Reflections on Teaching and Therapy: Informed Love as My Guiding Principle

 When a young therapist once expressed her anxiety over seeing her first patient, Carl Jung told her, “It’s not what you say, it’s who you are.” I tell this story to my students in order to lay the groundwork for their roles in their clients’ lives, and to make clear to them that I, too, believe that my effectiveness as a teacher and therapist cannot be reduced to information, or to facts that can be easily forgotten. I present myself, not as a repository of information, but as a legacy of experience that will take the form of stories and timely feedback that can inform them of their own unique style of being present in the world. After all, what I teach—counseling and psychotherapy—is not something that can be easily codified. It is more art than science. And, as Norman McClean once said, in A River Runs through It, “All good things come of grace, and grace comes of art, and art does not come easy.”

My own education lines up as an archipelago of impactful interpersonal experiences awakened and consolidated by my teachers and therapists. I have forgotten almost all the details of what they have told me, and I assume at the beginning of every course that my students will forget most of what I say, as well. The things I remember from my mentors are significant moments when they revealed themselves in their teaching, and moments when they saw me clearly. I remember, for instance, when my professor at William and Mary, Dr. Fred Adair reprimanded me in his marriage and family class when I asked him how I could help my own family. He was an ex-Marine fighter pilot sporting a handlebar mustache. He raised his voice and sternly replied, “Never be your family’s therapist! Love them! Love them!” I remember, as well, when my spiritual director leaned over after meditating, and said, “Don’t ever hesitate to let me know what you need.” Both of these mentors saw me in a profound way, and gave me what I needed in those moments.

What I carry of my teachers and mentors in my own approach to teaching are experiences of who they were that informed me of the core truths that guide my work. I am thankful for their courage in revealing themselves to me, and in turn, for awakening me to my own deep capacities and limitations.

Existential-Humanism as the Contemporary Standard

It is customary for counselor educators to espouse an existential-humanistic stance in their therapy and teaching, which is based on the assumption that people are intrinsically good. When guided by this positive view of human nature, counselor educators endeavor to help their students embrace their own unsullied goodness and authentic voice. Whether the teacher/therapist sees this essential goodness as divinely instilled or an aspect of human evolution, the corresponding teaching stance customarily expresses itself in an attitude of “unconditional positive regard,” and then sets about to assist the recipient in experiencing “unconditional self-regard” and the actualization of their inner potentials. 

While this philosophy enjoys almost universal acceptance by the major schools of counseling and psychotherapy, it nonetheless contradicts almost two thousand years of orthodox Christian belief founded on the notion that human beings are fundamentally sinful. The belief that humans are fallen by nature was contested in the first centuries of the Church by Universalism and other subversive threads in the movement, but Augustine finally drew a line in the sand in the 4th century A.D. when he declared, as heresy, the then-popular belief that we possess a core of goodness as our divine birthright. Augustine thought this idea so damaging to the core doctrine of Christ’s vicarious atonement that he persuaded the Pope to excommunicate the British monk Pelagius, who was the main exponent of the belief at the time. Thereafter, the orthodox Church rebuked the idea that humans possess any intrinsic goodness of their own.

It is common for teachers and therapists to ignore the orthodox legacy that still influences Christian doctrine. But I think it is naive for us to believe that this pessimistic view of human nature is merely an artifact of superstition and outdated religiosity. To the contrary, one can find this conservative view expressed by Hobbes, Freud, and political systems that view humanity with mistrust, as driven by destructive and hedonistic impulses. It may not be the whole picture either, but any idea that has served humanity for so long is likely to reflect some truth, and to serve some purpose. Churchill was correct, after all, and Chamberlain was wrong.

I part ways with existential-humanism somewhat by embracing another truth alongside it. In my teaching and therapeutic work alike, I find it insufficient to approach my student as only imbued with greatness, even though I believe it’s true that each person possesses a unique “genius” waiting to be activated and expressed in the world. People also need to find a way to confess their errors, and to unburden themselves of their real and perceived shortcomings. While the Catholic confessional once served as the principal way that people confessed and received expiation, the priest’s sacerdotal function has spread to the secular professions, as well. 

…fragmented and mobile, competitive societies leave many without stable supportive communities and community figures, such as priests, who previously supplied many valued facilities including the confessional; and the breakdown of the concept of selfless duty, altruism or love (Agape) also leaves a large hole in the social and interpersonal fabric. (Feltham, 1999, p. 7)

By uniting a perspective that celebrates the goodness within the human soul but recognizes our capacity for grave error, we arrive at a complex, twofold view of human nature—one that when expressed as an attitude toward others, can be termed, “informed love.”

My Discovery of Informed Love

I started to question the existential-humanistic paradigm principally through a decades-long phenomenological study of religious experiences. In the mid-1990s, I wrote two nationally published books on Christian religious experience—I Am With You Always: True Stories of Encounters with Jesus (Bantam, 1994), and Blessed among Women: Encounters with Mary and Her Message (Crown, 1995)—not from the standpoint of a believer, but from the perspective of a psychotherapist interested in answering the question, What impact do such experiences have on a person’s life?  I was intrigued by the specific “curative factors”  exhibited by alleged encounters with embodiments of higher power.

I discovered that what might be termed the “core experience” of higher power involves two simultaneous convictions of the recipient. In analyzing over 200 contemporary visions and deep dreams of Christian religious encounters, I determined that the experience of being totally known and totally loved was the unifying factor in all of them. George Richie, the recipient of what is perhaps the most famous near-death experience in history, described this two-fold experience as follows: “Far more even than power, what emanated from this Presence was unconditional love. An astonishing love. A love beyond my wildest imagining. This love knew every unlovable thing about me...and accepted and loved me just the same.”

Our capacity for emulating such love and knowing is certainly limited by our knowledge of a person, and our capacity for accepting them deeply. But while we cannot know everything about a person, our knowledge of clients and students increases over time, and our regard of them can grow commensurately. Thus we can embrace informed love as an aspirational ideal, and look for instances where we can serve in this capacity, if only briefly. Such experience of informed love are acknowledged as a normal consequence of spiritual practice in Hinduism and Buddhism, in which the guru serves as an external symbol of one’s own true nature. The guru facilitates this awakening to this unconscious wholeness through the bestowal of darshan—a Sanskrit word that means, literally, “glance.” But it is the guru’s full apprehension of the essential self where one’s prodigious strengths and weakness of moral compass cohabit in a unique, non-dual synthesis. So when the guru bestows darshan, the recipient is abruptly exposed to the heights and depths that coinhere within oneself. 

My own William and Mary professor and eventual therapist, Dr. Chas Matthews discovered the power of darshan unintentionlly. When he found out that both of his children had gone to live in an ashram in the Catskills, Chas was understandably concerned. Having a master’s degree in divinity and a doctorate in psychology prepared him, he believed, to evaluate the authenticity of the presiding guru. Chas dutifully traveled to the ashram to make his assessment. Like the other devotees,  he stood in the “darshan line” to experience what it was like to receive the guru’s blessing. As he finally faced her, she smiled and touched his head with a peacock feather. He immediately fell to his knees weeping uncontrollably, and spent the next three hours in a special room where he was cared for. He said he’d never felt so totally loved or revealed to anyone in his life.

Comparing the impact of ostensible “Christ encounters” with the Eastern phenomenon of  darshan, I believed that I had discovered what might be termed the ultimate “curative factor” in relationships—one combines a simultaneous witnessing of one’s exhaulted and faulted nature. I wrote a paper for the journal, Mental Health, Religion and Culture, titled “Informed Love as a Curative Factor” to present this premise. In this paper, I drew on my years of research into religious experiences, and laid out the phenomenological evidence for the way that people experience profound healing and change through informed love. One of the reviewers of the paper said in her review, “I was ready not to like this paper, but I was surprised.”

Informed Love Provides a Basis for My Teaching Philosophy

My theory of teaching thus has its roots in my theory of human nature, which is founded on the concept of our twofold natures, and the importance of “informed love.” This courageous attitude is nothing new: It can be found in the psychology of Jung, the philosophy of the alchemists, the poetry of Rilke, and the emptiness doctrine  of Tibetan Buddhism, among other places. As a thread throughout history, it often contends with partisan and moralistic perspectives that hide the greater truth of who we are, and project the unexamined fear and judgment upon those who differ from us, in particular.

What form does this take in my everyday teaching and therapy work? When I work with counseling students, and clients, I endeavor to witness the unique gifts that they bring to our profession. I am curious, even fascinated by their uniqueness, and I want them to see what I see. I also want them to find the courage to face what stands in way of their greater expression in the world. I also  want them to develop the capacity to see others in the same way, and to elicit from them the full breadth of self-consideration activated by the presence of someone who cares for them and yet holds them accountable, as well.

An example of a classroom event that I believe demonstrates “informed love” occurred some time ago in one of my group counseling classes. As part of each class, we meet together as an “ecological group” that is, at once a teaching environment as well as a place where group dynamics are on display. As we sit at small tables arranged in a rectangle with me at one end, I am able to perform quasi-therapeutic interventions in order to demonstrate how they can function as group leaders. If I use a group technique to facilitate our interaction, I will stop and explain its use shortly afterward.

One night, we were all seated and ready to start the meeting, except for one woman who arrived late. She had missed a couple of classes, and had arrived late on several occasions. I knew that she was struggling with depression, and I was trying to make it possible for her to continue. 

As she came in and seated herself, looking despondent, I noticed a couple of people reacting nonverbally with apparent impatience. In most educational settings, the professor would not inquire into these nonverbal behaviors. But as a counseling educator, I want to know what’s going on beneath the surface of such behaviors, in order to facilitate self-awareness and deeper engagement. So, I asked one of them what she was experiencing. As you might expect, she resisted sharing, but eventually admitted that she was irritated at the late-arriving woman. A woman beside her nodded, and agreed that she, too, wondered why the tardy woman was even in the class, given her irregular attendance. A third woman concurred, as if there was a consensus growing. They obviously wanted to make the deviant member the issue, and expected I would follow suit; but I would not allow it. I asked further questions about the source of irritation, and any other feelings the women were experiencing. Without judgment or criticism, I asked them each to share their own experiences with mental disorders: Had they ever experienced depression or anxiety, and had they ever been in therapy, I asked? They had not. They became very uncomfortable with my questions, but then I asked them to consider the basis upon which they could judge the woman. That is, had they ever been in such distress, I asked? Well, none of them had. And when I inquired further, it suddenly became evident that they were uncomfortable with the idea that they, too, might suffer with mental illness one day. None of them had any basis, as yet, for empathy. 

I have no doubt that those three women, as well as the target of their impatience, will never forget that group exchange. Nor is it likely that the rest of the class will, either. The three women who were ready to eject the deviant member were able to access their own fear of losing control, and their own fragility in never having experienced the stronger currents of life. The woman represented a side of life that they feared, and the mode of inquiry that I took helped them realize that their judgement cloaked an underlying fear.

Informed love is, I believe the most integrated perspective on human nature, and facilitates a form of inquiry and witnessing that speaks to a deep need within us for a kind of stewardship through which we are finally seen. Of course, it in order to emulate this stance of firm but compassionate witnessing, we cannot remain unconscious of our own darkness—of what Jung called the shadow. We need to turn within and participation in the alchemy of non-dual engagement and the ransmutation of all that we consider unacceptable. For that ambitious quest to succeed, we need our own therapists and mentors to guide us. 

Ultimately, I believe we can intentionally express this philosophy of informed love as teachers and therapists, and thus bring a core complete view of human nature to the world through our example, and through the students and clients who similarly awakened to this truth within themselves. By our own example and willingness to inquire lovingly and soberly into what makes them great, and what can undermine them, we will encourage them how to be present for others and awaken them, accordingly.

Feltham, C. (1999). Contextualising the therapeutic relationship. In C. Feltham (Ed.), Understanding the counselling relationship.London: Sage.

Teaching the FiveStar Method in my Group Counseling Classes

 Toward the end of the semester (summer session currently), I always introduce the FiveStar Method to my group counseling students, and we practice in class. Then, they are encouraged to use dream sharing in their small groups during the latter part of each class. My students invariably say that learning dream analysis is deeply rewarding, and supplements their conventional education with a practice that deepens and accelerates the therapeutic process. 

Here's a sample of our in-class dreamwork. The dreamer, Diana, has agreed to let me share the brief session. I think this video shows the natural and safe context for deep exploration established by the FiveStar Method.

Dreamwork with Diana

While my grad students are practicing in my group counseling classes, UTRGV Internship students have been leading online groups with participants from around the world. The groups have become quite popular, and now we are getting ready to conduct a research study on the benefits of these dream charing groups. Stay tuned for that! And check out DreamStar Free Online Counseling if you're interested in taking part in an online group.

Workshop on The Construction and Analysis of Metaphors

You may be interested in a workshop presentation I gave for the IASD conference in June. It was based on a paper that I published last year in the International Journal of Dream Research, titled "The Construction and Analysis of Metaphors from the Standpoint of Co-Creative Theory." Here's the link to the video: 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/plx8xo42ixcm27l/Sparrow%20Construction%20Analysis%20Metaphors.mp4?dl=0

In my writings in recent years, I have focused on the dreamer/dream interactive process as the centerpiece of co-creative dreamwork. But more recently, I have been focusing on how to understand the dream imagery. I think you will find this presentation to nudge you in a new direction, if you aren't already there. Let me know what you think, ok?

 I've just launched a new podcast, titled DreamStar Institute Presents "Dreamwork with Dr. Scott Sparrow." My first episode is a monologue, "An Introduction to Co-Creative Dreamwork," but my second episode will feature a conversation with Ryan Hurd, founder of Dreamstudies.org, and author of Sleep Paralysis, for which I wrote the Foreword...

Interviewed by Melanie Alberts on Psychic Playdate podcast

 I was recently a guest of Melanie Alberts, host of "Psychic Playdate" podcast, who interviewed me on the topic of Co-Creative Dreamwork. She's a gifted interviewer, perhaps because she's a psychic, too! It was a fun interview. Melanie is an enthusiastic proponent of the FiveStar Method, having experienced a FSM dream sharing group firsthand.

DreamStar Certification Program Relaunch Coming Soon

Kim Phetteplace, DreamStar's first Certified Practitioner, is working with me to upgrade and relaunch the DreamStar Certification program, as well as enhance our course offerings with short courses designed for people who want to learn the FiveStar Method without necessarily pursuing certification. We have cleaned up the Certification Course pages and navigation, and plan to re-offer the Mastering the FiveStar Method course soon. That course was unmonitored, but we plan to upgrade it to a mentored, interactive course. So look for it soon!

I am also working on launching a podcast in the next week, using the Buzzsprout platform. An ambient composer, Damien Duque (City of Dawn) has composed three original tracks for the podcast, and I have a brand new Blue Yeti mic for the podcast. I look forward to hosting a variety of dream experts and authors in the near future! 

Reddit AMA

 Hi all, I just did a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) appearance in the Dream community. You can view the conversation here.

Here's what Jason LeBord, the moderator and dream author and expert said of the event:

"It ended up being a successful event and we appreciate you engaging with the community and sharing what you know. Your approach to understanding dreams is the most accessible I know of, and that makes it especially valuable for a community like Reddit Dreams. They need what you offer. We can talk all day about theory and psychology and in the end it doesn't really help people understand their dreams, or help them understand themselves better through their dreams. I will take what I've learned from you going forward, and I hope you will consider dropping by again."

New Paper on Analyzing Dream Metaphors

Hi friends, 

I recently published a paper in the International Journal of Dream Research titled, "The Construction and Analysis of Metaphors from the Standpoint of Co-Creative Dream Theory." It can be downloaded here.

This was a paper that was long in coming! I hope you find it meaningful!

Fly Tying and the Mind of God

This essay may seem more appropriate for my fly fishing blog, but after writing it, I felt it captured something "in between" angling and the spiritual journey. More and more, it seems that everything I do is related to a singular purpose.  Anyway, I think you'll understand why I posted it:

I have flyfished now for 56 years, beginning on a small artesian pond in the Texas brush country. I started tying flies in my teens, and have always found flytying to satisfy my creative impulses. When I started fly fishing the Blue Ridge, I tied my own patterns, hoping that they would succeed. And they did, with the tiny brook trout that populated the streams in the upper elevations of Shenandoah National Park. They had survived over the millennia by being willing to seize the moment. But when I had the opportunity to flyfish Henry's Fork of the Snake River, I struck out entirely with my motley collection of homespun flies. The fish wouldn't touch them. For the first time in my life, I did what most flyfishers do as a matter of course when fishing new waters: I visited a fly shop and purchased a dozen flies, most of which were variations on a single bluewing olive hatch. That day, I learned that no matter how inventive you are, you must still muster the humility to look at what's going on around you.

When I began to flyfish my home waters of the Lower Laguna in my early 20s, I was able to unleash my creativity, mainly because the fish didn't care. I created poppers from deer hair, discovered that they would sink after a few casts, and began experimenting with various ways to keep them afloat. I ended up discovering closed cell foam, and married foam with spun deer hair to create the earliest iterations of the VIP popper, the subject of the second article I wrote for Fly Tyer. It's been one of my top three flies ever since, mainly because the fish don't care much about how the fly looks, as long as it doesn't misbehave. Many anglers, who have tied the VIP, agree. 

In fisheries such as the LLM, a fly is successful mainly because of how it performs; that is, its castability in wind, how it lands on the water, its sink rate, how it performs in seagrass-filled water, and its hookup rate. But in a cold water fishery populated with wild, spawning populations of trout, these variables don't matter as much. Instead, the fly is usually effective if it imitates a naturally occurring insect that the fish are keying on at that particular moment. Tying flies to match the hatch takes considerable discipline and "imitativeness," as opposed to inventiveness. Of course, there are non-imitative flies that are successful, too, such as the Wulff patterns, and Western attractors such as the Stimulator. Attractor patterns are, by definition, invented by anglers who are willing to think outside the box of imitative fly tying, and conceive of a synthesis of qualities that may not occur in Nature. In a sense, the inventive tyer taps into an archetype that has no literal physical expression, at least as yet, but somehow appeals to the fish's sense of propriety, or provokes its indignation. We really don't know what a fish thinks when it sees what is clearly divorced from all recognizable life forms.

Inventiveness comes at the beginning and the end of an angler's learning curve. When I fished the Jackson River in western Virginia, I learned that attractor patterns were, by and large, ineffective on that tailwater fishery. I learned one day from fly fishing guru Harry Steeves, who happened to be fly fishing below Gathright Dam one morning, that I had to know precisely the size and shape of a particular midge pupae in order to hook the largest trout I'd every enticed the following day. But while fishing in the same spot one day not long after this humbling lesson, it suddenly occurred to me--don't ask why--that a particular synthesis of two popular dry fly patterns would prove successful, even though the pattern did not match any natural insect on that difficult fishery. I went to my hotel and tied the pattern that night, and it became the "Jackson River Special." My buddy Bill May and I caught a lot of trout the next day on that pattern, and it continued to be my most effective fly for that fishery.

The difference between the novice fly tier and the seasoned one had to do with several things, including: the countless days of immersion on my Virginia home waters, the humility to learn from masters such as Harry Steeves, and the willingness to listen to what Nature was whispering to me. When you embrace all of those ingredients, then you become eligible on the far end of the learning curve to innovate effectively. Houston Smith, who wrote Forgotten Truth, and was known for his books on comparative religions, came up with a concept that resolved the conflict over Darwinian evolution and Creationism. Pointing to events in nature that cannot be reduced to the forces of natural selection--such as nonadaptive coloration among birds--he coined the term, "the descent of the archetype" to explain the playful creativity of the divine expressing itself in the world.

I believe that inventiveness at the fly tying vise can be, at the pinnacle of one's learning process, a moment of an archetype's descent into expression. It can be the fly tying equivalent of a Coppery Tailed Trogan or a Painted Bunting, both of which make no sense in a world governed in large part by survival of the fittest. It can mirror a pattern in the mind of God, which exists only as a creative expression capable of arousing an answering response in the mind of fish. Flies such as Bud Rowland's Numero Uno, and perhaps my own VIP Popper, look strange and idiosyncratic, but are endowed with something beyond the rational, imitative mind. When the VIP made the cover of Guide Flies several years ago, I was admittedly embarrassed to have the VIP pictured beside Harry Murray's Mr. Rapidan, a fly that has become immortalized as a Blue Ridge classic. I have always realized how odd the humble fly looks, but how effective it can be. In one sense, it wasn't my creation as much as a gift of momentary inspiration informed by years of failure and yearning. It was the utterance of another realm finding a fertile place in my imagination.

The other day, Ryan said, "I want to invent a new fly." As a relatively old man, I thought, as all fathers do, "Learn more first." But then I remembered the endless winter nights of inventiveness at the tying vise as a young man. So I said nothing, knowing that Ryan's creativity would, in time, merge with prodigious on-the-water experience to spawn original creations, the broad shape of which had been known for all eternity in one mind alone.

Paper Just Published in IJODR

I have authored a paper that might interest you was just published in the International Journal of Dream Research, 12, 1, (April, 2019), titled "Fading Light and Sluggish Flight: A Two-Dimensional Model of Consciousness in Lucid Dreams." You can download the paper from the IJODR site, at https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/IJoDR/issue/view/4397. Enjoy!

When You Are Ready

When I was about 22, I dreamt that I awoke to see a bright white light descending into our side yard, 20 feet outside the window. I was frightened, so I got up and ran from my room, but not before a dark form flew toward me. As it touched the ground, it became a beautiful blond woman dressed in a blue jumpsuit of the kind you might see in a science fiction movie. I asked her what she wanted. She said, “We have come for your brother. You are not ready yet.” Glad that they had not come for me, I went to inform my brother of their arrival. I found him kneeling tearfully in prayer. His head was shaved, and he wore a saffron-colored robe. He accompanied me to where the woman was waiting outside our bedroom window. She and her travel companions laid my brother down and slid his body through an opening in the luminous craft. Before they left, the woman told me that they had put something inside my wrist that would serve as a beacon to them. She said, “We will return when you are ready.”

Between that moment and this juncture in time I have been the recipient of countless experiences of spiritual ecstasy and religious encounter. I have written a book on lucid dreaming, a book on face-to-face encounters with Jesus, a book on visions of the Holy Mother, and a memoir on fly fishing as a spiritual journey that was inspired by luminous dreams. But throughout these important developmental stages, I have never forgotten the woman’s promise to return “when you are ready.”

One sign that I was nearing readiness for her return was an experience I had a decade ago aboard my fishing skiff, while spending the night alone on the Lower Laguna Madre, my home waters from childhood where I have flyfished since my 20s, and guided flyfishers for the past 18 years. I’d already spent several nights on the bay during the full moon, and I decided to do it one night while a tropical storm brewed over the open Gulf to the south of where I anchored.

  I lay there for a while, savoring the view of a clear, starry sky above me, and golden thunder heads to the south lit up with lightning, until I began to drift off to sleep. Passing into the realm between waking and sleeping, I heard something that I had not experienced in months. It was a familiar interior sound — like ocean waves or a rushing wind — and it had often preceded the coming of the Light or the onset of an out-of-body experience. A well-known Tibetan treatise refers to this phenomenon as the “gift waves,” and says that it indicates the presence of a spiritual master who is assisting in the development of the recipient. 

Regardless of its source, I have always considered it an auspicious event, so I surrendered to it without resistance or fear. A few minutes later, I lost consciousness briefly, but not before I felt myself rocking back and forth on the verge of leaving my body.

The next thing I remembered, I was sitting with a group of men in a wide, open work boat that was about 25 feet long. It was a very bright, cloudless day. I was fully conscious and acutely aware that I had somehow been transported from the Shoal Cat to another place. I wasn’t sure that the men could see me, so I remained still and just watched what was going on around me. Where was I? I wondered. I gathered somehow that the men were waiting to go to work inside a building that towered above us in the middle of an ocean. They all wore similar blue-and-white work clothes. I also observed several strange, otherworldly-looking boats passing by, each of which appeared to be exquisitely crafted and personally tailored to its owner’s tastes. 

Then I realized with a start where I was: I was on another planet, and the sun above me was another star! Reeling from this insight, I was suddenly back on lying on the deck of my boat, looking up at the stars again and listening to the retreating sound of the gift waves. 

It was another 15 years before the "portal" between this world and the stars opened up more completely. I have visited so many  planets in faraway star systems, and have said goodbye to countless loving souls whom I will probably never see until I am no longer tethered to this world. There have been so many experiences that I only write down the most memorable ones, some of which are included in this blog. Someday soon, I hope to write about them in a book-long treatment on the subject. But suffice to say, I know that we're not alone in the universe, and that there are countless worlds and souls who will welcome you as a long-lost friend ... "when you are ready."

The Guru's Invitation

I had meditated at 4:30 am, and left my body after lying back down around 5:15. After being out for 30 minutes or so, and encountering numerous beings, ostensibly from another star system (a regular experience), I left them, and walked along alone. I looked up at the sky and prayed that I might receive some help in my writing and be guided or taken someplace where I would receive that help. Suddenly the clouds parted and a huge mandala began to form in the sky. It was beautiful and very ornate. Perhaps it was an ancient Indian mandala or yantra, because there did not seem to be any Buddhas in the mandala.  I was drawn up into it and as I got closer to it, I could see that it was textured rather than two-dimensional, kind of like a quilt. 

Some of the panels was actually mirror-like or metallic and others were more like silk or lustrous material, but it was exquisitely beautiful. Then it seemed that the mandala was draped over a large table or platform and I knew that it had been created by a woman. I was on the platform, on the mandala and then lowered myself onto the floor around this platform. I found myself in what appeared to be on ashram store or a place where spiritual items were sold that were associated with some spiritual tradition. There were vendors all around the periphery of a square room and I walked around greeting each of them and seeing what they had to offer. Each of the vendors was a woman, and they seemed to be overjoyed to see me. They greeted me with great compassion and joy, and it just made me feel happy, on the edge of ecstasy myself. Then someone mentioned that the Guru was coming and I turned, and he came. He stood beaming only a couple of feet away.  He was fairly young and radiant and happy and clearly pleased to see me as if I was a long lost friend or someone he expected.  He had black hair, with white hair or light on the edges of his hair. He then embraced me. 

Then he had his followers bring me an abundance of gifts of various types and they inundated me with bags and boxes full of things. He was so happy, and he would lean over to tend to the gifts. At one moment, he said, "this is for your bath," and he took something out of one of the containers and brought it to my attention and smiled and as if he was taking great care and making sure that I understood how all of the gifts could be used. Finally I asked him, “Who are you?" And he said that his name was like two names starting with s and he used the acronym s a m as if somehow Sam was a short name that described his longer names. But as usual, it’s hard to hear words distinctly in the OOBE.

Then it seemed I was coming out of that particular episode and looking around for him and didn't see him anymore and I asked somebody if a man that I was standing next to was the Guru and the man I asked said, "no, no, he's down the hallway sitting in his chair." So I walked down the hallway and there was a woman kneeling in front of him with her head bowed to the floor. Meanwhile, he sat in the chair and in a very stately, meditative pose. The woman got up and then I took my position in front of him and he said something like, “Do whatever feels comfortable for you," as if to say "you don't have to go by our traditions." Nonetheless, I bowed down and put my head to the floor and it felt very right to do that. When I stood up, I aked him, “How can I find you? Can I visit with you again?" He said, "certainly you are always welcome." And then he said, “ Come to Montreal." And then I began to come back to my body.

Dream: The God Within the Garden

I awoke at 5 o’clock, and took 4 mg of galantamine before returning to bed without meditating. My goal was modest, that is, to just remember a dream. But I had a dream in which I became lucid and began flying. I considered going up and heading for the stars, but for some reason I stayed in the world, feeling that my out-of-body condition was fragile.  Then, I was with many people who were involved in ARE. We were in a rural setting, which had been endowed by some donor at the tune of $10 million or more, which was facilitated by Charles Thomas Cayce before his death. We were exploring the area. At some point, we became aware that the plant life of the earth  had been struck by some kind of force or disease that caused it to wither. Somehow we were aware that there was an ancient being who was underground, and we hoped to find that being so it could assist us in addressing the problem that the world faced. We used what looked to be a metal detector that we swept over the ground seeking for some signal of the being’s presence. After we had swept a garden area, a lettuce plant begin to vibrate, as if to signify that something was beneath it. I took a shovel and began to dig gently into the soil, eventually exposing a red light, which we knew to be an eye or sensor for the being. The being emerged from the ground in a non-humanoid form, looking like a plant made of flesh or non-woody material. It came close to me, and touched me. I knew that it recognized me. It then transformed into a little male child who was on my back with his arms around me. It seemed to be morning, and we were all eating outside. I fed the child buttered toast while we visited with the people around us. Then I addressed him more formally, asking him if he could do something for us to save the world from the dire situation it faced. He seem to rise up into the air and address the problem globally and taking a while to do so. Then, upon his return, he and I were face-to-face, and I was feeling deep, almost unbearable love. I told him I loved him and he told me the same. I asked him, "Where have we known each other?" He replied, “Everywhere.” And then I gradually awoke in my bed.

The First Cause of Dreaming

A recent realization of mine has been percolating for some time, and has matured in the context of doing online dream groups for the past two years. The question is, "What gives rise to a dream?"

Neuroscientists have their own answers, but I'm a phenomenologist, and therapist, so I'm looking at the initial moments in a dream to provide hints pertaining to the background reason for its emergence.

I believe that the first cause is the experience of dissonance between the status quo dream ego awareness, and some discordant or emergent feeling that collides with it.

In the Gospel of Thomas, it says, "When the one becomes two, what will you do?" In essence, consciousness depends on dissonance; for otherwise, there would be no other, no awareness of difference, only a kind of immersive, formless awareness.

If you study the first sentence or two of any dream narrative, you will usually find some sense of edge or uneasiness that lays the groundwork for everything that follows. It doesn't have to be unpleasant, only sufficiently "different" to evoke awareness upon which the imagery then populates the dream interface as an expression of the evolving sense of difference or dissonance. I know this sounds abstract, but it provides very practice ways to structure effective co-creative dream work.

Take for instance the opening words of a dream that a dream group member once shared. "I heard the howl of a wolf, and realized that my chickens were vulnerable to attack. I grabbed a hoe and ran out the back door in order to protect them." One ways to structure the dream work is to reflect on the fact that even before the dreamer heard the fox howl, she was aware of a sense of uneasiness and threat, and the wolf's howl and everything that transpired thereafter provided an experience of confronting and resolving (if possible) the sense of threat.

I will be writing further about this, but consider a couple of dreams of your own, and see you can come up with an initial sense of dissonance, and describe it. Then proceed to work on your dream using the FiveStar Method, and see if this preliminary step aids you in conducting more effective dream work.

Grace in a Flower

Grace in a Flower 

by G. Scott Sparrow

     It was almost dark as we made our way out of the piney woods and into the fresh-cut corn fields on the way back to my uncle's house. I rode old Smokey bareback, and my two cousins rode the full-size horses on ahead of me.  We were

tired, and so were the horses. As usual, we had all gotten up early and ridden until midday. Then, we'd gone back out again in the cool of the evening.  And now, we dropped the reins and let the horses' hunger carry us back across the fields toward the farm house. 

     It was like heaven to be in Alabama with my cousins, and I visited there as often as my parents would let me.  My grandparents and aunts and uncles treated me so kindly, that I looked upon each of them as near-perfect.  In my child-like bliss, I could not see the real-life struggles that would eventually bring them to their knees. 

     A popping sound interrupted my half-sleep, and I looked down to see what the horses were stepping on.  But it was too dark to see the small green fruit that grew on the vines that lined the edges of the fields. 

     "What's that sound?" I shouted. 

     "Maypops," Dub yelled back.  "They're all over." 

     That told me nothing, but a few days later, I walked over the same ground and noticed the bright green vines that ran along the edges of the fields.  Small green fruit were everywhere, and to my child's mind, they had to be good for something. But for what, I did not know.  Then, I discovered something far more intriguing than the fruit. Lifting the leaves, I exposed a delicate, violet flower with a tiny white cross in the middle.  I was transfixed by its beauty, and I took one back with me to my uncle’s house.  But the hair-like petals were fragile, and they quickly drooped. 

     Later, after returning to Texas, my mother helped me look it up in a plant book.  I discovered that it was a passion flower, and that its Latin name was  passiflora incarnata. Obviously,  the delicately framed cross had suggested  to someone years before the passion of Christ. I learned that it was was a medicinal herb, too, but that part I forgot until later. 

     It wasn't long before things went downhill for my uncle's family.  At the height of his social rise, he was a prominent businessman and an officer in the largest town bank.  But when his corn fields along the Tombigbee River fell prey to an overpopulation of deer, he took the law into his own hands, and began to kill the starving deer to protect his crops. The game wardens came to arrest him one evening as he sat upon his tractor, armed with the old .35 Remington with a barrel that always looked like a cannon to me.  For a while, it was not clear that he would surrender to them. He was defending his livelihood, after all; but his resistance to the law on that day precipitated his fall from grace in that community. 

Adding to the family's losses, my uncle's younger son was killed a few years later while driving his tractor trailer home one night.  He left the highway to protect another motorist, and was fatally injured when his rig flipped over.  

     Along with other rude awakenings, my short-lived childhood fantasy of perfection and bliss collapsed under the reality of human frailty. 

     Even though I embarked on an intense spiritual search at the age of 19, and have continued ever since, a sense of sadness and despair has dogged me since my childhood years. So it is perhaps not surprising that my anxieties about life came to a head one night in my young adulthood when I was visiting my childhood home in south Texas, just before I was supposed to be married.  

I am not sure why it happened, but I awoke in the middle of the night in sheer, indescribable terror.  It was my first panic attack.  Although I had a Master's degree in psychology at the time, I had no real first-hand experience with such things.  Like most people when they have their first panic attack, my sense of confidence was shattered in an instant. I was convinced in that moment that I was on the verge of madness or death, or both.  Anyone who has ever had a full-blown panic attack will know that I am not exaggerating. 

     Up to that time, my spiritual life had been unfolding at a pace that was difficult for me or my friends to comprehend. I felt blessed by God, but for what I did not know. 

     And so, the night time terror seemed to come from out of nowhere, and left me deeply shaken.  For over two years, the panic attacks recurred, further diminishing my belief that somehow I could avoid the tragedies that befell others. Around that time, I would awaken in the middle of the night, paralyzed with terror. I would grab my Bible, and  read the promises of Jesus in  the book of John, clinging desperately to the shred of hope that Jesus' words instilled in me. 

     While reading the Edgar Cayce readings one day around that time, I discovered that  the passion flower vine -- that intriguing southern flower from my childhood -- had curative properties.  Specifically, he recommended it for epileptic seizures and, sometimes, for anxiety.  Looking for relief in natural ways, I promptly ordered some passion flower from an herbal supplier. Since I had to order it in bulk, I received a three-pound shipment in the mail one day -- an amount that lasted me for years. The bag of pulverized herb went with me wherever I went, and it was my own poor-man's remedy for despair. For the months that followed,  I would drink a cup of passion flower tea before going to bed each night.  I imagined that it calmed me and protected me from the raw panic that could rise up in an instant. A cup of passion flower tea and my Bible were my unfailing companions on those sleepless nights when the panic overcame me. 

     The panic went away for a while shortly after a dream that I had one night after reading from my Bible at 2:00 a.m. 

     I dreamed that I was in Palestine at the time of Christ.  I was living in a one-room house with my parents.  I knew that I'd never seen Jesus, only heard about him. I went to sleep on the dirt floor of the house, and had a dream. In it, Jesus called me to come and follow him. When I awoke, I was filled with yearning to find the one who had summoned me to his side. I bade my parents farewell, and went in search of him. 

     That dream was a turning point, and for a season, the nighttime panic subsided. 

      It returned at a time that it became clear to me that my years in Virginia Beach were coming to a close, and that it was time to return to south Texas. It was not easy to close up a counseling practice of 16 years, say goodbye to most of my friends, and -- most grievously -- leave my 10-year-old son, who lived with my ex-wife. Indeed, it was difficult to absorb all of that loss and change, however necessary.

     Not surprisingly, the nighttime terror returned as I was preparing to leave. Actually it had started up some time before, but it intensified during that time of stress. It was more than a bad feeling this time: It was compounded by an absence of breath. I would awaken on the edge of blacking out, having not breathed for some time, and completely out of breath. I would run gasping down the hall -- and often out the door into the night before waking up all the way. When I shared my symptoms with a psychologist friend, who had researched various forms of apnea -- the sleep disorder that causes breathing to be interrupted. Most snorers suffer from "obstructive apnea," in which a closed air passage temporarily suspends breathing. But I didn't snore, nor am I overweight, so my researcher friend said that my form of apnea sounded like "central" apnea, a rare and more ominous form of the sleep disorder in which the brain -- for some reason -- tells the body to stop breathing. But then she quickly ruled that out, saying -- not very reassuringly -- "If you had central apnea, Scott, you'd probably be dead." 

      I knew that I was on the edge of life, and that I needed something to pull me back.

     One evening before we left for Texas, I was leaning against the deck rail behind the house. Looking down into the yard, I spotted a tiny green plant rising above the thick St. Augustine grass. Nearby I could see another, and another. Five young plants were spread over a 10-by-10 area, revealing the deep green, trilobed leaves of passiflora incarnata.  Needless to say, I was stunned. Even though I knew that the plant grew in the south, I had never seen a single plant inside the city limits of Virginia Beach, much less five plants. 

     It was, I am convinced, one of those little miracles. In the weeks that followed, I harvested the leaves and fruit from those plants, and drank the tea each night before going to bed. When we left for our new home in Texas, I carefully wrapped up three of the maypops and took them with us.

     Stories that end with closure appeal to our hopes, but rarely capture the truth of the never-ending journey. However, about the time we left for Texas, I had a dream in which the blossom of the passion flower took on new meaning. 

     The first part of the dream concerns my discovery of a great tragedy -- the murder of a native American man by a group of white hunters who considered the Indian as little more than an animal. (In analyzing this later, I realized that my impulse to return to south Texas was driven by the realization that an essential, natural part of me had to be restored.) I am so deeply saddened and outraged as I discover this crime that I know I have to report it to the authorities. As I call to report this tragedy, I look up and see a red plane overhead. A young pilot is saluting my efforts. He swoops down again and again, and does magnificent barrel rolls and loops as he pulls out of his dives. His maneuvers are so amazing that I finally realize that the experience has to be a dream. 

     I walk slowly across a grassy area, carefully observing the beauty of everything around me in the dream. A large hibiscus towers over me, and it's dew-covered red blossoms droop down over my head. 

     From past lucid dreams, I know that the holy light has to be near. So I raise my eyes to look for it, and see instantly that a white light fills the sky. I know that the light is Christ's light. There is a pattern that radiates outward from it, like white lace, or delicate latticework.  

     Then I notice an elderly woman approaching me. I feel great love from her, so I put my arm around her and kiss her on the forehead. I know somehow that she is Mary, the mother of Jesus. 

     We turn to look again at the Light, and see that there is a second light to the left and slightly below the white light of Christ. The second light resembles a passion flower blossom, with bluish and lavender hair-like petals radiating outward from a central light. 

     I turn to her and ask, "Is that your light?" 

     She nods. 

     I look back and see that there is now a third light -- to the right and again, slightly below the light of Christ. It radiates from a window on the top of a tower that has spiral steps leading upward. 

     I ask Mary, "Whose light is that?" 

     She says, "Mary Magdalene’s." 

     "Do you want to go there?" I ask her. 

     She nods again. 

     So we begin climbing the steps of the tower. Then I awaken. 

    The passion flower resurfaces from time to time in my life, as a symbol and as an herbal remedy alike. When I contemplate its delicate beauty, I am reminded that the word “passion” -- that is often used to describe Christ’s suffering -- has nothing to do with what we usually think of that word. It has to do with his submission to the forces that were at work to bring his life to fruition, however tragically. The word as it is used has more to do with “passive” than with “zeal,” and has a disturbingly out-of-control ring to it. But there are no guarantees that we will survive in responding to spirit's call. Indeed, we may be crushed, as he was, in our attempts to serve the good. But then again, what better choice do we have? 
   Whether we see ourselves as one who consents to our calling, as Mary did, knowing frightfully little about what the future holds -- or as one who suffered to love deeply as Mary Magdalene probably did -- we, too, will surely flower if we can bring ourselves to follow our soul’s calling without regard to the consequences. 

Does God Deceive Us?

This is an essay I wrote several years ago that stirred up quite a controversy when I submitted it for publication to a magazine. They published it, but asked a priest to write a rebuttal to it. Please note that I use God and the masculine pronoun throughout without intending for it to be taken literally. - GSS

Does God Deceive Us? 

  Last December, I left my dock at daybreak and boated eastward toward the lower Laguna Madre --  a clear, shallow bay on the Texas Gulf Coast.  It was cold even for a South Texas winter day, so I wore my fleece, neoprene waders, and fingerless wool gloves.  While I shuddered uncontrollably, I never considered turning back, because for many years I had dreamed of catching a record speckled trout on my fly rod.  As I skimmed over the water, heading into the rising sun, I thought, This could be the day.

  After all, many dreams had indicated -- if taken literally -- that this dream might eventually come true. In one, I was fishing and I spotted a great fish feeding. Excitedly, I cast my fly to it, and the huge trout rose to the surface and inhaled it without hesitation. Immediately I thought, There is simply no way to land this fish. But then, the huge fish leapt 50 feet into the air and landed on the ground, right at my feet.

The dream, however, did not come true that day. Hours after leaving the dock, I was wading a mile from my anchored boat in soft mud and a foot of water.  The sun had risen and the day had turned surprisingly warm. Exhausted and unable to shed some of my clothing, I turned around to make the arduous trek back to the boat.  As I considered the toll that the dream of catching the big fish had taken,  I also realized that it had played a small but significant role in luring me onward in my decision to leave Virginia after 25 years and to relocate to my "home waters" of South Texas.  This decision had been one of the most difficult steps I’d ever taken, for it had involved becoming separated from many of my friends and my son, and redefining myself as a fishing guide and innkeeper in the remote, natural setting of my childhood. As I reflected on the dreams and spiritual experiences that had pushed me toward this decision, an idea suddenly came to maturity after years of germination. I laughed, and knew that it was one of the most important realizations of my lifetime.  It had nothing to do with fishing per se. It had to do with how God gets us to do the work we need to do. 

 My thoughts went back to 1970, when I first met my spiritual mentor, Hugh Lynn Cayce. He sauntered up to me in the meadow below the A.R.E.'s camp's dining hall and casually introduced himself like he was just another camper.  Even though we'd never actually met before, I knew who he was. Further, I had encountered him in a dream several months before.

In the dream, Hugh Lynn asked me if I'd like to take part in a passion play. Having only a vague notion of what that would mean, I nonetheless felt honored that he would choose me, and so I gladly consented. Moments later, I was told to lie down on a cross. Two men approached, and prepared to nail me to it -- with real nails.  Then I awoke. 

As I made my way back to the boat, I reflected on this dream, and others like it, that seemed to indicate that I would be called upon to do important spiritual work in this lifetime. In one dream, I arrived at the A.R.E. and filled the only empty chair of twelve that were lined up in front of Headquarters. And in another, I was told that I would write a book, titled The Second Revelation. Well, as you might imagine, I felt pretty special as a result of such dreams; and they accounted, in part, for my decision to move to Virginia Beach and to go to work for the A.R.E. after graduating from college. I went on to write two books, which taken together could conceivably have been titled The Second Revelation.  My agent and my editor predicted that the books would become bestsellers, and the major New York publishers fought over the rights to publish the books. But in spite of all the fanfare, the books did not become bestsellers. The books may have been good, and they may have been what God wanted me to do. It was true that the books brought me a lot of advance money, but only because my publishers also believed in something that never came true. They must have felt deceived by their own expectations, but they never spoke to me about their feelings. Regardless, it was embarrassing and painful to become a failure in their eyes, and to experience the "real nails" of my chosen path.

As the sun bore down, I once again felt tricked by the dream of catching the big one. I skirted the yucca-covered shoreline of Rattlesnake Island, and wondered if perhaps the snakes were stirring from their wintry slumber. I felt some relief when I finally spotted my boat anchored off the south shore, and knew that I'd be there soon enough. 

 Meanwhile, I considered how the disciples must have felt when Jesus chose them. Here was this new teacher, rumored to be much more than an ordinary Rabbi, who was choosing them to be his followers. We can imagine how special they must have felt. But Jesus must have known that he was choosing men who would conceivably lose everything, even their lives, in the course of following him. We can also assume that he did not emphasize this part of the discipleship agreement at first -- the "real nails" part. Instead, he kindled in them a great dream that would sustain them in the hard years to come.  And then, after shattering this first dream by dying as he did, he awakened in them another by promising that he would return to finish the work that he'd started. With this single assertion, Jesus instilled more expectancy and hope than the world had ever known. 

 When Jesus did not return immediately, and his followers started to worry, Paul brilliantly focused on the redemptive power of the risen Christ as a sufficient fulfillment of Christ's mission in order to quell their understandable misgivings. However, others who assume that the Master meant to be taken literally, have pointed out that Jesus has never made good on his promise to return.  Some explain this by saying that Jesus, being a man, was simply susceptible to occasional error. Others, who believe that the tangible fulfillment of this promise is crucial, say that the time has not yet come for his return. And still others have regarded the return of Christ as an interior reality. My own work, I am With You Always , is arguably a collection of such interior "second comings." 

 But no one that I know has ever accused Jesus of deceiving us.

 There have many promises and prophecies, since the time of Christ, that have convinced countless believers that dramatic change was indeed imminent. For instance, as we approached the new millennium, I know that many of us expected that the close of the century would bring changes, the likes of which the world had never seen. At least that is many people came to believe from Biblically derived prophecies, or from the Biblically inspired prophecies of such from one of the best-known seers of our times -- Edgar Cayce.  Steeped in a life of devotion to his Master, and informed by prodigious Biblical study, the Sleeping Prophet described scenarios, similar to those found in The Revelation, that would unfold from 1958 through 1998 that made spiritual sense, and which provided a motivational basis for innumerable seekers during the last half of this century. Other modern seers concurred with Cayce's assessments, and offered their own flourishes to his compelling millennial vision. 

 But, by and large these changes have not yet come to pass. 

 Some say that Cayce was simply not perfect, even though he was a great visionary and modern disciple of Christ, and some say that Cayce was not so much wrong as unable to anticipate the choices that we would make -- individually and collectively -- that would alter the outcome. Others contend that his timing was just a bit off, and so they push the dates forward into the next century. And still others say that many of the changes have occurred, only that they are internal and symbolic, rather than literal. 

 But no one I know has ever accused Cayce -- who was as devout as any man who has lived in modern times -- of intentionally deceiving us. 

 Indeed, in all of our thinking about the promises and prophecies that have not yet come true, the one obvious possibility that we have not considered is that God -- through our own dreams and through those who serve him best -- regularly and intentionally misleads us for our own good.

 Indeed, there is good evidence that God -- or whatever you choose to call that power that sustains us and beckons us forever onward -- engages in at least two types of deception. First, He seems to makes promises that may be spiritually true -- and which inspire us to do the work we need to do -- but that never come to pass in this world. Second, He seems to withhold information that would undermine our willingness to to do the work we need to do. 

 In the latter case, let us consider the experiences of Henry Suso -- a 14th-century Christian saintly monk.  Like most of the great Christian contemplatives, Suso -- once sealed by his vows to the Church -- ceased living in the world as an ordinary person. He was otherworldly and deeply spiritual, and was known as a healer of peerless integrity. 

 One day, while plunged deep in thought, Suso was rapt from his senses. He rose up out of his body and encountered a young man who told Suso that he done well in the "lower school," but that if Suso consented, he would be admitted to the "higher school."  Not really knowing what that would mean, Suso nonetheless gladly consented, at which point he was ushered into the presence of the Master.

 After Christ welcomed Suso to "the school of perfect self-abandonment," and explained something of its purpose, Suso returned to his body and happily waited for more instruction. A few weeks later, the young man appeared to him again in spirit, and proceeded to give Suso spurs and other apparel that only knights wore. When Suso protested that he had not earned his spurs in battle, the young man laughed and said, 

  "Have no fear! Thou shalt have battles enough!" 

   Then Christ appeared and told Suso that he should cease all of his rigorous, self-negating practices, because thereafter He, not Suso, would administer the tests. When Suso asked Christ what the tests would be, the Lord responded,

  "It is better that thou know nothing, lest thou shouldst hesitate." 

  A few weeks later, Suso suffered the worst imaginable fate for a man wedded to the Church. A woman in the village accused him of fathering her illegitimate baby. For years thereafter, Suso struggled inwardly and outwardly with this test. And while the story is too long to tell here, suffice it to say that in the end, he surprised everyone by offering to support the child as though it had been his own. He passed his test, but would he have consented to it if he'd known what lay in store for him? 

 Christ said that even Suso may have hesitated.

Many of us have a way of assuming that dedicating ourselves to God's work will set everything to right in this world. Indeed, we are quick to latch onto rosy scenarios of our well-earned successes. Although we may give lip service to the idea of meaningful suffering, privately we might not expect it to apply to us. "He suffered for us," we might say. "We don't have to do what he did." The Master knew, however, that none of us can expect to be repaid for spiritual right action in the currency of this world. Indeed, he eventually made it clear to his disciples that they could not expect to be treated any better than He had been treated. Even so, Jesus believed that the "real nails" part was a tolerable price to pay for love.

  But why didn't Jesus tell them everything ahead of time? Why did he wait until just before his own tragic death to tell then the "rest of the story"? Perhaps it was because he knew that his followers had finally grown to the point where they could hear the complete truth without giving up. And, in telling them not to expect an easy life thereafter, he effectively insulated them from hopelessness in a different way than before -- by "promising" them that they would face humiliation, mistreatment and suffering in the course of serving Him.

 If it's still hard for you to accept the idea of God withholding the truth from us, then consider the example of a loving father who must decide whether to tell his child a devastating truth, or to deceive him in a way that will keep his dreams alive. More specifically, consider the example of a father who dearly loves his son who suffers from an incurable disease. As the father sits by his son’s bedside, feeling the anguish that only a parent can feel when his own child faces death, what does he say when his son asks, 

  "Daddy, can we go fishing in the mountains next spring?" 

  Does the father say, "If you're still alive then"? 

  Of course not. He smiles and says, "Sure we can. And we'll do much more than that." And he may even place a fishing pole near his son's bed so that when the little boy awakens each morning, he will dream anew of the coming springtime.

 It makes perfect sense to me that God, too, would mislead us to keep our dreams alive  -- at least, as long as we cannot yet hear, nor benefit from the complete truth. But as we grow in spiritual stature, we can presumably handle more. For instance, when Bernadette of Lourdes asked the apparition of the Virgin Mary if she'd achieve happiness, she heard Mary reply, 'Not in this world, but the next." At that point in her life, Bernadette could hear the sobering truth without shying from her committed course, and she went on to dedicate her life to God. But like the father at his son's bedside, the Holy Mother did not tell Bernadette everything. She did not tell her that she would die of an excruciating illness while she was still only a young woman. 

  Love ever upholds the promise of our reunion, but may shield from us the price of the journey. This, I contend, is the highest form of love, and the most gracious form of deception.

  When I reached the boat, the tide had receded so much that I had to push it two hundred yards to deeper water before I could start the motor and head back home. Straining against the weight of the boat, I recalled another "promise" that had come to me as I wrote and rewrote a little book, titled The Perfect Gift. Almost as soon as I began writing the Christmas story in late 1997, I began having visions in meditation of a Christmas tree ablaze with lights. My wife, too, began to have the same vivid experience.  From this, we believed that the book would succeed, and so we never gave up hope, even when a major publisher almost bought it, but ultimately did not. We went on to publish the book ourselves, and she wrote a screenplay for it, believing that the story would, in time, win wide recognition. But while a new agent has high hopes for its eventual success, it still has not sold. We are thousands of dollars poorer, and I sometimes wonder if we were foolish to believe in it.

 But then I realize that we tend to measure the fulfillment of our dreams by the wrong criteria. Like Peter, who wanted to erect a booth and sell tickets when he witnessed his Lord transfigured, we tend to evaluate the meaning of our lives in crude, numerical terms, and then find ourselves either acceptable or not on the basis of this assessment.  To God, I am sure, it's not the number of books we sell that matters -- but the lives we touch. 

 This morning, a lady came to the door to check out from our bed and breakfast. She was aglow with praise for the little book that had moved her to tears the previous night before noticing who had written the book. She gladly purchased a copy as she left. When I forget to count how few books we've sold, such a response is reward enough for all the effort that we have made. 

  After working on this essay last night, I had a dream. In it, I again saw a Christmas tree ablaze with lights. I thought, Isn't Christmas over? 

  Apparently not. Nor is the great Dream that will sustain us to the end of our quest.

 Now I am not so naive as to think that every time we feel tricked by fate, or by God, or by whatever seems to pull the rug out from under us, that God is up to his tricks again. No, in most cases I would agree that our sense of God's betrayal stems from holding onto the reasonable expectation that good things should happen when we do the right things. It makes sense, but that's not the way the world works, at least not at first. We usually have to wait a long while for some of our efforts to bear fruit  But the human proclivity for expecting to be rewarded for doing the right thing does not account for all of the promises and phophecies that have been made -- and that remain, as yet, unfulfilled. No, there is something far greater than our own active imaginations operating to keep us expecting things that do not come true.

 I submit to you that God, or Higher Power, will do whatever must be done to keep our deepest dreams alive. He may make promises whose time of fulfillment is both always and never -- always in heaven and in His heart, but perhaps never in this world.  He may hide from us what would make us hesitate in our commitment to our path. He may work through well-meaning seers, and through our own dreams as well, to mislead us lovingly so that we will keep doing the spiritual work we must do.   Above all, He knows that the great Dream of fulfillment must be kept alive to bring us all the way back home, and that vague, open-ended promises  -- as well as insignificant omissions in what we are permitted to know -- can keep us moving in the direction of our greater destiny without falling prey to hopelessness or paralyzing grief. 

 In the end, if we feel betrayed when certain things do not come to pass, let us remember that even Jesus trembled in Gethsemane, and that Edgar Cayce reportedly doubted the value of his life work in the final days of his life. It is essentially human for us to hope that the great Dream will manifest in its fullness in this world, and in our own time. And, it is essentially human as well, to weep when it does not. 

  And after considering this sobering truth, let us celebrate the work that all great men and women of God have done in keeping alive the greatest dream that there has ever been -- the Dream of our eventual reunion with God. 

  And let us celebrate, as well, how far we have come by believing it.