The Context

The Dream

I am attending some kind of festival at a big open-air arena. It is in the country in PA (possibly Lehigh county). There is a country vibe and I think the music is country or folk music. I'm aware of local people who are related to (sons of) the organizer standing on a hill overlooking the arena. I talk to them but can't remember what’s said. I sense that they and their mother are not good people and there is a vague sense of danger. 

Now I am dancing with the crowd in the arena. I am wearing a red dress. There are a lot of people but with space between them—not packed in like at a concert. No one else is wearing red and I know I stand out in the crowd. We are dancing away from the festival and out of the arena. There are numerous vendors, but I don’t recall any specifics.

The arena is part of a business compound with other buildings (possibly a welcome center and shop) between the arena and the road, all owned by the same family. I remember that an old school friend attended the festival in a previous year. 

I am supposed to drive home and pick up my younger sons James and Andrew so they can attend the event too, so I have to hurry. There is a downpour. A hard steady rain. I get wet but am relieved to think the festival will be cancelled and I don’t have to drive to pick up my sons and bring them back. Then the sky clears and I realize I still have to go get them.

I leave the venue. I’m in a car and there is an elderly man (I would say 80s or older) with me. He is tall w gray thinning hair. I have previously agreed to give him a ride home. I have a newer car, possibly silver, and have borrowed from someone (I think James). The elderly man insists on driving, saying he knows the way. We leave together.

The car is an automatic with a console shift. The man is shifting it like it is a standard, using all three forward gears. It is annoying. I tell him he doesn't have to shift like that, that he can just leave the car in Drive and he makes fun of that manner of driving. He is a bad driver in other ways too, having trouble handling the car in general. We go up a hill, left through a business district and then left again, going back in the direction we came from. We then pull into a gas station. 

I know we have come back close to where we started. I'm upset because I can actually see the venue, which is a short way down what appears to be a state highway. I am stressed about being late to pick up James and Andrew. Especially Andrew, who really wants to attend the event. I am stressed about the amount of driving (1 or 2 hours each way) I still have to do.

I point out the venue to the elderly man and tell him we have wasted an hour going in a circuit. He is unpleasant. We are out of the car. I tell him to take his things and get his own ride home. He has lots of stuff in the trunk of the car (shopping bags, containers, etc). I pile it all up on a bench. Then I see that he is having an issue with balance and cognition. I end up taking his arm to help him walk.

The man and his things are back in my car. I am at the edge of the gas station parking lot now trying to talk a group of people into taking the man where he needs to go. They seem judgmental about my lack of compassion for the elderly, but I feel if they knew him, they would think otherwise. A woman gracious woman with a southern accent is talking to the man sweetly, but after a while I sense she is getting exasperated too.

My Take Away

My Weaknesses

My Strengths

Outcome

I had three dreams about stone walls in 2024. While the dreams were far apart, I believe they were episodes in a single dream series. In a dream series, each dream is connected by a common but developing theme.

These dreams, or this series of dreams. began last year around Easter, so I decided to share the final dream now. You can find a link to the first two stone wall dreams at the bottom of this post.

The Dream Wall Dream

In the dream, I was at a house in my old neighborhood in suburban Michigan. The development changed a lot over the ten years we lived there but in this dream is was a lot like I remembered it in the beginning.

The homes were scattered across a large track of old growth forest. Most had large lots that were entirely wooded in the back and you could walk for a long way then without seeing any manmade structures at all.

I was in a part of the development near the home of a childhood friend. There were two houses. One belonged to an unnamed and unseen dream friend who was about to get married. I was inside a second house, very close by the first. Both houses were ranch-style homes.

I understood that the friend about to be married had dreamt a dream he felt was important. I knew that I needed to interpret it but I was not supposed to leave. This was a problem because there was someone I had to talk to about the interpretation. I had a sense that dream interpretation (or possibly seeing the person who would help with that interpretation) was actually illegal and I had to sneak out the back without being seen and walk quickly into the woods to find him.

It was winter, and the sky was gray, and the ground was covered with snow. The trees were just as I remembered them, tall and thin with bare black trunks. It felt like evening or maybe early morning and I set out in the direction I would have taken to our old house.

I saw that there was a wall built through the woods, or rather several adjoining walls because they were all different. I guessed that each wall was the back of a different property and, as is the case with houses, some were better maintained than others.

At one place, the wall was built out of crumbling cement blocks. It was quite low, but I could see that the wall for the next property was high and well built out of carefully laid fieldstone. There was a young man there who seemed to be a sort of guard or gatekeeper, and he confirmed that I was in the right place.

So I climbed over the low next door wall and cut over toward the house that went with the high, well-built wall.

The house was a mansion, and the occupant was renowned for his ability to interpret dreams. I was invited in. The interpreter of dreams was an older man sitting on the floor of a large, carpeted (possibly unfurnished) room. He was holding a mysterious scroll which he did not explain.

I told him about my friend's dream and shared my own awkward interpretation. I don't know if he provided feedback or additional insights. If he did, I can’t remember. And I don't remember my own interpretation or what the dream was about either.

The Synchronicities

I had the first and second wall and gate dreams around Easter of last year. Those dreams made me wonder if dream interpretation and the Catholic faith were compatible. The first and second dreams came at a difficult time when I was struggling with my writing and a group I belonged to then.

The third dream came when I was struggling to reconcile my faith with the Jungian perspective on dreams and consciousness.

A few days after the dream, I talked to our parish priest about my interest in dreamwork. He seemed to have a healthy interest in dreams and saw no harm in recording them or reflecting on them. He even shared a dream of his own.

When I got home from Mass that day I decided to listen to a Murray Stein video.

Murray Stein is the Jungian analyst who convinced me (via the This Jungian Life podcast) that Jung's approach to dreams was the right approach for me. What was especially interesting about the video I watched that day was that it mentioned that Murray Stein was a Christian.

Who would have thought?

Not me, certainly. But I couldn’t help feeling that there was a connection and that it all circled back to the dream.

The Dream Wall Revisited

I think it's relevant that I wanted to interpret a friend's dream (in dream 3) and felt that it was not allowed. I think this speaks to my uncertainty about the Church’s position on dream interpretation which was something that was on my mind at the time of all three stone wall dreams.

In the third dream, I had to sneak away to find the dream master. When I did, I encountered a wall. It was made of stone, just like the wall in the dreams I had at Easter 2024. It was not the same wall, but it was a similar sort of barrier. In dreams one and two the barrier stopped me. In dream three, it did not.

The wise old man and the mysterious scroll were important elements in dream three. The scroll may represent “learning, knowledge; the unfolding of life and knowledge; the scroll of…destiny.” To Christians it is “The Book of Life,” also associated with St. James the Great, Isaiah and the prophets. The Greeks considered the scroll to be an attribute of Aesculapius. The Egyptians associated it with knowledge. (Cooper, J.C.)

To me the old man and the scroll represent ancient knowledge and a mystical perspective. My own awkward interpretation of the dream reminds me that there is still a lot to learn.

The synchronicity of talking to my parish priest and learning that a Jungian analyst I greatly admire was Christian helped resolve much of the confusion I had with the first stone wall dreams. The priest’s open and accepting attitude was a sharp contrast to that of others I was dealing with at the time.

The Dream Series Theme

I am in a different place, now, than I was in 2024, and had to be, I think, to begin to understand the series as a whole.

The common elements were the walls themselves and the mysteries beyond them—the volkknot and illegible letters in dreams one and two and the unread scroll in dream three. The various walls in the third dream may represent different or incorrect approaches to the mystery.

Most importantly, I think the wall in each of these dreams represents the “passage from outer profane space to inner and sacred space; also symbolic of the sacred enclosure, which is both a protection and a limitation.” (Cooper, J.C.)

I was concerned about going through the door in the walls in dreams one and two. In the last dream I recognized that my concerns came from an external source (an expectation or law). Once I was in the forest I forgot these concerns and easily found a way around the high wall.

There is a lot that can be said about the elements in dream three—especially the mysterious dream master and the journey through the forest. To me, however, the theme is about barriers—both real and imagined—and how they may be overcome.

About Dream Series

Dream series are more common than a lot of people realize. I talk a bit about them in this video:

On the other hand, I lost hope and a dream saved me, and I feel called to tell that story.

I honestly don't know at this point if I'll be sharing that story here in the blog or in a long-form format but here is the intro:

In 2008, at the lowest point in my life, I had a dream I couldn’t explain.

Unlike the murky, sepia colored dreams I was used to, this dream was sharp and bright and saturated with color. A spectrum of blue, unlike anything I’d ever seen. Vivid reds. Shining white light. A beautiful woman with deep-water blue eyes, radiating love.

Filled with sparkling gemstones and mysterious beings, the dream told the story of a journey to and from an amazing location, and it told that story coherently.

As the woman in blue guided me from one dream experience to another, separate themes played out, like story-lines in a movie. When the dream finally ended, each loose end came together in a memorable and emotional conclusion.

I woke up convinced that my mysterious dream guide was someone special. I knew that the things that she showed me meant something. And even though I had no idea who she was or what she was trying to tell me, I was determined to find out.

This was the beginning of a spiritual journey that carried me through the New Age, in and out of Spiritualism and Wicca, halfway across the world, on pilgrimage to Israel, back to Christianity, through parapsychology, and onto the doorstep of Carl Gustav Jung.

And it all began with the dream, I would come to call the Spirit Dream. It was the initiation to the mystery and, ultimately, the key to deciphering it. The journey itself, however, was a process. 

For me, this process was a breadcrumb path of spiritual experience, odd synchronicities, and a host of lesser dreams. These smaller events guided me from one spiritual realization to another, like stepping through the dark—and I would have been off the path and well into the weeds without them. 

And so in the pages that follow, I have shared them all.

In the rest of this chapter, I talk about the life events that set the stage for the dream. In chapter two, I share the dream itself.

About the Video

Chatting about books, dream series, how dreams may explain each other and what's new on the Mystic Review. Also, a bit about Jungian Dream School and my plans for the channel in 2025. Happy New Year everyone! 

• My Newsletter: barbaragraver.substack.com/
• My YouTube: youtube.com/@MysticReview.com/ 
• Dream School: thisjungianlife.com/join-dream-school

Reflections on Winter (repost)

For a while I switched from tarot

to playing cards.

Just regular old cards.

No pretty pictures.

No Colman-Smith.

No abstract art.

No rainbow colors.

Just numbers and suit,

black and red,

blood and ash,

energy and associations.

And the associations are easy

with ordinary cards.

Spades are winter,

spades are dark.

The Queen, the twelfth card

of her suit,

a winter queen,

a waning year.

This is how you time a reading.

And I timed every reading out

to December,

to myself,

to that sharp and solitary queen.

Today is a turning point in time.

The air is cold and the wind is strong.

And air is winter.

Air is spirit

and, if you're lucky, inspiration,

new ideas and looking inward.

And I have been luckier in this regard

than in others.

Today is a new month and a new year.

The yard is a monochrome of snow

and dormant garden.

There are crows calling from the trees

loud and free and wild.

And the sky beyond the branches

isn't gray or silver

but really surprisingly blue.

Blue enough to get my attention.

Blue enough to anchor me

to this scene, this spot, this lonely season.

So I stand outside until my feet are cold

and I think that this is probably

where all the symbols point.

Not where you've been,

not where you're going

but the absolute magnitude

of where you are.

Today I know exactly

where that is.

Today is Sunday,

early January.

Today is number one of seven.

Today is number one of twelve.

And one is creation and renewal.

One is power under pressure.

One is stepping out and starting over,

and the single, shaking breath we take

before we leap.

I wrote this poem on January 1st, 2017. I was still reading cards professionally then and spent a lot of time making guesses about the future. I stopped reading later that year, and when I picked it up again I saw it differently. In keeping with the spirit of this poem. I no longer read professionally or make predictions.

The Project

I like online media because my neurodivergent brain can handle short articles and even shorter podcasts without a problem. Long-form writing is a challenge, but I was able to finish a short vampire novel this year, anyway, and have a sequel in the works. 

I feel good about those projects and there is no shortage of ideas for other books. 

The book idea I want to talk about in this post is a memoir about the dream I call the Spirit Dream and how it affected me. I don't really like the idea of writing a memoir, but I feel called to tell the story of the dream because of the difference it made in my life.

The Affect the Dream Had

I spent the entire decade before the Spirit Dream suffering one loss after another. The vision of a perfect family. My lovely home. The profession I had trained for. My extended family. My entire inheritance. My ability to write.

I wasn't diagnosed with autism then and didn't know that I was in deep autistic burnout, but I knew I'd given up. And then the dream came and changed it all. Not all at once, of course, but gradually.

My family regrouped. Finances improved. We moved into a new house that is much better than the in-between one. Those things probably would have happened, anyway. What wouldn't have happened was the life I now lead.

The Spirit Dream kicked off the spiritual journey that became the Mystic Review. It taught me things that mattered. It brought me back full-circle to the place I needed to be. Not the picture-perfect life I projected. My real life. The one that I was meant for.

It took over fifteen years to make that circuit and during that time, a lot of things happened. I went on some amazing spiritual adventures. I made and lost friends. I had other dreams that helped correct my course. I learned important things. I rediscovered my creative spark. And in the end, just this year, an unexpected synchronicity put it all into perspective. 

There are still more questions. Just like there will always be more to learn. But I'm ready to share what I have so far. 

Not my wisdom. Dream wisdom.

But that doesn't make the writing any easier.

How I Struggle with Writing

I have poor executive functioning and a lot of self doubt and when I hit the 10,000 word mark on any project, I start ripping thins apart. 

Which is part of the reason I started and restarted the Spirit Dream story at least five different times. Each version had a slightly different focus. One version was about faith, another was about autism, others were about me. And not a single one of those versions worked.

The issues were thematic AND structural, as my writing issues always are.

And then I started working with my dreams again and waking up in the middle of the night with words running through my head. The words came in phrases and paragraphs and pages—and one of the phrases was, "structure the book on the dream."

So I went back to the Spirit Dream and saw that I had divided it into five parts. This was something I'd done a long time ago to make it readable. Now it occurred to me that five parts might be a thing. And it was.

Sister Regina Kelly is probably shaking her head in heaven right now, but somehow I had forgotten Shakespeare and the five act structure.

The Spirit Dream, as I wrote it down that morning in 2008, had that structure. Baked in.

So what does all this mean?

The difference between a symbol and a sign according to the Jungians is that a sign communicates a single thing, while a symbol has many different meanings. Dreams are full of symbols. So it makes sense that I would get multiple insights from this most recent encounter with the Spirit Dream.

One insight has to do with theme and another has to do with structure. But the most important insight in my opinion is that is this is something I need to do.

As always, I will keep you posted <3

Of New Dreams and Old

Some symbols are universal. Others are personal. For me, circles are both.

When I have a dream that has a sphere, or a disk, or a looping path that brings me back to where I started, it always seems to mean something. So when a recent dream had a circular element, I paid attention.

And the more attention I paid, the more the structure of the dream reminded me of another, older dream—one whose full meaning has always eluded me. 

I had that dream in 2008 or maybe 2007. My life was at a low point and the future seemed bleak. And then there was the dream. A big magical dream. Brimming with color. Filled with mysterious symbols. Making me think that maybe God had remembered me.

I called it the Spirit Dream and, for the next ten years, I went from one metaphysical stopping point to the next, trying to make what I found fit. But it never did or, at least, never did for long. 

Then, a couple of months ago, I heard Murray Stein interviewed on This Jungian Life, and something he said absolutely fit. It fit so well in fact that it cast the Spirit Dream in an entirely new light. And in that light I saw that the dream wasn't really about a particular spiritual practice or deity or decision. It was about my inner life.

I didn't really know what to do with that, but I felt like I was supposed to do something. So I joined the This Jungian Life Dream School, applied to a Dream School dream group and got accepted. 

Then, I had another dream. The new dream wasn't as big or as beautiful as the old one, but it was still a dream about a journey, and I was still encountering things along the way. I felt that this new dream helped explain the Spirit Dream, or that maybe it picked up where the old dream left off.

The Journey by Bus Dream

In the first part of the dream, I have a boyfriend who is remodeling a house for me. I’m happy about this because I like him. He has a second house that he is also remodeling. My memory of the dream boyfriend is that he is a tall man and may have blond curls.

Someone has given me a metal disk. It is gold or brass. The back is gold colored. The front is red with a gold center. It seems important to me but I don’t know what it is or how I got it.

I am in the town I live in. I am going to my house to meet the boyfriend and some other people. I am driving north on North Main Street and miss the right turn up the hill. I’m stressed about being late and looking for a turn. 

Most of the side streets are one-way (the wrong way) and the only one that isn’t is very steep. I remember hearing a story about a city bus—which is what I’m driving—that went up the steep street and how all the passengers bounced right out of their seats when they hit the crest, so I keep on driving. This part of town is kind of run down.

I pass a roadside parking area on the right. The parking area is a small dirt lot that’s part of an old, abandoned motel. I remember that there used to be motorhomes for psychics there and that you could go there for a reading. I think there is still a sign advertising the psychics (in the dream). But now the psychic motorhomes are gone and all that’s parked there are various work trucks.

I reach the larger intersection (with a hard right) I’ve been looking for and see there is roadwork and traffic barricades in place. A man is directing traffic and I realize that the road I want to take (the hard right) is temporarily closed, so I turn left into a small thrift shop. I go into the thrift shop and see there is a big pile of journals for sale. 

I sit down on the floor and start to look through the journals and realize they are all mine and I have donated them to the shop. One has my writing in it and I think I should probably buy it so other people don’t read it but I buy another bigger (unwritten in) journal instead. I hear water running like a shower.

I go back out and see the roadwork is done. The man directing traffic is gone. I have to make a U turn which is a big wide swing and difficult to negotiate with the bus but I manage it. I am waiting for the light to change so I can go left up the sloping hill to my house. 

I start thinking about the boyfriend and realize that the second house he is remodeling is for him to live in. I feel okay about that, but I know we'll have to discuss it. I decide to tell him I’m autistic and that it’s good that we won’t live together because I don’t do well with live-in relationships, anyway. I’m relieved to realize that I have a way to explain myself.

From Point A to Point B

The Spirit Dream described a full round-trip journey to a mysterious location, while the new dream was nothing more than an ordinary drive from point A to point B. But, even though the drive was short, I passed things that seemed to have meaning.

The steep hill road. The abandoned psychic parking lot. The thrift store, full of old journals.

Three events. Just like there were three events in leg one (and leg two and three) of the Spirit Dream journey.

So I decided to submit the new dream to the dream group and see what they had to say, and I got some fascinating insights.

One member pointed out that the journal choice might represent a fresh start. Another said that the boyfriend who planned to maintain his own home might be an animus figure. Everyone was curious about the red and gold disk. The group connected the disk to amulets and to alchemy—and it seemed to me that this was the real key to both the new dream and the old one. 

I'd always thought that the color red in the Spirit Dream symbolized my own unevolved spiritual nature. Now I wondered if I'd got that wrong. Maybe red wasn't about failing or being at spiritual ground level. Maybe it was about transformation and the possibility of change.

But I wasn't sure if change was still possible. It had been a long time since the first dream—and there were parts of the second one that seemed to reflect some of the mistakes I had made. 

The lot where the psychics once parked reminded me of the various spiritual practices I'd tried and abandoned. 

The old journals made me think about the hundreds of thousands of words I have written here and elsewhere. Words which sometimes seem to have served no purpose whatsoever. 

The steep street seemed to reflect all the opportunities I had missed and all the things I'd thought I'd accomplish, but didn't.

But that wasn't where the A to B journey ended.

Instead, it ended when a road block was removed and I was able to correct my course. 

One really interesting things about the Journey by Bus dream was that it followed the actual layout of the town where I now live. So I know that the turn I was getting ready to make when the dream ended led to the same place as the steep hill road. 

Home.

Which makes me wonder if the Spirit Dream was ever about a mostly external spiritual journey. Or about writing my opus or discovering the truth with a capital T or doing any of other things I’ve imagined and then left undone.

Maybe the dream was really just about getting on with my life after I'd been laid low. Maybe it was about taking a chance when it felt like there wasn't one good thing left in universe. 

Or maybe not. 

Because, unlike signs, symbols point to a multitude of things.

Generously, my dream group has agreed to look at the Spirit Dream in our next session, and I'm curious to hear what they have to say. It is a very old dream but if I'm still dreaming about it I think it makes sense to look at it one more time.

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