How did a dream of mine recorded in November 2002 have anything to do with the Election of 2004? Back then, I had no idea that it did. Some understanding of the dream’s significance came 21 months later after having another dream that I decided must be connected. Here’s the first dream:
I Visit a Mysterious Place Along with Other People
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I’m visiting some “establishment”— looking around the large building housing the “place.” There’s a large room that seems to have various spaces used for different purposes. One side is fitted out with rows of seats like church pews. A small area opening onto this seems to be used differently—I see couches and tables. Beyond this is a doorway leading into an area evidently not open to the public.
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I’m there with unidentified people. We begin to sense that the place is used for some secret purpose. We are not allowed to explore beyond this “open” area. I say I think even this area with rows of seats, which we are led to assume is a church, has another purpose. I don’t know what. There are “officials” standing to the side overseeing the visit and keeping us from exploring beyond this area. If anyone should try to explore farther, we all would be asked to leave.
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When we do leave the building, we’re surprised to discover that the road into the place has been destroyed—we assume to keep others out. We have to figure a way to get out by finding a path our vehicle can travel. As we get to the edge of the property, we find a vehicle about to enter. I feel we need to warn them about what they may find.
Dreams are messages from our inner selves, drawing background material from our lives and the personal as well as the collective unconscious. Dreams always have multiple meanings and layers of significance. They can deal with our physical health, emotional and psychological status, spiritual life, and relationships with other people. They may also be bringing into consciousness a collective issue or circumstance.
At the time of this dream there was nothing going on in my personal life to which this dream seemed to refer. But considering a “building” to be a symbol for one’s self, perhaps this dream was pointing out that there was a part of me not open to the public, a part that I keep private. This certainly is true, I already was aware of this. But dreams come to bring new understandings, not to point out what you already know. I put the dream aside and hoped further illumination would come later. It came with this next dream in early September 2004:
While Helping Prepare the “Dance” Floor, I Worry about the Proposed “Game of War” I’m with an unidentified person in a public gathering place. We’re helping clean/prepare some type of dance/recreation space. We are required to do this. I’m complaining to my companion about the situation. Evidently the men in charge are proposing some type of “game” in which others will be required to participate. It is a “game of war.” I say I don’t understand how they can want to do this. It will involve serious consequences for so many people. My companion agrees with me.
My immediate association to “the men in charge” requiring others to participate in a “game of war” that will “involve serious consequences for so many people” was our government and our involvement in Iraq. Now there’s the connection to the 2004 Election.
I decided to look back through my dream journals for other dreams of authority figures, dreams that might be connected to this dream. That’s when I saw anew the November 2002 dream recounted at the beginning of the article. In it I visited “some establishment” which we sensed “is used for some secret purpose” where “we are not allowed to explore beyond this ‘open’ area” and “officials” were “overseeing the visit and keeping us from exploring beyond this (open) area.” I now consider this a reference to the then current administration’s policies of secrecy and deception in place in 2002. Examples materialized as it became evident that the real reason for waging war in Iraq was hidden and denied. Decisions and deals with war profiteers were shrouded with secrecy behind closed doors, and the photographs of consequences of the war (dead soldiers, body bags, and coffins) were banned from public view.
In the dream, I said I thought the area with seats like church pews had another purpose. In waking life I believe the faith-based advocacy of the administration at that time was being used to push a right-wing moral agenda and perhaps to support the ideological agenda of the groups to whom support was given. Unfortunately, I think, [and now in the Fall of 2013 I know], the right-wing ideologues are still pushing their agenda.
Next we “discover that the road into the place has been destroyed—we assume to keep others out.” Access to/communication with the government had been destroyed. “We have to figure a way to get out by finding a path our vehicle can travel.” We, the people, needed to find a way out of this situation. The second half of the more recent dream suggested a way. It stated:
Sometime later, after completing our chore, we watch as a couple dances around the outside of the special floor area where we are standing. I comment on how well they are dancing. Then I notice that the woman is much older than the man, who appears to be a teenager. She is “leading.” I comment that she is showing him how to dance.
The space we prepared for the game of war had become a dance floor where a couple was engaged in a graceful dance, the dance of life. This is very different from a game of war.
I believe the young male represented our historically young patriarchally dominated nation, one involved in repeated aggressive games of war. I was encouraged to see he was being instructed by the older woman who might represent wise, mature feminine attributes, perhaps even the divine feminine. I hope she was “leading” him back to ways of pre-patriarchal cultures in which people lived without the need of fortifications and weapons, sharing with and caring for all beings.
Dreams come in the service of health and wholeness. In this case, not just for an individual but the collective—the whole world. May we as a nation learn the ways of peace.
