Opening out into something beautiful, the crystal clear, blue-green sea–I keep dreaming of it, and now those dreams are coming true.  In my dreams I leave the small, walled pool on the shore for the sunlit water, a whole new world, and swim free, where I soon realize that I can still breath under the soft waves.  The whole scene from sky to ocean floor is pure breath.  An untroubled joy imbues every atom.

An unspeakably grueling journey is nearing an end, and a period marked by exhaustion, grief and hardship is showing the promise of transformation.  Things will get dramatically better, and they will get better soon.

For nearly two decades, my life has centered around one ambition, to earn a PhD in psychology and contribute something of value, something that could alleviate suffering.  After six years of graduate school, I am finally finished.  In less than one week, I will drive back up to my former town, where I attended school, and meet with a group of professors, defend my graduate thesis, and walk away Dr. WakingHeart.  The degree itself is not what matters.  What matters is that this beautiful ocean of joy is a place I find myself prepared to enter, and the currents of life have carried me here, and I let them.

I had so many dreams that I was driving back up to my former town, even when graduating looked comically improbable.  At one point, my advisor called to tell me that I should rewrite my entire thesis “starting from the top.”  All the puzzle pieces were finally present, but they’d become a jumble.  During one call, she said my thesis was beautiful and brilliant.  During another, as the deadline drew near, she said that some portions were so hopelessly complex, she felt as though she’d been “dragged over gravel and bruised up.”  Each time we spoke, she asked for major changes, until she “got” the story I was attempting to tell.  During that time, my life has been falling apart around me, and I’ve had little time to write with two boys underfoot.  A lifelong goal seemed to be ebbing away like the loss of blood from a mortal injury.

In my dreams, however, I saw myself traveling a beautiful path through green pastures to a tower, climbing the steps of the tower, and entering a room of teachers where I would move beyond the identity of “student.”  That outcome seemed unlikely, but after giving my advisor my final draft, she called to tell me that it was “a work of art.”  She said she read it from the beginning, slowly, in order to savor every word, and that it was the best piece of writing she had seen from a student since she became a professor in the late 1970′s.

I also dreamed that a companion would travel with me.  I dreamed that I would have the means to fill a truck with all the possessions I left behind, although the expense was prohibitive.  I kept dreaming of these things, and I kept saying to myself, “How on earth could that ever happen?”

My former love, Jimmie, whose reservations about the burdens of my life interrupted our fledgling intimacy, offered to drive me up to my former town and partake in my adventure.  There, the piece I never expected but saw in dreams again and again!  In one dream, Jimmie was a palm frond in a clear expanse of water waiting outside the meeting room to congratulate me.  I had that dream when we were freshly parted, and I could not imagine such an outcome, but he is coming with me.  We are staying at a beautiful bed & breakfast with a fireplace and whirlpool bath.

He even suggested that his truck could hold my remaining possessions and offered to haul them back.  The other piece!  Six months ago I dreamed of retrieving my things and placing them into someone else’s truck.

So when I dream that my entire life is opening out into something beautiful, I believe it.

At the same time, the thought of seeing the difficulties in my life get better brings relief but also huge resistance.  I didn’t expect that, and now I realize why.  The lost loves in my former town, I caused them a lot of pain, and they couldn’t forgive me.  Some part of me has held onto hardship as a way of punishing myself.  How much more pain would I need to suffer until they could forgive me?  Subconsciously, a part of me believes that my own suffering is the only act of love I have left.  As that becomes conscious, it fades, and genuine grief sets in.

The past two weeks have been filled with it.  I dreamed of that too.  In one dream, I was driving back up to my former town contemplating the loves I would never see again and realizing deep down that they were really gone.  In that now, here I am again one final time mourning the losses, heart squeezed to a pulp, bones aching, tears pouring out in rivers every day.  There is no substitute for any one.  No substitute.  You are all irreplaceable.  Precious snowflakes, no one like you will ever come again.

The snowflakes melt and disappear into the sea, into currents of light.  Joy is coming.