“I think for most of us, the encounter with the Divine is mediated through our dreams. We have tended to diminish the importance of dreams because of the Greek belief that dreams were simply an imitation of waking life. If that wasn’t enough to discourage the Western mind, Freud’s view of dreams as merely expressions of sexuality and aggression added to our disparagement of dreaming. Fortunately, we have had Jung, Morton Kelsey, Edgar Cayce and others to overturn these limiting views.
But we really don’t need anyone to tell us that God speaks to us in dreams. Indeed, anyone who pays attention to their dreams will soon discover that they are the doorway to deeper experiences, and the place where God meets us face-to-face — sometimes as a person and sometimes as light and ecstasy.
My first experience of Jesus was in a dream that took place in the A.R.E. (Association for Research and Enlightenment) auditorium. He was surrounded by light, but clearly a man, too.
He simply asked me, ‘Are you ready to leave the Earth yet?’ Of course, I said no! He replied, ‘Then go out and do what you know to do.’ He didn’t tell me what to do, only to do what I knew to do!
Such open-ended commissions are again, ‘self-validating,’ because they come to redirect us in our journey, but never to rob us of our choices. Everyone wants to know, ‘What did He tell you?’ But I have learned that Christ rarely, if ever, tells us what to do — only to support us in finding the courage and inspiration to do the difficult work of loving. Christ challenges us to have the courage to do what we need to do. He rarely does it for us, but manifests to remind us that we already have something within our reach that will resolve the problem.
Certainly, this dream leaves the dreamer faced with additional work, but with additional clarity about what he needs to do. None of us is ever rescued from the timely, urgent tasks of our lives, no matter how much the Divine might have anointed us in our dreams or in moments of quiet devotion. We still face hard, timely, independent choices through which the ship of our life can be redirected and others benefited.”
“When we are asleep, or when our physical consciousness is dormant, the subconscious or spirit consciousness is more awake. Through such experience, and in such a state, all of the higher forces are more able or liable to be able to communicate, or to make impressions upon us. ” READING 569-6
January-March 2026 A.R.E.Magazine, Venture Inward, “Sacred Encounters With Jesus,” G. Scott Sparrow, EdD., Pgs. 38-39.
