Wisdom speaks to us, when we can listen deeply. Sometimes it comes through a dream.Here is a story about a friend who works in a public school kitchen making meals for young children. She works side by side with women who tell her their stories. Often she listens to tales of hardship and suffering.
I had been thinking about prayer, about stillness. How, in everyday life, we need the power that comes from finding this quality.O Beloved, how do you wish me to be? What is the attitude needed, at this moment?
I had a dream about how women can help life. I struggled with this dream, because on a deep level I could feel it, but my mind couldn’t understand it. It was too much of a stretch for my mind.
One woman shared with me, “As a mother, sometimes I am able to touch that point of deep prayer that holds us in its love, and sometimes I still worry deeply and get caught off guard. ”
I heard in a dream these words: Enter. Behold. I am above. I am below. It touched me deeply. When I silently repeated it over the next few days and weeks, I could feel its sacred quality. I now look back at the timing of this dream and I feel it fresh and alive.
In prayer I asked to understand anxiety. What was it that flowed through me in the middle of the night? What was it trying to show me? Was it just a personal anxiety or connected to something larger? It was uncomfortable. But I knew - I remembered - how anxiety can cut us off from the healing that comes from the Sacred source. How it can cover over our connection to grace.
I had a dream one night when I had lost hope about a situation in my life. This was a few years ago during a time of loss. It was a little dream, but it had great meaning.Here is the dream:I was given a bottle of cologne. Written in calligraphy on the bottle is the name of the cologne – A Quiet Faith. It is in an elegant style that reminds me of devotional Arabic prayers.
One night I had just finished reading a book about the earth. I felt such love and compassion as I had never felt before, and I prayed with all my heart for the earth's healing.
Today a woman spoke about angels. Her partner had been injured and now she is living in a shelter, trying to care for him in a San Francisco hospital.
"I can see as clear as daylight that the hour is coming when women will lead humanity to a higher evolution." This is how the 20th century Sufi mystic, Inayat Khan, saw the role of women in our time.