WAYS 8 – THE DREAMER

Motto: Pay attention to your dreams - God's angels often speak directly to our hearts when we are asleep (Quoted in The Angels' Little Instruction Book by Eileen Elias Freeman, 1994)

One year has passed since the previous posting under the ‘ways’ series, as I shared with you ‘The Give and Taker’, exactly on December 31, 2013.

It is now January 2, 2015, midst of the yearly season for balancing past achievement with future plans, old learning with fresh expectation, and memories with dreams. During such period, I find myself thinking about time and its effects on people perception of live. I like to watch this short, interesting and funny video whenever I wish to re-visit life from a new time-perspective: The Secret Powers of Time.

Most people believe in living the moment to the fullest, as it is actually the only timeline in which we experience reality. The past is usually distorted by perception and the future rather unpredictable. Thus we hear a lot of advice about how to best ‘seize the day’, ‘let go of the past’ and ‘embrace the future’.

I found myself thinking today about the good old Master Time from a different perspective. It suddenly occurred to me that it is the most reliable lifetime partner that we have. It is always around, not going anywhere until we take our last breath on this Earth. It clearly has split personalities (past, present and future), shifting moods (boring or exciting, predictable or fascinating, good or bad), destiny-harmonizing skills (right or wrong), and variable driving speeds (flying by or juuuust staaaalling…).

Master Time is largely unpredictable, however in a manner that (have you noticed?...) is strangely harmonized with our own unpredictability. While I mostly agree to the general idea of living each day as it comes, (reasonably) letting go of the past and not worrying (too much) about the future, it happens that every year, on and around New Year, a little miracle affects the Master Time. The ‘now’ personality disappears for a little while. For some days around New Year, it is dominated by its past and future components. It is a time for smiles of acceptance and hope and for big dreams about the future.

There is however one other little miracle that combines the various personalities of Master Time into a strange and miraculous blend between past, present and future. It does not come to us only once a year and it is called the DREAM!

Have you ever noticed how our dreams tend to be timeless? How people from the past are sitting next to people from the present (even if they never actually met!) or how the future seems to be already happening as we dream? Sometimes we wake up with a slight confusion whether what we were dreaming actually happened, and it takes a while to re-adjust. Other times the dreams have no face, no color and no time, they are just a bundle of feelings and sensations. If we pay attention to those dreams, we may wake up knowing exactly what and who was the dream about, even if it had no such content.

There are many proverbs and old sayings that try to explain dreams and what they are all about. Starting with things that were forgotten and should have not been, answers to questions that we did not dare (or did not know how) to ask during the day, warnings coming from the future or cries for help from our past or present. What is obvious to everyone is that dreams have a strong hold on our daily live, no matter whether they are nice dreams or nightmares. They each have their own distinctive contribution to our life. While the nice dreams come as a reward or recognition for our peace of mind, kindness and happiness, the nightmares come as warning signs and make us attentive to whatever is wrong in our lives, address our fears, and make us change our mindsets and even our lives for the better, in the pursuit of happiness. Dreams seem to be the best yet unexplained soul monitoring tool given to us by the Universe, a fine reward scheme complementing our day-to-day life.

The Internet crossed my search for a motto with a Talmud reading: ‘A dream which is not interpreted is like a letter which is not read.’ 

There is some truth in this, as many dreams have day-life translations. On the other hand, I do not trust universal dream-reading rules (even thou some may have empirical experience behind…), but am more inclined to believe that each dream is tailor-made for a dialogue with ourselves and with those intimately connected to us beyond reason. As we are both the creator and the beneficiary of our dreams, we are obviously the main piece of the puzzle in interpreting it. As such, we should probably go beyond simple viewing towards focusing on the feelings we experience, trying to ‘read’ between the lines whatever our subconscious mind is telling us.

Well, I should get ready for closing this New Year dream exploring adventure, however it cannot be complete without mentioning the so-called ‘day-dreams’. I am referring to those great hopes for the future that we have with our eyes wide open and our minds very much awake. We cannot call them plans, as there is a big difference, which has to do with the feasibility of the day-dream. In other words, what we wish to achieve but we are not quite sure if or how or when we will, we call ‘dream’. What is obviously within our reach, we call ‘plan’. The big challenge ahead, for strengthening our capacity to build a better future for ourselves is to rely more on our ability to dream, to properly read our dreams so we can translate them more often and faster into plans. And to further make those plans come true, in a manner that would feed better and more beautiful dreams for a happier and healthier future!

I wish for you in 2015 to become skillful and beautiful DREAMERS, no matter if you dream while asleep, half asleep or fully awake. And enjoy the experience of making them come true, as a way out of any personal of global crisis which you may experience in your long, healthy and beautiful life!

Hugs and Happy New Year!

Georgina Popescu