I recently had an experience of a dream that showed up the next day in my waking reality. The dream involved being on a vacation and visiting a place that advertised itself on billboards as “The Floating Rock”. This place in the dream was very much like the cheesy tourist places you see while driving through the west. In the dream I find the floating rock and climb on it.
The next day, in my waking life, I am walking around the lake near my house and I spot some rocks that have been thrown out on the melting ice. Some of these rocks look like they are floating on the water (see the photo I took of these rocks next to this blog).
Now, back to the dream…in another part of this same dream I am holding a butter knife in my hand. I see a reflection in the knife that I very much want to take a picture of. In the process of trying to take this picture in the dream I fumble with my iphone and lose in the lake.
Then, while discussing this dream in my dream group (in waking life) several people take note of the butter knife and are curious about the meaning of it. To me it indicates a certain flash of creativity because of the strong reflected light.
Then yesterday I am cleaning out the attic with my wife and son. My son, who knew nothing of my dream, calls out to me because he has found something odd in the attic he wants to show me. When I get to the attic stairs, he is holding a butter knife in his hand. He says “We found this in the camping stuff. Isn’t that weird?” When I see the butter knife I laugh out loud and explain to him about the dream.
So, the dream seems to be living on in it's meanings and implications for me, being amplified by subsequent events in my waking life, calling on me to pay further attention to the specificity of the symbols. It is also showing me how notions of linear time are just that - notions. Our dreaming selves exist in another place where these rules of time do not apply.
This is so much fun and another reason to take note of dreams. I believe anyone who pays attention to the images of their dreams can and probably will have such experiences. And it is so worth paying attention!