DREAMS ABOUT DEEP WATERS

Here's an interesting dream:

I had a dream that I was looking for a job, and the only one I could find was to be a diver for a company that retrieves lost items from bodies of water. I was hired immediately and went through training at Long Beach. Long Beach is known for being a dirty with shallow water and no waves. It's a port, so surfers can't go there for surfing. In my dream, I stood at the edge of the shallow water on a dock while my trainer threw an object into the water. I was kind of grossed out at how thick and dirty the water was, but i jumped in anyway. When I got to the bottom, I could barely see because of all the trash and crap. I saw random debris, strange objects, and years of not being cleaned evident everywhere. I found the object and brought it to the surface. My trainer was impressed and said I was ready for the job.

Next thing I know, I'm at a gorgeous beach in Hawaii. I'm excited to see that the water is clear, and I was confident that I could find anything in it. My boss directed me towards a large pond not far from the beach and told me that there was something I needed to retrieve from the bottom of it. I was concerned because the water was at least 100 ft deep, even though the water was clear. Still, I agreed to the job and jumped in. As I descended, I could already feel myself running out of breath. That's when I was aware of being in a dream. I was relieved and happy, so I stayed underwater as long as I wanted. Also, in real life, I am terrified of deep water, so being aware that I was in a dream neutralized that fear as well.

When I reached the bottom, it was completely clean except for three buttons. A red one, a yellow one, and a green one, just like what we see at street stoplights. I didn't know what else to do, so I pushed all the buttons. After that, a blue button rose below the green button. I wasn't sure whether to push it, because no stoplights have blue. I knew I had to go up for air soon, and I didn't want to go back, so I pushed the blue button anyway. When I reached the surface, my boss was impressed that I was down so long and asked how it went. I said, "I think I just recreated the stoplight." He looked amazed and confused.

A lifeguard approached us and said he could look at the bottom, too. He jumped in, and I could see that he was confused by the four buttons. When he came back up, he asked what the blue one was for. After much thought, I concluded that red means stop, yellow means go slow, green means step on the gas, and blue... means to just relax, because the light won't be red anytime soon. End of dream.

At first glance, this seems to be a rather mundane dream.   Maybe that's all it is.  On the other hand, maybe it reveals something important about the dreamer.  It's interesting that she says "bodies of water."  Because that's what people are... bodies of water.  Let's explore this dream with that metaphor in mind.

Let's say that looking for a job is a metaphor for "finding meaning and purpose in life."  We all want our lives to have value... to ourselves as well as to others.   Some of us even want to have value for the world... the planet... the universe.

So, let's say the dreamer is trying to establish her value in life.. to "earn" her living.  Aha, a diver to a company in Long Beach, whose value is to retrieve "lost" or discarded objects in the water.   The water is shallow, filthy, no waves, and filled with trash and crap.  Still, a job is a job, so she jumps in, and despite the seeming impossibility of finding one object amidst all the debris in the murky, thick water, she finds it.  She's a natural for the job.

So her psyche is reassuring this dreamer that her value to the world is that she's naturally gifted with finding what people might have lost or discarded in their lives... and want to recover.  Waxing poetic, we might say what they may have lost is hope, happiness, self-esteem, youth, purpose... and even love.  They may never know they had it, or they might even have embraced it at one time and then threw it away.  But whatever it is, it has enough value to them that they want to recover it.

This dreamer is not a dewy-eyed idealist.  She sees the trash and crap which dirties the waters of the world.  In dreams, water usually represents emotions.   So, this dreamer's gift is that she can negotiate through all the emotional crap that people experience in life and find that one thing in the experience that makes the experience have value.

Not only is she discovering her own value to the world, she is gifted with helping people find their worth as well.  If she's a teacher, she's gifted with helping students see the hope of a successful future which education can provide.  If she's a gym coach, she can inspire her trainee to reach for the impossible dream of an Olympic medal.  If she's an artist, her work can elicit a response from an audience which brings to the surface a valuable feeling, or thought or experience.  If she's a writer, her work has the power to illuminate a truth or idea which can enrich the reader's emotional life in some way.

The interesting thing is that, despite her ability to see the crap which exists in life, and her willingness to jump into the thick of it, she herself lives in a clear, idyllic environment.  Compared to most people's realities, her personal life is a "vacation"... a gorgeous beach in Hawaii.  I would hazard to guess that because of her talent of finding the "value" amidst the hubris of life, she makes choices and decisions which tend to keep the crap out of her life.  She has used her personal gift to see the dirty environment and climb out of it... to create for herself a clean, happy lifestyle.

Except... even when the surface is clean and gorgeous, perhaps it's because the water is so deep that the weight of the debris keeps it hidden at the very bottom.

Now you suspect where I'm going, don't you?  We all know people who are always happy and always in "everything-is-wonderful" mode.  Usually, It 's because they're in denial about the harsh realities of their existence and this is their defense mechanism against it.

With this dreamer, it's her "job" to plunge deep into people's emotional lives, go to the very "bottom" of things, and bring to the surface something of value to them... something they have lost or perhaps discarded.  She isn't afraid of trash and crap, which are easily visible to people whose emotions are close to the surface.

But her lifestyle is such that she deals instead with people whose surface lives tend to be clear and clean, because all the debris is buried deeply inside them.  This dreamer herself is of that ilk.  She knows about her own issues... the  "crap" which inhabits the deepest recesses of her psyche.   She herself is afraid of delving in that terrain.  She doesn't deny that her issues exist.  In fact, she has a commitment to dive deeply into herself as necessary.

This dream is telling her that it's necessary now.

She herself has lost something which she must retrieve from her inner truth.  As scary as it might be, it's her expertise to recover such things, and if the world is to respect and honor her ability, then she has to swallow her fear and apply her own talent to her own life.  Her self-defense against her fears is that, "oh well, life's just a dream, anyway."  (In fact, this is quite a popular belief in some sectors of life.)  So she plunges deep within herself.

And it isn't so much that she recovers something lost... she discovers it.    Her view of the world is threefold:  Stop.  Slow down.  Go.  It's one of the rules of our consensus reality.  We'd all collide with each other if we didn't follow it and our world would become chaos without such rules.

However, we all have the power to discover new rules -- or create them -- as necessity demands.  We have to be prepared for the consequences of choosing to do so, which is also why prisons and such things are necessary.  But, I diverge from the point...

The point of this dream is the blue button.   Apparently, this dreamer has the power to "push buttons"... trigger a reaction from others because of what she brings to the surface to them.  She can influence people to stop, slow down and go.  She also has the ability to immerse herself for a long time in a deep emotional state (which artists are often required to do).  She's so good at it that her own "boss" is impressed.

Generally in a dream, one's "boss" can interpret to one's conscience, one's inner truth... and in religion the highest authority of all -- God.   The fact that in the dream, she KNOWS that she's in a dream is another indication that she knows she has the power to be in direct communication with "God."  So, in this case, she's being told that her gift is pretty impressive and she has the power to add something to one of the rules of consensus reality... the stoplight.

The lifeguard is comparable to a psychiatrist/therapist.   They too plumb people's emotional depths... intentionally... in order to sift through the debris, sort it out, organize it and somehow make that mess manageable and controllable.   Lifeguards intend to save lives.

This dreamer isn't a lifeguard... her intention isn't to "save" others.  Her job is to bring something of value to the surface.  She doesn't organize the crap... she sifts through it to find the treasure it hides.

Specifically, what she has to discover about herself is that she can revolutionize the stop-slow-go aspect of reality by using her talent to show the world that there is one more thing we need to learn.  We need to learn to "relax."  The red isn't about to light up soon.  No need to panic.  It's not yet a danger zone.

In fact, this is a powerful gift.  If she applies all her talent in all its power in service to the world, she has the ability to illuminate to the world from the innermost depths of its consensus reality, that there is one more rule to bring to the surface.

ACCEPTANCE OF ONESELF.

Yes, creating trash is part of life experience.  We all have to take a crap to eliminate the poisons from our systems.  Usually, our fears, doubts, suspicions, insecurities and other human emotions dirty the water we're in.  There are filthy realities we all live with:  Abuse as a child?  Yes, many of us.  Cheating on taxes?  Once or twice... or more.  Shoplifting?  And here's a good one -- running a red light.  And more serious stuff:  Cops and soldiers kill, and the toxic reality of that is destructive.  We've even destroyed cities and societies in the name of war.

All ugly realities lurking in the very depths of our beings.

But... that's life.  It's our heroic struggle to rise above that which makes us human... which brings to the surface our courage and our strength of purpose.  We have the heart and imagination to see the treasure amidst all the trash.

This dream is telling this dreamer... through her "job" in this world, she has the power to make us SEE this one truth about ourselves:  We can and we do rise above it all.

Not by denial.  Not by refusing to dive deeply within ourselves.  But by accepting that it's only through seeing the flaws within ourselves that we can find the object... the true purpose... of our existence.

Have a slammin' snoozlin' sleep tonight.