Love Letters to the Universe #6: I Had a Dream

Dear Universe,

I had a dream. I was walking alone in a wilderness, winding and deep. I came into awareness with the drive to move through this untamed landscape and the hope that if I should I would find myself where I could better understand my place in this profundity of life. For what seemed an instant and a lengthy struggle of some eons I made my way, instinctively moving down a path that somehow continue to manifest itself before me in unforeseen ways. I felt the approach of my destination in my bones and interpreted these vibratory messengers as a mix of dread and a burning and curious need.

I exited the wilderness on the shore of a river as it flashed and sparkled on its way to unknown destinations. Across an arch of a bridge over the water, a great eye resided. The vast ocular manifestation dwarfed the river, the bridge, me and all in its unrelenting observation. I trembled and faltered as I set my feet upon the bridge. Before the unfathomable judgement of the eye’s scrutiny I felt naked and terribly alone. What right did I have to approach such a celestial thing as that eye? How could I stand before it?

As I went down on my knees on the bridge, all of my pretense was stripped from me. All my ignorance, all my sins and pride, were laid bare and revealed as insignificant trivialities. The day of judgement had arrived for me, and all I could do was bow my head before the unflinching gaze of the great eye.

A most uncanny event occurred. I was whipped as if from a spinning wind, and the tiny thread of consciousness that remained intact before that gaze shifted. I saw myself kneeling on the bridge, a shadow, a puppet. I had become the eye. The judgement that I had feared had always been my own.

I thank you, sweet universe, for this vision. I wanted you to know that I have taken the lessons it taught me to heart. It has tempered my actions and thoughts. I understand that the greatest possession one could own would be a clear conscience. It fills me with grace and thankfulness with the thought of this divine justice. It allows me to pity the wrongdoer as they and all must face this eventual eye of appraisal, their own. How may I judge them, when I am so filled with the dread and delight of having to face this eye? Colors, creeds, states, and affiliations are stripped away before its gaze.

Martin Luther King Jr. had felt this gaze upon himself. How else can you explain the way in which he helped us understand the grace of non-violent resistance. He had a dream, and that dream was a prayer and a request of you, sparkling star-filled sweetheart.

So many make requests of you everyday, but they do so without the understanding that when they do so, they must ask so of themselves. Some ask for retribution, justice, success, health, and prosperity. I wish my wife and children to be healed from their auto-immune disorders. I believe that they suffer so because of my father-in-law’s repeated exposure to Agent Orange. He became so exposed because of a calamitous conflict that sadly should have, could have been avoided.

I know how change occurs; it happens from within. That is what we have dominion over, ourselves. We decide what a hairless and tailess monkey is. No political, social, or military force trumps this inner-power, this will to manifest. The idea is daunting at first: how may we hope when monkeys only learn to love themselves, each other and you, one by one? Then, we take that shift and look through the eye, and understand that it is glorious. It is a change that can occur at any time, is happening all over the world. Lights coming up in the darkness, inspired by others, yes, but lighting themselves.

I will continue to hope for a world where we treat each other as brothers and sisters. Where we delight in the ride together.  I hope for a world that will not leave mothers and children weak and wounded from conflicts that occurred before they were born. But, I also will not ask you for anything, sweet universe, that I would not be willing to summon up from within myself.

For there is enough food in the world, my sweet, because of you. And if there ever was a shortage, you gave us reason to muddle through the rough patches. What we have chosen to prioritize has always been our own choice. If we choose to live with cruelty, violence, greed and intolerance, then we will reap that. In the end, however, under the gaze of the eye, we find all of these things trivial and we marvel that we could have so duped ourselves into ignoring the brilliance, the manifest love and goodness of you.

And so, I take the time to reflect on this day in the cold heart of winter, a day of celebration for a man with a dream, and I use the words of Percy Shelley and ask this one request:

“Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like wither’d leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

Your faithful and ever-dreaming admirer,

Trav