Some dreams feel like echoes of daily life. Others arrive from somewhere deeper, carrying a sense of meaning we can almost grasp but never quite hold.
This was one of those dreams.
The Dream: Views from Tsunami Tops
I am in the ocean with my oldest brother and our mother when a powerful wave pulls my brother and me backward. We are swept through a circular tunnel and suddenly find ourselves standing atop a tsunami.
The experience is strangely calm.
As I search frantically for my mother, I realize she is somewhere beneath the water, out of sight. Then, gracefully, the tsunami lowers us gently back to safety.
Onshore, my father greets me and begins speaking through the perception of my maternal grandfather, who passed away many years ago.
In Ukrainian, he tells me what happened:
My mother was pulled beneath the water while on a boat.
But she was not alone. A face of light held her. It was always there.
When the story is finished, I embrace my mother, overwhelmed with gratitude that she is alive.
Even now, the feeling of wonder remains, and a sense that something was trying to tell me a story far larger than the dream itself.
Ancestral Voices
The presence of my grandfather feels significant.
Dreams often collapse time. The living and the dead share the same landscape. Generations sit beside one another as though separated by only a thin curtain.
Whether understood through psychology, spirituality, or simple memory, ancestral figures often appear in dreams as messengers. They remind us that wisdom is not something we create alone. We inherit it. We carry it. Sometimes it returns to us in symbolic form.
Carl Jung wrote about the collective unconscious—a deep reservoir of shared human experience expressed through symbols and archetypes. Perhaps dreams are one way we access that deeper layer of knowing.
Or perhaps they simply remind us that those who shaped us continue to live within us.
The Ocean, the Tsunami, and the Unknown
Water frequently symbolizes the unconscious, emotion, mystery, and transformation.
What fascinates me about this dream is that the tsunami never behaves as a destructive force.
It lifts.
It carries.
It returns.
The wave appears immense and overwhelming, yet it does not consume. Instead, it becomes a vehicle.
The circular tunnel that precedes it feels almost like a passageway—a symbolic crossing between one state of being and another. Many myths and spiritual traditions contain similar imagery: descent before renewal, uncertainty before understanding.
The dream seems less concerned with surviving chaos than with trusting the movement of life itself.
The Face of Light
The image that stays with me most is the face of light holding my mother beneath the water.
Whether interpreted as a divine presence, an ancestral spirit, a psychological symbol, or simply the dream’s own mysterious language, the image radiates protection.
Yet what makes this image especially meaningful to me is that it echoes another dream I once had.
In that dream, I was underwater with a woman whose face shone with love and light.
She pointed toward my nose and my mouth, showing me what to do.
Breathe.
I slowly and quietly inhaled beneath the water and discovered I could breathe there.
Suddenly, the underwater world came alive. I could hear voices. Music. A kind of symphony moving through the depths. Together we traveled through the underwater world as though I had always belonged there.
What strikes me now is how closely these dreams seem to speak to one another.
In one dream, the face of light protects my mother beneath the water. In another, a luminous woman teaches me how to live there.
The depths are no longer merely a place of danger: they become a place of learning.
A place of transformation.
A place where perception expands.
Even now, standing beneath a shower, I occasionally remember that dream. As water runs across my nostrils, I’ll breathe as I did in the dream and recall the strange sensation of breathing underwater—a sensation that provides peace and assurance.
Perhaps the Face of Light does not simply rescue us, but rather teaches us how to inhabit the depths.
Questions for Reflection
If you enjoy exploring your own dreams, you might consider:
- What emotions or life changes might your dreams be processing?
- Are there recurring symbols that continue appearing throughout different stages of your life?
- Have you ever encountered a guide, ancestor, or protective presence in a dream?
- What would happen if, instead of resisting life’s waves, you allowed them to carry you?
- Are there places in your life where you are trying to escape the depths instead of learning how to breathe within them?
What are your dreams teaching you? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
My song to embrace the feeling of being initiated by light and love includes the lyrics, “You showed me how I can breathe underwater, and suddenly, I can hear you.”
Footsteps in Fugue 
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