Dream

At 6:45 A.M., I awoke with this corrective dream:

Not far from me, I heard harassing, arguing, bullying, hounding, the voices escalating to a terrifying pitch. It sounded like the Trumps. 

Slowly, I pulled the covers aside, still smarting by the piece of dream story that wedged into my awareness and begged for attention.

True, I had been meditating upon Step One in Recipe for Recovery, with special focus upon surrender to my terminal illness. True, most afternoons, I had been sharing these insights with my sponsor and receiving her enthusiastic response. True, I had drawn insights from daily readings during phone conferences and shared them with my CPA buddies. In coasting along without a hitch, however, I had forgotten that spiritual growth is messy. I did have a terminal disease, after all. It was time for rumpling in my dream.

That my Dreamer likened my anger, largely covert, with the Trumps gave me considerable pause. Yet, truth, alone, fills dream stories, even snatches of them, as in this case.

Because of unremitting arthritic pain that chewed my knees like alligators, anger hid out in my psyche at an early age. With subsequent aging and diminishing health, my anger mounted. And with eligibility for hospice, it escalated into grief: thumping my innards, pommeling my breathing, splaying my thinking, and rendering me less than. Only with the spell’s dissolution did I pick up my life where I left off.

Perhaps my Dreamer prompts the ownership and expression of my anger as more losses deepen.

Yet, I’m also heartened by the Psalmist’s prayer, Who can understand her errors? Cleanse me from secret faults. And I’ve many, still lodged in my psyche.