Last night it rained, with thunder and a pounding force.
As I walked with our rescue puppy Lucy through our local conservation area this morning, it was as if the universe sprinkled us with magic, treating us to a gentle shower of steady and beautiful fall leaves releasing from the trees in a delicate, flowy dance of exhaling ecstasy.
Exhaling. Leaving. Letting go.
For many years, I’ve struggled to grasp exactly what it is that my time here on earth was for. Whatever I did, mostly professionally but personally too, I mostly felt wanting, and wondering, was that enough? Is THIS enough?
I release that now. I release all of those expectations I put onto myself. I release the old stories, the old identities, the old excuses.
Since I was a child, I would often have vivid dreams that don’t make sense to me at the time but I figure out their meaning later. (Because they are coming more often now, I’ve taken to writing them in the notes on my iPhone).
One of those dreams happened the night of February 10, 2024.
In the morning of February 11, 2024, this is what I wrote:
I am in a boat in the dark holding a lantern looking for lost souls in the water, pulling them onto a boat
No need to be afraid
Not mortal
Clang of bell ringing
Writing things down, observing
Vocation
Full moon shining on the water but pitch dark
Peace and love
Pain in upper stomach from food last night
Cramps, pain
Springtime new, fresh smell
Renewal resolved grief, sadness
I believe this is happening now. I believe the morning journaling sessions I’ve been facilitating on the meditation app Insight Timer, three times a week for almost a year, has been helping to pull folks out of the water.
More on that later.
And I have been steadily journaling, sometimes sharing publicly, but mostly scribbling in a number of notebooks.
Yesterday, I saw a clip from a podcast I used to listen to religiously during the pandemic, called We Can Do Hard Things (newly on YouTube).
Here’s the clip:
(Here’s a link to the NYT essay by Michelle Alexander that Glennon references. We are Not the Resistance.)
Glennon explains that in her essay for the NYT, Michelle Alexander wrote about The River, the ‘order’, the flow that we are to surrender to, what someone might call Source, Spirit, the Universe, etc. It’s the pursuit of love, equality, freedom.
And that there is always a resistance to that flow.
We are not the resistance, Glennon explained, we are the river.
Folks wanting to stop the natural energetic flow of the river, they are the resistance.
Glennon goes on to say, those working towards unity, love, freedom, we are in a fleet of ships, the Freedom Fleet she called it. People built boats to harness the power of the river and move humanity forward. Many ships, one fleet, all working together.
There are shore standers, freedom fleeters and dam builders.
Our job is to get as many people as possible from the shore, into the fleet. And we can organize, protest, boycott, etc. But it’s also our job to make life in the fleet, in the river, so irresistible that people on the shore can’t help but to want to jump on board. That means everyone in the fleet works together. And that when the shore standers finally come aboard a boat, we don’t yell at them for something we just learned not too long ago. We don’t prioritize our egos above the mission of the fleet.
Ouch. That hit home and hard. I have let that happen, many times. I’ve been judgy in some of the worst ways.
I have been the person, in my dream, in the rowboat, with a lantern, in the dark of night, pulling the cold and wet folks onto the boat, to row them to a bigger boat in the fleet and to get them warm again.
After I had a big cry and a big think on this, it brought to mind another dream I had, before my mom passed away (in 2015). I dreamt that I got brain cancer and that my mom would have to choose between my aunt (who was aging and my mom was gently tending to, hundreds of miles away from me) or me. And in the dream, she chose my aunt.
And then it hit me, that my mom was the one who got cancer (previously, I thought my dream wires just got crossed) and although it would be my mom who decided to stay with her sister and take care of her, instead of coming to live with me sooner when her cancer advanced, she actually did CHOOSE ME.
She chose to share her final weeks and days with me, as we healed our relationship together. She transitioned and that started a whole whack more healing, growth and transformation that needed to happen, in order for the patterns of our family to stop with me.
My mom was the first one in the rowboat, pulling ME out of the darkness and the cold, terrified and shivering. It was through her passing that I stopped being a shore stander and got onto one of the Freedom Fleet boats.
I need to remember that I was also a dam builder, many of us have been, perhaps unconsciously because the conditioning is so hard-wired.
I think we all are the ones in the water sometimes, and also become the ones with the lantern, pulling others out of the water. There are many rowboats in the water. And remaining warm and close with the Freedom Fleet is imperative.
But one thing is clear, we need to always believe in the flow of the river. That kindness, justice, equality, love and joy buoy us and that the opposite only contributes to the dam.
Wouldn’t it be fabulous if there was one day, no dam, no resistance?
I have to believe it’s possible.