This is an excellent example of how IDL can throw relevant, significant light on dreams from many years before. In this case, it explains the how and why of a dream that repeated many times over many years.
Coincidentally, it is another interview that throws light on water as an often misperceived and misunderstood emerging potential that everyone can benefit from appreciating, becoming, and using to make their everyday life better.
Here is a reframing of what Moonlight told herself. It is different from what your own interview will reveal, but this one gives interesting insights into how passivity can block our development for years and yet can be quickly outgrown when we access emerging potentials that are confident and assertive.
There is a part of you that is passive and feels walked on, like it’s discarded rubbish. You are bored of being the receptacle for other people’s life garbage.
There is a way you can get out of that. You need to go through a process of purification, similar to a waste water purification plant. To the extent that you do that you will find yourself free, able to breathe, confident, alive, energetic, light and full of abundance. You will become confident because you will become the essence of life. What you have called compassion will become less important; a different type of compassion will emerge. You will feel like everything in your life is in its right place. You will no longer be ruled by your likes or dislikes. You will have inner peace because you will be in touch with who you most centrally are. Pollution will still exist, and be an issue, but not nearly as much as it was before. There will be an acceptance of it and a knowledge that it doesn’t really affect what you are.
You will take the far view. Because you are in touch with a part of yourself that does not die, you will not be concerned about things that trouble others. It is OK to not be worried about your future; Ocean Water doesn’t worry about its future either! It’s OK to be fearless and confident that things will work out, but you need to develop a plan about how you will change your financial circumstances.
Because you are no longer to be a passive dumping ground for others you can shape your life and allow others to have their lives shaped by your decisions. You have plans for your future financial security that you need to act on, instead of using your mother’s health, the divorce and its effect on your children, and the present financial security as reasons not to take action. Begin moving toward renting out your mother’s two apartments by consulting with a friend that is in that business and talk to her mother about those apartments.
Continue to give your children consequences. Continue to say respectful goodbyes to your mother. Stay on your present course regarding the divorce; don’t allow yourself to be distracted by his aggression.
Here is Moonlight’s interview:
What are three fundamental life issues that you are dealing with now in your life?
Finances
Emotionally
Career
Tell me a dream you remember. It can be an old one, a repetitive dream, a nightmare, or one that you’re sure you understand.
I am going to be taking exams for high school or college. I know I am going to have them in two weeks and I haven’t studied! There is a voice behind me saying, “What are you doing? You are having your exams in two weeks and you don’t know a thing! Why don’t you sit down and put your head in the books?” Then I am so flabbergasted! I am really scared, but at the same time, daring to ignore danger. It’s like walking into a volcano, looking down, thinking, “It’s really hot!” And still jumping down. Thinking maybe, “Let’s see what the magma feels like.”
Then I am in between the written and the oral part of my exams. I think, “I don’t care that I don’t have both exams and don’t have full certification.”
Why do you think that you had this dream?
I haven’t had this dream any in the last year. Before that I sometimes had it every second night. I have had that dream for some twenty years, maybe 129 times!
I am presently sitting in my life like I am in the dream – doing nothing – not knowing where I will be financially in five years, and I don’t really care. Society tells us that we need to plan for the future. Another part of me says, “I do’t care a damn. It will work out.” But it’s scary. If you don’t do anything then it won’t work out in five years that everything will be OK.
What feelings does this issue bring up for you?
Flabbergasted!
If those feelings had a color (or colors), what would it be?
Green, brown, dirty!
If one character had something especially important to tell you, what would it be?
Soupy, dirty water in a street gutter!
Now remember how as a child you liked to pretend you were a teacher or a doctor? It’s easy and fun for you to imagine that you are this or that character in your dream and answer some questions I ask, saying the first thing that comes to your mind. If you wait too long to answer, that’s not the character answering – that’s YOU trying to figure out the right thing to say!
Soupy stuff, are you a representation of a feeling in Moonlight’s dream?
Yes.
Soup, would you please tell me about yourself and what you are doing?
There are dirt and leaves. I am a cold, dirty soup.
What do you like most about yourself? What are your strengths?
I don’t like anything about myself. I don’t want to be soup. I’m cold, dirty, the rubbish of the street, people walk on me. I am bored of being the end of civilization!
What do you dislike most about yourself? Do you have weaknesses? What are they?
The passiveness. I am being created by dust that flies by, flooding rain water, leaves that come down whenever they want. That’s boring!
Soupy stuff, what aspect of Moonlight do you represent or most closely personify?
Being the soup pot for others to put their dirt in!
Soup, if you could be anywhere you wanted to be and take any form you desired, would you change? If so, how?
I would like to swim through the gutter and be processed into good drinking water and then flood into the ocean!
Imagine you have done that, Soup. What is that like now for you?
It is like going into a washing machine – going in dirty and coming out washed! I can breathe! I am free! I can flood! I am not ashamed of my looks! I am with others. There are fish and corals – nice surroundings! Not dark any more! The light is coming through. I’m blue! It’s nice!
(Continue, answering as the transformed object, if it chose to change.)
Ocean Water, how would you score yourself 0-10, in confidence, compassion, wisdom, acceptance, peace of mind, and witnessing? Why?
Confidence: 10 83% of the world is made out of me! Because I am the essense of life!
Compassion: 8 I don’t care about those things anymore. Compassion is wonderful, but only humankind needs that! I like to be the habitat for fishes and corals, so there is compassion. I don’t even care when dirty ships drive through me. Compassion is not an issue for me….
Wisdom: 10 Everything feels like it is its right place.
Acceptance: 9 It’s not a question anymore whether I like or dislike things; I am essential, so I can accept what comes!
Inner Peace: 9 I am essential; because I am essential I have deep peace.
Witnessing: 8 Sometimes I am a bit annoyed by polluting boats or sharks eating people. But it’s the circle of life. The pollution is annoying…But I can’t change it and I am so powerful!
Ocean Water, if you scored tens in all six of these qualities, would you be different? If so, how?
It wouldn’t be much different. Even more accepting of what happens. Mankind, which invented polluting boats, will be gone in 30,000 years, but I will stay.
How would Moonlight’s life be different if she naturally scored like you do in all six of these qualities all the time?
I am a bit astonished that Moonlight is still relaxed concerning her situation. That comes from her Virgo and Saggitarius – the realistic planning…She would be even more relaxed and smooth. But she still is! It’s the same feeling as in the dream – astonished worried!
And why are you worried about her, Ocean Water?
There is not really a plan about how she will change her circumstances regarding her job.
If you could live Moonlight’s life for her, what sort of a plan regarding a job would you create?
What’s most important to me is that Moonlight is no longer willing to be the soup bowl of the actions of others. If she goes into action, others will have to cope with her life choices, and not so much vice versa, as it has been. Moonlight has ideas for her future financial security. She should just do it!
What keeps her from just doing it, Ocean Water?
The situation of her mother, which is getting worse and worse. Her children, who are not used to the divorce. They still have their flashbacks and are sad. Not presently having the financial needs due to savings she can live from. Moonlight’s idea is to rent out apartments that are furnished, starting with the one that her mother has, but she doesn’t want to kick her mother out of the apartment. In three to four months she will so be in her dementia it won’t matter. Moonlight wants to be respectful. Her mother is now living in a home for people with dementia. She’s not living in that apartment. There are two that are still the way her mother left them that Moonlight could begin moving toward renting out.
What do you think about that idea, Ocean Water?
There are many advantages. Why not? The apartments and furniture are there.
Ocean Water, how would you live Moonlight’s life differently?
Get out of the gully situation! Have the experience of the washing machine! Start letting her life flow!
If you could live Moonlight’s waking life for her/him today, would you handle her/his three life issues differently? If so, how?
Finances
Get Started! The first step is to talk to her mother about her apartment. Talk to another lady who is doing the same.
Emotionally
I think she’s on a good way. Just keep it up! Giving her children consequences. Say respectful goodbyes to her mother, who is fading away. Regarding her X, stay on her current path for the divorce. Do not get distracted by his aggression.
Career
The apartment idea will take time, but that’s OK.
What three life issues would you focus on if you were in charge of her life?
The same ones.
In what life situations would it be most beneficial for to imagine that she is you and act as you would?
Regularly for the next two months!
Why do you think that you are in Moonlight’s life?
Moonlight loves water
I think Moonlight had this dream because
there was this fear she couldn’t cope with society’s standards regarding her education. Once in a while she feels she wants to push the limits. It’s testing out. Why not check it out?? It’s different than her usual planning, rational personality! She went down a dark street when she was five to a traffic light and felt very brave. Then she went to the next traffic light, much farther away when she was a year older. She was crying all the way but she did it! Her mother had confidence in her that she could handle things. And so she has confidence in herself!
I think this dream event happened or (some character) was in the dream because…
She was on this way to have her exam and all of a sudden it changes – the way her life was disrupted by her divorce. On the one hand she is astonished – “That isn’t my life plan!” On the other hand is the attractiveness – “Let’s see what is going to happen!” Then there is the worry that without training and a good family she won’t have a happy life. But I am here to let her know that she doesn’t need to think that way.
What have you heard yourself say?
I don’t want to be the soup pot for the dirt of others any more. The confidence to go through this sewage treatment plant and then being the ocean water – what a nice feeling! I can use this while meditating and coping with situations in everyday life.
If this experience were a wake-up call from your inner compass, what do you think it would be saying to you?
Don’t be shy about going through the cleansing process! You’ll end up knowing you are like ocean water!
