Dreams and Spirituality
Christine Boyer
July 20, 2003
 

The last time I spoke to you about dreams and dreaming, I was able to refer to a lot of general research in the field. But this topic, Spirit and Soul, is something that has not been researched – cannot be researched – because it’s totally subjective. However, it is an article of faith for me, after working with dreams for over sixteen years, that the dream belongs to the dreamer. We all have our own dream language, with our own symbols, created by ourselves for ourselves. The dreamer is the only person who gets to say what a dream is truly about.

When I spoke before about dreams and spirituality, I said that for me, spirituality is about connection – sometimes it’s a connection to something larger or greater than myself, sometimes it’s about connection to others, and sometimes it’s about connection to myself. A spiritual experience can give some great insight which alters how I perceive myself or how I fit into my world. Today I’m going to share one of my own dreams with you, and talk about what I came to realize it meant for me.

Here’s the dream:

“The renegade pope is to come for Christmas and celebrate mass. We have to keep his coming a secret and hide him when he arrives. The mass will be held in my living room. Then we have to smuggle him out of town, and send him on his way.”

When I had this dream, back in the summer of 1993, I was intrigued by the symbol of the "renegade pope." I had an idea of what "pope" would mean, probably some symbol for the spiritual self - perhaps a statement about an older, entrenched, possibly outdated part of the spiritual self. But what about the "renegade" part?  That put an entirely different spin on the symbol. "Renegade" implies subversive, rebellious, a defector or deserter. So it seemed like I was looking at some unexpected, “outlaw” spiritual component showing up, doing its thing, and then being spirited away. An intriguing idea. But it wasn’t something I could get a handle on and say, “Oh, yes, I can identify that within myself.”

I took this dream to a dream group in which I was a member and discussed it with my dream teacher, Kathleen Sullivan. We all came up with the same concepts and symbols, but I still couldn’t see this being activated in my waking life. Then Kathleen had an interesting idea – what if the symbol around “Christmas” was a kind of forecast? Perhaps the dream was saying that the renegade pope energy would appear about Christmas time? I liked that idea. This was a symbolic dream, of course, and not like the standard precognitive dream, which is true to fact, but perhaps it did have a feeling of foreshadowing. From time to time over the next six months, I’d think about the dream and wonder absently if Christmas was going to bring some exciting new spiritual outlook in my life. Or perhaps some rebellious change.

I could surely have used it at the time! I had this dream during one of the lowest points of my life. I had just gone through a divorce, and I was working for a company that could have been the poster child for the classic dysfunctional workplace. The woman who owned the company had made her significant other / boyfriend the Vice-president, and they used the company as the primary battleground for their relationship. The most common words used in the place were, “I told you…” As in, “I told you that was never going to work.” Or, “Why are you surprised that we can’t meet this customer’s demand, when I told you we wouldn’t.” And of course, the #1 choice, “I told you…  so!”

I was working as a Sales Coordinator at the time, and I was smack dab in the middle of all of it. If one of them set up some business plan, the other one would work to demolish it. Plans and, most especially, changes in plans were kept secret from each other, and from the employees who were supposed to make things happen. If one of them found something to praise in an employee, the other one immediately set about trashing him or her. Beratings were constant, loud, and always done in front of other people. I got a lot less berating than most of the people there, but I learned a great truth in all this. It is just as painful to watch – and hear – other people being abused as it is to be the target yourself.

I had been looking for other work for nearly two years. However, if you remember, the early 90’s was during what they were calling an “economic downswing” and California was especially hard-hit. And since I wasn’t prepared for the idea of leaving one job without another to go to, I felt trapped in a sick, dehumanizing environment which was sapping much of the joy out of life. So given all this, I sort of latched onto this dream symbol – the renegade pope – as a harbinger of some dynamic, rebellious Something showing up in my life to bring about some change. I was really looking forward to Christmas.

Then, when December actually came…  I felt like I missed it. For one thing, I got the flu. It was a nasty flu that year, and I was pretty run down – misery will do that to you – so it hit hard. I was out of work for several days. And went back to work too soon, and had a relapse.  Fought my way through it, and again went back to work – again too soon – and had another relapse. This time I drug myself to my doctor who said the flu had turned into a secondary infection, put me on the first of what turned out to be several courses of antibiotics, and ordered me to bed.

So there I was, living alone, so pathetic that friends had to do my grocery shopping for me, feeling sorry for myself, and as sick as I’d ever been in my entire life. I was so sick I could barely move. Too sick to read. Too sick even to watch TV. So how sick was I? Well, for three days, I was so sick that the only thing I could do was lie on my couch and listen to the Home Shopping Network. Now is that the perfect picture of despair, or what?

Obviously, I survived. And when the holiday was over, I was back at work part-time, then full-time. And the workplace was still as bad as ever. I got a promotion and was supervising the customer service staff and receptionist in the office. Part of the new job had been a promise of a raise in pay and an assistant to help with the workload. And then there wasn’t to be an assistant – I was to do the job I did before plus the new supervisory duties all by myself. And then, one Friday in March, I was told that there wasn’t going to be a raise either.

When I went to work on the following Monday, I gave my notice – without a job to go to – in an economic period which was still bad. And I did it from a place of surrender and inner peace which was amazing at the time, and which still is one of the high points of my life. Even better, nine days after leaving, I started working in Technical Publications at Borland, International – the best job of my life. So far.

It was a while before I again thought about the dream of the Renegade Pope, and when I did, at first I thought, “Well, that whole thing was totally out to lunch!” I had been expecting some sort of dramatic transformation – which certainly happened, but not at Christmas! It happened three months later. Didn’t it? So I got my dream journal out and went back and looked at the dream again. As I reread it, I realized there was one symbol in that dream that I had totally overlooked. I had been so focused on the idea of a Renegade Pope that I forgot why he was coming to Santa Cruz. He was coming to celebrate Mass.

When you look at the Mass as a symbol, it’s about taking a common substance and changing it into something sacred, about taking something ordinary and transforming it into something extraordinary. The underlying process which is involved in this particular transformation involves betrayal, abandonment, loneliness, pain, and death before the transformation occurs. Not exactly the “fun and games with the Renegade Pope” that I had been expecting, but what I now believed – in hindsight – was exactly what happened. In another mythology, it’s the phoenix being reborn from the ashes of its own funeral pyre.

The mass is about a mystery. In fact, one of the definitions of “mystery” is “The consecrated elements in the Eucharist.” And another definition is “A profound secret; something wholly unknown, or something kept cautiously concealed; something which has not been or can not be explained; hence, specifically, that which is beyond human comprehension.” I believe now that what I was experiencing in that lonely, dark Christmas was a spiritual event. Or rather, I was experiencing the “Soul” aspect – the dark side – of  spiritual event. The “Spirit” aspect – the light side – followed three months later when I stepped into that state of surrender and quit my job.

Let me read that dream to you again:

“The renegade pope is to come for Christmas and celebrate mass. We have to keep his coming a secret and hide him when he arrives. The mass will be held in my living room. Then we have to smuggle him out of town, and send him on his way.”

So here’s what this dream meant to me. The “renegade pope” was an internal spiritual outlaw, an energy which came in secret at Christmas time. It came to “celebrate mass” – to elevate the commonplace and transform it into something sacred. And, as I looked at this again, best of all: “the mass will be held in my living room” – probably while I was in sick misery on my couch! And then, this spiritual outlaw was to be smuggled out and sent on its way. But, the dream says, the transformation happened. It just took another three months to become visible.

Now I acknowledge that there are other ways to look at this whole experience. I got sick because I was worn out. I quit because I wasn’t willing to be abused any longer. But for myself, that explanation isn’t enough. I had worked in that place for four years – something had happened this time that had not happened before.

Since I had this dream, and the life events which followed it, it has seemed to me that the spiritual occurrence, as with so many things in the human experience, comes in two varieties. We’re accustomed to pairing things – as in up and down, right or left, work and play, masculine or feminine, dark or light, good and evil  – with the spiritual life, I think of one as “Spirit” and the other as “Soul.” Two faces of the same thing. 

Spirit is the exuberant, resounding part – where you climb the mountain to call out the good news. It’s exciting, validating, and encouraging, and the symbols that show up in dreams about it are often about “up-ness” – mountaintops, rooftops or attics, soaring through the air, or going up in elevators.

Soul is the dark and mysterious part – where you go deeply within, into caves or caverns, into dark, hidden places where you may face great despair or danger. The symbols in dreams are often about “down-ness” – caves, caverns, holes, dungeons, sub-basements, elevators going down.

It is the Spirit experiences that are spoken of and shared with others. We are often giddy with wonder and want to communicate the news with others. It’s the Spirit aspect that has the energy that is needed to found new religions, or to proselytize. But we don’t tend to talk much about our Dark Night of the Soul. The dark experiences are usually faced alone, and the sense of loss or hopelessness that we face in those times of mystery are not usually broadcast. The places where we face the soul experience are dark and dismal, and in these places we are almost always alone.

My dream imagery in this case was nothing like any of the symbols I just mentioned. The Renegade Pope was my own creation, unique to me. I recognized that this was a dream about my spiritual life because of the word “pope” – a reference to a spiritual leader. But like all dreamers do occasionally, I missed the point. I wanted this to be a Spirit experience about change and transformation. And it was. But it was also the first step of the process, not the last step. First, for me, had to come the Soul experience.

I had to go through that dark night of the Soul before I could have the elation of the Spirit. I have a tendency to resist that. I have a certain natural optimism that doesn’t want to go into those dark places, and I avoided it for as long as possible. But I believe now that I had to be willing to let go before I could find something new to hold onto. I had to experience some sort of “death” before I could become renewed. And I believe the dream of the Renegade Pope was preparing me for that renewal.

Why not just call it an example of personal growth? Why do I insist on calling this a spiritual experience? It’s because of the mindset I was in when I left that sad, sick company. I wasn’t angry, I wasn’t hoping for revenge, and I wasn’t going to “show them.” I was in a state of peaceful surrender. I had stepped back from trying to control things, or trying to manipulate things, even from trying to protect myself. I turned my will and my life over to something else – something other – a Higher Power, a force in the universe, something that wasn’t just me. And I believe that the ability to finally let go started that horrible Christmas. While I was lying on that couch listening to TV, somewhere in the dark depths of my soul, the renegade pope was celebrating mass.