I was talking with a friend the other day who’s having a rough time. She’s been working hard to bring a dream into reality, a dream she has held for years, and now everything seems to be falling apart before her eyes. There are roadblocks everywhere she turns. Not only has she been working hard on her dream with her head and hands, she’s also been doing the spiritual work of prayer and visualization to manifest what she wants. Still, nothing is working. As we talked, I could feel her pain.
I wanted to offer her a word or two of encouragement, an affirmation that would inspire her to push on in spite of what the world was throwing at her. After all, I believe as she does; that as spiritual beings, infused with the universal power and presence of the creator, we each have the capacity to bring anything we can imagine into physical form. In spite of this, I have seen many instances like the one my friend is experiencing. Are some dreams more worthy than others? Is it just a question of timing? Are the roadblocks we encounter along our life’s path simply there to test us, to make us stop and consider our options before moving on? Or, is there something else at work here?
While I believe we can create anything we can dream of, I’m not sure we always should. This is not a judgment about the relative value of anyone’s dream, only an observation that the kind of pain my friend is experiencing comes from the breaking down of form, not the dying of a dream. The dream still lives, only the form she has been trying to create to hold the dream is falling apart. There is a difference.
The image that comes to mind is that of a snake shedding its skin. The snake sheds its skin because of an inner urging to do so. The snake’s essential energy pushing out into expanded form brings this about. While the snake’s skin is being stripped away, the essential energy of the snake remains. The snake would suffocate and die if it tried to hold onto its old skin. Only by shedding it completely will the new expanded version of the snake be able to come into the world. No matter what happens in the outer world, the essential energy standing behind our dreams still lives, only the form will ever die, and it is when we attempt to hold onto the form that we feel pain.
We live in a culture that worships growth. For many of us, if we could graph our idea of a perfect life it would look like an upwardly sloping arrow, always moving forward, each step higher than the one before it. Sure, we’ll stumble along the way, make mistakes, take a wrong turn, but the goal is to move past those dips as quickly as possible and keep building on what we have accomplished. We expect it from ourselves, our businesses, our leaders, and our economy. But this fixation on growth ignores the cycles of nature and our own essential natures as well. Those dips we experience along the path of life aren’t just there to jump over; they’re there to help us learn something of value about ourselves. In fact, those dips, which can sometimes look more like a deep “U” than a dip, can be the most interesting parts of our journey.
My friend and I ran out of time the other day–life stepped in and called us each to our next appointments–and so I didn’t have the time to tell her that what might need to happen is to let everything she has been working toward go, at least for awhile, and step completely into the depths opening before her. That can be a scary thing and it is not something most of us do with ease. Sometimes it takes a guide, someone who has been into the dark places before and come out the other side, to point the way. This journey into the dark can be particularly scary because there are no assurances as to what we will find there, nor are there timetables we can rely on that tell us how long we will be in the bottom of the U before returning to the light.
This dive into the depths is an essential part of our spiritual journey of self discovery. There is a quote that has been attributed to Joseph Campbell that speaks to this: “We spend all our lives climbing a ladder, get to the top, and realize it’s leaning against the wrong wall.” This dive into the U is about finding the right wall to lean our ladder against. Before we can create form for our dream (the ladder) we must first understand the essential nature of our dream (the wall) and this essential nature can only be found by taking a journey into the soul.
Next…Looking into the “U.”
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Tom Anderson is the author of Your Place in the World: Creating a life of vision, purpose, and service. In the past, Tom has been a commercial mortgage banker and real estate developer but today, he describes himself as an activator of purpose whose passion is helping others to discover theirs. Tom’s message is that we all carry within a gift that can fuel a dream, create an abundant life, and even change the world. In his roles as an inspirational speaker and workshop leader, Tom brings the lessons he has learned in the wilderness as a vision quest guide to individuals and groups all over the country and in varied settings. Whether speaking before an audience, leading an afternoon workshop, or guiding a group through a multi-day retreat, Tom creates transformative and inspiring experiences for those he serves. His primary tool is the process of the vision quest, an ancient and universal ceremony used to mark and honor major life transformations. Audiences and participants leave being able to look more deeply at the challenges confronting them in their lives and work and then transform those challenges into something of value. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tom_L_Anderson |
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