Finish A Dream: Your Goal Fulfilled

Best of Better Endings: If you can finish a nightly/ lucid dream according to the way you would like it to end, you can apply that same principle to your “outer” life and reality. This dream showed me what it takes to re-envision my goals achieved!

February 9, 2014

(Re-blogged from The CrazyBagLady@BulanLifestyle)

Some twenty years ago I dreamed I was hiking along a high mountain trail. Several others were also on a trek to reach the top of this peak. It was a hard trail with a steep, rocky incline in hot weather that seared the skin. Many turned back; only a handful reached the top, singly. I was among these, arriving at the apex after a long, winding ascent.

Finally at the top, I see there is a canyon chasm between the edge of the mountainside I have scaled and what I know to be my true destination: an even higher peak separated from the one I am on by a huge divide.

At first I believe I may be able to cross, for there are steps, suspended in space, hovering between the two peaks. One of the other climbers starts across these floating steps, but they become narrower and further apart as the aspirant attempts to bridge the gulf. He turns back, returns; the steps drop into the gorge as he steps back onto the ledge at the top of the canyon.

The others leave, descending back down the mountain. I stay, alone, gazing across to the realm I desire to reach. I am passionately aware that I have worked so hard to reach this plateau, only to find my deepest goal seemingly impossible to attain.

There is a picnic table at the canyon edge. I sit at the table, not wanting to give up, not knowing how I can go forward. A woman appears and comes over to stand next to me at the table. She seems an Ancient one, yet ageless. She has salt-and-pepper hair, dark eyes, light skin—she reminds me of a person I know to be highly enlightened in my outer life.

“How can I ever get over there?” I implore of this woman whom I know to be a Guide.

“How would you get to another planet?” she replies.

Then, I am alone again; the Guide has disappeared.

I awaken in bed, bemused by the dream, saddened to learn it “was only a dream”. It felt so real, like I was finally “almost There,” to the fulfillment of a spiritual Quest.

Now, many years later, I recall this dream. The feelings are still potent, the desire as ardent as it was then.

I sit for contemplation, return to the picnic table AS IF I have never left.

“How would I travel to another planet?” I ask inwardly, suddenly aware of the obvious solution.

“Direct projection,” I utter in silence. Assume the destination-state accomplished; be-here-Now.

I walk to the edge of the cliff, sit tailor fashion; appreciate the rarified atma-sphere, quiet serenity. I close my eyes, open inwardly, sing a mantra syllable as pure as the air is high: Hu. I become this Sound, resonate with its pulse as a warm, glowing Light.

I open my Heart to just BE. Feel… SHIFT.

Open eyes: a Temple nestled in a misty enclave. Light forms come and go from round platforms surrounding a domed spire. Blues in magenta, iced in golds and white.

Approach. Friendly beings exchange silent greetings as we pass. Enter temple—Door always open, an archway. Inside is still open space, nature, gardens, rooms that appear as I imagine a purpose: library, classroom, stables with horses. I explore, unlimited. See a fountain, sit at a gossamer bench around it, close eyes to listen to the Flow.

Open eyes: sitting tailor fashion, looking across the Canyon. See? A picnic table, across the gulf, far from where I AM.

************

               Complete a dream according to your deepest desire. Imagine life as you assume it to Be, your Heart and Soul fulfilled.                 – lw

Better Choices—A Lucid Dream (by Linda K. Watts)

As we are exploring the Best of Better Endings this month Day 8), I want to return today to the original gist of Better Endings as a concept involving a conscious choice for a (more) positive outcome. Here is a true story about a lucid dream I experienced several years ago. Apparently it was preparing me for what was to come in my own consciousness of the principle of Better Endings. (5/6/14)-LW

January 12, 2014

I am sometimes blessed to be a lucid dreamer. About a year ago, I “received” a dream that unfolded as a full story, in three separate acts! It was an unusual dream. It does not seem to have much to do with my own personal life or psychology, although it could pertain to an archetypal aspect of myself that I am not always aware of. Since the dream unfolded in three distinct act sequences, that is how I’ll tell it. Maybe this dream was meant for this blog or for some readers of this post, though at the time of the dream I had not yet even developed the idea of hosting this Better Endings blog.

ACT I

I see a business man walking along a sidewalk in a city environment. He is apparently quite successful. He is wearing an expensive looking grey suit and tie, he is obviously well fed, and he is a bit overweight. He has achieved a degree of comfortable repute with his business. Let’s call him Howard. Another man approaches him, stops him on the street and introduces himself. (Let’s call him, Jack.) As the Dreamer I know that Jack is a Mob Boss. Jack has heard of Howard’s success and he feels threatened by it, so he has approached Howard to offer him a deal.

“Join my team,” Jack invites Howard. “You will share in my success. We stay at the finest hotels and have all of the good things of life. You will merge your business with mine and be on my team.”

Thinking that joining Jack’s team could lead to “the good life” with little effort on his own part, Howard complies. He becomes a constant member of Jack’s entourage (read, mob gang). They travel together 24/7. But after a few months have gone by, Howard approaches Jack at a hotel they are staying at, in Chicago.

“Would it be okay with you if I sometimes do things just on my own, Jack? Like eating alone or sometimes spending a few days away from the team?”

Jack looks Howard up and down, sizing him up before he answers point-blank, “No, Howard. That would not be okay.”

Now Howard realizes he is, in a very real sense, Jack’s prisoner. He has been under Jack’s control, not an equal business team member with him.

The dream next shows Howard in a hotel bathroom. He looks out a small window onto a snowy rooftop in Chicago. He longs for his freedom. So, he climbs up onto the toilet, opens the window, squeezes himself through to the rooftop, and runs! He leaps from the rooftop into a snow drift below. Then he runs in leaps and bounds away from the hotel and Jack’s control, free!

ACT II/ Part A

Free from the Mob Boss Jack’s control, Howard gets a shrewd business idea. He figures he can do business with Jack’s own clients and offer them to pay a little less to him for the same services; so he will benefit at Jack’s unknowing expense. He walks into a shop which has a front business area and a back office and he offers his deal to one of Jack’s customers. The store owner pretends to appreciate the offer and says he needs to check something first in the back office.  As the Dreamer I understand immediately what is really going on. The store owner has called Jack and reported Howard’s offer! He has agreed to keep Howard occupied until Jack and his gang will arrive. Though the dream doesn’t show the final conclusion of this ‘act’, as the Dreamer it is clear that Howard will turn to leave the shop just as Jack and his gang close in on him, guns drawn. He will be toast!

ACT II/ Part B

Here’s where it becomes very interesting as a dream! I am now shown an ALTERNATE dream scenario, a different way that Howard could experience his Freedom. This act picks up again from the same scene of Howard having jumped from the hotel roof, skipping away happily to enjoy his escape from Jack’s control. This time, however, he does not revert to his old business ways. We see Howard exploring his newfound freedom, staying in the cover of night to avoid being recaptured. He comes to a remote, natural enclave area, like a small, recessed canyon with Red Rock cliff walls.  Howard looks UP. He sees, looking back down at him from their comfortable perch near the top of the cliffs overhead, two otherworldly Beings, one of them holding a flute. They are Guardian Spirits of some nondescript sort. They have been watching Howard.

“Can I climb out this way?” Howard asks the two gentle Beings who use no words but smile openly when he sees them and asks them this question. One of the two beckons a way that Howard can climb up the cliff. He does so. Howard climbs up and then crosses over the lip of the red canyon cliff wall.

ACT III

Still in this extended, lucid story-dream, I am shown that Howard has been experiencing a wholly new and different life situation since his choice to climb out of his old life to Freedom. Now Howard lives in a small, rural sort of community. He lives an average life, one of service to his village. Everybody knows him, and he them. He does good deeds whenever he can, always being willing to lend a helping hand to a neighbor or to give from his own meager resources to anyone in need. He has lost weight and he wears common work clothes, not a business suit.

As I wake from the dream, I am given a title for it: “The True Meaning of Spiritual Freedom”. As I open my eyes I have the distinct awareness that if Jack were ever to be face to face with Howard now, he would not even recognize him!

So, that’s the dream. I share it with you now as a story for this week’s topic of Better Choices. I will let the story’s message speak for Itself to you, as it may hold different meanings for different readers.

******   ******

What do better choices–or Better Endings–look like in YOUR life experience? What forms might they take? I invite your insights and stories! (May 5, 2014) – Linda

Ere, I Was in Eire: Inner Travels for Better Endings

I have since high school days always held a special fondness for Ireland. I nearly memorized in 11^th-12^th grades the whole of a volume on The Selected Poetry of W.B. Yeats. In college as an undergraduate English major I took an entire year of courses including a graduate credit course on James Joyce, studying Ulysses “properly,” guided page by page by companion concordances and a topographical map of Dublin. My grandmother, Ada Kelley, was a living reminder to me that my family’s roots on my Dad’s side go back to Ireland in the mid-to-late 1700’s.

Some 6 years ago I had a lucid dream from a “past life” perspective that astounded me. I am a teenaged girl with a friend or a younger sister beside me, standing inside a stone church with a dirt floor and a large wooden door. We have come in just to explore.

Somehow I know there is some sort of religious ritual going on in the far end of the church that I cannot see. I ask my Inner Guide (already I have one), “What religion is this?” My Inner Guide answers, “Satanism”. I turn immediately for the door, to leave! But, the huge oak door is locked. Beside the door there is an opening to a tower, with a spiral staircase within it.  I decide we will try going up there, hoping for an opening to get out. We go up one flight, then another (with like storage areas on each level). Then I realize we are being followed, stage by stage, by the ritualists. We are being sent higher and higher, becoming prisoners of this group.

In the process of waking from this dream, I received awareness about further aspects of that life experience. I saw myself becoming a slave—even a sexual slave—to the leader of the religious group, a big man with long, light brown hair. I see myself thanking him for accepting some small gift I hand to him, years later. My friend I believe was sacrificed; she was not in the later scenarios.

I woke from this dream with a sense of its utter Reality. I could not shake it. Soon I met a friend, Jan, who was hoping to go to Scotland for a graduate program on Celtic history. We began frequenting an Irish pub/restaurant and we then started planning a trip to Ireland together. When I opened a book for tourists on Ireland, I nearly dropped the book when I saw that stone churches with spiral-staircase towers were nearly ubiquitous in medieval Irish history! I had not known of these at all before my dream.

(Me at Glendalough, Ireland, 2012)

So, we planned and organized a two-week drive from Dublin, up to New Grange, then South and to the West, all along the coast including an island stay at Achill, on to County Sligo to visit Yeats’ grave (I left a brown penny), and back across to Dublin passing through Caval during a major Celtic Music Fleaugh (Festival). As I approached the trip, I thought it would be in part to forgive what had transpired in that life of being held as a captive slave to a ‘religious’ leader.

During the middle of our two week stay, Jan and I stayed for 7 nights with a couple of other friends we had come over with—Diane and Bob—at a wonderful Irish cottage rental in Bunratty of County Shannon. The second night there, I had another lucid dream. This one made the earlier dream seem mild by comparison! It also was a “past life” (or parallel life, I prefer to think, since quantum physics has determined that Time is an illusion).

In this inner experience, I am in a lower area of some structure (like a boat or a castle, perhaps), with a lot of wood, and dark. I am there with my Inner Guide, who is showing me this place which feels very familiar.  I realize people died in here. Then –okay—I realize I was responsible! I say this to my Guide: “I was responsible that people died here! I am a murderer; many times over!” He said nothing, allowing me to absorb the grim reality. Then I turned and saw a group of people descending into this place from an upper region. A priest led the way, followed by a small group of people who looked like potato farmer sorts—salt of the earth Irish peasant people. The priest set up a small table, then he put a candle on the table and lit it, to establish a ceremonial setting.  A sister and her brother stepped forward as they saw me, and we approached one another.

I said to the young woman:  “I am so sorry for your loss!”

“I am sorry for all that you have had to endure because of this,” was the young woman’s reply.

I knew that she and her brother, and all of the people in this group, had suffered in grief for the loss either of their own lives or of loved ones, whose deaths I was responsible for.  I had not actually murdered them with my own hands, but somehow I had allowed them to die or be killed by some decision I made—whether it was a triage situation on a boat, allowing some to live while others died “below”, or perhaps as an officer I had closed off some common folk in the low section of a castle to protect my own class from a deadly castle attack.

As I woke from this lucid vision, I said three times out loud: “I can’t believe my life has been about this; I CANNOT BELIEVE MY LIFE HAS BEEN ABOUT THIS!”

Wow! I called my friend in New Mexico from Ireland right away (it was early morning her time).

“I’m a murderer!” I told her; “many times over!”

My friend helped me realize this was from another time, another life. I realized the experience was needed for an absolution of sorts; for a mutual forgiveness between myself as Soul and those begrieved peasants who had confronted me. I hope they found the peace needed to move on.

This second dream showed me that the earlier dream might actually have been part of my own karmic due (which came first or ‘later’ matters not.) I found myself wondering how many people visit Ireland because of their own karmic loads from difficult times. Ireland in general is a nation still closely attached to its often violent history as well as to its rich tapestries of culture.

So for this week about Travel in relation to Better Endings I share with you this story of how we sometimes need to travel inwardly—as well as outwardly—to confront our “past” and to resolve its lingering ghosts, in order to move forward into greater future potentials. Whether you accept reincarnation or prefer to interpret such inner experiences as these metaphorically and/or ‘only’ archetypally, your dreams and other visionary experiences carry messages to help you advance to Better Endings in your life.

******   ******

I am posting this story early this weekend to remain on the site through Sunday, because it has deep significance for me.

Do you have a parallel-life or other ‘deep’ dream or visionary experience that has helped you arrive at Better Endings in your life? I welcome all of your insights and stories!

 

Better Choices—A Lucid Dream (by Linda K. Watts)

I am sometimes blessed to be a lucid dreamer. About a year ago, I “received” a dream that unfolded as a full story, in three separate acts! It was an unusual dream. It does not seem to have much to do with my own personal life or psychology, although it could pertain to an archetypal aspect of myself that I am not always aware of. Since the dream unfolded in three distinct act sequences, that is how I’ll tell it. Maybe this dream was meant for this blog or for some readers of this post, though at the time of the dream I had not yet even developed the idea of hosting this Better Endings blog.

ACT I

I see a business man walking along a sidewalk in a city environment. He is apparently quite successful. He is wearing an expensive looking grey suit and tie, he is obviously well fed, and he is a bit overweight. He has achieved a degree of comfortable repute with his business. Let’s call him Howard. Another man approaches him, stops him on the street and introduces himself. (Let’s call him, Jack.) As the Dreamer I know that Jack is a Mob Boss. Jack has heard of Howard’s success and he feels threatened by it, so he has approached Howard to offer him a deal.

“Join my team,” Jack invites Howard. “You will share in my success. We stay at the finest hotels and have all of the good things of life. You will merge your business with mine and be on my team.”

Thinking that joining Jack’s team could lead to “the good life” with little effort on his own part, Howard complies. He becomes a constant member of Jack’s entourage (read, mob gang). They travel together 24/7. But after a few months have gone by, Howard approaches Jack at a hotel they are staying at, in Chicago.

“Would it be okay with you if I sometimes do things just on my own, Jack? Like eating alone or sometimes spending a few days away from the team?”

Jack looks Howard up and down, sizing him up before he answers point-blank, “No, Howard. That would not be okay.”

Now Howard realizes he is, in a very real sense, Jack’s prisoner. He has been under Jack’s control, not an equal business team member with him.

The dream next shows Howard in a hotel bathroom. He looks out a small window onto a snowy rooftop in Chicago. He longs for his freedom. So, he climbs up onto the toilet, opens the window, squeezes himself through to the rooftop, and runs! He leaps from the rooftop into a snow drift below. Then he runs in leaps and bounds away from the hotel and Jack’s control, free!

ACT II/ Part A

Free from the Mob Boss Jack’s control, Howard gets a shrewd business idea. He figures he can do business with Jack’s own clients and offer them to pay a little less to him for the same services; so he will benefit at Jack’s unknowing expense. He walks into a shop which has a front business area and a back office and he offers his deal to one of Jack’s customers. The store owner pretends to appreciate the offer and says he needs to check something first in the back office.  As the Dreamer I understand immediately what is really going on. The store owner has called Jack and reported Howard’s offer! He has agreed to keep Howard occupied until Jack and his gang will arrive. Though the dream doesn’t show the final conclusion of this ‘act’, as the Dreamer it is clear that Howard will turn to leave the shop just as Jack and his gang close in on him, guns drawn. He will be toast!

ACT II/ Part B

Here’s where it becomes very interesting as a dream! I am now shown an ALTERNATE dream scenario, a different way that Howard could experience his Freedom. This act picks up again from the same scene of Howard having jumped from the hotel roof, skipping away happily to enjoy his escape from Jack’s control. This time, however, he does not revert to his old business ways. We see Howard exploring his newfound freedom, staying in the cover of night to avoid being recaptured. He comes to a remote, natural enclave area, like a small, recessed canyon with Red Rock cliff walls.  Howard looks UP. He sees, looking back down at him from their comfortable perch near the top of the cliffs overhead, two otherworldly Beings, one of them holding a flute. They are Guardian Spirits of some nondescript sort. They have been watching Howard.

“Can I climb out this way?” Howard asks the two gentle Beings who use no words but smile openly when he sees them and asks them this question. One of the two beckons a way that Howard can climb up the cliff. He does so. Howard climbs up and then crosses over the lip of the red canyon cliff wall.

ACT III

Still in this extended, lucid story-dream, I am shown that Howard has been experiencing a wholly new and different life situation since his choice to climb out of his old life to Freedom. Now Howard lives in a small, rural sort of community. He lives an average life, one of service to his village. Everybody knows him, and he them. He does good deeds whenever he can, always being willing to lend a helping hand to a neighbor or to give from his own meager resources to anyone in need. He has lost weight and he wears common work clothes, not a business suit.

As I wake from the dream, I am given a title for it: “The True Meaning of Spiritual Freedom”. As I open my eyes I have the distinct awareness that if Jack were ever to be face to face with Howard now, he would not even recognize him at all!

So, that’s the dream. I share it with you now as a story for this week’s topic of Better Choices. I will let the story’s message speak for Itself to you, as it may hold different meanings for different readers.

************

To Share this Better Endings story, you may use the Facebook, Google, Twitter or Pinterest buttons below. To receive Better Endings daily by email, simply click on Follow and type in your email address. Thanks for reading!

Your Significant Life Events

You are the key protagonist of your Life Story. Contemporary cognitive scientists say there is an adaptive psychological need for a human being to mentally and emotionally construct a “coherent self,” one that undergoes a series of holistically interwoven experiences which we can call your Significant Life Events, or SLE’s. We recall these significant events situationally. That means we each recognize specific KINDS of events in our lives that have played important roles in our Life Story. This varies from person to person. While Family events might be paramount for one person,Work or Spirituality, or Relationships, or Health might be more central for somebody else. We all recognize several of these categories or kinds of significant events in our lives. They overlap. Some situations tend to lift us Up, others might hold us Down, and still other kinds of situations that recur in our lives may help us to maintain a welcome balance from day to day.

Next week, we will call these KINDS of Significant Life Events your Life Themes. You will discover which Life Themes are present in your life and what sort of patterning or influence they have. This week, let’s set you on your personal adventure with the Life Mapping Activity of the Week (see right sidebar to participate).  In this week’s posts let’s talk about how Significant Life Events can relate to Better Endings.

An SLE is an event or a time frame in your life which has “influenced or shaped the person you have become”. There is no fixed, “correct” or complete number of these events in your life, but any time you reflect back you are likely to recall a sampling of those kinds of events that have been most relevant to you from your current or present perspective. The Life Mapping activity I offer to you this week asks you to make list of at least 12 of these SLE’s. List them in whatever order they come to mind, then you can arrange them chronologically if you like. In my upcoming book and self-help handbook, Life Paths, I will include a set of forms you can use to plot these SLE’s visually, but it is enough this week for you just to list 12 representative events.

Here are some basic questions to get you started in recalling your significant events:

• What was the earliest life event that you remember? Why or how was it significant in shaping the “person you have become”?
• What have been some of your “best times” and some of the “worst times” you have known? How have they influenced your choices along the way and who you are today?

In my own life, Significant Life Events have been like punctuation points, where my memory lands when I reflect upon past, present and possible futures. I think of the first lucid dream I had at about 4 years old; it was about a gorilla that follows me into my house and upstairs to where I pretend to be sleeping in my bed while it puts a kitchen knife to my throat and I wake up screaming! Or for a much happier SLE, I recall being Student Director for two plays in high school and how the Director–my favorite English teacher, Mr. Scelsa–inspired me to go to college to become a teacher myself and to study literature, language, drama and philosophy.

All good literature arranges the key characters’ SLE’s to create dramatic, interweaving plot lines. Much of poetry and art figuratively or sometimes even literally freezes or “frames” an SLE sort of experience as a multi-dimensional Moment.

I invite you to list at least 12 SLE’s this week as an entry to reconstructing your own personal dramatic narrative. Yet, I encourage you to approach this rather lightly–as a fun, creative process rather than as a challenging task. Please, do go lightly. You only need to scratch the surface at this stage in order to “round up” a basic sampling of your significant, life shaping memories. Later I will help you to discover how each of these memories, no matter how happy or sad, has allowed you to develop the repertoire of Strengths you now possess. These are Strengths you can use to forge ahead in creating, yes, your own Better Endings.

____________

Please, if you enjoy this, SHARE it with your Friends and Follow this site to receive daily Better Endings posts by simply registering your email address in the Follow box. You can participate by sharing your Comments below, and by submitting a Guest Blog (‘What Do Better Endings Mean in Your Life?’) or a Story of the Week about our weekly (any weekly) topic.

Related articles

• On calendars. On butterflies. On gardens. On life. (wellthisiswhatithink.wordpress.com)
• synchronicity and meaning (kluskuschronicles.wordpress.com)
• Self-narratives and autonomy [by lisa bortolotti] (kolber.typepad.com)