About a week ago I was at the UNHCR building in Kuala Lumpur working with a group of English translators from Myanmar on the subject of dreams.  My wife had invited me to the class because she teaches them higher level English a couple of times a week.  As in most of my dream meetings I asked the participants to write down both a positive and negative dream that they have had in the past so that we can look at the metaphors and understand the messages and solutions.

The first dream that appeared was this one.   I was in a building on the 6th floor with my family when the building began to shake.    I fell from the building onto the ground.   Then a large wave came and was knocking me over.   Finally the sun was out, and then a big dark disk started covering it.  The darkness was so intense that it was falling on top of me.  I was running from it and then I woke up.

The theme of falling is a big one in the dream world.    It is one of the most common types of dreams that can be experienced in multiple ways.    This one is particularly instructive to all of us.   The first interesting symbol is being on the 6th floor.   This means that the dreamer has already risen to a certain level in his life.   We can presuppose from this that he has a certain amount of motivation and ability to achieve goals.    But then he feels a shaking and falls to the ground.

Shaking can come in many forms.  It can be a natural disaster, an accident, being fired, or losing a relationship.    For instance, if you are in love with a woman and have put your hopes in a future together, then when she breaks it off, you can be very shaken and take a fall.   The biggest shakes are those that cause some kind of separation.

The key to overcoming shaking is to get right back up again.    When you are shaken and feel separated, for instance, then it feels like a big wave is going to come over you and then the world darkens.    When you are fired or are not accepted or thrown out of your country,  the people who do the best are those that do not stay down and out.

It is  human to feel some grief when bad happens,  but those of us who hang onto it suffer much more than we have to.   A bad government who excludes major parts of its population which we still see happening in the world today cannot withstand the power of people who rise up again and again despite efforts to shake them and keep them down.   What destroys a people is not the bad government, but the holding onto the fall.    Bad governments and organizations always end up falling, but when we fall from a shaking, we can just get right back up again and keep moving forward.

I was very grateful to be able to hear this dream and then study because it taught me the need to just keep getting back up again.