I was recently having a metaphysical discussion with some friends about dreams. In specific, we were contemplating how one might discern the difference between people/spirit beings who come to us in dreams to relate messages and people/spirit beings who are conjured up by our subconscious for starring roles in our dreams. In other words, how can you tell if a visiting figure in a dream is "really" some person you know or if that person is simply an image your inner dreammaker is using to make a point?

That night, I had two dreams. In the first dream, John Lennon was sitting across from me at a bar. We had a great conversation with a good deal of laughter, and as I left, I asked if I could have his autograph. When he groaned, I told him he didn't have to do it. He said, of course, he did and then he made a little picture for me on a piece of paper along with a very short story. But when I looked over to read the words, I couldn't make sense of them. I asked him, "What does this say?" When he looked, he couldn't read it either, and there we were laughing, neither of us able to make sense of it. What finally stopped me from laughing was the sobering realization that this was some kind of an explanation to a question I couldn't remember.

In the second dream, I saw my grandfather, who died when I was 8 years old. He was looking slightly away from me, but as I approached him he turned to face me. He then hugged me very tightly, as if enveloping me, and suddenly there was such a strong rush of love flowing between us that it brought unexpected tears to our eyes.

Upon awakening, I concluded that the two dreams were in answer to my question, one conjured by the internal dreamworkers and one that "really" involved my grandfather's presence. But as the day wore on, the dream images stuck with me, not as two images but as one, and I began to feel something that I couldn't quite explain.

I began to wonder if, at deeper levels, it really matters so much where any message comes from -- dreams, an overheard conversation, the shape of a cloud, a sudden remembering. Does the vehicle of the message make the power of the message any more or less real? Laughing with John Lennon, hugging my Grandfather -- perhaps the answer to any dream, any aspect of life or death, is all in the relationship. Perhaps the question we need to ask ourselves isn't so much "Is it real?" as "How am I touched and changed by this situation, this meeting, this event?" Perhaps this is the beginning of a shift to a deeper awareness of our interconnection with all beings everywhere.