Dreams and Visions

Doesn't everybody hate it when a friend tries to tell them about a dream... Yes, they do. You always begin with, "I had a dream last night..." see, you know you hate it when it is done to you, and you know everyone on the planet hates it, but you have to tell it... all about it... anyway.

     I had a dream last night and, as soon as I wanted to tell someone about it, I completely forgot all about it. Oh yes, it had a character from the novel I am currently writing in it. The details aren't important and it is the details that people hate to hear anyway. My consciousness must know this and shuts out all memory of it and says to my subconscious... "Hey, let's keep this one a secret... tuck it away so that he won't remember it. It is our dream, so fuck him."

     Perhaps the biggest frauds perpetuated on anyone are dream interpreters. Not just the palmists and astrologers with a booth in the back of a holistic spiritual bookstore, but even the most scientific... the Freud, Jungian and etc, ones. The reason I say they are frauds is based on my own experience with telling someone about a dream. When I tell a dream and it makes no sense, I tend to make up stuff that does make sense. So you see, the reason it is a fraud to me is that I know that, even when it comes to telling people about my own dreams, I am a fraud.

     This is true with the exception, of course, of Martin Luther King's famous dream. Then again, he was saying I have a dream and not I had a dream. Past or present tense makes a big difference. When I have a dream I have a vision of the future... an ideal... a clear one. Martin Luther King's dream was a nightmare for every racist at that time but, for most of us, it was more than a good idea... it was a great vision. He was a young man then and the old ways of America's apartheid  had to step aside for that vision. It was the completion of an ideal far greater than any of us could imagine at the time... not even those attending that day.

     A quote from the Old Testament comes to mind from the Book of Joel (verse 2:28): "and it will come to pass that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, and your young men shall have visions. Even upon your menservants and maidservants in those days, I will pour out my spirit." Young people have clarity of vision even when they can see no practical means of fulfilling those ideals. At least, that is something practical I can take away from this scripture

     Dreams and visions are necessary but it is my belief that a vision is more powerful than a dream. These are times when a vision is necessary for our very survival and, as the proverb recommends: "Without a vision the people perish." A couple more accurate translations say that is when "the people have no restraints"... but the point is well made.We need to break away from old ways... of dreamy expectations and unreal certainty... of visions made up of conclusions drawn from partial recollection. These are times that require the impartial clarity of a great vision, in which individual responsibility is taken, in lieu of a dictated one that comes down from the old mechanism of failed authority from government or the pulpit.