You know those dreams that make you ridiculously happy?
No, I don't mean the one I had when I was 8, where an enormous ice cream sundae loomed in front of me, and just as I was about to take the first bite of that creamy, gooey, nutty mountain, I woke up and realized it wasn't real.
Instead, I mean the dreams that nestle inside your heart like a purring kitten, the vibrations of which have you humming long after you have woken up and well into the day. The dreams where you meet a person or an animal that seems normal but that glows with an inner light. Where you accomplish something extraordinary and feel power surging through your veins. The dreams where you fly.
The other night I dreamt I climbed a tree and then ran around a park with the greatest ease (I get joint pain easily and am not normally a runner). Climbing the tree, I felt I could fly, that I could reach any heights, escape enemies, help new friends.
Upon waking, this excitement stayed with me. I felt that my being had been validated, the personal power that gets submerged under daily annoyances reasserting itself. A gentle reminder.
I forget that these dreams exist until one returns. And I vow to hold the feeling in my heart until it fades. I cling to reality but it slinks out and I am left clutching an empty shell.
I thank God for these angelic nudges but humbly ask if I might live among the stars more often and not only in sleep. But how?
I feel more aligned with this power when I am regular about praying and meditating, when I get enough exercise and listen to the voice that tells me to write, to be forgiving, to look up and greet the pigeon couple flying by. But the simplicity of this makes it seem irrelevant, and I stray.
Until one night, when I walk on snakes in the moonlight, banish a demon shaped like a cuddly cat by declaring God's power, meet a stranger who sings a song of love, fall from a cliff and soar back up...
Showing posts with label dreams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dreams. Show all posts
Monday, November 24, 2008
Monday, June 30, 2008
When I Grow Up, I Want to Fly
When I grow up, I want to fly, I thought. Not in an airplane. I want to have the power to fly, the gift of flight.
Whenever anyone would ask me what I wanted to do when I grew up, I would suppress this answer. I would choose from a careful list of fun-sounding careers, settling on something that was not too out-there, not too scary. Something that wouldn't devastate me if it didn't happen. In fifth grade, for example, I think it was marine biologist.
But walking alone, looking at the stars, letting my yearning heart speak, I knew what I wanted to do when I grew up. Fly.
Sometimes I flew in my dreams. It would be so realistic that I would wake up in disbelief. I must have been awake! And the dream feeling remained. Oddly, it was not only a feeling of being light and floating. It was a feeling that the air around me was heavier than it seemed. That it was filled with a magical substance so substantial, in fact, that it could support me. That by a combination of movements of body and belief and energy willed up, I could take off. For fun, to escape my enemies, to revel in some innate power that only I was aware of. While others saw nothing, I knew the air was alive.
As I grew older, my flying dreams diminished, but my heart yearned no less for this power. I certainly couldn't tell people about it now. Can you imagine the look on the advisor's face when she asked what I wanted to major in? "I want to fly." And to me it seemed much more practical than French literature.
My dream had been in my heart strongly for a couple of weeks, when I was working on homework for my religion class. The desk in my attic apartment faced a window, and as I glanced out, I caught sight of a bird. The wind pushed up into its wings, and the bird floated and swooped, deft movements working with the air to change its direction.
In that moment, not just the air, but other matter became fluid. I became the bird, and from that vantage point, I could feel the wind supporting me, feel the magic of weightlessness, that it is not the absence of weight, but being held by powers unknown but felt. I was the bird. I flew.
And when I came back to my body at the desk, windblown, the air fresh in my lungs, I smiled at the secret.
I have grown up to fly. Thank God.
Whenever anyone would ask me what I wanted to do when I grew up, I would suppress this answer. I would choose from a careful list of fun-sounding careers, settling on something that was not too out-there, not too scary. Something that wouldn't devastate me if it didn't happen. In fifth grade, for example, I think it was marine biologist.
But walking alone, looking at the stars, letting my yearning heart speak, I knew what I wanted to do when I grew up. Fly.
Sometimes I flew in my dreams. It would be so realistic that I would wake up in disbelief. I must have been awake! And the dream feeling remained. Oddly, it was not only a feeling of being light and floating. It was a feeling that the air around me was heavier than it seemed. That it was filled with a magical substance so substantial, in fact, that it could support me. That by a combination of movements of body and belief and energy willed up, I could take off. For fun, to escape my enemies, to revel in some innate power that only I was aware of. While others saw nothing, I knew the air was alive.
As I grew older, my flying dreams diminished, but my heart yearned no less for this power. I certainly couldn't tell people about it now. Can you imagine the look on the advisor's face when she asked what I wanted to major in? "I want to fly." And to me it seemed much more practical than French literature.
My dream had been in my heart strongly for a couple of weeks, when I was working on homework for my religion class. The desk in my attic apartment faced a window, and as I glanced out, I caught sight of a bird. The wind pushed up into its wings, and the bird floated and swooped, deft movements working with the air to change its direction.
In that moment, not just the air, but other matter became fluid. I became the bird, and from that vantage point, I could feel the wind supporting me, feel the magic of weightlessness, that it is not the absence of weight, but being held by powers unknown but felt. I was the bird. I flew.
And when I came back to my body at the desk, windblown, the air fresh in my lungs, I smiled at the secret.
I have grown up to fly. Thank God.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
