dreams? I got ’em.

I’m talking about the while-sleeping kind. I know I have plenty – I can hear the chattering as I wake up – but, do I remember my dreams? Hear their insightful messages? Not so much.

Truth is, I just feel like I need rest afterward.

The other night, I tried presenting my weary brain with an intention: I asked before going to sleep to receive a message through a dream, and asked for the ability to WAKE UP so I could record it. Even made it easy by putting pen, paper and my glasses by the bed, too.

I distinctly recall the smile I had on my face a few hours later as I drifted from semi-consciousness back into deep sleep.. it had worked! A fully formed vision, captured in a few key words, would be waiting for me to work some intuitive magic on it in the morning! (hooray!)

“drink your Ovaltine.”

When I woke again, I got another quick impression. (bonus material? sweet!) Two women, newly-met members of my own real life ‘elder tribe,’ were standing a short distance away and observing me while I received a message of three words: “Love, then share.”

hmm.. okay. Don’t quite get it, it’s pretty vague.. it’ll probably make more sense when I add it to the first dream I wrote down.

Which was .. not there. At all. Blankness. I had dreamed that I’d had a dream and captured it on paper.

For a moment I felt like Peter Billingsley in A Christmas Story, after his decoder ring unveils the super-secret message “Drink Your Ovaltine.” Wha? that’s IT!? “love, then share”? All I had left was that cryptic three-word phrase, and two wise women standing way over there… sayin’ nothing.

thank you, auto-correct.

My Great Message lacked crass commercialism, true – but it also lacked any direction whatsoever. To me, “love” denotes a state of being, rather than a thing to be done or an action to be taken. (Yeah, yeah, I know, but this is my metaphor, ok?) So, “then share” would come after.. what?

I dropped it. Experiment failed, intention un-intended. “It’s okay.” I’d try again tomorrow.

My renewed interest in Facebook distracted me for a while, and I got happily carried away on the bubbling post-Martha Beck Coaches’ Summit energy of my tribemates. Read, read, like-like-like, comment, friend, join stuff, accept friend, read some more, LIKE!

Suddenly, there it was. (again.) Another person commenting on how every time they’d tried to write the word “love” in a post after returning from the summit, their auto-correct would change it to “live.” “LIVE.”

not ready to be ready.

For a loonnng time in my life, I let my mind swim in a constant stream of helpy motivational thoughts: “put yourself Out There!” and, “go big or go home!” and, a personal fave, “who are you, to withhold your gifts from the world?” Not surprisingly, my mind also swam with a constant vague sense of unease, as I was not aligning with these directives at all. Then, on an early June morning last year, a new directive stated itself so clearly in my head I thought I’d heard it out loud: “I’m Not Ready To Be Ready. and that is okay.” Everything else fell silent.

ah, Revelation. Relief. I don’t have to share, yet. I can go on with this path, this learning.
Rest. Be a beginner, again.

Oh!

“LIVE, THEN SHARE.”

(My elder-tribe ladies nod slightly, and smile.)

I’m still not quite ready to be ready.. but, almost. There’s still a lot of new I want to catch. I can “live” now – then, share.

and, “love” ?
always.