Throughout my life I’ve had a recurring dream of driving a car downhill with brakes that barely work. I mean I have to press really hard on the foot petal and use all my physical strength, focus and will power to keep from losing control. Somehow I always manage to avert the unknown terrifying event that would surely take place if I didn’t do all this efforting. I am always alone in this dream. After waking up I would feel drained and uncomfortable the next day.
Less frequent, but also recurring, is a dream of floating down a peaceful river. Here, I am quite blissful, enjoying the scenery and the bodily sensations of the moving water. I let the water carry me, doing nothing, trusting the water completely. I liked this dream and felt good the next day, wishing life could always be like that. I tended to dismiss that occasional vague anxiousness in the dream that crept in when I sensed the ocean downstream, and wondered what might happen when the river eventually opened into the ocean and the water became deep and powerful, without shores. These two dreams alternated in my psyche throughout the first 50 years of my life.
Dreamtime was a lot more out of control and less frequently blissful about the time I met Saniel (Bonder) and Linda (Groves-Bonder) and was introduced to the Waking Down in Mutuality work. Two and a half years later, I awoke to myself as the unbounded spaciousness that penetrates and interconnects All That Is. I also knew ever so subtly that this penetration included this human life I was living. I wasn’t sure what that meant completely at the time, but knew my deeper psyche had resisted it as long as it possibly could.
Another dream merging the two previous ones tells about this resistance. I am driving my car to a very important event, but I get lost. I don’t know which road to take so I pick up a passenger that is going to the same event and who says he knows the way. As you may have imagined, soon we are going down a hill and the brakes start to go out. This is an old theme, but for the first time I can actually see what awaits me at the bottom of the hill. It is a river that has flooded up over the road and has become a raging swift current. This feels like certain death and I try with all my humanly power to make those brakes work and turn that car around. The passenger in the backseat, however, is unconcerned and encourages me to keep going, letting me know this is the way to get to where I want to go and that we will be fine. He also calls me by a new name, which I recognize as the name of my deep Soul essence. This is startling and distracts me for a moment, but I return to the struggle of avoiding the river and soon wake up.
My life was just like this dream right before my awakening. I was presented with many out-of-my-control circumstances. I started getting the intuition that I didn’t have enough attention and energy to power the brakes enough to stay in control. In fact, it was even hopeless to try anymore. There was no way to fix this situation. And, as in the dream, others were with me assuring my more wounded vulnerable parts that I would be safe and find the risk well worth the ride. These same others were calling me forth and reflecting divine aspects of myself back to me. Much of my attention went to exploring these new parts of myself, and less effort went into fearing and avoiding the river of the awakened embodying life. Pretty soon, unlike in the dream, I slipped into the river, realizing it after the fact.
By awakening in the river of embodied life, any resistance to the penetration of All That Is into my life is futile. I have given up the primary struggle to stay in control. I have now been in the sometimes raging/sometimes blissful river for almost three years and wouldn’t want it any other way. To maneuver here I absolutely need several things. I need the deep knowingness of who I am as an unbounded spacious awareness. This awareness surrounds me and catches me like a net when I go deep under the water too long.
I need my unique humanly form, power and will, accepted by me and grounded in the stillness of its own Being. My imperfect human form is the one that makes this journey down the river and into the arms of the great unknown ocean of the Beloved. It is precious. Without it there is no journey.
I need the holding, encouragement, and skills of others who are traversing these same waters. They help me when I feel the trip is too turbulent, or I don’t see a boulder in myself that I’m about to crash against.
I need my divine Soul, which I intuit through my heart. It keeps calling me home to the Beloved Ocean, while simultaneously showing me what currents of activity are mine to express along the way. Without my expressions and activities, how else can I become all that I am before the arrival home? My unique self is unfolding as I travel down the river. This particular union has never happened before, and somehow it’s important to be all that I am meant to be by the time it completes!
I see a few people on the shore. If you are there, I hope to enjoy your company soon on this sacred trip.
~ June Konopka (excepted from the book, Dancing in the Fire: Stories of Awakening within the Heart of Community by Bob Valine)
