August 21, 2010

The Dream

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WRIT:

I had a rough night. I don't want to go into it, but I would like to thank Good To Be Free for being a saint and helping me land on my feet. After I finally went the way of sleep, I had a dream. 

I am a big believer that dreams unleash messages of what is going on in your life that you are not always able to see yourself. I apply this belief to dreams that are fluid (very visual) or that you just can't seem to shake from your memory after you wake. I had such a dream last night.

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I was in a town square. It had a good number of people walking around, in their own little worlds. I boarded a bus from the square. However, I got off because I was missing something that I needed before I could leave. This boarding and leaving repeated several times, because I had not finished all the tasks I needed before I was ready to leave. 

The final time I exited the bus, I met someone in the town square. This person was Sweetie (whose history can be read here). This was not a meeting to hang out, because someone was after us. Who ever was after us was trying to kill. Sweetie took off running, and I right behind him. We started running up a maze of stairs. We took different paths though. I could still see him, but we were not next to each other. 

The person chasing us, or as I began to realize more and more, chasing me, was catching up.  I could no longer out run the chaser on this maze of stairs and so I jump on the roof of the buildings. I began to jump from roof to roof.

That was when I woke up. 

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Instantly when I woke up, I noticed a parallel in my current situation in life. A realization of the problems that had kept me up last night freaking out, scaring myself, and panicing. The wise counsel of Good To Be Free rung true in this dream.

The current path I am taking in my life: Trying to pursue a relationship, while trying to remain in the church is not an easy path, and it involves a lot of guilt and hardship. I need to resolve that the path I am on is right for me, instead of trying to justify my actions to fit it. 

I see the bus in the dream as my life. I keep boarding this bus, to begin my life. However I keep exiting for a numerous host of reasons. 

I see Sweetie as my trying to find a relationship with a man. 

And being chased, with sweetie as my non-readiness to have a relationship. I see my splitting from Sweetie when being chased as the acknowledgment that I am not ready to be one with anyone. I am still a lone agent. I am still only ready to "run" alone and save myself.

I see the fear from being chased as the feeling of entering into any relationship when I am not ready. I have not resolved issues in my life that conflict with a relationship. I cannot successfully date a man, while I still have my testimony of the church. I cannot renounce the church that I know to be true to date a mn simply because I want someone to be with. The fear of being chased is simply my unread state for all of this. 

Good To Be Free taught me something that I now value dearly. Its called "borrowing from the future". In a basic understanding it goes like so: We all have issues that we are presented in life. Issues that challenge us, that strip us of energy, resources, and life. We are not able to deal with the issues at our current time. And so we need to borrow from the future. We put this issue on our future shelf. We put it up there until we are stronger, clearer, and ready to deal with it. When we put this issue on the shelf, we go on to the next thing. A hobby, a school project, etc. We borrow time from our future, in order to avoid dealing with something we are not ready to deal with. 

We don't put an issue on the shelf in order to forget about it, or delete it, because at some time in the future we will need to deal with it. But we borrow our time from the future to deal with it when we are stronger, and more prepared for its complex and difficult issues.

I have put relationships on my future shelf. I am not ready to deal with them right now. I am going to pursue a hobby of mine that I have ignored for over a year now. Photography. I am going to borrow time from my future to help myself grow, gain more experience, more knowledge. Then, when I am ready, I will take relationships off of my shelf, and deal with it.

3 comments:

  1. Great post. What a great way to explain setting things aside. The phrase "putting it on the shelf" is thrown around a lot on the internet, but I had never heard it explained so well. This kind of helped me reframe some things tonight.

    Thank you for the post.

    I am sorry you had a rough night though. ((hugs))

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  2. Well, agree and yet have a word of caution - a person can live their whole life never making critical and most important decisions, especially those involving sexual identity. It is a scary world and playing it safe is always more comfortable. Sometimes our religious values provide security but do not equip us for swimming in the deeper parts of life's ocean.

    Sexuality is a scary world too. And the gay community can be a wild and crazy place. However, if one is gay and that is how one can fully and most genuinely love another, then the world will only be joyous and empowering if that love is actualized.

    Follow your love. Time is not a renewal resource and time does run out when it comes to finding and expressing romantic love.

    Take care but ride the bus and take your spiritual/religious values with you to help shape and redeem the journey as opposed to denying the journey.

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  3. Trevor,
    I am a believer in 'putting things on the shelf' when necessary. The past few years, I've had to put many of my doubts about the church on the shelf while trying to rebuild my belief in God, a Savior, and the basic principles of the gospel. Trying to deal with it all at once was very overwhelming and caused way too much anxiety, stress, and confusion.

    Taking things one step at a time was the only way I could deal with things without losing my sanity. I realized that it was okay to not understand everything or have all the answers. I became much more relaxed and able to make clear, rational decisions by taking things off the shelf only when my foundation was solid enough to tackle the next issue.

    All my best,
    Steve

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