Life on Earth is a constant attempt to remember, to remember where you come from, why you are there, and for what purpose you took on an earthly existence. All of these things are stored within you waiting for you to find them, the pieces of you, the mysteries you have forgotten, the answers you seek. Remembering is the process that will enlighten you. Practice remembering by trying to remember your dreams. They are the first and most immediate portal to all that you are.
Our nighttime dreams are actually evening meditations. As the senses of the body become passive in sleep, our consciousness is freed to meet with our teachers and guides who reside in the subtler dimensions of our being. Dreams and waking meditations are the portals to communion with our own High Spirit.
When we return from our nightly spirit consultations, we abruptly wake up to our physical reality, as the ego quickly begins anticipating its day. If we are able to download the contents of our dream journeys, we are able to contemplate their messages and benefit from their guidance.
It always helps to write them down. It is amazing how a dream, clearly remembered in the morning, drops from memory as we move through our day. Themes that are encountered in the subtler dimension of the dream take physical form as the day progresses. The subtle energy of dreaming creates the mental blueprint that deeply influences the events and attitudes we will assume in waking life.
Collective dreams are the dreams of Mother Earth as she interacts with the guides and higher self of her own Earth being. Human beings collectively comprise the ego consciousness of Mother Earth. Human waking behavior and climactic events are the physical downloads and expressions of her subtle dreams.
Covid-19 was an enactment of one of Mother Earth’s subtle dreams. That dream completely disrupted human behavior. For a while a united world raced to protect itself from that serious viral infection. Then the world split into opposing factions, unable to agree upon vaccines, masks, or whether the threat was even that real.
The covid dream confronted human beings with an abrupt threat to individual and collective survival. The latent Spirit intent was to raise human spirituality to face the truth and be willing to act in alignment with it. That dream had a minimal impact on human unity, but a new dream was needed to further the cause.
In came the Russian attack of Ukraine dream. Almost overnight the covid dream ended. Even the Freedom Convoy arrived at the outskirts of Washington, DC without a cause, as most mandates have disappeared!
The Russian/Ukraine dream is Mother Earth’s latest dream, where even the potential nightmare of nuclear holocaust has been activated. The collective reaction of the world to this onslaught has brought a much higher level of human consensus to the world stage.
This includes the welcoming of migrants and the willingness to suffer and sacrifice to shut down a behavior that is rooted in untruths and which threatens the innocent people of Ukraine, as well as the overall stability of the world.
Interestingly, it appears that Putin’s strength rests upon his export of oil. Will the world completely shun Russia’s oil to shut down this invasion? This is being contemplated right now. Is the world ready for such sacrifice?
I ponder Mother Earth’s higher self’s intent in this dream. Truth, unity, and sacrifice are key ingredients. Yet, the latent effect of shutting off the oil might be the development of a new dream, of seriously going green, a major key to Mother Earth’s survival. We will see how this dream advances.
Mother Earth’s next dream will be the karma of the outcome of this current dream. Rest assured that whatever next dream appears upon our Earthly field of dreams, it comes imbued to the brim with Spirit intent! And that intent is love, regardless of the challenging dreams we must be shaped by to get there.
Focus on your dreams of a new self, a new life, a new path. Create a vision of this new self, life, or path and see yourself in it, living it, being it. Perfect it with all the nuances you can imagine. Keep this vision in your mind’s eye, in your thoughts, and in your everyday world imagine it as though it has already happened, already come to life. Manifest your dreams in this manner, and then keep going. Don’t stop. For life is the plane of manifestation and realization, the place to make dreams come alive.
It’s possible to communicate beyond the veils… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Several months ago, I found out that the man who had abused me during my childhood had died. A few weeks after his death he appeared in a dream.
Putting his arm over my shoulder, he hugged me gently and spoke some kind words. In the dream he was very loving, not at all how I knew him in real life. It was a little disconcerting to say the least. I was not sure what to make of it.
Then again, two months after that, he came in another dream. I am lucid, fully conscious of dreaming in this dream, fully aware of being with him. I have no reaction to being in his presence; I am as calm as calm can be.
We sit opposite each other, foreheads almost touching, looking directly into each other’s eyes. Once again he is kind, concerned, as he states: “SHE says I did this to you,” and he glances to the side, as if looking at someone standing offstage.
Then, he gestures with his hands and a scene from my childhood appears between us, suspended in midair. It’s like looking at an old movie; in the scene he is abusing me. I nod at him, and say, “Yes, it’s true, you did that to me.” I have no reaction; I am perfectly calm as I see the scene play out and as I tell him the truth, that it actually happened.
Again, he repeats, “SHE says I did this to you,” and once again he gestures with his hands, putting them together as if praying and then pulling them apart, and as he pulls them apart another scene of him abusing me materializes.
“Did I do this to you?” he asks, incredulous.
Again, I nod at him, and say, “Yes, it’s true, you did that to me.”
We sit like this, head to head, for a long time as he repeats, over and over again, “SHE said I did this to you,” glancing over his right shoulder toward the SHE whom I feel standing off to the side, observing, as he materializes yet another scene of him abusing me and which I acknowledge as truth. Again, I have no reaction to any of the traumatic scenes playing out between us. I do not wish to blame or shame him. I am perfectly calm and emotionally neutral.
As this plays out I realize that he has no memory of the life he has just lived, that he can’t remember anything that he had done. It appears that he’s going through a life review with SHE as his guide. He has total amnesia and appears flabbergasted every time I tell him that he did all those things to me. It’s as if he’s hearing about it for the first time.
We look squarely into each other’s eyes and I can see that he’s being honest, he simply does not remember; he’s a clean slate, with no memory whatsoever.
At first, I think I’m being challenged to recant my own life story, but then I see that this is not the case, that SHE is his teacher, helping him to recapitulate the life just lived. SHE appears to know everything about him. I sense that SHE brought us together, to help him remember.
I intuit that everyone must recapitulate at death, that all memory of the life just lived is lost and must be brought back into consciousness so that all can be reviewed and reconciled with in order to move on into a higher plane of existence.
The setting of the dream is desert-like, empty except for some low adobe buildings in the distance, which I intuit are spartan living quarters. Low dry brush, desert grasses and sand stretch in every direction as far as the eye can see. There’s a kind of dull light, not dark, not light, just kind of overcast, the temperature neither hot nor cold but comfortable.
After going through countless scenarios of the abuse he inflicted on me, we get up and he takes me over to a pile of long scrolls of tapestry lying on the ground, the frameworks upon which he must weave his just-lived life as he recapitulates, creating a large tapestry to study, learn from and evolve from.
“SHE tells me that everyone does it when they come over,” he says, and he suggests that I pick one up and create a tapestry too, but I tell him that I don’t need to do that, that I’ve already done it.
“I already did a recapitulation,” I say, “my books, you know.”
He nods, but I sense that he still doesn’t understand that he did all the things he’s been told he did. He’s an empty vessel, unable to grasp, totally clueless, but he understands from SHE that it’s his job now to remember and to weave the tapestry. It will take him a long time, he says, because he can’t remember a darned thing. He shakes his head in disbelief.
I sense how low his energy is, as if he’s depressed, stunned or traumatized by what he’s learning about himself. It feels as if he’s being slowly eased into knowing a little at a time about who he had been, not the kindly man I met in the first dream, nor who he appears to be now but a cold-hearted pedophile.
How interesting, I think, that his overall personality is gentle and kindly, that though he was a pedophile in his last life that may not be who he actually is in his spirit body, but that it was a persona he wore in order to learn something or challenge himself with.
Later, I tell him that I love him because I know that he is genuinely trying to fathom what he had done, and I sense that the work he has to do on himself is being attended to with diligence and honesty, that he really wants to get to the truth. And I can love him for that.
Recapitulation, I tell him, is the key to advancement. He nods when I say this, still muttering that he just can’t believe what he’s been told he did.
As I leave, I see him hanging up the framework, preparing to begin the job of building the tapestry with the truth. I am happy to have helped him verify that truth.
As I walk away, I am perfectly calm and at peace, knowing that indeed my own recapitulation of my abusive childhood is done. There will still be other things to recapitulate I’m sure, but that at least is fully done.
Sending love,
Jan
J. E. Ketchel, Author of The Recapitulation Diaries and All The Gifts You Are Given
Our home, as the personal repository of the remnants of our earthly existence, is the perfect metaphor for our human personality, our soul. Closets house moments of the past, some joyful, some deeply sad. Bedrooms house our intimate lives and our nightly journeys of rejuvenation and ventures into infinity.
Bathrooms meet our animal needs and ego primping; kitchens our desires and physical sustenance. Living rooms support our relaxation and social gatherings. Basements are home to the powerhouse of heat and the central electrical nervous system. Upstairs are rooms of spirit, hobby, and fanciful dreams.
Dreams utilize this powerful metaphor of home to reflect the status of our soul’s journey in this life. When we leave this physical life the home we leave is the home we arrive to, replete with the sensations, emotions and thoughts of our earthly experiences and attachments. Some rooms of our familiar soul are polished, some a mess, some avoided, others the home of creative possibility.
Our work beyond this life is no different than our work in this life, that is, until we have perfected the home of our human personality we won’t be ready to continue the great adventure of new life beyond the human personality.
In spiritual terms this would mean our readiness, beyond physical life, to shed the astral soul body, called the double, as it completely resembles the physical body it entwined with while in physical life. Once we have perfected the completion of our earthly challenges beyond physical life, our spirit moves on to a new body of experience. While in physical life, however, our dream homes remain an active playing field to enhance our soul’s refinement.
When we dream of childhood homes we are brought back to our entry into this world, with our primal attachments and core feelings and beliefs about ourselves. Such dreams invite us to recapitulate and free ourselves from formative habits and hurts. Such dreams also suggest that our current waking life is a milieu for reliving the past. Meeting deep challenge in waking life can free one of past limitations.
Dreams of explosions of the furnace, or electrical fires in the home, speak to unruly passions of desire, fear or rage. Often they correspond with physical symptoms in the solar plexus and heart. Dreams of this genre beg for acknowledgement of suppressed and repressed emotions, seeking safe release and practices, such as meditation to gain mastery of the energy of emotion.
Dirty bathrooms and compromised toilets correspond to the digestive and elimination systems, where certain experiences of life refuse to be cleansed or flushed away. These dreams generally point to the need for deep self-reflection and honesty, where we acknowledge the truths we have denied or projected away onto the lives of others.
Attic dreams may reflect promptings from our high Spirit to build a new room for creative endeavor by opening, in our waking lives, to new projects, relationships, and innate unfolding of potential. These promptings might also appear in visitations to homes never inhabited, or in the discovery of a room never before known about in one’s current abode.
Kitchen dreams might harken back to a spotlight on early nurturance and how those patterns overshadow the present. Cooking dreams focus on self-care, the quality of what one is taking in to nourish physical body and soul. Kitchen adventures also reveal one’s relation to the desire body, often the one hidden away in waking life.
Houses in the mountains are the abodes of spiritual life. Houses by the ocean depict one’s relation with one’s inner nature. Is there threat of tidal wave? Here, nature warns of a coming major life transition or a compensation for too much repressed life. Dreams of this type call for a broader view of the balance of the energies within the self.
Homes under construction portray the soul work you are currently engaged in. Is the foundation secure? If not, the dream asks you to slow down, have patience with the basics. Are the building materials inferior or insufficient? Perhaps one is asked to be more generous at devoting one’s resources to true needs.
The dream house is a guide to soul work in this life. Perfecting that home leads to fulfillment in this life and advances the soul when it lands at the next stop on its infinite adventure, beyond this physical life.
