Dreaming of a life

3 29 05
I’m in Mt. Airy again. After a restless night of constant awareness of my dreaming I awakened, put in my contacts and put on my sneakers and shorts to have a run in the ‘gym’ at the hotel. As I got to the door I saw that someone was already on the elliptical so I thought hopefully no one is on the treadmill, which there was. I was turning away from the door when I saw that there was a seated machine like a low bicycle so I went to put my key in the lock to use that when a little man stepped out of nowhere and seated himself on that machine which eliminated my working out. I turned to go back to my room thinking that maybe this morning wasn’t mine for a work out. That everything has its reason and perhaps this was God’s way of telling me that my body couldn’t take a heavy sweat this morning after not having exercised in weeks but at least I’d gotten up to try. Instead I came back to my room, put on a pot of coffee, powered up the laptop and decided to write about what I could remember of my dreaming. My last dream was a family drama: mine. It was set in the house in High Point that Wayne and I used to share. Even Grandma was there (she’d be 105 years old) and of all the strange things we were all being kind of mean to her, like she had no purpose and nothing to contribute anymore which was not only mean but disrespectful and unlike how we had treated her in life. Also it occurred to me as the action was playing out that this was a play in three acts, I awakened for a moment aware that I should remember that if I could dream a play this good that it was in my subconscious and I could write one; it is there. At one point the garbage was overturned and there were coffee grounds all over the floor amongst other mess. I got out the vacuum to clean it up and in the course of frustrating minutes of just pushing the dirt around and in the process finding that under the mess that there was no room for in the vacuum lay other levels of dirt that had not fallen out of the trash but were simply hidden by the dirt that had fallen on top of it. The bag was full and so it was impossible for me to clean it up until I emptied the vacuum. There were no more bags so I had to empty the bag that was currently full of dirt in order to make room in the old bag for the trash I needed to now clean up.
This seems pretty clear to me. In all of our lives there are layers upon layers of ‘dirt’ that we accumulate in the passage through life but in order to properly deal with our messes we need to make room in the vessel (us) by removing the old dirt in order to be able processing cleaning up the new. Otherwise we just end up pushing it all around and not accomplishing what we are trying to.
In the process of reading The Purpose Driven Life I’ve been meditating and praying on getting my life onto a footing that connects me with my reason for being here. A part of that is putting things into my body that are life affirming (good food, no alcohol for instance) and ‘cleaning’ out my mind and soul too. So much of my life has been lived in reaction to things like a wil of the wisp instead of being driven by internal (or divine) engines. The night of intense dreaming was reconnecting me to my creativity, the obstacles to exercising this morning were intervention so that I would focus on my internal world this morning before focusing on my body. So often in my life when I’ve attempted to make changes I’ve put all of my energy into ‘things’; projects, diet, exercise, activities and not initially put my focus first where it belonged in changing my internal world so that those other actions were a reflection of intrinsic change instead of actually being another avoidance of real change. I think this is why my many attempts to grow forward into who I’m meant to be have been met with limited success and have always been temporary instead of blocks upon which a successful life here is built.

Photo of me in London last year having dinner with friends. I pretty much look like this now except with a crew cut. 

The truth will set me free

March 10, 2005
At the moment I’m on a plane to Toronto for meetings tomorrow morning. Paul finally finished moving out yesterday. He text messaged me at work around 4 o’clock that he’d be gone by 6 which had me in panic mode for the last two hours of the day as I kept thinking, “what in the hell is he doing in my apartment? As far as I know he’s moved out everything that he wants and was only dropping off the car.” It both rankled and creeped me out. I discovered upon arriving home that he’d cleaned which was nice and unexpected, especially after the bizarre emails of hate over the last few days. I woke up this morning feeling pretty great all things considered and had hope for the first time in a long time. I feel like I can get back on my path again now and stop with this stupid and pointless depression. I’m trying to give up the cig’s again and a short trip away is always a great start for that. This of course means no alcohol as I loose all will power but that’s also a very good thing too. I realized that I’ve got to embrace EVERYTHING about myself if I’m going to live a full and successful life and that includes loving my weaknesses. That seems like a bit of a contradiction but it’s one that makes sense. I’m even going to post this journal that I started on my blog which is a potentially very public way for me to face myself and in so doing, embrace myself. I do feel very full of hope again and God willing I’ll be able to accomplish everything that I need/want to do. ‘The truth shall set you free.’