Dreams became an important part of my life in the summer of 1978 the A.R.E. in Virginia Beach, VA. I had discovered that marvelous organization by one of those interesting little "accidents" in life. I just happened to attend a lecture in my home town of Richmond, VA on psychic happenings in America. My interest was highly aroused and in May of 1978 I visited the A.R.E. for the first time. The remainder of that summer was spent in numerous weekend trips to Virginia Beach and in mid-August I attended my first lecture on dreams at the A.R.E. The dream I had that night was highly vivid and is still clearly in my mind.
I was seated in a large college lecture with about 150 other students. The professor was a large, athletic man about six foot three inches and 210 pounds. He was dressed in a colorful costume almost like a pirate. He stood in front of the podium and leaned casually on it as he lectured in a highly confident and relaxed manner. Suddenly we were interrupted by an announcement that something had been lost and we all had to go and search for it. Much later, as evening approached, we were down on the docks and found a group of small men about four feet high in a ship or restaurant. They were sipping some kind of juice and having a great time. They were not drunk but were not really sober either.
Having already read my first book on dreams I immediately knew that all of the characters in the dream represented some aspect of my self. The professor was me when I stood up and took a leadership role and the students were me when l just sat and listened. Alas, the small men were also me in my less constructive times. In my haste to focus on the symbols I completely missed the inner meaning of this dream. It was not until several years later when I began using the heme approach to dreams that I realized that this dream was telling me that I was lost.
From this highly successful beginning I returned home to Richmond convinced that dream recall and progress in this area would be very rapid. Nothing could have been further from the truth. The next two to three years were a period of struggle and very slow progress with dreams. Numerous times I began keeping a dream journal only to quit a few weeks later. Finally, after moving to a new home in late 1979, I forced myself to keep a dream journal on a regular basis. On many days there were no dreams to enter so I made other notes and turned it into a regular journal of activities. At one point my technical nature got curious and I counted the days between dream recall. It was a seven day cycle. However, it I missed a dream on the seventh day it would skip to the 14th day.
Throughout this same period I greatly improved my diet and adopted a much healthier lifestyle which had a significant impact in improving my dreams. I got very specific help from my dreams in improving my diet. At one time, when I was tempted to start eating red meat again, the meanest man in the world came and offered me a big juicy steak. So I knew this food was not for me. In another key health dream, that occurred while I was ill, I was told the following:
I was living with a couple from India. The man was sick and the woman from India wanted him to eat cherry pie.
I understood this dream to mean that I was a spiritual being with both male and female energies. The male part of me was sick and the intuitive part of me was telling me to eat cherries. I was at the grocery store when they opened that morning and the cherries greatly helped my illness.
At about inis time I attended a lecture by Mark Thurston at A.R.E. and for the first time learned the theme approach. Up to that time I had been looking mostly at symbols and missing most of the inner meaning of the dream. From this point, my dream recall accelerated and the information became more important.
Precognition arrived in my dreams in a very tiny way at a new year's conference at Virginia Beach. In a dream at that time I was told that one of my schedules at work was being changed from three assignments to only two. When I returned to work in Richmond, that event came true and I was both delighted and amazed. From that point on my dreams about work took on a much greater importance and were generally accurate predictions of future events. At about this same time the wise old man of my dreams Jim -- first appeared. In real life he is a personal friend and his thick crop of white hair gives him the appearance of age and wisdom. I immediately understood his role and he only came at infrequent intervals -- about every two months -- with key information.
In the next two to three years there were many changes and corporate rearrangements at work. Jim was typically there in my dreams to keep me informed as dreams about work occupied a significant part of my dream activity. The most convincing one occurred in the spring of 1983 and goes like this:
I am going down the cellar stairs and Jim stops me at the bottom of the steps. He tells me that there are not going to be any raises given out at work for a three to four month time period in the middle of that year. I laugh and tell him that I will not be affected as I am not due for a raise until December. He says, no, that I do not understand and I will be affected.
About three weeks later it was announced that there would not be any raises during April and more information would be given later. Before the end of April it was announced that the freeze on raises had been extended for another 90 days. So the wise old man's information had been highly accurate in a very important matter. This dream was highly significant, for from this point on I trusted all information from the wise old man.
In another dream from this period, a group of men stormed ashore to capture an island and advance to the mountain's peaks. Later they retreated to their boats and an older supervisor at work waved them goodbye.
A few weeks later a large group of supervisory people at work were shifted to non-supervisory roles. The old supervisor in the dream was not affected.
At the start of December, 1984, a new event occurred in my dreams. For the first time ever I had a series of 20 to 25 dreams over a period of two months all on the same subject. None of them were identical but they all carried the same message: something very exciting is going to happen in your life and you will be rescued. Several key dreams in this period had the following sequences:
I fall out of an airplane and an unseen force picks me up and saves me.
I am hanging on the edge of a cliff and a big hand reaches down and pulls me up to safety.
Something happens at work that is so exciting that I go out and buy a new house.
I go down to the station and catch the train at the very last moment. I find many of my friends from work on board.
At first I did not recognize the overall connection in this group of dreams but by the end of January I knew that some very important event was near at hand.
In early February, my company announced an early retirement program that was highly attractive. It was especially attractive to someone of my age. So this was what all of the dreams in December and January had been preparing me for. My dreams then switched frequency and started saying, "take it, take it, take it." In spite of the many dreams, this was not an easy decision as I had worked for that one company for 32 years.
A typical dream in that period of February to April showed me breaking out of a barbed wire stockade. However, the main dream was when the wise old man came to me in the following dream:
I am inside a small, old fashioned fort. Riflemen are firing at the fort. The wise old man, Jim, is in charge of the fort. He comes to me and says, "Come on with me. I will show you a side door where you can get out while there is still time."
This dream needs little explanation. It was telling me in very clear terms to leave and take the early retirement ofter. I decided that many years of listening to my dreams and laving fun with them had ended. The time had now come to trust them and take action.
I took the early retirement offer in April without knowing what the next step in life would be. I sent out numerous job resumes but the response was not encouraging. I traveled quite a bit and paid very close attention to my dreams for future guidance. To my shock and dismay my dreams were filled with many events about my former place of work and very few about any new job prospects. One thing was very clear, however. Whenever I went back to the old place at work I had to carry a gun or knife for protection. In one dream I even led a group of commandos to attack the place. These dreams were clearly showing me that I had left a very hostile environment and was well rid of it.
In one of the few dreams about new work I was shown leaving the old place of work and waiting on the comer for a bus to come and take me to a new location. I waited and waited but the bus did not come. I was told to wait some more.
By mid summer of 1985 I had decided to leave Richmond and move to Florida. So I arranged a trip to Florida to hunt for a new house. Shortly before leaving on that trip I had a clairaudience dream -- a single sentence spoken aloud. I had experienced these before at a frequency of about twice per year. So I knew that they were important messages. This dream said:
Get ready for a big surge of energy in your life.
With the trip in mind, I felt certain that the big surge of energy would come when I found my new dream home in Florida. After two weeks in Florida there was no big surge of energy and no dream home in sight. I did make a down payment on a lot with the intention to build but the excitement was really not there.
Shortly after returning to Richmond, I had a more positive call from a job recruiter and my life began to turn around. A series of phone calls followed and then came the big event. My potential new boss called me and asked me to come for a job interview trip. The electrifying surge of energy that ran through my body is difficult to describe. I had gone to bed very very tired at 9 p.m. I was awakened by the call at 9:30 p.m. and was barely able to talk coherently. The surge of energy woke me and I was totally unable to go back to sleep until about five a.m. There was no doubt in my mind that this was what my earlier dream was talking about and what my future direction would be.
Events moved rapidly after that and progressed from job interview to job acceptance and relocation to a major southern city. At present I am happily enjoying the results of the most important decision of my lite, secure in the knowledge that I was guided to a correct decision. Dreams continue to play an active role in my life and are currently telling me which research projects at work will succeed.
Walt Stover is now a research engineer for a fabric firm in Atlanta, Georgia.
