A Dream of Everything

I had a dream. I’d been called in at the last minute to facilitate a personal growth seminar that I hadn’t done in many years. I arrived at the seminar with no outline or notes to refresh my memory; only to discover that the assisting team also had no notes or instructions, no preparation, no supplies, nothing.  The participants were waiting at the doors, and it was time to begin the seminar.

Now this dream threatened to turn into one of those “ohmygosh I forgot to study for my exam” kind of nightmares, but I was able to say NO to that. Instead, I chose to stay in the dream and respond to the challenge. In the dream, I decided to start the seminar with an in-depth exploration of one particular ground rule, and see where it would take us: “Use everything for your upliftment, growth, and learning.”

[In waking life, this ground rule is a key teaching from my primary spiritual coach, John-Roger, and an actual groundrule in many seminars I facilitated for organizations he founded. Over the years it has become a primary source of guidance for me, one that I am challenged to work with every day.  It’s ancient wisdom, and is said these days by many sages in many different ways.]

So the seminar began, none of us knowing exactly where it was going. I gathered the group around an easel and wrote out the words, “Use everything for your upliftment, growth, and learning," reading aloud as I wrote. I said “You’ll notice there are no exceptions.  'Everything’ means Every Thing - whether you perceive it as good, bad, indifferent, should be or shouldn’t be - Every Thing.  Every One.  Every Time. Every situation, circumstance, environment, relationship, conversation, event, act, or omission …  everything.”

I paused, looked around the group, and added “If you get nothing else from this seminar, I hope you get this. I hope you’ll really lean into the possibility that everything that happens in your life is there to teach you, to help you grow and expand into the fullness that you are. But consider also that it only works that way when you choose to use it that way. If you want to be free of the prison of ‘life happens to me,’ you are the one who holds the key. Right now in this moment, in this seminar. In your next breath. In tomorrow and next week and next year. Use EVERYTHING for you.”

After a bit of silence, a young man stepped close to me, his eyes soft and open, and he beamed as he quietly said “I get it.”  And it was clear he did.  He was a beautiful manifestation of the peace and confidence that comes with that level of acceptance and self-empowerment.  The room went quiet again.  Another young man was nearby, and I saw his eyes begin to soften and his demeanor relax, the beginning of a smile at the corners of his lips. I said “looks like you’re getting it too.”  He almost whispered “Yeah, I am. I really do get it.” And then he grinned.

As often happens in groups, the energy of possibility began to spread throughout the room, as together we began exploring what it would be like to live that way. I invited the participants to imagine what it would be like to go through life experiencing everything as for them, not against them; with the knowing that everything can be used as a tool for their upliftment, for their learning, for their growth.  How would that feel in their bodies, their breathing, their posture? What kinds of emotional states would go with that? What would be the quality of their thoughts, their words, their actions?

[I invite you to pause here and take a moment to do that for yourself. If you experience "yeah but’s” while you’re doing it, you can just acknowledge them and keep going anyway. It’ll be a lot more fun that way!]

In my dream, the participants described that imagined way of living with words like peace, bliss, confidence, joy, courage, trust, ease, strength, openness, loving, acceptance, flexibility, laughter, and surprise.

We talked about acceptance as the first step:  just simply accepting that what is, is … because if we’re busy arguing against reality, it’s going to be pretty hard to use it productively. Acceptance doesn’t mean liking what is, condoning it, approving of it. It simply means not arguing with the existence of what is. It transcends should and shouldn’t, right and wrong. When I am willing to accept that what is, is, only then I can start to see how it might be for me rather than against me. Only then can I find a way to use it.

“What if I can’t see how it could be FOR me?” asked someone. I replied, “Perhaps you don’t need to know how right now. Perhaps it’s enough to just lean into the possibility that it IS for you, and that you will know how that’s so at some point. Perhaps you ask yourself ‘Well if I did know, what might I be doing or experiencing differently?’ As you open more and more to the WHAT (‘this is for me’), the HOW will likely show up. It’s an attitude you choose, and you may need to choose it again and again and again. The choosing of the attitude is itself empowering.  In fact, sometimes choosing the attitude may be the whole lesson.”

I invited the participants to try it out: to call up some challenging scenario: a time of loss, failure, confusion, hurt, rejection, fear, unfairness, misunderstanding, attack, mistakes, you name it. I invited them to bring it very present, with all the yuk that goes with it, and then just say to themselves: “What if this is FOR me? What might be the lesson, the gift, the invitation, the protection?” And then to use their imaginations to live into that version of reality: to not only think it, but to feel it, sense it, embody it. I said “if you can’t yet imagine how it is FOR you, then just imagine acting as if it is for you, imagining your thoughts, words, actions, feelings if that were so.  And let yourself live into that.”

[I invite you to pause and try that out now.]

Naturally, some folks were more hesitant than others; but as we continued, it seemed everyone was getting a least a taste of that blissful peace and courageous self-empowerment that comes with taking charge of the challenges through acceptance and commitment to one’s own growth, learning, upliftment.

And then I woke up!

I didn’t dream the remainder of the seminar. Or maybe I did, maybe that one ground rule for life was the entire seminar. I awoke happy and peaceful and open. I awoke grateful that in my dream I myself had used the challenge to facilitate something beautiful and fulfilling. I awoke so very grateful that the dream was not just a dream.