There came a point in my searching for answers to my Big Questions of Life that I started having these little subtle feelings that dreams were important, so I’d been writing them down for a while. Didn’t know specifically what to do with them, but I honored them enough to go out and buy blank books to write them down. Drilling down, I started reading other books on how to record and explore my dreams.
And I had this dream…
In this dream, “I” had just joined “the circus” and was just about to meet some of the other people. It seemed like it was dark, which I came to find out means “in the dark” or “not known to us at this time” so that seemed apropos. Some of the circus people asked me, “What is your name?” (This is how dreams are funny) I realized I did not know what my name was, and I needed to listen to see what name I spoke. I heard myself say, “My name is Mesmarriah Miracle, M-e-s-m-a-r-r-i-a-h.”(It seemed very important they understand it was Mesmarriah with two “r’s.”) “You can call me Marriah.” There’s not much more from the dream except they seemed likeable people to be around.
Even in the dream, I knew what a very special name I had been given. I mean, first of all, I’ve always loved alliteration, MM, mmmmmmmm—what did it mean? Where did it come from? Who was the “I” who had to listen to see what her name was? What was I to do with it? Why would I be given such a beautiful and special name in a dream? Was I to do something special with it? Surely there had to be a purpose for my being given a name I could not possibly have heard or read about.
I didn’t know. I felt all I could do was wait and see what presented itself. That’s what I’d been learning how to do—be patient, wait, Just. Let. Life. ‘Flow.’ Mesmarriah Miracle did seem like a Dot dropped for sure. Would there be a Dot to connect it to? Would I recognize it? How long would it take?
Waiting. Patience. Not my strong suits. But how was I to do otherwise? Who can you scream at to get an answer, “why the heck was I given such a special name and not know what to do with it, for criminy’s sake!”
Nobody.
Nothing to do but just wait. And wait. And wonder. And revisit. And wait. Yeaaarrs.
While we’re waiting, I’m going to back up for just a moment. Now, this ‘feeling” that dreams were important? Where did that come from?
Close your eyes. Super tight. You’re in pitch black darkness. Not a dust mote of light seeping through your eyelids. But in life, you’re moving, always moving so you must keep walking. Move slowly. Feel your way. Feeling is the only thing that will guide you, will save you, and enable you to go forward. Slow, cautious progress perhaps, but movement forward nonetheless. When you first wake up to Life with a Capital L that is what you do. Feel your way. Feeling that dreams were important was reason enough for me to step forward.
I’d been traversing that pitch black darkness aka unknown territory for almost five years before I’d felt my way to the feeling that “I think dreams might be important.” Feeling my way day by day, emotion by emotion, one feeling to the next. What had started the journey into the Unknown?
A feeling that I’d just ‘woken up.’
When you feel “I just woke up,’ the natural question you ask is, “When did I fall asleep?”
A Dot. ‘Waking Up”
I woke up at the age of 35. “Waking up” requires a catalyst. A very strong one. A strong emotional, many times heartbreaking, devastating, crippling catalyst to jolt you awake. That’s Part A. Part B is you must heed the challenge you have now been given to investigate “why,” look inside, dig deep, face feelings, conquer uncertainty, and not succumb to the fear or pain it might threaten. It’s what the mythologist Joseph Campbell calls, “The Hero’s Journey,” and heroes face and conquer awesome challenges, don’t they?
From a book called, “Passages,” by Gail Sheehy, I retained the breakdown of our life’s passages. Roughly (and I’m paraphrasing my own concise view): our 20’s, 30’s we’re acquiring—family, careers, all those plans we have, we’re working hard to bring them into fruition. Late 30’s, early 40’s we start some assessing: is this where I wanted to be, is it what I thought it would be, is this what I want? Then comes some time of possible re-assessing. Late 40’s and 50’s are when people make major changes in careers, lifestyles, life goals, life ambitions if their reassessment comes up short for feeling a purpose in life. (Believe it or not, we all crave a purpose in life.)
Many times the reassessment of original goals and aims uncovers a feeling of malaise, discontent, melancholy that has seeped through all the striving and doing. By the time we’re in our 60’s, we’re probably on the way to beginning what I call concretizing. Wild changes in thought, attitude, actions are null; the ones we have at that time are beginning to harden, perhaps stultify.
Basically, I was right on target, 35.
My catalyst was an encounter with another human being, a person I’d never met before and yet I knew immediately.
“Breaking the heart opens it. “
(Retained as pertinent to my survival from one of Alice Walker’s books.)
The inward journey is portrayed in the Myth of King Arthur which stories man’s (woman’s, human’s) psyche—the part where ‘each knight of the round table must go into the forest on his own path searching for the Holy Grail.’ That is the metaphor for an inward, dark foresty search for our ‘holy grail,” our true Selves. Every hero enters on his or her own path. “Seek and ye shall find,” sayeth the Bible.
The impact was a bomb crater in my life as I knew it. Hurt and heartbreak for me and those I loved most of all. A tearing apart of the life I was living. Yet I knew with some unknown knowledge that all of it was for a purpose that had deeper meaning than what the surface attraction, turmoil and anguish showed. It required that I not fall into the trap of thinking the surface circumstances were the reason or the end-all-be-all. I had to navigate my way through it only with what I felt was the leading of something bigger than mere logic or feelings or desire, something inside rather than outside. Following that leading, I started a search to understand why I now felt I had just woken up. That search would take me inward, now outward.
When I ‘woke up,’ the feeling was more a puzzlement than an amazement. I was more curious about, “when did I fall asleep?” I searched back over my life to see if I’d ever felt a feeling like this before. Was I ever awake that I could recall? Fell asleep somehow…was it from boredom, monotony, the mundane?…and then all of a sudden kissed awake? (Sound familiar?) I had to conclude that I somehow must have been asleep all my life and was just now awakening to it.
What did that mean, ‘to wake up?’ Honestly, I didn’t even equate this ‘waking up’ feeling to ‘Wow! All of a sudden I know what my purpose in life is. I know what Life is all about!” Nope. Feeling that I was waking up from a sleep was all I could explain. Was I living a real life version of Sleeping Beauty? Why not? Myths are the contents of (hu)man’s psyche! The story had to have some spark of origination in reality.
Feeling my way in this new state—what it meant, where I needed to go/learn/do next—was like stepping into that blind darkness of the unknown. Who knows what lurks in the scary darkness of the unknown? Who is hero(ine) enough to step into the darkness and look?
Well, that’s where my quirky (and sometimes irritating) trait of forever asking, “Why” would pay off! I was (and have always been) curious as to “Why.” It’s just a question that rolls naturally off my tongue, no matter the situation—much to the chagrin of family, friends, bosses, especially. And for every answer to the question ‘Why?” you can continue to ask “Why?” yet again ad infinitum. Even though I felt hesitant and tentative, I also felt compelled to go forward, lay trepidation aside and follow through as many “why’s” as I could find the bravery to do so. The Mesmarriah Miracle dream came a few years after The Catalyst. Was she the new life I had just awoken to, symbolic for my true Self? In that case, I had just joined the Circus. I could then only assume it was The Circus known as Life.
I decided I must stop clinging to being asleep and let the river take me where it knew I should go.
Clinging I Shall Die of Boredom