WARNING: Expect no laughs, giggles,snorts or funny stuff all ye who enter here today. This is that boring
Lo who insists on gnawing on a puzzle until the poor thing is unrecognizable. Sorry about that.
I have recently been wrestling with a few of life's conundrums and suddenly came upon a truth I had never glimpsed before......and I am not sure at all that I like it. This is very different from other truths that I have stumbled upon whereby I feel enlightenment, release, ecstasy (and gratitude that I can stop wrestling with that particular lesson from now on). For this reason I intend to brood upon it for a while and will not discuss it further right now. (Stop that booing and hurling of overripe fruit in my direction this very minute......I will tell you if and when I am good and ready.)
However, it made me think about this whole business of Life Lessons and how mightily we all struggle not to learn them, and how sometimes our subconscious or our wiser self gives us a smack in the head in our dreams if we could only understand them.
The wonderful Mary Moon of Blessourhearts and I share a lot of things including those weird dreams about being in college and forgetting to go to our classes. Some time back Ms. Moon blogged about a puzzling dream she had..
............."But the one that woke me up this morning was bad enough. I'd applied to law school and gotten accepted and then of course I had no idea where classes met or when or anything and besides that, I kept saying, "I don't want to be a lawyer!" and so I stayed at the Opera House and was trying to do some Herculean task straightening up and organizing the costume and prop room so that the law school could put their books in that room, feeling guilty all the while because I wasn't ever going to make anything of
myself. "
My own dream is similar and I have dreamed it many, many times in my life. I don't know what led up to the dream moment, but wherever I am I suddenly realize that I am in college, it is the end of the semester and there is a class I had signed up for but never attended and, worse yet, the final was today.
Horrors! Not only would I flunk the exam and the course, but I had missed/avoided the chance to learn that lesson........(have no idea what the subject was). The punishment for this was never very clear but I knew it was dire and would affect my entire life. I would be plunged into a pit of guilt, remorse, shame and black depression. Then always I would awake still writhing in agony and ask myself, "What the hell was that all about?".
It is only recently that I have come up with some kind of answer.....I think that this is all related to my conviction that life is a kind of school and we are here to learn certain life lessons (while we are doing what WE think we are here for) ....but sometimes we aren't really ready to learn that lesson or perhaps are too cowardly to attempt it at this moment ....it is too painful an idea to accept.... too difficult to even face the truth that is flickering before our eyes so we shut them tight, turn our backs and slink back down the way we came without enduring the confrontation and without learning anything except that we have escaped (growing) and that cowardice has prevailed again. We get many chances to learn the same lesson and often turn away without learning it.
Perhaps in the next life we will get another chance to try and we will succeed***........Meanwhile we go on avoiding it desperately enduring that excruciating drawing up of all our resources against....of suffering that tensing of all our muscles , the squeezing, straining, twisting and painful pinching of our guts and entrails, the clutching at door jambs with clenched fingers and bloody, torn fingernails .....all the ways we resist opening our eyes and exposing ourselves to the lesson. In my own case I have found that it is only when the process of resisting becomes so excruciating and exhausting that I cannot continue that good things happen. When I have to surrender.......to stop resisting the letting go of a wrong idea or an unacceptable truth about myself...........when I go limp and can no longer fight and must accept death from the truth, that is when I can finally see things from a different viewpoint. Then finally comes not death but the moment of epiphany and triumph. One beautiful "Aha"......one delicious orgasmic moment and then........sob.....on to gather strength for the next lesson grateful I do not have to drag that particular bag of crap along any longer.
For me it always boils down to the same precious old keywords..........."Accept" and "Let go".
Sigh.
Sounds so simple....
If only it weren't so damned hard........
***I do believe we get to go around again....can't accept that God would let all the effort we put into learning what we have managed to learn go to waste.
Now And Then
4 hours ago
I have the same dream. I always wondered about it because I never had anxiety during school, or about tests. So it must be some other test I'm not studying for.
ReplyDeleteRecently my anxiety dreams have been about trying to get to an airport gate in time to see my sister, and running through the airport and never making it. I think this one is clear. My sister is dead and so it's external circumstances keeping me from seeing her and helping her.
Then there's the one where I'm in a pickup truck in reverse in the dark on a hill and I can't stomp on the brake enough to get it to slow down and I don't know what I'm going to hit. Uh, hello, death?
Your posts always stop me dead in my tracks, you are so spot on with the universe.
ReplyDeleteMy dreams are not wise. They are like technicolour travel programmes and it doesn't seem to matter what the century is. Sometimes I get bits of them into a drawing and then I can recall the dream really vividly.
Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one having that stupid dream. I've found myself in college unprepared, lost on an unfamiliar campus, so far behind on assingments that failure is the only option more times than I can remember. All my dreams seem to tend toward guilt or fear, and I really hate the ones where I am running through mud trying to save one of my children from an alligator or an alien. I would love to have a dream that made me laugh or feel competent for a change, or have a dream that meant something. Sometimes I think my brain saves all my worries up and remixes them into dream stew at night. It's a mystery, isn't it? I'm trying my best to accept and let go. Thanks for posting this.
ReplyDeleteLove your interpretation of this dream that recurs for so many people, me included.
ReplyDeleteThis is a P.S to all my blessed commenters and readers.....
ReplyDeletein my very long lifetime (this one) I have only had 3 or 4 pleasant dreams. The rest have all been struggles of one sort or another steeped in varying degrees of unease building to horror. (I have no idea what this signifies and I will probably regret revealing this fact)
Actually, I have never been any good at interpreting my dreams.....my psychiatrist mostly gave up on using that path in trying to help me cure my insanity.
Lo- what a great interpretation! I am a bit afraid, though, to take it on for myself as so very often the reason I have not gone to class or prepared is that I have little children- often babies on my hip- and so I have always thought the dream was about anxiety, about not being ready for something coming up in my real life. And if I am actually and really refusing to learn a life lesson, would that mean that I am using my children (have used them) to avoid doing so?
ReplyDeleteWell. Now that I think about it- could be.
Not that they DO interfere with my learning (no, they have been my best teachers) but that I use them as an excuse.
What do you think, Wise Lo?
I used to have a recurring dream about the giraffe outside nudging his nose through the partially open front door and grinning at me. I never learned anything from that. Go figure.
ReplyDeleteNow I have a recurring dream about knocking around in a huge old house. Secret passageways, dark elevators, back stairs, friends in some rooms, strangers in others, intrigue everywhere, weird stuff going on all over the house and garden. I've wondered whether maybe I'm looking for the giraffe. I suspect I'm not going to learn anything from this one either.
I have, however, learned by other means (all accidental) that surrender is the key. Sometimes you quit looking, and "it" finds you ... thus do I believe in serendipity. Obviously you're on the right track, Lo ... =D
gc
Funny you should be talking about dreams. I've always been able to see my life evolve through my dreaming and some have been exciting and others, terrifying. But, the one I had yesterday morning is too cool to not mention -- although, I haven't figured out the lesson yet.
ReplyDeleteI won American Idol! Yes, I did. And, I sang my deceased daughter's favorite of my original songs -- all. the. way. through! Who does that, in a dream? So, I won and then they didn't know what to do with me because I was such an old fart and how do you present that to the teeny-boppers as the next great whatever. So, Simon Cowell (yes, it's my dream, remember) took me to dinner to discuss the future whilst everyone figured out how to make it work. And, then, we realized that it wasn't going to work, so we just shtupped!! It was glorious and real, and .... and, then, I woke up! But, by golly, I can still remember it -- not where I put my glasses -- but that dream... oh, yes... Fun post and look forward to the when, and if, and how...
Hi dear, I just finished reading your last posts...about 3 times..They are all definitely worth reading 3 times or more...I have this recurring dream that John has left me for another woman,,I plead and beg in my dream,,Sometimes wake up madder than hell at him,,God rest his soul..Maybe it's because it is so hard for me to use 2 of the words you posted,,accept, and let go..Anyway, I enjoyed and learned so much from these posts,,,I will be thinking about them for a long time,,Your writings still amaze me, Love you
ReplyDelete