In The Arms of Spirit

This essay documents Dr. Bernard Bail’s personal dream analysis during a period of significant family and professional stress — specifically while working on the documentary “And Now, Love” and navigating family tensions.

He was managing challenges on two fronts: promoting the film and addressing family relationship issues. He notes that “a considerable degree of frustration filled my interpersonal arena,” and acknowledges that resolution would require time, thought, patience, understanding, as well as considerable compassion.

Dream One

The dream opens with Dr. Bail forgetting to move two Lincoln Navigators from his front yard before street-sweeping day. Despite morning traffic and a packed schedule, he returns home. The house appears different from his actual residence — a two-story structure with simpler architecture than his real home.

Instead of the two Navigators, he finds a single beige cream-colored car resembling one he owned almost fifty years ago. On a large-leafed plant, he discovers two identical sets of silver keys. Each set comprises four connected rings arranged like figure eights, totaling approximately forty keys (car, house, garage, and various lock keys). The keys are wet with water droplets.

He gathers both sets and finds his wife upstairs. She appears as she looked fifty years prior — young and unchanged from when their children were small. He explains his reason for returning and asks about the mysterious keys, though he doesn’t recall receiving an answer. The dream transitions from confusion to clarity and focal intent and work to be done.

Dream Two

At dawn, Dr. Bail drives alone in a vintage bronze Infinity down a declining ramp approaching a wide multi-lane freeway. As he descends, successive ramps appear in succession. Few cars occupy the roads, and an unfamiliar expansive valley comes into view.

The critical element involves guidance: white traffic cones cordoned each Y-shaped junction, preventing him from veering into unknown hinterland. He describes the driving experience as smooth and flawless, coursing onto the freeway “as though I was being guided.”

Discussion

Dr. Bail interprets the first dream’s setting as revealing his past unconscious patterns — specifically, how his own upbringing affected his family. The dream’s early-period home reflects his younger years as a new husband and father, when he was “unknowing about the emotional effects my own tormented upbringing visited upon my wife and family unconsciously.”

The two Navigators in waking life symbolize the psychological tools now available — dreams, and the person (Dr. Bail), to understand them. The silver keys, representing feminine/maternal and unconscious elements, hold “the answers to the suffering, restrictions and obstructions that each of the members of our family have acquired.”

The second dream indicates progression. Though unencumbered work remains, Dr. Bail now operates under spiritual guidance rather than conscious control. White traffic cones represent the “road to freedom,” though the experience remains unfamiliar.

Commentary

The commentary notes that neither Dr. Bail nor his wife had a “Navigator (Analyst)” during their marriage — both were psychologically damaged without realizing it.

Four key points emerge: each person must take responsibility for understanding their own psychological state; the four keys represent one for each family member, symbolizing the keys to the truth of the unconscious; the color silver represents the feminine, and only through the feminine can healing occur; and the second dream’s importance lies in its demonstration that “he is no longer in control, but that spirit is in control.”

Addendum

A subsequent dream involved Dr. Bail walking on unknown terrain along a fence of staves he called “sensors,” searching unsuccessfully for an exit. This prompted therapeutic discussion about his core imprint: the belief that he “is not to receive love in this lifetime.”

The imprint is reframed as functioning like an internal saboteur — sensors preventing escape. Despite evidence that three women in his life love him, his imprint filters their expressions as complaints only, since he “never learned what love sounds like.”

The suggested intervention centers on personal agency: knowing that this is his imprint, making an opening in the fence is his responsibility. He has to make an effort to get himself a decent, happy, life.

Copyright © Bernard W. Bail, M.D., July 2019