Choosing our Dreams...or Not

I've been considering dreams and particularly which ones that I will consciously keep and others that I will intentionally let die.  I've discovered that it isn't as easy as I expected.

First there are a host of dreams that I've actually achieved.  Consider joining three cousins in being the first generation in our family to graduate from college.  Actually, you could even say "go" to college, but we also graduated.  It was a very big deal for me, since it took me 22 years after I started college before I graduated.

Then, there was getting a graduate degree.  I think I was the first in my family to do that.  That allowed me to get the kind of professional work that I had dreamed about.  That was followed by the dream to work globally, which I did 25 years ago and to publish a book, then two, which I did almost 20 years ago.  What I discovered is that there were a lot of these dreams that once I achieved them, their completion left something of a vacuum that I never consciously either replaced or celebrated and really en-joyed.

Somewhat disturbing to me are some material dreams that were very important to me in my twenties and early thirties.  The big house with a pool. Lenox china and Waterford crystal.  Later the big house in the woods on a lake.  There was the Jaguar XKE.  It really was a lot of fun to drive and watch heads turn when I drove down the street.  Having grown up in a lower middle class neighborhood, maybe just having the heads turn was a dream.  As I reflect on these dreams, they hardly seem worthy of being a dream.  Yet, they occupied a lot of psychic space for a number of years.

I've also recalled the dreams that fall in the category of "be careful what you wish for."  Thank you, God, that many of those dreams didn't come true.  The relationships that I wished wholeheartedly would materialize, and in retrospect, I know they would have been horrible mistakes.  Even the relationship I was certain would resurrect itself after 20 years (its been 22) now seems like it would never have worked.

Similarly, there were jobs or even employers that I was certain would have been perfect.  Later I worked with people from those companies and discovered that the work those companies did wasn't a good fit for my skills or the culture wouldn't have been nurturing for me.

I've had purpose dreams: I dreamed that I could make the world a better place and even visualized what it would look like when we all loved each other. A ribbon of love that connects the whole world from heart to heart. In times when there is a mass shooting almost daily in the US and some really big ones, like Paris and San Bernardino, not that uncommon, and when ISIS electrifies the internet with beheadings, a world in which we are connected to every single person through love seems very 1990s.  That contradicts my dream of living beyond fear.

A friend helped me think through this, and I believe that some dreams "expire," sort of like milk or meat.  But when mine have expired, I have not been conscious about choosing to not have them as dreams any more.  I am not really sure how this happens in the Universe.  If I've prayed for a dream, especially some dreams for years, how do I say, "Uh, God, could we cancel that one?" but some clearly don't feel right any more.

I believe that we communicate with God in feelings.  Maybe I will just share with God what the feeling that I want will be and let God figure out how to get me to those feelings. Then, the picture of the dream can change without changing the feeling.  I think it is called "Letting God be God."  Novel concept, would you say? As I sit in my New Year's meditation, maybe that is the real dream, that I can surrender my dreams and allow myself to experience God's dreams for me...and for the world. Now that will be living my dreams.