All About Marie - A Dream

I had a young and pretty lady aged around 25 living with me along with her two year old child born out of wedlock. She was easy going, adaptive and full of street smart and uncommon wit.

During the day, Marie would stroll down the neighborhood with her child. Most of the neighbors would play with the child and chatted with her. At the end of the leisurely walk, she usually brought back some household items like bags of candies for the child, mop or broom and pots and pans for her.

She had a not-too-popular habit of borrowing things from the neighbor and then later on insisted that she was given the items as gifts. Since she was a single mom, most of us were sympathetic of her situation and we just let go of it. One day, she told me she was going to shop on supermarket, but when she came back, instead of on foot as usual, she rode on this shining red scooter with all her groceries somehow magnetically adhered to the scooter. I could see cartons of milk, juice, cereal and all kinds of baby foods piled up high on the scooter. I asked her how did she get the scooter, she just beamed with a big broad smile.

I was annoyed with her when she brought some street people into my house and insisted it was a right thing to do. I scorned her for not consulted me first. She usually got away with many things fully aware of her power of charm and wit. All of us suffered from Marie Syndrome. We all loved her and hated her at the same time. The last scene in my dream was that I vehemently argued over her selfish and notorious behavior that generated lively gossip in the community.....

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I awoke from the middle of argument feeling incredulous of why that I dreamed of a person that does not fit into my present life personality. I certainly appreciate the charm of that lady, but no one in my life has this kind of dynamic persona that I can relate to. Well, you can say that dream content is sometimes way out of league with our physical reality. But who knows? I can not be certain that our physical reality is the only reality in the universe.

" The great Taoist master Chuang Tzu once dreamed that he was a butterfly fluttering here and there. In the dream he had no awareness of his individuality as a person. He was only a butterfly. Suddenly, he awoke and found himself laying there, a person once again. But then he thought to himself, "Was I before a man who dreamed about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?"

A Wolf Pack - A dream

I decided to change my environment and moved into a remote village. Since land was cheap there, I afforded myself a good sized piece of land. We built a house with screen door and secured yard in place knowing that a pack of wolf was known to be roaming around the village preying on small animal.

I had a partner and a child living with me in the woods therefore the urgency of security was paramount. The house was built in a way that there was an iron-clad screen door separating a 20 feet long patio so that during the day, the child can play in the sunlight without exposing itself to the wild life surrounding it. The door to the house was double lock. I believed we had taken safety measure to the highest level given the seemingly beautiful nearby forest where we lived but potentially hidden danger looming all around.

At night, I spotted two wolves hanging close to our property. They will get close to the screen door and banged on it to test its vulnerability. Then one night, after a day's tiring activities, I suddenly realized that we forgot to have screen door locked tight. I told my partner to hurry and get that door locked before the wolves found out and got in. But it was too late. From the inside of my home, I clearly saw the wolves were jumping and banging inside of our patio. A rush of adrenaline swelled in my heart, a sense of terror and panic coursed through my body. A split second later, I found myself holding and hitting the wolf on the head when it tried to open and enter the door. I hit so hard that its head was bloody and broken and from the strength of wolf's struggle I was wounded myself. After the incident, I told myself that this was not the good place to raise a child, and I can't live like this anymore...... I woke up from my dream feeling very disturbed. I looked at the time on my alarm clock, it was only about 2:30 am.

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It has been quite a while since I remembered my dream a few months ago. Never was I awoke in the middle of night with such a vivid and emotionally draining feeling. I could not make out of why a dream of wolves when things happening in my daily life are pretty much routine and uneventful. I certainly have issues that I am dealing with, but nothing unusually alarming. Dream seems trivial and frivolous but according to the esoteric teaching, a dream is a way of communication among various levels of our consciousness. I hope to understand its meaning and how it relates to my current life situation.

Black Gold - A book

Once in a while I will read a book that is practical and useful for a modern living that is nothing to do with the realm of metaphysical. I found the book "Black Gold"very informative and recommend highly for it informs and educates the reader the urgent issue of rapidly depleting natural resources that so much of our modern living is depending on.

Oil, indeed is a driving force of our economy, modern amenities and comfort. As a consumer, we tend to focus only on the gas pump. About one or two years ago, whenever I saw the gasoline price soared above $3.00 mark, I got a little concern. Now we finally got used to the gasoline price hover around $3.00 to $4.00 range depending on the location and the provider.

Fossil fuel is indispensable for modern living now more than ever. This book gives us the biography and history of fossil fuel, its distribution and current estimated reserve around the world. It addressed the issues of how the discovery and usage of technology and fossil fuel advanced, modernized the world economy. Due to the limited supply can not keep up with the ferocious demand of modern living, the volatile oil producing regions could very well become the focal point of the conflict zone. As a fact it is not too dramatic to say that it is possible that our entire civilization could collapse if one day fossil fuel is completely dispensed and there is no alternative renewable energy source available to replace it. Could it be possible that the next world war will be fought on the ground of nations willing to risk millions of lives to gain control of the precious natural resources? I hope we don't come to see that!

Novel - A Novelty Experience for the Mind

Have you read a good novel lately? For me it has been a long while since I took up the hobby of reading novels a few years back. Not that I don't enjoy novel, but every time when I finished reading it, I felt there was something amiss either in the ending or in the plot. I felt that I did not learn much about it except a momentary thrilling sensation that got me up all night just so that I knew what happened next.

A novel that I enjoy is a mixed blend of ancient mythology with modern technology; a novel that touch base with our mythical side of human nature and yet boggle the mind with futuristic scientific discovery that could radically revolutionize the definition of what is human. I think that is probably one of the reasons I enjoyed so much watching the "Star trek, the next generation" several years ago. It is not just about technology, it is the exploration of human consciousness beyond the present. Much of the concept in the Next Generation was ahead of its time and resonated nicely with the metaphysical realm of human consciousness.

Some mind researchers asserted that mind seeks novelty to explore and expand itself. As much as we desire stability and certainty of our daily routine, the predictability and numbness of some daily chores could be a stumbling block to prevent us from stimulating the brain for creative expression. One of the things that we can do to keep our brain cells properly stimulated and neural pathways strengthened is to regularly engage our mind in some novelty activities that are not part of our daily routine.

Reading a good novel takes our mind off to the land of imagination and visualization. Instead of watching movie with our vision, we take the imaginary ride along the story line with our mind, we savor the vividness of exquisite literary expression, we explore a far out world with landscape and scenery foreign and fresh and most importantly is the conflict, the plot, the battle of good against evil and all the convoluted schemes of story telling that keep us thoroughly entertained. In a sense, it provides us a fictional mind travel experience beyond the confine of space and time.