Friday, May 10, 2013

What do we do when we have dreams of fear

Greetings!

Recently someone used the key words 'what does a pink fish mean in a dream', and went online looking for answers.   He or she was one of quite a few who happened to read my post A beautiful pink fish on the back of a white dove because they dreamt of a pink fish too.  It made me realize I had not written about dreams for quite some time.

In the pink fish post, the gentleman who interpreted my dream asked what pink meant to me.  It was a valid question.  For instance, in our Chinese culture, a dragon symbolized good fortune and power, whereas, it was not necessary the case in the American culture.  I loved nature and animals, and I had many wonderful dreams of such.  A friend was allergic to cats, and was not very fond of pets.  When she dreamt of animals, her experience was different from mine.  Therefore, it was important to ask ourselves how we felt about the image we saw.  According to my experiences, I learned my mood in the dream, and the thought that came to me at the very moment I woke up bore some significance too.

Today I would like to share with you two incidents that happened after my dreams. They happened during the restaurant years.

One Saturday morning, I woke up from a dream.  I took it as a past life dream.  In many of my dreams, I was observing what was going on as if watching a movie.   I saw a young man (my husband) walking with his girlfriend (me) in an open-air market place.  They were in their 20s and looked very different from the real life us.  They might not be Chinese in the dream.  The vendors along the street were predominantly of another culture.  The boyfriend was carefree and mischievous.  Suddenly, he intentionally knocked down some display and made them spill all over the place.  He then grabbed something from the ground.  The girlfriend was shocked.  She asked him why he did that.  He grabbed her hand and began running away.  Lots of people chased after them.  They ran into a mall and entered a place.  They had unknowingly entered a place where they saw many people of another culture were inside, and there was no exit.  Meanwhile, the people who chased after them were closing in.

When I woke up, my heart was still pounding with fear.  I told my husband the dream. I said, "In front of us, there were people of the same culture as the people that were chasing after us.  We were being sandwiched.  There was nowhere to turn or escape!"  I repeatedly said the same thing "oh, no, we were being sandwiched" even while I took a shower.

Later that morning, we had to do some shopping for the restaurant.  When we were on our way back, the car in front of us turned on its left turn signal.  Seeing that, we slowed down our car.  There was no center lane for the car to move in to make the turn.  Therefore, when the driver stopped his car waiting to make a turn, we had to stop behind him.  We could not move to the right lane because there was a lot of traffic.  The car in front of us could not turn because of many oncoming traffic from the other direction.  While we waited, all of a sudden, I heard a loud bang.  A car slammed into our car from behind.

The young man who drove his car into ours tried to lie.  He said his car slipped.  I pointed to the badly damaged rear end of our car, and said, "It can't be a slip.  Your car slammed into our car!"  His nephew who was about 12 years old said, "He was on his cell phone!  He was not looking at the road.  I told him to stop, but he could not hear me because he was on the phone!"  When we called the police, they said if our cars were still drivable, we should exchange the insurance information and report the accident within a certain time period (I forgot the exact no. of days).  My husband and I went to the police station right away to report the accident.  

I was totally overwhelmed by the accident.  Our family of four had only one car.  We needed the car to go to work, to drive our sons to college, and to pick them up every couple of weeks.  I could not describe how bad and sad I felt.

When I finally calmed down, I suddenly remembered the dream in the morning.  With the car stopping in front of us, blocking us from moving forward, and another car slamming into ours, we were indeed being sandwiched!  Then I also remembered I had a wonderful dream a day before.  My mother appeared in that dream, and she brought with her another person.  I found tremendous love and comfort remembering that dream.  When I connected these two dreams, I understood a karmic debt was paid. The car was damaged, but we were safe.  My heart was filled with gratitude for the Grace of God and for the love of our loved ones.

The insurance company refused to fix our car because it would take many thousands of dollars to fix our car.  Instead, they paid us the market value of our old car which was less than half of the estimated amount that needed to fix it.  For a while, I felt very depressed because of the situation.  We could not use the money as a down payment for another car because we did not have the money for future monthly payments.  Luckily, it came to me there might be an auto shop which could fix the car for less money.  We found one.  Although the money was not enough to restore the appearance of the car, but we had the use of a car for a few more years until our sons graduated from the universities.

Below was the second incident.

One morning, I woke up from a dream with trepidation. I could not recall my dream clearly, and did not understand why I felt that way.  I felt the need to pray for protection.  Quietly, I centered myself in peace.  I prayed for protection as well as the Grace of God.  I did not tell my family about it for I did not want to spread fear or worry as I did the last time.

After shopping, we got back into our car.  I had made sure that there was no car in both directions before my husband pulled out of the parking space.  However, a car that parked a space away (i.e. it parked next to the car that was next to our car) suddenly pulled out heading for the opposite direction, and its rear hit the rear of our car.   We and the woman of the other car came out to check our cars.  The force was not hard when the end of the cars bumped into each other.  The damage on our car was very minor, and was hardly visible since the rear of our car had been damaged before.  The woman's car was in good condition, and the little dent on her car seemed visible.  I felt sorry for the woman.  The woman wore a white dress.  She looked at me and let out a gracious smile.  She said, "Don't worry about it.  It is only a car.  It is (a) material (thing).  I am not concerned about it."  I was amazed at how gracefully she had looked at the situation.  We got back into our cars and parted ways.  On our way home, I thanked the Divine.  I also thought about what the woman said.

Looking back, our sons must be pretty strong.   They did not feel embarrassed when we visited them or picked them up in an old, rusty damaged car.  When we traded in the old car, I took some time to thank 'our old friend' (the car) which had been with us through good and tough times.

In love, I shared with you these two experiences.  In the first incident which happened about twelve years ago, I had totally subjected myself to the emotion in the dream.  It did not mean the accident might have been avoided if I had changed my attitude. However, it certainly would not help when we reaffirmed the fear in the dream.  In the second experience, I learned to pray for protection, and let go let God.  In recent years, sometimes I woke up and rewrote my dreams (or imagined a new outcome).

I learned from my dreams that sometimes doors represented the door of my heart (guarded, open or somewhat closed), the window or glass symbolized my view or attitude (dusty or cloudy window), and cars were the vehicles we used to live a physical life (the human I).  My family gave me the nickname the Queen of Dreams because I talked a lot about my dreams when I was young.  Gradually, I kept most of the dreams to myself for I noticed my family was not that interested in hearing them.

I dream all the time, but I am not an expert in dreams.  I am still learning how to interpret my dreams.  I would love to hear what you have learned from your dreams.

If you are interested in my other posts of dreams, please click "Dreams" under Labels on the side bar below the popular posts.

Have fun dreaming!

Peace,
Q of D

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