Monday, October 08, 2007

Dreams: A key to your spiritual destiny

This post was inspired by comments made and shared with Unbiased.

An interviewer once asked me why I had put "sleeping" down as one of my interests. I told him it was because when I slept, I dreamt and when I dreamt, I went places. I did things. Saw things. Lived a bit more. I was stronger, braver, happier and more free; qualities that I felt I needed to develop to survive in my creative career path of architecture. I don't know if he agreed with me because at the end of the day, I did not get the job but then again, I had not seen it in my dream that I would so I let it go until the one that was for me came along.

Most times, when I tell people of my faith, I either get an immediate flurry of questions aimed at discrediting my choice or they make the assumption that I am in it simply because I was born into the faith. No. I had been given many chances while growing up to change my faith. In fact, Islam is the registered faith on my birth certificate. However, I have chosen to remain an Eckist because I have tested its principles against my life and they have been to my liking. One of such principles is the study of my dreams.

I really like those ads that come up on television where some person tells you that they can help you find solutions to your life by helping you to interprete your dreams. That intrigues me greatly because I know for a fact that my dreams can only be read by me because over the years of documenting my dreams - I keep what is called a dream journal; a book into which I write whatever it is I remember about the dreams I have- I have been able to pick up enough signs and symbols that apply just to me.

Mostly my dreams tell me what is to happen in advance.

I graduated from secondary school in 2001. It took me three years to get into the university. I did not want to school in the country. From an early age, I sensed I was different and that if I was not careful, the environment I was in would crush that and make me just a generic individual- not that that is bad, but if that is not what you want, that can be horrible- so I did all I could to try and get out of the country. When I started my plans, I wanted to go to the United States. My family possessed neither the money nor the connections to make that happen. I tried for a scholarship. I failed Jamb twice; once because I couldn't be bothered and the second time because I refused to pay the invigilator. My mother sold her only land to pay for A levels, which I failed as well (yeah I know I am one of those kids). It was still good enough to apply to university in South Africa and I began the process.

It was taking forever so I figured I was going nowhere. My father was not even for the idea. His dreams had been shattered long ago and he had developed the survivor's habit of dreaming just within your reach. I put in my application for OAU to study architecture. With my A level grades, I was accepted into advance placement - Year 2. I began to make arrangements to settle down nicely in my fatherland. Maybe, my first sojourn to the white man's land would be as a tourist...much better sef than stressing over school.

Then I had a dream. I was walking on the roof of a building. I was carrying a little girl and holding the hand of a little boy. Ahead of me was a man, lugging a suitcase and a huge bag. I looked down from where I was and there were many people in coloured shirts milling around. I could not make out their faces or where I was. When I woke up, I was so freaked out because I thought I was seeing myself with my children. The man, whom I did not recognise, was much older and I knew definitely that I was not older in the dream than I was in real life. I thought it meant that if I continued on the same path as I was with one of my guy friends, I was bound to get pregnant -hence the kids. I started to avoid the boy like a plague. Because God knew that my agro-ed adolescent body was just a ticking time bomb.


Flash forward almost eight months. I have arrived in the United States after a whirlwind of activities- got my 1-20 when one yeye man who does not know his own name told me I wouldn't get one, got my visa in one try and got the last economy seat on the plane. My cousin whom I had never met, picked me up from the airport and took me to school. I was left to check in and he went to get his kids. When he came back, he had with him my suitcase, my brand new bedding set purchased from Target (which I thought was the bomb and still do), his three year old daughter and six year old step son. Because we got into the east wing of the dorm and not the west, where my room was, we were shown a linking bridge between the two buildings via the roof. I carried the little girl and took the boy's hand cos he looked like he was about to try some spider man tactics and fly off the roof. My cousin walked ahead with my things. As we crossed the roof, I suddenly had the urge to look down. The student organisations in their coloured shirts were singing and dancing and passing out water, trying to get the freshman hyped. I nearly passed out when I realised that I was looking at my dream. Then it became clear why the school was familiar and why out of three colleges applied to, it was the only one to give me admission.

Over a year later, this same cousin hit me repeatedly in a fit of anger and threw my things out of his house in the middle of the night - a story for another day. As he hit me, the only name I could shout was that of my spiritual guide. Luckily, the bruises were emotional and mental. I was not shocked by what he had done. I had seen it in a dream weeks before that he had hit. I had "cancelled" it with my spiritual exercises but still it happened. For many reasons. One, I had become complacent since my arrival in the states. I wasn't doing my spiritual exercises as dedicatedly and unknowingly had become a financial burden on him; a burden that neither he nor I had foreseen nor one that he felt capable to accomodate. He was stressed. He lost his temper. I swore that the next time a man raises his hand against me, I am prepared to die defending myself because like all things controversial, his family brushed it aside and asked me why I had angered him.

The next time I would see him, I was prepared in the dream state. I was to go to my aunt's house on xmas eve and take her out to go see "Memoirs of a Geisha". I saw him in the dream and for the first time in months of seeing him or his family members, I refused to run away but stood and faced him. He could not say anything to me in the dream. My aunt called to warn me the next day that he had just called her to tell her that he was coming to her house. I told her I already knew. She was shocked. I did not elaborate. She told me that there was to be a dinner at his house and if I wanted to come. I said no. I had been warned in my dream not to go. She went. There was an arguement. He hit her, broke her leg when she slid in the ice, knocked her older sister who had jumped in to break the scuffle and frightened her little boy.

This and many other things unrelated to him have been shown to me in the dream state. I don't have to go to any priest or spiritual leader to see what is to happen to me, what I need to do or what I need to stop doing because I will always know. Dreams are for me, my most direct link with Holy Spirit. I have learned that from being an Eckist.

You in your individual faiths can learn that too. Your dreams are an indicator of your inner and outer life. Chances are that if you remember and acknowledge your dreams, you are a spiritually aware soul and can easily pick up on signs that come your way from Holy Spirit both when you are awake and asleep.

Yoruba's say " Ala go" which means "Dreams are useless". I disagree. Study yours and you too might do the same.

37 comments:

Anonymous said...

Spookey i must say

princesa said...

Hmmm...sweetie, you dream like my mum o!
Oya as you don become joseph the dreamer abeg come over to my blog and explain my mum's dream for me:)

Eckankarism sounds interesting.

Ms. Catwalq said...

supergirl: why?

Princessa: I can't explain your mum's dream because her dream symbols mean different things for her....

UnNaked Soul said...

stop turning me on catwalq... stop it, or else...

in time we shall all know... very insightful *wink*

My 2 cents said...

I totally agree with you. Dreams transcend reality in every way.

Bubbles said...

Pretty interesting stuff. Wow!!! That blew my mind. I usually don't read any stuff that has to do with religion. For some weird reason it irritates me, but this completely grabbed my interest.

Nwanyi Ocha said...

A good WOWWWWWW, worth looking into for more detail but thats the thing. I try not to have dreams.

Rinsola said...

I also disagree with th Yoruba proverb. But thats one gift you should always thank Him for. Before the manifestation in the physical, began in the spiritual.

cally-waffybabe said...

Babe, you dey try o to get three blogs. I can hardly keep up with my (new) one. I have to commend you sha for trying, coupled with your school work.
Way to go girl.

ozaveshe said...

she speaks in whispers
and loves in screams
she writes her heart out
and reads her dreams...

fascinating post

Anonymous said...

I dream and sometimes my dreams come to pass. When i have an unpleasant dream, it spooks me out though when i pray God renders it null and void. The general idea that one can see what will come to pass is spookey, thats what im trying to say

36 INCHES OF BROWN LEGS said...

hmn food for thought...

Anonymous said...

Dreams are a weird thing. I Have had dreams that actually came to pass, or maybe it was dejavu. As for JAMB, I got failed twice by those ye-ye people. :-)

Carlang said...

A really lovely post dear.
Well written too.

i totally agree with you.
I think dreams are very important. They make us who we can be.

I'm with you.
When next i go for an interview i'm adding sleep amongst interest.

Right next to blogging!

cally-waffybabe said...

Wassup babe? Long time. Y'alright?

shhhh said...

dreams can come true............

N.I.M.M.O said...

Hey Catwalq! Nice Intro Talk you have going on here. Sorry, I'd been off-base for the past week, just getting back to read your posts. So you're gonna be at the Worldwide of ECK this weekend; good for you o. Salute everybody sha.

@All: Hey Peeps, I'm an Eckist too! (So?? Who asked you sef?). OK. Let me just drop my two kobo on the subject here and on the comments I read on the previous posts.

As she says, Dreams are the real deal. Personally, I usually start discussing dreams with a rhyme we all probably learnt in Kindergarten:

'I have two eyes,
I have two ears;
I have two arms,
I have two legs
but I have ten toes!"

In other words, all these body parts belong to a 'I'; that is, even if you remove all these possessions/parts, something still remains which is the 'I'.

(Now, All sing 'I am not my hair' by India Arie).

But who or what is this 'I'?

I think we all know the saying that we - all of us - are spiritual beings having a human experience. The 'I' that is us, uses the human body to have the human experience. And this is what we do in our everyday lives.

Our intellect and intelligence, our beauty and sexuality, our family and friends are all a way for 'I' to have this human experience.

But the human body gets tired and needs rest, thats why GOD gave us the miracle of sleep. It is not by accident that every normal human being spends a third of his/her life in sleep. It is a divine ordination. You can't 'fight' Nature, as we say.

However, the 'I' which is us, does not need rest - and in fact does NOT rest. Rather, it continues its activities while the body is at rest.

It is these activities - when we are made aware of them - that we call DREAMS.

Not being limited by Time, the 'I' can go forward in Time ahead of the human body awareness to see/do things which have not 'happened' yet in our human awareness and these we call 'prophetic' dreams or it can actually go backwards in Time to review certain activities in the past for the purposes of correction or whatever.

How far 'I' can go in whatever direction cannot be limited. 'I' can also remain in the present Time to take care of some pressing issues that probably threaten the survival of the human body. 'I' can also go exploring the 'heavens' of GOD for the purposes of its education and all or probably just 'chills' for the human body awareness to catch up.

But who or what is this 'I' which is us?

'I' am Soul, part of a living and loving GOD. Created in love, with love, by love and for love. I am immortal and I am free.

In our dream explorations of the worlds of GOD, we travel with a friend who knows the way and is familiar with the terrain having gone that way before (Been there, done that).

@BimbyLads: As ECKists, we give respect to all who proclaimed the love of GOD to humanity at different periods in history.

As ECKists, do know Jesus - I dont want to say 'believe'- and I acknowledge his sonship of GOD in the exemplary way he lived his life, in the love he showed to all who came in contact with him.

He came to show us that our relationship with GOD, our Father, is one of love - not of fear or anything else. By the example of his life, he came to show the love of GOD.

Like all of us, he was human. And just like every single one of us, he was DIVINE.

@UbongDa: ECKANKAR advocates virginity until marriage. (yeah, we do).

Question: At what point is a man and a woman 'married'? Is it when a third party says so? (As in Minister, JP, Imam & even family/society) or Is it when the two of them agree to be?

My take on this is that (marriage) is between two individual Souls who have agreed to share their lives together in LOVE. Once the two are agreed, my brother, they are married. Period.

Now what we are all asked to do thereafter is to WITNESS the consummation of the agreement; eat the rice, dance and go home.

If you go through the standard wedding program in churches, the Preacherman starts out by saying '.... We are ALL here gathered to WITNESS the joining in Holy Matrimony of Mr. X and Miss Y.....' but somewhere along the line, the Preacherman suddenly assumes some imaginary powers and believes he is the one that is 'joining' them together.

I take GOD beg you, dont ask me about gay marriage o.

Nimmo

יש (Yosh) said...

This is interesting. I just haven't gotten around doing much per my dreams.

Thinking about it, the closest I've gotten to feeling what you experienced is when something happens to me in real life and it feels like it's a recurrence. I ask/say to myself, "Hasn't this same incident taken place sometime ago? This incident feels like a repeat...I've been thru this before and this is what is gonna happen, or this is what I expect will happen." All efforts to remember particularly 'when' in the real life returns zero. After reading the two incidents you wrote about now, the only conclusion I come to is that it is perhaps my dream!

I've not just gone further to read meanings to symbolisms and signs into them.

Anonymous said...

tears almost dropped down as i read your post, u see i beleive in my dreams too and people look at me weird when i tell them certain things. I beleive life is spiritual and things happen there before happen in the physical and dreams is a sure way of advanced knowledge.....love your post love your blog but i'll remain anon today......

SOLOMONSYDELLE said...

Well, I have always believed in the importance of dreams and the messages they hold. I unfortunately due to various incidences, have come to fear these dreams and they burdens they present....

Glad to be reminded of the positive nature of dreams and the messages they deliver. Will take a look at the Eckist website.

Miss Eight said...

i believe in my dreams, i also believe that the physical is the outward expression of the spirit.i can tell when i'm on the right path, my dreams+prayer give me deeper insight.

Ms.Diva said...

My boyfriend of almost two years is an eckist and I am a born-again christian. We broke up in 2005 cos he did not become a christian. However, he is the best thing that has ever happened to me. Two weeks ago he asked me to marry him. How can I do that? How can I be unequally yoked with an unbeliever. But how can I not? He's my everything. Reading your post is helping me understand Eckankar.....

Ms.Diva said...

My boyfriend of almost two years is an eckist and I am a born-again christian. We broke up in 2005 cos he did not become a christian. However, he is the best thing that has ever happened to me. Two weeks ago he asked me to marry him. How can I do that? How can I be unequally yoked with an unbeliever. But how can I not? He's my everything. Reading your post is helping me understand Eckankar.....

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Anonymous said...

Hello, I've read that your a an Eckist. I've bee practicing the practices a little bit an I've definitely felt lots of energy from these practices. I've been wondering though, does one need to become a member of eckankar to fully experience the teachings of eckankar?