Past, Present, and ?

I should have asked Lora sooner. A week and a half of the same nightmare, waking up in sweat, the rest at night I needed ruined, the day spent dragging my knuckles through work like an unproductive Zombie. Lora and I had been friends since Grade 3. Twenty years of solid friendship. If I couldn't trust her then who? She was on a new-age religious path, one that emphasized dreams, and she was the smartest girl in school. So why had I waited?

'Okay this same dream has been waking you up for how long?' We talked as we walked along the deserted fairgrounds. She wanted to get a clear picture of what was bothering me.

'Ten nights. Every night for the past ten nights.'

'And what have you done about it?'

'I looked the symbols up in a dream book.'

'How much did you pay for said dream book?'

'$4.99 in the used books store.'

Lora gave me one of her wry smiles. 'I'm your second choice, right after a five dollar dream book. I'm very flattered.' I started to speak, but she waved me off. 'Okay. In this dream you are always on the fairgrounds. About here?' I nodded. 'And far off in the distance, you see two figures approaching slowly. From that direction?' She pointed. I nodded again. 'It's dark. You can't see them clearly at this distance but one is touching the other one's arm. You realize the one man is blind?'

'Yes, but I can't make his face out at first.'

'Even before you recognize him, you realize that the two people are walking straight towards you, and that's when you start to freak out.'

'Actually I freak out as soon as I see them in the dark, but maybe that's because I know how the dream goes.'

'Probably. Then, a few moments later, you recognize your father. You see that he's blind, he's walking towards you, and you wake up with a start?'

'Covered in sweat, and unable to get back to sleep. What's it all mean?'

Lora paused. 'Michael, it's your dream world. You're the one who has to know what it means. Come on, let's sit on this bench for a minute.' She took my arm and steered us towards a park bench, then took a large sheet of paper and a pencil out of her purse. She drew two rough concentric circles on the page, then pointed to the inner circle.

She explained. 'The small circle in the center represents the here and now. This reality. We've got your father--she drew a male symbol, your mother--a female sybol, and the fairgrounds--she wrote FG. I saw your parents last month. Your father's not blind.' I nodded. She went on. 'The larger circle is the dream circle, people, objects, places in your dream that can be connected to the physical reality. Again there are the fairgrounds. She wrote FG in the second circle, and drew a line to the FG in the inner circle. Beside the outer FG she wrote 'dark' and 'long distance.'

Next, in the larger circle, she made a male symbol and drew a line to the symbol for my father in the inner circle. Beside the outer circle male symbol she wrote 'Blind.' She pointed to the part of the page outside the larger circle. 'This area represents the higher reality, the world beyond Matter, Energy, Space, and Time.'

I interrupted her. 'You've tried to tell me about those before. I don't know, I just don't...'

'You just can't manage to imagine such a reality, let alone believe in it, and you're objecting to my help when you've gone night after night without sleep.'

Lora made a good point. 'Sorry. Please go on.'

She was unfazed. She must have been used to disbelief and argument by now. 'These worlds are the source of all teaching and progressive development. They are the source of the message. And there is always a teacher or a teaching principle in this circle, sending out the dream.'

'There's no teacher in this dream,' I objected.

Lora sighed. 'I know you're sleep deprived, Michael, but try to think, will you? Who is guiding the image of your father? Who is that?'

'I couldn't see him. I don't remember.'

'Exactly. That's your teacher.' She wrote a capital T in the outer area and traced a squiggly line to the image of my father in the dream.

'So who is it?' I asked.

'I don't know,' she shook her head, 'your higher self? the saviour of your religion? Why are you asking me if you don't know your own dream teacher?'

I had no comeback to that. 'So can you help me understand?'

'A little,' she offered. 'You have more work to do. I think the great distance that your father is walking is a time line. It's a great distance, so a long time. It's dark, that suggests the Plane of Memories and Causation, so most likely this action started a long time in the past, several lifetimes ago. The message is urgent, and that is why it's repeated and getting your attention. So you have to figure it out. I would ask for clarification.'

I was getting even more confused. 'Well who would I ask.' I got a sharp look. 'Oh, I have to ask the Teacher.' She nodded. 'How?'

'Before you fall asleep tonight, just say or think "Please show me more". Oh, and, in case you're dumber than I think, no alcohol, no gummies, no drugs. You want the truth, and those substances block the truth with illusion. Understand?' I nodded.

'Your father, what month was he born in?'

'January,' I answered.

'The month of Unconscious Will,' Lora noted. 'The symbol is a blind man. 'Your mother?'

'Same.'

She nodded. 'You're March.'

'What's the theme of that month?' I asked, remembering that she had taken me through this before, and I had dismissed it as nonsense.

'Conscious Will,' Michael. You were born in the month of Conscious Will to two parents who were born in the month of Unconscious Will. Think about that.'

We walked in silence for a few moments.

'Okay Michael, this is important. Don't blow it. Call me in a week.'

'I'll get an answer that fast?'

'If you ask...' I walked her home. She asked, apparently casually, about my parents.

Lora was making sense to me, and besides, I had nothing to lose. I lay down on the bed, exhausted, and said, aloud, 'Teacher, whoever or whatever you are, please show me more.'

This time the dream was different. Appearances, clothing, and faces were changed, but somehow I recognized everyone. I was a tiny child, just reaching my mother's knee. We lived by the coast, near bogs. Our clothes were ancient. I was also with my father, and my father's older brother. Somehow I grasped the whole situation. My mother, and my uncle, had made a plan to murder my father. My uncle was going to drown him in the bog in which we drowned the animals for food. A lightning bolt of panic flashed through me. I realized I had not warned my father, and in that second I knew that he was dead. I woke up with my heart in my throat. I said to myself that can't be. My parents love each other. That just can't be!

There was no way I could sleep now. I made breakfast, burned the eggs, spilled the coffee, got dressed with mismatched socks and stumbled my way to the bus stop. It was crowded with commuters. Standing, I clung to my strap, and stared at the ad in front of me. It was for the new exhibit coming to the museum: 'The BOG PEOPLE.'

I tried to talk myself down from Freaking Out. Maybe I had seen the ad yesterday, and that's why I dreamt about Bog People. That was plausible, wasn't it? But the dream was so specific. And I had asked for it. My stomach was a mess of reef knots, sheet bends, bowlines, every knot known to man. I walked into the university library, took my place for my weekly shift at Circulation. I started filling out notices for fines. In those days we used pink telephone message slips, that were put in students' mail boxes. I had hoped the dream would fade at work, but it didn't. At lunch I thought about phoning Lora, but I remembered I had work to do on this, and I decided to do my best before calling her.

At five I rode the bus home, another Bog People poster in my face. As soon as I got in, the phone rang. It was my mother. She explained that my father had seen the doctor without getting a clear diagnosis. He was told the swelling in his abdomen "might be cirrhosis of the liver."

'But Dad doesn't drink and never did,' I objected.

'The doctor said you can get it without drinking,' she answered. 'Anyway, we're not doing anything about it now, just waiting and watching,' she said.

I started action right away. I made an appointment with my own doctor, an emergency appointment, for the next day. I repeated to him what my mother had said. He was serious. If my father had cirrhosis he needed treatment right away. There was a world renowned liver specialist just an hour away from my parents' house. 'Get a second opinion,' my doctor commanded.

I called my mother. She agreed to call their GP and ask for a second opinion from the liver specialist. I asked her to call when the appointment was made. She called in the afternoon. The appointment was for the following Monday.

Mercifully, the recurring nightmare stopped. I slept like a log. Friday night I met with Lora again.

'Tell me about your paternal uncle,' she asked.

'He died two years ago without a diagnosis, swollen abdomen.'

'You've done well,' she allowed, 'but there's something more. Something more you have to do.'

'How do you know?' I asked.

'Well it's a pattern, isn't it? The same group of four people from long ago, back together again, a death in the past, and now a health crisis. It's a pattern.'

'Is it what you call karma? Do I have a karmic debt?'

'It's a pattern,' she explained. 'It's like a glitch in a computer program. It keeps coming back until it gets debugged. I think you have to debug it.'

'Why me?'

'Because you're the one with the dreams. You're the one with the awareness of what's going on. What went on then, and what's going on now.'

'What do you mean? What's going on now?'

'I don't know, Michael, but it will come clear, that's for sure.'

On Saturday my mother called again. Her tone, usually warm and affectionate, was cold and dry. 'I don't think we're going to go to see that specialist,' she said.

I asked why not. She answered in the same dull tone, 'It's a lot of trouble, an hour away.'

This was not at all like my mother. When one of us was sick she sprang into action. No effort was too great. Something was very wrong, I knew, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. This was the pattern coming back. This was the glitch I had to debug. My uncle had already paid for his crime of the past. Now my father was at risk, and my mother was not going to help him. Hard as it was for me to admit, I knew in that moment that her reluctance, her refusal, was the Unconscious Will to harm him coming through.

I was, on the end of the phone, just as Lora had said, the one that had the whole picture, and the next action was entirely up to me. I couldn't say, "You had him drowned last time, and now you're letting him die". Too much ground to cover to get to that point.

I settled for something in the middle. I said, slowly, 'If he doesn't get the diagnosis, and if he does have cirrhosis of the liver, you and I won't need to have this conversation many more times.'

Was this too harsh? Was it unkind? I don't know. You will have to judge for yourself, Reader. They went to that appointment. He had cirrhosis of the liver, apparently from one meal of uncured pork on the farm, shared with his brother. My uncle had died, but my father got the best treatment that could be designed, and it gave him five more good years, in his right mind, with no change of personality.

As for me, I had one more dream. In it I was one of the students in the library. I had a stack of pink telephone slips with fines on them. They added up to quite a lot. There would be no extras in my budget that month. I approached the Circulation desk. No one knew me. The librarian took my fines and ripped them up one by one. 'No need to worry about these,' she said. As I stood there in the dream, astonished, my father appeared at my elbow, then Lora walked into the dream. She said, 'Come with me and we will talk a bit,' and she led my father aside. I awoke, calm, collected, deeply grateful. Silently I thanked my unknown Teacher.

Oh and there's one more point to the story. I'm going to marry Lora.