\"The transition between being asleep and dreaming, and being awake
and living the waking dream, is simply a subtle shift in focus. It
eventually becomes difficult to distinguish where the night dreams
end and the waking dreams begin.

An unexpected trip half-way across the country to Utah to visit a
sick relative was foreshadowed for one couple by a dream one of them
had in which \"Anne Vance\" (word play on ad-vance as in \"advance
notice\") told her to urgently prepare for an upcoming trip to Europe
(a foreign state of consciousness).

Early one evening on that same trip, as the couple were admiring the
scenery close to the downtown area of Salt Lake City, two young women
managed to get the wheels on their rental car stuck in a deep
drainage gutter right in front of the couple. The driver and her
friend had been looking for a particular address, but had failed to
notice the deep drop off into the drain. These \"little\" road hazards
seem to be fairly common in that city, and although they are
obviously well-known to local residents, they pose a real hazard to
the uninitiated. In fact, it took more than an hour for the combined
effort of the couple, the two women, and some other passers-by, to
free the car from its untimely predicament. Eventually they had to
jack up the car in various places and insert a number of blocks of
wood under the troubled tires before the car could safely be
maneuvered back into the middle of the road where it belonged.

On the way home, the waking dream made itself clear to the couple.
They too had been stuck in \"a hole\" with the work they were trying to
do together because they had allowed themselves to wander from
the \"middle of the road,\" to \"get off track\" as it were with the work
that was supposed to be their focus. They had, in fact, been spinning
their wheels in their entire relationship and needed help from their
spiritual guidance to \"jack them back up\" and get them safely back on
the road, and aimed in the right direction in which they had
originally been headed.

What the waking dream meant for the other participants in the event
was of no concern to the couple at that time. They had received the
message they needed to hear, and were only too thankful for their own
ability to see and understand the wisdom being offered.

It is one of the most closely guarded secrets of life in the modern
technological age that some of the best sources of waking dreams in
our lives are, in fact, our cars! In the basic set of Waking Dream
Cards, a car is also referred to as a \"vehicle.\" Thus it can also
represent almost any aspect of ourselves or our bodies, what we often
term our \"physical vehicles.\" Did you ever wonder why cars seem to
have a particular \"suit-ability\" to the type of people who buy them?
It\'s much the same situation as with our pets.

For one man who we\'ll call Harold, no matter what kind of car he
bought, each one soon began to take on the role of playing his waking
dream by acting as a mirror to his physical body. This often included
his emotional, mental, and spiritual bodies as well. In particular,
the 1965 Chevy Impala he owned for more than five years became his
personal diagnostic physician and source of outer guidance. Like a
Stephen King novel, whenever his car had brake trouble, he knew that
the Type A-side of his personality was too much in control. He knew
he somehow needed to \"put on the brakes,\" or to \"ease up on the
accelerator\" in his life. Sometimes it just meant he was working too
hard and needed to \"take a break\" in order to keep his health in
check.

Since dreams have interpretations and relevance on all levels of
existence simultaneously, the spiritual aspect of Harold\'s dreams
about bad brakes also had a corresponding significance on the
physical level of his life. Unfortunately, he was usually too busy
looking at the spiritual significance of the waking dreams to look at
its physical counterpart as well. In doing this, he overlooked the
fact that one of the brakes on the back of his car had gone bad and
was affecting the axle bearings. By the time he got around to
checking the brakes, the damage had already been done. This point was
reached, coincidentally, at another opportune time for a waking dream—
Harold had literally \"lost his bearings,\" both on his car, and in
his outer life as well!

It took a long time for Harold to regain the needed stability and
direction in his life which allowed him the necessary resources to
fix this more major problem of bad bearings.

Later, a badly needed transmission rebuilding mirrored his own recent
inability to \"shift gears\" in his life. When the harmonic balancer on
the old car broke and needed replacing, our friend Harold knew enough
by this time to understand that his spiritual self had also just gone
through a major change of its own in order to bring his life back
into the harmony and balance it so badly needed. Similarly, when the
car\'s generator went on the fritz, Harold sought out his chiropractor
and was not surprised to find that his body\'s own generator was
burned out and he was suffering from adrenal exhaustion and liver
trouble. An overheating radiator started on the exact day he began
letting his temper \"boil over\" and run away. Electrical problems
symbolized a nervous system overload. And, when the 30-year-old
lining on the interior of the car started falling off the roof, he
knew that his old way of life was also \"coming apart at the seams.\"
As the paint job on the car thinned, so did his hair. When he ran
into a deer on the highway and dented up the grille of the car, he
knew it was a sign not to let himself get \"all bent out of shape.\"
And, during one particular time when he was in the process of
breaking up a romantic relationship he had been having, his own
broken heart was mirrored by the crack which then appeared in the
car\'s own heart, its water pump. The synchronicity was too much to be
a coincidence.

Harold\'s waking dreams didn\'t only happen when he owned his 30-year-
old car either. In fact it didn\'t matter how old the car was, his
personal guidance always used the car he owned as a vehicle to give
him his daily messages. When he traded in one car for another newer
version, it wasn\'t long before he found the new car had many of the
same old problems which earlier had plagued the original vehicle.
Old wisdom says that when we buy a used car we are inheriting the
previous owner\'s troubles. That may be true for a while, but only
until the car adjusts itself to the vibrations and conditions
surrounding the purchaser. And of course, until the new spiritual
guidance takes over. Is it any wonder why some people manage to
pick \"lemons\" no matter what kind of car they buy? If we were to tell
the automakers in Detroit or Japan about this strange phenomena,
wouldn\'t they want to cancel all the warranties on our new cars?
Should we tell them that faulty parts are not necessarily built into
cars at the factory, but are actually only giving themselves as a
sacrifice in order to mirror the conditions inherent in the life of
their new owner? Actually we should be grateful when our cars have
problems because these are a sign that our guidance is working with
us. If we listen and understand, we will find that the messages they
are trying to give could save us the greater expense of \"a total
breakdown\" of our own bodies, minds, or emotions.

Like any other symbol, when a new car enters our life, all of a
sudden we become more attuned to that symbol\'s presence any time we
see it around us. For instance, if a woman buys a new car, say a
white BMW 318i. All of a sudden she begins to notice how many white
BMW 318i\'s there are driving around in her particular little town.
Until she bought one, she was not aware of how many of that same kind
of car there were.

So it is with the symbols we start to recognize from our dreams. If
eagles are a symbol for us of our continued spiritual growth, then
every time we see an eagle we will gain some further reassurance
about our forward movement in that area. Soon we will begin to notice
eagles everywhere. And we don\'t have to limit how the eagles appear
either. It might be on a poster, it might be on a bumper sticker, on
a calendar, or even on the brand name of some favorite grocery
product. Every item in our lives is out there to be used for our own
spiritual growth and guidance.\"

From Waking Dreams and the Waking Dream Cards, by Peter Farley and
Sharon King - available to downlaod free from the group\'s Files
section.

2008-02-25