The dream of the girl who could see the holy grail

On the Anapanasati retreat a few weeks ago I had a peculiar dream on the first night (2nd-3rd of April). It is quite common to have all sorts of interesting dreams when one is on retreat. They can be due to all sorts of things, but often nothing more strange than sleeping in a unfamiliar bed in a dorm together with other guys that you may or may not have seen before (some of them possibly snoring).

The dream went something like this:


There is a big expanse with trees without leaves. It's raining heavily and the ground can not absorb the water quickly enough. A stream forms, which expands into a river. The water washes the soil away to unearth the bones from various creatures, both animals and humans, long since covered and forgotten about.

Then I discover three children, babies, all girls. They were also buried by the soil and have now been washed clean by the water from the river. They are very much alive, quite chubby, and happy. I adopt them all as my own children.

Time then speeds up and they grow into young adults, maybe around twenty years old or so. It seems as if I mistook the gender of two of them, because now the first two children are boys, not girls. There is some kind of story element to the dream that I never remembered, so the narrative is unfortunately lost, but it transpires that three beings are quite special.

The first boy is able to turn into a frog and the second boy is able to turn into a dog or wolf, or a least to take on definite dog/wolf-like characteristics. The narrative had very little to say about the first boy, but the second boy was involved with protecting someone (us?) from an attack from something.

The girl is the most interesting one, because her ability is nothing like those of the two boys. She is able to see the holy grail. That's the way I knew it in the dream at least. It obviously does not mean that she's seeing it the whole time, only that she would recognise it for what it was once she saw it.

(The End)

I haven't attempted to interpret it, but I find it encouraging that I still remember it. This is my third big dream at Padmaloka. The previous two happened on two separate retreats but were curiously connected by a character in the dream. I won't be saying more about that now apart from that those dreams also contained water (but in a cave).

Anyone who wants to interpret this dream is welcome to give it a shot.

I think I'll leave it at that for this time.

[First image: Sir Percival with the Holy Grail, by Arthur Hacker, from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hacker_Arthur_Percival_with_the_Grail_Cup.jpg]
[Second image: The Damsel of the Sanct Grael or Holy Grail, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Holygrail.jpg]