Decadent driblets of ice cream disastrously ooze down the waffle cone.
From my serving table, I notice the creeping sweetness threatening to explode in sticky little messy puddles onto the lifelines crisscrossing my grandfather’s enthusiastic hands.
He’s like the young children who surround him – immersed in the simple joy of an ice cream treat.
The fanatical color of the ice cream, a neon green spotted with rectangular chocolate pieces, momentarily haults my racing thoughts. The interior inferno of my mind bleakly contrasts with the deceptive serenity and lightheartedness permeating the air, the cloudless blue sky.
Children sprint toward me and crowd the white iron-wrought table where I serve dishes of mint chocolate chip ice cream. I am the giver of sweets and their guardian, and while I scoop perfected dollops, my mind stretches and searches for a solution to ensure their continued protection, their survival and my own as well.
I meet the assassin on the sidewalk. She’s nonchalant about following me, about recording my day-to-day actions, and my work to safely evacuate the children and my grandfather has been despairingly compromised by the sudden interest and targeted zeal to eradicate…me.
My mind summersaults through possible schemes, trapezing through escape routes that all collide into the same fear-seized trap that any motions I make will be monitored and so…I cannot save them, and I cannot save myself.
Here the doom descends and through the billowing darkness a crack of light zigzags in the shape of a fiercely loving voice.
“Meredith, it’s a dream,” and like the string of a kite, my consciousness holds close to the light of the truth that pulls me through the back door of my heart, initiating a reunion with awareness and body.
My eyes adjust to the gray shadows curtaining my room. I feel the weight of my spine resting into the bed. The relief of this waking reality fails to diminish a strong and strange familiarity to the scenario experienced within the dream.
Ancestral and karmic histories ignite. My bones seem to release steam, as if I’m finally cognizant of a dormant tension that can now be set free.
The nightmare sizzles in feelings and overarching themes I’ve known before, in other lives and times, and it’s the past clearly speaking into the present that captivates my commanded attention.
My hypervigilant system instinctually senses and sees the invisible nefarious energy of menacing surveillance. I’ve operated under this insidious umbrella, before, with the responsibility of others’ wellbeing cautiously considered in my actions, choices, words.
Here, in the startling wakefulness, as my body integrates the surfaced information from the subconscious, my belly vibrantly voices instructions on how to calm and repair.
I swiftly respond to my gut, a wisdom-wired core focused on survival and thriving, and the fact that I take action signals progress. I am learning to show reverent trust in my body’s innate intelligence through answered response.
I journey through the silent house, through night-graced hallways and up a pitch-black staircase to the top floor where my belly directs me to sleep.
I find the vacant bed, toss aside pillows, pull the covers and curl underneath the skylight that reveals the waning moon and by her side, a planet dazzles as her companion.
Moonbeams bathe the bed, bathe my breath, and the breath breathes me. Moon-bathed peace confirms, once again, the all-knowing, all-loving presence that powerfully resides within me, within my cells, within the articulate gut.
I center a hand on my heart and the other on the belly and feel the tidal rhythm of the breath as I gaze up into the universe.
I blink into the astonishing vastness and marvel at the committed small-mindedness I possessed in the dream. I completely bought into the bright and brilliant false-reality (that enticing artificial sweetness of the neon green ice cream). The unquestioned full immersion of self into the dream-drama strikes an eerie note within me.
From the lifted perspective of the seats of the stars, I witness the dream-like play that is life on this Earth, this masterclass for the soul, and the teaching to remain conscious while in this dense drama.
Whatever the dangers –real or conjured – I soften into trusting the intelligence within me, the orchestration of the universe, the ancient language of dreams to assist and guide me.
There are clues and cues peppered in our existence, to urge us to reawaken, to remember a consciousness vast like the solar system.
So as I drift into a second wave of sleep, I do so with the moon shining upon illusionary ice cream parties where I slip back into a dream and serve myself the scoop of empowerment to ensure wellbeing, and not cave into a falsity, but determine my own fate and in the clarity of my mind, in the conviction of my heart, I keep my dream grandfather and my dream children safe.