Gratitude is the sign of noble souls ~ Aesop


Wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving ~ Kahlil Gabran


Joy delights in joy ~ William Shakespeare


Thursday, February 25, 2010

Today I am grateful for dreams -- dreams that guide and remind.

Yesterday was a busy day! Then my plans for the evening fell through and I found myself with a free evening. So what did I do? I turned on the TV and buzzed through Sunday's Olympics (I know, I am way behind the curve). Then I watched a movie -- Separate Tables -- about the crazy and tender ways we isolated humans try to connect with one another. Then I read voraciously a couple of New Yorkers that have been sitting around. I mean, I ravaged those New Yorkers, devoured them with hardly a chew, pushed way past my bedtime, till I could hardly keep my eyes open, and fell asleep. Sometime in the wee hours I woke, quietly, but with enough conscious awareness to recognize Depression's furtive paw resting on my chest. I went back to sleep and had this dream:

I am in a restaurant or hotel, with different rooms. It is filled with people. I am trying to avoid some people, so I go from one room into the other, and there is my dream guy, Mr. Tall Dark and Handsome. He swoops me in his arms and we have a long, romantic kiss -- and then he helps me hide in a burlap bag on the floor.

What?!? I am lying in a burlap bag on the floor, and this is where my Romantic lead, my animus, has taken me? What the hell...!

OK, so after some thought, and reflection, this is what I learned. Yesterday, there were a whole bunch of tender little feelings that were sprouting up all over the place. Sad feelings, difficult feelings, not just that expansive contentment I have been reveling in lately. I have been sitting with clients struggling with difficulties -- and they become my difficulties. Another client has fallen in love -- and that stirs envy. A potential client still has not made an appointment -- that stirs up disappointment. The terrific client load I had last week is less this week, and that stirs up fear and anxiety. So all this little feelings were chasing me around all day, like a swarm of locusts, and instead of letting them have their say, giving them their space, I retreated into the matrix, wrapped myself up in my media cocoon, battened down the hatches, determined to keep them at bay. Mr. Romance is my drug of choice, fantasy arousing all sorts of longings, inadequacies, fears and just plan, well, fantasy. It's my crack, my heroin. I run off on these little fantastical journeys -- Burt Lancaster has me in his arms, and is he accusing me or seducing me, I'm not sure -- and I think, Oh, that's living, that's life, not this little paltry thing that I have. And all the while, the life that I do have is shut out in the cold, locked out of my heart with all those tender little feelings.

So today, after looking at this dream, writing about it, reflecting on it, I sat quietly, and opened my heart like Rumi's Guest House ("This being human is a guest house, every morning a new arrival") and beckoned, "Come in, Fear, Anxiety, I will soothe you. Don't worry, Envy, I won't shut you out. Disappointment, Sadness -- you have been my stalwart companions, I won't turn my back on you! Loneliness, come in, I will be your friend."

1 comment:

  1. First of all, thank you for sharing such an intimate story, second of all, thanks for making me laugh, third of all, thanks for making me think. It's funny, I was just reading Henri Nouwen last night and he was talking about turning hostility into hospitality and I was absoultely taken with the thought of showing hospitality to that which is hostile towards us (fear, anxiety, anger) and in so doing, we turn them from strangers into guests. Amazing!

    ReplyDelete

Blog Archive