Is the task to live one’s life with integrity? What is the definition of a good life? In my dream, my sister and husband were reluctant to clean up a spare room to make it useable as a bedroom for their daughters. Instead it was full of paper, old furniture and other things they didn’t use and didn’t need. But to clean it seemed such an effort to them. They left it and their daughters slept in sleeping bags on the floor. How many of us cannot face the thought of cleaning up our own lives? And at what cost to ourselves and others?

Then there was my brother in law, who was learning how to fly a helicopter so he could get home faster and see his baby more. It was a means of getting from AtoB quickly and efficiently because he worked so hard and so late, but did not want to miss out on seeing his child grow. What tools do we have in our lives that can aid us in getting from ego to Spirit quickly and efficiently? Do we pray? Do we say an affirmation? What is our spiritual “helicopter” to take us from a focus on our biology and humanity to a connection with Spirit and our hearts?

Next, I was sitting talking to a stranger and I started to open my mouth and say something negative about my mother in law when I noticed her son sitting next to me. I felt immediately terrible at the thought of hurting her son with my cruel words and so I stopped myself. How often do we refrain from speaking badly about another? How do we know what kind of effect, either direct or indirect, such talk has? Can we see ourselves in each and every other person in our lives? What is so different about another that merits our defamation? Do they not have a soul? A Golden Angel? Guides that love them? A lineage in earthly terms full of complexities beyond our wildest imaginations? And so much more we ALL hold in common. Can we stop ourselves and realize how much we are hurting ourselves when we seek to hurt another (even if we are doing so “behind their back”)?

Then there was a communal aspect of my dream and an oven that had complicated buttons and did not get turned on properly by the person next to me in line. There was a man naked from the waste down doing stretching exercises and joining in the conversation without a second thought to his nakedness. It was an apartment complex of sorts. And a gathering, a sharing, a being together, each in our own uniqueness. Can we accept each other for who we are? Can we come together in the Spirit of nonjudgement? Can we look at another who is coompletely exposed (in a metaphorical sense) and still listen to what they have to say?

And the oven! It was a communal effort to figure it out, a group attempt to help one another toward the ultimate goal of cooking a meal to eat. Can we support each other in our individual endeavors to sustain ourselves? Each of us is “cooking” something different, but the “oven” of life is the same for us all and we need to help eachother figure it out beacuse it can appear quite a complicated beast. Some of us have a better understanding than others of its many “button” and what they all mean. That’s just because we’be been here longer and had more practice in “figuring it out.”

Next, there were some neighbors helping eachother out with babysitting. A mother needed some time to homeschool her two older children so the baby went next door. There is not one of us on this planet who does not need help at some point or another. Asking for help and giving help are both gifts. In my dream, this neighborly helping of one another was perfectly natural. Why wouldn’t the one family help the other? The overall feeling was one of mutual support. In helping another, we help ourselves. When we help another, we help sustain the community as a whole and that, indeed, helps to sustain our own position within that very community. Service is our natural state of Being.

My dream was about the Spirit of Community, about helping and supporting one another. It was about being conscious of what we say and what we do. It was about how we connect to Spirit by how we behave and conduct ourselves in the midst of our human experience and our interactions with all. God is there for us and it doesn’t take isolation in a monestary to find God (although that may be an appropriate path for some in any given lifetime). The path to God is so very much in our interactions and in our relationships. God is revealed when judgement is set aside, when we accept people (including ourselves) as we are. When we clean up our own ”houses” to make room for more love. When we share with others knowledge that we have to help make it easier for another. When we help a neighbor. When we catch our negative thoughts and do not speak them.