The Fog Lifts

This morning, the coast was socked in with fog, but during my morning walk, I watched that fog thin, dissipate and lift entirely. It felt like a weight had been lifted from me at the same time. If you scroll down to my last two blog posts, you'll see that lately I have struggled. I have not seen a clear path and have felt surrounded by gray. That may be why this morning's gift of clarity felt so personal!

In April Rinne's book Flux - 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change, the third of the superpowers is Get Lost. She suggests that "in the landscape of change, getting lost is how you find your way." I have actively cultivated a friendship with "lost-ness" these last months as my patterns and expectations have turned upside down while I shifted my small household and work to a new home up the coast. I would have said that, of the 8 superpowers, being lost is one of my strong suits. This may be true, or partially true, but getting lost wears. It gets old quickly! Our survival brains crave some pattern, routine and clear expectations. In other words, I have been worn down by all the unknowns and I am tired of being lost.

What lifted the fog for me today (the internal fog, not external) was a shift in thinking. Somehow I had picked up a belief that HOPE is not at all "spiritual" because it means we do not want what is and want something else instead. So much of my journey these past few years has been around becoming more present in each moment of life, within and without. I know that when I am in my mind thinking of some other (preferred) reality, I am not present in the moment. I accepted this belief and when I found myself hoping for something other than what was in front of me, I'd quickly reel myself in and back to the moment. When I did this, however, I somehow felt like the kid on Halloween who is asked to set aside that piece of candy they are just ready to take a bite of: deprived.

During the morning's walk, my mind had drifted to some idyllic vision of the future, and I was floating in that pleasant, future place. As I recognized this drift away from the moment, I started to set aside the vision, when a still small voice said "Dreams are good. Keep dreaming." It was like someone had let me out of jail! Without dream, we stagnate and do not create new futures. Without dream, we lose our inventiveness, our creativity, our artistry in the world. What I needed to do was NOT to stop dreaming, but to dream differently.

I still believe that hoping and dreaming and longing for something other than what is can be a dangerous place to linger. I hope I recognize it when I wander into that country and gently nudge myself home, into the present moment. I also believe that we can recognize those dreams, even in their wildest form, and honor them as part of our incredible humanity. Then, rather than following them into the poppy fields of "someday," we can let them nest, gestate and grow in our essence or soul-self rather than with our needy ego. Ego-self feeds need and discontent, and hopes and dreams held there string us along on a path where there is never enough. Essence-self nurtures seeds and brings them to fruit, in service to a higher good. It works with our dreams from a place of abundance, not scarcity, and ultimately evolves them into a higher form than we could have imagined.

I still don't know what lies around the bend, but my dreams are letting me fly above the clouds, and from there I can see that the fog bank really, truly ends and that there are sunny days ahead. I am giving my dreams back to essence-self, soul-self, and trusting.