By Dr. Michael Lennox
Dreams are universal. Most human beings are familiar with the crazy nighttime phenomena, where anything can happen and probably will, where impossible narratives unfold with a psychedelic complexity. But there are other kinds of dreams, for in the sleep state our thinking minds are also sleeping. In that quietude, we become open to much more mystical experiences, such as precognitive dreams that portend the future, visitations from loved ones that have passed away, lucid dreaming, and even shared dreams. Two people sharing the same dream sounds like something right out of a movie, but this does in fact happen. Here is a story of an extraordinary and beautiful shared dream experience that illustrates the magnitude of the mystical connection between two close friends.
Blaire and Amanda went away for a long weekend to a beautiful cabin in the woods. They both needed a break. Amanda’s father had just died, and Blaire’s father was very sick. Blaire reports having intuitive gifts for perceiving energy, and as lovely as this cabin was, there was something about it that felt dark and not quite right. Feeling silly, Blaire said nothing to her friend, though the feeling wouldn’t abate. One afternoon, the two decided to curl up for a nap together. Privately, Blaire felt relieved that Amanda was willing to cuddle, because that feeling had persisted, and Blaire did not really want to sleep by herself. After 45 minutes, they both woke up screaming and shaking.
As it turns out, both women had been dreaming almost the same thing. Both dreamt that something terrible and dangerous was coming to get them. For Amanda it was two men. In Blaire’s dream, it was much more energetic, like a menacing dark force. Amanda saw the heads of baby dolls and Blaire saw actual murdered babies. Though the details were different, the feelings they described to each other seemed the same. And as it turns out, Amanda was also having the same negative feelings about the cabin, and she also chose to stay silent about her feelings. Of course, by now they both agreed that no matter what, it was time to go, so they packed their things and left immediately.
That experience was an absolute turning point for Blaire. She possessed an innate spirituality, but due to a traumatic childhood environment that was unreceptive to such sensibilities, she had shut those perceptions down. This powerful shared dream experience opened her up to begin exploring her spiritual nature in earnest. They never found out if there was anything to the dark sensations of the cabin, but the story does not end there. When I was preparing for my new book, Psychic Dreamer, I reached out to Blaire and discovered that the two were at it again.
Initially it was an innocuous little dream experience that inspired a phone call, where Amanda told Blaire about what she referred to as an awful dream that her father, who was dead in waking life, was still alive, and actually had been for many years. The sensation of the dream seemed connected to the notion that he had been alive and on the planet for all this time, but Amanda had not been aware of this, and the news of it felt devastating. “That’s outrageous,” replied Blaire, “I had a dream last night that my father was alive, and I was delighted.” I hadn't known he was there, but I was so delighted he was.” At the time, the meaning the two of them mused about dealt more with the notion of father issues, but as this story winds to its stunning conclusion, the two sides of the same coin dream about fathers were really two sides of the coin of the powerful and final separation that death engenders.
Remember the cabin in the woods? It was actually a decades long tradition that at least twice a year, Blaire and Amanda would run away to the woods together and enjoy retreats from urban life. One particular trip started out like any other, marked by the usual sense of freedom and ease that comes with a slower pace and lots of outdoor space. But this trip felt decidedly different. Blaire would wake up terrified each night in a panic that she had not locked the door, while not locking the door in waking life was a powerful ritual that represented the freedom that these trips offered.
These panic dreams propelled Blaire out of bed and into the living room where she would lock the front door, as well as the sliding glass doors in the back. On the fourth night, she even took to sleeping on the couch, as she thought that if indeed there was something malevolent coming to the house, she wanted to be downstair, where she could be in a better place to offer protection. The dream on that night was even more upsetting, where the cabin they were in suddenly sported a second-floor gallery where Blaire could feel deliberate malevolence, a kind of “deliberate mischief,” as she put it. On the fourth morning, Blaire had had enough. The feeling that something evil was coming for Amanda was too great, and Blaire told Amanda, “We’ve got to get you out of here.”
Nobody knew that Amanda was sick. Not even Amanda. This trip was in May, and by that June, she was diagnosed with stage five glioblastoma, an inoperable tumor in the middle of her brain, in the form of a star. The oncologists declared that they had never seen anything like it, and by the end of the month, Amanda had passed. There were tremendous phenomena that Blaire experienced, both as Amanda moved through the semi-comatose twilight before she passed, as well as a sense of constant visitation in dreams since her passing. And though Blaire’s grief is epic, the connection that these two women shared in physical form is something that has not broken: like the two sides of the coin of their shared dream. Amanda’s passing is like that for Blaire. One side is heartbroken at the loss, the other side feels the connection as eternal.
Not every friendship is blessed with such organic and powerful connections as vibrantly as Blaire shares with Amanda. The bonds of friendship and intimacy are powerful, and operate in realms that are ultimately mysterious, and these connections can be explored in dreamwork. Whether it is having shared dreams with others, dreams that predict future events, visitations by loved ones who have passed, lucid dreaming; in dreams, all of us connect more powerfully to our intuition.
Explore those themes and more with my new book, Psychic Dreamer: Exploring the Connection between Dreams and Intuitions, being released this January.
From Psychic Dreamer: Exploring the Connection between Dreams and Intuition © 2024 by Dr. Michael Lennox. Used by permission from Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd., www.Llewellyn.com.
Dr. Michael Lennox is a psychologist, astrologer, and expert in dreams and dream interpretation. He teaches classes in self-investigation to a worldwide audience and is the host of the weekly podcast, Conscious Embodiment: Astrology and Dreams. He is also the author of Psychic Dreamer, Llewellyn's Complete Dictionary of Dreams, Llewellyn's Little Book of Dreams, and Dream Sight.
Visit him online at www.michaellennox.com