Wishing on a star

Tuesday, May 17, 2022

6:15 a.m. I guess we’d better discuss yesterday morning’s dream. It made a great impact on me – and I get that maybe it was for others as well, not for me to hug to myself as something personal, though it is that. After yesterday’s session, I spent a while reformulating it, getting it into words, then getting the words into a poem. So, here we go. Focus, receptivity, clarity, presence. The four horsemen not of the apocalypse but of the reuniting.

I don’t get that I should start by reciting the dream, though. Seems strange to discuss it before describing it, but if that’s how you want to proceed, presumably you have your reasons.

In an odd sort of way, telling the dream in the order it came to you would lead people to misunderstand, because the background to it, which goes far into your childhood, came first. It was part of the prepared field that the dream interacted with, even though you didn’t draw the connection consciously until the end of the dream. So, you almost have to tell it out of order in order for it to be intelligible to others.

Oddly, though I’ve just sat down here, it seems like too much work to describe the dream.

That’s not weariness, nor laziness, but reluctance.

Well, it does seem a little like bringing something precious into the common day.

We’re waiting for the irony of that feeling to strike you.

All right.

Start with Jiminy Cricket.

I don’t know how old I was: somewhere between 12 and 17, I suppose. Walt Disney – what was the TV show? “The Wonderful World of Disney,” I think; came on Sunday nights. One week, it was Pinocchio. I enjoyed the story, but nothing special, certainly nothing life-changing, until the last two minutes. Then –

You might insert the URL here.

Yes, I think I will. This is the final two minutes, a little less, and it is a man with a high tenor voice singing, “When you wish upon a star.” You – whoever you are, reading this – should listen to this now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2zzXBg3FcI

 

I have never tried to express what that moment did for me. How could I? Who could I have told? Besides, my internal world was so separated from anything that showed, I doubt if I even –

No, say it carefully.

Yes, I just got that. My inner world and outer persona – my mask, Yeats would say – were very separate things. When I was in the presence of another, those inner facts were not usually accessible to me. In a very real sense, I was one person with myself, and another with others. Maybe it’s that way with everybody, I wouldn’t know.

But you can express it now, at least somewhat.

[Contrary to my usual practice, from here I’m not going to put my “voice” into itals, as it would be too hard to read that much italic type. When the guys chime in, I’ll identify them.]

Well, I can try. That little song hit me like a promise from the universe. There was nothing rational about it; it had not a thing to do with thought. It was as deep a reassurance as I have ever gotten, and it went straight to my core. And then – typical of my life – it was mostly forgotten, or occasionally remembered as something odd that had once happened, precious but inexplicable. And yesterday, when I told Nancy of this dream, she reminded me of the vision I had during a Monroe tape at my Gateway: “You are not alone. You are not alone. You are not alone.” That vision came nearly 30 years ago, and followed that Jiminy Cricket moment by probably 30 years, more or less. Nice symmetry.

[TGU:] So now your dream, as you reconstructed it yesterday.

9:50 a.m. The elements of the dream:

• Talking to the woman
• Talking to Margaret
• Looking at the tree

I

The woman was all concerned about her hair, and when I told her she was superficial, she asked how she can be less so.

I said you have to want it above all else, and you would find that giving up other things was no sacrifice.

II

Margaret [my elder sister] and I were talking. I told her that I realized that what I had tried to believe 50 years ago, I was living.

Margaret said to her that the change in me was that I would tell such a story about myself. “About history yes, but not about himself.”

III

Margaret and I were at the old Main Road house where we grew up. It was night, and I was caught up in how beautiful this one tree was.

It had two masses of branches, forming a sort of Y with the trunk.

I can’t help associating the deep reverent feeling I had at the end of the first part of the dream with the magical experience I had as a child, watching Walt Disney, when at the end of some episode – seemingly unconnected to it – a man sang words that seemed to penetrate my being, even though I had heard them many times before.

[TGU:] This spares you the tedium of writing it out here, you see. And the connection of the dots?

The first scene ended with a great realization, unspoken and deeply felt. I got that I had become that which I had aspired to become, and that it happened because of my unswerving intent, beneath all the surface confusion.

The second scene made a point for me (to me): My new resolve to tell more about my inner life was itself a major transformation.

The third, I suppose, was a sort of validation. And after I awoke, I associated the dream with the old experience of that song’s effect on me.

All that remains to be done is to tease out a few symbols.

The unnamed woman, I don’t know. My anima, my soul? Margaret was always earth-wisdom to me, affection and protection assumed. The tree – nature itself, I suppose. “The world” in its everyday holiness, as deep as one sees into it.

Yes, short, sweet, and to the point. Finally the poem.

Yes. Thanks for this, though I’ve done all the work.

We smile too. The work you did was to put into the public eye something very close to your heart. Keep doing it, and it will become its own reward.

Well, I guess we’ll see. Thanks as always.

 

Living the Dream

 

“If your heart is in your dream,

No request is too extreme.

When you wish upon a star

As dreamers do….

 

“Like a bolt out of the blue,

Fate steps in and sees you through.

When you wish upon a star,

Your dreams come true.”

 

I

She was so absorbed in hair.

What color? What style?

But, being called superficial,

she asked how she could change.

 

“You have to want it,” I said,

“more than anything or everything,

So that nothing outweighs it,

like the pearl of great price.”

 

II

To my beloved elder sister,

More than to her, I said, “I see now

That what was once beyond my grasp,

Almost beyond my faith, I have become.”

 

And Margaret, more to her than to me, said,

“What tells is not that he speaks of faith

But that he speaks of his life,

And not just  something he read.”

 

III

Nighttime, and Margaret and I are outside,

In the yard by the house which we had known

In all those years, growing up. Nighttime sky

Backlighting trees, bringing memories.

 

One old tree, its branches rising in two masses,

Formed a triumphant vee against the stars

We wish upon, setting our unbending intent,

Living in faith that dreams come true.