The Change

Last night I dreamed of two dark brothers named Twoomy. The younger one felt the older one had betrayed him, and for evidence he held up a chessboard, so few pieces left, an endgame that dripped with corruption and decay. We had something to do, and this man’s belief in his brother’s faithlessness was holding us back. In the background a woman dressed in a white shift was carried by the current, face up below the surface in a flow of sweet water, and children joyfully steered a small wooden ship too close to the ocean’s shore.

I woke up wondering, what would it mean to discover there had been no betrayal? Life could move forward without the snarl of the bickering brothers. One direction, one purpose; flow instead of acting as a clogged trap in a drain accumulating hair and other organic debris. What would it be like to have no traps between me and my reason for being?

And if there really had been no betrayal, perhaps even the traps act as baskets, nutrient-rich nests whose sole purpose is to contain the gestation, emergence and delivery of the material out of which our world is fashioned. Each particle of us is a drama of love and betrayal, separation and reunion. The smallest bit of us cares very deeply, about itself and about what it knows. It has a will and a heart and a storyline that defines it. Miraculously it all comes together to form a leaf, a broken fingernail, the dog and the cat who share the couch with me as I write.

When we cry foul and rage that we have been betrayed, we chafe against the forward motion of an outdated plot and accumulate around us the material on which to feed and rest while a new thread of intention forms inside us. It is time for this story to move forward in the world only when the substance of the old story begins to rot and wash away, and we realize we are loved and true, and have been all along.

Can you feel it in your body? The dream changing shape? Is it time?