My husband, God love him, showed up in my dream once again.  Dancing on top of a hay wagon - in a city that I have never visited.

I have been moving on with my life after seven years of grieving for him - experiencing new and wonderful things along the way.

I feel that his visitation brings with it a reminder to not take life too seriously - something I have a tendency to do.  His very presence in my life always enabled me to put my seriousness aside for the playfulness that is a more favored part of my personality.

The message I am left with is “Embrace the past while you dance into the future.”

I see that it has been awhile since I posted on this blog - been busy living the journey.

Last night’s dream, or one small segment of it, at least, wanted to be recorded here.  In the dream, I have an electrician changing the wiring to the light on the wall in the living room I grew up in.  In the dream, I am feeling  confident of the difference this change is going to make in the way I live the rest of my life.

Henri Nouwen writes “When we are able to take the next step with the trust that we will have enough light for the step that follows, we can walk through life with joy and be surprised at how far we go.”

I am finally able to take the next step with the light I have - not worrying about consequences - maybe because I am no longer feeling attached to my expectations of what I want the outcome to be.  It is enough to be alive and to have the opportunity to take the next step. 

Today, for the first time in my life, I feel compassion for the young girl, the young woman, and the old woman in me who I have spent my life resenting, in one way or another, for getting in the way of what I wanted.

I never realized, until now, that THIS is the destination that is the most important one of all - the state of being compassionate with ourselves - and all that we are - all those human frailties that make us less than we want to be - to be able to forgive ourselves - and love ourselves - just as we are  - no matter how unloveable we are - to have compassion for the wounded part of ourselves that held us back from being all that we could have been.

This compassion for the wounded self is the key to abundant living.  Without it - no matter how much you have - you are still lacking.  With it - no matter what is lacking in your life - you have it all.

This recent dream enouraged me to make room in my house for a vulnerable 20-year-old girl.

I am fully aware that the dream is referring to a part of my Self that has been dormant for 40 years - which in itself is interesting to me because of the spiritual significance of that number.

Wandering for forty years in the desert.  Yes, that fits with what I have been doing and with what I am about to do.  I am about to become True to who I am - after spending 40 years looking for myself in other people.

I stumbled across these very  significant words  written by Henri Nouwen in “Bread For The Journey” which I feel are important for me to carry with me on the next leg of my journey:

“There is a great difference between successfulness and fruitfulness.  Success comes from strength, control, and respectability.  A successful person has the energy to create something, to keep control over its development, and to make it available in large quantities.  Success brings many rewards and often fame.  Fruits, however, come from weakness and vulnerability.  And fruits are unique.  A child is the fruit conceived in vulnerability, community is the fruit born through shared brokenness, and intimacy is the fruit that grows through touching one another’s wounds……what brings us true joy is not successfulness but fruitfulness.”

Strength, control, and respectability……..I put my all into forging these three things out of the steel armor I used to hold myself together through thick and thin.  Now I kiss them all goodbye as I let myself go with the flow - a vulnerable 20-year-old girl - an aging woman - feeling moved by the Spirit to go forward in new directions. 

I am working on an Inventory of my dreams - just the dates and the highlights of each dream.  I have completed 2001 - 2004 which I consider to be the foundation  my future dreams are built on (2001 being the year that my second husband died).

Having the highlights of my dreams condensed in a small space like that shows the natural progression through the grief process, the eventual attempt to rebuild my life, the “losing of heart” along the way.  It also shows the help that was given me along the way.  We really do not walk this road alone.

I am finding that the time and effort it took to do this Inventory were well worth it.  Extra insights  came while I was typing it up.  Seeing everything together when reviewing it led to more discoveries.  And now I will have easier access to older dreams for further work on them.

I kept a copy on file in my computer because I am already making notes almost daily on the document I printed off.  So many truths that I was not ready to see are revealing themselves to me now that more time has passed.

I encourage anyone interested in the spiritual discipline of dreamwork to keep an ongoing record of their dreams.  They offer such valuable insight into your life’s journey as time goes on.

I’m sad to say that, although I have been getting direction and guidance from my dreams for 28 years, I have only been recording them for the last 6 years - and not always faithfully during that time.

Last winter, I gave myself permission to go into partial hibernation and type up the dreams I had recorded. That process alone imparted new insights to me.

Being a member of a Dream Circle these last six months  honed my tools of working with my dreams;  as well as showing me deeper levels of meaning for all  these dreams.

I am now entering my second year of partial hibernation for the winter months.  Before typing the dreams I had during 2007, I decided to put some of the older dreams  into categories.  One new and exciting discovery after another jumped out at me - insights into myself that I had not been ready to face or do anything about.

Four years later the blow is softened - received in a more gentle light.  These new truths about myself  and my relationships provide a more dependable roadmap for the new year that I am walking into.

Thank God I thought to pack it!

It is clearer to me now what pictures from my past are still with me - in need of reframing.

Last night I saw a big buffalo standing in the middle of the herd - as the daylight was fading around him.  I was struck by the majestic beauty of the beast.

I have spent the biggest part of my life focused on pain that I didn’t know how to do anything about.  I absorbed everybody’s pain around me; but I didn’t know how to process it so I could let go of it.  And it just got bigger and bigger inside of me.

Then the images in a recent dream showed me accepting the love I had known in my life - not just in my head; but Feeling it in my heart - not just for the man I found so easy to love - but also for myself who I often did not accept so easily.

 Sharing the intimacies of my inner struggles on my blogs in as nonjudgmental  a way as I can has allowed the light to start filtering through all that blackness  - changing it to a shade of purple - the color of passion - not the passion you feel in  a love relationship with  another person - but the passion you feel for life and for your purpose in life.

It took an image in a dream of a dresser (made of light wood) with the drawers partly open to bring this message home to me.  Even then, I never would have got there on my own.

It was in discussing this dream in a dream circle; and responding to their questions that I got the answer I haven’t had all these years.

We can’t  turn our heads away from other people’s pain; but we can’t just absorb it either.  Eventually the vessel becomes too full of pain to be of use to the Self or anybody else.

The Loving thing to do is to be Present to them in their pain; and then open your Self to the Light - in whatever way it presents itself to you.  Let it lead you through the night of pain back into the light of  day.  Awakened.  Conscious.  Aware.  Informed.  Better able to be a tool for Good.

My father served in WWII.  A few years before he died, he shared with me that when he was a youth he dreamt of a motorcycle with a sidecar on it.

He did not know that such a thing existed until he grew up and was overseas.

 

Now that I am newly navigating in a deeper area of consciousness, I am having trouble recalling my dreams.  There seem to be no words to describe them - just fleeting images.

I am experimenting with a technique that I read about somewhere -  to express my dream by drawing a picture - and believe me I’m no artist.  My pictures are truly kindegarten level;  but they seem to be doing the trick. 

Sometimes I’m only using a circle of color to represent a person  - whatever comes up for me when I sit down to draw.

Friday I drew a picture of my dream and we discussed it during our dream circle time.  We ended up getting a lot out of what I had no words for.  And I then had a handle on the message the dream held for me.

Friday night before going to bed, I drew another picture - kindegarten level - just opened myself up to what wanted to come from inside me onto paper.

Saturday morning - once again just images from my dreams  to be put on paper.  Before going to bed Saturday night, I looked at the picture I had drawn in the morning.  Now I was able to put into words what the picture showed.

I then drew a picture that represented how I saw something that happened during the day that had impacted me.

When I woke Sunday morning, I could remember disjointed events from last night’s dreams.  I recorded them - starting at the end and working my way backwards.  I was able - later on in the morning - to go back and record them as they came to me through the night - recognizing now how they actually did tie together.

I am getting quite excited about this technique that is new to me - and am looking forward to where it might lead me in my dreamwork.

Dream - I am separating and playing some Christmas CD’s - one of which is Alvin & The Chipmunks.  Some of the CD’s are not useable because the packaging was too flimsy and the tapes did not come apart intact.

This dream tells me that there is more inner work to be done before some of the spiritual truths I have been exposed to are a working part of my nature. 

It also tells me I need to set aside the heavy issues I have spent this last year working on;  and focus on the lighter side of things.

Yes, the spiritual work is important;  but it is okay to have fun with it.  It doesn’t always have to be so serious.  A picture that is all dark is not worth looking at.

You have to loosen the soil before planting the seed.

A relaxed mind is fertile ground for new teachings from a higher plane of existence. 

I have never forgotten one of the dreams I had awhile after my husband died.  A beaver, a raccoon, and a white kitten were in the outside box where I store my garbage.  In the dream, I leave the door open so they can leave when they are ready.

Lately I have been realizing that this dream is referring to energies within myself that I no longer valued and was therefore disowning.

To honor my quest for wholeness, it is vital that I find ways to re-integrate these natural energies and find ways to give healthy expression to them.

In the words of Jill Mellick: “If we reject one part, we give up our past; if we reject the other, we give up our future.  Whether we like it or not, we need to hold to our roots and build from there.