Last night's dream feels distant, yet I can access some pieces here and there. I was in some sort of reality/society in which people were wildly oppressed. People challenging the authority systems would disappear mysteriously, and I kept finding their bloody body parts behind the doors of buildings. At one point, without any real motive to change what was happening, I developed a deep and mystical relationship with the leader. He was some sort of male figure that felt familiar to my conscious life, yet I can't seem to identify him yet. After we would walk and sit together in silence, he began making different choices and paused the killing of dissenters. Yet suddenly he disappeared, leaving all of us behind. He left me a note that was unreadable, with a pale lavender flower in the center. I woke up before I saw what happened next.
Even though this description of my dream feels vague, I woke up feeling clear that I have a purpose on this Earth. I want to heal the poison that lives in society. And the work I do at WantToKnow.info seeks to uncover how this poison has manifested in the authority systems we're told to trust.
My work has been a massive initiation. The truth about how the world works can feel so painful to process. And we're swimming in a toxic soup of chemicals, propaganda, centralized power, and manufactured scarcity. The pieces have been slowly coming together for me, and I feel like my world is being torn apart in order to make way for a new one to emerge.
“The only choice once your world has been torn apart is to find your genius and live with that. ‘Normal’ is out of the question. The healing for anyone going through great tragedy is finding your natural spirit and your genius that was waiting to be found. That can now become the cohering principle in your life. The idea of patching someone up and back into normal when they’ve had extremely abnormal experiences is a misunderstanding.” ― Michael Meade
After the devastating Rwandan genocide, the Rwandan government set up community courts where people could confess and take accountability for their participation in the genocide. The motto of the courts was that truth can heal. What a powerful example of forgiveness and humanity, in the face of some of the worst atrocities.
I'm feeling more committed than ever to be a cultural healer for our media systems and larger society. And I'm so grateful to have the time, energy, and health to engage as best as I can... with a fierce heart and a humble mind. I'm recalling the breathtaking poem by David Whyte now, named "Revelation Must Be Terrible."
Revelation must be terrible
with no time left to say goodbye.
Imagine that moment
staring at the still waters
with only the brief tremor
of your body to say
you are leaving everything
and everyone you know behind.
Being far from home is hard, but you know,
at least we are exiled together.
When you open your eyes to the world
you are on your own for the first time.
No one is even interested in saving you now
and the world steps in
to test the calm fluidity of your body
from moment to moment
as if it believed you could join
its vibrant dance of fire
and calmness and final stillness.
As if you were meant to be
exactly where you are,
as if like the dark branch of a desert river
you could flow on without a speck of guilt
and everything everywhere would still be just as it should be.
As if your place in the world mattered
and the world could neither speak nor hear the fullness of
its own bitter and beautiful cry
without the deep well of your body resonating in the echo.
Knowing that it takes only
that one, terrible word to make the circle complete,
revelation must be terrible
knowing you can never hide your voice again.
For now, I'll keep dancing to honor the creative expression and the celebration of life that lives in me — despite the roars of the world. Here's a little snippet of me dancing in my favorite place: outside in the sun :)
Sounds like a powerful dream. You definitely have a purpose and seem to be living it fully. Work like ours inevitably and irrevocably changes how you see the world. I've been at it for a long time and I still have days when I'm overwhelmed or just sick over the toxic material I'm encountering. My own initiation may be a process that never quite ends.
Fun to see you dancing with the sun behind you: )