How It’s Done

by | 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.

The Dream That Got My Attention

by | 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.