For many dreams may be just dreams and may not be worth paying any attention. Today I was reading a book title 1001 Ways of Wisdom and I found a very interesting quotation about dreams:
When you wake up after seeing a dream, don’t immediately dismiss it as nonsense. Think about it. Ask yourself, what could this be trying to tell me? Listen to your dreams; they may be sending you a message.
In this blog I will tell you about one of such a dream of mine that was telling me something about my personality, and listening to that dream solved one of fears that was troubling now and again and by analyzing it I was able to get rid of that problem.
I use to write columns for a number of newspapers in Pakistan which became a source of making some money and giving me a sense of pride and satisfaction of seeing my columns published almost every week or sometime even daily. I was also enjoying the feeling of becoming somewhat famous. I was considered one of the gifted and knowledgeable writer on philatelic subject, especially on the stamps of Pakistan.
After getting married in Pakistan in 1980, my responsibilities as a family and the sole or the major earning member increased considerably. Before I was only responsible to pay for family expenses of my parents and six siblings, and but now I had my own family and when I had two kids, I was not able to find enough time to devote to this hobby, and my wife did neither appreciated or supported me in this pursuit.
After a few years, I used to see a scary dream that would wake me up. I never told anybody about this scary dream. Every time I would wake up seeing that same dream, my wife would tell me to recite a verse from the Quran, change my posture and go back to sleep.
To get a better paying job, I went back to college–Institute of Business Administration (IBA) to study MBA as part-time student in the the evening, as I was also working full time in a Plastic Molding factory–Rehbar Water Cooler as a Maintenance Engineer, where I was working seven days a week from 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM. The campus of IBA was in the middle of the town, about 15 miles from the factory, and to reach there 5 minutes before the class start time at 5:30 pm I had to drive faster than normal. If I would be late by more than 5 minutes I would be counted as “absent” and five absences would automatically kicked out of the college and there would be no refund for the tuition.
While I was continuing this education, my wife suggested that I should go to USA or UK to complete the degree, thus improving my job prospect as a foreign qualified MBA. I had completed the 10 courses out of the 20 courses required for the MBA, I was qualified to get the Post Graduate Diploma in Business Administration and was about to complete the next 4 courses, I got an admission letter from a private university–University of Evansville, Evansville, Indiana in their MBA program, and all my courses in IBA would be transferred to their program, after my transcript would be evaluated by the college.
After getting student visa I dropped from IBA and went to USA to start studies at UE. I was able to get a 20-hour job as a student in the university as an editor to the student newsletter for the international student managed by the Director of International Students. One day she asked me if everything was OK with my family, and why I was not in a jolly mood on that day. I told her that everything was OK at home, but from a few days I am having a scary dream that disturbs my sleep.
She did not take that information very lightly, but suggested that I should see a psychologist for this problem. I told her that I cannot afford the fees of the psychologist. She said that I would not be charged for the first two visits as I will see a UE paid psychologist and if more visits are required she will get some funding. She asked me the free time the next day, and I told here that my job in the computer lab (this was my the other 20 hour per week as student assistant) from 8:00 AM – 9:00 AM is almost a free hour for me, as hardly any student comes to the lab and may need my help.
So, next day exactly at 8:00 AM the lady psychologist came to see me. She said that she has 1 hour for my session, and I will need to tell her about my family, my job and other activities starting from high school days, and she gave me 45 minutes for my “story”.
I told her in as much details as possible and just after the end of my 45 allotted time, she asked me to tell her about this scary. This is what I told her about the dream. I see a shadow entering my room and tries me to choke me by pressing hard against me neck, and to push that shadow from my body, I make some kind of sound and after struggling for a few minutes I wake up, completely shaken by the dream that is always the same.
This is what the psychologist told me as an interpretation of the dream. I have a duel personality, one is the outer that wants me to take care of the family, and forget about my literary pursuits, while my inner personality is trying to convince me to pursue the literary activities. So there is this “fighting” going on in my brain and manifests in the form a dream.
She asked me what would be an ideal solution to resolve this conflict. I told her that I am going to put my inner personality to “sleep” for some time, may be for a couple of years (10 or more) to take care of my family needs and then wake my inner personality to resume my literary activities. She said that this is the correct solution.
I was surprised that after that day, that I stopped seeing that scary dream, and after all my three daughters were married and settled in life, I resumed my literary pursuit, by writing columns in the local newspaper–The Dahlonega Nugget as guest columnist and submitting “Letters to the Editor” on some local issues. I also published my memoir–The Lottery and published the revised edition of my first book–25 Years of Philately in Pakistan. That dream has finally been “purged” from my brain.
So, the moral of the story is that dreams sometime are really trying to say something to us. It could be a warning to save us from a future calamity or something that needs to be changed. So, listen to your dreams.
Rambler's Corner 