(Monday, September 30, 2013) I’m on an extended journey: maybe walking around the world. I come across a white clapboard building. It’s a church, but with no steeple, just a large, square-topped tower. I pick up a booklet of classes offered at the community. Many are taught by the founder, whose name I see in the dream but have forgotten. A Germanic name.
I think that to outsiders the church members might seem eccentric, even bordering on cultish. But to each other they are a close-knit and happy family. Like the School of Metaphysics.
I find out that the founder has passed. His spiritual community is full of grief. Who will teach now that he is gone?
Day notes:
I received the IASD magazine in the mail today. Ernest Hartmann passed away August 7 from a heart attack while riding his bike. He was not a founding member of the IASD, but he absolutely was a spiritual father.
On my walk today a small white sign was posted near the Mendota Bridge. It gave the Caring Bridge address of a man who had had a heart attack at that spot on September 14 while riding his bike. The sign let everyone know he was OK.
When I wake, I have a passing thought of Robert Larsen, founder of my Tai-Chi school, who taught at the Jung Institute in Zurich. Dr. Hartmann was from Austria.
Dr. Hartmann developed a standardized scale to measure “boundary thinness.”
I had another dream a year ago or so about Dr. Hartmann. I wonder why the connection seems deep. I don’t recall ever speaking to him. I was one of the people who received his lovely book of poems in the mail last year.
Beautiiful dream. I love how your waking life meshes with your dream life. I feel very sad about Ernest dying. I had him and his family in my prayers this morning during meditation. I did meet him the first year on the dream hike and had a lovely talk. We talked about the main theme of the dreaming staying the same during retells. I told him I had read his article in the journal and he was so pleased that I had read it. Such a sweet man.