Dreams have many functions and one of them, like meditation, is to help us become more aware. Last Sunday I participated in a daylong silent retreat  led by good friends and excellent facilitators, Kay and Philip Davidson. I will be reflecting on many aspects of that retreat for some time to come, but I experienced the first gentle nudging during an initial period of silence when we were asked to allow our intention for this retreat to come forward. After consciously running some possibilities through my mind, I was able to acknowledge them and let them go and to simply sit with attention.  It was then that I knew, from a source deeper than thought, that I was here to become better acquainted with  nonresistance and noninsistence.

      I was familiar with the idea that we accentuate our pain and cause ourselves and others suffering by resisting the way things are at a particular moment. It’s as though we come out swinging or hurriedly draw back before we even know what we are fighting or fleeing. We just know we don’t like it, whatever it is, and we refuse to accept it. By not resisting, we can see more clearly what is both before us and within us and choose from a variety of possible responses. Nonresistance increases our freedom.

     What was new to me was this concept of noninsistence. As I reflect, I realize that just as I can resist what is, I can also insist that what is be exactly like I want it to be. With resistance I am caught up in what I don’t want and with insistence, I am caught up in what I do want. Both reactions cause pain and limit freedom because neither allows for what is.

     Then, to drive the point home, came last night’s dream.  I dreamed that I was in a small, rectangular, windowless room about the size of a changing room. A  bench ran lengthwise  down one of the room’s sides. In the room with me was a man  and a woman I knew to be the mother of a female acquaintance.  It seems she had had cancer. Her dress was made of a gently flowing, russet colored,  diaphanous material of uneven length  and reached just below her knees. It reminded me of  a wood nymph’s clothes. As the man and I watched she danced in this very confined space, somehow creating the sense that it was spacious. The space did not limit her movement or her capacity to express herself in any way. When she finished she said we could learn to dance like this too and she would give us the name of someone in our area who could teach us. I told her I wanted to learn from her. With a soft smile, she shook her head. I persisted, asking if she would be willing to come and teach a whole group of us. I woke up with the sense that she had again said “no”  and I was very disappointed.

     I know this dream is an important one and I will come back to it again, but for now what stands out for me is that I am in a place of change and I am being shown that it is possible to dance even when the space seems extraordinarily limited. I also think I’m being nudged to look at the way I can insist that things be exactly as I want them to be and, when they’re not, to be disappointed even though I am presented with a real opportunity to learn.