Deb in the dream, but what it meant I had no idea. A friend suggested I make it into a necklace and send it to her, which I have done.

Before the dream Andy, a builder, had fallen in love with Deb who said she felt the same way. On a working trip overseas, however, she fell in love with someone else and wrote to tell Andy that their relationship was over. This happened within a matter of a week, which left Andy feeling devastated.

It was the discovery of the glass stone from my dream on the beach the next day which made me contact Jane Anderson after finding her book, Sleep On it and Change Your Life, in the local bookstore. I had no idea what it meant other than it was to be looked further into.

The dream interpretation was involved and almost as lengthy as Andy’s original twelve-page dream! It included a look back into Andy’s emotional past, a comparison to his state at the time of the dream, and a glimpse ahead to the potential of his future. Although he skied off with Deb at the end of the dream, she was symbolic of his ‘female’ side, his Yin, indicating the potential not for the relationship to be reinstated, but for Andy’s future achievements once he came to terms with his whole self (including his Yin): just look at the ease with which he happily skied off, not even requiring the skis!

The terrific landscape revealed Andy’s emotional landscapes at various points in his life and development and there were many ‘turn arounds’ or ‘looking backs’ to emphasise the insights, the glimpses of the past, or the changes in his life. Snow, being frozen water, tends to represent frozen emotions, so there was much recognition of old frozen emotions and consequent thawing and melting. Andy’s relationship with Deb melted snow, the deer (aspects of himself) brushed off more in recognition of the importance of walking on without fear. The winds (of change, or the breaths of fresh air) whipped away the hardest icy snow from the very mountain tops.

In digging for the ring, the symbol of unity between Andy and his ‘female’ side (like an engagement ring?), he was searching and digging to find his own personal riches. the dream commented throughout on how to find this unity within himself. He dug deep into the lichen, where the snow had been thawed, close to the earth below which lay his unconscious where more needed to be revealed. Deep within he heard the mighty rumble of water and later saw the waterfall, resplendently releasing chunks of snow as it spouted out into the gorge. And so Andy was realising the power that digging deep could achieve: the release spewing out of old frozen emotions.

Unity he did achieve, not only at the end of the dream, but also in his moment of contentment, being at one with himself on the edge of the gorge. It all certainly hit him in the face, just as Deb’s snowball represented her own coolness and frozen emotions that she hurled at him when she found herself a new boyfriend. Even so, they laughed, because Andy realised, in his dream state, that she had given him the greatest gift of all. In her hardness towards him he was challenged to the depths of his unconscious to work out why this had happened and how he could use this information about himself to better his future.

Perhaps the stone represented a ‘karmic debt’, something Andy repaid to Deb. Whatever it was, it was a synchronicity, and its major importance was that it reappeared on the beach in Andy’s waking life to beg the question of the meaning of his dream and to spur him into taking steps towards self-discovery.

My unconscious was taking me very carefully through my past, present and, upon the synchronicity, my future. It was impossible not to look and act upon this dream; as Jane Anderson wrote in her book, ‘a synchronicity is there, in your waking life, screaming at you to find an answer’. If she hadn’t worked that out for me I’d probably be walking around in one of those jackets with the eight foot wrap-around sleeves!

The emotions which I had kept on ice for the last five years melted as a direct result of my relationship with Deb. The stone was indeed a ‘karmic debt’ which has finally been repaid . It was a debt to a girl, Naomi, who I was with before Deb. I had been deeply hurt when I found out that my long-time girlfriend before Naomi had been having an affair with a good friend of mine, so I closed myself away for three years. She tried in vain to help me to let go of the hurt and the repressed emotions and she suffered terribly mentally and finally left. Realising what I had done, I let go. For a year and a half after that I felt guilt for what she went through.

Along came Deb and within a couple of days she had not only stolen my heart but had also told me that every boyfriend she’d ever had had treated her like dirt and put her down. Subconsciously I picked up on this and gave her more love, respect, appreciation and affection than anyone ever had. She would cry frequently about it because she was so overwhelmed. What I was doing, in fact, was paying back Naomi, the previous girlfriend. Deb has since been very spiteful, selfish and ungrateful and I now see her as a person I used to be. She represses her emotions from the past.

So how did Andy use what he had learned to change his life?

After receiving this interpretation I began looking more and more at my dreams, very much self-discovery, personal growth and awareness sort of stuff. With a lot of soul searching I began to realise I was not using my full potential. I had to take a look ahead and see not just what I had to do, but more of what I wanted to do. To be able to do this I had to look deeply and face a few home truths. I had to find my confidence and self-esteem and discover why I was lacking in this area. This mental flush out and consequent cleansing went for about two months. After that, for another month, my dreams took on a different form, very positive, one after another. I was killed a few times, which to me is a good sign: out with the old, on with the new. Dream doors started to fly open in front of me without me even touching them, like something out of a Schwartznegger movie: it was hilarious!

I took up horse riding. In the past I had no confidence and had been scared of this huge beast made of muscle under me. I had a large quarter horse, a very powerful beast, and jumped in so full of confidence that in ten minutes we were trotting, something I never thought I was capable of. In half an hour we were on the beach at sunset at full gallop. I have never felt so free. On the way home my horse shied terribly at a car. He went sideways into the road and spun around. In a few seconds I thought of the dream, the stone, my past, my future and my present mental and emotional state and I laughed all the way home.

At this time I was looking deeper and deeper into my dreams, asking questions and receiving answers, facing fears and overcoming them, albeit sometimes in a pretty bizarre manner, as some of my dreams are pretty outrageous. At the end of the third month I made my decision to take on university and study counselling and mediation.

The steps I have taken are in the right direction. I now have a major goal to achieve. I have no fears and I am confident that I can accomplish the course I will be undertaking.

Looking back on the changes in my life, the first dream made me ‘look’, the synchronicity made me ‘realise’, and my following dreams made me ‘take charge’.

Jane’s Interpretation

Since Andy consulted me shortly after he had this dream, my interpretation is already included in the account.