Awakening from Technicolor Dreams.
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We’ve all experienced being whisked out of the present moment by a cyclone of worries and fear, leaving us feeling ungrounded, out of control, and lost.
When caught up in it, the cyclone feels undeniably real. And for some of us, our houses have been spinning around and around in it for so long that this madness even becomes comfortable, familiar.
But one day something changes and our house hits the ground, and we realize what peace is. It may take time to pick ourselves up and stand on the shaky legs of a new way of being, but whatever practices we can then employ to keep our house firmly attached to its foundation become more of a priority.
I make time for Yoga, meditation, and walks outside because when I do, I feel less like I’m rushing through life with twigs in my teeth and wind between my ears and more able to dance with the unexpected with strength, resiliency, and grace.
It is, after all, a truth universally acknowledged that bad habits become easy to break when we choose to move in the direction of what feels good.
But what about our daydreams and fantasies? What happens when, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, we spend our monochromatic lives daydreaming of rainbows, get caught up in a cyclone of madness, and land in a Technicolor fantasy world, brighter and more vivid than anything we’ve seen yet?
What happens when our daydreams don’t necessarily foster worry and fear, but rather show us everything we could have wanted and more? Is there anything wrong with sitting at home on a black-and-white day and dreaming about a sunny, color-infused vacation? Or what about when I’m home alone, filled with champagne-like laughter, imagining the perfect evening with friends?
After all, in every hero’s quest there’s a moment when they get tired and just want to arrive at the treasure so they can head for home. Is it so wrong to picture myself having already arrived at the perfect job or house or relationship…? How else will the Universe know what to send me? How else will I ever get to come home to what I want? After all, I’m just moving in the direction of what feels good, right?
What our minds imagine to be good and what feels good often turn out to be worlds apart. Does it feel good to imagine a good version of yourself so perfect and beautiful (say, Glinda) that reality begins to pale in comparison… after all, if you’re only Glinda in your fantasies, then in reality you must be the opposite — perhaps Elmira Gulch, the Wicked Witch’s Kansas counterpart?
Or have you ever created and then believed in some outside savior who would be able to provide you with all the answers? How did it feel to finally celebrate finding your wizard, only to have the curtain of illusion ripped away to reveal nothing more than another imperfect human?
The truth is, whether we use our innate creativity to project a fearful world or a Technicolor one, we are overlaying our soul’s reality with something that doesn’t exist. And when we do that, it robs the present moment of the sweetness of its own opportunities. Ultimately we can’t walk more than one path at once, and we can’t have both the present moment and our projections. Do you choose Oz or Kansas?
And make no mistake… it is always a choice.
Even in the midst of her wonder, Dorothy’s heart knew that Oz was not home. But what would have happened if she had stayed in her fallen house? What if she had become like a tin-man herself, removing her heart to avoid its truth, and trying to live the seemingly easier life of a munchkin’s hero, instead of setting off down the yellow brick road?
What if she had let moving in the direction of good take her deeper into her mind’s fantasies and further from Kansas, her body’s truth, and ultimately the home of her heart?
When I indulge my daydreams, when I invest myself in seeing with the eyes of the mind, I become trapped. Whether jumping with both feet into fantasy or just dipping a toe in, the result is the same: part of me is on the yellow brick road, and part of me is walking some other path entirely which leaves me straddling a gulf filled with mistrust, dissatisfaction, fear, instability, and projections.
Life, which longs for my participation and exploration, goes hungry while Illusion grows fat off of my creative power, misdirected… and instead of moving towards what feels good, suddenly I’m just trying not to fall.
Like Dorothy, my dreams fill with characters that bear similarities to my loved ones from home, but are different in crucial ways which begin to cloud how I see them. Often I select only certain of their characteristics to highlight — cowardly, silly, cold, wicked, too-good-to-be-true, all powerful — all without any possibility for complexity and redemption.
Sometimes I even hurt the people I love by trying to force them to walk my home-bound journey rather than their own, mistakenly believing that I need them because they hold some part of me that got lost and has not yet been reclaimed.
And this is why the homecoming journey is filled with pitfalls and tricksters — to teach you the skills you need to know to steward and reclaim the treasure that is you. Some traps you instinctively know to avoid, others try your discernment and commitment a little more deviously.
To reach the Emerald City and discover you had the tools all along, you must choose to be present in the face of imagined joy, just as stubbornly and fiercely and lovingly as in the face of imagined fear.
So let’s awaken from the siren cages of our minds. Before tapping your heels together, come, sit, fold your ruby slippers underneath you, and get quiet. Watch your breath flowing. Invite your dream-yearning back home to your heart. There is always a little seed of truth hidden within a questing hunger:
A longing for connection.
A desire for more abundance.
A craving to know that we are enough.
A soul churning to create and express itself in the world…
…Invite it back in to your heart. It just wants to be seen and honored. Perhaps once back home in your heart, like a small sigh of relief, like a house settling deeper into its foundations, you see that these seeds do not need outside validation or specifics of people, places, or things to grow.
They are little bits of your own soul, little invitations from your heart, meant to be nurtured within the darkness of your fertile body so they can blossom and bear fruit and fill to overflowing your everyday life with more purpose and beauty than any fantasy your mind could create.
Now stand — stable, powerful, on your own two feet. You have been lost, but don’t fear or judge yourself — it was only to help you learn that there is no place like home.
Click: Trust that what your heart longs for in its childlike innocence and purity will always be met, because those longings want to come home to you too.
Click: Melt away your limiting beliefs so you see the ways in which you already have your heart’s desires… even if it’s only a little bit or doesn’t look like what you expect.
Click: Choose to be soul-honoringly real, even when it doesn’t always feel ‘good’.
…Welcome home, dear one. It’s not your absence making you fonder so much as your new depth of presence. So behold your life from the eyes of your heart, this everyday magic, and bless it with hugs and laughter and tears because it holds all we could ever truly need.
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Kate Powell, founder of Wild Sacred Journey, follows the voice of her soul, wherever it leads. At times it has led her on off-the-beaten path adventures. At other times it has gotten her lost in darkness and confusion, turning her own power against herself. Through beauty and pain, the sacred and the messy, she has journeyed around the world and come home to her own deep, sensitive heart. Kate still walks the road-less-traveled as a Yoga/meditation teacher, author/creator, and budding shaman/energy healer. Passionate about transformation and possibility, she is both the pilgrim and the pilgrimage — a compassionate mountain-presence for anyone with the courage to walk their own wild, sacred journey and come home to their own truth, trust, vulnerability, and playful, sacred love. Journey with her on Instagram or Facebook.
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