Section Nine: Dreams and Inner Vision

Chapter 148: The Wisdom of the Night — Typologies, Meaning, and a Personal Dream Chronicle

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” – Anaïs Nin

If we accept that dreams are indeed a nexus of profound communication, we must turn our attention to the specific dialects through which this communication occurs. Have you ever found yourself captivated by the enigmatic world of dreams? Are they whispers from our biology, creations spun from a wandering imagination, windows into the subconscious, hints of wisdom from a higher power, or even glimpses of our past incarnations? Most of us have experienced a dream so vivid it lingered in the mind long after waking. By venturing into this mystical territory, we open ourselves to extraordinary possibilities.

I am a deeply spiritual, though not traditionally religious, person. I stand alongside a vast, invisible community of theologians, mystics, and seekers who believe that dreams are one of the primary mechanisms through which the Divine—whether you call it God, Higher Power, the Universe, Great Spirit, or the Collective Unconscious—captures our attention. In the absolute, fundamental reality of consciousness, there is remarkably little difference between what we experience through the theater of our dreams and what we call waking reality. Awake or asleep, our internal landscape responds in real time to what we witness. It stands to reason, then, that the universe is constantly attempting to impart wisdom to us while the noisy, rational mind is finally quieted in slumber.

Understanding Dreams: Four Lenses on the Dreaming Mind

Before cataloging the specific typologies I have come to know, it’s worth pausing on the broader question of what dreams are for. It’s worth examining them through several lenses: neurological, psychological, spiritual, and evolutionary.

Neurologically, dreams arise from brain activity during REM sleep. Brain scans show that regions like the amygdala, which processes emotion, remain active during this state. Some neuroscientists believe dreaming is simply a byproduct of electrical impulses with no inherent purpose, while others argue it helps the brain process emotion or encode memory.

Spiritually, many traditions regard dreams as messages from the divine or the deep subconscious—woven with symbolism that offers guidance, warning, or insight. Despite vast differences in interpretation, a comparative look across traditions reveals broad agreement on their spiritual value.

Evolutionarily, some theorize that dreaming gave our ancestors a “safe space” to rehearse responses to danger. As civilizations developed, this raw survival function became layered with religious and spiritual meaning.

Perhaps the truest value of dreams isn’t found in any single explanation, but in the interplay of all of them—biological programming, psychological truth, and connection to deeper mysteries, meeting at once. Each dream we remember offers a reflection of our inner workings, and perhaps a glimpse of what it means to be human.

A Life Steeped in Dreams

We all dream, whether we recall it or not. Many who do remember have no framework for interpretation, and so their dreams are dismissed as noise. But some of us build a lifelong practice of attention around our dream life, developing a language for it and treating it as a genuine channel of communication.

I found a note I had written while “asleep” in 2007, tucked inside a dream journal that surfaced again in 2019—rediscovered, of all things, inside a suitcase as Sharon and I packed for a trip to Japan. There is something fitting in that: a message from my sleeping self, waiting patiently for over a decade, only to resurface just as I was preparing to cross into an unfamiliar part of the waking world. My dreams have long served as messages from the many facets of my Self—a window into the subconscious and a channel for healing. They have illuminated hidden emotions, offered guidance, and facilitated genuine transformation. On more than one occasion, I have felt a deep and inexplicable connection with the spirit of a deceased friend or family member within a dream. Others have seemed to reveal fragments of past-life experience—so vivid and emotionally charged that they compelled me to seek their meaning.

So could Truth be trying to reach us while we sleep? What follows is my own map of that territory—the typologies I have come to know intimately, both through my own nights and through the accounts of those who have shared their dreams with me. These are not rigid boxes, for the fluid nature of the unconscious often blends these categories together in a single night’s journey. Understanding them, however, provides a crucial map for navigating the often bewildering territory of the sleeping mind.

A Catalog of the Night’s Typologies

1. The Visitation Dream

The first, and often most profoundly moving, of these categories is the Visitation Dream. It is remarkably common to experience a deeply vivid visitation dream after a beloved friend or family member passes away. In these sacred encounters, the deceased almost always appear in bodily form, but they are invariably healthy, vibrant, and imbued with a luminous, unmistakable energy. Their purpose is usually clear and direct: to communicate a message of peace. “I am okay,” they tell us, or “There is absolutely nothing to fear about death.” I have been graced with several of these dreams over the years—encounters I share in fuller detail in the Personal Dream Chronicle below. What I can say now is that these visitations never felt like mere subconscious comfort; they possessed an energetic signature of absolute otherness, a genuine connection across the veil.

2. Prophetic and Warning Dreams

Where the Visitation Dream speaks to us of what has passed, other dreams speak of what is yet to come. Our complex human brains come equipped with built-in predictive hardware, so it should be no surprise that we possess the capacity to prophesize, utilizing both our waking intuition and our sleeping visions. In many cases, our subconscious minds are simply drawing on vast archives of past experiences to run complex, probable scenarios of future events. I have experienced several dreams that predicted future events with eerie, exact precision. Yet I have also learned that they remain unreliable predictors of an absolute future, precisely because the future is not static; it is fluid, constantly shifting based upon the choices we make in the present.

Closely related to prophecy is the Warning Dream. The Divine—and the profound intelligence of our own physical bodies—can and will speak to us in dreams to warn us about imminent danger, particularly regarding our physical health. We may dream repeatedly of a specific body part failing, or receive a direct, verbal warning from a dream character. In a 2015 study of women diagnosed with breast cancer, 83 percent reported dreams more vivid than usual, and 44 percent recalled hearing specific words like “breast cancer” or “tumor.” The body knows what the conscious mind denies, and it uses the canvas of the dream to demand our attention.

3. The Healing Dream

When we heed these warnings, or when we are in desperate need of energetic realignment, we may be gifted with Healing Dreams. These are profound, internal creations explicitly designed to shift us from a state of deep imbalance into a state of harmony and equilibrium. They frequently involve a mystical encounter with a luminescent being, a wise guide, or an ancestral figure. I have experienced many such dreams—one in particular, involving a beloved ancestor, so awe-inspiring that I have reserved its telling for the chronicle below. Such dreams have the power to deposit a profound healing energy into our waking lives, fundamentally altering our spiritual trajectory.

4. Heavenly and Mutual Dreams

To experience such love often requires us to visit spaces that feel entirely beyond this earthly realm—Heavenly Dreams. A 1989 study found that more than half of healthy young adults who dreamed of death spent significant time, within the dream, in a realm that can only be described as heaven—often traveling down a luminous tunnel toward a breathtaking destination, and frequently reuniting with deceased loved ones. I have had dreams where I was suspended in an expanse of light, hearing the layered harmonics of celestial beings, carrying a message of such staggering beauty that it defies the limitations of human vocabulary.

If the Heavenly Dream dissolves the boundary between this world and the next, the Mutual Dream dissolves the boundary between one mind and another. A mutual dream occurs when two individuals—typically, though not always, in separate physical locations—dream of the exact same narrative, landscape, or event at the exact same time. According to a 2017 study, shared dreams are, on average, 80 percent identical in their details. While they most frequently occur between close friends, twins, or relatives, four percent are astonishingly shared by complete strangers. This phenomenon points to a profound realization: the collective mind of humanity dreams through the individual, and the individual dreams through the collective mind of humanity. We are, at our core, deeply and fundamentally One.

5. The Lucid Dream

No accounting of the night’s typologies would be complete without the Lucid Dream—that curious state in which the dreamer becomes aware, mid-dream, that they are dreaming. Science is only beginning to catch up with what mystics have long known intuitively. Researcher Çağatay Demirel and his team recently assembled the largest dataset in this corner of sleep science, comparing brain activity across wakefulness, ordinary REM sleep, and lucid dreaming. They found that the self-awareness of the lucid dream is tied to beta waves in the right central and parietal lobes—regions that govern spatial awareness, nonverbal memory, and touch. Beta waves are the same high-frequency activity that dominates our minds during waking problem-solving, which may explain why lucid dreamers retain a degree of cognitive control entirely absent from ordinary REM sleep.

Perhaps most remarkable is Demirel’s observation that lucid dreaming bears a striking resemblance, at the level of the brain, to the effects of psychedelic substances such as LSD and ayahuasca. Yet lucid dreaming may go a step further: “While psychedelics often lead to a dissolution of ego and decreased self-referential processing,” the researchers note, “lucid dreams may actually harness elements of self-awareness and control.” For those capable of achieving this state with regularity, the implications are extraordinary: a threshold where conscious will and the boundless imagery of the unconscious meet, and neither must surrender to the other.

6. Projection and Remote-Viewing Dreams

Adjacent to the lucid dream, and perhaps its more mysterious cousin, is the Projection or Remote-Viewing Dream. In 1992, I came to understand that my sense of self had to include a far more expansive, collective self—one shared by all conscious members of the human race. In a dream, I was shown that we may each project ourselves into another person’s experience within the dream world, inhabiting their version of reality for a moment or two. Early occult and spiritualist literature referred to this phenomenon as telesthesia or traveling clairvoyance. Researcher Rosemary Guiley described it as “seeing remote or hidden objects clairvoyantly with the inner eye, or in alleged out-of-body travel.”

7. Radical Empathy Dreams

Closely bound to projection is the Radical Empathy Dream, in which we find ourselves witnessing life through another person’s eyes entirely—raising unsettling questions about just how porous our individual identities really are. This category is significant enough that I devote a full chapter to it later in this book; for now, it’s enough to say that these dreams point toward empathy as something more than emotional imagination. They suggest it may be a latent, visceral faculty of shared consciousness.

8. Dreams of Teaching and Personal Growth

Dreams frequently arrive as invitations toward Personal Growth and the Act of Teaching. To dream of teaching may indicate a desire to share knowledge or experience, reflecting a sense of responsibility to pass on what one has learned. Such dreams often symbolize our innermost aspirations to guide or inspire others, and can reveal latent leadership qualities. At times, dreaming of teaching may instead point to a struggle with communication, or a need to assert oneself more fully in waking life. If you have ever awakened from a dream shaking, having lived through an experience that felt both vividly real and utterly alien, you have crossed the threshold into a higher dimension of self-understanding. We are far closer to one another than we presently believe; it is only our beliefs that keep us feeling separate.

9. Dreams of Past Lives and Ancestral Spirit

Some dreams seem to reveal fragments of past-life experience or connect us to ancestral spirit rather than personal memory—so vivid and emotionally charged that they demand further exploration. I devote considerable attention to this category later in the book, where I trace how unresolved wounds from prior incarnations can shape present-life fear and paralysis until they are consciously reclaimed.

10. The Farewell and Divergence Dream

Finally, we arrive at the dream that closes a chapter in life. Some dreams mark the quiet end of a relationship or phase of life before waking life catches up, signaling that something is coming to a close. It is fitting, perhaps, that our exploration of the night’s typologies should end here, for this category reminds us that the dreamscape does not merely inform our waking lives—it accompanies us through them, from the moment a loved one departs to the moment we ourselves are called to release what we can no longer carry forward.

Key Takeaways

• Dreams possess transformative power, offering avenues for healing and self-discovery.
• Dreams can open windows into past lives, offering lessons for our present existence.
• Dreams can channel spirit connections, providing profound ties to the beyond.
• Personal interpretation of these experiences fuels ongoing spiritual growth.

A Personal Dream Chronicle

The categories above are only scaffolding. What gives them life are the dreams themselves—the specific, dated visions that taught me what each of these typologies means in practice.

The Priest and the Evil One (1964) — Projection and Teaching

At eight years old, I dreamed I was a priest in a pre-technological village, instructing my people to cast their sacred idols into a lake. Alone in my home, I summoned the darkness that had long terrorized the community. As I exhausted myself fighting this unseen force, a face began to materialize in the fog—my own.

Meaning: This childhood dream was a lesson in psychological projection decades before I had the language for it. The “evil” we perceive in the world is so often a reflection of our own inner shadow. We heal together, or we perish alone.

A Message from Bob Fero (1978) — Visitation

Bob and Dorothy Fero were close friends of my parents for as long as I can remember. In 1972, driving home from Reno in a fit of rage, Bob crashed head-on into an oncoming car, killing himself and critically injuring Dorothy. My father, too grief-stricken, couldn’t bring himself to attend the funeral. I went in his place. Two nights later, Bob came to me in a dream. He told me not to fear death—that where he was, it was beautiful and peaceful, and death was not the enemy.

Meaning: This visitation offered a profound sense of comfort, suggesting that consciousness continues beyond physical death. I’ve had several such dreams since—each one a quiet reassurance.

The Reincarnation of Bobby Clements (1987) — Remote Viewing and Past Lives

A month into my sobriety, I had three consecutive dreams in which my name was Bobby Clements—a teenager enlisting in WWII, then a bomber pilot shot down with the certainty we would all die. Decades later, my sister’s research uncovered the real story of Robert “Bobby” Kelly Clements of Nova Scotia, a bomber pilot whose life—down to hand-picking his five crewmates—matched my dreams with uncanny accuracy.

Meaning: My childhood aspirations to become a pilot, and later an electrician, echoed his life in ways too specific to dismiss as coincidence—suggesting our souls may carry echoes of past experience that shape the present journey.

A Dream of Healing and Self-Love (1988) — Healing and Visitation

I first met Diane “Di Di” McLoud in 1982, and by 1984 we had become lovers, though I sensed our relationship couldn’t survive our shared flaws. She died in 1988, struck by a drunk driver. Shortly after, she appeared in a dream: I was confronted by an aggressive, abusive man and pleaded with a policeman to arrest him. Di Di then took the officer’s place and told me plainly that for love to reappear fully in my life, I first had to “arrest” those same negative qualities within myself.

Meaning: This was a direct message from my subconscious—and perhaps from Di Di’s spirit—that healing love always begins with self-rehabilitation.

The Prophecy of the Eight-Jeweled Ring (1988) — Prophetic

I dreamed of searching for a ring with eight jewels but could only find seven; a thought arose that the eighth would be found already mounted to the lost ring itself. At the time, I was engaged to Laurie H., a relationship that ended weeks later. In 2004, my wife Sharon showed me the ring she’d bought, unprompted, for our second wedding in Las Vegas. It held seven small stones and one larger, distinguishing eighth stone—the ring from my dream, sixteen years earlier.

Meaning: A stunning confirmation of life’s mysterious synchronicities—the future casting light into the present. Sharon was the eighth jewel.

A Farewell to Randy Olson (1988) — Visitation and Divergence

In a dream, the sky seemed to open and heaven sang a beautiful song about Boston. I found myself flying, without a plane, and received a message that I would be leaving my lifelong friend Randy Olson behind for this phase of my life. Soon after, I traveled to Boston, where I was unexpectedly given access to Mary Baker Eddy’s private study. My friendship with Randy grew distant in the years that followed. Years later, Sharon read his obituary: Randy had died of a heart attack, found in his car after a trip to get a sandwich.

Meaning: This dream foretold a painful but necessary divergence of paths. I couldn’t carry him to the spiritual places I was called to visit—that willingness was his alone to find. You are still loved, my friend.

Grandfather, Great Spirit (1992) — Healing and Transcendence

While living in the Rock Creek area with Sharon, I dreamed I was back in my grandfather’s home when a fierce, fiery orb of pure light and love hovered above me—unmistakably my late grandfather Henry. I understood that joining with it fully would destroy my body, too weak to hold that fire of love and wisdom. I didn’t care; I began to rise toward it anyway. Sharon, hearing my distress, woke me—and I had never felt so disappointed to return to waking life.

Meaning: In shamanic terms, I now recognize this as an encounter with the eighth chakra, the doorway between the immortal soul and the earthbound self. The dream left behind a clear directive: to one day hold that vibration, my body and mind needed to be dramatically strengthened.

A Message from June Thomas (2016) — Mutual Dream

June Thomas, a woman I’ve known since 1990, was visiting her ailing brother Dale in 2016. One night I dreamed I’d fallen in an unfamiliar bathroom and become trapped between the toilet and the wall. The next morning, June called to say that in the night, Dale had gone to the bathroom, fallen, and become trapped in that exact position.

Meaning: Coincidence, or evidence that our awareness extends beyond the five senses? I know my own answer; yours may differ.

The Cup and the Map (2017) — Spiritual Teaching

After a Friday evening seminar on mysticism with Matthew Fox, I had a dream in which I was fully, strangely awake. I opened a door into a well-lit room, where a man offered me a cup, and understood drinking from it would “intoxicate” me in a way still consistent with my sobriety. He led me to a table holding a map divided into two paths: one a solid, unbroken line; the other, several dotted lines that wove and intersected but never crossed the solid path. Matthew wouldn’t interpret it for me—he simply told me to let it reveal its own meaning. On the drive home, it did: those who walk the solid line live within the ruts of convention, while those who choose the dotted, uncertain paths embrace the unknown as a constant companion.

Meaning: This is the path of conscious evolution—curiosity and creativity forging new routes rather than conforming to expectation. As Tolkien wrote: not all who wander are lost.

The Electrician’s Dream for Marty Crouch (2018) — Personal Growth and Healing

I woke at 2:45 a.m. with a profound sense of presence and fell into a dream of a noisy industrial plant where an electrical system needed reconditioning. I understood that a safety lock had to be removed from the panel before the system could be trusted to run again.

Meaning: Healing requires releasing our self-protective controls and trusting the process, even when fear makes that trust feel impossible. Marty carried deep resistance to his own healing; I hoped this dream might show him the beauty beneath that armor.

The Foundation Dream at 1440 Multiversity (2018) — Projection and Teaching

During a workshop with Alberto Villoldo, I dreamed of groups of people assembling the foundation of a great new building while Alberto silently observed. A voice delivered a monologue on the nature of the “magnetic self,” which I countered eloquently—until, mid-dream, I turned to Sharon and asked, “Do I sound like an idiot?”

Meaning: Even within a dream of expanded consciousness, my oldest wound—self-doubt—found its way in. It remains my life’s work to make peace with that voice.

The Return of Grandfather, Great Spirit (2022) — Ancestral Spirit and Resolution

In 1987, during a transcendent meditation, the Sacred Silence showed me two mysterious “tricksters” embedded in my life energy field. I carried that unresolved image for twenty-nine years until I began to understand them as the embedded wounds of trauma. On October 25, 2022, I woke at midnight in acute anxiety after another dream of my grandfather Henry—this time together in a car with two dark, threatening figures. I knew I had to confront and remove them, even at the cost of my own life, to protect him.

Meaning: I am those tricksters when I remain unconscious of them, and I am Grandfather, Great Spirit, when I confront them and refuse the dark paths they point toward. I grow sick when I stop looking, and I heal—along with anyone inspired by the telling—each time I choose to see.

Closing Reflection

It’s worth remembering that dreams, spirit connections, and past-life impressions are deeply personal. Each person’s journey is unique, and interpretations will vary—what holds profound meaning for one may not resonate with another. Approaching the mystical realm with an open mind and a sense of wonder, rather than certainty, is the only real requirement.

As we navigate this beautifully complex territory of dreams, spirits, and past lives, each vision and each realization becomes another building block in our spiritual journey. The wisdom is already there, waiting in the dotted lines of the map, for anyone willing to wander off the well-worn path. So let us keep exploring, keep learning, and keep growing—unraveling, dream by dream, the extraordinary possibilities that lie within.

Chapter 149: Radical Empathy Dreams: Blurring the Boundaries of Self

In our slumber, we occasionally encounter dreams that defy logic and challenge our understanding of self. Among these enigmatic nocturnal adventures are radical empathy dreams—experiences where one may find themselves witnessing life through another person’s eyes. These dreams raise compelling questions about the porousness of our identities and invite us to explore the fine line between personal and collective consciousness.

Radical empathy dreams present an intriguing challenge to the traditional boundaries that define self and other. They blur the distinction between our individual experiences and those of others, offering a glimpse into a shared human consciousness. When we dream as someone else—seeing their world, feeling their emotions—we question the solidity of our own identities. Are we merely isolated entities, or do we possess an innate capacity to transcend our sense of self and connect with the experiences of others?

I have brushed against this porousness myself, as recorded in the Personal Dream Chronicle’s 2016 entry, when a vivid dream of being trapped in an unfamiliar bathroom mirrored, with uncanny precision, an incident that befell a close friend’s ailing brother that same night. Had I, for a few unguarded hours of sleep, slipped the confines of my own perspective and taken up residence in his? I cannot say with certainty. But the experience left me with an unshakable sense that whatever separates one consciousness from another is far thinner than we assume.

The psychological and philosophical implications of radical empathy dreams are profound. They prompt us to contemplate the nature of identity and our capacity to understand others on a deeper level. Such dreams suggest that empathy might extend beyond mere imagination or cognitive perspective-taking, hinting at a more visceral and authentic connection with the lives of others. This notion challenges us to rethink our understanding of empathy, recognizing it as an inherent human ability that transcends the waking state.

An intriguing aspect of radical empathy dreams is their potential to enhance real-world empathy. Could experiencing life through another’s eyes in the dream state lead to greater understanding and compassion in our waking lives? It seems plausible that such dreams could act as a training ground for empathy, allowing us to refine our ability to connect with and comprehend the experiences of others. By nurturing this empathetic capacity, we may become better equipped to bridge the divides that often separate us.

However, in our modern world, the prevalence of technology and media may play a role in diminishing these profound empathetic experiences. The constant bombardment of digital stimuli and curated content can limit our imaginative capacities, leaving less room for the deep introspection required for radical empathy dreams to flourish. The challenge lies in finding a balance between engaging with technology and preserving the sanctity of our inner worlds.

Empathy plays a crucial role in the realm of dreams, serving as a window into our subconscious emotions and social connections. When we dream, our mind often reflects our daily experiences and relationships, providing insights that may not be readily apparent in waking life. This aspect of dreaming becomes particularly interesting when we consider instances where we feel empathy for others within our dream narratives—dreaming, for example, of feeling compassion for someone being scolded can indicate deeper insights into our emotional state and values. This category of dream shares much in common with projection or remote-viewing dreams, and questions of the porousness of our very identities come to the forefront during any investigation of them.

Radical empathy dreams offer a powerful reminder of the interconnectedness of human experience. They challenge our notions of identity, urging us to explore the potential for empathy that exists beyond the confines of waking consciousness. By understanding and nurturing these dreams, we may unlock new pathways to compassion and connection, enriching our relationships with ourselves and those around us. Dream researchers, philosophers, and the general public alike must continue to investigate these experiences, for they hold the key to unlocking the true potential of human empathy.

If the mind can slip its moorings enough to inhabit another’s suffering in the space of a single night, then perhaps identity itself is a far looser garment than we’ve been taught to believe—not just across the boundary of self and other, but across the boundary of now and then. The same porousness that allows a dream to carry another person’s pain into our own may also allow older wounds, carried from lives we do not consciously remember, to surface within us. It is to this deeper current—the wounds we inherit not from empathy alone, but from the very fabric of a soul stretched across time—that we now turn.

Chapter 150: The Power of Then: The Process of Reclaiming Disassociated Parts of Ourselves, And Healing Traumas from Present or Past Lives

Embracing a Distant Past

Writer’s note: As explored throughout the broader journey of An Electrician’s Guide to Our Universe, and a Life, Love, and Death Upon Its Unlimited Bandwidth, when we begin the process of healing from our human condition, we never know in advance what direction our path will lead us. Such continues to be the case for me.

The tapestry of our lives is often far richer and more intricate than it first appears. Lying beneath the surface of a singular human experience may be countless threads spun from human archetypes, historical narratives, past incarnations, or disassociated aspects of the present self. Each holds the echoes of forgotten traumas, triumphs, and incomplete journeys.

When these fragments of the soul remain hidden in the unconscious, they operate as invisible puppeteers. They dictate our reactions, define our fears, and enforce limitations, giving us the illusion of free will while secretly binding us to ancient scripts. True freedom is an impossibility until these unseen forces—whether born of past-life karma or present-life disassociation—are brought into the light of conscious awareness.

Human consciousness is not a singular, fixed entity. The soul houses wounds older than the body it inhabits, wrapped delicately in layers of forgotten incarnations. During a meditation on July 21, 1987—an experience recorded in full in the Personal Dream Chronicle—I received a profound spiritual teaching intertwined with a most confusing revelation. Ever so briefly, in a twice-in-a-lifetime experience, I could see the field of energy that constituted my body/mind awareness. I saw embedded within it two almost complete thought or identity forms, which I recognized as distinct caricatures, or entities. I had two “extras” attached to my field, and I immediately understood that they were not there for my greater good.

I came to regard these two unwelcome components of my life force as tricksters, though I noted that their presence allayed the loneliness of my ego, perhaps because they seemed vaguely familiar. I sensed that I was supposed to let go of these illusions of self, but I did not know what to do with them until I revisited them consciously in recent years. Little did I know that they were to become the most critical components to understand in my desire to heal from trauma and reclaim my autonomy.

Part 1: Unraveling the Wounded Energy Vortices of the Soul

Two specific vortices have shaped my energy field, mirroring fragments of past lives that resonate powerfully in my present. One emerges from a life as an ancient shaman, a healer tethered to the spiritual forces of the earth. The other stems from the life of Bobby Clements, an ill-fated WWII pilot surrounded by camaraderie and sacrifice but plagued by loss.

The Wounded Healer

The shamanic vortex was deeply rooted in the archetype of the wounded healer, a paradox I have often lived without fully understanding. My childhood was rife with night terrors, bedwetting, abandonment fears, and a desperate yearning for connection that rarely found nourishment in peers. Yet, intuitively, I always bridged my inner world with spiritual forces I could barely name.

As I described in the priest dream recounted earlier in the Personal Dream Chronicle, that childhood vision of a village and its summoned darkness remains a significant teaching. Idolatry and psychological projection are the modern names for the phenomena shown to me. The shaman forced his village to face their shadow without the help of gods, and I feel certain the village shadow prematurely ended his life for his efforts. Before this energy was made conscious, its negative influence manifested in my present life as a deep-seated fear of abandonment and a crippling hesitation to share my spiritual truths. The shaman’s unresolved trauma whispered that spiritual authenticity equated to alienation and destruction, erecting invisible walls around my heart that prevented true communion with the world.

The Unfulfilled Leader

The second vortex bore the mark of Bobby Clements. As I described in the Bobby Clements dream sequence above—the three consecutive dreams that came a month into my sobriety in 1987—I lived, enlisted alongside, and ultimately died as this young WWII pilot, flying his final fatal mission with five close friends aboard. As recounted there, my sister’s later research uncovered the real Robert “Bobby” Kelly Clements of Nova Scotia, whose life matched my dream sequence with uncanny precision.

Because Bobby’s final conscious act was one of fatal failure—plummeting from the sky with the crew he had sworn to protect—my own subconscious decision-making was infected by an expectation of inevitable ruin. Bobby’s despair turned inward against me, breeding a profound self-doubt and a depressive paralysis that culminated in a desire to end my own life in 1986. I hesitated to commit to a path, to build a future, or to trust my own leadership, because an unintegrated part of my soul believed that taking the helm would only lead to devastating loss.

The Synergistic Paralysis

These two past incarnations did not merely influence me independently; they merged into a powerful, synergistic force that severely restricted my freedom in this life. The shaman’s trauma dictated that exposing my spiritual authenticity would lead to my ultimate destruction at the hands of those I tried to help. Simultaneously, Bobby’s unresolved grief convinced me that stepping into any leadership role would inevitably result in the catastrophic ruin of those who trusted me.

Together, these intertwined energies created a compounding paralysis. I was terrified to step forward as a spiritual leader or guide, trapped by the dual subconscious conviction that doing so would simultaneously destroy me and fail everyone who relied on me. My free will was entirely usurped by this invisible intersection of ancient fears.

Part 2: Revisiting the Unraveling and the Path to Wholeness

There is an infinite power accessible through becoming lovingly present for “the then.” Yet, many of us live within the confines of “the now,” unable to fathom the depth of these fragments’ influence. Cultural norms and modern-day psychology have conditioned us to frame our challenges solely within the narrative of our childhoods. While significant, it is not the full picture.

These energy vortices do not emerge as straightforward figures but as patterns in your energy field, recurring dreams, vivid meditations, or deeply embedded emotions that feel larger than this life alone. Clues of past-life dynamics often appear through frequent dreams, compulsion-driven decisions, and karmic relationships. Understanding these themes is not about being stuck in the past; it is a path to reclaiming your autonomy. Through introspection, I have developed a three-step process to dismantle these unconscious controls:

Recognition: Notice recurring patterns or archetypal behaviors. Honor the inner acknowledgment of dissonance.

Integration: Employ tools like meditation or journaling to invite the fragments back home. The goal is not to erase the past but to honor it.

Transcendence: View these echoes not as burdens, but as teachers. Acknowledge that time simply creates the context for understanding cycles of spiritual growth.

While there is value in understanding the psychological utility of archetypes, dismissing these experiences as mere imagination strips them of their transformative power. Treating these fragments as real, living components of the spiritual self demands a level of radical vulnerability and accountability that traditional therapy often skirts. By meeting these energies where they are, we stop pathologizing our spiritual depths and begin the sacred work of reclaiming our disassociated parts.

The Spiral of Healing

Healing from the wounds of past incarnations is not a linear march toward perfection; it is a continuous, upward spiral of self-awareness. When I finally recognized and integrated the shaman and the pilot, they ceased to be my captors. They transformed from architects of my suffering into wise companions on my expansive spiritual path. The shaman taught me to transform suffering into light without seeking external validation, and the pilot provided a compass for deep loyalty that does not require the sacrifice of my own individuality.

We are all carrying the weight of wounds far older than the bodies we inhabit. Yet, within those very wounds lies the dormant light of countless lifetimes, waiting to be unleashed. I urge you to look closely at the recurring patterns, the inexplicable fears, and the persistent shadows that haunt the periphery of your life. Do not dismiss them. Seek out the forgotten fragments of your soul and invite them back into the whole. It is only by bravely facing the entirety of our “then” that we can untangle the strings of the unconscious and truly embody the freedom, the peace, and the unlimited bandwidth of our “now.”

Chapter 151: Dreams and July 21, 1987: Projection and Perception—Finding Truth in the Mirror of Reality

Oh, evil’s shadow boxer, when will you ever retire? ‘Tis champion of a lonely dream world to which you aspire. Stop resuscitating dead illusions with mental pugilist blows, and a peaceful mind will replace the confusion you now know.

What do you see when you glance into the mirror? A body? A mind? A projection of your woundedness, or a reflection shaped by the judgments you carry? Or do you glimpse something far deeper, the essence of who you truly are? This question, on the surface, may seem simple—but its depths reach into psychology, neuroscience, and our shared spiritual experience.

Projection, a concept often discussed as a psychological defense mechanism, extends beyond our interpersonal conflicts. It manifests in families, communities, religions, and even nations. “All that you see is yourself.” These words reflect an ancient truth, one that challenges our surface understanding of perception and the judgments we carry. Every reaction to another person, every assessment of what is “good” or “evil,” holds up a mirror reflecting our unexamined selves. What we fear most, the “enemy” we see in others, often turns out to be the unrecognized shadow of our own being.

Perception originates within each of us in a unique creative form. Yet, what you see “out there” is deeply intertwined with the narratives and associations you’ve built “in here.” Our inner world serves as a lens, shaping how we perceive reality. We have been assembling an internal model of reality since we were quite young, according to Piaget, and this is our unique creation and the glasses we must look through. Without self-awareness, this lens becomes clouded, chaining us to patterns of fear, projection, and misunderstanding.

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development provides insight into how early in life this process begins. He argued that children construct their internal models of the world stage by stage, using sensory experiences and interactions to assemble frameworks for understanding their environment. These models are not passive recordings of the external world, but active and creative interpretations that evolve into the schemas we carry as adults. It is through these schemas that we approach new experiences, often interpreting them through assumptions rooted in our earliest perceptions.

Furthermore, Piaget highlighted that as we grow, equilibrium between assimilation (integrating new information into existing schemas) and accommodation (altering schemas to incorporate new information) becomes essential. Without this balance, our internal lens can remain fixed, distorting our perspective of the world. For instance, a child who grows up associating discipline with rejection might carry this unresolved narrative into adulthood, projecting fears of abandonment onto authority figures or relationships. To recalibrate this lens, a process of both cognitive and emotional self-reflection is necessary.

But how can we confront something as elusive as perception? To uncover the layers of projection and move closer to clarity, we must dare to venture inward. There are many tools available to assist us in this search for truth, including dream study, cognitive behavioral therapy, journaling, and mindfulness and meditation techniques.

The childhood dream I recounted earlier—the priest who commanded his village to abandon its sacred protections and then confronted, in his own summoned darkness, the unbearable recognition that the “evil one” wore his own face—continues to serve as a beacon of insight for me to this day, illustrating how facing our fears and ourselves is at the heart of transformation.

The symbolism of the dream is both personal and universal. By discarding their idols, the villagers relinquished their dependence on external symbols of security, setting the stage for true self-discovery. The priest, taking this step further, found the possibility of his own reflection in the adversary he thought he was battling. This act of confronting fear without the crutch of external protections highlights a deep truth about human nature. True peace and resilience arise not from suppressing fear, but from engaging with it directly. The priest’s struggle illustrates the paradox that in seeking to destroy what we fear, we often come face to face with fragments of ourselves.

Through this lens, the dream becomes more than a personal narrative. It is a window into the human condition, speaking to our shared tendency to project unacknowledged fears, desires, and judgments onto others. Psychological projection, a concept popularized by Carl Jung, is the act of attributing one’s own unconscious feelings, traits, or impulses to others. It functions as a defense mechanism, shielding us from the discomfort of confronting our inner conflicts.

Neuroscience confirms how subjective perception shapes our reality. Sensory input, filtered through memory, emotion, and bias, creates a unique internal reality for each individual. However, our perceptual lens is not constructed in isolation. Trauma, both personal and intergenerational, profoundly alters the way we see the world. Those who have endured trauma often experience heightened states of vigilance, as their nervous systems have been shaped by the echoes of past threats. The scars of trauma embed themselves in our perceptions, influencing how we assess danger, trust others, and interpret ambiguous situations.

At times, projection becomes an unconscious tool for survival, a way to externalize internal chaos in an attempt to find order. Unresolved trauma acts as a conductor, amplifying projection until it reverberates not just in individuals, but across families and even generational lines. Consider a parent, scarred by their upbringing, projecting their fears onto their child. Or a community, burdened by historical trauma, creating scapegoats from outsiders. Intergenerational trauma compounds this mechanism, adding layers of inherited pain to the distortions of perception. Addressing projection in the context of trauma requires not only self-awareness but also the courage to heal the wounds carried within.

Forgiveness becomes a bridge—not just to others, but to parts of ourselves fractured by pain. Projection often thrives in the absence of forgiveness. Unresolved pain and resentment distort our perceptions, leading us to externalize blame onto others. When we fail to forgive, we perpetuate cycles of projection that deepen divisions and prevent healing.

Take, for instance, a grudge held against someone who has wronged you. Instead of addressing the underlying hurt, you construct narratives that amplify their flaws. This act of storytelling becomes a way to avoid self-examination, trapping you in a loop of blame and denial. Forgiveness interrupts this cycle. By choosing to forgive, we confront and release the pain within ourselves, freeing both ourselves and others from the burden of blame. Forgiveness is not about excusing harmful behavior but about dismantling the walls between projection, judgment, and inner truth.

William Blake urged, “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is—infinite.” What does it mean to cleanse these doors? It means moving beyond the limitations of conditioned thinking and seeing life in its fullness. It is a shift from judgment to understanding, from projection to self-awareness. To begin this process, consider these practices:

Mindful Observation: Observe your thoughts and emotions without attaching to them. Learn to differentiate between reality and your inner stories.

Challenge Biases: Reflect on a strong belief or judgment you hold. Is it rooted in truth, or does it stem from unexamined fears?

Meditation: Stillness allows you to transcend the filters of past experiences and encounter pure awareness.

Radical Openness: Engage respectfully with perspectives you once dismissed. This act of listening can reveal more about yourself than about others.

The external world is not a neutral space but a mirror reflecting the depths of our inner selves, both individual and collective. Reality, as we perceive it, is never objective—it is filtered through the lens of our conditioning. Yet within this truth lies a profound opportunity. By examining the judgments and fears we project outward, we can uncover the hidden aspects of our psyche. The shadow we fear most is often our own.

Jiddu Krishnamurti once observed, “You are not an individual; you are part of the vast mind of man. When you realize this fact, you enter into an extraordinary world. You are the entire humanity.” True freedom, then, does not spring from controlling the external world but from mastering our internal landscape. When we strip away the idols, confront our shadows, and accept uncomfortable truths, we touch the essence of shared humanity. Within this shared experience lies both great turmoil and immense healing potential.

Freed from the weight of our past wounds, we are better equipped to engage with the pressing social issues of our time. Take a moment today to confront an uncomfortable truth about yourself. Name it, accept it, and bear witness to it. This act of courage does not diminish you; it liberates you. By turning inward, we free ourselves from the boomerang effects of unconscious projections. These projections, when unnoticed, often return to harm us. Becoming conscious of our shadows, of the judgments we cast, is a step toward inner peace and clarity. Through this sacred self-exploration, the universe perceives itself, and we come to understand our place within a vast, interconnected whole.

Yet, we are not only individuals. We carry a collective identity that overlays our singular experiences. This collective identity is both powerful and susceptible, understood deeply by masters of propaganda and by the self-aware. Unconscious collective patterns can drive us toward profound harm if left unexamined. History offers no shortage of demagogues who have wielded this susceptibility as a weapon—leaders who rise on the strength of manufactured fear, who cloak self-interest in the language of destiny, and who invite a nation to project its unhealed wounds onto a convenient enemy. The values of deceit, performative hatred, and predatory manipulation ripple through the collective psyche of any era that produces such a figure, impacting us all in ways that demand awareness and courage.

Reflecting on the human condition often travels through unexpected places. For me, it came through studying the archetype of the tyrant-demagogue across history—the leader who consolidates power not through wisdom but through spectacle, cruelty dressed as strength, and truth traded for loyalty. To call such a figure a corrosive force without hesitation was, ironically, a revelation about myself. What I discovered was not simply contempt for a distant historical villain, but a much deeper truth about my own values and the behaviors I am unwilling to tolerate in myself or others. I despise manipulation, self-interest at the cost of others, and the degradation of truth. By examining my emotions toward this archetype’s actions across the centuries, I came face-to-face with my own internal judgments and moral boundaries.

It is not only permissible but necessary to reject destructive figures and ideologies, wherever and whenever they arise. Rejecting the tyrant-demagogue’s parade of deceit and cruelty has taught me vital lessons about myself:

I despise those who prey on the vulnerable for personal gain.

I abhor the use of performative hatred as a tool for manipulation.

I can name destructive behavior without fear of a shadowy boomerang effect.

Here lies an essential paradox of perception, though. When we evaluate others’ actions, are we truly seeing them for who they are, or are we projecting our own hidden tendencies? This question led me further down the path of understanding. The world we inhabit feels irreparably fractured, filled with broken systems and broken people. It’s tempting to externalize this brokenness, to see it strictly as a flaw of “others.” Yet, when we take a moment to pause and reflect, we see that this brokenness exists within us as well. Our unhealed wounds, our unacknowledged pain, and our unresolved anger feed into the collective condition. The flaws we despise in others often act as mirrors, reflecting back aspects of ourselves we’ve yet to confront.

This recognition does not absolve harmful actions or justify wrongdoing. Instead, it calls for an inward turn, a willingness to address our inner fractures before we dare critique the broken fragments of the world around us. Speaking truth to power is not an act of diminishing ourselves; it is an act of collective healing. Healing ourselves is not just a personal endeavor; it is a revolutionary act. Each time we choose self-awareness over denial, forgiveness over bitterness, and love over fear, we move closer to clarity.

When we cleanse our perceptions and address the shadows within, we find that judgment is replaced with discernment. The floodwaters of emotional reaction subside, revealing the quiet truths beneath them. Only then can we begin to see others as they are, untangled from the web of our projections and assumptions. Through healing, we can develop both the vision to identify darkness where it exists and the wisdom to act from a place of love rather than resonance with that darkness. Thus, we reclaim our ability to evaluate others and situations more accurately, free from the distortions of our unhealed inner worlds. As we heal individually, we become spiritually present and prepared to confront and transform the disfigured and corrupted aspects of our collective identity.

Once we see clearly, we find ourselves face-to-face with an essential truth: the world contains both profound beauty and heartbreaking evil. This duality compels us to make choices—not to ignore the darkness, but to confront it with courage and love. The act of fighting evil, however, is fraught with complexity. It requires aligning ourselves with deeper truths and resisting the temptation to fight fire with fire. Hate cannot end hate; it merely amplifies the cycle of destruction. Instead, we must engage the world with a sense of deep integrity, allowing clarity and love to drive our actions.

It is here that life demands the most of us. Acting in harmony with higher truths while confronting the shadows of the world is no small task. It demands resilience, introspection, and a commitment to growth. Yet, it is through this struggle that we find meaning, purpose, and the courage to contribute positively to humanity. The most profound freedom emerges not from external triumphs but from clear insight into our individual and collective selves. From this space of clarity, we can shed the burdens of unconscious projections and replace them with conscious truth. Healing begins here. And in the collective truth of our shared humanity lies the path to lasting peace and understanding.

The more we uncover within ourselves, the more evident it becomes that the world is a reflection of our inner state. All that we witness around us is, in essence, a mirror to the self. The beauty we admire, the flaws we critique, the darkness we condemn, and the light we celebrate all coexist within us. To truly cleanse the doors of perception is to see the world as it is. But deeper still, it is to see ourselves as we are. This realization invites us to extend forgiveness—to ourselves and to others—not as a passive allowance, but as an active liberation of the heart.

When we change ourselves, the way we see the world changes. And when enough individuals transform their perspectives, the ripple effect can bring about collective healing. The path to personal and collective transformation requires effort, courage, and a willingness to confront the parts of ourselves we would rather avoid. Yet, it is through this process that we uncover the power of forgiveness, the beauty of clarity, and the strength to act from a place of love and truth.

Take time today to ask yourself these questions:

Are there areas of my perception that need cleansing?

What emotions or judgments might be reflections of my inner world?

How can I engage in daily practices of self-reflection and healing?

Commit to this process and share these insights with others who are walking a similar path. Explore the resources, communities, and practices that support your growth.

Remember this as you go forth today and every day: the world will always be characterized by shadows and light, evil and good, selfishness and selflessness, for that is the eternal perceptual dance human beings engage in. The world becomes clearer and more beautiful to us, even though we now see the darkness where it exists, when we change how we choose to see it. The lens of perception is not fixed; it bends, sharpens, and softens as we grow. It is sometimes very difficult to look at oneself honestly and then look at the world with a clearer vision, yet that is how the world will eventually be saved from itself. With love, courage, and self-awareness, we can transform both our inner worlds and the collective reality we all share.

All that you see is yourself, with red hair, goofy smile, freckles and all. Unless you have first changed yourself.

Chapter 152: The Cup, the Map, and the Inner Electric: Healing, Lucidity, Radical Empathy, and the Work of Conscious Evolution

Among all the dreams that have shaped me, a few stand apart because they do more than comfort or symbolize. They instruct. They diagnose the soul. They illuminate the hidden labor of transformation. They act almost as initiations. Some expose wounds. Some reveal what must be surrendered. Some open into states of consciousness so refined and lucid that one wakes knowing that the dream was not merely about truth. It was itself an event of truth.

One such dream came through grief and love. Diane “Di Di” McLoud was not a peripheral figure in my life. I loved her deeply. Ours was not a simple romance, and I knew even while in it that both of us carried toxic faults that would make permanence difficult. Yet love does not wait for perfection before it binds itself to memory. As I described in the ring dream chronicle above, she appeared to me after her 1988 death in one of the most important healing dreams I have ever received, delivering a piercing truth: if love was to return fully to my life, I must first arrest these same qualities within myself.

That dream was not sentimental. It did not flatter me in grief. It used grief as an opening for moral truth. It revealed that what I found intolerable outside myself was not wholly absent within. The dream called for self-interruption, for an arrest of toxic masculine force, aggression, domination, and unredeemed passion. It insisted that love is not merely found; it must be made possible by inner work. The dream ended, but its demand did not. In many ways, I have been living inside that instruction ever since.

Another dream of enormous significance came in 1992 and involved what I can only call Grandfather Great Spirit. As recounted earlier in the Personal Dream Chronicle, a fierce orb of pure light and love hovered above me in my childhood bedroom, and I knew, without doubt, that it was my deceased grandfather. I felt myself drawn upward into that field, certain my body was too weak to sustain it, yet wanting to go nonetheless. Sharon, hearing my distress, woke me from what she assumed was a nightmare. I woke devastated, not relieved.

The significance of that dream deepened over years. It taught me that if I wished to embody higher vibrations of love, my physical and psychological structures had to be strengthened. Revelation without capacity can become destructive. Energy requires grounding. Spirit requires embodiment. I have long believed that this dream was part of the hidden motivation behind the strengthening of my body and life in the years that followed. Love, if it is real, is not vague. It demands preparation.

A later follow-up dream involving my grandfather, also detailed in the chronicle, brought further clarity when dark, threatening figures appeared beside us and I understood I had to confront them to protect him. Over time I came to see these “tricksters” as embedded wounds of trauma within my own life energy. To save Grandfather, Great Spirit, was to clear the field of those destructive forces. The deepest spiritual presences in our lives do not remove us from shadow work. They compel it.

Then there is the dream about June’s brother Dale, referenced above, which I maintain as a major instance of radical empathy or remote viewing. The dream’s importance lies not only in its eerie accuracy, but in what it suggests about the moral architecture of consciousness. I did not merely observe an event from a distance. I felt the predicament from within. I awoke shaken because the dream had the density of embodiment. For me, this dream remains one of the clearest indicators that dreaming can involve participation in another’s experience through channels of connection we do not understand. The implications are spiritual, psychological, and ethical. If consciousness can extend itself in compassion through dream space, then perhaps empathy is not merely emotional imagination. Perhaps it is a latent faculty of shared being.

And then there is the dream that emerged around the Cosmic Christ workshop with Matthew Fox, which I regard as one of the clearest dream teachings of my entire life—the cup and the map, as described in full above.

The dream stayed with me not merely because of its beauty, but because of its interior certainty. I was unusually awake within it. There was lucidity there, not only in the technical sense of knowing one is dreaming, but in the spiritual sense of receiving coherent instruction from within the dream state itself. The next day, at the workshop, Matthew Fox invited anyone with a dream to share. I hesitated. Later, privately, I told him about it. He smiled and refused to explain it for me, saying only to let the dream tell me its meaning.

It did.

On the drive home, as I recounted it again to Sharon, the meaning broke open through horripilation, through what I call God chills. The solid line was the rut of conditioned life: inherited systems, institutional certainty, socially approved pathways, the road of obedience without discovery. The dotted lines were the pilgrimage of conscious evolution, where the path is made only through walking, where uncertainty is not a problem but a companion, where one chooses curiosity over conformity. The offered cup was the invitation to drink from Spirit itself, to accept a consciousness-altering participation in mystery without abandoning sobriety of soul.

That dream deserves development because it captures something central to the whole dream world: dreams do not merely reflect the life we have lived. They invite the life we have not yet dared to live. The map was not geography. It was vocation. It named the difference between a managed life and an awakened one.

This dream also belongs in the category of lucid mystery because it aligns strikingly with what research has begun to suggest about lucid dreaming. Studies drawing on EEG data have indicated that lucid dreams involve unusual combinations of REM sleep and waking-like brain activity, particularly beta-wave associations tied to conscious awareness, problem-solving, spatial processing, and self-reflective cognition. That matters to me because it implies that the dream world can host not only symbolism and emotion, but genuine conscious participation. Dreaming may be one of the states in which the self becomes aware within mystery rather than simply carried by it.

Some researchers have even noted neurological echoes between lucid dreaming and psychedelic states, particularly in relation to altered imagery and modified self-processing. Yet lucid dreams may preserve more agency than psychedelics often do. This is a profound idea. It means that the dreamer may enter visionary terrain without losing the capacity for response. Consciousness need not be extinguished for transcendence to occur.

That possibility aligns with my own experience. The Cosmic Christ dream did not reduce me to passive awe. It invited interpretation, participation, and eventually commitment. It asked me which side of the map I intended to live on.

The same pattern appears in the electrician dream connected to Marty Crouch, as described earlier: a noisy industrial plant, an electrical system in need of reconditioning, and the instruction that a security lock had to be removed from an electrical panel. Symbolically, it was obvious: self-protective mechanisms can keep the system safe during emergency work, but they must eventually be removed if energy is to flow again. Protection can become obstruction. Fear can masquerade as wisdom. Healing requires re-energizing the system after the repair.

For an electrician, this symbolism is not decorative. It is organic. I understand systems, grounding, overload, flow, interruption, and restoration. Dreams have repeatedly used that language because it is native to my life. The soul speaks in the images we are built to understand.

To honor dreams, then, is not to become irrational. It is to become more fully human. It is to admit that consciousness is wider than our daylight habits. It is to recognize that some of our deepest repair work occurs offstage, in the unseen workshop of sleep, where maps are opened, cups are offered, the dead speak, the future flickers, and the hidden system waits for re-energizing.

Yet, as this circuitry is re-energized, we inevitably discover that the power coursing through us does not originate solely from our present waking life. The hidden system connects to a much older grid. When we truly begin the process of healing from our human condition, we never know in advance how far back the wires will lead us. To fully reclaim the self, we must turn our attention not only to the nocturnal nexus of dreams, but to the distant echoes of past incarnations and the disassociated fragments of our soul that await our conscious embrace.

Epilogue

(This dream occurred in 1963, when I was eight years old. This account was written in 1968)

THE DREAM:

The priest, having received his directive from “on high”, then returned to his village along the lake in the high mountain region.  He gathered all of the villagers together, and informed them that they were to take every golden figurine, every sacred symbol that they owned, and they were to throw them all into the lake, and never to think about them again.  Then, he told each villager that they must each go into their own home, and face the “evil one” without any protection or care from any of their gods or their symbols of the sacred.