In this morning’s dream, on waking naturally at 5.30am again, I was in the recurring dream setting of being back in my bhakti yoga ashram of my youth, among numerous other members. The setting was curiously at the beach front road of my childhood home in Cape Town, a lovely place. The ashram seemed to be located there in this dream scene. Amazingly my head spiritual teacher was present among us in the dream and he instructed me to prepare the regular large scale food distribution meal, so that we could feed the hungry on the street outside.
This used to be my service, among others, for some years in the ashram. We would collect donations of excess vegetables as charity, or sponsorship of cash, and I would cook up a huge pot as big as a round bath tub – of rice, dhal and vegetables, to feed a few hundred people. This would happen maybe twice a week, in a big gas burner in the kitchen courtyard of the ashram building.
Then I would drive our group out to one of the poorer African locations or townships, as they are called, on the outer edge of Cape Town city, and we would bring out bins full of fresh hot cooked “kitchari” a traditional simple but wholesome Indian meal of rice, dhal and vegetables. The local kids would run up to our van to meet us, lining up with their plastic containers or pots to receive a nice helping of dinner for themselves or their family. We could feed a few hundred people at a time like this, and it went on for a few years. In fact it was still going on at the yoga ashram until covid, in Cape Town, where other newer monks continue the service.
So for this image to be so strong in today’s dream is quite valuable. In the dream I had clear recall of some details, like my teacher being very present and personally involved with me, not aloof but by my side. I recall urgently looking in the refrigerator and wondering what there was to cook.
At some point we were outside the building, on the coastal promenade by the seaside in the dream scene, much like my childhood home suburb. In reality I lived in this suburb as a child, but the actual ashram was never by the seaside, so the dream has taken various parts and put them together.
Somehow there is also a fragment of part of the dream scene where we are now in a group in the city center of Cape Town and the streets are somewhat empty, as if it is after hours on a weekend and there are no cars or people. The guru suddenly is dancing and singing in the middle of the road, with carefree abandon, and I have to run to catch up. I have a drum to play, since I was the drummer during my ashram days, where we chanted and sang a lot of bhajan and kirtan daily.
The one drum I am given is not fully working, so I see a second drum which I take and begin playing musically while we all follow the guru dancing through the streets of the CBD, in the heart of the city center. These are all impressions of my youth, where I did these kinds of things regularly, but in this dream the pertinent point is the closeness and familiarity of the spiritual teacher, who I have not seen or heard of for decades, since my time in the ashram of my youth.
His presence in the dream, directing me to cook and feed the public, as well as sing and dance with carefree abandon down the middle of the empty street, is the interesting symbol for me today. Personally nowadays I’m much more of a hermit, and seldom engage in public activity. Perhaps I’m being called to go public, so to speak. The symbol of the center of the city of my youth, is perhaps suggestive of the heart – the heart of the city of the realm of the unconscious.
It looks like a very auspicious dream overall, so let me meditate on that further and see what interpretations relate to my personal life at this time in history of the journey of self-discovery and ultimate liberation. Singing and dancing down the middle of the street certainly feels like a symbol of liberation.
This blog recording of my drams may not appeal to anyone much, but I’m doing it as a personal journal entry to record my dreams, as I used to in my youth, as a way to stimulate more recall, and to share the process, so that you can also take up this art of tapping in to your unconscious for the messages of guidance you can receive.