“It was all a dream…” or “Untitled” or shoot, I don’t know, (insert random title that sums up both types of somesuchsh*** have got to be my most common entry titles. I was reminded of this yesterday and in recent months, [let's be honest, everyday] because the tangled web weaves seems to be unraveling, or maybe it’s getting more intricately crafted. Not quite sure but if there’s at least one lesson I’ve learned, it’s that the end is not the end until well, it’s the end.
I had a dream a few years ago that went as such:
It began scrapping with the ex, we were still together at the time but this scrap was writing on the wall it would seem. She was wearing a shirt that I used only for work and we were arguing badly. I then went to a dark place, into the dark of night, with an old house in the middle of the dark. Dark being a key feature of that portion of the dream. Two women needed to use the bathroom so I stood lookout/guard by some bushes while they did. At that moment, a black man comes out of the house with a barking dog. The dog runs towards us so we all peaced out and ran. I could hear him yelling: “It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay.” Well then I am in a car and I’m driving for what feels like hours but probably wasn’t (or was it, who can tell where the Soul journeys when the conscious mind says sweet dreams or nightmares?) and then I’m staring at a fence. Through it, I see a field filled with all kines of people. I turn around and the dog is a now a puppy. It jumps in my arms and I meet a beautiful mixed-ethnicity woman. I put down the puppy, we hug, and the dreams ends.
At the time I had the dream, I was working as a Legislative Chief of Staff or Office Manager [or Political Cubical Dweller] and my Soul needed air to breathe. It was lashing out and would not go quietly without a fight. The relationship that had meant so much was falling apart more and more, a great love crushed by reality, a reality, a possibility, an inevitability, that I was not prepared for. I couldn’t accept life. I could not let things be. Nor could I flow, even though that’s what I most desired in my Heart, and probably what I’m best at. What can I say, hindsight is 20/20 and resistance of something bigger can only get one so far.
I woke up, told her about the dream, and guess what? We got into a big fight. In the weeks preceding, I’d been having a series of violent dreams, which I had interpreted as being in turmoil within. And I was. I truly was not happy with where I was, how I was, or who I was.
That day, coincidentally [or was it... dun dun Dun!], I had a previously scheduled appointment with a Counselor to talk about stress, my first in years since college and I went in all open because something had to change, I didn’t know what exactly. I did everything the World told me was right and yet, there I was, struggling and suffocating as I crawled through life. It wasn’t flying, that’s for damn sure!
For whatever reason, I told old boy about the dream. He just listened, sat, and did what I did all last year and still to this day [but making a boat load more money because of credentials]. Of all the Counselors I could have gotten, I got the spiritual one, and of course he says: “That’s me, Jason! That’s me in the dream, telling you, it’s all going to be okay.” It really gave me chicken skin because he was a black man in real life and I didn’t tell him the ethnicity of the characters in my dream.
I went to work, talked with my boss, quit my job. Some how, some way, that just made sense after talking with homie. It didn’t make sense to my ex but we were both different people then and well, we live our lives differently so how could I expect her to understand what made sense to me. Out of love, I strived to changed and learn since so that I could understand her side and that allowed me to see that we all have our own Path.
At that point, I guess that would be the time where I put up and walked my Path, but it wasn’t so graceful in the beginning as I started to slip further and further down the rabbit hole. I’d had some experiences with the numinous and mystical but it definitely picked up there…
Fast forward, more dreams interpreted, used as guidance, following signs after the Apocalypse of my life, that being that everything I could have feared happening, happened, wading through it all, grappling with the Dark Night of My Soul, and here I am, in this moment, wondering, because I feel the something somesuchsh** again… Where earlier I rode good waves, Brah, this is the wave, that’s going on in my life around me, the wave that puts a cap on something somesuchsh** so that I can finally rest [not Death I'm told but a respite for the Soul].
Life seems to accelerate and decelerate often, like the tides in the ocean rise and fall, and I often wonder what that dream meant in its entirety. I’d meet the character, the woman at the end of it a few times later, in other dreams, she was at the end of the dream that I interpreted as it being necessary for me to travel, do my “time in the desert” and she was there in another dream when it was all done, we were traveling together, and I said something like, I did this all to prepare me.
I don’t believe in coincidence. If you’re an avid Simple Voice reader, a client, a friend, you know that about this JMAW character. The further up this road that I walk alone, and as often as I share the landscape of the moment with others who speak from the Spirit, the more I believe, I see how it is all by design. I don’t understand it. I have a basic understanding of the principles of working with it, manifesting, co-creating, living, whatever you want to call it, but I don’t understand the why. In a sense, I do but I don’t want to get ahead of myself…
Why do we hurt? Why do we suffer? Why do we feel? That last question is really the answer but I’m humoring you reader and I’m getting ahead of myself [hey if The Universe wants to have humor with me, I can humor as well, because we might as well laugh]. I don’t understand timing or how or what but it’s all an experience, and it’s great to feel each element of it. The greatest feeling? That’s easy, what we need most, love, love within and love shared all around for what’s life without love? True love?
Turns out I lived in the House. It hit me one night as I sat in front of it and spoke with a man in the dark of a full moon night. I could only see the outline of his face, could not make out any details but he talked about how it all works out in life, how it’ll all be okay.
I believe in that, Okay-Ness, as I like to dub presence or mindfulness. I accept that it will all be okay, it’s just getting back to okay and accepting whatever is being felt in that moment that is oftentimes quite challenging.
I walked along the field that I saw, this dream, from so long ago, years in fact that feel like a blink, a dream, an (insert here). I saw the fence, I’ve seen how the mirrors and the characters are all there. My then-mentor telling me that holding a puppy after it was growling was symbolic of taming the wild side. I do not know if tame is accurate because the free Spirit in me grows restless, but at least it is no longer a wild animal, it’s still the Wild One, yet I can care for it, and love it like one would a puppy. And if we each have an Inner Child, than every Dog, even the Wild Ones, have an Inner Puppy.
So as I discussed the dream yesterday as things seemingly unraveled, a day of plans overcome by the Flow, I pondered and was brought to a conversation about the Notorious BIG, life, art, creativity, being, hot dogs, expression, and it embodied spirituality. But the thing I liked the most. Well, that’s follows here and was unexpected.
Most unexpected because as I listened to an intriguingly wise, young woman talk about her appreciation of honesty, I paused and really listened. Then, I reflected and thought about how for so long, I’ve worked at living in a way to express and remind others, shoot, myself, that being honest is genuine, and that authenticity, is kind of what the world seems to be lacking.
“Do what you love.” She said.
Life is okay. I’m doing what I love and if/when I get tired of it, I’ll do something else. The Journey is an intricate system embodying all things, Light and Dark merely two sides of the same coin. It all balances. It all works out, it’s all varying levels of Love/God/Universe/Is/Whatever and in the end…
It’s all just stardust again anyway, now isn’t it?
