Dreaming of Personal Fulfillment

I dreamt the other night of my family home and of my mother. The roof was leaking into my girlhood bedroom, the room Jim and I shared when visiting. I was very distraught. And then there she was. Not my 83 year old mother but my 60-70 something mother. Mom full of common sense and wisdom. She was as real in that dream as she is now dead.

In her uncanny and highly practical way she told me not to worry. My mother the worrier told me not to worry. "Ann, don't worry about it. No one lives there any more."

Last night I dreamt some scene out of "Raiders of the Last Ark" meets "Once Upon a Time". In it my husband Jim took on the role of the archetypical male hero but I was truly the character with the dilemma. It all involved the offer of a magic elixer (a fancy Champagne meets elderberry aperitif)  from a Rumpelstiltskin character. Looking much like the character in "Once Upon A Time" (click here to see actor Robert Carlyle as the evil trickster) his appealing offer was really about choosing desire over truth. Though hidden, both choices offered difficult consequences: loss of freedom versus the difficult road.

As the morning fog cleared my mind, I came to realize the power of both dreams. Messages from another reality, that of the eternal and the creative, intuitive mind. And that is where precisely all our archetypes tend to lie in wait.

Caught within our current logic prone, scientific society of economic growth and competition, we tend to dismiss this world of knowledge. However I believe we need more archetypes, heroes and heroines, myths - roadways to our inner mind. When I see the USA in context to other nations, when I visit rapidly developing China, when I see the balance of old and new in Germany, what I see is that we are dismissing our choices and not fully comprehending what we've traded away. Though I respect all of these countries - and am glad I am not the leadership making the difficult choices - what I observe is the following: in the US, an ideal of freedom becomes mired in pride and greed and divides us; in China lust and envy for growth is traded for a truly livable, sustainable environment; and in Germany pride in structure is traded for an inclusive society.

Taken in the personal context our glorification of wealth, of cheap material objects, of exotic foods and upscale drinks, of technology and compelling devices as the way, of social mobility and growth has led to individuals lost without true purpose, beholden to desire and advertising. Once known as the sins of wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony, we've lost sight that these were sins not because we couldn't get to heaven but because they rob us of heaven on earth. They hide the path to personal meaning and internal fulfillment.

So in lieu of our fairy tales and myths, perhaps listening to our dreams can show us the way.