One of the most valuable processes in personal development is to update our views or feelings about things. Many of our strongly held ideas or beliefs come from an earlier time in our lives, established when our situation may have been very different. So it is useful, when we gain an awareness of something that nags at our attention, to revisit what it is and the reasons why we feel it is important to our life. Are those reasons still valid? Sometimes they may be, but other times we will realize that we no longer need to hold onto them and can let them go. (At the end of this post there are instructions and a link to download this recording to your computer.)
John: In this dream I have a vague memory that today is a test day, perhaps for a number of classes, I just don’t remember anymore, that I may be taking at this local university campus. I should be remembering that, however I’m not quite remembering it because there’s this bicycle that I have, that I’ve been holding on to, which I keep because it has a value that’s associated with something in terms of the past, with something that involves something in my past.
It was something that I feel that I have a responsibility over and haven’t really looked at it that closely. In other words, this bicycle is associated with my brother. So today is a day in which that is commanding my attention, and so everything else kind of fades away. I have a value. This bicycle that I hadn’t been really looking at or paying attention to until today, I’d been carrying it inside of me as having a value, a particular value, that I have to maintain and support. It’s a conceptual value.
Today I decide to ride it for the first time in a long time. In other words, in making this decision it shifts into any idea of a test I might be needing to take because I forget all about that. And because it’s like that, it’s as if the bike is the test.
So I ride it to begin with in a direction away from the campus, take a left turn kind of in town where there’s a lot of traffic, and then come back towards the campus along the scenic route instead of the usual route to and fro the campus.
When I come back the scenic route it takes me to the back of the campus is what it does but in doing this whole riding with this bike and going about with this bike, I have to contend with it more directly. In other words, it’s like it’s waking me up from a trance. And it’s not what I had imagined, or seen, or been maintaining for all these years. For example, the key breaks. I’m not sure quite how I needed the key, but I have to keep the key for this bike. The key breaks and I’m having a hard time holding onto it as a result because it’s not in its usual way. It’s sitting separate and I have to hold onto it carefully. And something else even pops loose from the bike and I kind of flinch over that not knowing, okay, what’s that all about?
I slowly realize this bike is not what I have been imagining all these years so, like I say, I arrive at the back campus. I go through the back doors which I close carefully because I don’t want to disturb others who are in the main campus. These are double doors that I’m closing and they just have a little thing that clicks or hits, but if the wind’s blowing it won’t hold them. So there’s a woman that’s standing there holding them shut so that this back area doesn’t disturb the front area, and in the back area is where the testing is going on.
But before I can get my bearings again in this back area, in other words, where the testing’s going on, I need to do something about the bike. And so I need to take the bike that I’ve now crumpled up as if it’s junk, and throw it away in a corridor bathroom. It sounds bizarre doesn’t it?
The meaning is, holding on to that which does nothing for me is fraught with misconceptions in terms of myself and others. This causes me to be blind to what is unfolding in life. Placing value where it is inappropriate causes confusion to predominate. To do this is to lose one’s way in life and the thread I am meant to follow to arrive in an intended realization.
I have spent so much time tangentially reflecting upon the outer that when I look at what is going on more closely those images crumple up. The access key is broken. This means I am not confronting that which is meaningful or real, or maybe I am because they crumple up and I throw them away and I go, which means that something more real is coming into an awareness.
What is happening is that, like it or not, things are falling away. They’re being replaced by something else that’s a center of awareness, that is real and touches the heart. The other affects the heart, leaves one kind of twisted and misaligned.
So as I look around, I notice that I am having more and more trouble holding the outer orientation, that had been important for me, together. My attention is being drawn to inner dynamics that affect the outer. I am not able to dependently dwell upon the outer reflections like I used to. It is like losing one’s mind and memory when the attachments and the mental gymnastics that hold onto the attachments fall away.
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