I am talking with a young woman about how I relate to a particular situation involving someone else, and how I can relate to it from a Big Mind space (nondual, neutral, detached) or from essence (soulfulness and more engaged). She says "I like it better when you bring essence to it".

The woman in the dream is someone from a bodywork intensive I am currently in. And essence is here used in a similar way as in the Diamond Heart (A. H. Almaas) approach, at least when they use it in a more relative sense.

A few minutes after I woke up, a quite remarkable synchronicity happend.

I am carpooling with another woman from the intensive. This morning, one of the first thing she brought up was essence - used in the same way as in the dream, expressing and interest in and attraction to essence. I mentioned the dream to her, and it turned out that the issue brought up in the dream had been on her mind recently as well. We have not talked about essence before, as far as I can recall, and it is not a term I usually use (I tend to prefer soul).

When we talk, there is often a sense that there is one mind dialoguing with itself - an ease of connection and understanding, and this synchronicity is just one example of that sense of one mind dialoging.

The dream reflects a conscious issue that often comes up when I do these bodywork intensives: the relationships between my human self, my essence (soul level) and the nondual. (Although these are of course only what appears when a story is added onto what is).

The soul level gives a sense of fullness, meaning, direction and guidance. The nondual - or rather a nondual awakening, gives release from any identification with any phenomena, including this human self. And this human self is the vehicle in the world of phenomena.

Without the soul level, there is a sense of shallowness and coldness. Without the nondual, there is blind identification with fragments and a sense of struggle and drama. Without the human self, there is no functional connection in the world of phenomena.

For a while now, there is been a need for me to bring the soul level more into awareness and this life - along with the two others. It used to be more present, but has now been in the background for a while. And the dream seems to point to just that.

In Jungian terms, the dream is the anima reminding me to bring the soul - and soulfulness - more into my life.

Labels: almaas, dream