Dreams Can Save Your Life

 “Dreams are today's answers to tomorrow's questions.”

Edgar Cayce 

My interest in dream study began when I began reading  Edgar Cayce. I couldn't get enough of his teachings, and when I picked up and read the classic, 'Dreams: Your Magic Mirror: With Interpretations of Edgar Cayce' by Elsie Sechrist I was totally hooked, so much so that I joined his organization, the A.R.E. and took part in a dream workshop they were having the time. My gosh, that was so long ago, but  it was this book that taught me the techniques, such as keeping a dream journal, needed to not only remember,  but interpret my dreams. One thing I discovered was that seemingly unconnected dreams may, in fact, be trying to tell us something.  Sometimes, it may take us awhile before we find our answers.  Other times, it may be one dream that pops right out at us.   I was in my learly twenties when I had the following dream, yet I still remember it as if it happened yesterday. Perhaps it is because it saved my life.  Briefly...

'I live in a small house near the sea.  I am standing on my back porch looking out over the ocean. I am holding all my important papers in my hand, and I watch as a storm is brewing.  The wind is really beginning to pick up, and suddenly, all my papers blow out of my hand and are flying off toward the ocean.  I race to catch them because I sense that I am in big trouble if I lose them, that without them I will cease to exist,  but just as I get a few feet from the water, I find myself sinking in the sand, but then it turns into mud. I cannot pull myself out.  I cry out for help.   Now I find myself surrounded by people, but no one is helping me.  They are laughing amongst each other and having fun while I continue to sink, and just as the sand is ready to totally devour me, I awaken.'

To put this dream into context, one must know bits and pieces of my life at that time.  Bluntly speaking, it was a time that  I was sowing my oats...and not in a good way.  I was smoking too much, drinking too much, moving from job to job, and hanging out with a rather wild crowd, who I believed were my friends.  Remember, I'd lived an extremely sheltered life and had little in the way of socialization skills.  Mom and dad had always found ways to 'ground' me so I missed out on a lot of the fun things my peers engaged in--dances, proms, movies, etc. Plus, I had been bullied and teased since grammar school, maybe not so much in high school because it was a larger school and we'd been split up, but the damage had already begun.

So, when these people accepted me in their group, I really believed that they cared about me. It didn't matter that I seemed always to be the one buying drinks. It just felt good to finally be a 'part of'. I didn't even notice how no one treated me to a drink when I was broke. I was so young and naive that hit me that following after these people was leading me down a self-destructive path. Fortunately for me,  the dream put me back on the right track before it was too late. 

The storm of my dream represented the stormy life I was living.  The sinking in the sand/mud depicted that I was throwing my life (the important papers) away.  The people who gathered about laughing and having fun while I was sinking were the people I had thought were my friends.  The dream showed me that I had only been kidding myself and when the chips were down, not one of them would be there to lend a hand and help me.  It was up to me to pull myself out of the mire before it was too late...and that I did.

Needless to say, from that day on I began to take a look at my life andhow I was destroying myself as well as the destructive, shallow nature of my so-called friends, and I decided it was time to start anew.  Oh, I'm not going to say that everything was 'peaches and cream' from then on.  In fact, I continued to draw negative people into my life for quite some time afterwards, but the change was that I wasn't doing it consciously.  I wasn't seeking them out. I wanted friends, yes, but not enough to compromise myself as I once did. 

Life changing dreams happen to us all the time, but one has to be open to them. I am no longer a member of the A.R.E., although sometimes I think of re-joining.  And, for many years since that time, I've not paid much attention to anything that happened in my dreams unless they stand out to me, but at some point, at the beginning of last year, I returned to my dreamwork, only this time through the studies of the great teacher, Robert Moss.  Tomorrow, I will share more about him and recommend some of my favorite of his books. For now I shall leave you with a few Edgar Cayce quotes. 

Actually we have no problems,

we have opportunities for which we should give thanks...

An error we refuse to correct has many lives.

It takes courage to face one's own shortcomings

and wisdom to do something about them. 

There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, it doesn't behoove any of us to speak evil of the rest of us.

For, he that expects nothing shall not be disappointed, but he that expects much - if he lives and uses that in hand day by day - shall be full to running over.

All souls were created in the beginning and are finding their way back to whence they came.