We’ve all had them – challenges and circumstances that leave their unforgettable impact and change us forever.  Abraham aptly terms it: the contrast.

I would like to believe that we have chosen the contrast on some level before we ever fully emerged into these bodies.  I don’t believe we chose the specifics of it so much as the generalities.  I do believe we chose it before we were capable of feeling fear and before we formed individual ideas of what’s good and what’s bad or even what’s right and what’s wrong.

The beautiful thing about making peace with having chose it all on some level is that I don’t have to understand why – just know that whatever it is, I chose it. This is a far more empowering feeling than the victim stance of this happened to me and I have no control over it and it sucks.  And I feel it’s even more empowering than searching for positive aspects in certain situations where I just can’t come by it honestly.

I actually dreamed one night about someone very close to me who is a heroin addict.  I dreamed we were in non-physical and talking about how we were going to come down to earth in these bodies and have this relationship with each other.  We spoke eagerly about this adventure we were going to have and there was this sense that this undertaking meant lots of challenges with thrilling twists and turns.  But there was no fear, no judgement at all about it, the only feeling was one of enthusiastic anticipation.

The dream scene then changed and we were in physical bodies here on earth.  We were in a small boat on a river and we were still happily awaiting the contrast we were about to experience.  Then the water became choppy, darkness descended and one of us was thrown overboard into the water.  At that moment, the drama began to unfold and we were both lost in the dream.  We forgot the initial agreement we made in non-physical.  We become immersed and lost both literally and metaphorically in the water, in the dream I was dreaming, in the drama.

The dream ends but leaves behind its message: this was all a choice and from your non-local vantage point, you were not afraid, nor did you say this is a good pile of things to experience and this is a bad pile of things to experience.  You wanted it all.  You didn’t just come to paint with the color yellow, you didn’t just come to ride the smooth train from point A to point B.  You did want it all.  And remembering this, I step out of immersion and I make peace with where I am and what I have lived and will live.  Making peace, I pass from moving against the current of life to moving with the current of life.

I’ve been thinking lately that night dreams are my final frontier in consciousness.  They fascinate me and I wonder if they might be a link for us between the physical world and the non-physical, Spirit world.  Or as Susie called it in The Lovely Bones, the Inbetween.

I dream every night vividly.  Last night before I went to sleep I was thinking about my Mom who died in 1988.  Macabre thoughts perhaps about whether her body deteriorates even though its embalmed.  Thoughts of that moment when I was saying goodbye to her, as she lay in a coffin, and just had to reach out and touch her hand one final time.  I cringed and quickly withdrew my own hand as I felt her cold, hard skin.

Last night in my dreams, we have moved into another house again, something we so far seem to do about every five years or less.  Even in my youth we moved around quite a bit.  So once again another move, but this time it’s back to the first home I ever purchased.  I bought it about a year after my Mom died.  She had never seen it, my home, my first “real” home.

There are boxes everywhere.  We are in the living room and there’s a lot of talk with the kids about their first day at a new school.   The front door slowly swings open and my Mother walks in.  I know that she’s visiting us from the Spirit world and I yell out to the rest of the family that my Mother is here.  She takes a seat on a couch.  There are boxes cluttered all around her.  I sit outside the ring of boxes that seem to surround her.

My Mother then comments how she has finally come to see me: “I’m so close you could touch me but you don’t, you let the boxes be in the way,” she says.   “Here’s your chance and isn’t it interesting that you let the boxes get between us.”  I tell her, “oh my gosh, you are right, what am I thinking, let me move the boxes.”

I clear a space and I sit down beside her.  Yes, here is my chance.  My Mother has only ever played small bit parts in my dreams, almost as an aside.  Now here she is playing a central role.

I look deeply into her eyes, they’re bright and dark and luminous just as I remember them.  Her eyes are the darkest brown, so dark, they remind me of the color of dark chocolate.  I take her hand in mine and run my hand slowly over hers.  It’s warm, soft and smooth.

She’s wearing a navy blue suit, large lapels and buttons the size of small saucers.  I note that her outfit is circa 1970s.  The decade when she would have been in her 40s still wild around the edges, still relatively young and most of all, free of the medical label she would later have pinned to her.

I see that she has two necklaces on.  One is a rhinestone necklace and the other necklace extends long down her chest and at the end of it dangles a small golden whistle.  I reach out to touch it.  “It’s a God whistle,” she tells me; “I use it whenever I need God.”  “I want one,” I say to her.  And the next thing I know, I’m awake and the dream is over.

I could analyze the dream “to death” if I wanted to but I don’t.  I love living in the questions and not having all the answers.  I love final frontiers that are never conquered.  I love, as my friend Kim says, being alive in the mystery.  I love that I get to be alive and live in the mystery of it all.

I love you Mom, the path is clear now, no more boxes to get between us.  Your fair skinned hands — they are warm, soft and smooth, that’s what I take back with me.  It’s the gift you left for me in the Inbetween world of my dreams, that, and a small golden God whistle.

And now, I’m off to find my own God whistle.  It’s what we’ll share now.  It’s my forever link to you Mom.

My favorite line is: there is a moment when fear and dreams must collide. We have all had those moments though perhaps only in hindsight can we get a sense of the pivotal moment when fear and dreams intersected. When courage and the unknown awaited us and so did the familiarity and safety of what is known and comfortable. Which would prevail? Sometimes the choice looms big and as yet unreachable. Sometimes it takes a huge leap of faith. Yet, it’s only ever a choice that we make for something.

So the next time you take that leap of faith and fall into the unknown, may you know that the one you will become, will be there to catch you.

Let me fall
Let me climb
There’s a moment when fear
And dreams must collide

Someone I am
Is waiting for courage
The one I want
The one I will become
Will catch me

So let me fall
If I must fall
I won’t heed your warnings
I won’t hear them

Let me fall
If I fall
Though the phoenix may
Or may not rise

I will dance so freely
Holding on to no one
You can hold me only
If you too will fall
Away from all these
Useless fears and chains

Someone I am
Is waiting for my courage
The one I want
The one I will become
Will catch me

So let me fall
If I must fall
I won’t heed your warnings
I won’t hear

Let me fall
If I fall
There’s no reason
To miss this one chance
This perfect moment
Just let me fall

Cirque du Soleil lyrics
Album: Quidam

Album Cover by Christie Brinkley

In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
From the Mountains of Faith
To the river so deep
I must be lookin’ for something
Something sacred I lost
But the river is wide
And it’s too hard to cross
even though I know the river is wide
I walk down every evening and stand on the shore
I try to cross to the opposite side
So I can finally find what I’ve been looking for
In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
Through the Valley of Fear
To a river so deep
I’ve been searching for something
Taken out of my soul
Something I’d never lose
Something somebody stole
I don’t know why I go walking at night
But now I’m tired and I don’t want to walk anymore
I hope it doesn’t take the rest of my life
Until I find what it is I’ve been looking for

In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
Through the Jungle of Doubt
To the river so deep
I know I’m searching for something
Something so undefined
That it can only be seen
By the eyes of the blind
In the middle of the night

I’m not sure about a life after this
God knows I’ve never been a spiritual man
Baptized by the fire, I wade into the river
That is runnin’ to the promised land

In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
Through the Desert of Truth
To the river so deep
We all end in the ocean
We all start in the streams
We’re all carried along
By the River of Dreams
In the middle of the night

~ Billy Joel ~

as twilight begins
and darkness descends
light pours into small spaces

and I am tossed out into the violet night
half remembering now the questions I asked:
what’s it like in that other realm?
and
will I be alone?

answers drift in from faraway places
and hang like forbidden fruit
words and images impossible to translate

relief comes as the first blush of morning arrives
wind strokes my hair
I turn back to what is familiar
and the simple language
for things: table, chair, cup, spoon, plate

now in the pulse of a quiet sleep
I dream that I have abandoned the questions
and am wrapped in the arms of the answer:
I am not alone.

©heartsdeesire

Good stuff, Tyra.  Off to dream I went and my dream had a message about talent.  In the dream, I read poetry that I found in a thrift store, I created that love poem written by some unknown-to-me man to his beloved, decades ago, about his visit to the white canyons.  I never even heard of white canyons and I don’t write poetry, at least I didn’t think I did.  Also, I created all that vintage inventory in the store.  I became both fashion designer, story teller and poet all in one dream.  So it brought up to me the nature of talent as something innate and the nature of talent as something I/all could choose to be anything we want, whenever we want.  Dreams will take you anywhere you want to go, they can show you how you are capable of anything, they can also show you lots of other things, too.  The possibilities truly are endless and I just love believing that everyone not only has a special gift/talent but that we all have access to infinite talent.  Wow, why that should be a biggie to me, I dunno, but it is…may you discover what talent you didn’t know you had and may you step into the joy of knowing you are infinite talent…Love and Light, Beth