I am with a lively crowd at a large table in a restaurant. Our mood is festive not only because of the season, but because of the fun of being together and sharing adventures in the workshop I was leading earlier in the day. Though the table is big, we are a little cramped because of our numbers. In fact a little man has been seated right in front of me, partly blocking my view of a woman across the table with whom I am talking.

How did he get there? I see now that there is a gap in the middle of the table; what I thought was one giant table must be many smaller ones pushed together, their joins concealed by white tablecloths. The little man is seated in the gap, with his back to me. I notice the long strands of dark hair he has slicked back over his bald patch. I don’t recognize him as a member of our group, but his presence doesn’t bother me.

We have finished our starter salads, and wait for what seems like a long time for the main course. When a bevy of servers arrive with food on carts, it becomes clear that a mistake has been made. They are about to serve us dessert, but we have not yet had our main course. I make this clear to the head waiter. Confused, he says he’ll have to go and check with the kitchen.

We are waiting again, and people are getting hungry. I notice people at another table coming back with trays piled high with what looks like wonderful food. I ask how they got it, and they tell me that if we go to the food hall we can pick anything we want, eat as much as we like. The price is the same as the prix fixe for table service and we’ll have a better selection and won’t have to wait.

I don’t hesitate. Nor do the others at the table. We all get up and make our way through the busy restaurant to the food hall. It is a sumptuous scene. Counter after counter, offering everything from quinoa to filet mignon, from pad thai to feijoada. We pick up trays and start making the rounds. The only worry now is how to make choices when the range is almost limitless and everything looks and smells so fresh and good.

~

I woke from this dream scene this morning, smiling and cheerful, quite refreshed after only a few hours in bed, thinking, Life is good. I like the simplicity of this short dream report and the clarity (for me) of the situation it presents. Abundance is there for the taking, but don’t expect to get what you want – or enjoy your full range of choice – by just waiting passively at the table. Get up and get on with it!

Sure, there are mysteries here. Who is that little man sitting in the gap? What’s going on with the gap?

There is also the need to examine the dream from various angles, since (like any dream) it may offer many levels of meaning. It could be a fairly literal rehearsal for a future situation; the food hall reminds me strongly of European food markets. The dream could be coaching me to think about diet and food selections in a season of sometimes excessive good cheer! The dream may also be the memory of a situation played out during the night, in a separate reality.

I may want to go back and make the links between this scene and things going on in earlier scenes, including the workshop I was leading and the hotel where I was staying. My beloved black dog – long on the Other Side – turned up at the workshop, on the other side of a glass wall. I may want to understand why, and whether the “little person” in the hole is also a visitor from the Otherworld.

Any dream can take us deep and far, and juice the imagination, and bring rich material up from the subliminal mind into waking consciousness.

Yet we don’t want to lose the energy and clear direction that can come from homing in on one key element.

This morning’s dream gave me clarity in abundance, and clarity in relation to abundance.

I’ll travel with this bumper sticker, from the dream: Don’t wait to be served, when abundance is waiting for you.