Betrayed in a dream by the “daud / dhaad / ض"

I had one of my rare but interesting intense, symbolic dreams that feels almost more realistic than real life. 

The world seemed older, maybe not simpler, but more subtle and less technological. In this dream I looked more like a stereotypical male Ivy Leaguer (whatever that is, but definitely thinner and more handsome than I am in real life). I remember buttoning a suit, fixing a tie while looking in the mirror; I had a more narrow, chiseled face, thinner black hair, a dimple, and a smile that was dashing. 

I was either a student in college at some old institution or had just graduated. I remember strolling along under shady, sturdy trees around a sunlit, flower-lined stonewall campus joking casually alongside the no-face man who would soon become my handler. 

We went on a funcation across Europe. We met others of similar educational, socio-economic ilk, enjoyed some fine dining and cultural entertainment opportunities, mostly in dark, ancient, brick and stone cities in Eastern Europe and the Near East.  Next thing I knew in my dream, my life was immersed in lightning paced, jet-setting intrigue.

Somehow we were working to figure out the connections between the terrorists in Southwest Asia / Middle East and Europe. I don’t remember any specifics of what I was doing in my dream when I was off traveling from one country to another, using multiple passports and (apparently) only slightly modified “disguises,” but a couple of things happened that let me in on a bit of what I was up to. 

In a side office of one of the embassies in what might’ve been Belgium, a woman that I thought of as a kindly older (I was in my early 20’s) somewhat frumpy secretary asked me what the government had me up to these days. She asked nicely and with genuine curiosity, but when I said, “oh just trying to wrangle through some minor disagreements and come to terms on totally inconsequential details,” she looked at me hard and skeptically and said, “hmmm...” dismissively. 

Outside her door (we were in some sort of a secure space apparently) one of my colleagues - with a harried look but a glimmer in his eye which suggested he’d also experienced a whirlwind exciting and perhaps treacherous week - stopped me briefly and asked me how many places I’d been to in the last week. I paused and quietly revealed “well, one passport is stamped in Prague, Ankara and Jerusalem, another has me going through Afghanistan, Pakistan and Czechoslovakia, and another has me in London, Paris, and Berlin - so you tell me...” He gave me a knowing look, breathlessly rattled off his list, which included Cairo, Moscow and Baghdad, and then hurried off to some other part of the building. 

At that point, just as I was stepping off towards whatever came next, the secretary from the office shot her arm out of her office doorway, grabbed me by the shoulder, and yanked me backwards until I was standing back in front of her desk with her office door pulled shut. “Minor disagreements and inconsequential details indeed...” We both smiled, me sheepishly, she grimly.

“Now you listen to me, IF you get in trouble, here is my number. You call and tell me you’re coming. Then come straight into my office, walk into this closet, which will be closed and locked.

“Here is a key” (which she handed me) “Walk into this closet and walk right down the stairs. I’ll be waiting at the bottom for you and we’ll get you off to someplace safe. Oh, and lock the door behind you. 

I thanked her and walked out the door. As I was leaving what had been the Belgian embassy building, I exited by a narrow stone stairway directly onto a busy street. There was a boy begging at the base of the steps and I stopped to say hello and to give him some change. Somehow I learned that the boy’s native language was Arabic, so we started speaking Arabic together; in the course of our conversation we both used a word that had the letter “ض" in it. 

I must’ve pronounced the letter more like a “daal” “د" because a kindly old grandfatherly type man, hunched over, wearing a suit and using a cane corrected me politely. He tapped me on the shoulder and spoke humbly,  “beg your pardon sir, it’s pronounced _____ not _____.” His voice was oddly high pitched, nasally, and frail. I smiled and said, “right you are my man - my mistake, thank you, I always mess up the daud words.” I bid them both a good day and went off on my way. (I’ve tried to remember since waking what the daud word was that we used, but can’t quite find it).

Cut in the dream directly to Baghdad now. I’m participating in a meeting of officials and apparently  I’m using an assumed identity of a person who wouldn’t have any business being anywhere near Belgium. I use the same word in the course of casual Arabic conversation that I had used in Belgium with the child beggar. A man in a fine silk suit, standing straight without a cane,  taps me from behind on the shoulder, “Beg your pardon Sir, it’s pronounced _____ not _____.” I smiled and said... nothing. As I turned I could see Saddam Hussein looking directly and sharply into my eyes. I now recognized that he had been the grandfatherly old gentleman in a disguise of his own. I knew in that moment that he also recognized me. His voice was still high pitched, nasally and frail, but this was his house, and I was caught. Betrayed by the ض

Trump, Ticks and Flea Circuses

I had a dream about Trump last night. 

A bunch of administration people or maybe the press pool and I were in a room with him. He had created art that looked like a Rorschach Test. I thought it was a bad attempt at a tarantula, and I said “oh, is it a tarantula?” which was met by uneasy chuckles in the room. He corrected me and said it was actually a tick, which it did, in fact, resemble a bit. 

In my dream the idea of a tick then transformed into a flea,  and Trump was talking about how “you know... fleas are actually talented and admirable,” because "look at all they can do in those flea circuses, even though they're so tiny and everybody just thinks of them as pests..." 

In hindsight, the Rorschach blob looked an awful lot like a coronavirus. I think there might be just a bit of symbolism in this dream.

Crashing Helicopter Dream

*

I had the most vivid dream I've had in a while last night. I was back in the military, walking in uniform (I had to salute a couple of officers as they passed so I know I had to be in uniform). 

Then I was at an official function of some kind. It felt like it was at an Officers' or NCO Club, or at the Base HQ or some place like that. There were a few officers and NCOs there that I actually have known in real life. We were all talking and laughing like we'd known each other forever. Then everything was over. 

The NCO's and airmen left in 4 or 5 blue vans, and the officers made a show of leaving in several helicopters. As the helicopters were taking off (about 8 of them all together in a formation) they tried to do a fancy bank off to the right. Two of the helicopters got their rotors tangled up and crashed to the ground. 

The person next to me (who I didn't know) and I ran to the scene. It was then that we realized that 2 of the vans had been hit by the falling helicopters and were completely smashed. No movement, no voices, no screams. I completely froze. I realized that I couldn't remember the steps for CPR (ahem *choke*), so I volunteered to call 911. 

 Nobody had a cell. I ran back into the club, but the land-line was dead (except for some very distant-sounding elevator music). Another airman walked into a dayroom and I had to beg him to let me use his cell-phone (he was having a conversation with his girlfriend). 

I was having a hard time hearing the 911 operator, and I had the distinct feeling she didn't believe my story about what happened. The dream ended with me not being sure that she would send any help at all. I remember telling the operator that this all happened on the corner of Pope and Main.

That's all. This morning's dream. 

***

Misty Dream

I was walking through a city with a group of people that I know. The street that we were walking down appeared to be one like you would see in a European city. A dignified old grandeur interjected with small squares of brightly colored, well-lit modernity. We talked and laughed, and then we parted ways. I headed off to the left and they kept moving straight ahead.

As I was walking alone it became obvious to me that I was finding my way to a more seedy part of town. The signs were flashier, the streets were more dirty, the street lights were not so ever-present. Rain was drizzling as I walked on, without purpose, taking in the sights and sounds which were both dampened and magnified by the humid, foggy air.

I soon found myself in the red light district, and there were sights that you can imagine. I was watching the behavior of everyone around me in a surprisingly detached manner, just taking it all in, logging information in some sort of database in my mind. I finally decided that I would walk into one of the establishments.

As I walked in I asked myself what I was doing. I felt fear that I might succumb to the temptations found within. I was drawn to move forward as if I were in a trance. I felt tension in every muscle. I was fighting and giving in at the same moment.

The place that I had ventured into was as seedy as anything a modern-day Dickens could describe. What I saw I will not relate, but again I was surprised at my lack of interest in even just imagining what it would be like to take part in the debauchery. I thought to myself, "I should be wanting to watch this even closer. I should have some hidden desire to partake of this forbidden fruit. Why am I here? What is my purpose? What am I doing? What do I really want?"

My mind began to fog over. I was no longer in control of the wheel. My body and mind were careening and contorting in a strange undulating motion as I seemed to float to the floor. Hours later, or maybe longer, I began to regain consciousness.

I was lying on a cold cement floor. The area of the building that I had walked into was empty and silent. There were sounds of music and laughter coming from another area of this brothel.

As my vision began to clear I saw that my naked body was covered with blood. There was a gushing of blood that was subsiding from a hole in my chest where my heart should be. Within a few seconds the flow slowed, and then subsided. The hole in my chest began to heal over. That is when I noticed Misty.

Misty, the most mysterious and unknowable of all of my cats. She is the one who lives in a possum hole during the day, hides at the slightest hint of a sound, and usually doesn't want to be petted, until she gets into that mood (about once every 2 months or so) where she just has to be touched. In those moments Misty will purr loudly and incessantly, bopping her head into your leg or your hand until she is getting the attention that she demands... but only for just so long. Then she'll get angry at you for showing her too much love, and she'll hurry away, angry at being bothered.

Misty was standing on my chest, licking up the fresh and drying blood that covered my body.

My chest wound now completely healed, Misty was looking at me intently with her powerful gaze as she continued to lick methodically and without worry. She thought patiently towards me: "You are going to be alright. You will be strong again. You are stronger than you have ever been."

With that, the vision of Misty, and of myself lying on the ground faded. I was standing now, looking out of the entrance of the building into the streets of this area that I had been exploring. I estimated the time to be about 3am. Everything was quiet and still. There were few signs of the excitement that had been forcing itself into my being just a few hours before.

I hesitated for a brief moment, gathered myself with a sigh, and took a sure step... into consciousness.

The Library Man and the Game Show Host

From a dream that I had in June 2006:


There is a man in a luxurious estate style house. It is filled with heavy dark wood furniture and leather chairs and elaborately carved siding. I have a flashback in my dream of this man being kidnapped from the street at some point in the past and realize that he is here in this place possibly brainwashed and unaware that this isn’t where he belongs. He has forgotten his former life and has forgotten the kidnapping.

The man is wearing a bulky, clanging suit of armor that is made from metal things from around the house. I’m not sure that everything making up the armor is the type of thing that you’d find in kitchen cabinets, but most of the armor is made of kitchen pots, metal spoons, colanders, and other kitchen / household utensils. The man is always tripping clumsily over his suit of armor, and every time he trips, he falls to the ground landing on his back with his legs flying in the air like the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz. He laughs at himself, shakes his head, rolls his eyes, stands back up as he dusts himself off.

The man in the house is in a dark library whose dark wooden shelves are covered with books of every title known. This man is reading the titles as he dusts the books and the shelves with a feather duster. He hasn’t read any of these books but he tells himself that he will read them all eventually. The man is whistling a happy tune, dusting off the shelves, and tossing the feather duster in the air playfully from time to time as he finishes a shelf. He seems fully content to be doing what he is doing and doesn’t seem to harbor any bad feelings about his situation at all.

Now the view of the room grows smaller as a camera view widens and we see the room disappear behind a wall and a locked door. The view continues to move backwards through an arboretum filled with trees and flowers and shrubs. Another wall and another door now fill the scene and the camera pans over an audience and a game show host on a stage in front of the crowd.

The game show host says: “This is the moment that we’ve been waiting for weeks to see. Tonight we get to find out how this man will react when I let him know that there is more to his life than he can even imagine.”

The game show host opens the door to leading from the auditorium to the arboretum and walks across a narrow cobblestone path towards the locked door on the other side. In the dream the arboretum is extremely vivid. I’m in the game show host’s body as he walks across towards the locked door that leads to the library. There is mist in the air and I can smell the flowers. There are water striders skimming the surface of the water. I reach out and touch a soft, fuzzy leaf. I can feel the dew from the plants on the leg of my pants.

I’m an outside viewer again as I watch the host climb a set of stairs and approach the locked door to the library.

The host is immaculately dressed in a suit and a tie. His eyes have a glimmer to them.


When the host reaches the door, the camera closes in on his face. He smiles a gleaming game-show smile and winks at the audience before unlocking the door.

The host walks in to the dark library where the man is feather dusting the bookshelves. Immediately the man’s eyes grow wide and he falls over his armor, landing on the floor and chuckling awkwardly at himself, then stumbling up off the ground. He asks the host where he came from. The host tells the man that he came from the laboratory.

The man’s eyes get wide and he looks out the window at the arboretum and asks: “The laboratory, I didn’t know that there was a laboratory, where is the laboratory?”

The game show host says: “Just on the other side of the arboretum.”

The man looks longingly out the window past the trees and the pond and says: “The arboretum, ahhh… it must be nice out there, I see it every day but the door to the arboretum is locked and I can’t go out that way.”

The game show host responds: “It is nice out there, we’re doing some really amazing experiments in the lab, we’re learning the secrets of life, and living... how life works and about all of the intricacies of nature.”

The man looks longingly out the window towards the unlocked door on the other side of the arboretum. The game show host walks back out into the arboretum and locks the door to the library behind him, leaving the man in the library, still gazing out the window towards the open door on the other side. The game show host stands at the top of the stairway which leads to the library's locked door. The camera closes in on his face, as he looks at the camera with an earnest questioning expression. “What will this man do now that he knows that there is more to life than just dusting books? What will he do now that he knows that there is a place that he wants to go on the other side of that locked door? To find out the answer to that question and more, you’ll have to tune in next time. We'll be right back, after these messages."

And then I woke up.

Dream: Dinner for Two at the Mansion

Dinner for Two in the Mansion

A dream that I had in Cairo while hoping for a dream that would clarify the decision about whether or not to stay in the military.

My girlfriend and I are sitting in the dining room of a very large mansion that could very well be in the same house as the library in my other dream with the Library Man.

The furniture is dark wood. The room is expansive, the table is long and we are using very fine crystal and china dining ware. We have a butler, and servants. The conversation is predictable and stunted. The room is mostly silent, except for short, matter-of-fact statements, and there is a noticable lack of enthusiasm or vitality in the air. Everything feels stale and practiced.

Suddenly the viewpoint of the dream changes from that of myself sitting at the table to that of one of our servants working in a cottage-like shop in a distant corner of the property of same estate.

In this somewhat removed, dark, and dank location, the live, writhing bodies of the poor, disenfranchised, helpless members of the surrounding Dickensian village are being tortuously run through a meat grinder by a hulking, ugly thug of a man that looks something like a troll or a medieval executioner wearing leather armor.

Their screams ring out as he grabs them up with one hand and throws them, flailing, into the massive machine that destroys them in a matter of seconds. The executioner doesn't pause to give them a second glance before throwing them into the jaws of death. He doesn't seem to necessarily relish his work, but he carries it out energetically, with a sense of purpose. He doesn't seem to be bothered by the cruelty of what he is doing. He may even believe for some reason that he is doing the world a favor by ridding it of these vermin.

Next, the focus of the dream returns to the dining room, where my girlfriend and I continue to dine politely with the almost imperceptible addition of classical music playing gently in the background. We share some more uninspired conversation together as we sit at the table, satisfied within the confines of our routine.

While I'm sitting at the table with my girlfriend, my mind begins to conjure up the scene just described from within the distant slaughterhouse. I experience a very small tinge of regret that the place exists at all, but I shrug it off and continue eating.

She starts to carefully cut the food in front of her into small pieces. The dish is meatloaf.

At that moment, it dawns on her where this dish originated and how it has been prepared. She starts screaming at me saying: "How could you let this happen!" "Why didn't you tell me this is what we were going to be having for dinner?!"

I look over at her calmly. While continuing to slowly and deliberately chew my food, I say: "You can't possibly be telling me now that you didn't already know that this is where our food is coming from. You know very well that we couldn't survive without the sacrifices of those poor souls. I don't like it either you know, but it is a fact of life. Just be thankful that you get to enjoy all of this and that you've not been born as one of them. Now hurry up and eat your dinner."

That is the end of my dream.

The first thing that I have to say is that I would NEVER actually talk to my girlfriend that way. I think that this post is a political dream, partially inspired by our eye-opening experience of the blatant caste system on the cruise ships that we've been on, which is just a micro-version of how the economic system of the world really works. We enjoy the luxuries that we have because others suffer. That is the harsh reality.

The Messenger - Part 2

For more context - please read "The Messenger - Part 1"

The following was written on the intention hike that my vision fast group went on a month before the actual vision fast. The idea was to meditate and think about what it was that we wanted to get out of the vision fast, what it was that we hoped to gain. We could choose to write or not. We could also choose to just hike through the gorgeous hills of Garland Ranch.

I walked around for a little while, and eventually decided to sit beside an old wooden fence between the lower part of the ranch and the mountains. While I was sitting, I started to see everything around me as part of an analogy of my life. This text came to me as I sat there, and I probably wouldn’t have thought much of it over the course of time, but what happened during the vision fast that came a month later was so incredible and amazing, and such a validation of everything written in this text, that I almost have to conclude that this text was truly part of a vision, and that what happened during the vision fast (which I will write about in the next post) was, perhaps, the closest thing to an absolute miracle that I will ever see in my life.

15 May 2004

I walk down a path of my own choosing – searching for depth - searching for clear guidance – searching for truth. I’m searching for the clear words being spoken by the inner voice that has never lied or led me astray. The inner voice which has screamed at me from deep within – the inner voice that I have listened to when it was convenient and ignored when it was condemning me. I realize that the depth that I seek is all around and within me. I just need to claim it.

I look around and I see beauty in everywhere in this place. I see depth and purpose, and I realize that in this place I see myself. The vision ahead of me is a glorious one – full of life, vitality, diversity, and mystery. It is wild and relatively untouched by the predictable, linear, boxy forms imposed by man on our existence.

The whole scene is an analogy to my life. It is built upon a sea of yellow grass swaying in the breeze… a swaying that marks the passage of time and the continued presence of old life, representing dreams, ideas, and ways of being or thinking whose times have passed, but whose presence is still felt. Their presence still adds a valuable contribution to the whole picture. Empty seed pods speak for, and bear witness to the dreams and aspirations that were brought into existence at an earlier phase in life. Some of those went to produce new, short-lived grasses of their own. Others did not mature into anything but seeds.

The yellow grasses of the old paradigms are just as important to understanding my depth and future direction as the new life springing up from the ground, the strong trees reaching their arms towards heaven, and the hawks who soar above it all, free from the grounding influences that some would call reality. Gravity is our master, but it is a master that the hawks and the eagles have tamed and taught to perform tricks for their pleasure. Our reality is their playground.

The grasses of past paradigms vibrate with the winds of time passing over them. Like cilia or a sort of natural seismograph needle, they vibrate and sway in a frenzied dance carried out by personifications of the old memories they represent. The vibrations create a chord of voices which sing to me. They sing of different things, and if I listen closely, I can hear each individual voice. The whole makes up a high-pitched chorus.

Some sing of happy days filled with golden sunshine, lush green fields, june bugs, river banks, ocean tides, gardens, forest clearings. They reminisce about the days when their younger, grassy shadows fell on the waters of a pond in the evening as the water striders danced on the surface of an underwater world, appearing to the inhabitants of that space to be soaring beyond the restrictions and limitations imposed upon them by their reality… just as the hawks and the eagles appear to us to be doing in our microcosm of land, sky, and gravitational forces.

Whether the barrier is the surface tension of the water, the means of attaining the oxygen needed for existence, or the means of using gravity to go where we want or need to go… what actually constitutes a barrier is all a matter of perspective. Our barriers are nothing to other forms of life. Their barriers may be invisible and meaningless to us. We all occupy the same universe, and yet we all live in different worlds.

I want to fly, but surely I don’t need to fly in order to exist. I might die someday because I wasn’t able to fly at a moment when that ability could have saved my life. Nobody will call me a failure because I wasn’t able to fly at that moment. That doesn’t change the fact that I want to fly. Wanting to fly doesn’t make me more able to fly. Depending on what my definition of flying is and how willing I am to adjust that definition – that desire might just lead me to something which, while not the flight of the hawks and eagles, is the equivalent experience for my wingless form to achieve.

Maybe the hawks and eagles wish that they could swim and are jealous of humans, who can both walk and swim. Maybe they’re perfectly content just being hawks and eagles, doing what they’re meant to do, and living in harmony with their purpose. Maybe they’re blessed by not having the power to destroy the nature that they are a part of. Maybe we can learn to be as human as the eagles are eagles. Maybe we can learn to be happy within our role which has been defined for us by nature. Maybe we can take our perceived limitations and turn them into our playgrounds. Maybe I can learn from the hawks and the eagles.

There are old truths that beg not to be forgotten. The grasses form the shallow sea in which I’m walking, a sea in which I’m grounded at the moment, a sea that is constantly reminding me of where I’ve been, what I’ve done, as well as what I have not.

Amidst all of this yellow, swaying, vibrating chorus there are trees, bushes and shrubs. Ideas, plans and dreams that have grown and found what they needed to take root, flourish and form over time into healthy, green, sturdy, more resistant, more permanent members of this area. These represent the consistent ideals that I have held true to over time and the areas of my life that I have given proper attention, and have provided with the consistent nutrients needed to ensure their survival. Some might not be as vibrant as others, but they are more hearty. They are also likely to be around for a longer period of time, and to play a more influential part in the overall scheme of what is to come in the future than the parts of my life that are just a memory, whose time has come and gone.

At my feet is a newly sprouted seedling. It sways in the wind. Amongst the memory grasses of the past, it stands firm and proud. It demands to be differentiated from the ghosts of the past. It speaks to me.

It says: “I can be anything. I can become one of these grasses, something that you’ll look back on and learn from. Maybe you’ll be happy you found me, and maybe I’ll become yellow with time… just a reminder of what once was, swaying in the wind with all of the other reminders. I could become a perennial flower, or an annual flower, or a bush with thorns. I am a stem cell in the world that you are creating. I have the potential to become whatever you make me.

Treat me with respect and honor and I may just become a strong, tall, sturdy tree – reaching my branches to heaven in exaltation of the glorious reality that we will create together. A tree that is a resting place and a departure point for eagles and hawks – and a tree which shades the waters of the pond where the water striders defy the barriers of the world beneath them.

Time, patience, love, nurture, boldness and courage are needed in order to nurture me if you ask this of me, but when that time has passed, when that effort has been spent, when that nurture has been given, when that honor and respect have manifested themselves into the final majestic form that I have the power within me to become, you can rest in the shade of my branches, on the banks of the still waters of the pond, watching the whirligigs, the minnows, and the reflection of the leaves swirling down slowly until they land gently to float on the surface of the water like the clouds which float above you now. I can show you what it is for you to be as human as the eagles are eagles. I can help you to fly in your own way.

So I say to the seedling that this sounds like a grand idea. I say that I want to fly. I say that I am tired of my limitations and my reality. I ask what I must do to fulfill my part of our pact.

The seedling leans towards the sun, over the mountains ahead… It speaks:

“Look behind you. Behind you there are a few tall trees and a lot of yellow grass. Look ahead of you. Ahead of you there are hills. Daunting hills… but in them there are waterfalls, shaded pathways and mysteries to uncover and marvel in. Every plant on those hills is green. Everything is playing its part, working together in harmony. It’s a challenging climb – but the journey is worth the effort.

Take me with you on your journey to the top. I’ll be with you as you struggle. I will be an inspiration to you when you tire. I’ll stand firm when you lose your footing, and will help you to stand and walk again. I’ll grow and you’ll grow as we go on our way together towards that summit. We can give each other that impetus that we each need to become what we know that we can be. When we’ve reached the top of that summit, I’ll be ready to make roots and become what I was meant to be. A pillar of strength in your life, a reminder of all of your efforts and hard work, and a place of comfort and rest.”

I ask the seedling: “Why have you come to me now?” The seedling responds: “I’ve been right here all along… you came to me.”

There is a fence, a wooden structure, a man-made invention between the grasses and trees that are behind me and the hills and lush, green expanse ahead of me. It is a false barrier. I am taking the seedling and climbing over the fence. The next time that I see the yellow grass will be from the summit of the hills, where the eagles and hawks are flying.

The Messenger - Part 1

One year ago I had a spiritual encounter. I don't know if it was as much an awakening as it was the sudden awareness of a doorway standing directly in front of me, which I could walk through by just making the decision to do it.

It was a beautiful sunny day with hawks and vultures flying high above the lush green mountaintops. The yellow grass was rolling gently and rustling in harmony with the soft sound of the breeze. On a mission offered to me by my chosen spiritual guide, I was sitting on the ground in a valley next to a dirt road and a wooden fence, waiting for some sort of clarity.

I was waiting to receive some kind of message, not expecting much, when all at once I saw a multi-dimensional picture in my mind which has since helped to redefine the way that I see my life, my world, and my role in it. I had been doubtful that my quest for meaning that day would bear any real fruit; but what the Universe chose to give to its seeking inhabitant that day was quite profound.

For the next 2 hours I tried to put on paper what had been revealed to me in an instant. What I wrote that afternoon was an allegorical description of my life as it had been and how it could be. Everything around me became part of a living parable, full of deep symbolism and wondrous new meaning.

The message received from the Universe that day was as crystal clear to me as it may be cryptic to anyone else. My whole life was surrounding me in the form of the grasses, the animals, and the plants, which were speaking to me in ways that I was hearing for the first time since I was a child.

The fence to one side of me became a small barrier in my life which I had chosen not to cross. The path leading up into the rich, green, unknown dark places on the mountainside was now a direction in life, which I could choose to take in order to arrive at a place where my spirit could fly like the eagles and the hawks. The yellow grass to the other side of me had now become my past life, which had led me to this place where I was sitting. This is where I met my messenger who promised that all I had to do was take it with me on my journey, and care for it until we reached the top of the mountain. There it would grow strong in the place of its choosing. "There I will show you how to soar with the hawks and the eagles." it said.

My messenger that day, just over a year ago, was a very young pine sapling, growing near the place where I was sitting beside the road, in front of the fence, facing the mountain of choices ahead.