Dream Freedom vs. Real Freedom

A dreamer recently shared with me a recurring dream she’d had for over half a century.  The dream was trying to make a point but the dreamer wasn’t getting the point. Finally, after sharing the dream with me and listening with an open heart, the dreamer finally got the point of the dream. All this time it was trying to communicate to her that what she thought was freedom was not freedom at all.

Here’s the dream:

I’m riding a horse on the beach. I’m totally naked and feel a sense of real freedom. The sun is shining brightly and it’s a beautiful day. I’m holding onto the horses mane and loved the feeling of a gentle breeze blowing through my hair. Then, the back of the horse gets slippery and I fall off the back. I run behind the horse as fast as I can and manage to jump back onto the horse.

End of dream

The first time the dreamer had this dream they were around three years old. the last time they had it was a few nights before we met.  They reported enjoying this dream because they felt such a sense of freedom. In truth, they loved having it.  The dreamer is a very spiritual person and said they’d always felt like they had a spiritual life from a very young age.

Okay, now to get down to what the dream means.  First the setting of the dream. The dreamer’s riding a horse on a beach. They provided the detail that the horse was running in water less than a few feet deep. If we want to understand the meaning of this dream we’re going to have to understand what a beach means in metaphorical language. To get that answer we’ve got to get down to basics, the simplest definiton of a beach. A beach, is essentially, where an ocean meets the land. It’s a transitional place between water and land. But it’s much more than that. An ocean is more than just water. It’s very deep and very wide, boundless in a way. It’s important to note that the dreamer isn’t actually touching the water.  The hooves and lower legs of the horse are touching both the water and land.  In dreams, the ocean often represents spirituality and horses often represent power.  Well, now we’re getting somewhere.

If the ocean represents spirituality and the horse represents power in this dream, then the horse is allowing the dreamer to have a powerful connection to spirituality. But that’s not all.  Remember the dreamer reports being naked in the dream, and while most free spirited people will see this as the ultimate freedom, it indeed means the dreamer is completely open and vulnerable. This is good, especially in a dream about powerful spirituality. However, there’s something in this dream that’s easy to miss. It’s not necessarily what’s in the dream, but what’s missing from the dream that communicates a vital message to the dreamer. That message is simply this: you are riding on spiritual power, but the dreamer has no control of the horse.

The horse has the ability to run into the ocean and swim away from land, it has the ability to take the dreamer into darkness or into light. Most importantly, the horse has the ability to run right off a cliff and the dreamer has absolutely no control of any of it. You see, the dreamer is holding onto the horse’s mane but has not real control because they have no reigns to hold on to. There’s a bit of a word play here. The dreamer has no way to reign in this powerful spirituality. They are completely at its mercy. To say it in a more basic way, the dreamer is at the mercy of a spiritual power that has no boundaries.

That’s a scary concept… to be completely vulnerable to spiritual power and forces that have no boundaries.  What the dreamer perceived as ultimate freedom was a bit of a deception.  The obverse was actually true.  Real freedom has boundaries built in. To be clear, the boundaries I am referring to are not confining restrictions, such as rules and regulations. Let me say that again. Real freedom has built in boundaries and those boundaries ARE NOT confining restrictions.  It’s the same concept of not letting a two or three year old child play on top of a counter near a stove with red hot burners. It’s for their own protection.

Now back to the dream.  Let’s not forget the fact that the dreamer keeps sliding off the slippery back of this horse. There’s no saddle holding the dreamer in place.  This is yet another reference to boundaries. Boundaries are needed to keep the dreamer securely in place.  And another thing is very interesting about the imagery of the dreamer falling off the back of the horse and having to catch up and jump back on.  There’s an idea presented here that the dreamer has times of self effort needed to get them back into a position of power. This wouldn’t be so bad, but this portion of the dream scene is highlighting the dreamer’s effort (what they can do in their human strength) to put themselves in a position of power. The world has unfortunately witnessed the result of human beings raising themselves up into positions of boundless spiritual power by their own human effort. Destruction almost always follows.

Spiritual boundaries that will keep the power they are riding from destroying the dreamer’s spiritual life need to be set in place. There are spiritual powers that exist for no other reason but to deceive and lead the unsuspecting into dark spiritual traps. Sometimes spiritual journeys that end up in traps begin with seemingly freedom rides on spiritual power. That is what the dreamer did not understand for all those decades of having the dream.  Their spiritual journey was taking them closer and closer and closer to the edge of a cliff.  This is quite a concept ina world that admonishes us that every spiritual path leads to the same place.  The question that is often overlooked is this: Does this spiritual path afford healthy boundaries that keep me from harm, or is there only the promise of power disguised as boundless freedom?

Something to think about.

EB