In October, 1995, a woman I'll call "Mary", who had become very close to me, and had been excitedly aware of her spiritual path for four months had the following experience. I wrote it down the following morning:

Just before leaving for our Course In Miracles group last night , Mary suddenly felt a foreboding, a resistance to the group. When examining the feeling, she found it was uneasiness with certain egos' focus on the material world.

Later, during group discussion, a woman began talking about the feelings evoked when visiting the Biltmore Castle in the Smoky Mountains. Her husband began describing the opulence of the castle, and suddenly Mary became visibly upset. I asked what was wrong, and she said she would tell me later.

When we went to eat after the meeting, Mary suddenly began to weep, and couldn't speak for a few minutes. After regaining her composure, she said she felt that something bad was going to happen, but that she didn't know what it was. She described it as an intuition, a feeling that something bad would appear in her dream that night.

We talked about it later, and she told me to ask about her dream first thing the next morning. I suggested she use a "Hemi-sync" tape before going to sleep, as it had given me total recall of my dream the morning after the first time I heard it.

I was awakened this morning by a sudden unknown noise (later found to be a strong wind rattling a skylight) and I rushed to her room to check on her. She was shaking and crying, awakened by her disturbing dream, which she proceeded to relate.

"I was in a castle, and old castle, and no-one lived there. I heard someone crying, and I went into a room and saw a girl crying."

"She started to lead me up a large, circular staircase, still crying. She went up and up and up, and I could never catch up to her. The staircase kept going, up and up and up, seeming forever."

"Suddenly we were on top of the castle, and she was still crying. She told me to look up, and there was nothing there. She said "See, (still looking up) there is nothing there".

"She led me to the edge of the castle, and we looked over the edge, way, way down. There were rocks and seaweed on the shore, and waves crashing in. She suddenly pushed me over the edge, and started to laugh as I fell."

"I fell slowly, almost floating down toward the rocks and the seaweed, and I could hear her laughing. I shouted "I am not a victim" over and over. As I shouted "I am not a victim", I could hear the voices of the rocks, and the voices of the seaweed, and her laughing. And I knew they couldn't hear me shouting "I am not a victim", for the voices of the rocks and the seaweed and the waves were too loud.

"And I was still falling, slowly. And then I woke up."

Having just awakened myself, I was still "connected", still in my higher state, with little ego awareness. As I listened to her dream, I had a knowing of it, a knowing of its meaning, and I began to explain.

The old castle was her old world of many material things, and she didn't live there anymore, "no-one lived there."

The little girl crying was her ego self, the one she thought she was, yet she was her true self, her spiritual self, observing her ego crying. And she knew she was crying from fear of losing the material world, her identity as an ego being.

The staircase was her trip up to the light, to her higher self. Ego, the little girl, seemed to be leading the way, because she had made the choice to find her higher self, but she was crying because she was afraid.

Because she was afraid, the ego took charge of the trip, and the spiritual self could never "catch up" to her.

When they got to the top, the ego showed her there was "nothing there", there was nothing above, showing her fear that she wasn't going anywhere at all.

When they went to the edge and looked down, they saw the "rocks and seaweed" of her old life, the one they had left because her spiritual self had made the choice to know herself.

Then her ego pushed her over the edge, and got rid of her spiritual self. Free from having to change, she started to laugh. The ego had won, it didn't have to be afraid anymore, it didn't have to grow, it didn't have to leave the safety of the identity she had known all of her life. She was safe.

And yet, her Self knew that she was not a victim, and she wasn't really falling back down to the rocks, just floating. And she knew that she could go back up if only she could make her ego self hear her shout "I am not a victim".

But she knew that the "voices of the rocks and seaweed", the ego's "laughing", were too loud, and the cares of the world kept ego from going higher.

And she awoke troubled and afraid. She had judged that she wasn't doing it right, that she wasn't growing spiritually as she had chosen to do.

And I knew, totally, that "All works together for good", and that this dream, the events that led to it, the sharing of it, and the understanding of it, were GOOD, AWESOMELY GOOD. For it allowed her to see, and to forgive the false judgement, and to choose again.

Little did I know, that one month later, she did what she had dreamed of doing (see Secret Thoughts), to help me learn more of Love.