I was born in a Muslim family, went to a catholic school, many of my close friends are Jewish. I try to practice the best of Zoroastrian, Buddhist, and Hindu faiths.
As a teen until my early twenties, I was an atheist, and argued with everyone who believed in God or a being that is in control of us. Mostly because, I thought how could a “just” God, that everyone speaks of, exist with all the injustice and inequality in the world.
The story of how I started believing in something, anything, is a long one and not the topic of this note. This note is about a dream that comes to my mind if not every day, but often enough to make me write about it.
I dreamt it in the early nineties. I was in my late 20s. I can’t explain how a dream from 25+ years ago is still so vivid in my aging mind. When I dreamt it, I was no longer an atheist, and had already made my connection with my spiritual mentor. (1987). My spiritual mentor is a man who kept silent for 40 years before dropping his body in 1969. He believes that all religions and their prophets had the same intention, which was to wake humanity to its fullest potential. He believed advent after advent, the message that “man can become one with its source” was delivered, but duality and illusion quickly took over and the truth got lost in translation.
By the way, I use “he” to refer to my mentor in the sense of his physical gender, because once you rise above duality, there is no such thing as male/female. I know...I’ve shared way too much prelude, and you are anxious to hear about my dream. So here it is:
I dreamt I was floating in the dark and cold universe among the stars. (My recent canvas painting attached here, was inspired by this dream).
Ironically, in my dream, I had my favorite cream-colored business suit on. At first I was alone, but from afar, I noticed a man with a long white dress, who looked very much like my spiritual mentor, floating towards me. I was happy and surprised to see him. I greeted him with a big smile and asked why am I here? He opened his arms over his waist and looked around and said: “look how lonely it is up here.” “I brought you here, so you can see, that I need you as much as you need me.”
My immediate feeling after this profound dream was confusion. I asked myself, how can my mentor need me? Why would a dream like this come to me? According to Carl Jung the famous psychologist, dreams are the psyche's attempt to communicate important things to the individual, and he valued them highly, perhaps above all else, as a way of knowing what was really going on. Jung also believed that dreams are an important part of the development of the personality – a process that he called individuation. (Source: https://www.thesap.org.uk/resources/articles-on-jungian-psychology-2/carl-gustav-jung/dreams/)
So, what was this dream trying to tell me? After all, I was the student. Why would my teacher need me? Well, until recently that I became a teacher myself, I could not wrap my mind around the meaning of that dream. I have three theories:
1- He is lonely, because he has become one with the source and surely and continuously must be experiencing the bliss of union, so he wants to share that experience with someone!
2- Perhaps, he too needs me, because when you are the only one who gets IT, and everyone else is still on chapter one, you can lose your cool and you simply need someone to vent about it. Like a shrink for god?!I can’t imagine the patience he practices on us especially me.
3- Or may be, he is lonely, because when you love someone, you want to be with them constantly.
I don’t know if I am way off with my dream analysis. My sister Nazila who studied Jungian psychology and is a Dream Analyst would probably say so. But one thing is for sure, I have not been the same person nor how I view God, ever since.
AMBKJ
