My dear friends,

To follow current events and concerns, we have just studied five cases - three dream analyses and two case studies - that dealt with ecology, the health of our planet earth and climate events. We were able to see that there is a correlation between the inner and outer world: the processes of psychic life seem to have a decisive effect on the concrete events of life on earth.

To my delight, a comment on my French blog supported this viewpoint.

Before I begin my study today, I would therefore like to thank Catherine for her valuable observations about the rainmakers and the weathermakers. Catherine brought us the remarkable testimony that a Sufi spiritual master wrote about 950 years ago:

"Sheikh Ali Farmadhi (who died in 1078) already stressed the importance of what the Sufis believe, so he wrote:

- The "invisible world" interpenetrates ordinary reality at all times and in different places. What we regard as inexplicable is actually due to this intervention. People do not recognise the participation of this "world" in ours because they believe they know the real cause of the events.

In fact, they don't know it.

It is only when they manage to keep in mind the possibility that another dimension sometimes affects ordinary experiences, that this dimension can become accessible to them.

We have evolved and we finally accept to perceive what was strange to us, to understand that Everything IS already; this Everything is waiting for our mind to use it because it is attributed to us, consecrated to us."

I thank Catherine for her clear and very welcome contribution.

The last five articles have given us examples of advice and solutions to help us achieve this indispensable balance between the outside world and the world inside.

To the women who sought advice from the dreams, the dream advised them to maintain loving relationships,

to respect the different aspects of unconscious life, to honour and nurture natural spontaneous instinctive forces, whether manifested through the senses or through the spirit, to welcome feelings and intuitions, to trust the mysterious forces that rule the earth, instead of taking for granted that it is the conscious that dominates and directs.

Others, men, did not seek assistance from dreams, but chose a mystical attitude of inner relationship with the divine force. The old rainmaker Chinese went into meditation in order to empty his mind and retune himself to the universal force, the tao. General Patton, on the verge of military defeat, not zen at all, addressed God in a hell of a row, in a prayer that was original to say the least, and very cheeky: he asked the God of Armies to make the rain stop, which did not seem to upset the Creator, since the general was granted a sun beyond his expectations.

Still others, men and women, absorbed themselves in processions, in prayers, told their rosary and all these manifestations of piety undoubtedly helped to establish the desired balance in the environment, made the rain or the good weather return.

Ah well, very well.

Very good.

Yes, and then...

... what do I do now, in my neck of the woods, to help the earth, to balance the external forces around me with the internal forces within me?

And I think of my readers.

Do they do, can they even do anything to change themselves internally, and consequently change the environment?

Tricky questions!

Questions that are starting to annoy me a bit!

Yes, my dear blog friends, I am thinking of you, of your daily life, of all your burdens and constraints: rushing to work, taking care of the children and the spouse, working around the house; and despite these multiple and overwhelming activities, despite the tiredness, would you still have time to take care of your partner, and to make love?

And how do you manage in this exhausting period of pandemic and uncertainties, how do you manage to retreat to calm and "to be in tune with the Tao"... difficult, right?

You can always, like Patton, not zen, bawl out the Lord, it might calm your nerves, despite what people think. But then again...

... And after that ?

Enough is enough, the irritation increases, the anger boils over and, not zen at all, maybe you cry out, and so do I with you:

"- But I've had enough! I don't give a damn about the tao! I don't care about stammering prayers, even in the underground, where I can barely stand on my legs because of the exhaustion, or even sitting in my car stuck in the traffic jams. And afterwards, once at home, at the end of the day, I couldn't care less about meditating when I have to take care of the family and I can't take it anymore! And what am I going to do to harmonize stuff and whatnot? But what the hell do I care ?"

My dear blog friends, if these protests are yours, how I understand you! If not, please read my article anyway, which might teach you something. The messages of dreams are so surprising...

I think of you with all my heart and a dream came to my mind that I had interpreted a long time ago. I found it so simple, so beautiful, so comforting that I have already put it on my blog. Here it is again today, in a slightly different presentation. This dream is in fact for everyone, for those who seek to center themselves as well as for those who don't.

It is Loretta who received this dream. Christ appeared to her several times in her dreams.

And she aspires to experience this inner illumination again, this communion with the divine, or in other words, to become one with the Tao.

She received a dream that marked her and she confided it to me. Here it is:

Dream

I'm at my mother's house, sitting in her kitchen. The priest, Father André Marie, enters. I go to the bathroom. When I come back, he's not there anymore. I ask my mother:

- Did you offer him a coffee?

- I'm sorry, she says, I didn't think about it.

Silly story, prosaic dream. What does it mean?

Who are these different characters? Loretta explains:

My mother has been dead for several years. She was a devoted woman who did everything for her 7 children. She always had a lot of work to take care of her family and her house. She didn't show her affection with tender gestures, but everything she did she did with all of her heart.

Loretta immediately recognizes her own maternal side, which puts all her heart into taking care of her family.

The kitchen

In the home, it is the place par excellence where the mother shows her love by preparing lovely tasty dishes for her children with all the work involved. A kitchen is a warm and welcoming place, says Loretta, and it's a pleasure to gather there.

At that moment

the priest, Father André Marie, enters.

Let's analyse this symbol:

- What is a priest?

Loretta explains to me:

- He is a man who helps in the spiritual life, he guides towards God.

- And Father André Marie, can you tell me what he's like?

- He lives in everyday life, he knows me well, he always tells me that I push myself too hard, that I feel too guilty, that my efforts towards perfection and my desire for fulfilment don't necessarily lead me to God. He tells me that I am fine the way I am, that God loves me the way I am, with my imperfections.

I take up this description and ask:

- Loretta, tell me, someone who helps you in your spiritual life, who knows you well, who tells you that God loves you just the way you are, who does this remind you of outside or inside of you?

- On the outside, of Father André Marie of course...

Inside of me? Who would that be? Inside of me?

Loretta seeks, reflects and continues her monologue:

- In me, ... someone, who knows me? ... who tells me that God loves me as I am ...? But... couldn't it be... God?

God is the meaning that Loretta suggests for the image of the priest.

- Well, I said, we have a first hypothesis of interpretation. We will check it out.

I take up all the associations of the dreamer and ask:

- For you, does God live in everyday life?

- Yes, the dreamer answers, he is always present in my thoughts.

- Does he tell you that you push yourself too hard?

- Well, from time to time, like Father André Marie, something gives me the feeling that I make things too complicated to please God.

- To God, are you fine the way you are?

- Who is the one who won't reproach me, if not God?

We have carried out the checks, so the priest André Marie is indeed a representation of the Divine Force.

This is not the first time we have seen the divine appear in dreams in human form. It is even a common phenomenon. I have given many illustrations of it on my French blog. There is, for example, the dream of the American businessman whom God visits. In that dream, neither the businessman nor anyone else noticed that God was there: only the humble servant saw him, she was the one who announced his presence. (1)

Let's continue our study:

The priest enters the kitchen.

Ah! What does this detail tell us? We learn that it is in the kitchen that God chooses to present Himself. That is to say? The kitchen, Loretta told us, is the place where the mother manifests her love to the family by preparing lovely tasty dishes, it is a warm and welcoming place, it is the heart of the home.

And who does God visit?

Here God presents Himself to the devoted mother. It is to the maternal Loretta in her kitchen, who does nothing to seek God: but she shows her love to others by peeling potatoes, baking cakes, doing the dishes, and repeating these little tasks every day, with love and patience.

Thus the divine comes to accompany those who serve others with love and devotion, in the humble daily reality. The dream invites the dreamer to become aware of this.

But Loretta has only one idea in mind: to be impeccable, without fault, she only thinks of going to the bathroom to purify herself, to present herself pure before God.

The dreamer then explains to me that she practices several rituals to prepare herself, to harmonise with the divine forces and to come into contact with them. To do this, she surrounds herself with candles, practises visualisations, concentrating on the image of the face of the Virgin or of Christ.

And after that, this is what she finds out in the kitchen:

When I come back, Father André Marie is no longer there.

So, when she feels pure, she comes back to spend some time with the priest, to meet God, ... he is no longer there, ... he is gone.

So the divine had come to see her without worrying about her purity. As the priest André Marie said to Loretta: "God loves you as you are, with your impurities".

Loretta then asked her mother:

- Did you offer him a coffee?

- Sorry, I didn't think about it.

Now let's see what is ...

A coffee

- It's something you offer someone as a greeting, Loretta tells me.

- And what's it like?

- It's good, it's warm, it makes you feel good.

- Is there anything else you can tell me?

- No, ... I don't know.

What happens in the dream?

Neither Loretta nor her mother offered the priest a coffee. Neither of them welcomed the divine when he presented himself in the kitchen.

Yes, this is the meaning of the image. The dreamer said it right away: "Coffee is a way of greeting someone".

And the divine who appeared in the kitchen didn't get any coffee...

What a great spiritual lesson this little, seemingly silly dream gives us!

What does it teach us?

The fashionable purification rituals, the high aspirations to enter into a altered state of consciousness, in contact with the divine, or with "ascended" Masters, to empty oneself through meditations, to make efforts of concentration, breathing exercises, as proposed by many current approaches which are meant to be therapeutic, that, according to the dream, does not necessarily lead to a contact with the divine.

No, to get there, it's easy, too easy, very simple, too simple, too silly: as Loretta said, God, alias the priest André Marie, lives in everyday life, he accompanies us here below, every day, in our banal life, in this earthly mediocrity, from which we aspire to escape, to try to reach the magnificence of the divine celestial spheres.

However when the divine manifests itself in us within our everyday life, without brilliance, without miracle, without synchronicity, without anything sensational, without vibrations in the body, without trembling, without visualisations, without dazzling images, without Kundalini rising, without ecstasy, ... we forget to welcome Him where he appears.

When he comes to tell us :

"I love you as you are in your darkness and your modest little simple life, with your mistakes, your inadequacies, your weaknesses, that's where I am with you", we don't even offer him a coffee.

And yet!

What good news, my dear blog friends!

The dream has given us a lesson in the "kitchen tao", so to speak.

Now, what awaits us?

With perseverance we will struggle in our daily lives, busy with a thousand small dreary things; with dedication we will have to deal with the thousand little hassles of everyday life, working patiently, with a smile, welcoming the other with warmth, and there ...

Yes, there, even if we can't believe it, even if we want something else, yes, there, we will know that we are in our right place, we will know that the divine is there too, there he accompanies us and loves us as we are.

The altered states of consciousness? The spiritual awakening? The Tao? Emptying oneself? Following a discipline to meditate? Taking special positions? Doing Lotus Flower Mudra with your fingers? Breathing exercises? Some OM? Trying in some way to harmonise conscious and unconscious to save the planet?

No, the dream doesn't talk about it.

What it offers us is to be aware that our everyday life is sacred: God presents Himself discreetly at every moment in our humble experiences, even if our ego finds no gratification in it. Thus by welcoming the divine, by letting Him take His place in our small, inglorious daily life, our inner earth is cared for and our outer earth blossoms.

The Angelus by French painter Millet.
The Angelus is the prayer to which the bells call, in the morning, at noon and at the end of the day.

Next time, I will tell you the real story of a little boy who met God right in the middle of an everyday life incident.

Christiane

Translated by Marianne

French blog:

(1) the dream of the American businessman:

http://christiane-riedel.blogspirit.com/archive/2008/03/30/il-est-un-reve-etrange-et-debonnaire.html

Its interpretation:

http://christiane-riedel.blogspirit.com/archive/2008/04/22/il-est-un-reve-etrange-et-debonnaire-interpretation.html

Illustrations

I would like to thank the artists whose works allowed me to illustrate my blog.

The proposal: painting by contemporary Scottish artist Jack Vettriano.
http://tillart.co.uk/
https://www.jackvettriano.com/

Gandalf: arwen.undomiel.com

Procession: http://www.surinenglish.com/lifestyle/201803/16/passion-holy-week-andalucia-20180316093204-v.html

Mindfulness meditation: https://www.yogajournalfrance.fr/meditation-de-pleine-conscience-quid-pourquoi-pour-qui/

Overwhelming task:http://express.fr/actualite/societe/la-charge-mentale-le-syndrome-des-femmes-epuisees-d-avoir-a-penser-a-tout_1906874.html

Christ Face: "The transfiguration" of the contemporary French artist Arcabas (Jean-Marie Pirot), one of the greatest artists of contemporary sacred art, internationally recognised. http://www.arcabas.com/oeuvres/index.php

Kitchen: https://www.cuisineaz.com/diaporamas/cuisiner-en-famille-1306/interne/1.aspx

Meditation: espaceducalme.canalblog.com

The Priest André Marie: self-portrait of the painter Arcabas (Jean-Marie Pirot), who died in 2018. https://www.placegrenet.fr/2018/08/23/peintre-arcabas-decede-91-ans/203987

Radiant Christ: http://eucharistiemisericor.free.fr/index.php?page=misericorde_divine

The Angelus, painted from 1857 to 1859 by the French artist Millet (1814-1875), famous for his pastoral paintings. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'Angélus

This article was published on the French blog on 10 December 2019: http://christiane-riedel.blogspirit.com/archive/2019/12/10/et-moi-je-fais-quoi-3144790.html