Everything Is A Metaphor ...

••• EVERYTHING IS A METAPHOR •••

Have you ever noticed how when you clean out your closet, or straighten up your desk, or even wash your car, that you feel lighter, clearer, open to new ideas and ready to take action? Just like your desk is now occuring as an invitation to work on something new, and your car is a pleasurable invitation to drive, life experience occurs as freer and there is an invitation to become curious about what next inspires you. 

"If you want to know what you're thinking, look at your life."

I completed painting the interior of our home this past holiday season. It took months to decide on which colors to put on which walls. I am an artist, so I figured it would be easy and fun! What I realized shortly into the project was that this was a whole different world of expression than creating paintings, and there was an inventory of house paints and colors about which I was basically ignorant. This was work! About six months after starting, the last wall was complete, and our two floors of Navaho White are now transformed into a enveloping realm of warmth and beauty.

What I wasn't prepared for was the deep and satisfying experience of being home that this new many-hued house suddenly elicited. Having grown up in a family where abandonment was the culture, I had always felt that I didn't have a home, and over the decades have experienced myself as always looking for home, feeling like I never belonged. I came to realize that I didn't have to keep looking for a place, because I was a place, and I learned to "bring home" with me. But this new expression of warmth radiating out of the bold palette reminiscent of pumpkin and aubergine and green pear, is like stepping into one of my paintings, and suddenly the "inside bringing" of home is reflected in the outside structure of the house. Finally, the completion of a long search born of much self-reflection, emanating through this lovely house. Everyone who visits loves stepping into this environment and feels its enveloping cheer.

"If you want to know what you're thinking, look at your life."

I took a wonderful class last year through the University of Berkeley's "Ollie" curriculum. It was a course on dreams and consciousness. We shared dreams as part of the coursework, and as we all sat in a circle, we took one voluntary decribed dream and we all interpreted it. The caveat was, however, that we had to interpret the dream as if it was our own - we could not analyze the dream as if we had the answer for someone else. Well, of course, each of us saw so much value in our own interpretation of another's dream, because the symbolic nature of the other's dream got interpreted through our own filters, born of each of our own unique past experiences. It didn't matter which of us had actually dreamed the dream! Very powerful.

As I reflected on this classwork over the weeks, something occurred to me. What if I were to describe an event that happened during my waking hours, an event that caused me some kind of dilemma, concern, or perplexity, and reviewed it myself as if it were a dream I had had, or even a dream that another had had? And what if my interpretation of this waking event as if it were a dream, resulted in a fruitful illumination of the issue? 

Well, there followed many good harvests.

If you want to know the source of your life, consider what you are thinking!

Are we sure this life is the waking walk and the dream life is the sleeping walk? Is it worth considering that everything is a metaphor? With this perspective through which to peer, life experience takes on even richer hues, even clearer vision. The deeply wise essence of who I am is always trying to tell me something, but I have been limiting myself to listening only to the language my tongue can speak.

~•~•~ Ten Thousand Blessings to You  ~•~•~