Made of dreams and dandelion fuzz

Make a wish and come to earth for a lifetime.

So many lives are made of dreams, of wishes, of wants, of blow-the-dandelion-fuzz across the back yard so the Forest Owls hoot your deepest desires back to you just before midnight.

I once dreamed of traveling to Switzerland, to Italy, how about France? Perhaps even Mexico, Nicaragua, maybe Ecuador.  I dreamed of writing a famous book, you know, the kind of book which leaves readers gasping, wanting more, truly inspired, truly knowing themselves in some deeper way.

Gondola dream

I dreamed of owning a brand new car–just once–or maybe having a quarter million dollars, let’s not be too greedy and make it a million.

I dreamed of contributing to world peace, somehow (didn’t you?) or winning the Nobel Prize or maybe getting a pat on the head before knocking on Heaven’s gate.

Or maybe just helping someone down and out.  Maybe just opening my heart a little wider.

Sharing

I dreamed of being a good person, didn’t you, now really?

Someone who made a difference.  Someone who didn’t just take up space on the planet.  Someone who helped.  Someone who healed.  Someone who lightened the load of her fellow travelers.  Someone who wiped away tears. Someone who listened.  Someone not too self-involved, too insecure to move beyond self obsession, too much trying to fix myself that I refused to look at my suffering neighbor.

Or, perhaps, we dreamed to fix ourselves first, and then heal the entire world, realizing that this is the proper order of things…

Dreams of earth, sky, water

Perhaps we’re sent to earth to dream.  Perhaps in the womb we dream of fresh air, sandboxes, plentiful milk, Mozart, rock-n-roll, Mama’s happiness.  Perhaps we dream of a thousand future accomplishments without words.

Perhaps we’re simply dreams come to earth in bodies.  Perhaps in some before-life Paradise we co-created our dreams.  Perhaps they were simple dreams: “I want to learn about kindness.” “I want to learn about forgiveness.” “I want to learn how to persevere during hardship.”

And then off we spiralled toward that watery womb where fluid gestated those dreams while our Mama and Papa danced or argued or fixed the nursery, dreaming their own dreams which would soon intersect.

Then, so unceremoniously, we slid or fought our way into the world and looked around, gasping for breath, appalled that the dreams slid away so quickly, just out of reach of our kicking toes and endless squalling.

Dreams of sand and sandals

Remember the innocence of graduating from, say, high school, and how you felt the world wide-open before you, like another birth from another womb, and you thought you could be anything, simply anything?  Before the world compressed you into a nice respectable citizen with gray hair and endless habits and stale dreams you smoked like cigarettes, still whispering to God to please, please, please, make this person-dream come true before I keel over and sprout flowers from bones and ashes.

Perhaps we follow our many dreams through the forest of life, we humans, learning the science of dreaming, learning how to manifest our PhD or Little House in the Big Woods or first wide-eyed bald-headed baby birthing down from our heart.  We’re apprenticed in dreaming.  We aim for small dreams and then hatch bigger dreams.  We’re dreaming machines.  Whether we’re dreaming a cup of coffee or a new friend, we’re following desires which promise to bloom us into full potential, full human-hood.

The moment a dream comes true. Before the next dream rises…

Then one day down the dreaming path, maybe in this dreaming life or next, it may all slowly lose inertia.  No matter how much we dreamed, no matter how many riches or losses arrived, it was never enough.  Never enough, never enough.  Perhaps the fulfillment of a trillion dreams will never, ever, be enough.

Unless we’re seeing what pre-exists the dreaming.  What already bloomed the first time we wished on those dandelion fuzzies.

The dream has already been given to us.  The dream is already fulfilled for us.  This life–before we tried to fix or change or escape or travel or heal or beg for something else–IS the Garden of Eden, the Holy Grail, the nirvana.

The fulfillment of dreams

It’s been here all along, hidden beneath the dreaming and stories and desires we’ve endlessly told ourselves.

Hidden in plain sight, we suddenly realize the dreams prepared us for the final dream.  How magnificent blossomed the impossible dreaming!  How fabulous…all pointing toward the culmination.  The final dream was sand pouring through our open fingers, dropping all dreams, sand washing out to sea, smelling the breeze, being here NOW.

Home

Here is the fulfillment.  Here in the only dream which really means anything…

What do you dream for this rainy, sunny, cold, warm, sad, happy day?  Has your dreaming changed over time?   Of what does your heart dream today, my fellow dreamer, in this school of unfolding dreams?