Each dream contains within it elements of the past, the present, and the future. Even if what you remember is just a fragment of a dream, it will contain some element from the preceding day, elements of your own past, and, as the dream symbols move into archetypical symbols, elements of the distant cultural past. The dream will also contain a foreshadow of things to come. If we dream it, then it stands to reason that what we dream is likely to come to us in some form barring physical impossibilities. It is quite possible for a dream to seem to focus on only one aspect of life yet contain many other aspects as well.

I once had a dream where I was talking to Suvy, a lady friend of mine. While I was talking to her, I noticed a gentleman sitting a little ways behind us, reading a paper. In the dream, my attention was drawn to this person momentarily, and I asked Suvy, "Who is that?"

She responded, "That's Mr. John Doe. He's a graduate of such and such a course of study." Then I awoke.

As to elements of the present, I had spent part of the day prior to the dream with Suvy. An element of my slightly more distant past was the fact that this Mr. Doe had completed a course of study that I had recently contemplated undertaking myself. The manner in which the conversation was taking place, the indirectness of the manner in which the introduction was being conducted, represented past patterns from my childhood.

Monday evening rolled around, and I was in the building in my dream. I was there taking a class I normally took on Monday nights, and I was half-keeping an eye out for Suvy, thoroughly expecting to see her so she could get on with this introduction. Much to my disappointment, the class was completed, and she did not show up. I left, at the time chalking the dream up to some kind of wish for a precognitive experience. The dream, however, was vivid and had quite a number of qualities that stuck with me.

The following Sunday, Suvy and I found ourselves together at a lecture. I immediately asked her where she had been the previous Monday night. She responded she had intended to come to class, but shortly after she left home her car had a flat tire. In the time it took her to deal with this minor upset, she decided there wasn't enough time left to benefit from the class that evening. So she went home.

I was about to begin explaining to her why I was curious when, out of the corner of my eye, sitting behind me, I saw the very man I had seen in the dream. I was startled, and Suvy noticed my reaction. She recognized the individual and introduced me to John Doe. In the brief conversation that took place, I was able to ascertain that John Doe had in fact been in the same building I had on Monday night. He had been sitting in the foyer, reading a newspaper.

From this experience, I understood both that dreams can predict the future, and that the future is not fixed. Now you might conclude, as I did, that this experience proves that precognitive things exist. It happened during a period of time when I was working on accessing the precognizant elements of my dream life, so it seemed I had a successful venture from dream to reality. But that was only one aspect of the experience.

I believe dreams contain not only elements of the past, the present, and the future, but also material that is physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. Within the term physical, I include both the physical health of the body, the day-to-day experiences of life, and whatever it is that a person does, for example a student or a professional. Mental aspects include not only what we think about, but also how we communicate and what we communicate: what we write, say, and do. Emotional aspects include anything that falls within the province of feelings, beginning with the standard feelings of love, hate, fear, sadness, joy, anxiety and so on, and moving to anything that pertains to how a person relates to people or any element of the entire universe that can be described on a feeling level.

Spiritual aspects cover everything else. Most particularly, I include in spiritual whatever a person's true purpose is in life.

One critical element of dreaming I find frequently left out of the telling, and often of the interpretation, is how did the dreamer feel immediately preceding, during, and after the dream? This is especially important if the dream caused the dreamer to wake up, or if it was what we refer to as a nightmare.

Explaining that, I'd like to take you back to the dream I just described and play it again against the backdrop of myself physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. I went to bed a little anxious, involved in my work of trying to tap into the precognitive level of my own dreams. Aside from that, I was generally relaxed, reasonably happy. Within the dream, as I began relating to Suvy, I was feeling comfortable and pleased. Then I was introduced by Suvy to John Doe, and I had a sudden knowing that the person in front of me was totally insipid. I could feel his lack of life in my guts. I was quite surprised. That surprise is what woke me from the dream, meaning I woke in a state of surprise, curiosity, excitement, and, as I have mentioned before, a very clear understanding that the dream was precognitive.

Relating to my physical life, in the dream I saw myself quite clearly, my entire figure, and there was nothing unusual about me, That is, I appeared in the dream as I saw myself in everyday life, reasonably healthy, things going well. Part of the content of the dream had to do with an educational course of study with which I was involved at the moment, and another I was considering undertaking. Both related somewhat to my potential work in the world and to the work I was doing at that moment as a student.

On a mental level, the dream was indicative of the kind of conversation I had with Suvy. As already mentioned, the course of study that I had been giving some thought to pursuing over quite a period of time played into the dream as being the course of study Mr. Doe had already completed.

Emotionally, on an immediate level, the dream very clearly depicted my relationship to Suvy. We were never touching in the dream. In reality the relationship never blossomed or matured; we never really 'touched' each other, so that aspect of our relationship was played out very clearly within the dream.

There is the matter of my gut reaction that Mr. Doe was insipid. As you may recall, when I actually met Mr. Doe, I was startled, which was also a precognition from the dream. Within that moment of startle, I again had the same physical gut reaction to Mr. Doe. On the day of the actual meeting, I described the dream and most of its contents, including my feeling of Doe's insipidness, to Suvy.

As we discussed this, Suvy assured me that although she thought on the surface he appeared somewhat insipid, Mr. Doe was really capable of being quite a lively and entertaining fellow. I was unconvinced, and it was a moot point. I have never again, to the best of my knowledge, reencountered Mr. Doe in my life travels.

What about the significance of this dream on a spiritual level, on the level that refers to my life purpose, my path? Understand that the precognitive element of the dream kept it near my consciousness over a long period of time. Even today, some twenty-three years later, I didn't need to go back to my dream diary to pull out the important pieces of this dream. I remember it all clearly, as if I had it last night. In that you might say it is a special dream. And it is for me in a spiritual sense. It has served to keep in my consciousness something that is very crucial to me as I follow my own spiritual path: There has to be life in it. There has to be energy, It has to vibrate; it can't be insipid.

Six months after having the dream, I found myself in a position where I could begin the course of study Mr. Doe had completed. In conjunction with making arrangements to begin that course of study, it was made painfully obvious to me that the people involved in teaching the course were behaving in a less-than-ethical manner, Alarmed by this, I put my plans on hold, and continued on with my regular studies at the University of California. Over the next several months, I was introduced to a number of people who had completed the other course of study, I became firmly convinced these people had not achieved the goals the course of study promised. Further, they had each lost something, some essence, some indescribable but very important part of themselves, through this course. This loss left them insipid. As I drew back even more from the people involved, I began to perceive that they dangled a golden carrot in front of the individual but never actually gave them the carrot, In fact, the more I saw the more I believed the carrot was probably wood with fake gold paint on it.

What at first seemed like a simple precognitive dream was telling me something my unconscious self had clearly processed but my conscious self was not yet ready to accept: that course of study was not for me. There was some very important energy missing. It was insipid. As I retell the dream and the events that followed, I can see other points in the past twenty years when part of the equation that goes into choosing my life path has always been that it have a vibrancy, a life within it. And that the people I associate with and learn from have that vibrancy also.

I feel as if I've presented so much material that I'd like to recap. In most dreams you will find elements of your present, the immediate past, the far past, and the future. In addition, the dream presents you with a view of yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

EDITOR'S NOTE

This multilevel approach, developed by Sun Bear and used by his students, is much like my home-grown technique. But I rarely practice it so fully--first I explore the bits that tug me, raising questions; I skip layers that feel normal, just as Shawnodese found his body and the setting familiar; his foreboding centered on John Doe.

I agree that dreams often pack a lot of meanings in, but do they need exhaustive (and exhausting) analysis of every level, a la Freud? They're teachings with a focus and intent--here, to make Shawnodese notice that Doe was insipid, and to think twice about taking the course Doe took. Dream interpretation takes work, but if you're feeling overwhelmed, a hard look at the most charged parts will often be enough.

--Chris Wayan

SOURCE: Dreaming with the Wheel by Sun Bear, Wabun Wind, and Shawnodese (1994, pp.77-80). Art by Thunderbird Woman (Erika Malitzky)

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