The following is another installment in the series of dreams with apocalyptic themes that I began here.

On 6/11/06, I dreamt that I was walking along the shore when I observed super high waves. I saw that there were people riding the waves, like surfers without boards. One of them was wearing a T-shirt with some kind of phrase or emblem that made me realize I was one of them. We all were tuned into the same frequency, following the same calling.We reached the shore at the special place that has long called me in real life. We were being called there for some kind of earth event.

Suddenly it was upon me to lead everyone, but I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t want to mislead, so I was at a loss as to what to do. I decided to silence my mind, follow my intuition and walk. And so I did, with the others following, until I led us away from the shore, over the road and across a field. Then we came upon a strange circle of stones and ritualistic objects. I asked those around me to stop and wait here to allow the group to gather.

Later I saw boulders moving up a mountain on their sides, so I urged everyone up that mountain. Then, in my mind, I decided it was a certain mountain that is special to me in real life. I am not sure, but I may have forced that identity onto the mountain instead of just letting it emerge. At any rate, when we reached the top, the world around us was transformed so that it was dark, red and smoky with volcanoes erupting all around.

But this latter part was abstract, or viewed from a distance, as in a movie. I found my dream self again in the formal gardens of a mansion from the gilded age. I was trying to find the secret to transformation – initiation. There was some secret word or key I needed.

People were not pleased about me being at the mansion. There were many guests about in twenties clothes. There was a butler in formal butler-wear. I was alone at a stone patio table in the garden. I found there was lunch there and I ate it, though afterwards I worried that I had taken liberties. I couldn’t remember how I had come upon the lunch.

There was some kind of intrigue with a dark secret and the couple who owned the place and a butler. I think the wife ended up killing the butler. This was going on in the background, but I wasn’t particularly interested in it. I was trying to uncover my own secret and it was of a completely different nature.

Somehow “turkey” was important – I realized it was the secret word I was looking for. Then I found myself at the top of a needle-like tower. Turkey tower? I thought to myself and then jumped off the top, sailing downward spread eagle.

On the way down, there were remarkable thoughts and experiences that unfortunately I cannot remember/make sense of outside the dream. But I do remember the ending: I opened my heart and by my own will dissolved myself before I hit the ground.

* * *

When I woke, I immediately transcribed the dream to my best recollection. “Turkey” stood out in more ways than one. Many years ago, when I was in high school, I had a dream in which the word “turkey” occurred with strange and inexplicable importance. Now here it was again, this time as a secret word or key. Right away I saw “turn key” in it. Then I connected the tower to the Tower key in the Tarot and meditated on it.

Little did I know that I my own Tower experience was starting to set up in shadows and would arrive that fall.

I had this dream on September 13th . . . the setting was like a high school but it was peopled with my coworkers. We were ushered into a classroom where a woman addressed us. She started saying that we should all bow our heads to pray and I protested that it was an inappropriate assignment in work/school because not everyone does that, at least not in the mainstream way. But then she revealed it was a trick opening – she was actually there to give us some kind of diversity/tolerance training. She started throw out questions like “Which is which – play or punish?” I know that doesn’t make sense, but in my dream they were supposed to be pairs of good/bad opposites and it seemed that we were to assign them. But once again they were trick questions because the correct answer was always good and good.

I soon realized that this “diversity training” was actually mystery school teaching in disguise! Somebody was cleverly trying to put out ancient esoteric wisdom in a form palatable to the mainstream. So we went through the “training” and it was a lot of fun. At the end, the teacher “graduated” us with a dramatic speech that consciously employed rhetoric from an initiation ritual. We were supposed to take it as a mock initiation, but I knew it was a REAL initiation of sorts. She gave us each a small chest that was supposed to look like an old treasure chest. Inside were two “mock” potions in beautiful little bottles. One said “mockumentary” which I know makes no sense but I had the idea it was a “mock” initiation ritual drink.

The second was a “mock” potion labeled “wisdom” – or at least that’s how I took it. There was also some kind of lottery ticket/envelope that said you might be the winner of $100 if you looked inside. Most people were playing around with the stuff in their chests, making lighthearted toasts and so forth. I thought these things were only pretending to be fake. In other words, I thought they were real, so I wanted to treasure them and drink the potions mindfully later when I was alone and in a meditative state. I hid my box and went around to check in with others. Soon I learned that everyone had $100 in their envelope! (I hadn’t bothered to open that, since I was more interested in the potions.) I rushed back to find my chest and ran into the teacher. I praised her on the work she was doing and she told me how two people wrote/designed the course – a man and a woman. He was very factual and she was very imaginative. Then I woke up.

Two years ago I dreamt that I was seated at a lunch table with an odd mix of former/current friends and acquaintances from high school, college and work. They were very involved in some drama as a group — comedy or tragedy, I do not know. I felt detached and alienated from them. It was clear I did not fit in.

There was something strange about the cafeteria. Everyone inside was carrying on as if it were a normal cafeteria that you’d find at work or school, but it was actually a pavilion, with a ceiling and floor but no walls. I was sitting there, with the group but detached from it, looking out at the forest just beyond where the back wall should have been. My gaze came into focus on the trees.

At the edge of the wood, I realized, stood a glowing green man. This man was looking at me. In fact, it appeared he was waiting there for me. No one else noticed him.

When I say he was glowing, I mean lit from within, like a light bulb. The light was a gentle green. (He was not green-skinned like the Hulk.) I was not afraid to see him, but there was a shivery importance to his appearance. I left my friends at the table, left the phony cafeteria and joined him at the wood’s edge. We embraced. I was awash in overwhelming love. It thickened at my chest and throat so that it almost felt like it would spill over and I’d choke. I was overjoyed, but in the midst of this, some wiser part of me understood that I was not ready. We pulled apart and the dream faded.

I had this dream at a time of internal crisis. My life was racing full throttle in one direction while inside I was trying to go the opposite road. My job had become a monster that was crowding me out of my life. I couldn’t breathe. The dream gave me some hope and validation for what I was feeling. A couple months afterward, I up and quit my “upwardly mobile” job with no other job lined up. Just some crazy idea about being on my own little grail quest.

I haven’t seen the glowing green man since, but I am always looking.