The dream today has me in a school class room somewhere in Asia, Japan, I think. I am with a team of American educators who are investigating how learning is done in Asian schools. We have a documentary film crew along with us shooting our journey. I see us all seated in the back of a large classroom. There must be 50 some students in here. All of the students must be around ten or eleven years old. They are wearing uniforms.
Seated behind me in the back of the class is the leader of our group. He is a stocky middle aged man in his late forties with blond and greying hair. All of a sudden he has what looks like an epileptic seizure. Everyone turns to watch him thrash and foam at the mouth. The teacher at the head of the classroom, and his assistants, begin filing the students out of the classroom one row at a time. There is an urgent need to get the kids out of the way in order that emergency medical personnel can reach the man. I turn to watch the man in horror and wake up feeling helpless that I could not do anything to assist him.
We see reoccurring themes here in this dream. The chief symbols are a school and learning, and a film crew. These are all elements we have seen in previous dreams. Odd that school is playing such a major role in my dreams and unconscious. I have been out of school for a couple years now in the waking life yet the idea of it wants to make itself known. I must be having some secret yearning to go back to finish what I started all those years ago. Seeing our mature educator leader succumb to an illness is surely representative of myself. I have had my share of health problems too and I am middle aged man as well. The epilepsy is somewhat like my restless leg syndrome. I thrash quite a bit in my sleep. I grind my teeth as well. I have medication to control it.
The epileptic attack is sort of a figurative manifestation of my own frustrations at finishing my university degree. I left school thoroughly thwarted in reaching my goal and literally gnashing my teeth when the process was over. I walked away completely disgusted and disappointed with myself. The dream, I think, is a reflection of all my desires and feelings of despair surrounding that experience.
For one of my courses at university, Anthropology 101, I did a study of the differences between American and Asian schools. In fact, here is the link to a video I posted on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAPy35ylakI
It was eight years ago almost to the month that this happen! Strange that it is so firmly lodged into my unconscious. I thoroughly enjoyed that class (way more than I should have). There is definitely synchronicity afoot in all of this! In the video I am in a classroom watching an American made documentary of American educators in Asian schools and we are studying the differences between Asian, and American teaching modalities. The similarities to the dream are startling. This cannot be a mere coincidence.
So how do we wrap up an interpretation of all this? What is the take away? My unconscious and conscious self loves Anthropology. That much is certain. I once considered going in that direction for a career. Overall, I am a man deeply interested in what it means to be human and getting to the bottom of mysteries. What greater mystery is there than this? Who are we? What are we? Where have we been and where are we going, as individuals, a society, and a species?
I have an endless fascination with all this and it is still my view that dream analysis is the greatest tool to getting any satisfying or useful answers. This dream, I believe, is a nudge from my unconscious to consider these larger philosophical questions. There is an urge in me to respond or act, but I am uncertain just what is the right response should be. This is so typical of me!
Unconscious, I acknowledge the message. How do I integrate what you have shown me into my conscious life? Sometimes dreams teach us spiritual lessons and sometimes they are prophetic. What do we have here? Am I soon to be wandering classrooms in Japan with a film crew and suffer a seizure? Or am I just to heed what the unconscious is expressing to me and use it in some manner in my conscious life? I don't know at this time, but I always keep an open mind toward what may or may not come my way. To my way of thinking this is the best strategy to contending with dreams. The mystery cannot fully manifest if you put it too tightly in a box. I try to move about the dimensions with eyes wide open even when I am dreaming. I pledge to fully engage every dream no matter how weird they get. Ha, ha!!
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