Natural disasters have been much in our thoughts the past several years. They are frequently in our dreams. How do we interpret such dreams? Dreams can have multiple meanings and layers of significance. They can be bringing to consciousness one’s deep inner concerns about activities, relationships, and emotions in our personal lives. At the same time they can be speaking about worldwide cultural, economic, and environmental issues. At times they may be warning of possible future events.
In my dream journals, I have found dreams relating to various natural disasters, beginning with some of my earliest recorded dreams. Some describe great flooding or massive snowstorms; others describe struggles to survive after some major, but undefined disaster has struck. In 1994:
I am living in a small village or community with my family. Some kind of natural disaster strikes. The whole community becomes buried under water or a blanket of something—maybe a blizzard of snow. We are very fearful and worry about our families and friends. Somehow some of us survive, while others die. Either the water recedes or the snow melts and we begin looking for survivors. I don’t find my daughter anywhere. I look and look and can’t find her. I drive out into the countryside—into a valley searching for her. The dream ends or shifts before I find her.
In 1998, I had a dream that began:
I am in an institutional setting. We learn a major natural disaster is fast approaching. There is no point in trying to leave. We just need to find the safest place within our building.
What do these dreams mean? Were they warnings? Expressions of personal concerns? Both?
These and many other dreams pointed to unconscious feelings of being threatened. By 1998, I was conscious not only of my personal concerns but also of a collective concern about the potential dangers resulting from global warming.
Six years later, in 2004, the dangers had not gone away. Two dreams the same night cried out to be noticed. The first dream:
Apparently something drastic has happened and my family and I are told that we will have to move. The news bearer is apologetic, saying he understands this will be quite a strenuous undertaking for us. I agree that it will be, but I’m resigned to the inevitable. I begin thinking of the need to take only a fraction of our belongings in the move. Next I’m standing on a hillside looking skyward and see a huge transport plane overhead. I’m concerned by how low it is, as it goes from my right to the left. I can see that the plane lands somewhere below, perhaps beside a highway not at an airport. Then, as my family and I drive down from the hill, we see many people standing out on surrounding hillsides looking up expectantly, wondering what is taking place, seemingly waiting for something. We circle around and stop on a level area part way to the valley, then get out and stand watching and waiting, as are the others. I get the feeling that we are waiting for some ‘authority’ to appear below to make pronouncements to the multitudes that are waiting there.
I awakened with a feeling of unease, almost an ominous dread, but I managed to go back to sleep; then five hours later I awoke from this dream:
My husband and I have gone into some hotel in an unidentified place to await the arrival of a group of people. At first I’m thinking this group is part of my family, but when they arrive it’s obvious they are unknowns. A woman and at least two men walk into our room. The woman sits on my bed, then gets right up and hastily walks back out. The men follow her and we follow them. As we come up to them I overhear conversation between the men and I catch the word ‘infinity.’ I become concerned. I call my husband to me and tell him I’m worried and ask if he heard what the men were talking about. Did he hear the word ‘infinity’? Yes, he heard and he immediately says it’s their word for the end of the world. This is exactly what has worried me. I take it to mean that they belong to a group that is involved in secret affairs, perhaps something we have read about. I’m alarmed and don’t want to have anything to do with them. After I hear my husband’s response, I leave and return to our room.
The first dream of this night recounted a displacement of people similar to what happened during Hurricane Katrina, even to evacuation by means of large planes. Was it a warning of something that could happen in the future? The dream occurred nineteen months before Katrina.
The second dream did not spell out a particular catastrophic event. However, it did point to a deep unconscious fear, one that was growing in my consciousness, of a possible end result of a crisis we are facing.
When I studied my dream journals, I recalled that these two dreams came during a period when I was experiencing some stressful health issues, but nothing as drastic as the scenarios of these dreams. The dreams might be simply exaggerating the anxiety feelings or expressing feelings of lack of control in my personal life. But maybe I am also alarmed about our collective crisis.
Six weeks later I had this dream:
Other people and I have been preparing to travel somewhere, evidently on foot. We are told that things are going to become ‘impossible’ and some people are giving up. I’m thinking we should at least try to leave and go to a safer place. I tell a female friend I see we should begin our journey; we should try to go as far north as possible. As we begin walking, it begins to rain. We see two people lying on their backs on the ground. They have just given up, thinking it’s no use to try anything to prevent whatever might occur. I wake up, feeling this was an awful dream. It had a feeling of doom, perhaps of the impending end of the world.
I believe the import of these dreams goes beyond the personal level. They seem to be speaking of one of the most serious problems our world faces, the consequences of the damage we humans are inflicting upon the environment. One of my earliest recorded dreams, back in 1972, told of living under difficult conditions after a major disaster.
Life is not as we know it now. There must have been some major disaster. People are scattered and having to live under ‘survival’ conditions. I am in a small building with people I don’t know. I see the need to be organized concerning jobs within the building for survival, for rationing and using the food we have. I try to get the other people’s attention to tell them of this need. But they are noisy and won’t listen. We have trouble with various stragglers coming by and wanting to cause trouble. There is also danger from strange animals.
In 2003 people were still not listening in my dreams:
I’ve gone to some building to get out of stormy weather. I find lots of other people there. Someone may question why I’m there. I say I’ve just taken refuge from the weather. I receive a phone call from someone I don’t know. The person has heard of me and is begging me to warn other people about an impending disaster. I ask what s/he is talking about. The person says it’s what was in the newspaper and it will happen in two days. I then remember seeing the item referred to. After getting off the phone, I turn to people near me and try to tell them what was said. No one wants to pay any attention.
But in fact it is urgent that we all pay attention. In 2003, the world had just experienced the widespread effects of the Asian tsunami, caused by an undersea earthquake. Shortly before I had this last-mentioned dream, P.M.H. Atwater, researcher and author who has written extensively on near-death experiences, reincarnation, and related phenomena, wrote in an area monthly newspaper the following:
“The island of La Palma in the Canaries north of Africa is separating—three more feet of recent date. An eruption would cause half of the island to fall into the Atlantic Ocean, creating a tsunami wave that would devastate the entire eastern seaboard of the United States, not to mention areas in Canada, Europe, and other countries.”
Was this the article I’m referring to in the dream?
With the breaking off of glaciers and the melting of snow fields worldwide, we will see a rise in sea level that is predicted to flood seaports and coastal areas worldwide in the coming years. This would have the same effect as the potential tsunami Atwater mentioned.
So far, the economic and political leadership in the United States has not taken the threat seriously enough to take the necessary steps to avert this catastrophe, or even to plan how to deal with the situation if it happens. Individual and national greed and desires for short-term benefits and pleasures derived from the damaging environmental practices blind us from seeing the greater long-term suffering.
Al Gore points out in his book An Inconvenient Truth the dangers facing the world due to global warming. He is quoted on the back cover of the book:
“In order to face down the danger that is stalking us and move through it, we first have to recognize that we are facing a crisis. So why is it that our leaders seem not to hear such clarion warnings? Are they resisting the truth because they know that the moment they acknowledge it, they will face a moral imperative to act? Is it simply more convenient to ignore warnings? Perhaps, but inconvenient truths do not go away just because they are not seen. Indeed, when they are not responded to, their significance doesn’t diminish; it grows.”
Recently a growing number of people and world leaders have finally begun to pay attention. We are hearing calls for going “Green.” As I write this, Britain’s prime minister is announcing that a “Green Revolution is in the making.” We need to take all possible measures to halt and reverse global warming and its serious consequences. It is my hope that our next governmental leaders will make this one of their top priorities.
Is it too late to avoid all the disasters that are potentially impending? We are seeing some of them now— typhoons hitting Japan, earthquakes in China and elsewhere, floods in the U.S. Midwest, wildfires in California, and devastating hurricanes such as Katrina. This makes it even more urgent that we accept differences between groups (local and world-wide), put aside conflict and war-making, and work together to provide for the basic needs of all. If we don’t, we will sacrifice a viable world for selfish and petty gains. Let us listen to the wisdom of our dreams and act with heartfelt compassion to protect and preserve our planet earth and all its life forms.
I believe, as does dream analyst Jeremy Taylor, that all dreams come to help us in some way. He states that no dream—not even the most terrifying ones—ever come to say: “Nyeah, nyeah, nyeah—you have these problems and you can’t do anything about them!” This means that the dreammaker—the divine within us— believes that if we take seriously this all-important problem, there are things we can do to prevent a catastrophe. We must work together to eliminate toxic substances from all areas of our environment and to find new sustainable and environmentally sound resources, while maintaining the ecological balance of nature, even if it means sacrificing personal and corporate gains.
I believe the dreams I’ve shared are saying, “Wake up, everyone, before it’s too late!” There’s a crisis in the making. Let’s work together to save our world.
This article is adapted from three columns written by Norment and published in a Charlottesville, VA, area monthly newspaper, Echo, in 2004. 2005, and 2006.
