By Sri Harold Klemp
In Germany, a woman on the path of ECK who hadn’t been in the job market for eleven years decided to go back to work. Her husband was working but lately it was becoming more difficult to make ends meet.
The woman had been on her job search for a year. Every time she went on an interview, she faced rejection.
Interviewers told her, “No, you don’t have quite the qualifications we’re looking for.” And every few days her husband would give her an ad that he had found in the newspaper in the employment section; he’d circle it for her and she’d call for an interview. But finally she didn’t even call these places anymore because she was afraid of one more rejection.
Then she had a dream. In the dream, she and her husband were out for a drive when suddenly he pulled the car over to the curb. “My brother’s over there,” he said. “I want to talk to him for a minute.” So he got out of the car, and while he was off talking to his brother, along came two acquaintances of this couple, a mother and a daughter.
The wife leaned her head out the car window and asked, “Where are you going?” The mother and daughter said they were on their way home. “You can ride with us as soon as my husband comes back,” the dreamer said.
As soon as the two women got in the car, they began to complain. The daughter complained about a broken necklace she had. She had tried to piece it together, but she just couldn’t get it pieced together. So she just complained on and on about it. The mother complained that she had been looking for a frame for a certain picture for a long time. But she just couldn’t find it.
After the couple drove the mother and daughter home, they took the daughter’s necklace to a friend who was a jeweler and quietly had it fixed. It cost quite a lot. The husband brought it back to this young woman, but the young woman wasn’t at all grateful. She just stuffed the necklace in her pocket without even a word of thanks.
Meanwhile, the dreamer’s mother phoned around and finally found a frame for the older woman’s picture. But the woman didn’t really care for the frame, and like her daughter, she never bothered to say thank you.
The dreamer woke up and wondered, Why did I ever become friends with those two people? They are so ungrateful.
The Inner Master said, “Look again.” And then it struck her. She realized that the dream was about herself.
The necklace meant the need for something valuable—a job to bring money in—but it was broken. She tried in her own way to get the necklace fixed (find a job), but she couldn’t. The second part of the dream was the picture frame that couldn’t be found. This meant that the circumstances surrounding the job were never right.
She realized that when her husband cut out these ads for her—he’d been doing it for over a year—she was never even grateful.
After this dream, the ECKist realized that the Dream Master had spoken to her to let her understand something about herself. The dream helped her understand just where she wasn’t facing up to her own responsibilities. She wanted to help with family finances, yet she wasn’t willing to persist enough. But this dream gave her the motivation.
That Tuesday the women called one of the ads her husband had just circled. It was an employment agency. The woman at the agency was not very encouraging. “It’s a recession; it’s hard to find jobs. I don’t think I’ll find you anything,” she said. “But you can leave your name if you want.”
On Thursday the employment agency called her and said, “You know, it’s very interesting, but I think I have the ideal job for you. All you have to do is go to the company and take the interview.” The woman who had the dream went to the interview. She got there early and sat out in the parking lot, very nervous.
“Don’t worry, said the Inner Master. “Don’t hang on too tightly. You’ve got to let go of your fears.”
This is the meaning of detachment, she realized.
Detachment is something we know about in the spiritual life. It doesn’t mean not to get involved; it means to not let outer circumstances throw off your inner balance. The ECKist heard this from the Inner Master through her inner feelings. She calmed down, and she developed the feeling of a child who expects only good from life.
So when the time came, she walked into this company, had her interview, and was hired. This was quite surprising because she had been out of the job market for eleven years.
The dream helped her recognize that she had been holding herself back from a better life.