The Text of the Precognitive Dream
© 1997 Mike Strong Return to: Image Bin Home Page, Spiritual Origins
E-Mail to: dancer@kcdance.com
Monday morning, July 4, 1983 - This was forgotten shortly after writing it until 11 September 1983 when I intuitively found it in the bottom of a box.
Starting notes: (I sometimes roughed out quickly remembered pieces from the dream so that I could remember more of it for the detail notes. I found that if I didn't do this I would forget most of the dream before I finished typing.)
coach as psyche teacher ... roomate, runner for the coach who tells me that the coach always has a job for him over the summer, coach corners me and tells me that Olivia Newton-John (I think of her) got her way through college doing jobs she didn't really want such as sweeping, he has sweeping job for me ... I accept because prepared by roomy, he asks me how I like my coffee and I say black he leaves t get it turning to me with thumbs up saying yup that's the military style of coffee ... in meantime have been in art/book store on campus looking at large book When They Used to Pose One Way about the new ways of posing women for nudes, no longer in old fashioned chaste fashion...
Detailed notes (the fully-written dream):
"I am in a dormitory on a campus, a high-rise type and am doing laundry. For some reason the laundry room is in the next dormitory basement ... don't recall all about why this is but find that I need to do my wash there after secretly getting into their basement. For some reason I'm required to do my washing there but that dormitory is locked to anyone not actually residing within the building. So I need to find my way in through locked doors. --- This is the summer school session --- I finish the wash and go back to my dorm.
"I have a roommate who is a marathon runner. He is going out to the track to run some big event for the coach. In the meantime I go to the campus bookstore and while browsing come across a book titled something like Not the Way they Used to Pose. It is a very large art book (about 30 inches by 50 inches or more) with a blue gray cover and line drawings or black type and black title. The inside of the book is a series of poses and absolutely no coyness, all at ease. 'When they used to pose one way,' about the new ways of posing women for nudes, no longer in old-fashioned chaste way.
As I glance through the book my roommate taps me on the shoulder telling me that his coach (coach in the dream is also a psyche teacher) always takes care of him with some job in the summer and that he feels the coach also has a job for me with which he will supply me. I thank him and head for home. ...coach corners me and tells me that Olivia Newton-John (I visualize her) got her way through college doing jobs she didn't really want such as sweeping, he has a sweeping job for me.
"As I go home I go to the next dormitory instead of the one I had come from and climb over the hurricane fence to get inside. As I go through the lower level the coach taps me on the shoulder and says he has a job for me. Suddenly we are upstairs in this building in my room having just moved in and the coach is explaining that the job is mine if I will take it for the summer. A girl from the next room looks in curious to see who the new resident is and I imagine her as a girl in the art book, then re-focus back to the coach and the girl goes on her way while I think that the room was a bit messy, with a pair of jeans on the carpeted floor.
"The scene changes to basement of dorm and the coach and I are standing at an office railing to sign employment papers for a job to sweep the floors and other janitorial work. (The coach is a behavioral-psychology instructor I had about a year previous in a KU class). He says, "Hey, what about a cup of coffee? I'm getting it for you." I say yes and he ask if I want cream or sugar and I reply, with a back and forth sweep of my arm, "no way, I drink it black." The coach beams approvingly and says in turn, "That's the military way, hard drinking." He gives me the thumbs-up sign and leaves to get the coffee.
Interpreting the dream:
Note that this interpretation adds some items from a viewpoint of 13 years after. Some of the events are easier to interpret now than they were when I pulled the typed sheet out of the box.
The first dormitory, the one in which I am residing is clearly my Grandview townhouse. The locked laundry room in the next dorm is Unity. Unity Village was only a mile down the road from my office in Lee's Summit and I could even look out the window and see Unity.
The next door dormitory that I go home to instead of the dormitory I came from is the job in Lee's Summit, a mile from Unity. The marathon runner is Sequoyah Trueblood in whose home I used to go for meditations. Sequoyah was a former Green Beret who Gordon always seemed to fix up with a job. Sequoyah was the person who recommended me to Gordon for the position. Indeed, I had the position even before I called for the job interview, I just didn't know it.
The book with the nudes, and all the nudes and the girl next door are all me. This was a new way of presenting myself to the world and to myself, especially the manner in which I did the job interview, as well as the nature of the job itself. I didn't even know such a job category existed. I was going naked into the world.
The idea that I have been given a sweeping job, not the one I really wanted, to get through college is easiest to see in hindsight since I learned a great deal from that job that I might not otherwise have gotten. I certainly would not have chosen such a job, had I know about it.
The jeans on the floor may well represent my not quite finished photo-lab work.
Gordon is the coach. He hired me. His business was teaching (coaching) chiropractors how to manage their practices as a business (how to modify their current behavior - the coach was "a behavioral-psychology instructor") to get more patients and to keep the patients longer. This was a combination of motivational seminars, time management and marketing advice. This too was a business I didn't know existed. In fact I had no idea what chiropractors did. (my grandfather, a dentist, was from the medical side of the healing arts and as such must have greatly disparaged chiropractors. But since his brother-in-law was a chiropractor who owned a few stocks and owned a car (something my grandfather never owned) the only thing I, as a child, heard or learned about chiropractors was that they were some kind of sleazy, buy-a-new-car-every-few-years stock broker.)
I find it interesting that the dream tells me I am required to do my wash (work? growth?) at Unity by sneaking in, around their locked doors. Also interesting that Gordon is hiring me to a "sweeping" job instead of what I really want and that this job is necessary for me. I could also look at the cleanup theme as coming in to cleanup the work started by someone else who was leaving to go to law school.
That the coach tells me the job is mine if I will take it for the summer and that the job is "to sweep the floors and other janitorial work" was exactly true. I was offered the job purely as a temporary position (the 20th anniversary meeting was the first weekend in October). It was to take over work already begun by the firm's meeting coordinator (she was going back to school to get her law degree). The job would be over when the anniversary meeting was over. I did not know until that anniversary meeting that I would be kept on at the company doing various other work, mainly database work on the computer.
As far as the coffee part of the dream, early-morning coffee and a big-breakfast at MacDonald's was the centerpiece of our start-the-day conferences. Besides being a funny part of the dream I do drink coffee black though it may also indicate a total commitment to doing the job. I gave up the photo-lab business entirely to do this, not that I was in any shape to do otherwise.