Carrie Link

SOARING

I went to the Franciscan Spirituality Center today with Kathleen for a class on praying with our dreams. It was really great. A 78-year-old priest that gets it, was the leader. Paul. Just Paul. Don't you love him already? There in his olive colored sweatshirt and olive colored wide wale cords he sat, beaming, guiding and loving as we worked on adding "our holy one" to our dreams. He's big on Jesus. He doesn't care what you are or are not into - whomever/whatever you consider holy will do very nicely.

The idea is to record your dreams - waking yourself up in the middle of the night if need be - and then meditating on them in the light of day, "inserting your holy one" into the dream until you get the "click." Until you get what the dream is trying to tell you. Or until you get what it is not trying to tell you.

He did a lot of, "If it were my dream it might mean to me..." but emphasized the dream can only be properly interpreted by the one doing the dreaming.

I dream often of flying. I'm the only one and I am always really pleased with myself in these dreams. It was suggested I come back to earth, that I might think I'm above everyone else. Perhaps. But Paul shook his head no, said it was really neat and asked me if I wanted help in completing those flying dreams, bringing them to an ending.

He led me in a guided meditation in which I was somewhere before I took off flying, then had me feel what that felt like for as long as I could, then tell him where I ended up. A valley. I was flying from a place of elevation to a lower place, yet there was a sense of soaring, not plummeting. A sense of gliding, not falling. A sense of transcending, not devastation.

I can't tell you how helpful this 3 minute exercise was. I had tears in my eyes and was grateful he didn't ask me to share any more of it with the group. At the time it felt to personal, too intimate, too close to true.






* Photo from www.worldgolf.com