Soul Treasures

I’ve always had a cherished relationship with my dreams. I’ve never passed dreams off as the meaningless result of something I ate before I went to bed, or some remnant of a movie watched recently. My dreams to me are pathways into my own soul. To discount their messages would be to close the door on something critical to my own evolution.

I have a favorite type of dream, a theme I’ve had since I was very small. Perhaps they’re familiar to you too. The premise is, after living in the same house forever and ever, you suddenly find a secret room. Maybe hidden behind the piano. Or the bookshelf you’ve inexplicably chosen to dust behind in this particular dream. You find a door. A dark hallway. Or just a gaping hole leading straight into the secret soul of the house. Stepping inside, trepidatious, heart pounding, you find a room the size of a football field or much bigger, with an oriental carpet adorning the endless floor. Or maybe you find rock formations with an underground spring, trickling and dancing down the walls, with grass under your feet and animals you’ve never seen before.

In my last hidden-room dream I found a canvas my long-deceased mother had painted. I’d never seen it before. As best I could tell, it was of a New Mexico adobe home, with Mayan peoples kneeling in front of it, sun rays cascading down upon them from above and behind the house. The painting itself was so bright, I could not  look upon it fully. It hurt my eyes. Like gazing at the sun itself, the rays burst forth from the colors, blinding me. And like a person dying of thirst, I drank them up, my spirit overflowing. I put the painting to my chest, protecting my eyes from the strain, and said, “Thank you.”

These dreams are such gifts. I never knew their meaning, never worked to find out, until recently. I just accepted them with gratitude, waking up feeling full and alive and purely grateful for life itself. But a couple of years ago, as is usually the case with gifts like these, their meaning found me. Ordering a book online, Amazon suggested I buy another “similar” book called The Red Book by Carl Jung. Carl Jung being one of my favorite people in history, I of course read the description of the book. Within it, I found this:

“A not uncommon dream is of stumbling upon a previously unknown addition or wing of one’s dwelling, which is found to be many, many times the size of the existing structure, and to contain objects and treasures of previously unimaginable value, interest and numinousity. One is filled with awe and wonder at the new found wealth and possibilities. The response is that God is neither dead nor to be found in outer religious, national or political containers, but is to be discovered and struggled with in the living of each individual life.” Jung said, God was right there inside of us, all along. Pretty beautiful.

To me the dreams ask me to check in with my own soul. Reconnect. With the pace of our daily lives, the list of our daily obligations, we forget about this hidden room inside of us, larger than anything we can imagine within our day-to-day lives. Within it lies hidden treasure: our power, our purpose, our passion– waiting to be discovered and claimed.

There’s nothing greater.