Image by Midjourney
DREAM
A group of old seafaring friends individually go to visit each other. They're all captains now, like in the original Star Trek. And those ships are usually in the middle of the ocean. The friends like to tease and prank each other.
For example, I go with one lady, who gets the emergency procedures reviewed on an old friend's ship. She goes to see the captain, and jokes about how simple the procedures are, when they've actually been shipwrecked before and know how complicated it is to be in those emergencies.
I'm new to all this, so I inquire about sharks. She says it's really important to stay out of the water and avoid them. I see myself on a scrap of wood avoiding the huge masses of white and gray flesh that keep popping up.
"They can launch themselves onto the land, can't they?" I ask. I see a small great white launching itself onto a rocky beach where I think I'm finally safe.
"Yes," she says.
Then I'm in a quaint, small town's shopping area with a friend of mine. We walk into a small, wooden store that sells crystals. A woman behind a counter presents us with a large case full of flat, polished stones the size of a person's palm. My friend does something very Dr. Strange-like, drawing lines in the air around the stones, and when he's done, the lady just gives him several of them. We haven't paid any money.
I gasp and say, "This is extraordinary! How do you play this game?"
I think it's a game anyway. That's what it looks like to me. My friend confirms it when he says, "You use your cell phone."
I look up the game right away. You have to move two slow frogs around a room, collecting things to use as currency with the physical shop owner who is giving away stones. But the whole time, a bear chases the frogs. I start losing right away.
I don't think I'll ever win as much stuff as my friend, but I do win a stone statue of Buddha with a cobra because I guessed a phrase to go with it: "Man cannot live on faith alone." I know it's not the traditional Christian phrase. In fact, it's probably the opposite sentiment of the phrase, which is that you can't live on food alone--you need spiritual nourishment. So I look for the reaction of another friend who I know is a Christian.
INTERPRETATION
I had a dream right after this one that involved taking friends in to see an abandoned house, so I feel as though getting into trouble and having fun misadventures with reliable friends is a theme for the night. In the dreams, I'm never really in trouble with friends around, even though I'm in some suspenseful situations. And I do feel very safe and secure with my current real life friendships.
But it's the Buddha with a cobra that really has me intrigued. "Naja" is part of the scientific name of the cobra family. And I have been trying to immerse myself in a Buddhist practice in the past year. (From what I've read, Buddhism really likes to define itself as something you do and experience versus something you believe in or study.)
Buddhism has been a curiosity of mine ever since I started taking praying mantis kung fu lessons way back in my very early 20s, but I'm looking for something more now, spiritually. My intensified and renewed interest began because I was experiencing a lot of stress and looking for peace, but now that things have calmed down again, I still want to explore what Buddhism has to say more generally. I do have a lot of Christian friends and family, so I feel a little restrained when it comes to the topic of religion. I tread carefully (in the dream, I very carefully observe my Christian friend's reaction). I think some of them don't know what I mean by "Buddhism" (which is fair), and they are scared about my leaving Christianity.
It's interesting that the catch phrase in the dream is "Man cannot live on faith alone." I believe that the dream expresses my fear that I'm sitting around reading and meditating too much. Too many autumn walks, crunching around in the dried pine needles. It's very pleasant, but feels strange at the same time. I'm not used to having so much calm in my life.
I guess my concern isn't so much that I have so much calm; it's more so that I'm not serving somehow, which is what I would like to do.
