The Dream

I had a dream in the waking hours of this morning. I was in the field near my childhood home where a canal runs through and was always a place of solace, peace, and truly a lot of fun and a little mischief. 

In the dream I walked through the area of tall cottonwoods that lined the banks of the canal, listening to the water gurgle and thinking about the crawdads that lie underneath. As I rounded the bend to the area where we spent most of our time as kids, swinging on a rope over the water and riding bikes up and down the big hill with the tree at the top, I came upon a group of men with construction trucks. The gurgling water was gone and the dusty dry canal bed lay there. The men were measuring, quickly doing their calculations as more trucks arrived and they started to flatten and pave the entire canal area. 

“Wait!” I screamed. “You can’t do that! We need the water for this area! The animals need the water! What will the crawdads do?! Where will the children play? We can’t hang a rope over this road!”  

They had stopped and were staring at me, nonplussed. After a moment of watching me pace and screech out my speech, they began their work again. 

I was so upset because there was nothing I could do to stop these men from ruining my childhood memories. From ruining this spot that was a little nirvana for animals and humans. Maybe I glorified the memory, but to me it was a childhood love. My memory.

As I sit here with my coffee and think about this dream, I feel I know the message. Readings of Buddhism and Toltec have taught me that the pure self is the childhood self. A time when judgments and beliefs are not tainted by others judgments and beliefs. A time when we live freely and purely, full of love for ourselves and others. Only when we grow and become judged and learn how to judge ourselves and others do we become impure of heart.

This dream showed me that a childhood memory, so pure, when tainted becomes ugly or may cause fear to develop. A fear of change? A fear that you can’t “swing” on the proverbial rope? Or catch a crawdad? 

Maybe.

What I chose to take from the dream is this…

When changes come that seem ugly or unfounded, the way we deal with that change is a choice. We can be afraid and stand in bewilderment and outrage at what is happening to us and the world we’ve come to know, which causes a lot of dissonance, stress, anxiety and depression. 

Or, we may choose to take a different road. Turn around and find a new place, a new adventure, a new tree lined canal of solace. The new place will be different and may well be more abundantly beautiful. There may be challenges, but the journey will be well worth it. The memories are still there of the past - good and bad - but movement with enlightened and open eyes may bring love and happiness within the self as well as extraneously.  A new way and place to swing on the rope.

In a time of worldwide pandemic, activism around inequalities in race, gender and sex, severe environmental issues around our planet, and a continuance of unemployment, homelessness and hunger, it’s easy to fall into a place of foreboding and fear. This blog story is based upon my values and how I get through my days and really started out as a journal entry that I felt compelled to share.

I hope it helps some people in dealing with their inner self and coping with the current state of our planet.