My dear Jil, let me tell you about signs and wonders. I’ll tell you a story. There was this nice and wonderful gentleman who met a lady some years back. She’s quite successful. Somehow they couldn’t date. Things just couldn’t click. In truth they were ill-suited for each other. The reason they were ill-suited is hard to define. Let’s just say they were not cut from the same cloth.
A few waters under the bridge of life and they met again. The basic likeness was still there but their characters were formed. One night this gentleman had a dream. In the dream he and the lady were sitting side by side on the floor, arms locked. She grew passionate. He was a tad surprised at her open intimation of desire and he responded wanting to kiss her. They locked heads like rams, but she began to hesitate. Then she got up and ran away. In dreamspeak she left their “station.” He sat for some moments then went after her. He saw her on a soft mat. She was praying to the hearing of all. She prayed concerning her desire for him asking God to deliver her from herself. The people around her, three or so in number could hear her pray. They had funny shaped kneaded heads, like a black fist knuckled but smoothened. Call them knuckleheads. The knuckleheads also laid on mats in the comfortable Spanish style villa. And at this point he woke up.
He thought about the dream and came to the conclusion it was a divine instruction to marry the lady. It was supernatural afterall. The dream was read as a divine mandate, which is not unlike how many interpret dreams about marital decisions. But he began to examine the sequence and details of his dream. Somehow they correlated with his thoughts in the last 24hours. He had been thinking about her. He did think of connecting with her…maybe do lunch. He had actually spoken to her that very day and afterwards wondered if he could marry her. They had had informal dates in the past. But something had held him back then. As he thought he realized his image of close friendship with her involves sitting down together informally, arms locked. His “dream” simply picked pieces of his conscious thoughts, stringed them together into a story, like a bead necklace.
If he was honest with himself it was his INTERPRETATION that turned the dream into a sign from heaven. It was his INTERPRETATION that turned bits of his consciousness into a mandate from God to marry her. It wasn’t as if God appeared to him in the dream and told him to marry her. He determined that. He interpreted non-auguries. If he hadn’t had those pieces of thought 24 hours before, he probably wouldn’t have had the dream! Even the Spanish villa in the dream was because he visited his friend in his Spanish villa apartment hours before the dream. He thought about the whole thing and concluded our subconscious stream is another world entirely. It’s why what is feasible in dreams is not feasible in the real world. The experiences differ. They’re different media.
Everything subconscious is not supernatural. Some dreams are nothing but strings of bits of our conscious thought. Many times we dream our dominant and last bits of thought. Our unconscious mind weaves the thoughts into a prose. Our fears are also projected into our dreams. They get mishmashed into our flow of the subconscious. Our subconscious many times employs our imagination to forcefully weave disparate elements of thought into a dream sequence. It’s like the brain tasks the imagination to create a story from impossible and diverse elements. Think of a chef being told to make a soup from jam, pepper, oil, onions and bacon. Outside of the dream he couldn’t date her. Yes, she’s physically attractive but he could only date her in a dream. Their values are different, the quality of exposure not the same. She seeps through the cracks despite her exposure. And he can’t even trust her. She lies needlessly. And the “smartness” can be confounding. Meanwhile she trusts no one irrespective of length of association. She seems very insecure, which is surprising. She can also be temperamental. He can’t abide temperament or lack of peace. And so he saw the folly of relying on dreams in the determination of matrimony. It’s a slippery slope.
That’s not saying God can’t give guidance through dreams. But he won’t force anyone on anyone. Won’t violate freewill. And so their relationship which made so much sense in the dream made no such sense outside the dream. And since he wasn’t going to live in a dream he knew the relationship could never work, even if he tries. There are relationships that are resistant to shove. Some things just can’t gel. If a relationship can only work under emotional compulsion, it’s evidence the relationship won’t work. Relationships ought to be natural. If it’s artificially induced it will require unavailable energy. Always go for easy fit in a relationship. Good relationships just are. But when we begin to convolute simple decision-making with dream mandates we get misled, force ourselves into relationship.
Being ordinary humans we’re prone to give higher credence to dreams. They’re supernatural to us. There’s that initial phase in such relationships when both parties are TRYING to create a relationship. Requires playing a role. If we’re honest with ourselves we know relationships that can’t work and won’t work. But we mysteriously plunge on, looking for whatever guise to be with someone. In which case, we’re setting ourselves up for depression and unhappiness. It’s a matter of time. Unnatural relationships are like those hospitality and propaganda programmes in North Korea. There are forced smiles, posses for the camera, and the hailings of the Great Leader… All scripted narratives. And we may just be after one particular thing in someone – say sex, or money, or family name, or connection, not the person. An unhappy marriage feels like the pamphlet of a funeral service. I’m just saying be careful about reliance on dreams. And be careful about interpretations you give ordinary dreams. Sometimes wishful thinking masquerades as God’s mandate.
