Electric Dreams
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The Awakening Room

Marilyn Barrye


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Barrye, Marilyn (2003). The Awakening Room.  Electric Dreams 10(11).




 

I've always had prophetic dreams but the dream I am about to describe is the most accurate and extraordinary. I had the dream in 1979 when I was in therapy with a Jungian analyst in London. I was in the process of deciding whether to give up my teaching career and move to Findhorn - a spiritual community in Scotland.

In the dream I was emptying a bucket of dirty water into a deep enamel sink. Then I walked along a narrow corridor leading to a small room with a bed in it. The bedclothes were thrown back as if someone had just woken up. The bed was bathed in golden sunlight which streamed in through a window over-looking a garden with rose bushes. I stood in the room, smelling the fragrance of the roses, and felt totally at peace. When I turned to leave there was a man standing in the doorway dressed entirely in black. "You don't remember me, do you?" he said. I was embarrassed because, although he was familiar to me, I could not remember who he was.

My analyst and I worked on this dream at great length. Of course, we saw it as symbolic. I wouldn't know for another six years that it was prophetic. We called the room The Awakening Room and I dialogued with the man in my dream. He said he was a "doctor of the spirit" and we would meet in the future. In 1980 I moved to Findhorn and was there for five years before deciding to study Psychosynthesis, but where? My search took me to New Zealand, Australia and America. In New Zealand I met a couple who suggested I study at the Psychosynthesis Centre in Pasadena. Someone in Australia told me that the centre in Pasadena had recently closed down, but I had already written a letter. I subsequently received a reply from a woman who was now holding classes in her home in Pasadena. As the classes were about to begin, I flew immediately to L.A. to begin my studies.

After the first class I was offered a room in my teacher's house in exchange for cleaning. The room was off the kitchen at the end of a narrow corridor - just as it was in my dream. It overlooked the garden, where there were rose bushes, and in the morning golden sunlight streamed in through the window. Every week I emptied my bucket of dirty water into a deep enamel sink when I washed the floors. Of course, I told my teacher about the dream I'd had six years earlier.

She told me that she had wanted to rent a house in the mountains but her signed letter of agreement had been lost in the mail, and she ended up renting this house.

She also said: "I bet you're going to meet the man from your dream." I DID meet him and he did stand in the doorway of my room dressed in black - just as he had in my dream. He was then a therapist and now he's a Medical Social Worker. Both could be described as a "doctor of the spirit". I wrote a book about the process of remembering who he was which totally challenges our perception of time and space. You can read about it on my web site:
www.innerwayonline.com 

What's fascinating to me is the fact that it all depended upon meeting a couple by chance in New Zealand and my teacher's letter of agreement for the house in the mountains being lost in the mail. Yet, despite the improbability of it all, I did end up in The Awakening Room - just as my dream had predicted.

Marilyn Barry
innerway@cali.co.uk