Last night－to be exact, it’s this morning, because it was after four o’clock in the morning－I had a terrible dream.
I was in a room. Together with me in the room were a cluster of my students. We seemed to be having a class. However, the class couldn’t begin, because a woman was cooking in the room and another woman was decorating the room with vases, pots, flowers and shrines. About half an hour passed, both my students and I lost patience, so I began the lecture. As it was the last lesson in the semester, I didn’t follow a strict procedure for a class; I simply give them a topic to write an essay on to prepare them for the final exam. The topic is: “Please give your opinion about the medical system of our country. Do you think there is any room for improvement?” Then the students started to write. However, not long after that, the students and the women disappeared, leaving me alone in the room.
I was sitting at a desk working or something. Suddenly, I heard two people chatting from another room. It seemed to be the voices of my mom and dad. I was confused because my dad had already passed away, which was exactly four months ago. So I sneaked to the door of the room to take a look. There really sat my mom and dad on a bench, chatting. My dad was wearing a mask covering his mouth. I was startled and wanted to take a photo of them as evidence, but I couldn’t turn on my phone. I then tried to phone my husband for help but was unable to find the right number. I was scared and shut the door to keep myself from being hurt. However my dad went into my room through the window. I called out to my brother to burn scented sticks and paper money for the dead. He did it, but it didn’t work. My dad came over and grabbed me in the arm and in another part of the body! Then I called out “Jesus!” Suddenly my dad disappeared! I was overjoyed and told my brother to call out the same way. This time he didn’t do what I told him. So I repeated shouting the word myself several times until I was sure it was safe. The battle was over and I was relieved. Then I started to clean the room, clearing things for the dead such as scented sticks and shrines away. However, I was not totally relieved, because then I was surrounded by a pile of quilts. I tried to pull them away but the quilts just kept emerging, endlessly. I was extremely tired, so I struggled to wake myself up. Finally, I woke up. It was already 7:00－too late! I had planned to wake up at 5:00 or 6:00. I felt very tired and upset.
Why did I have such a terrible dream and fail to wake up earlier? There was another story. Last night, before going to bed, I prayed to God to help me go through the next day smoothly because there would be heavy workload the next day. I had a good sleep until half past three in the morning. I woke up and was wide awake. I should have got up to work because I had had enough sleep. However, I decided to go on sleeping for one or two more hours till my alarm o’clock set off－I had one alarm for 5:00 and another for 6:00. So I forced myself to go back to sleep. Then the dream. As I was deeply stuck in the dream, I ignored both alarms. So I failed to wake up normally.
I learned a big lesson from this dream: Follow the call from God; God’s plan is always the best! Suppose I had got up at half past three, I could have avoided that terrible dream. Meanwhile, I could have won three more hours and could have finished a large part of my work for today. It’s a double win situation. But now it’s double loss. At this moment, words from the Bible came back to me: “Love not sleep, lest thou come to poverty; open your eyes, and thou shalt be satisfied with bread.”(Proverbs 20:13)（箴言20:13“不要贪睡，免致贫穷；眼要睁开，你就吃饱。”）
From the perspective of Chinese Medicine for Health-Keeping, the matter can be explained in the following way. Three o’clock in the morning is like the Beginning of Spring（立春）. It’s a time for everything on earth to begin to wake up. So if you are wide awake at that time, it means that you have had enough sleep and should get up to work or exercise. It’s good. If you are still sleepy, you can go on, but should wake at 5:00, because 5:00 is The Waking of Insects（惊蛰）, which means that all animals should wake up at this time. And one must get up before 6:00, because 6:00 is Vernal Equinox（春分）, which means that the day and the night are divided here half by half. Since it is daytime, it’s time for work, so one must get up. If you don’t rise with the sun, which represents Yang, symbolizing dynamism or energy, your body will be overwhelmed by Yin, symbolizing quiet or rest. Excessive Yin at the wrong time will lead to loss of sensitivity of the warning system of your body which is supposed to protect you from being attacked by evil spirit. As a result, your body becomes weak. That’s why I had that terrible dream and I felt very tired after getting up this morning. I guess the dream happened between 6:00 and 7:00, because when I finally woke up at 7:00, the dream was still fresh. Therefore, if I had got up before 6:00, I could have avoided that terrible dream and avoided wasting much of my energy and time.
