John: In the imagery in my dream (see The Indulgence), there’s a shift, but what does that shift really reference or mean?
In my waking life, I’ve begun to notice that I’m spending the day doing things that had once seemed so important, but that now don’t have the same energy in them. I’m starting to sense that anything that isn’t connected to what’s important needs to be let go of, or stopped, as a part of my habitual goings on. If I do let them go, I will be able to make a shift in myself.
The images show me eating a snack after a meal, which is redundant. It implies that I’m locked into unnecessary ritual and need to open myself up to a whole new flow that I’ve been avoiding (perhaps not avoiding but keeping hidden below the surface [inner] until now).
In other words, the things I do without thinking prevent me from being fully involved in all that’s happening around me. It means I’m not open to what else is going on because my focus is so narrow.
Ultimately I’m being shown that I need to drop the old me, and the patterns I have acquired, and take on a new me with a whole new expression. In order for this to occur, I need to clear my schedule of many of the things that have been filling my time and drawing my attention. I need to set myself free to be able to channel this new flow.
As I take and I ponder what all of this could imply, I feel like it’s already happening in my waking life. Now when I go to the computer to check emails etc., it doesn’t hold my interest as it usually has. The question is, “Do I really need to do all these things anymore?”
The shift that I’m going through is making me better able to see what is important and keep things in perspective. When the proportion of effort is out of balance with the need, it becomes an indulgence.
Ultimately it’s not just about how we spend our time, but more a matter of whether we are narrowly focused to such a degree that everything else gets blocked out. Being open to our inner guidance connects us to an ancient inner depth that can then come through into our lives.
We need to have enough space, or vacancy, within us for that ancient quality to emerge. If I stop mindlessly repeating psychological patterns I will hear it and recognize it. What’s interesting here is that I’ve known this, on an intellectual level, for a long time. It’s just that I haven’t been able to do anything about it.
I’ve gone through life and considered myself to be in a state of controlled waiting. Filling my time with this, that, and the other has gotten me by, but now all of a sudden something has shifted.
I suppose what I’m looking at in terms of our move to Vegas is that I’m having a hard time understanding how I relate to my past – it doesn’t seem to fit here. Vegas seems to be a whole new energy that’s meant to be taken in and supported, almost as an observer.
This whole otherness that’s caught in the pattern of controlled waiting is part of me biding my time, not knowing what it’s all about. Yet now I really just don’t have the fervor for any of that anymore. What’s no longer okay for me is to go from isolated instance to isolated instance and that’s what I’m inclined to do. If I let go of that specificity and look at everything in terms of the greater whole, then I can let go of all these personal idiosyncrasies.
I don’t have time for them anymore – they are just drains on my energy. I have to take in the big picture. I would describe this as allowing for something new to see the freshness and importance of itself. In my dream I have a shift, which is “Out with the old and in with the new.” And the new has a quality to it that needs to make a fresh start. It can’t work very well if I’m bringing in the habits that have existed as a part of my old way of being.
