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Why We're Going to Talk About, Analyze & Decode Your Dreams during the Dreaming Morocco Retreat ========== In my last email, I promised you the story of the dream that changed my life and helped me define my purpose: **1. This dream was the beginning of my formalizing this dreamingoutloud technique I outline in my Ted Talk AND WHICH WE WILL FLESH OUT DURING THE DREAMING MOROCCO RETREAT** **2. This dream was also the beginning of my formulating the Emotional Type Technique that I teach my clients to figure out what their four major emotional chords are...or recurring themes in your life that drive you, make you feel alive, vulnerable and are the clue to finding purpose and meaning in this life WHICH IS WHAT THE DREAMING MOROCCO RETREAT IS ALL ABOUT. ** I believe your four major emotional chords are the lessons you are uniquely qualified to learn in this lifetime. ---------- **It's why you were sent back. You're an expert at these things...lol. ** Writing down this dream was the beginning of finding my purpose... Ready? Let's take this ride....__****__ ----------  Beachtown, Essaouira in Morocco Here's what I learned about dreams and my journal entry in 2012: ---------- This morning I woke up dreaming about _The Color Purple_. There were tears on my pillow and my cheeks were swollen and stained. I sat down immediately to write because I believe dreams hold the answers to all the stuff your head and your heart are struggling with. I went back to the moment in the film where Shug confronts her Daddy in church. (there are too many moments to count in that film that truly moved me and were seminal moments in filmmaking) It's hard to isolate one moment that left me in tears, but I will recall this one because I re-lived it last night in my sleep. It's the moment when Shug who has been holding onto the pain of her father's religious judgement and has severed the relationship with her realizes what she needs is more important that what he believes. She has an aha moment that the very thing her father dissapproves of, her singing secular music with the rhythms of the church in the grooveline, is the very thing which has kept her connected to the church. She loves the music that brought her close to God, to her community, to the epic struggle of her people to survive. She makes a career of singing because she does love God. And she's found a way for that love to help her make a living doing what she loves. A rare thing for anybody, but certainly a rare thing for a black woman in 1930's America. And for this love, her father sets her aside. Her journey into the world of secular music leads her to a life where she meets another man who loves her with limits (just like her father....see how we repeat the same emotional themes or chords?) I believe in this moment she realized that until, she healed that wound with the first man who could not find it in his heart to love her unconditionally, that she would be doomed to choosing the same man over and 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" and force him to see her; he may not like what she did for a living, but that did not give him the right to hold her love hostage. She risked rejection again, but this time a rejection in front of the church full of people and juke joint patrons who would then have the power to throw her failure in her face if he did not accept. But her heart was hurting and she had to find a way to tell him she loved him, to embrace him despite his rejection of her. What a monumentally brave act of vulnerability. I wept in that theatre and I didn't care who saw me. I was a kid in college 3000 miles away from a mother who had rejected me and not spoken to me in 15 years for the same exact reasons (fucking religion). 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 in instances like this is that the very thing that people hold onto and use as an excuse to control and punish others, is the very thing that is supposed to be about "unconditional love". Religion...oh, religion. These amazing books: the Bible, the Koran are filled with history, human error, frailty, stories of mercy and kindness, stories of humans at their best and 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 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, we attach to the lessons that speak to our fears and need for control in an unpredictable world. ---------- I find it odd that the places we go to find compassion, comfort and hope are the places where our biggest takeaway is to find new reasons to justifiy hurting each other. Places where we find a way to be right and to get rewarded for being right by making someone else wrong. Big, beautiful books of wisdom are supposed to make us bigger, not smaller. The Universe is Trying to Tell You Something, Why are you ignoring her? ========== "God Is Trying to Tell You Something" _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_ _Oh, speak, Lord. Speak to me. Speak, my Lord._ _I love you, Lord. Save my soul_ _Can't sleep at night and 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_ _Oh, you can't sleep at night and you sure wonder why_ _Maybe God is trying to tell you something_ _Trying, trying, trying, trying, I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying_ _Maybe God is trying to tell you something_ _Maybe God is trying to tell you something_ _Maybe God is trying to tell you something_ _Maybe God is trying to tell you something_ _Lord, He's got to tell you something_ _Lord, He's got to tell you something. I hear you, Lord_ _Maybe God is trying to tell you right now, right now_ _I'm gonna praise your name_ _I praise your name_ _Speak to me, Lord_ _Maybe God is trying to tell you something right now, right now,_ _Right now_ _Thank you, Lord_ _Maybe God is trying to tell you something right now_ _Right now, right now. Thank you, Lord_ _If I were you I would say yes,_ _Speak Lord,_ _Speak to me_ _Well you can't sleep at night_ _And you sure wonder why_ _Well maybe God is trying to tell you something_ _You cry all night long_ _Something has gone wrong_ _Well maybe God is trying to tell you something_ _God is trying to tell you something_ _God is trying to tell you something_ _Maybe God is trying to tell you something right_ _now_ And what I thought was, where is my courage? Why can't I risk telling someone I love them even though I know they may reject me? I couldn't answer that question all those years ago when I was in college. Why?  Because I wasn't finally tired of my own bullshit.
Bullshit in this case, is the set of beliefs, assumptions that we hold onto without even being aware of it and these are the source of our fear, our lack of directon or purpose, or stuckness. ---------- **In my next email, I'm going to show you how to start fleshing these belief systems out and taking them out for dinner and putting those bitches to rest....** But I digress. Shortly after seeing _The Color Purple_, the universe smacked me with another tough lesson. (She was particularly relentless this year...lol) A little while after that film, I was in the college center talking to a young man who was fastidiously trying to tell me he loved me and I was having none of it. He was a friend who had been trying to tell me he loved me unconditionally for over a year and I couldn't hear it. Him: I like you. Me: I like you, too. Him: No, I really like you. (_she starts joking which is what she does when she's scared she might actually be worthy of loving)_ Me: Ah, you mean you like me like a peanu butter & jelly sandwich-like-me or something else. Him: (Sigh). Something more. A lot more. Me: Uhm, you're my friend. That's something I've learned I can count on. Love, I've learned is something I cannot, so let's not go there. _(She exits briskly, stage right.)_ And I walked out of the office where we were sitting. As I exited, I tripped over a box of books. The books tumbled at my feet and one hit me in the shin. It was Pema Chodron's "_Things Fall Apart_." It hit me so I supposed I was meant to have it. I picked it up, took it to my dorm room, read a chapter and then threw it against a wall. (You see I was not prepared to release my bullshit) She was talking about learning how to stay even when something scares us, just stay and remain open to it. To be curious about what might come up or what we might learn about ourselves and someone else. She was talking about finding the courage to remain open and vulnerable because that is actually what living is all about. To remain open, vulnerable and dare to love without any attachment to that love being returned. So, there it was. God, The Universe, Pema, this young man, who would turn out to be one of the loves of my life (though I was working real hard not to know it) were trying to tell me something Those folks were trying to tell me something.... They were trying to tell me something I was too terrified to admit, believe or own. **Which was this belief that I had firmly attached to my idea of April, and it was no longer serving me.** I had somehow worked it out that if my parents couldn't find it in their hearts to love me unconditionally, the people who made me, then why should anybody else love me? I mean wasn't my parents inability to love me irrefutable proof that I wasn't worth loving? Ah, that was the storyline I had running. It was safe. It was a truth I could depend on, that I could control. Because it allowed me to predict the future and control every interaction I had with people. Shit not working out was a guarantee that I had come to rely on. To use as a protective blanket to justify not even trying to reach out and love or allow someone to love me. As I chronicle the dream, the vulnerable admission followed by the book hitting me in the shin, I realized... This is one of my emotional chords: [warrior for love, the passionate, wild spirit & the blind goddess oblivious to her beauty, her gifts and her loveability.](https://www.aprilyvettethompson.com/aprils-emotional-type.html?link_list=4753907) It took me years to flesh out the process of finding my recurring emotional chords, but once I did, it was in that very moment that TED asked me to do a TED Talk.... Since then, I've taught this process of dreamingoutloud: using your dreams to get at your deeply hidden fears, fractures on your soul that you're here to learn, decode and rise above in this lifetime... That's the shizzazle we'll be exploring together during the Dreaming Morocco Retreat. In my next email, I will walk you through the 3 major steps of dreamingoutloud... So stay tuned. Love, Light & Power, April & TheDreamUnLocked Team **P.S. This is the last letter that I'll be sending you, so if you want to get the entire series, please click** **[HERE]() now.** **P.P.S. We are making some changes to the registration process.** **1. The first installment payment is non-refundable. However, should you book the trip and have a last minute conflict, we can credit the amount you've paid towards the 2019 trip. You'll have exactly one year from the date of purchase to use the credit.** **2. The tour is 17 days with breakfast daily and some meals and excursions. The $1800 is a sale price that ends December 31, 2017. The price goes up to $1999 on January 1, 2018** CLICK HERE FOR THE DREAMING MOROCCO RETREAT NOW!
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