Exploring

You know how we have said all things are connected?

 

Our subconscious mind sees the connections in the things others say and the things we say ... There is a message ... a lesson ... in all of it ... There is a thread that flows through all those words and all those images.  The thread is our personal truth.

I thought I knew the meaning of "all things connected" until I actually begin to see the WAY they connect and even now, I am just a student, watching as life connects and intertwines in the most amazing ways ...

I have been working on two projects that have illustrated that to me in a way I have not seen before ...

The first project was to organize all the pictures and articles that I have saved over the years.  I divided them into categories like home improvement, decorating ideas, gardening, craft projects, self improvement articles, and one is just a pretty picture book of scenes and poetry ... like a narrated walk in the woods ...

 

As I worked on it, I saw in vivid color the things I like.  Of course, we know what our favorite things are, but do we truly know the depths of our desires or the detail?  I didn't until I started working on these notebooks.

I like blue and white dishes ... all kinds!  I have a dozen patterns or more of plates, cups, bowls, serving pieces ... and I mix and match them like a patchwork quilt.  The infinite varieties of blue and white just make me happy.

I like colored glass.  I have three stained glass windows hanging over windows in my home because I like the way the light shines through them.  One is a tiffany looking scene of flowers and hills and a path that wanders through them toward mountains.  One is really big tulips.  One is geometric.  The seasons have different light and those lights reflect differently through the windows and I am content to watch the light change from season to season.  This fall was exceptionally GOLD and the light was warm, like hot cinnamon rolls and coffee, apple butter and pumpkin pie ...

I like old glass the best ... NOT the machined things ... but the things that were fashioned by worn hands.  I like the irregularities of bubbles and dents ... I like unconventional uses like turning an etched wine glass into a candle votive or an old fruit jar into a glass for lemonade.

I have rescued glass ... using old sugar bowl lids for paper weights, old domed cake plate tops for terrariums or as a cover for a really pretty piece of coral ...

But maybe, the message for me in all those things is to be more transparent?  Maybe, the crispness and predictability of blue and white makes it easier to mix and match and play within the framework of blue and white?  Maybe, I like the old glass because it reminds me of my grandmothers warm kitchens?  Maybe, I like the idea of old bottles cast into the sea and the blessed magic of answered (and unanswered) prayers, love notes, wishes and dreams?  Maybe visualizing a bountiful garden will bring me a garden as pretty as my grandmas were?



The second project was to reread the dream journal I have kept for almost 10 years ... while looking up the symbols in a Dream Dictionary.  I found a really good one lately called DREAM DICTIONARY - AN A TO Z GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING YOUR UNCONSCIOUS MIND by TONY CRISP.  I dream a LOT and sometimes in color.  I forget some dreams within seconds of waking up and I can tell you about some dreams that I had years ago.  Some of my dreams have come true.  I have dreamed of deaths that happened in the exact manner that I dreamed only days later.  I have dreamed of weddings and births. 

I dreamed of an old school chum who was caught in a horrible forest fire.  I called my mom who gave me the number of this girl's mom and after talking to her mom, I learned that she was a fire fighter in Montana and that while I prayed, she was fighting a REALLY BIG fire.

I work things out in my dreams.  Some of my dreams are nonsense.  Some of my dreams are in color.  Sometimes, I fly!  Sometimes, I am not me but different people, doing things I have never done, speaking languages I do not know ... but in the dream, I understand this foreign language?

Do I believe all my dreams?  No.  Do I understand all my dreams?  No.  Can I predict the future with dreams?  No.  How could it be possible to predict anything with something that comes and goes so unpredictably?  Do I think I can learn from my dreams?  Absolutely.

Here is just one thing that I learned ... Almost ten years ago, I had a recurring dream about huge storms and weather patterns that I couldn't understand, like tornados side by side by side like those long pieces of cloth in a car wash, moving over the entire landscape ... In the dictionary, it said, "emotions and urges against which we feel powerless, and which may become obsessive ..." In the same dream, the tornados ripping up the landscape were followed by strange lightning clouds that struck and burned everything for miles.  The dictionary says about lightning, "Unexpected changes, whether through unsuspected events or from sudden emerging realizations or emotions; discharge of tension, perhaps destructively ... and how this discharge can threaten, destroy, or break down old attitudes or lifestyles, so allowing change; expression of wider awareness; intuition; conscience."  I dreamed this dream several times, at the end of my marriage BEFORE I actually knew my marriage was ending ... I wonder if KNOWING and understanding the images would have lessened the impact of that storm on my waking life?

This is the eerie part of my story ... There were breadcrumbs ... little sparks of intuition that happened before I even met some people ... that looking back now, I wonder why I didn't see them or notice them, but maybe, they weren't meant to be warning markers?  Maybe, they were meant to be page markers, so that now, when I do look back, I can see that there was a purpose and a plan in place before I ever walked the path I walked ... that even while I thought I acted alone, there were dreams and messages coming to me to help guide me along the path and even to help bring me back to the path when I strayed too far from it?

As I am remembering the dreams, I am also remembering the conversations that I had along the way and I am seeing connections that I never saw before ... threads of personal truth that flowed through all the events and conversations and actions that happened so long ago.  When the view of our past is free of guilt and regret, it is possible to see things we missed!

I am not putting my faith in one little dream dictionary.  I simply find it interesting to read that some of my dreams are had by women who are going through changes in their lives.  Did you know that end of the world dreams and fantasies are common among women in menopause? 

Listen to this!

"End of the world dreams and fantasies depict the powerful and threatening inner and outer changes that accompany major life transitions and social changes.  The transition from childhood to adolescence, for instance, is the end of the world that existed for the whole lifetime of the individual up until that point.  Such points of transition occur several times in the life of anyone who dares to grow and adapt.  Menopause for women, the leaving home of the children, the loss of a job, retirement, loss of a partner or health, can all be represented by the end of the world, or a world."

I like this sentence best:  Such points of transition occur several times in the life of anyone who dares to grow and adapt. 



Cool!  I'm growing and adapting!

I am living the kind of life I have been reading about!  It's like reading a book about flying and looking up and watching the birds and saying ... "That's nice" ... UNTIL, one day, you get in a plane and actually fly among the birds and "That's AWESOME!!!"

I didn't set out to go on a self-discovery tour.  I really thought I was finally cleaning up all those old articles and pictures ... The dream journal has turned out to be much more introspective than I really imagined it would be.  Dreams are the ultimate form of self-talk, except for that our subconscious and conscious mind don't always make the connection until much later ... and lately, mine are seeing connections they have never seen before!

Life sure can be GOOD, can't it?