A young lawyer... decided to incubate a dream after a fight with her sweetheart. They had been discussing their religous and spiritual lives, and Alyse had taken offense at a few remarks Tim had made regarding her relative immaturity in this area. She was furious and felt that he had been unfairly condescending toward her. Yet she wondered it she was not in fact closing out some good counsel from Tim... She came up with this incubation request: "Is Tim wiser than I? If so, show me how; help me to accept his counsel."

Alyse's Dream

Tim and I are on our way to a vacation house owned by an eccentric uncle, who has built it on a hill of sand without an elevator so that only the ftttest will be able to enjoy the house, which is somehow like the top floor of my family's home.

Tim holds on to a great book (like The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien, which he has been reading to me lately). The book is like a motorcycle or is also a motorcycle. As Tim holds on to the handlebars, I hold on to his waist. He speeds up the sand hill over what is at first a road with double yellow lines. I tell him he is going too fast at times. We cross over the lines. I am frightened. He tells me not to fret.

I finally bother him so much about his speed that he turns the book-motorcycle over to me, saying "You'll see that you have to go up fast or you'll slide back."

I try it alone. He is right. I begin to slip. I wish he had a rope to pull me up. (He is already on top of the hill.) But he has no rope. So I go up my own way to the right (more conservative way?) of his straight route. I am on foot. I arrive. Whew! We made it.

I take the dream to say that Tim has a lot of wisdom to offer me regarding the spiritual life. The setting reminds me of... how I see God... like an eccentric uncle who offers us a relaxed, harmonious, happy life if only we can make it up to his place (the highest level, my true home) through a steady application of our energy (motorcycle). He has ordered the world so that we have to learn and grow to arrive at his resort (enlightenment).

Tim has been lovingly reading me all the Tolkien books, which symbolize for me a new understanding of the world, brought into my life via Tim. Last night Tim was offering to ride with me straight up to the resort. He was trying to show me how he thinks it should be done. But his way scares me. In life, sometimes I feel he is overdoing his spiritual development "program."

The dream makes me think that I will probably take my own less steep, if longer, route to enlightenment. I'll make it on foot, the motorcycle, in book form, in my hand.

As I relive the dream, I am struck by Tim's patience and by my inability to trust him. That's too bad. I can feel that my natural way is a more gradual development toward spiritual wisdom. Motorbike enlightenment scares me. Yet I feel a new openness to learning from Tim, because in a way he is already where I want to go. He is very much in touch with the God within. I'll tell Tim all this at lunch.

Tim's Dream

As Alyse was writing these comments in her journal, Tim was recording a dream in his. At lunch that day, he told Alyse that he had had a very vivid dream compensating for his condescension to her the preceding evening.

He dreamt of a very wise old wornan who showed him in nonverbal, non-three-dimensional ways how much he had yet to learn. As the dream became more realistic and specific, she gave him a test, which he failed because of his overbearing pride.

SOURCE: Living Your Dreams by Gayle Delaney (1981 ed) p.82-83

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