Just to ensure that I understand your post correctly, I’ve tried to summarize it as follows: you recently were thinking back a few years to when you had to leave art college because of depression and anxiety from which you still sometimes suffer, partly from an understandable apprehension over a possible upcoming diagnosis of fibromyalgia and from cancer fears that doctors have told you are unfounded etc.

As part of looking back, you remembered an old dream where a God-like voice told you to throw away all of your art college assignment “failures” and you interpreted this to mean that although you do have art skills, you just have to get over any anxieties about a lack of talent etc.

At some point after these reflections, you had a dream about being in a classroom where, contrary to the usual situation in such dreams, you were fully prepared and woke up feeling excited.

Apparently later that day, you received a phone call related to becoming a master gardener about which you had been thinking in the past but hadn’t been thinking about it at all around the time of the call.

In the days following the call, thoughts about art school continued a lot and you often talked about art as if you were a teacher, also having thoughts of restarting your art studies. You then had the dream about being the teacher in a class and knowing less than the students.

If this summary is correct, then there could be a possibility that the situation of having the dream about being well prepared for class which was then followed by the phone call about studying to become a master gardener might be what’s called a “synchronistic event”, or more simply, a “meaningful coincidence”.

The idea would be that something you really could be good at as a career was “in the air” as a possibility as it were, as shown by the coincidence of receiving a phone call shortly after the dream reminding you of the career of “master gardener”.

In this type of happening, two events are not connected by “cause and effect” (that is, the dream did not “cause” the phone call to happen), but they’re joined by “meaning” (that is, “being good at something”, and the phone call about the job of “master gardener” might possibly be connected in your outer life).

Apparently, you prefer to stick with trying to develop your art skills in order to make a living (e.g. lately you’ve been thinking about it a lot and talk about it as if you were a teacher).

But apparently you then had a subsequent dream of being a teacher but knowing less than the students in the class and not even knowing what to test them on etc.

So there might be some hint in that dream that the subject of art, while probably great as an ongoing hobby for example, might not be your strongest potential skill to make a living.

The latter could be related to gardening while art might have to be relegated to second place as possibly suggested by the old dream where a God-like voice told you to throw out the failed assignments as if to start with some studies that would be completely different.

All of what you’ve been going through is of course very stressful and understandably, in such circumstances we all prefer to escape in some way.

In your dreams, this is shown by your trying to fly away etc. when being chased and this is a very common motif.

Lately, you had the positive thought of not trying to escape and the thing which is chasing you sometimes catches up and causes some pain.

Actually, this can be the start of something good because, although painful at first, facing various issues head on usually can help to solve them more quickly, e.g. getting tests for fibromyalgia is of course scary but putting them off doesn’t really help to relieve your overall feelings of anxiety.

Your other dreams that are “restricting” you in some way are probably trying to get you to face certain realities and to learn new skills of assertiveness and determination etc. in order to move forward more effectively. For example, a good way to help things to move along in this direction would be by practicing the outlines presented in the book “Asserting Yourself” by Bower and Bower.

Of course, without knowing very much about you, these ideas may not fit your personal circumstances very well but I hope they can help in some way.

If you’re interested in learning more about “meaningful coincidences”, reliable books about this subject by professional analysts include “There Are No Accidents” by Robert Hopcke, “The Tao of Psychology” by Jean Shinoda Bolen, and “At the Heart of the Matter” by J. Gary Sparks.

Please feel free to ask any questions or to make any comments about this particular way of looking at your dreams.