A Pair of Two-Part "Pre"-Knowledgeable Events
A Precursive "Message" and a Precognitive "Dream"
© 1997 Mike Strong
The Precognitive Dream
The Job They Centered Around
The Dream Remembered
The Message Repeated
In April or May 1983 my money was declining badly. I was not making enough in my little one-person B/W custom photo lab to cover my expenses. Even though Macy's advertising department kept me fairly busy my bank account kept decreasing. This was mostly because I had no idea of how to market myself and my business. To pay for rent, food and supplies I had to cash in certificates of deposit.
Despite the money loss, I had been feeling what I can only describe as a sense of "acceleration" in my life since at least January. I kept interpreting this "acceleration" as a belief that my business was going to expand and I would finally make some real money. That never happened and I didn't know how to make it happen.
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The Message
One evening (April or May, I no longer remember the date precisely) I remember deciding that I needed guidance. I decided to use the tactic of asking a question then closing your eyes and sticking your finger in a book to get the answer. I had tried this tactic before but it had always seemed a bit self-conscious. This time was different. I recall standing in the living room of my small townhouse next to a bookcase and placing the index finger of my left hand at the top of the spine of an RSV (revised standard version) bible which was in my bookcase as were several other translations. The next thing I remember was sitting Indian style on the carpet with that same bible open on the floor in front of me.
I don't remember pulling the book from the shelf, sitting on the floor or opening the book, but that bible was opened to the page with the 23rd Psalm. One place-marker ribbon was carefully positioned so that on the right hand page the ribbon snaked straight down from top center, between the two columns and then made a sharp right-hand turn across the page near the top so that it underlined the phrase "... I will prepare you a table in front of your enemies. ..." I said, "thank you God" for the message.
I then mistakenly decided that this meant that I would finally land a job I sought in the prayer room at Unity Village. Because of a job interview that had gone awry I very mistakenly assumed these "enemies" were at Unity. Please note: I have long since decided that interpreting such events is a mistake and leads to considerable error. The only part I happened to get right was that this was about a job. But I got the identity of the job all wrong.
About a year and a half before this event I was interviewing for the prayer-room job. During the second job interview I had let slip that I knew some of the inside gossip at Unity (this could be downright juicy gossip!). The interviewer crossed her arms in front of herself so fast they almost seemed to snap into place. From then on, in the employment office, I was treated to whispers and looks when I came in and, of course, no job.
So when I this event occurred I thought this meant that Unity's resistance to me would be overcome and I would finally get hired to pray all day. I renewed my job application at Unity. I got the same treatment as before. No job. I was perplexed and in a bind. My money situation became so much worse that I pawned items. When I was down to the very last of my money I was "given" a job I had never done, had never heard of, with a few people I barely knew and a lot of people I didn't know at all.
What's more, a week before I got this job it was shown to me in a precognitive dream - the only precognitive dream I've ever had that I know of. It is important to note that I forgot the dream almost immediately after typing it down.
The Dream
Early one Monday morning, exactly a week prior to getting this job I typed out a dream. At that time I kept my typewriter near my bed so that I could type dreams because I could type faster than I could write. That meant that I could record more details from the dream before its memory faded. It was my practice to then file the typed dream in a loose-leaf binder. I would often peruse the new dream looking for something profound in the dreams. I wanted instructions from God. But try as I might to crow-bar supernatural importance into those dreams they were all within the normal range of dreams. No god speaking to me, no predictions, no instructions.
This dream on this Monday morning was different in a couple of ways. One: I handled it differently. I forgot to file it away in the binder. I probably set it on one of my piles of papers. Two: I didn't spend any time that I can recall trying to glean a message out of it. I seem to have forgotten it quickly. Three: when I later saw it again it made sense immediately I knew the dream recorded events which had occurred after the date on the dream therefore making that dream precognitive. Four: it was the only dream that I consider precognitive and remains such at this writing - more than thirteen years after.
The Job
The week in which the dream occurred I floated my rent check. Suddenly I felt sick. I had knowingly sent off a rent check I without funds to support it. I could hardly believe myself. I expected to see the sheriff at the door in a few days. That Friday I had a message on my answering machine. A friend told me to phone his pal Gordon about a job. I phoned Gordon who asked if I could come over right then for an interview. I said I still had pictures to deliver to Macy's. We set a time Monday.
Monday afternoon I felt overwhelmingly positive during the interview - unusual for me then. Gordon explained that this was a temporary job as a meeting coordinator for a chiropractic management firm. They needed someone to take over arrangements for a 20 year reunion of previous and current clients. Their then-current meeting coordinator was returning to school to get her law degree.
I said I had never done that before and never even realized that any one organized meetings for a living. "Could I do it?" he asked. "Sure," I said. "Can you start this afternoon?" he asked. "No, I have another picture delivery today." "See you in the morning," he said.
I need to make a special point about the positive attitude because it was not my trademark. I had totally forgotten about the dream, even assuming I could have recognized the symbolism. I had also totally given up hope for what I thought was the prayer-room job. I really imagined that I would be on the street in a matter of days if not weeks. Yet in the interview I was so unthinkingly positive I surprised myself.
The 20-year reunion would need space in both the Hyatt Regency and the Westin Crown Center hotels. The main meetings were to be in the Hyatt. Gordon, the man who hired me to work in his Lee's Summit office was a hands-off boss. He was easy to work for just as long as I got results. Rolla Pennell, Gordon's partner, was another story.
The two partners worked in separate offices and supervised separate staffs. Rolla worked in Independence with the largest staff. The first time Gordon took me to meet Rolla it was instant mutual dislike between myself and Rolla before a word was said or a hand extended.
There was more than just dislike. As soon as I entered Rolla's outer office area I felt sexual overtones combined with coercion as if the air itself was thick with the feeling. I hadn't talked to anyone, it just felt ugly to me. At that time I had not encountered this sort of feeling and didn't know what to make of it. So I reasoned away what my senses had identified.
I didn't have a means of confirming my feelings (feelings here means sense-feelings rather than emotional feelings) until mid-winter when Marie, the secretary in the Lee's Summit office went to an art gallery to pick up a statue Gordon had purchased. Marie related the meeting to me.
When the woman working at the gallery learned what firm Marie worked for she asked Marie whether she liked working for the company. Marie said, "Sure" (note that Marie worked for Gordon in the Lee's Summit office, as a separate location). Then the woman in the gallery said that she had once worked for Rolla. She said that Rolla had propositioned her during one of the firm's quarterly membership meetings, that she had not complied and had then been fired the very next week.
Rolla hired almost all women (the firm had close to 100 people). I learned that in his trips through the offices he would sometimes stand up someone to harangue them, embarrass the person and leave that persons in tears (or at least a shaken emotional state). I was about to find this out for myself.
As an example of Rolla's attitude, some months later (after the experience I am about to relate), I and another employee shared a limousine with Rolla and a client. All of us were enroute to the last Broadway showing of Marilyn. Rolla and Gordon had paid for our tickets to the show. Indeed, they took us to two shows, Marilyn and Dream Girls. During the limousine trip to the theater Rolla was giving his client management advice. He told her, in front of us, that she should fire an employee once in a while just to assert her authority as boss. He said that this would provide the remaining employees with a motive to work harder and that they would see themselves as survivors.
The Message Comes Home
Getting Rattled
About a month into the 20th anniversary project it was my job to give a report to a number of assembled employees about our progress in terms of how many meeting rooms we had, what the menus were and so forth. Rolla asked me how I knew that the main meeting room had enough space. He wanted room for 1200. I replied that it was part of the printed information the Hyatt had given us. Had I checked the information with the hotel, he wanted to know. No, I answered. So how did I really know? I didn't. I would have to check later, after the assembly.
That wasn't enough for him. Rolla kept grilling me to get an answer which I clearly couldn't give at the time. The other staffers who had to sit through my grilling told me I had done relatively well under Rolla's attack. I didn't feel that way. Today this would roll off my back and I would know how to handle it but after that meeting I was rattled. It was Tuesday and for the next two days I tried to work but I couldn't do anything productive. I just went through motions. I was miserable. What was I doing in this place?
An "Insistence"
Two days later, on a Thursday, I felt what I can best describe as an "insistence"
to go over to Unity Village to what was then the Peace Chapel. I didn't like
the Peace Chapel. It seemed uncomfortable to me and it seemed a mere after-thought
tacked on to the Prayer Room building. I fought my "insistence" all day long
but I really couldn't do any work. Late in the afternoon I 
drove
the mile over to Unity Village. For some time I walked around avoiding the
little side room. I remember walking by the main dining hall and seeing through
the windows that they were having some sort of a candle-lit dinner.
Finally I resigned myself to the Peace Chapel (picture on the right). The room had six chairs for meditation. I sat on the right-side chair in the back and tried to sit still assuming that some answer would come to me in meditation. But I fidgeted. And fidgeted. After some time a woman came in to the room. I thought that perhaps, as she meditates, I can hitch-hike on her energy ("entrain") and get myself in the mood for meditation. It didn't work. She left without spending much time at all. Maybe she felt my fidgety energy.
Affirmation
Finally I decided this was getting me nowhere and I stood up to leave. At this point I should remind you that I had now forgotten the earlier incident in which I found myself looking at the line from the 23rd Psalm. I had long given up on my interpretation of what that event meant. As I began to turn to the outside door a last thought made me turn back around and walk to the front where a large-size bible was kept on a waist-height stand. Maybe I would read some nice-sounding thought for the day. I found something else.
The bible was opened to the page with the 23rd Psalm. The first thing I saw was the passage about "... a table in front of your enemies ..." I saw that passage first because someone had vandalized this bible by deliberately tearing a section from the upper right corner. The manner in which that bible was torn sent pulsing sensations up and down my spine as I recognized the passage. This particular bible was a physically scaled up version of my own RSV. The pages with the text layout on the pages looked just like mine, only larger. (I note this because when I sought another RSV to illustrate this article the page layout had changed.)
Whoever had vandalized it had very carefully torn away the upper right corner a page or more in depth. This "vandal" had carefully torn the page directly down the middle between the two columns and then at a 90-degree angle to the right. Just below the tear were the words "I will prepare you a table in front of your enemies..."
Recognition, relief, teary eyes. I sat down, stunned. I knew that life was not off course after all. I was not lost. I can't tell you that Rolla magically became a wonderful guy. He didn't. I suspect he's still the same. I wasn't suddenly transformed into a person who could easily handle the situation in that company meeting though it is duck soup for me today. But I knew I was OK and that this was part of some sort of plan not that I could tell you, even today, what that plan was.
In that second part of the event I experienced for the first time the seeming "set up" of meetings and situations which "consciously" we don't know about. Sitting cross-legged with the bible can be called a precursive event. I believe the "pre"part of the word is not very descriptive. It depends for definition on a restricting, sequential time line.
Try thinking of time as a slice out of a "coordinate" system. The physical part of us is restricted to that slice while a greater part of us (for lack of a more precise and less pre-conceived term, I'll call our soul) is free to navigate the entire system and also interact with the time-bound slice. This is much like the physics example of trying to imagine being a "flatland" character restricted within a two-dimensional space which - every once in a while - is intersected by events which come from the larger three-dimensional space. For a "flatlander" the events seem to come from nowhere. From this restricted perspective these events seem miraculous.
This was also an event which my show-me-the-evidence mind couldn't refute. Remember that the first part of the event pair occurred while very much awake one evening, except for those few seconds or minutes it must have taken for me to pull the book from the shelf, sit cross legged on the floor, open the bible in front of me, find the passage and carefully pull the ribbon across the column and under the right phrase.
I have no doubt that I took those actions. Yet I have never had anyrecollection of them. I really doubt that this was done for me in some version of movie special effects. It would seem more likely that I did the physical work but in some sort of sleep-walking mode though I've never been a sleep walker.
That leads to thoughts about what we don't know consciously but do know in some other way. We can speculate how the "greater" part of us communicates to the part of us bound within the time slice, the one we perceive as ourself. Think also about the person who tore that piece of paper from that bible. What was the person's reason? Was it an act of vandalism for that person? The page was torn so carefully. Did this person feel some compelling reason to do so or did a sense of disregard go along with the action of this person? Has that person ever experienced a sense that it was wrong to vandalize the book. Did that lead to a resolve to handle their life differently? What was the use for that person of that action? Or was it done by someone in a sleep walking mode? They might not even know.
What kind of coordination went on "behind the scenes" to bring the two of us together in this manner. Did two souls get together and plan this? Who or what set up the appointment for this intersection? It is unlikely I will ever know. It is also unlikely that the other person will ever know how their action affected my view of everything around me.
As profound as this event was for me my new confidence quickly ebbed. And then the second of the One-Two punches hit me.
Revealing The Dream
Sunday morning, September 11, 1983, while I was again having doubts about my new job, I was about to leave for Unity Village to open up the Help Line (I was a volunteer at that time on the Help Line, a telephone crisis line). As I began to open the kitchen door to step outside to my car I remember suddenly wheeling around, without thinking, walking through the kitchen, into the living room and down the basement. In that basement (which was my darkroom at the time) I blindly reached with my hand into the very bottom of a cardboard box and pulled out a single sheet of paper from under a stack of other things which had been piled on top of it.
Filling that paper was the single-spaced typed dream which described how I got the job and it described the people associated with the job. The dream was dated July 4, 1983, exactly one week before the job interview during which I was told I could start right away. As I read this dream the symbols were immediately clear with an "ah ha!" sense of recognition. I had never "gotten" a dream before. Not like that. And not since, though I also stopped writting down dreams. The dream described the person who would tell me about the job, described getting the job and even described the morning coffee conferences with the new boss.
Remember, I had floated my rent check in the middle of the week of this dream. Although I had forgotten the dream, I assumed, without knowing why, that it was perfectly all right as I wrote the check and sent it off. Afterward I "woke up" and worried that the check would bounce. Remember also that at the job interview I had total confidence, almost to the point of disregard. When Gordon asked me whether I had ever done such a job I said I hadn't but I could handle it. Very unlike me, especially at that period in my life, to have the confidence to promise that I could perform a task I had never done.
At this date I was living in Grandview, MO. I had moved there to be closer to the Unity Village job I wanted and still be close enough to my photo lab customers that I could deliver pictures and also get out to Unity for meditation and volunteer work with equal ease.
The meeting coordinator job I was about to get would be only a mile from Unity Village. It was to be with a friend of a friend that I had met in whose house I used to go for meditation sessions. That friend was a runner. Later, when I "found" the dream I learned he was also a marathon runner.