Last week I dreamed that a group of people entered my home on Sophia Street. They filed in, one by one, and sat in my living room. They represented various ages, economic classes and ability levels. They did not say why they were there. They did not say anything. They just waited, quietly.

One sat down on the floor and made a pile of the dust. I went to my broom closet but could not find a suitable broom. 

I looked out the large window and saw a man skateboarding through the sky in a graceful arc. A rainbow trailed from the back of his skateboard. He landed in the street and vanished.

No one spoke. They just waited, quietly.

***

One could say a great deal about this silent group that visited me last week. Inner tribunal? Inner witnesses? Thoughts and feelings present to me, hinting that I should be present to them?

This week, one aspect of the dream continues to surprise me. It turns out that many of the dream’s images depict future events, events that happened in the days after the dream. A person waiting for me unannounced, a utility closet containing all the wrong brooms for the job, a rainbow landing right on Sophia Street.

This is not unique; I have had other notable dreams showing future scenes, with a high level of literal detail. Two especially stand out in my mind.

The first dream came as I was beginning to look for work as a part-time university teacher of philosophy (1987). In the dream, I was asked to teach a psychology course. I tried, and the result was disastrous. In waking life, the day after the dream I received a phone call inviting me to an interview. At the interview, a week later, they asked if I could also teach psychology. My interviewer was a nun, so I told her about the dream. She agreed it would be wise to decline the second course.

The second dream came three months before I decided to apply for a full-time rabbinic position (2003). In the first scene, I sold my home filled with memorabilia; in the next scene, I looked out at a city on a bay; in the final scene, I attended a Jewish Renewal event. In waking life, eight months later, our family decided to sell our home, move to Vancouver, and become part of Or Shalom. We drove across the Lions Gate Bridge, looking out at the city from my dream.

Experiences like this make people wonder about the nature of time. Is the time we experience only linear, as clocks and calendars represent it? Clearly it’s not, and we don’t need special dreams to tell us this. In any given day, our consciousness shifts between past, present and future. Memories of the past pop up to colour our experience of the present; our present leads us to project a future; our hopes for the future change our grasp of the past; and so it goes, on and on, in a 3-way round robin.

Experiences like this also make people wonder about the nature of the human mind. How far past our immediate perceptions does the mind reach? Quite far, clearly, as we are always using our immediate experience to make general rules about life, people, and everything. Sometimes the generalizations are verified, and sometimes they are not — just like dream images of possible futures.

My own burning question is really about the nature of dreams. What does it mean if a dream turns out to be filled with images of future events? Is there any one “thing” it means?

The two older, powerful dreams marked inner openings that made it possible to walk new professional paths. Big changes into new futures were unfolding. When, in the course of time, the waking life version of the dream scene presented itself, I recognized it instantly, all at once.

But this dream is more of a teaser. Its imagery appears in waking life only bit by bit. Slowly, the dream draws me into future realities. Something is changing, I don’t know what, except that it comes in small increments.

“Don’t forget to keep me close,” the dream seems to say. “You will need my wisdom as life unfolds before you.”

— Image: Sophia Street rainbow, photo taken today by Laura Duhan Kaplan