by Gloria | Dec 31, 2013 | Mystories
When my husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he took up meditation in an attempt to find peace with the situation and I joined him as moral support and in the hope that it would also help me cope better than I had been doing. He had brought home a tape from the Cancer Care Centre and it was basically a guided visualisation of going down in a lift, seeing the numbers of each floor in the mind’s eye and on reaching zero seeing the zero expand, imagine walking through it and visualising being in a tranquil scene. The tape would then go silent for a period of time and the voice would count up again.
At first I struggled mightily just to stay awake but after about six weeks the persistence paid off and I was able to relax and found the sessions quite enjoyable. One day I was in a relaxed state when I had a vision of my mother. Her face appeared to me as though it was above and outside of me and she looked very sad. She communicated telepathically to me ‘you don’t need to be here, Gloria. You’re needed back there.’ With that something relaxed even more deeply in me and I felt an incredible sense of peace such that when the tape finished I didn’t want to move. Roger had been on his stool in front of the lounge where I was sitting and after a while he stirred and glanced over at me. I smiled at him and he came and sat alongside me and we held hands with neither of us saying a word for a long time.
At the time I wasn’t coping very well and though I knew I wouldn’t do anything while Roger was alive, I wasn’t so sure about the future. I had always had a tenuous hold on life, even at the best of times and simply couldn’t imagine what I was going to do without him. I had no belief in anyone surviving death in any way, shape or form at the time and had no knowledge of altered states of consciousness and their effects. I presumed the vision was a kind of waking dream but the sense of peace it evoked had a profound effect on me in many ways. The suicidal thoughts abated and I eventually sought out a counsellor.
Roger’s impending death had brought up memories of my mother’s death and I realised I had never grieved for her when she died 12 years before because it had coincided with a very difficult and demanding period of our life. Eventually I was able to visit her grave for the first time and come to terms with much that had not been dealt with.
As far as what the vision meant, it didn’t change my belief that death meant anything more than peaceful oblivion and had no concept of it being anything other than an artefact of my imagination. The only explanation I needed was that it was like a waking dream and was happy to leave it at that – until the next meditation experience Dream, Vision or… What? Part Two really shook up my simplistic viewpoint.
by Gloria | Dec 30, 2013 | Dreams
I am in the study in my current house. Belinda is here and we are both working at our computers. I don’t know what she is doing but I am working on the James Hollis transcript when David Van Nuys arrives. There are other people in the house as well and someone has let him in.
I am very surprised and delighted to see him and happy that Belinda is here so she too can meet him. He has come to Australia in regard to doing some work in Brisbane and thought he would pop in to meet me. I wonder how he managed to just drop in to Adelaide and marvel that he somehow got through the security gates into the village and then found his way to my unit.
We chat very amicably as though we are old friends meeting up again after a long period even though it is the first time we have met in person. There is much hugging and laughter and shaking of hands as I introduce him to the other people around but he is on a tight schedule and can’t stay long. Belinda and I go with him to escort him out of the village but as we do we learn that he has to meet up with some people he is to go to Queensland with but he doesn’t have transport.
Belinda offers to drive him to his rendezvous but when I see her car, I think mine would be more comfortable. Her car is like the cabin of a ute except it has a regular trailer attached at the back rather than a fixed tray top. There is a tarpaulin over the trailer. We discuss it and Belinda reassures me that it will be fine in her car and so we head off. We sit in the front and David sits behind and between us, somewhat squashed in as there is minimal space in the back.
It is evening by now and getting dark when we get to where David is to meet the others. They seem to be part of a spiritual organisation and treat Belinda and I like outsiders. The whole thing is rather clandestine and somewhat tense as though they are on a tight schedule and they are obviously eager to be rid of us as soon as possible so they can bundle David off to his true destination. I gather his detour to visit me has not met with wholesale approval.
Belinda and I are somewhat bemused by the whole thing. All the intrigue seems somehow unnecessary and a bit contrived although they are deadly serious. My guess is that David is going to do a workshop of some kind, perhaps a dream workshop but I am at a loss as to why it’s so secretive.
A little background: Belinda is my dream buddy from the days of the dream forum mentioned on the Home Page, whose work includes website design. David Van Nuys is a retired American psychologist who has a long running and very popular podcast Shrink Rap Radio in which he interviews a wide range of guests in the field of psychology and related areas. I had been doing transcripts on a volunteer basis since the beginning of the year and the one I am working on in the dream is one I had been doing in reality for the SRR website the night before the dream. James Hollis is a Jungian analyst and the interview I was transcribing was about his latest book Hauntings: Dispelling the Ghosts That Run Our Lives. I had in fact done a teleseminar with James a couple of months prior, the theme of which was finding meaning in the mature stages of life. A question he had suggested participants ask themselves was ‘what does my soul want to birth through me?’ I had pondered that question from time to time but no definitive answer had been forthcoming, so I let it slide. The interview I was working on also broached that same topic, with the ‘ghosts’ being the fears that block us.
So what did the dream mean? At the time I was at a loss, although overall it did have a good feeling about it so I assumed it was something positive and didn’t feel inclined to try and work it out. The only thing that struck me initially was that there seemed to be a theme of work throughout the dream – David coming to Australia to do some work, albeit of an unknown nature, Belinda and I working at our computers – and then there was James Hollis. He had said in the beginning of the interview that he felt much resistance to writing another book as he was getting on in years, had written a lot of books and felt it was time to kick back and relax. It was his dreams that had kept prodding him to write Hauntings and a particular dream that made him finally surrender to the prompts. The clues were there for me but I couldn’t see them until events that led to embarking on this website unfolded over the next several days. I had been thinking for years of writing a book and was always writing and rewriting chapters, but I could never sustain the enthusiasm and motivation to put it all together. It would never have occurred to me to do a website and even if it did, I didn’t have the technical know how.
A couple of days after the dream I was talking to Belinda via Skype and somehow or other the idea of me doing a blog came up. When she asked me what it would be about I didn’t know but as we brainstormed the kinds of things I’m interested in – psychology in general and Jungian psychology in particular, spirituality, dreams, states of consciousness and various other related topics – it became apparent that dreams were the thread woven through all the others. So with that the decision was made and Belinda got to work setting up the website and giving me the necessary tuition in navigating my way around WordPress.
It was only after the wheels had been set in motion that I realised this dream had been giving me a nudge and a blessing. In dream interpretation, the way we relate to the various players in the dream, the attitude and opinions we have about them and their roles in life are important clues to what is in our own unconscious. Although there was an obvious theme of work, on reflection it was more about their work as an expression of purpose and meaning in life. Belinda, David and James are all deeply engaged in the kind of work in which they have a passionate commitment and dedication to what they are doing and in that they are showing me the way. Although I have been very passionate about the areas of study I have been involved in over the past several years there was a sense of wanting to do something with it and not knowing what to do.
In any good dream story as in all drama, there has to be a point of conflict and in this dream the conflict was represented by the unknown aspect of David’s business and the attitudes of the group of people he was working with. Dreams show us our unconscious limiting beliefs, i.e. fears and once I twigged that this dream was a forerunner to me taking the step of going public with my interest in the world of dreams and especially the very personal stories I would be using as a vehicle, it didn’t take long to realise what those fears were about. The fear of exposure and of not being good enough are demons that most people can relate to. I took heart from this dream in the fact that Belinda and I were not unduly fazed by the way the ‘in group’ marginalised us.
The reason I singled David out as the one giving me the blessing is that he has read my comments about his interviews out on his podcast from time to time – as he often does with other correspondents – and after one particularly heartfelt outpouring from me, he said that he appreciated my comments and the way I articulated myself. I was rather shocked at the time because I have always felt somewhat tentative about my ability to express myself but I was also deeply touched by his words and it made me realise that what was important in what I had expressed to him was the intention behind the communication and the sincerity with which it was offered rather than any artistic merit of composition. The other aspect of the David character in the dream was that he had gone to considerable trouble to come and see me, there had to be more to it than just saying hello.
One of the most important aspects of working with dreams is what we do with the information contained within it but that naturally entails having some understanding of what the dream is about. This was one of those rare dreams that didn’t require any effort on my part, it just struck me as a feel-good dream and events unfolded organically and almost effortlessly. I have a hunch that that is the result of honouring the process of taking dreams seriously.
by Gloria | Dec 30, 2013 | Dreams
This dream was relayed to me by a friend soon after my husband Roger died, although it would be many years before I would view it as I do now, that is as a spirit visit dream.
The background to the dream was that this friend and Roger had a discussion one day about the possibility of life continuing on after death. Roger was like me at the time, a confirmed atheist and had no prior belief in life after death, although he must have begun to wonder to even broach the subject. Our friend said that he doubted it because both his mother and his sister, who had died a short space apart, had been devout spiritualists all their lives and he felt if there was any ongoing existence he would have heard from them and he hadn’t. Roger said to him ‘well, if I survive I will find a way of getting through to you.’ They both had a chuckle and nothing more was said.
One day soon after Roger’s death this friend came up with his wife and his wife nudged him into telling me about a dream he’d had. This is what he told me:
In the dream I was lying in bed and Roger came through the wall behind the bedhead. I said to him ‘hey, Roger, you said you were going to let me know if you survived your death.’ Roger replied, ‘this is how it’s done – in dreams.’
I didn’t know what to make of it at the time but I remembered the conversation they’d had and I didn’t think it could be just a random coincidence. Some time later I brought it up with my friend and he had completely forgotten it, not even remembering it when I retold what I remembered. His amnesia was even more astonishing to me than the original dream although I have since had that exact same reaction from others when they have told me about a certain dream and I’ve brought it up in later conversation. In most cases though a memory will be jogged by providing details.
The dream brings up interesting questions – what exactly is the nature of the figures in our dreams, what is the purpose of such a dream as this, why did my friend have the dream and not me and why did he not remember the dream even when I reminded him of it? Some of these questions will be explored in these pages but I don’t pretend to have definitive answers to any of them. I have since had many of my own spirit visit dreams from various deceased people and will no doubt write about them as the blog develops.
I eventually came across a book about after death communications, called Hello From Heaven. It had coincidentally been published a few months before Roger’s death, although I didn’t read it until many years down the track. Since that time this particular field of investigation has blossomed along with studies of other related phenomena.
I really don’t know what I thought about the dream at the time but so many odd things had been happening and I had enough on my plate to deal with at the time anyway that I doubt I came to any conclusions about it other than to wonder what was going on. I don’t recall Roger ever talking about having dreams so it wasn’t as though there was any precedent for his statement that contact is made through dreams. Two and a half years later I had a visitation of my own from him, which was vastly different and somewhat disquieting but also convinced me of the reality of the continuation of life after death.
Eventually I learned, from study and experience, that dreams are not the only way we get communications from the non-physical realm but I have to wonder if the seed that had been planted regarding my encounter with the dream life was being nurtured along by hearing about this dream from another person.
by Gloria | Dec 28, 2013 | Dreams
Shortly after my husband died, I had a dream that alerted me to the problem solving ability of dreams and also to the connection between dreams and waking life events.
The day before the dream, a neighbour had come around to do some odd jobs on the property we had and had asked if I had any two stroke fuel for the chain saw. I felt sure there was some in the shed as Roger had stores of most of what he needed but I couldn’t find any among the various drums of oils and fuels. That night I had the following dream:
Doctor Ford has come to give me a hand around the property with some work that needs doing. As thanks I siphon some petrol out of one of our cars to give him.
When I woke I thought it was strange that I had dreamt of our doctor doing the work someone else had in fact done the previous day. I noted the fact that his name was the same as the make of car I had siphoned the petrol from in the dream, a Ford Cortina but as I couldn’t make any sense of it, gave it no more thought.
Later that day another friend dropped by who used to work with Roger from time to time and I asked him if he knew where Roger kept the two stroke fuel. He said that he would siphon the petrol out of the car and mix it with oil he kept on hand and then took me down to the shed to show me where the oil and the hand siphon pump was kept. I recognised it as the very same pump I had used in the dream by its red handle and though the car he used to take the petrol from wasn’t the one in the dream, as that was on gas, the car he used to take it from was also a Ford.
I had no conscious knowledge of Roger having mixed the fuel in this way and I certainly had never siphoned petrol myself out of any car ever, or indeed ever used a siphon pump in any way.
The thing that impressed me most about this dream, once I understood it, was its attempt at problem solving. The clues to the solution of the problem were in the dream– the similarity to the previous day’s events, the doctor’s name being the same as the make of car that supplied the fuel and the specificity of the action of siphoning out the fuel. Our friend turning up the following day enabled the simultaneous solving of the riddle of the fuel and the riddle of the dream.
There are of course many other ways of looking at this dream but it was one of those rare dreams that had such an obvious literal interpretation, even to a complete novice, that there was no need to even attempt to unpack it at a symbolic level, then or now. Another interesting aspect of the dream is that its imagery has stayed with me all this time – 17 years later at the time of writing – and I never wrote it down as I would eventually learn to do with my dreams.
I never did figure out why the dream didn’t have me siphoning the petrol out of the actual car Roger used to take it from but that is the enigmatic nature of dreams and one thing you have to quickly learn in order to avoid getting bogged down in unnecessary details is that most dreams have an unfathomable depth to them. Rest assured that if there is something that needs attention it will show up again – and again.
