LIVING THE DREAM....
i can't even begin to tell you how many times i have heard this statement in my life... most notably in the last year.
"wow zani... you're living the dream!"
every-time i hear that i think to myself...
what dream?
who's dream?
what does that even mean?
I've started this piece 10 times over the last few weeks.
I keep coming up against a lack of words... contrasting, conflicting ideas... and i throw my hands in the air and leave it.
Today I took a train down from LA to San Diego and walked on Encinitas beach with my mom and her dog Ramblin Rose.
Our shadows were long across the black and silver streaked sand as the sun descended towards a cold ocean pumping with big surf that crashed beside us.
With each step i saw these imprints of rocks that the water had pressed into the sand as it drew back into the body of the sea. The design left in the sand looked like Virgin Mary effigies somehow. I observed these as my mom and I talked about marriage and my cousin's upcoming wedding.
Just then i looked up at the big waxing moon, seemingly transparent, hanging in the bright blue sky. All around the moon were colorful hot air balloons gracefully drifting along the cloud-free late afternoon.
The first thought in my head is how I'd like my next wedding to be in a hot air balloon right there on the california coast line.
I must have sighed outloud in the dreamy way my mother has been hearing me sigh my whole life.
'Desirous of everything' is how Jack Kerouac would describe people like me.
"you really want to go up in one of those?" she asked as a reply to my look of longing.
"ya! Its totally always been a dream of mine." i said.
I immediately remembered this piece that i had started again last night before seeing something shiny and ditching it.
"Why? Because you like the idea of being up high floating?" My mother said, insinuating way more then she intended to.
We both just nodded and stared up at my dreams... floating high next to the luminous vellum looking moon... We felt the sun pour across our backs and let the echo of crashing waves be the soundtrack to the quiet moment of understanding.
I have now been back "home" in America for one month.
I've been high, low, happy, sad, and nostalgic... I've felt completely grounded and completely lost.
"where do I belong?" I found myself asking anyone that would listen the other day.
I reached out to Baba Aaron Glass, my travel companion, spirit brother and best friend right now.
He replied to me
"you left India before we met Prem Baba. But he said that exactly what you're feeling is part of spiritual evolution. It's part of the next step. And it's a hard step because of these feelings... Feelings like you are a stranger in your own skin."
Somehow this gave me hope and also made me feel even more lost.
If I am living "the dream".. ANY dream... I can tell you right now it's not one of those lucid dreams I can control and influence and decide what will happen next.
I feel like I'm reading a novel that has completely confused and lost me- so I couldn't really tell you what is happening let alone predict what will happen next.
That morning I was telling my friends about my dream where I was in South America.
"I always dream that I'm somewhere other then where I am."
I meant, of course, that literally the stories in my dreams were set in other countries then the one my body was asleep in... But again I heard the double entrances... The symbolism inadvertently hidden in my words.
My dream is somewhere else.
I went for a run.(which by the way... HOW do I consistently forget time after time... Year after year... That running makes me feel incredible, clear and focused as though someone has screwed my head on.)
After my run I sat in mediation, totally wiped out, exhausted and open.
And that was the message that came through to me.
Be here. Be open.
I chanted this in my head as I was falling asleep... Willing all the clogging thoughts and fears currently blocking and occupying my dreams to vanish and dissolve.
I dared myself to dream without expectation.
I dared myself to dream new, fresh ideas and create new colors.
I opened myself up and asked what the universe wanted of me.
Again I received a message that told me to stop searching. It was time for me to stand and see... Recognize what I already AM.
I guess in my mind I thought that living the dream meant living as an eternal hot air balloon... Forever floating high up by the moon.
I still don't know what "living the dream means" but I have some new intentions in 2012.
I am going to teach yoga internationally as I have done for the last 5 years.
I made a video to remind myself of what I've always done.
I'm already here.
Maybe that's what people mean when they tell me I'm "living the dream"... Maybe they are telling me to stop searching and digging my way through and out of everything, but just to be here...
Open...
In this dream I'm drawing.
No comments:
Post a Comment