A New Vision

At last my writer's block, which began in February following a visit to the emergency room and a cat scan, has dissolved.  The emergency was prompted by a very unusual headache which was severe, lasted seconds, then disappeared for hours, coming back again and again, becoming more frequent as the day drew to a close.  Nothing was detected, but this prompted some blood tests which confirmed my latest thyroid dosage was way too high.  It has since been cut in half which resulted in a kind of whiplash of depression--now lifting.

This got my attention.  Why me?  Why now?  As I pondered this, I realized that I couldn't bring myself to go back into my past memories, with all their emotional upheaval.  I needed a new vision for my book.

Yesterday that vision presented itself.

I will return to my memories, but as a compassionate observer, bringing all the wisdom and spirituality I've gleaned over the years to counsel those parts of me that are still in need of compassion and transformation.  I need this especially as I continue aging.  Did anyone ever tell you it takes Courage to age well?

Rather than continue blogs of my life in chronological order, I'll post occasional portions of my book for your comments and suggestions.

Here is an example of this new approach, in rough draft form:

I’m frozen by the thought of my death. This is embarrassing because I’m supposed to be a woman of Faith, someone who has great positive expectations that my consciousness in some form will continue, that there will be a “next grand adventure,” that I will at last see God face to face, the greatest delight possible.

 “There’s no reason to be afraid,” a saner part of me tells my petrified self.  “Remember that dream you had in the Seventies?”

In that astounding dream, I find myself in “the next life.”  I spot a man there whom I deeply love.  We are unusual creatures; not our human selves.  We are made of colored beams of light.  He is a radiant, transparent blue-green life form and I am a glowing alizarin crimson being.  As we behold each other, we merge so that our colors intermingle. 

My feelings sparkle.  We truly “see through” each other without any embarrassment or barriers or boundaries, with complete love and acceptance.  The intimacy is dazzling, and intense, it’s as if I’m experiencing a climax in love making in which I’m fully present and this electrifying bliss becomes our natural state of being.  Because we are not physical beings, we are able to sustain this state indefinitely. It’s normal in this dimension.

Reflecting back to this dream today, I wonder at myself…that I get bound up in my interior paralysis over this thing called death.  How can anyone with such a dream lose touch with that phenomenal sense of awe?

 

I think the reason I forgot this dream is that the next morning I woke up to the routines of my ordinary life and felt displaced, lost, and burdened by a deep grief, a sense of profound loss. That vivid experience which I still carried had only been a dream that burned off  like the fog over the ocean on a sunny day.  On one level this dream gave me hope that this kind of intimate ecstasy is possible in our next life.  On another level, the marvel that I experienced was very seducing, like the Turkish Delight the White Witch gives Edmund to bewitch him.  He can't think of anything but getting more of it regardless of cost. I couldn't think of anything but returning to that heavenly realm. I remember it was a terrible struggle to regain my sense of the preciousness in the ordinary moment.

Today I choose to set my reaction to the dream aside and regain its gift.

“Light a candle on an altar and set it in the darkness of your terror,” my priestess-self counsels. “Take time to ponder that other world, the blue-green and crimson beings that merged. You have all the heat in you to melt the icy fear.”                                                                 END