I saw a small.group of people going up a steep mountain.
"It's encouraging to see the Numenoreans climbing again," I said.
"Big deal," said my.companion. "What would you expect them to be doing but climbing? You want to see something really encouraging, look over there."
I looked and saw a very large group of people walking down a path through rolling hills. It reminded me of a Mazu pilgrimage in Taiwan, where hundreds of thousands follow the goddess through the streets on foot.
"Who are they following?" I asked.
"Jesus! Look up there, and you'll see him as he comes around."
Up ahead, the path forked. A few isolated individuals had taken the right-hand path, which continued up through the hills, but the overwhelming majority had followed Jesus on the left-hand path, which went down to lower ground and turned around so that they were going the opposite of their original direction, coming back towards us. Looking down from the hills, I could see the leader of the group clearly, and he did look like the Jesus of popular imagination, with a robe, shoulder-length light-brown hair, and a full beard.
There was something I can't remember very clearly about the members of the band Blondie, who had been assigned Roman numerals. I think Blondie III (drummer Clem Burke, who died this past April, was part of the crowd following Jesus.
I know the reader is expecting Tarot cards now, but this wasn't a divinatory experiment, just a dream.
I found the dream disturbing because all the obvious symbolism -- the left-hand path, lower ground, turning back, following the crowd -- suggests the crowd was going the wrong way, but they were following Jesus.
Do you conclude from this that it must have been a false Jesus they were following, or that the path must in fact have been the right way despite appearances?
3 comments:
I would say your troubled feelings are correct. A false Jesus. The figure commenting but not quite visible is snarky & negative & wishes to divert your attention away from something uplifting you said about ppl identified as Numenoreans - (a positive & noble ppl group who appear to be striving to do something to improve). Such efforts are scoffed at & instead a shallow, easy to do group effort is being pointed out as more desirable.
By my understanding of how dreams work (different from yours!) I would say that the "feelings" are themselves the meaning of the dream - and should be the focus of our waking attention - rather than dream perceptions/ symbolism etc, which seem to function as means to the end of making us apprehend some kind of "lesson".
At any rate, that seems to be the case for me. My dysphoric dreams, especially the last dream of the night, "recur" in the sense of hammering away at inducing a particular set of "feelings"; as if trying to teach me some tough lessons about myself.
(Comment revised and resubmitted due to typo)
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