Dream from Nov. 2007
Part 3: Insight/Vision

… During a moment when I am waiting again to talk with the organizer, I HAVE A COMPELLING INSIGHT:

I ‘see’ that

• there may be other groups like us.

• that there are others who may be entering this world (still/even now) as we did.

• (I see that our group), what we do/what we can do, has to do with coming together (as a unit, as a whole), to gather as much learning, knowledge, experience, etc., as we can, then, when we are ‘full’, we separate, go out into the world to see who else is there, what other groups have survived, what other people are around.

• we share our experience, etc.; we spread out into the world – and by doing so, we somehow act as the tie (the connection for) the others who have come to this side.

I am incredibly excited as this insight rushes through me.  Gesturing with my hands, I describe the insight/vision of coming together, learning/gathering, and separating.  I bring my hands together in a gathering/containing motion, fingertips touching as though holding a sphere/ball, and then, with a slight push against the fingertips, I open my hands in a ‘bursting’/star burst motion as I say ‘we separate’, opening my arms and extending them in many directions with an expanding motion.

I am shaking when I finish.

It is so clear to me – this is what we can do!

I know that the whole group has to decide the next steps.  And there may be other ideas, but for me, at least, this is what I see.

I am shaking with excitement and a sense of awe/compassion.  We have a purpose.  I am part of something.  Up to now, I couldn’t have said what it is I do in/for the group, but in this moment, I know how I fit.  The insight is what I bring to the group – it makes a difference.

This is why I am here (on this side).  Now I know the reason.  Whatever is ultimately decided by the group, the image is planted – the vision is a ‘seed’ and speaking it out loud has planted it.  I have completely forgotten my earlier idea (of a scholarship) – this one is bigger.

Those who come now will be individuals, scattered, mostly between whatever groups there may be.  Somehow I know there are other groups — individuals having something in common who found each other, as we did.  And I also know that I am in the ‘first’ group from the collapse/change.  We’ve been here the ‘longest’.  We’ve had time to learn what the others will need to know.  They will need to know what we have learned.  The time ‘before’ is done.  This world is New.  This world is Now.

Dream from Nov. 2007
PART 2: THROUGH

… There is a blank space, as if the dream ends, but it continues….

I become aware that I’m alive and have been on the other side with the others for some unknown period of time.

We have come out on the other side.

Not everyone comes out on the other side.

There are fewer people.  The land is green, growing, gently rolling open space, trees, open space all around.  I see no indication of buildings, roads, etc., although we have supplies/resources.  The supplies are from the ‘old’ society, ‘left over’ from ‘the time before’.  There is no money.  Money is the only thing that did not make it to the other side.  It also seems that anyone who held onto money (in a grasping way, or out of fear of letting it go), did not come out into this world, either.

Those of us now here, we came together, found each other somehow.

We find a way to survive — we get along fine without money.

We are a large enough group that, as things need to be done, we separate into smaller groups to do particular tasks.  The smaller groups are fluid, becoming bigger/smaller as needed.  They are not ‘set’ as to who is in them, though people will gravitate toward what they like, what they are interested in, etc.

No one is ‘in charge’.

Some people are ‘organizers’ [for lack of a better term].  They are good at and enjoy organizing, and that is what they have gravitated toward.  They help with keeping up with what we have and what we need.  But they are not ‘in charge’, either.

Although I have the skills to be an ‘organizer’ and have the feeling that I could have taken that role if I wanted to, I am not an ‘organizer’.  I chose not to when I arrived/found myself here [a decision I don’t remember but know that I made].  It’s as though I needed a ‘rest’ from it – a sense of having been burned/wounded (not physically, but in the heart/spirit), and associated with a time ‘in the past’ when I was an organizer, ‘before’, in that other world – the one in which people have no way out except by falling into the lava river.

One guy (an ‘organizer’) has a desk.  I comment that, in this world, I could have had any desk I wanted (i.e., if I were an organizer, there are so many desks that, if one is needed, there are many to choose from).  I comment because the desk is nice – not fancy, but large enough and arranged in a way that helps the organizer do what he is good at.  Seeing his desk reminds me of the small, cramped desk I ended up with at my ‘last job’ [from the perspective of the dream, and being in this other place after falling into the lava waterfall, the job I am referring to is in fact my current job in waking life].  Seeing his desk makes me think about how nice it would have been to have had a desk at that job that was ‘big enough’’.

The supplies he keeps track of are represented as dishes and other office-type supplies.  Even in the dream, I understand that, while these supplies are what they appear to be, they also represent the idea or concept of supplies or various types.

I am speaking to the organizer because we are all coming together as a group in the space where the supplies are.  We are at a point (in our coming together and surviving) where we are asking/wondering ‘what’s next?’  We have come together to discuss ideas, possible options, and to come to an agreement, as a group, as to our next steps.

The ‘organizer’ mentions to me that my supplies (the ones associated with me/the group I’ve been gathering these supplies with) are running out the fastest (in the dream, these particular supplies are represented as paper napkins in the colors of my ‘last job’ – the one ‘on the other side’, ‘before’).

I am not concerned that these supplies are running out the fastest.  I understand that the supplies are, by their very nature, temporary – a ‘cushion’ as we are transitioning from what was to what is/will be.

There’s also the understanding that what we are doing is necessary.  It is also still somewhat comfortable in its execution/experience because we still do have supplies left over from ‘before’.  The real work, the harder part, begins when the supplies run out and we have only the resources of the earth, not of man-made.  When all that is man-made has been used (man-made=perishable supplies), the real ‘work’ begins.

I’ve been part of a circle/small group or have had a dream where the question of money comes up.  We’ve reached a point (‘again’) where money would be useful.  ‘Again’ as in, as a group grows, it reaches this point – so ‘again’ is about the growth/size of the group, rather than ‘we had it once before’.  We have not needed/used money up to now.  This group, and our question, is part of the larger group’s asking ‘what now?’ and considering options and ideas.

I’m talking to the ‘organizer’ about this, and sharing a dream about a scholarship used in my last job (in the other world) – how this interdisciplinary program set up scholarships to attract and support students while they did research/internships.  Up to now, we have had no interest in money, but now some of us are considering setting up a scholarship for those with an interest in joining us (but it’s more than that).  I say one or two sentences that play on the meaning of the word ‘interest’ (i.e.:  money % [as in ‘interest rate’] and attention [as in ‘interested in’]).

The group is coming together to see what the next step is.  I’m going to suggest something about money.  Others keep arriving and pulling his attention.  He doesn’t see the point because I’m going into too much side-detail.

At some point, I see something like another scene showing a few partial/charred coins on the ground.  These made it through.  We find such charred coins sometimes.  We never find paper money (it did not make it through the lava river).  The question has come up, on seeing these charred coins, ‘is it possible to go back (to the other side) and bring some money back?’  Along with that question comes the question/idea of maybe we need someone from the ‘other side’ who understands how money works if we are going to set up a scholarship.  Maybe we need that way of thinking for this idea?

Coming to this side [of the lava river; this new world], has to do with attitude/intention.  We all made it here because we did not hold onto/grasp money the way that those who died where holding/grasping it.

[The next thing is like a scene/dream ‘to the side’ – as if, as I try to describe my scholarship idea to the organizer, an ‘alternate’ or ‘side’ timeline opens up, in which we actually do what we are thinking about].
I am part of the group that is exploring this idea of going back to the other world.  The lava river, on this side, looks like a kind of shimmering energy boundary.  It dips down near the ground at a point near us.  This portion/area of the energy boundary looks like a large, deep bruise — mottled yellow/green/blue/purple.  It is clear that this boundary is intended to keep the worlds separate.  We have been considering options.
Scene:  Some of this smaller group goes back ‘through’ the lava river/barrier to the other world (‘before’, near the end).  We can, as individuals, safely move through the boundary by creating a kind of personal energy ‘bubble’ in which to travel, but it requires three of us to create and hold a bubble of sufficient size and stability to bring someone back with us.

Yes, it’s possible to bring some (money) back.  It’s also possible to bring back a person with that money grasping-ness frame of mind.

But I am unsettled by it – bringing this grasping person, bringing that frame of mind, that energy, alters the balance of this world as a disease alters the balance of the body.  As soon as the bubble ‘opens’ on this side, I feel the shift – the whole environment seems to go on ‘alert’, as if a disease has come into this world.  It is immediately clear that the guy we brought over cannot stay.  He must go back, otherwise the money-grasping disease will infect this world.  We go back through the barrier with the man, returning him to ‘before’.

I’m still not finished trying to convey my idea about the scholarship – I’ve only been able to get bits and pieces said with all the others coming to him and pulling his attention – and I’ve heard bits and pieces of conversations as people arrive and talk to each other and the organizer, even as the ‘money’/’crossing the barrier’ scene is played out, both interwoven with and ‘to the side of’ the gathering.  The whole group is gathered to talk about what the next steps are – why did we come through?  What happens next?  And the whole supplies/finite resources thing.

During a moment when I am waiting again to talk with the organizer, I HAVE A COMPELLING INSIGHT…

(continued in Part 3)

This is a long dream, so I have divided it into three sections, ‘Before’, ‘Through’, and ‘Insight/Vision’

Dream from Nov. 2007
PART 1:  BEFORE

Something very big has happened.

The world is collapsing.

BIG change.

People are herded/pushed to an edge.  Below, what looks like a river of lava.  The lava is very thick, viscous, and fills the wide, deep channel nearly to the top.  There is no way around or over the edge.  The people fall in as the crowd presses against them.

All sorts of people.  Most are round/overweight.  This is, in part, what has brought about the collapse / destruction of the world.

I’m at the edge near a bare tree (dead? dormant?).  I have been here for a long while and have been perplexed about what ‘do I do now?’  In front of me, to my right, is something like a lava waterfall falling from above.

At one point, I had climbed the tree.  Weathered boards are nailed to the trunk.  From horizon to horizon are hundreds of thousands of people.  Running.  Fear.  Panic.  Something over the horizon and out of view, something very big, has collapsed/imploded.  An enormous column of smoke/dust rises far above the horizon, roiling into a kind of cloud as it continues upward.  A kind of pressure wave/shock wave expands as a circle, outward from the collapse/implosion at its center.  It grows faster than people can run.  There are no people – no nothing — behind the leading edge of the wave — it is swept clear.  Those now at the edge of the lava river had left significantly before the collapse.  Others left later.  Still others left even later, too late, or not at all.  Many had left significantly sooner, but they are far fewer than those who had waited longer and much longer.  Even so, the edge of the lava river is as far as anyone can go.  And still the crowd presses forward. They do not know about the edge until they get there — they do not know that there is no way across or around.

It seems that I am aware that there is something to do, but I honestly don’t know what it is – my next action, the next step, is completely unknown, a blank.  I am simply ‘stopped’.  I see all this fear in people, but I don’t feel afraid.  Standing, stopped, at the edge, I am perplexed more than anything, with no idea of  ‘what do I do?’  The crowd has not yet spread to where I am, but soon will.

From my vantage point in the tree, I had noticed, scattered among the crowd, areas that seemed more ‘open’, less dense, where the crowd seemed to be moving ‘around’ something within it.  These seemed to be people who are different from the rest of the crowd.  They are not afraid.  They move at a steady pace, in the same direction as the crowd which spills around them like water flowing around an object in its path.  They are not pushed or crowded or jostled in the same way as everyone else is pushed and crowded.  I notice them because of the ‘space’ around them, like a bubble that ‘gives’ as others encounter it, but it does not ‘pop’.

Then, I notice that some people jump in on purpose.  There is a sense that they seem almost happy, excited, eager.

There is a man moving along in the crowd, nearer to my location.  He is not resisting.  He clearly knows something about what has happened or about what is happening [something ‘behind the scenes’].  He is going with the flow of the crowd, not fighting or struggling or panicking like the others.  There is a kind of ‘space’ around him, so that, while he is in the midst of the chaos, he is not being crushed by the crowd as so many others are.

When he gets to the edge, he looks at it a moment, as if surprised and also ‘ah, so this is what it looks like…’.  Then he hugs himself around the knees and lets himself fall in.

This catches my attention.  He is not afraid.  I am not afraid.  As the crowd grew, I saw people pushed in, struggling, grasping to hold on, afraid.  I didn’t see falling in as an option – falling in was done by people who were afraid, who were trying not to fall in.

When I see the man, I see there is another way.

‘I can do that!’ I realize with sudden clarity.  All confusion/perplexity vanishes.  In that moment, seeing him fall in not afraid, not resisting, I think/consider ‘at least death (heat) is quick in the lava waterfall’.  I had anticipated pain and had held back, in part, because of that.  But his openness, excitement, looking forward to something, is stronger than my anticipation of pain and bigger than any uncertainty I’ve had.  In that moment, I understand that whatever pain there may be, it will be very, very brief.  Intense, but brief.  It is clear that, whatever he knows, the lava river is no barrier.

I follow, let myself fall in like a dive – palms together overhead in a ‘prayer’ position.

There is a blank space, as if the dream ends, but it continues….