When Dreams Dissolve

and all that's left is Space

My apologies for not getting a blog out last weekend. I needed time to process a recent experience, and today I’d like to share some of what I have so far been able to glean from it, with the hope that something in my journey will intersect and resonate with something in yours in a meaningful, and perhaps even helpful way.

When a significant dream, vision, creative project, business collaboration, job, home, relationship, or plan we have deeply invested in, dissolves before fruition or completion, it can feel disorienting and even traumatic to the psyche, and deeply bruising to the heart. All the more so if this dissolution impacts or cracks the foundations of what a self-image or an identity may have been partially constructed upon, perhaps unconsciously; if we have been mistreated, or if buried pain from a core childhood wound was triggered in some way.

When closely-held dreams dissolve - and all that’s left is space where the dream once existed - a great deal of wisdom becomes available to us, if we can remain open and not close down in disappointment, frustration or grief. We are so conditioned to fill our lives, our mind and our time, with attachments to external things, relationships, activities and distractions, that there is a real temptation to fill the new space quickly - somehow - before we have to fully feel the pain of what there is to feel. Nature abhors a vacuum! Intense disappointment, grief, sadness, self-judgment, shame, frustration, or anger - these are hard emotions to sit with.

And when we do try to sit with them, our mental chatter can cause us to feel like we are sinking in emotional quicksand, if we credit our looping, judgmental negative thoughts with evidence of reality. If you can begin to simply meet the open space freed up by the disappearance of a dream, with no agenda to fill or change that space yet, you can step back and start to observe your mental chatter — just noticing it as it arises — and you can begin to see this thought-stream for what it truly is: a construction of your mind, not an unchangeable reality. This awareness is the first step toward pulling yourself out of the emotional quicksand. If you were truly sinking in real quicksand, trying frantically to claw your way out would only cause you to sink further. More calmly observing your situation is likely the only chance you’d have to access a practical strategic plan to free yourself.

Emotions may have to move through you first, but when you are able to become more attuned to the patterns of your thoughts, you gradually gain the power to change them, to reshape your mental models into ones that support your healing and growth. When you observe with awareness, you start to see thought-forms, not facts — fleeting, often irrational, and not necessarily reflective of reality. This is the power of awareness — it doesn’t eliminate the mental chatter, but it changes your relationship with the thoughts, and it becomes possible to navigate through them without getting completely entangled and stuck in their fabrication of reality.

One place where I still find myself getting hooked, is in attempting to influence or control what is beyond my control. I tend to work hard to try and salvage something from the wreckage of a dream that fell apart. I do think it is worth asking: “IS there something worthy of salvage here, and can that actually BE salvaged?” But if the clear answer to either part of this questions is “No,” then it’s time to surrender it all. I have expended too much of my life-energy efforting to salvage the unsalvageable, more times than I care to confess. I am a slow learner in this department. I do not give up or let go of a cherished dream easily!

An important lesson for me has been to allow the emotions that arise to flow through me, without minimizing or maximizing them, and to simultaneously do my best to dwell in the reality of NOW, rather than in the non-reality of my mental chatter and old story-loops that exacerbate emotions, or in the futility of grasping or trying to fix what wants to dissolve in order for a better alignment to come into focus.

Once the primary emotions have been felt sufficiently (and there is no right or wrong timeline for that), and I have taken note of my typical mental chatter, I find that I can begin to pivot by accessing some high-quality questions, such as:

• What did this dream really mean to me?

• Did it truly feel the way I imagined it would?

• What is the hardest part about losing it now?

• What is available to me in this new space that has been freed up?

• What new wisdom and messages are trying to break through for my highest good?

• What is needed for a better alignment?

• What can I see differently now, about what I truly desire in my life?

• How can I meet this new spaciousness with trust and openness?

• What kind of nurturing and support can I access for myself right now?
  

You can see how I can keep myself moving to higher ground through my journaling process!

Sometimes our most cherished dreams don’t make it to the finish-line, because all of the necessary elements for them to flourish simply weren’t there. These unrealized dreams can be seen as dress-rehearsals for the ones that WILL come to fruition. As long as we don’t shut down, or close ourselves off from the next adventure, new doors will open — and if we have treated ourself and our unrealized dream with love and respect, and learned all we can from its dissolution, we will be well-poised to engage with a new dream productively. We can choose to experience our life as an evolution in consciousness, each dream-exploration building mindfully upon the last as we cooperate wisely to evolve into greater and greater understanding and Self-realization. What more can we ask of this life?

The past week and a half has been messy and painful for me, and I am only just beginning to find the inner resources to re-ground myself. This is not my first rodeo with an unrealized dream, so I have already developed some real inner muscles I can call to action. As the children’s book says, “We can’t go under it, we can’t go over it, we can’t go around it….SIGH….we have to go THROUGH it.”

Deep inner listening, stillness, journaling, walking and sitting in nature, warm baths, extra gentle self-care and self-compassion, and leaning on trusted friends and family who will always have my back…this is what helps me through - every time. When we dare to dream, and when we dare to give our dream a try, we live a life rich with adventure and learning. The only true failure is if we stop believing in our dreams, and stop taking the necessary risks.