Mysticism can erupt while in a dream. If you believe, you can see the future or better understand the past. You can dream up a vision and let your heart turn to what you really love, rather than be satisfied with what you already have — or have not!

I like to day dream. No, I’m not talking about the proverbial grammar school child who looks out the schoolroom window and lets his or her imagination go wherever it wants to wonder. That can be a trigger for those of us who like to write.

But I’m talking about the Jungian experience. What the psychologist Carl G Jung talked about. Dreaming while awake but in a state of understanding and synchronicity with some non-ordinary thought or idea and a material stimuli that appears in one’s daily world. He called it “active imagination” which I applied during a “individuation process,” another term the eminent Austrian psychologist coined for personal growth through self-exploration.

I wrote a Blog for the first time after dreaming about Socrates and then seeing him come to life in a day-dream the next day. I saw the Greek philosopher as an angel who guided Plato in his writings, many of which the younger man used to express what his master teacher spoke about, but never put into writing.

——-

Day dreams can come true if you believe in “active imagination”

I spoke a lot about angels shortly after those two highly unusual experiences. I realized that I “saw” the manipulation of the angels in many of the persons that had guided me through my life, be it for good or to ward off the bad.

I feel them today, but only upon reflection and contemplation, if you know what I mean.

Let me point out a few for your mystical inquiry . . .

———

— In 1968, my brother urged me to become an officer in the army and I went to officer’s Candidate’s School and led a platoon in Vietnam, causing me to grow up at the ripe old age of 21.

— My family’s Scottish neighbor suggested I study journalism after being discharged from the army. (I became a newspaper reporter because of him.) At the time however, I didn’t know what I wanted to be “when I grew up.”He asked what I studied in high school. “Printing,” I said. “Take journalism,” he said. “They’re both the same.”

— And lastly, my Vietnam buddy Charlie Brown somehow got into law school on the West Coast. I couldn’t believe it.That event caused a light bulb to shine forth inside of me. If a person like Charlie Brown — that wonderful pot-head who I smoked grass with while putting to bed the Temple News, the university newspaper — could become a lawyer, this schmuck of a Greek boy could do the same, I said to myself.

——-

They appeared in my life at different stages and at different times. All of them had in common the ability to guide me to new path, a new journey. I have been fortunate to be open to such good advice and soul-searching. I believe that each were guided themselves by some spiritual force with the main intent for them to counsel me as a young man.

These life-altering events materialized from dream-like experiences in my life. No, I didn’t see them while asleep. All materialized during waking hours and in daylight visions.

Mysticism works that way sometimes. Reflect on your own life, and see if there were people who guided you to make the choices you did.

Thank them the next time you see or talk to ’em!

Michael J