Our Better Endings topic for this week is Dreams and Dreaming. Before presenting a list of prompts for you to write about, talk about or contemplate, let me share a profound—well, yes—example from my own dream life about how we can receive vital inner guidance, support and messages through simply being open to our dreams.
Some 14 years ago I went through a time of deep questioning of where I was at and where I wanted to be going with my life. I called this at the time a “mid-life crisis”. I was 45 and coming up for tenure at my university. I knew I would probably achieve that, but I was questioning whether an academic career was ‘enough’ to truly fulfill my desire to make a useful, creative contribution in this life. My strongest desire since childhood—my Life Dream—was to be an author who might “make a difference”, somehow. I was publishing research findings in academic journals and had published a scholarly book with a small academic press, but the prospect of continuing along this same trajectory as my sole venue for self-expression and service felt like a dead end. What could I do? Because of a deep spiritual orientation which I had developed since I was 20, I knew I needed to ask for inner guidance and then, listen. I have kept a dream journal for as long as I can remember. So I asked in contemplation daily for weeks for help in understanding this mid-life crisis and what I could do to reconcile my creative and spiritual interests with my academic career.
I received several significant dreams that showed me what my inner desires were about: to be of service in a public way, not to become swallowed up by an institution where I felt I might ‘drown’. Then one morning during that fecund time of transition between dreaming and waking, I saw, literally stamped in bold black letters ‘between my eyes’:
YOU HAVE THE RESPONSIBILITY
TO REALIZE YOUR DREAMS,
NOT JUST FOR GETTING BY.
This dream message answered my questions, clearly. It was ‘spot on’ what I needed to know. Of course, it led me to further questioning about what ARE my dreams that I seek to realize, leading me back to creative writing and service as well as to spiritual goals. Long story short, after accepting tenure, within six months I completed a science fiction novel, having resolved my mid-life crisis by realizing that I needed to find ways to better integrate my creative writing, public service, and spiritual interests with my career, rather than doing one or the other. I then received another clear dream message one morning, while considering what topic I should focus on for an upcoming research sabbatical. This time the dream message was auditory, an ‘inner voice’, that said quite directly, “Life Paths”. So, that’s how I got started doing “life mapping” research which has led to several articles, another academic book, and now finally a mainstream personal development book and self-help handbook which I aim to start marketing in about six months, called LIFE PATHS.
Here is my point for YOU today:
YOU HAVE THE RESPONSIBILITY
TO REALIZE YOUR DREAMS,
NOT JUST FOR GETTING BY.
Accepting this message as a ‘waking dream’ for you now, where does it take YOU to?
Okay then, here’s this week’s writers’…and Dreamers’!…Prompts List. Consider how the following sorts of dreams and dreaming can relate to Better Endings, or about your own experiences with dreams and dreaming :
- recurring dreams
- levels or kinds of dreams
- recurring dream symbols (their meanings to you, how they might change over time)
- past life dreams
- lucid dreams (and their messages for you)
- daydreams
- waking dreams (synchronicity or ‘signs’/ messages in your waking life)
- prophetic (future) dreams
- past lives or ‘parallel life’ dreams
- spiritual dreams
- disturbing dreams (and how you have resolved them)
- problem solving dreams
- situational awareness dreams (e.g. how to improve relationships)
- What is your Life Dream?
I know that many of you are Dreamers. I invite your comments, insights and stories, in any form!
Better Endings 