by Ethan Johnson
May 18, 2006

I have been working my way steadily through Seth Speaks, and the material that I am reading right now concerns dreams, their purpose, and how you might make the best of them. He talks about the effective uses of suggestion, such as telling yourself to dream about losing weight or surviving cancer. He claims that these suggestions are carried out on some level during the dream state, and while this doesn't necessarily mean that you'll get the expected end result (depending on what is suggested) the overall positive benefits are worth considering. In short, what is the harm in suggesting that you become happier or healthier in some way before you go to sleep?

As a warning to the reader, this article is going to get rather personal. I have opted to share this story because of the punchline, more or less, and not out of some voyeuristic thrill. This story involves someone who I am pretty sure will never read this article, but if she does, it shouldn't be especially surprising to her. I will use an alias for this person for privacy reasons.

Long ago, when we moved from Wisconsin to Illinois (1977), I began Second Grade in a new school and didn't really know anybody. Because our apartment complex contained a fair number of school-aged children, some acquaintances were made during the summer but nothing particularly solid on the friendship scene. As is to be expected.

Prior to that time, I recall "floating" through my school experiences. I took the bus to school, had no idea where it was, sat through class but didn't really understand what was going on structurally, apparently was more advanced in certain subjects (like reading) than I had any relative inkling about. For example, I liked to read, and as I recall I learned fairly complex reading at a young age. In First Grade, while I was floating along, I was ordered to leave the room and go down the hall to either the Second or Third (I think it was Third) Grade classroom and sit in on their reading session. I drifted in there dutifully, and don't recall making any formal aquaintances in the foreign classroom.

When I entered the Second Grade classroom in my new school (located much more tangibly down the street from our apartment complex), I looked around the room at the small sea of unfamiliar faces and saw her. Years later, a weird friend of mine called her "Flower Pot Annie" (don't ask) so that moniker will suffice. This sounds unfathomable, but I knew love at that moment, and it would pretty much screw me up for years to come. This was a revelation that I wasn't wired to deal with at this young age. On some level, we can get on board with more loosely defined ideas of love, such as loving one's family. But capital-l Love? Hardly.

The problem was that I was tapped in to a force that I wasn't set up to harness, channel, or express. This is not to say I was some unfeeling machine, but capital-l Love is pretty heavy for a Second Grader. And it was a pretty isolating feeling, because nobody my age understood what I was coping with.

Needless to say, the expression of this force compelled me to make a pretty big ass of myself in the eyes of FPA. I'm pretty sure I'm high on her "FOAD" (F Off and Die) list, or at least I have been operating under that assumption since roughly Junior High.

For whatever reason, I had a dream about FPA several months ago. I wasn't expecting to do this. In this dream, she came to me and said simply, "I love you, and I forgive you." Then she went away. Whether I literally dreamt this up or not, this was a powerful message and one I needed to "hear" on some level to get past all that came before. Parsing this statement, I take this to mean "I don't hate you, and I forgive you for making an ass of yourself on my account for roughly a decade." I woke up profoundly relieved.

From time to time, I reflect back on that dream and am thankful that this message was communicated to me, regardless of its origin. Other than that, I don't dwell on it or the previous experiences that the dream spoke to.

After reading a few dream-oriented chapters of Seth Speaks last night, I had an errant thought about the prior dream, and thought "wouldn't it be funny if I dreamt about FPA again?" But why? I felt that the past had been resolved on some level, even if only in my head, so there was no compelling need to dream about FPA.

As fate would have it, I did indeed dream about her this morning. She was driving what appeared to be a Bentley convertible (no idea if this really exists) and going to work at a dry cleaners. I instinctively checked out her left hand and she was sporting wedding rings, which I assume is an accurate assumption knowing FPA as I do. (Or did.) I flagged her down and we talked for a short time. I again took the opportunity to express my regret about the past and apolgized for being "such an idiot." She looked at me funny and asked, "why would I forgive you for loving me?" She got in her car and went on her way.

I like to think on some level that FPA and I really are working out this crap from the past, and that there really is a sense of forgiveness, and that between the two of us, consciously, I'm the one thinking about FPA and not the other way around. I don't believe that I am on her radar screen one way or the other. I could be President of the United States and I wouldn't be on her radar screen. Which is fine. What's important is not that she forgives me for my idiotness, but that I forgive myself. Two consistent dreams months apart with the same message is a pretty big hint.

It's time to give myself permission to let go. <EM>