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Car, Personal Growth

Taking Control of Your Life & Living in Your Empowered Self

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Day 2: How the Virtue Will Change Your Entire Life

By Richard Hastings

O SON OF BEING! With the hands of power I made thee and with the fingers of strength I created thee; and within thee have I placed the essence of My light. Be thou content with it and seek naught else, for My work is perfect and My command is binding. Question it not, nor have a doubt thereof.     Baha’u’llah

The advantage of choosing a process or virtue for your focus of change this year is that virtues and processes are automatically generalized to all parts of your life, not just the one that may be giving you the most problem.   When you learn how to have endurance, for instance, you can stay positive for long periods of time with any project. However, it is my experience that the mind often needs some help in the process of generalization.

The activity today is to make a list of the various parts of your life and then describe how the virtue will assist you in each one. Of course the more you understand what the energy of the virtue is the easier this will be.   The divine world is there to assist you so it is very helpful to have a daily prayer asking for assistance in learning about and applying the energy to your life. God does not just handover to anyone a particular energy. You can’t go to your place of worship and expect that you will suddenly become a new person.

We have been given a free will and an ability to make efforts. These are gifts that are aspects of every human being.   God expects us to use them because that is our nobility, but the divine world is also there to support and guide us along the way if we reach out to it.   The communication from the spiritual dimension never stops flowing. For instance, something like world peace is not going to be delivered on a silver platter one day to us. We have to learn our way to it.   A lot of people make the argument that God let such terrible tragedies happen in the 20th Century, but He has always done His part which is guidance and support. The problem for us is that we often don’t listen to the guidance.   We do not have world peace right now because we don’t follow the guidance. Ask for help, listen for it, and then make lots of efforts and your world will change.

Get out some paper or use your computer and make the list.

Happy changing today.

Transforming Fear to Courage

Dreams about car crashes are about taking back control of your life and driving with a lot of enthusiasm towards the desired destination.

By Rachel Perry

I am driving down a road I’ve driven 100+ times before. It’s a road on a hill and I’m headed down towards the base of the incline. It’s been snowing all day and the roads are slick with ice. Having lived in snowy places like Ontario & Alberta, I feel confident about navigating the terrain. Visibility is not great but with the windshield wipers going, I can see as well as I need to. I’m coming around a bend in the road when suddenly the car’s back end veres off to the left and I find myself sliding sideways down the hill. Quickly, I turn the steering wheel and am able to straighten out the car and I apply the breaks hoping to slow the car down to a manageable speed but no such luck. The back end slides again and I look ahead of me on the road, realizing that if I continue down the hill at this rate I run the risk of smashing into any of the various cars parked on either side of the road. So I realize I cannot make the turn and instead I look straight ahead. In front of me is a drop off the side of the hillside. In the dark I can only perceive that there are trees and I do not like the idea of driving off of a cliff into a ravine of unknown depths. To the left of me is a street lamp post. It occurs to me that driving into the pole is the only way to ensure I have a chance of surviving the impending crash so I allow the car to proceed face-first into the pole knowing that I cannot apply the brakes again, risking the car hitting the pole sideways instead of head-on. At least if I hit the pole head-on there is more protection and more metal between the post and my seat at the wheel. The car continues to accelerate as it drives towards the pole and I whisper a prayer asking that my life may be spared. I don’t want to die and I don’t want to be badly injured. 

The sound of the car smashing into the post is the most deafening sound I’ve heard all my life. The crunching of the metal. The blast of the airbag deploying. My face crashing against the airbag and then bouncing back in my seat and then flat into the airbag again. Blacking out and then coming to and wondering how long I was out for. The sound of the car crushing in on itself. Then suddenly it’s over and I crawl awkwardly out of the driver’s side door, glad that I’m alive, but so shaken up and worrying about the extent of the damage. Fortunately, a man is home at a house nearby and he lets me in, calls 911, and sits with me attentively until paramedics arrive. A trip to the hospital ER with an X-ray and a CT scan reveals nothing is broken and I am free to go home. But the trauma is not over just yet. For the next 3 weeks every time I sleep I dream I am in the car again, going over a cliff, or burning in flames, or crashing and not surviving. My dreams are so realistic it’s as though I am there in the car, again and again, reliving the fear and chaos of being in a car going 55km an hour directly into a pole.

In the 10 years that I’ve been learning to interpret dreams I have experienced dreams of car crashes or listened to others share their dreams of collisions. The metaphor of losing control of a car while driving is about losing control of the direction life is going in. In my dreams, and in real life, I lose control of the car and then say a prayer for my life to be saved. I do survive, in the dream and in real life, but I have a huge mess to clean up. The dream is a reminder that my car was out of control even before it slid on the ice – in other words there is a part of my life which I am not in control of – and when I pray about it I can gain control again and therefore can avoid further catastrophe in real life. When we dream of cars and traveling it is about the way we travel to get to where we are going. One way to look at the past 10 years of my life is to see that when I am headed down the road of my life, going for the things I want, often times people with a lot of negative behaviour stand in my way and they do things which forces me to lose control of my life and forces me to have to deal with a big loss and a big mess. 

So what I have learned from this recent collision is that I need to remember to have quiet moments of meditation & reflection daily where I can keep my mind centered on a positive vision of where I’m headed. Then I am able to perceive challenges in advance and avoid them or navigate through them with great skill. 

When I work with inmates on the challenges they face, I often keep this idea in mind. Sometimes people are motivated by fear or by desire to have more materialistic gain in their lives. Some people are in jail even though they are not guilty of the charges placed on them. Some people in jail have been breaking the law but they are accused of doing something else which they were not involved in. Some people are 100% guilty of what they’ve been charged with and they are willing & able to take responsibility for their actions. Some people are 100% guilty but they never admit it. One way or another, being arrested and incarcerated is like a huge collision in the road of life. Suddenly, and usually without warning, everything comes to a halt. Cops appear. Arrested, incarcerated, charged, and having a day in court. Since I have never been arrested and have never engaged in unlawful behaviour (except for the $3 bracelet I was caught stealing from Canada’s Wonderland when I was 17) I cannot relate directly to the incarcerated experience but what I can relate to, metaphorically speaking, is the experience of trying to go for something and getting aggressively prevented from going for what I want.

The solution to a car crash and the solution to being incarcerated is very much the same. After the crash, everything changes – new car, new Insurance, new beginnings. After an arrest everything changes too – new housing, new responsibilities, new beginnings. So in this way, I am a lot like the inmates I work with. They are reflecting on their lives and thinking about where they want to go next and how they want to get there … And I am also reflecting on my life and thinking about where I want to go and how I want to get there. Change is hard. Really really hard. But everything in life calls us to change, all the time, and if we surrender to the change we can grow with it and experience really amazing opportunities in life. When we resist the change, we get stuck or trapped, and we encounter continuous obstacles without the thrill of victory.

Many people are shocked when they hear I was in another collision. “Again?” they say. “Yes, again,” I reply. But the two collisions were so very different. In the first one, last March in 2019, I had the right of way, driving about 60km on the main road through town and a truck pulled out of a side street without checking all directions and she drove right into me, T-boning me. Luckily, I was able to swerve fast enough that the damage to the car was minimal. I had a serious concussion and painful soft tissue damage following that collision but the car was unscathed. In this most recent accident, it was just me dealing with horrendous driving conditions. More soft tissue damage to deal with, and a totally messed up car to deal with, but not such a serious concussion as the first time. Could either accident have been avoided? Maybe. Have I learned something about my Self? Absolutely. I’ve been learning about trusting my Self more fully and listening to my Inner Guidance when it directs me and I’ve been learning about keeping and maintaining control of my life so that I can confidently move forward with a lot of drive towards the direction of my dreams.

When I consider these life lessons in the context of the Second Day of the Transformation Program I realize the main quality or virtue I need to get back in control of my life is Patience and Calm. When I am Calm & Focused then I am in control of the direction I’m headed and I am not deterred by the obstacles or dangers I’m faced with. This is the same solution inmates need when they are changing direction in their lives. Patience and Calm are two of the most helpful qualities when awaiting court or trial or release. When we are Patient & Calm, we can clearly see the vision we set out before us, we know where we’re headed and how we want to get there and we can use all of our skills & talents to achieve the outcome we desire. 

It is quite easy to look at the damage I caused on my car and think it is a horrible sight but with a little effort and creative-thinking, the crash can be seen as an important and unmistakable lesson for positive change. My life circumstances are calling me to have even more Patience and even more Inspiration and even more Commitment to the path I’m following in life. The more I am able to do this, the crises in my life will get fewer and farther apart until they are no longer needed at all. It is the same for inmates. When they get control of their True Self and they understand exactly what they are going for in life, they will be able to have more and more control over the direction they are traveling and will be able to live out their positive new lives. 

Rachel 🙂

Car, Disgust, Narcissist Behaviours, Rape

Disclaimer: A Message About the Language of Metaphors in Dreams About Sexual Abuse

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rear view of a boy sitting on grassland
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

September 29, 2018

Yesterday a post which was written last September in 2017 was published on this blog. For those unfamiliar with the language of metaphor used by dreams to communicate messages about transformation, the dream described in yesterday’s post may have seemed appalling, maybe even scandalous. The post is no longer visible on this website, but for those who did not have the chance to read it, in the 18 hours it was published, I’ll briefly describe that the dream had a scene of sexual abuse in it, with a mother sexually violating her daughter. Some might call that kind of dream a nightmare. These kinds of nightmarish dreams are one of my favourites to work with because they embody a high degree of fear & disgust. With daily attention and diligence, Fear & disgust can be transformed into Courage & Contentment.

Even though the dream scenario was a metaphor and to the best of my knowledge did not depict things which happened in the real world, the reason I decided to publish it is to initiate a conversation through this venue around the complex issues of sexual abuse of children and the society of secrecy which surrounds it.

adult alone anxious black and white
Photo by Kat Jayne on Pexels.com

Coincidentally, there was a show on CBC yesterday which I listened to while driving to work. The show featured an author who was originally from South Africa, and moved to Canada with her family when she was 10. Her book talks about her experience of racism and also of having been sexually abused by someone close to her family. What I found so interesting about her telling of these stories is that she said even when she was sexually assaulted at the age of 7 she knew to keep it a secret. She knew to speak of it would bring shame to her and “mark her” as tainted or spoiled in some way. When she experienced a racist incident at 10 she knew she could turn to her family for help and support. Instinctively she knew the difference between these two types of attacks and way her reaching out for help would be perceived. In the program she described that her father, an outspoken revolutionary, taught her to “not own” the problems of the racist. If someone is ignorant and acts out of a racist mindset, they must be held accountable for their actions. In that way, you give them their problem and do not own it.

But for sexual assaults, it is not so easy to disown the violence. Even as a child she knew to keep it a secret, that the man would not be held responsible, even if she reached out for help and in that way, she sort of “owned” his assault. She owned the problem. It wasn’t hers to own, but she did, because what other options were available to her? None.

The dream I shared yesterday was about this issue. It was about an adult in a position of trust manipulating those in the environment so that she could get away with violating the dignity of someone who she perceived she had power over. When a person perpetrates sexual assault they are trying to go for Power, power over the recipient of the attack, power over those who watch but do nothing, power over the situation which they want to control with a vengeance.

Since the dream was a metaphor, and not about a real life situation, what it means is that the dreamer has someone in their life who is saying things and doing things which are as violent and abhorrent as sexual abuse. To solve the problem in the dream, the dreamer must begin to see themselves as capable of driving the situation forward, out of the power struggle. The sexual assault happened in a car in the dream so that is a metaphor for the solution to drive forward and out of the power struggle.

photo of person driving
Photo by Peter Fazekas on Pexels.com

When I work with women who have experienced domestic violence and when I work with men who are in jail, I often see that the violence they’ve experienced or perpetuated has clouded their abilities to envision a positive future for themselves or others. Trauma has a way of doing this. The part of the brain responsible for responding quickly to threats is the small almond-shaped amegdala, which connects the temporal lobe of the brain and is responsible for fear & aggression. When someone experiences a high degree of fear, the amegdala is activated and a flight or fight or freeze response is triggered. One traumatic event is enough to rewire the brain’s fight or flight response but even more so when there is a pattern of abuse, such as with children growing up in abusive homes, or with women (and men) caught in domestically abusive patterns of behaviour in adulthood.

The work for someone who experienced abuse in childhood is to become conscious and “wake up” to the ways in which the abuse affected them and then change the negative emotions and patterns to more positive. It is more difficult work because many of the abuse scenarios may have happened before the age of 4 and are not a part of the individual’s conscious memories. This is why dreams can be very healing and therapeutic, because the dreams reveal the unconscious memories or fears which have been buried away for so many years.

Alternatively, if a person had not experienced abuse in childhood but had experienced it as an adult, their nightmares can be a direct result of that fear-filled experience and as they work through the metaphors they can process the negative emotions associated with the violence and they can take the lesson from the experience and develop themselves to be able to help others even more than before. The purpose of our lives is to continue to transform, to grow, to change, to evolve so that we can be ever-more capable of supporting and accompanying more and more people in their personal & collective evolution.

When the sexual abuse post was published yesterday there was not a lot of explanation about the metaphor so today I thought I would write more about it even though I am fully aware that our society is just at the very beginning of being able to speak of these atrocities with any degree of capacity. The “Me Too” movement has made great strides in this arena so in a small and trite way I’m addressing the issue of sexual abuse and the way it is handled by all parties through occasionally sharing violent dreams on this blog.

adventure baby beautiful blue eyes

  I have a very positive vision of the future where families are healthy and free of violence, where children are safe & protected and free from threats of all forms of abuse. When I write about things which are negative or difficult in nature, I do it to expose the Negative Truth. In this way, the lesson can be learned and more positive relationships can be developed. That is my aim. That is my intention. That is my goal. And that is the purpose of this blog.

Air, Car, Cat, Community, Death, Eagle, Fear, Flying, Water

My Eagle Dream

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July 18, 2018

Last night I dreamed of being on a First Nations reservation. There was lots going on. Some sitting by a bonfire. Some getting ready to go somewhere. Some playing games. I heard something and looked up and saw an eagle soaring very high above the trees. It was circling around. Others started noticing too. Then another eagle joined the first and it was even higher than the previous one. They circled around and around high above us. I just stared at them, not being able to take my eyes off them because of their beauty. Then I noticed the first one had something in its mouth and as it flew lower and closer to us I could see it was a tiger. I was stunned. “What?!” An eagle carrying a tiger in its mouth!? Impossible, I said to myself. “But there it is! Impossible yet it’s happening.”

By now the eagles caught the attention of the others and an elder beside me to the left was looking up at the eagles and then doing something with the sticks in front of her. She closed her eyes briefly as though in prayer or supplication. I glanced back up and sure enough, there truly was a tiger in the eagle’s beak, being carried in the way a mother cat carries her kittens.

Soon the eagles landed in a clearing nearby and before we knew it the tiger was dropped and surprisingly it was still alive. It started to run at us but we had lots of time to pack our belongings and get in the car although it was packed and we all  just barely fit. The elder was giving us instructions the whole time.

There was a swampy area over further off to the left and at some point we had been playing a game over there, some sort of simple games like catch and tag. I had jumped in for a bit and got out, thinking I’d go back in later, but when we were getting in the car I realized I couldn’t go back to the water today.

So that was the end of the dream, getting into the car, watching a tiger run at us from across a field, with the eagles close by on its heels.

Auditorium, Car, Fear, Kidnapping, Mind Control, Negative Figure, Physical Pain/Discomfort, School, Solving a Mystery, Supernatural, Torture

Dreamwork: How Am I Metaphorically Kidnapping & Drugging My Self?

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08 May 2017

Well, in the dream, it begins when I’m enjoying a concert. I see the keys melting, which really defies the laws of physics and yet I figure out a way to stop it from happening. Then the keys come apart and even though I don’t have technical background in the key’s mechanics I still figure out a way to fix them.

This leads me to be in a car driving by a location where a crime is taking place.

Once I’m spotted, I’m kidnapped & drugged.

That’s the end of the dream.

Arresting Police Officer, Car, Death & Dying, Personal Growth, Solving a Mystery

Dream of a Friend Being Arrested

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This morning I woke up at 4:30am having just had a dream about a friend. In the dream I am traveling with her. She’s telling everyone it’s her last days, that she’s dying, and I’m there with her to comfort and encourage her. She looks beautiful, wearing turquoise and white, wearing large stones and sandles. When she curls herself up into a ball sobbing I just wrap my arms around her and hold her, comfort her and rock her a little bit, saying soothing words, encouraging her.

In another part, I’m the one upset and she tells me I have to get ready to let her go and I tell her no and she says Yes. We are driving in her old car “Nelly” and I’m in the backseat. Soon a helicopter is shining a light on us and police are calling out commands in their loudspeaker. For some reason she keeps going and I don’t understand why. She tells me she’s going to go as far as she can and when it’s time to stop she will. Eventually she does stop, by the Peace Bridge in Fort Erie and an officer arrests her.

I’m standing by the car confused. Are they just stopping her to question her? Are they going to detain her? Has she done more than I am aware of? Will I be questioned? She looks over at me, with her hands behind her back in handcuffs and she mouths to me that she’s sorry, sort of shaking her head like she sees how wrong she was and she’s sorry. But I have no idea what is going on. Why are there  helicopters? Is this the end of it or is there more? The dream ends like that. Me looking over at her with handcuffs on waiting for instructions, her mouthing she’s sorry and me looking back at her like “What?!?”