Have you ever had a dream in which you felt something really important was being shown to you? You lie there for a moment in that interspace between being really asleep and being really awake. You understand what you’ve been shown, and it feels joyful, consoling, exciting or in some other way helpful. 

I had one of those dreams recently. The dream was largely a traveling sort of dream with a gathering of friends from across my life including a dear friend who died almost two years ago. She was by no exaggeration a burst of joy and delight always waiting to happen when she was with other human beings. In that dream, she was the topic of our conversation, and every time we talked about her, she would show up.  I knew that she was no longer in this world, and I felt like she was visiting through our memories of her. And then, just before I started waking up, she told me something that was so clearly a word of wisdom for me to work with. I laid there in the bed in that in between state feeling so good about what she had told me. And then, I woke up.  I began moving about my day, and while I was brushing my teeth, I remembered that I had been given something. A message. A piece of wisdom.  It was only a few words. And, it was gone! I couldn’t remember it.  The harder I tried to remember, the further it seemed to slip away. It felt like I had been given gold and that it was all slipping through my fingers.

I paused right there at the bathroom sink, and I spoke to the Dreamer within me, to Spirit, the Inner Shaman inside of me, and I humbly asked that, if it were possible, I might be shown again what that message was. 

I made coffee. Unloaded the dishwasher, and went to my meditation place for my morning prayer and time of meditation. During a quiet pause in the midst of that, without any trying or even thinking, the phrase I had been given in my dream returned to me. 

When we go inside ourselves in search of meaning, connecting points begin to emerge. Maybe I’ll write another blog about the phrase that was given to me, but that’s not for today. Today, I want to affirm again the universe of wisdom that we have access to within ourselves. When we go inside our hearts and knock on the door for the thing we seek, it will come to us. We will connect. We will find what we need in our search for meaning. 

~Robert Patrick