$90,000 Rolex

$90,000 Rolex

m326933-0001This morning I dreamed we gave Cameron
a $90,000 Rolex
with a broken watch band
that we’d found somewhere
and counted as our lottery win,
our ticket forward.

Yet we handed it over to Cameron
so he could marry his girl
and have his own future.

I don’t think the dream’s about dollars, though.
It could be about time.
About the 90,000 hours he’s missed of his own
this-time-around life.

Or the 90,000 beats of my heart,
within not one of which he’s been absent.

Or the 90,000 bits of bone and ash
still waiting to be scattered.

Or the exponential expanse of time
he’s now experiencing.
All the time,
not just in the world,
but in the Universe
to live in love and freedom.

Or the energy of nine, which is endings
and the magnified energy of zero,
which is eternity,
infinity,
and the real truth of his passing.

There was a day I would have handed over $90,000
or 9 times $90,000
to buy his happiness.

But happiness is an inside job,
not to be bought, but created
day by day,
heartbeat by heartbeat,
tick by tick of this $90,000 Rolex we call life.

He taught me that
through the grief of his leaving.

 

in memory of
Cameron David Perkins
4/2/1978 ~ 5/3/2004

When Dreams and Life Converge

When Dreams and Life Converge

dreamtunnelsmaller

The steps to the Unity Village Rose Garden have been sealed with yellow crime scene tape to protect the wedding parties from intrusion by hordes of teens in formals celebrating homecoming and seeking the perfect photo shoot backdrop.

I ask the security guard how I’m supposed to get to my classroom in the Unity Institute building, whose main entrance is in said Rose Garden. He directs me to the basement access route right off the cafeteria (which, by the way, is giving me flashbacks to my parochial school days with its dun plastic trays, industrial plates and silverware, and rolling conveyer belt that carries the dirty dishes into the steaming underbelly of the kitchen to be washed).

I enter a hallway demarked by painted yellow lines on a concrete floor. Overhead, exposed pipes and ductwork shoot off in every direction. I would never have guessed this to be open to public access, much less to lead to my classroom. The security guard rattles off  quick directions (some combination of straight-aheads and turns that immediately flow through one ear and out the other without fully engaging my inner GPS) then disappears.

I take a tentative step into this surreal landscape. To my right, a forest of artificial Christmas trees bristle in the shadows, their naked limbs awaiting the season when they will be brought out to bloom with lights, tinsel and colored ornaments. I am suddenly aware that I have walked into a familiar kind of dream scene, although I am quite awake.

How many times have I wandered through underground concrete mazes like this in my dreams? Sometimes in search of something – my car, a bathroom. Other times trying to elude nefarious, shadowy pursuers or carry out some clandestine spy-versus-spy mission. Usually in these dreams I wander lost as panic rises and each twist and turn takes me deeper into unknown territory.

In Active Dreaming, one prescription for a nightmare is to re-enter the dream and move it forward, through the fear into a transformation and conclusion of your choosing. I have the sense that this is just such an opportunity. The veil between waking and dreaming has disappeared and I have a chance, in full consciousness, to transform this recurring dream theme.

I realize, it isn’t a maze. It’s a labyrinth, like the one I walked under the full moon the night before. I am never lost, it only seems so. The path twists and turns, but is clearly marked as I move toward my center and back out again.

Today I know that this underground concrete labyrinth will take me closer to my center. Straight ahead is a sign. Education Building to the right. The elevator takes me up to the familiar 2nd floor where my circle of sisters welcome me in to our moon tent room, a space to connect and create, and to reclaim my soul. It is another kind of dream space and I step into it with deep gratitude.

~~~

With gratitude to Aliza Bloom Robinson and Pamela Hawkins who so beautifully facilitated The Yin Experience Retreat, and to my new circle of sisters: Patti, Susan, Megan, Sharron, Gail, Michelle, Noemi, Tamra, Leailia,Carmen, Mary and Monica. ♥ ♥ ♥