Often while dreaming, I will be looking out someone else’s eyes. It is usually nobody I know, just a person going about their day. In the midst of these dreams, I will sometimes question why I am there, realizing I am “inside” another person’s body observing their life. But this doesn’t seem as odd as the fact that there is nothing important taking place or any life-changing decisions on the horizon, yet there I am, interacting with their family members, co-workers, neighbors or strangers on the street.

Every now and then, there might be a detail I can fact check. For instance, in one dream a man drove across a bridge to an island to work at a sneaker factory. After a Google map search, I found one off the West Coast. In another dream, I was looking out an older boy’s eyes. He was at rest area sitting on a landscaping curb beneath a tree. He had a puppy on a leash. I assumed he was waiting for his parents. A woman was walking on the sidewalk toward him. I recognized her. She was Charlene Theron. She had a gauze bandage on her neck. She stopped to pet the puppy and smiled at the boy, then kept walking. I googled Charlene’s name the next morning and discovered she had minor surgery on her throat three days prior.

What is the point of having these dreams? I know that sometimes the interaction can have an impact on the person in the dream. For instance, once I dreamt of a pastor, which I wrote about in my book Shaman Stone Soup, so I have included the excerpt below, instead of rewriting it:

In the dream, I floated into a scene of a man pumping gas. I knew he was a pastor who was having trouble making a difficult decision. My spirit descended into his car and “sat” in the passenger seat to wait for him to finish pumping gas. The pastor got in, started the car, and drove slowly through the parking lot. He paused before pulling into the street. At that moment he felt my presence, and although he couldn’t see me, he knew I was there. I apologized for the intrusion. In his thoughts, he said, “That’s okay. I was thinking about going for a drive.”

I knew he had changed his plans of going directly home, and instead, he decided to go for a long drive to ponder his difficult decision. I left him alone with his thoughts as he drove away.

When I woke up, I remembered the dream vividly and couldn’t forget it for weeks. I kept looking for this man in public—expecting to meet him.

But after a couple of months had passed and I hadn’t yet met the pastor, the dream was tucked into the back of my mind.

Then one night, I pulled up to my gym and noticed a Red Cross bloodmobile in the parking lot. I decided I would give blood, although I had never voluntarily donated blood before.

I walked up to the table set up temporarily in the gym’s lobby. The young woman standing there asked if I had any health problems, and I said no. She asked if I was in good health and feeling well. I answered that I was feeling a little light headed, but she didn’t seem to hear me and began talking with someone else while she handed me a folder with a stack of forms that needed to be filled out.

After my name was called, I walked through the chilly night to the large RV that served as the bloodmobile. A young woman greeted me and escorted me to a tiny room where she asked me questions, pricked my finger to take blood, and attached a finger monitor to check my blood pressure. At this point, there was a problem. It seemed my pulse rate and blood pressure were too high, which was very unusual since I normally have low blood pressure. She mentioned that I might be stressed about giving blood and thought answering additional questions on a computer in the room would give me time to calm down.

I finished the questions and was waiting for the woman to return when a man entered and explained he was the supervisor. I knew I wouldn’t be giving blood as soon as he sat down, but decided to let the conversation play out.

With a smile, he asked me how I was feeling. I answered that I felt fine. He said perhaps I was coming down with something and just didn’t know it yet—that sometimes an undetected infection can make the blood pressure spike as the body fights it.

I mentioned that I was feeling light headed, but felt that it was a reaction from an intense healing session I performed earlier in the day.

The supervisor was surprisingly knowledgeable about shamanic healing and pointed out that a healing session should have lowered my blood pressure. I agreed with him. He continued asking me questions about the healings that I performed, saying that it was wonderful work to offer healings and appreciated my efforts.

His spiritual demeanor captured my attention, and I asked him how he knew so much about healing. He answered that he was a pastor of a church in a distant city. Suddenly it dawned on me that he was the pastor from my dream! I began telling him, “Several months ago you had a tough decision to make.”

He nodded his head in agreement, and said a few months earlier he had to decide whether to stay at his church or become the new pastor at a church of a different denomination. His mind told him to stay with his current congregation, but he felt God was guiding him to leave. After much soul searching, he had decided to go to the new church.

When I described seeing him in my dream at the gas station and the interaction that had occurred, he remembered asking God for a sign and stated that he often went on long drives to think.   

I had been waiting to meet him and was blessed to do so. What a wonderful confirmation for the two of us.

I knew the elevated pulse rate was divine intervention, and after leaving the blood mobile, I went to work out at the gym. It felt great!

Sometimes in these dreams, I seemed to have been a silent observer while at other times, I influenced the main character, and maybe they influenced me. Perhaps these dreams are nothing more than the thinning of the veil that symbolizes our belief in being separate when in reality, everything is connected.