Intuition and Dreaming - Lent 2023: Day 25

And Lo! Did I dream... I was in a garden centre somewhere in the Thames Valley (Pangbourne? Goring?); a Victorian-style conservatory, cast-iron painted white, glass walls and roof. I was just about to buy a sapling pine; the small tree was about 25cm high, in a clear plastic pot. A slender grey stem, some needles sprouting at the top. I was about to take it to the checkout and pay for it, when suddenly I felt my intuition telling me calmly: "This tree will not take root in your garden - put it back." 

And as that intuition came to me, I realised immediately that I was dreaming, and that in fact this dream of an intuition was the very first time in my life that I had dreamed of intuition! A lovely moment of lucid dreaming! The dream, as usually happens, then drifted off into other, less memorable, themes, but the moment stayed with me until I woke. I wrote it down in my notebook [See, coincidentally, my injunction on the 25th day of Lent last year to... write everything down.]

As I write these words, I can see in my mind's eye - I can feel the klimat, the atmosphere - of the garden centre, quite posh, beyond it the escarpment of the river valley, a low, rocky, cliff-lined wall with trees. It is early summer.

And so it seems that my recent series of Lenten blog posts about intuition has worked its way into my subconsciousness. A new way of looking at the world. 

Does it have practical meaning though? Something I should act upon? That I, Dembinski, should avoid garden centres? 

I have indeed been considering buying some blackcurrant bushes to plant in my garden. And I have noticed a few days ago a couple of pine saplings emerging from the soil near my apple trees. My own trials of grow pine saplings from cones failed, while the acorns I planted the same way have successfully taken root. Maybe the soil was wrong? 

Well, I can certainly detect day-to-day trains of thought being recycled and recombined in the dream. The Thames Valley setting? A typical disjunctive cognition. [Coincidence corner - on my desk I have a blank sheet of paper; just now, I turn it over to see what's on the other side - it's a to-do list from Monday 27 February, written in black biro. Just two words written in red biro: 'DISJUNCTIVE COGNITION']

But back to the question in hand - should I buy the blackcurrant bushes? Do dreams serve as warnings?

Yes, I should buy the blackcurrant bushes. But the dream, if anything, stands as a warning against complacency. The bushes, if bought, will only grow and flourish if a) I will them to grow, unhindered by unseasonal frosts or hail or other random events, and b) if I look after them.

Intuitions like this, whether dreaming or awake, signal the observer to draw from out of the future, by act of will, an optimal outcome. These intuitions do not serve not prophecies - they do not mean that "something that I will invest in is likely to die" - rather they are warning signals to heed, meaning "watch out for something, and to will it to go the right way."

Lent 2022: Day 25
Writing It All Down

Lent 2021: Day 25
Faith and Knowledge

Lent 2020: Day 25
Chances, complacency and gratitude