Wednesday, January 11, 2012

The mountain and the valley (A dream with a message)


I had a dream the other night. That in itself is not unusual; I have very vivid dreams almost every night. Most aren’t worth sharing; most in fact I don’t even bother to remember past the morning shower.  This one seemed different right from the start and the more I thought about it the more I realized that my subconscious was trying to tell me something important. It had been nudging me for weeks but my stubborn nature doesn’t always take nudges, sometimes I just need to be kicked in the tushy to get the point.

In my dream I was standing on a mountaintop. It looked as if a forest fire had  recently swept through. The few remaining trees around me were little more than blackened spikes rising up from the scorched rocks. There was nothing green or alive, just the wind blowing dust and ashes. There were no animals or birdsong, just silence and a view of a beautiful valley below. I should have felt proud for making it to the top of the mountain. Isn’t that what we are always taught? We struggle all of our lives to make it to the top, we should feel pride and accomplishment when we get there. But I remember in the dream wondering why I fought so hard to get to this desolate and barren place when what was below was much more scenic.

Then I heard a small voice crying out from the cliffs below. Looking over the edge I saw a young girl clinging to a small shelf of rock, crying out for help. She was about 12 and her long blond hair was pulled back in two pig tails that hung down over her shoulders. She was dressed in an orange soccer shirt with black shorts and cleats. It seemed like a strange outfit for a young girl to be rock climbing in, until she looked up at me and I realized I was looking down at myself.

The girl saw me and called out for help, the shelf she was on was crumbling beneath her feet. If I didn’t help she would surely fall. I reached down to pull her up, but I couldn’t reach her from where I stood. I saw toe holds and handholds that would allow me to climb down to help her, but that would mean leaving the safety and security of the mountain top that I had worked so hard to attain. Eventually her calls for help encouraged me to climb down to where she stood. As the ledge we were on cracked and crumbled beneath our feet I realized that we would never be able to climb back up the same way I came down, the holds I had used had disappeared.

I kept one arm around the girl, feeling her terror and fear and trying to keep it from infecting me. I looked up, searching for a new way to climb back up with the girl, but there was nothing. I finally looked down and saw the beautiful valley far below with a deep lake directly beneath where the girl and I stood. Our way off of the cliff was clear, but the way was not what I had been expecting. The only way for the girl and I to get off the cliff and be able to move ahead would be to let go and leap off the mountain to the lake below. There was no way to climb up and staying still would mean giving up control of our fate to cliff.

After I woke and thought about this dream for a few days I realized what my subconscious has been trying to tell me. Sometimes the top is not worth reaching. Sometimes the best way, the only way, to move forward in life is to let go of the security you thought you had at the top. Sometimes you just have to take that leap of faith into the lake below.

What my mind was trying to tell me was that sometimes it is not only okay to let go, sometimes it is the only way to save yourself and find what you are really looking for rather than what you have been told you should be aiming for.

Letting go is not always easy, in fact it can be terrifying. But sometimes letting go is the only choice you have.