Interpret The O.J. Trial Like a Dream

An Interview with Dr. Glenn R. Williston

by

Lisa Bennett

Since you have written numerous articles on interpreting everyday events like dreams, I wonder if anyone has asked you about the O.J. trail and the issues around it.

• As a matter of fact, someone asked me just the other day about the trial. The question went something like this: "How are we supposed to have faith in the justice system or in the world with the outcome of the trail?"
  
  La vida es sueño. "Life is a dream," said Pedro Calderón de la Barca, the national dramatist of Spain. And Shakespeare is famous for his "All the world's a stage." More than just interesting metaphors, these statements question the relative importance of what we call 'reality' and what we quickly dismiss as illusion or symbol. Further, these epigrams suggest that life's events carry meaning.

But how can we uncover the hidden meaning in all the events that go on in our lives and how do we know which situations to pay attention to?

• Yes, there are many events in our lives every day. Yet we need to pay attention to only two kinds of events: the events that repeat and those that are out of the ordinary. And it is curious how these messages manage to appear just at the time we need them most, and often without the kinds of cause and effect relationships we expect from 'reality.'

  A Course in Miracles says, "waste no experience." Personal messages in dreams and events provide a practical application of this important concept.

You mean that dreams and event in life can be interpreted the same way, even if the event does not happen to us?

• Correct. There really is no difference between dreams and other experiences in terms of their meaning, significance, and healing potential. In some ways, this view represents the oneness of all life that we find difficult to accept. We feel safer putting everything into its own separate category.

  Lame Deer, a Sioux Medicine Man once said, "What you see with your eyes shut is what counts."

  But I say that what we see with our eyes open can be just as significant.
  But what is more important to understand, is that we must train ourselves to look, with eyes open or closed, into all kinds of events, understand what they mean, and then act rather than react to them.

  What is most important to understand is that messages from our own minds, and messages from Divine Mind, occur not only during sleep, but also in the fantasies and events of our waking lives.

  I see four different categories of meaningful (meaning full) experience:

  1. true dreams (including nightmares),
  2. personal daily events including crises which I call "daymares"
  3. fantasies and daydreams.
  4. world events.
  

  They are all really all the same in terms of purpose and interpretation: they all alert us to seeing something we are not wanting to see. They urge us to do something we should be doing or implore us to stop doing something that is hurting us and others.

So the O.J. issue is an example of this?

• In the case of O.J. and his trial we see the stuff of nightmares.

  We have abuse of a mate and other people in his path over the years.
  The need for attention and stardom.
  Heavy use of drugs.
  Denial
  Defense of self.
  Etc.
  If we put all the pieces together, we get a personal message from which we can benefit.
  Because our society, and many others, are based on the condemnation of love and the glorification of violence, we have inherited a legacy of pain and confusion. Fortunately (or unfortunately), most people do not act out their judgmental and violent thoughts; they internalize them. In polite societies, people implode rather than explode.
  The O.J. issue is a message about self-judgment. Self-judgment is always violence towards self. Any violence towards self is violence towards others, and violence towards the world. We have all suffered with the O.J. issue, but unless we realize that it is a message about our own self-abuse, we cannot bring the healing that is offered (proclaimed innocent) to ourselves and to the planet. We must see the personal meaning to this sordid affair so that our own anger and frustration is replaced by personal resolutions to "love thyself as thy neighbor."

You have said in other articles that information comes to us not only in various forms but in different intensities as well. Could you explain that idea?

• We must remember that information (warnings) come to us in increasingly powerful ways to "wake us up." First, we are granted intuition, through our sixth sense, by which we are welcomed gently into an understanding of issues around abuse, denial, danger, willfulness, control, and needs. If we fail to perceive this most subtle level of information, we experience, in turn, discomfort or uneasiness; then pain; then cellular or psychological breakdown; then disease or dysfunction; and finally, we face debilitation and/or death.

  World events, such as this famous trial, act to alert us individually so that we do not have to experience such a personal disaster in our own lives.

  If we listened to ourselves, we would not need devastating events in the world to wake us up. If we listened to ourselves and acted according to the messages, we could truly bring peace on earth.

  I emphasize the acceptance of intuition so that the messages we receive do not have to become louder, more dramatic, and more demanding on the physical, emotional, and psychological levels.

  Martin Buber said, "All suffering prepares the soul for vision." But suffering is not necessary for vision if we are willing to look -- to see -- in the dreams and events of our lives, the all-important messages that are designed to bring us out of victim role and into victory. Most suffering is the result of not seeing.

  Effective event interpretation and subsequent action leads us down the path of increasing health and empowerment. It does not eliminate all tragedies in our lives, but it does help us prevent many and handle the rest more effectively.

Thank you, Dr. Williston for this enlightening view of an issue we have all thought about.

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