Sometimes the path is clear.
I had an interesting dream last night. I found myself before a big ornate door, dark and imposing, and I felt a sense of uncertainty about where I was, and where I was heading. I knocked on the door and as it opened felt I was standing before ‘the heart of the universe’. A woman answered the door; a woman of uncommon beauty and serenity, with laugh lines rather than wrinkles, and of an indeterminate age that only seemed ‘not young’. She radiated calm, compassion, and wisdom. She smiled and sunshine broke through clouds I hadn’t even seen. She wore my face, but seemed somehow unknown to me in the course of my own experience of life. I felt her inquire in a questioning way, but wordlessly, and what I thought I heard was more an assurance than a question “I can help you with this.” I replied simply “Where am I going?” and felt we were truly somehow saying the same thing – as though questions and answers are entirely interchangeable.
I was suddenly in a sunny meadow walking alone, only remembering her, and her words and a big map, with a convenient ‘You Are Here’ arrow. “If your focus is on just one element of the journey, how will you find your way? Consider the method, the map, and the destination, or be lost aging, not growing.” She pointed to the map, “You Are Here is where you are, not where you are going. We don’t choose where we start, we start where we are – and choose our destination.” I had wanted to ask her again, ‘Where am I going?’, but her compassionate smile stopped me. She held the door for me then, gesturing to the world on the horizon, “I can’t be you, now, you are not here, yet. Soon enough, if you follow your path…” I shaded my eyes from the sun as I stepped into the bright light of day… and woke suddenly, in my dark room to the eager beeping of my alarm clock, and a new day.
It lingers with me even now… “We don’t choose where we start…”
Spring flowers along the way
I wonder what the journey will be like…who I will become over time… how life will change me… how I will change life around me… now where is that damned map… 😉
Evening Light 