My Dream Story (again)
I have stated that I have been dreaming as far back as I can remember. I indulged in day dreaming as well. Most of my creative ventures ranging from poetry, painting, decorating, dancing, dream interpretation and the naming of my children were cocooned in my day dreaming world.
Currently my day dream technique is to lie down for about 30 minutes and traverse the bridge between sleep and wakefulness, in the liminal space between the two messages and images come. I begin with an intention of what I am looking for, and more often than not, I get clear images. Sometimes I get detailed instructions, like when I was meditating on the dream I had of Ezra and I in a car running over bodies in the road, the image of him being homeschooled with a private tutor came clear, then the image of their Brain Balance program, then the thought of the Henderson Homeschool group, etc. Step by step it came and within 3 hours of my meditation I had the clear plan for the little boys education. I had no plans the day before of homeschooling them.
Daydreams
School was long days and a lot of socialization for me when I was young, so it was a welcome break for me to let my imagination drift. I didn't need to be looking out a window to daydream, I could flip my mind to places far away while appearing present. My imagination knew no barriers. Ezra is the same, but he doesn't stay as present. I don't do him a disservice by being too concerned when he is not paying attention. He is paying attention to what he wants in the movie of his mind. Our day dreams and active imagination are vital to our happiness and an anecdote to stress. Ezra will take off from a social situation to go jump on the trampoline by himself, locking the animals inside as well, so he can fully immerse himself in pretend play. I adore when I look out in the back yard and he is in a full simulation of some sorts.
We connect with another realm in imagination. Quantum physics would assert that we are already in more than one realm simultaneously, so why not take a short break from one realm to check in on another? A status check with another version of myself.
Many artists incorporate elements of active imagination or explored the realm of the unconscious in their artistic practices. Leonora Carrington is one of my favorites. She was a British-born Mexican artist who drew inspiration from dreams, mythology and the unconscious. I love her paintings that are steeped in mystical and symbolic imagery. I am not a talented artist by any means, but I am exceptionally aware of my connection to the creative pulse from which Source births creation.
When I really started looking at my dreams they seemed more like a curse than a gift. Often I could not move on from the energy of my dream the next morning. The dreams would haunt me for years until they were fulfilled in waking life. Some horrible dreams I had, usually of my kids, I did not know if they were predictive or subconscious chatter. I had a dream of Deven when he was little that he got hit and killed by a mail truck when I had sent him to get the mail. I did not ask little Deven to get the mail after that.
It took decades of having dreams like this before I really wanted to understand what they meant. I needed to understand what they meant because they were off the charts of being able to be ignored. I began a deep dive into the dreamworld and it has made all the difference.
I went to a dream circle here in Henderson, NV. It was a circle of people all faced towards the center of our circle, feet pointing to the middle, meditating to drumming. During this dream circle I felt my body stay in the circle while my spirit traveled elsewhere. What I saw was subtle and flight oriented. I was transported and a bit unnerved when I came back to my body. I bolted out of the space as soon as I could without even thanking the beautiful women from Mexico that had traveled to provide such a beautiful and authentic experience. What did that mean? What was going on with my brain?!
Waking World of Dreams
Around the same time I had a waking vision while watching three young boys play in my backyard. One was a neighbor boy, Landon, 7, and my two sons 8 and 9. As I was watching them play, no thoughts in my head except wondering if Landon knew how to swim, the scene switched from the reality of them jumping on the trampoline to a vastly different future scene. Immediately I was seeing a different version of all three boys. Landon was floating in the pool, Everett had cracked his head on the bar of the trampoline and Ezra had broken his neck. All three boys were laying in my backyard lifeless.
I buckled to my knees. What did it mean?!
Intuitively I had the feeling that this was a predictive vision. It was connected to me and I had no idea what to do with it. So I told my husband.
A month later Landon ended up drowning in his pool. I was devastated. Should I have said something to Jennifer, Landon's mom when I had the vision? Do I tell her now? What do I do?!
I began researching, dreaming more and feeling like nobody in my life was able to edify me in any meaningful way regarding what was going on with my whole dream situation.
Then a couple months later I had a dream of Everett in the hospital with a head injury. The dream was fuzzy, but I did hear a nurse say "we don't know how bad it is." When I woke from the dream that morning Everett was standing right in front of my face saying "mom, I'm cold for you." Everett was going to have a head injury that day. I knew it. I canceled the family plans of going on a boat off the coast of Florida (we were on Spring Break vacation) and agreed to take the boys to the movie. After seeing Sonic 2 Everett was outside the movie theatre on the railing, lost his hand hold, and fell back to crack his skull. I watched him fall in slow motion, saying to my self "I knew it and I couldn't stop it." I was gutted. I didn't stop it even though I knew it was going to happen. That was two little boys I knew were going to get hurt and I was rendered a voyeur of the tragedies.
The next casualty was going to be Ezra. I went into full blown craze mode of studying the numerology of the dates of the accidents, the symbols of my dreams and visions, calculating possible timelines in which Ezra could get hurt. Desperate to know if you can change the course of a predictive dream I went to a dream shaman. She calmed me with an affirmation that yes, yes you can change the course of a dream.
BUT HOW?!?!
I was feeling a bit frantic and wondering if my sanity was slipping. It was this time frame I began going to dream circles, meditating, dream journaling, and really paying attention to all signs and synchronicities around my subconscious mind and my waking life. I calculated the day I thought Ezra could get hurt. There was a pedestrian that was hit and killed in front of his school a week before the day I had calculated, and that really sealed the deal on my plan to keep Ezra home on a certain day. He was not allowed to be in a car, play on the trampoline, nothing. He watched TV all day and did not break his neck like in the vision I had.
I don't know if I altered the future by paying attention and taking action, but I do know that I really became vested in my dream world. It was a harsh awakening, but it worked.
I had no one to talk to at the time about what was happening to me...except one beautiful woman. I was guided to her 100 percent. Quickly the unusual became the usual in my life. I did learn how to accept and honor the new way of navigating my life. It wasn't new really, it had always been there, just unacknowledged. After decades of staying unacknowledged my higher self stepped up the stakes and forced me to honor my dreamscape.
My dreams became more extreme at times and very detailed. My children showed up as main characters in my dreams. Children are often used in dreams because they hold a great impact and require attention. I have been led long nights through ancient sites I have never visited. I was taught by unknown entities about plant medicine, attacked by animals and so on.
I see what was happening these past couple years is much like an initiation through dreamtime. A shamanic initiation. My waking life was full of responsibilities as a mother of 5 children (even grown up children require time and attention), volunteering at the local women's organization as a first responder for domestic violence calls, plant medicine facilitator in training, wife, and a lot of beautiful travel. My waking life was ideal, but it was not my master plan. My dream life is not my plan as well, and it was wild. A different life was calling me with insistence. Nightmares demanded I move into a different space. I could step into it the easy way or the hard way.
It was clear that there was no turning back to living in just the seen world. The unseen world was infiltrating my reality in an undeniable way and was not going to go away for the sake of social norms or my convenience.
555:Chaos
My husband had seen me go through this shamanic initiation. He had been as understanding as he could have been about something completely foreign to his existence. He was open to listening to me and this is why our marriage stayed together. He listened and could not deny the things that I were experiencing were valid. He saw me predict dreams, have visitations from dead people that would then surface somehow in waking life via a relative of such dead people, he was witness to the whole process. The point in which I was having over the top brutal nightmares regarding him I knew I had to make a move to be alone.
The wild woman alone is a massive theme that repeats throughout history. I was not breaking any new ground, but in my current culture I was. I woke from a nightmare that left me sobbing one night, and the next morning I looked on Zillow for a home to rent near my family and the first one that popped up seemed master planned for my situation. It was 5 minutes from my family, it was white, it had a casita for facilitations and it had a putting green in the back yard for my golf loving son Everett (10).
I moved into a home of my own because of dreams I had. I did not know why I was being called to leave my family home and it was heartbreaking for me and confusing for my kids, but it all lined up so miraculously that I knew it was part of some master plan and if I kept in alignment and followed through with what was being taught to me in my dreams that all would be well.
The dreams continued with dreams of authors, Goddesses and Gods, more dead people. I began studying in my waking life and continued to deepen my meditation practice. Some periods of time I was sleeping 12 hours a night and felt exhausted upon waking due to all the travel and work I was doing in the astral plane. My deja reve was in full swing and occurring from night to day.
Deja reve means already dreamed. I have had deja reve since I was a child. It is where you dream something and then it comes true in waking life. One of the main times I realized this was a significant aspect of my life was when I was a young mother. I was at the park playing with Charly and Deven while talking to my Jordanian neighbor and I recalled that I had a dream of the exact scene I was in when I was living in Moncalierei, Italy as an exchange student. I was 19 and woke from that dream in the cold apartment in Italy wondering who the beautiful woman in a burka I was talking to in my dream was. 7 years later I was living the exact scene I had dreamed.
Some dreams took 7 years to come true, some took 2 years, some took 20 years, but during my active dream initiation it was happening from night to day. I would dream of being in a situation and the next day I would be in the situation. I was being guided to do things in my waking life that I would not normally do or choose to do, but if I did not follow the guidance I would be forced to do. It felt unnerving and chaotic.
I was being guided by my higher self to get me into a space of wholeness, and she had waited decades long enough to be heard and was intent on filling what was an empty vessel with all the knowledge and power that had been robbed of me as a member of a cult religion and a marriage that was intrinsically bound by the limitations of it's doctrine.
It felt liked chaos was being thrust onto my life so that order could properly be made. The puzzle had to be shattered so the pieces could be rearranged. And rearranged they were.
Growth in Myself and Family
I did research on my family line. I wanted to know about my Native American paternal grandfather, my occultist paternal grandmother, my Free Mason maternal grandfather, my KKK member maternal great-grandfather. I took multiple trips to North Carolina to spend time with my mom's sister, my Aunt Jo, who was in declining stages of dementia. The veil is thin for older people facing the stage of transition and it was very helpful to hear Aunt Jo talk openly about my mom's side of the family. The few times I tried to talk to my mom about what was going on she did not have much to say or support to give regarding my dream life except that it was strange as a child how much I had de ja vu.
I shared my growing fascination for dreams with anyone that would listen. I knew that whoever was entering my life at this point was guided to me because I had made my circle of acquaintances very small prior to this initiation. I did not have any fat to cut regarding the people in my life, for I had made sure that the only influences I had were in alignment with my highest timeline.
The miracles that were unfolding in my life on a daily basis were fascinating. My dreams were fascinating. I was being guided to teach as many people as possible how to work with their dreams during their awakening process. I began writing more, doing deeper healing work and seeing remarkable transformations in the lives of my husband and children. How could this be? The power of our dreams is how this can be.
I am aware of my night dreams and have been directed to better choices when I have paid attention to them and listened. I wrote my dreams down and honored them. I chronicled what my future may have held. I believe we all dream the future symbolically or literally. It has become clear how connected my dreams are with my life, even if it difficult to ascertain in my day to day machinations.
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