Dreams and Context

This was originally comment #252 in John Michael Greer's ecosophia.net   June 5 2024,  'The Flight from Prediction.'  
https://www.ecosophia.net/the-flight-from-prediction/#comment-115926   The discussion that day was about predicting the future or being warned of the future in dreams;

Several years ago, I started writing down my dreams in bound notebooks.  I have nearly filled the third such notebook, and have  begun making observations about the patterns of my own dreams:


 I think one of the problems with seeing the future in any way is being able to put the information into some sort of useful context: The information you get is often there, and often would be useful if you could understand in advance HOW it would be useful. It’s only after the future events unfold that you can put together the bits of information you got in advance.

For example, here’s one from my dream journal, dreamed 04 Oct 2023, and on 05 Oct 2023. This is what I wrote, word for word:
“04 Oct 2023 Mosque Visit
It is hot, sunny and dusty outside. My wife and I have decided to visit the local Mosque, as there are rumors that a new mosque is being planned for the middle of town.
It looks like a Presbyterian church inside. We sit on a pew next to a garrulous old woman who tells us all about the New Mosque, and shows us the plans.
“Tariq wanted to put it next to the park, but Hafiz wants it at the center of town, next to the highway,” she tells us. “Oh! It was a long and bitter fight! In the end, they compromised and we bought both properties.”
The plans are far more along than we realized, and have been conducted in secret. No one in the town has a clue of what they have been doing and we wonder what else they have been doing….”

05 Oct 2023 A Marriage Breaks Apart
I am watching a kitchen table with two men seated at it. A woman is bringing groceries in from the carport. The house has the same layout as the one I lived in until I was 7.
The woman has discovered that her husband has had a secret boyfriend for years. This boyfriend has been a friend of the family, always around, but never suspected.
She has apparently caught them being intimate. She is surprisingly calm (Children implied, but none seen).
Bringing in another bag of groceries, she says, “I congratulate you both on dancing around me for this long. Really, I was completely blindsided. Where do we go from here?”
Comment [On Oct 5th] — Last 2 dreams are about hidden, giant plans being discovered that will change everything. Are there machinations of some sort at work? Or perhaps at home, or with [Son]? Something I’d need to know, but don’t? Or something in global news about to break?”

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In hindsight, it seems apparent that these were clues to the war in Israel/Gaza that would break soon after the dreams. I had an inkling that it would be something global, perhaps, but without a context to fit the bits into, I was not able to assemble actionable information before the events. And even with context, what actions could I have taken if I had known in advance of the plans of Hamas?

I know when my dreams are omen-ous, just don’t know how to make good use of them.
I am very interested in any possible ways to assemble the bits together beforehand. How can we gain context before the events happen?

Blink Visions

 For many years, I have sometimes had 'blink visions:' 

Everybody blinks throughout the day, and everyone is familiar with a very brief episode of darkness during the blink, followed by the resumption of vision almost instantly.  Most of us hardly pay attention to blinks most of the time, and that includes me.  

However, at times I will be surprised when, shutting my eyes briefly to blink, I see a vivid picture that is often something entirely unrelated to the world before and after the blink, and at other times it gives me insight into things that are happening;

Example:
We got a new worker to my store that had transferred in from another location.  I had spoken to her a couple of times, and didn't know her well.  While welcoming her to the store, I blinked and saw a vision of her face sewn together out of brightly colored fabric--A patchwork face with button eyes and a brave smile, but held together by threads and only just staying together.  It was very surprising and unnerving at the time, but on meditation it informed me to be on my guard with this new employee.  This proved to be a good warning!

This was a free-standing blink vision.  Other blink visions are recurring.  I write them in my Dream Journal, and often don't have a good understanding of what they may mean.  This series happened over several months and had an ominous feel to it.

At the time, I was conducting the magic circle defense described in Dion Fortune's book, 'Psychic Self-Defense,' Methods of Defence: Part II, page 196, starting with the sentence, "In making the magic circle, the operator stands upright..."

I began to have blink visions while doing the magic circle defense.  Not every time, but with related themes.  Here are my Dream Journal entries with (not very good) pictures that I drew:

19 June 2021

I have been doing the Circle of Protection or Magic Circle for a while now.  Usually, I put on the flaming armor, take up the flaming shield and flame-shooting sword against evil and oppression.  I observe the sword shooting flame straight up into the night sky, roaring like a rocket engine as I grow tall.  Then I look down on North America and the curve of the Earth before beginning the ritual of protection.  

 

But this time, I see a large, pallid face with stringy white hair and a stern expression facing me.  When I look down, I am standing on the edge of a precipice so deep that I cannot see the bottom.  North America, that part that is East of me–most of it–is gone.

(I am looking down at my armored boots at the edge of the precipice)
 

I continue the Ritual of Protection at the edge of that cliff.

 

29 June 2021 Protection Ritual Visitor

The pallid woman, a face in the darkness, looking down at the chasm at my feet:

 

Lots of Black and Grey hair with cloth strips woven into it.  A rough face, large, flat nose.  Complexion Grey, like clay.  Dark eyes.  

A stern face, but with concern and a hint of kindness.

 

 

19 July 2021 Protection Ritual Part 2 - Different Scene

 

In intervening days, I am having trouble perceiving North America.  It has become narrower–East to West.  Sometimes I am standing at an eroded shoreline to the East.  The sea is washing away the cliff that I am standing on, forming a U-shaped bay.  

 

I can’t perceive what is behind me.  

 

19 July 2021 North-South Chasm

Today when I look down at the ground, I find I have one armored boot on each side of a deep crevasse.  A crack in the ground that goes far down into blackness.  My right foot has crossed over it.  Somehow, I am facing North though I want to face East.  

 

18 September 2021 Pyramid in the East

 

When doing a Circle of Protection, I am in armor with the sword of protection/defense against evil and oppression, flaming into the dark sky above me– I am facing East.

 

Instead of seeing the outlines of North America, I see an enormous pyramid, white and gleaming across a dark plain.  It has 4 vanes on top of it:

 

 

No one is visible and I can’t tell the scale or size of it, or how far away it is.  It is a non-natural object, but fills me with dread, like seeing a hurricane coming.  

 

One vane looks like this:

 

 

Darker than the pyramid.  Significance unknown.

 

 

20 October 2021 Circle of Protection Picture

 

During the Circle of Protection ritual, I see a bunch of tumbled down strips of lathe, as if an old lathe-and-plaster wall fell down and the plaster weathered off.  The lathe strips are grey with exposure.  

 

I notice a small path or hole through the middle of them:

 

 

Significance unknown.

Common Features:
1)  Chasms.  In 4 of the six visions, there are chasms at my feet while I am doing the Magic Circle ritual.  It would be very dangerous to turn around in circles at the edge of a cliff or chasm.  So some danger is involved that could keep a person from doing the Magic Circle at all.  Also, the chasms and new bay seem to me to represent declining conditions.  All the faults were running North-South with me on the West side of them, except one in which I was straddling the chasm.  
Perhaps I am seeing both sides of an issue, but having one foot on each side of the chasm is the most hazardous position of all.  I am doing a magic circle ritual for protection, and am wearing armor-- but Chasms in the earth are not the sort of thing you can fight with armor or a flaming sword.  I am facing vast and developing problems that are far beyond my defenses.  

2) Buildings:  The pyramid with vanes at its top; the weathered laths of a destroyed lath-and-plaster wall.  The pyramid seems to represent overwhelming power that has been there for a long time.  The destroyed lath wall has a path through it, so there is destruction but also a way of escape.

The pale woman-- perhaps a watcher of some sort.  She is frightening, but does not seem like an adversary.  She mostly seems to be watching me to see what I will do.  Will I give up on my protection ritual?  As it turned out, I did not give up.

Current events at the time: 
In Summer 2021 we had severe wildfires throughout the Province and extremely smoky air.  The province is also at risk from earthquakes, so perhaps in the picture language of visions and dreams, the unmanageable wildfire risk was translated into the form of unmanageable earthquake risk.  There was also the ongoing COVID pandemic and all the social weirdness that accompanied it.

There seemed to be a message of doing what I could in the face of unmanageable risks that were beyond my control, and that there would be a way through the destruction.  This was a hopeful message in hard times.

Blink Visions--They aren't really dreams, but are dreamlike glimpses of alternative realities.  Now that I think of them, they mostly seem to happen when I am in ritual space.  I have never heard of anyone else experiencing this, but I do wonder if it is a common occurrence.