 DREAMS are Life Lessons
Waiting to be Heard ============== This is the DreamingOutLoud Technique I talk about in my Ted Talk: RewriteYourHistory ---------- This morning I woke up with tears on my pillow, cheeks swollen & stained. and swollen cheeks stained with an ocean of tears. my cheeks were swollen and stained. I sat down immediately to write my morning pages because DREAMS hold the ANSWERS to all the stuff your HEAD & your HEART are STRUGGLING with I was in this moment in The Color Purple where Shug confronts her Daddy in church Shug has been holding onto the pain of her father's rejection of because she left the church to sing her LifeOutLoud Shug realizes that what she NEEDS is more important than what he BELIEVES She has an aha moment: the very thing her father disapproves of, her singing secular music w/the rhythms of the church in the groove line, is the very thing that has kept her connected to the church She loves the music that brought her close to God to her community to her peoples’ epic struggle She’s found a way for that LOVE to help her make a living DOING what she LOVES A rare FEAR for anybody, but certainly for a black woman in 1930's #JimCrowAmerica And for this LOVE, her father sets her aside. Her journey into the world of secular music leads her to another MAN who LOVES her with LIMITS (just like her father....see how we repeat the same emotional themes or chords?) In this moment she realizes that: until, she HEALS the old wound with the 1st man who could not find it in his heart to LOVE her UNCONDITIONALLY, that she would be doomed to CHOOSING the same man over & over again. It took a lot of courage for her to walk from that juke joint to her Daddy's church singing "God is trying to tell you something" from the bottom of her feet CONJURING a LOVE of SELF she’d never had before She forced him to SEE her; he may not like LIKE what she does for a living, but that did not give him the RIGHT to HOLD her LOVE HOSTAGE She risked rejection again, but this time in front of a church full of people & juke joint patrons who would then have the power to throw her failure in her face if he did not accept her But her need to HEAL was greater than her FEAR SHE had to find a way to tell him she LOVED him, to EMBRACE him despite his REJECTION What a MONUMENTALLY BRAVE act of VULNERABILITY When I first saw this film, I wept in that theatre. I was a kid in college 3000 miles away from a mother who had rejected me for 15 years for the same exact reasons (fucking religion ...but i digress) Because I chose not to practice the religion she raised me in, I was excommunicated from her life until I would give in and "come to my senses and come back to the church." What's funny is that the very thing that people hold onto & use as an excuse to control & punish others, is the very thing that is supposed to be about "unconditional love" The Bible, the Koran are filled with history, human error, frailty, stories of mercy & kindness, stories of humans at their best, at their worst exist to teach us not to repeat the same mistakes but to rise above them. And the first rule is to LOVE WITHOUT without LIMITS RULES or CONDITIONS And oddly enough, it's the first lesson we all abandon in our pursuit of religion The fundamental tenet that holds it all together: unconditional love and forgiveness. Instead, what we attach to these lessons are the things that trigger our fears and need for control in an unpredictable world. ---------- I find it odd that the places we go to find compassion, comfort & hope are the places where our biggest takeaway is to find new reasons to justify hurting each other. Places where we find a way to be right & to get rewarded for being right by making someone else wrong. Big, BEAUTIFUL books of WISDOM are supposed to make us BIGGER not SMALLER If I were you I would say yes speak, Lord Speak to me Oh, Speak, Lord Won't you speak to me I was so blind, I was so lost until you spoke to me Oh, speak, Lord Speak, Lord And hear my mind Oh, with your word heal my soul Can't sleep at night & you wonder why Maybe God is trying to tell you something Crying all night long something’s gone wrong Maybe God is trying to tell you something The Universe is Trying to Tell You Something, Why are you ignoring her? ========== She’s talking to you in your dreams. That’s what DreamingOutLoud is all about Start with Step 1: #TheMorningPages Write down your dreams let them fall out of your mouth onto the page That’s a powerful CONJURING because DREAMS are LIFE’s FUEL When you run out of DREAMS you run out of gas Dream big, no rules, no small stories, no boundaries, just what makes your heart sing? JUST Listen That’s life's heartbeat It's everywhere struggling to be SEEN To be HEARD To be CELEBRATED
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