I receive Russ’ invitation
I do not hesitate.
I take his advice from The Fictive Purpose of Dreams:
I faced the blank page and began falling into a state of receptivity to what presented itself. I let go of intentionality to open more the potential of the dream story.
So now I stop and look at the blank page in front of me…
In one week I received five new people
who actually want to explore dreams and the imagination
I’ve been in a desert
Now I hear running waters
They need no convincing or argument
To cough up a dream or two
Before dumping it in my lap with a gesture of
“do something with the shapeless mass I give you!”
No I am refreshed by this new eagerness
To swim or even dive in deep
I have worked so long
To persuade thirsty others to come to new pastures
Only to find they prefer their
Dry dusty fenced-in corrals
My efforts led me to face the bitter wind
But this is different
Water rushing to meet water
Story evokes story
Trickle becomes flood
And we are replenished
The Persuader speaks: People just don’t see this. You must work on persuading them. Get them close enough to see, touch, feel the possibility of a new way. Then they will joyfully leap that fence, free of the corral and luxuriate in the green grasses.
ME: Ok, you have had your way for a long time. I tried it your way which is to persuade people’s minds to take the leap. I don’t think that is the way anymore. Remember what Jo Campbell said: if folks today had to choose between going to heaven and hearing a lecture about heaven, they choose the lecture!
TP: But I am trying to persuade them to leap out of their viewing chairs into life, with my rhetoric.
ME: How has it gone so far?
TP: O dear, maybe I have been trying to persuade myself all along.
ME: Well, don’t be hard on yourself. We all carry the burden of the scientific spirit which is skeptical of just about everything and finds its satisfaction in the skepticism. You had to find a way through that skepticism and persuasion has a place in that process. But, my friend, having persuaded yourself, there still is the question of the leap.
TP: I feel a bit lost. I have been turning toward that bitter wind as you know.
ME: So that was you in that dream, was it?
Silence
A poem recalls to me from my doctoral days:
Are you afraid of weakening my son?
Are you afraid of that sweet fire
From fixity to fluidity you go
Let it go! Let it go! Let it go!
Letting go!