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Receiving Symbolic Guidance from a Spiritual Teacher

Overcoming Difficulties

Experience submitted by Karim
Experience submitted by Karim

In a dream, I saw myself and two other persons standing next to a big audience which was seated in front of a stage, such as you would see at a conference talk. On the stage there was the main speaker.

The speaker was actually flaring or guiding the whole crowd to be negative towards the three of us, with arguments that were full of “feeling right“, but actually had the enjoyment of antagonism and negativity behind it.

All the people in the crowds were very willingly directed like that to turn against us. We held our ground and stood by what we knew to be true and expressed it, even in the face of that hostility of the big group.

After the talk the speaker came up to us and addressed us saying: “So You Think That …[……]….?!” Without mentioning the specifics what he said basically boiled down to that we believed the spiritual work to awaken was something that could take place right now, not just something that can only happen in the past and to be talked about now.

The three of us standing there remained silent, as in “we hold our stance to what we have expressed.” Then, as if we’d passed a little test, something happened. The crowds disappeared. And the speaker changed into his true appearance of a spiritual teacher that I knew.

Receiving Further Guidance

Moments later I found myself in the back of a street in my hometown on a grassy play area. There, kneeling on the grass, was the same spiritual teacher.

In front of him was a student. I also joined and sat down on my knees in the same position as they were, but facing the teacher. There was a particular atmosphere of learning in the air.

I felt very conscious and was keenly and patiently observing the scene with full focus. The spiritual teacher didn’t say any words, but very deliberately acted in a symbolic way.

As a natural follow up of me so keenly paying attention, eager to learn, I repeated the same gesture he made and while doing this I was trying to intuitively feel what this symbolic action meant. I got a feeling somewhere deep inside of what it was conveying, but it hadn’t yet fully clicked.

I was contemplating it “on the way back to my body.” Only then when I actively involved my mind consciously, following up on that intuitive feeling, did it become more articulated and understood.

With that symbolic gesture I now knew what I needed to apply and live in my life: self-observation.

 

18 comments
  • Thank you Karim for sharing those beautiful experiences and by sharing them their message keeps giving.

    I think its also a helpful message for people who may be looking and trying to understand how spiritual beings can teach us through dreams and conscious experiences and that its a real experience.

    Lastly it just goes to show how in our efforts to learn about ourselves, we have the opportunity to grew firm in our experience of it all, its as if the two are the one and the same.

  • Hey there Karim,

    LIke others have said already, thanks very much for sharing your experience. Such a wonderful opportunity for you to learn. Clearly, you
    have been making many efforts to be aware during your wakeful hours so that you could be really clear in your dream experiences.

    It is quite admirable to hold strong to your beliefs like you did in the face of so much antagonism and opposition – I am not sure I would be as strong, to honest.

    And the direct teaching you received regarding self-observation is so simple yet very powerful. It really is such an important aspect of this internal work. As Belsebuub says, we cannot know or eliminate what we cannot see within.

    Great teachings, thanks for sharing! 🙂

  • Thank you Karim for sharing your very inspiring experiences. You deeply touched me in the way you were taught in both of them. I also can understand what you mean about following that intuitive feeling without understanding it clearly enough. It’s amazing how precious our dreams are for our inner learning, how much care and help we are given from above through them. Thank you again, and wishing you much more inspiring teaching experiences!

  • Thank you for sharing your experiences Karim. It’s interesting how you needed to activate the mind to understand what was conveyed in the second experience. I can’t think of what that means.

    I also found it interesting how a spiritual being took the role of the opposition in the first experience. It goes contrary to common perceptions of a spiritual being, but makes complete sense when we know about passing tests in dreams. Well done on that test!

    • Yes, I’ve sometimes had spiritual beings act much differently than I would’ve thought they would in order to teach or show me something.

  • Thanks for sharing those experiences Karim. It sounds like the learning you gained in the second experience was connected to your approach in the first one. The latter experience also highlighted the importance of self-observation as a fundamental principle of spiritual change.

  • That sounds like some wonderful teachings indeed! It was interesting for me to read that you were not alone in the first experience, but accompanied by 2 more people. I wondered if those felt more like aspects of yourself, or if they were possibly real people.
    The second experience sounds also very profound, especially how the movements have their own language with which they speak.

    • I think in this case they were not aspects of myself (as I was present myself as well with the right inner attitude) but I also don’t think they were real people (although I’m not excluding it entirely.) Rather I think they were representations of people who were in the same boat as me. Trying to live the teachings spoken about and having the will to stand up for them.

    • Sorry, yes the teaching through a particular movement felt wonderful. There was this ‘silence is golden’ in the air and yet there was this one very slow and deliberate movement performed solemnly. I felt the same when reenacting that movement.

  • It’s wonderful that you had the strength to face all the negativity and stand up for the spiritual work, even in a dream! The ensuing teaching afterwards was well-deserved!

    It’s quite cool that even movements have symbolic teachings within them. Thank you for relaying that message to us on the importance of self-observation.

    • Thanks Mike. Yes I think the choice I made there was a good sign. Yet I also see in everyday life, even in very little things!, how I sort of cower from confrontational encounters. So there’s a lot to work on for me personally to overcome those fears.

  • Thank you for sharing Karim. The first experience seems very strong to me. To stand in silence and not give into the pressure of the people around you. To stand your ground. And the second experience really makes me feel how important self-observation is. That it’s something that needs to be worked on a lot.

  • Sounds wonderful Karim, I’m happy for you that you received such an experience! Wonderful that you could stand strong in the face of that onslaught and that it brought you such a valuable teaching. It’s amazing to me how much the immense work of awakening can be brought back down to incredibly simple practices carried out in every day life.

    • Yes in a sense it’s amazing how that daily work we of self-observation we do, on our own (although there’s a lot of help of course), in our psyche, the moments in everyday life where we’re studying ourselves— that this has such great importance. As became more clear to me due to this great spiritual teacher choosing to convey this to me, to teach me that.

  • Thanks Karim for sharing these very special experiences. Your first one must be a great boost for you to carry on with the same perseverance working on the different layers of negativity and its aspects, wishing you to pass next tests too with as much zeal as you ‘defended’ your very robust stance in your dream. Your second one is a great message for everyone seeking for awakening and in accordance with the greater emphasis placed by a spiritual teacher.

  • Very nice experiences Karim, thank you for sharing. It seems they both had to do with self-knowledge, even the first one in a way. It was also interesting to hear how a spiritual being knows very well how to “play” the opposition if they want to, for the sake of learning, since they understand the principles of how things operate.

    • It was a nice moment when that strong and authoritative figure (who I was not able to agree with due to what I was standing for), that this opposing person ‘melted away’ into a kind and wise spiritual being who was on my side. In that exact moment when the whole scene and his appearance melted away he spoke some kind and deep words to/within me.

Who Is Belsebuub?

Belsebuub is an author who has previously published several books on dreams and out-of-body experiences and has discussed these topics widely in the media. He withdrew from public life in 2010. Read more about Belsebuub's work on dreams...

More Experience Sites

More experiences with Belsebuub's work:
- Mystical Experiences
- Out-of-Body Experiences
- Self-Discovery

Read more about this series of sites here.