Two nights ago, I woke from a dream about being in school again. In this one, I was studying for a test, reviewing chapters from the assigned book and reminding myself to go through my class notes next.
School dreams have been frequent for me over the years. In my frustration, I called out to my divine advisors, “What the hell are you trying to tell me this time? What am I failing to understand? Where am I lacking?”
Their answer came immediately and was quite lengthy.
You’re interpreting the dream upside down. You’ve been seeing it as a sign that there’s some deficit you have to overcome and feeling shame as a result. But it simply means that in some aspects of your life, you are a student. Think about it. Is there something wrong with a fifth grader because he isn’t a ninth grader? Is a senior in high school somehow a failure because she isn’t a junior in college?
No. The fifth grader is learning at a level appropriate for his developmental stage. The senior is studying topics fitting for someone about to graduate and pursue an advanced degree.
There’s no lack. There’s no failure. You’re right where you need to be. Embrace it and recognize those dreams not as something negative, but as a marker revealing that you’ve reached a transformative point and are about to enter the next stage of your development as an incarnate spiritual being.
Over the last twenty-four hours, I’ve been holding those messages tenderly, really trying to take them in. As I’ve written elsewhere, for much of my life I believed I wasn’t good enough and had to make up for some faulty or broken part of me. I believed the school dreams reinforced that.
How different might things have been if I’d recognized the true message behind them?
You might have noticed that even that question implies a lack on my part: a regret over something I should have understood. It’s a challenge to let that negativity go.
Have you ever had school dreams like mine? Have you also interpreted them negatively?
As my divine advisors explained, we are all beings in development, each at some stage in our lives according to our path. We are where we need to be. We’re not lacking. We’re learning, and before us are opportunities that invite us to grow and expand.
And my advisors have a final comment:
Celebrate who you are in this moment. You’ve come a long way. And that’s some achievement!
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