Dreaming Humanity's Path When Push Comes to Shove

Push has come  to shove, and we need all the information we can find, all the inspiration that finds a home in our heart, and all the encouragement to do what feels most authentic to our nature and what drives us to be the best we can be.

I love that the astoundingly impressive mensch, Senator Cory Booker, used the word “Hineini” in his epic speech last week and I am grateful that I noticed it. Hineini is Hebrew for “here I am” but more than that: it means “Here I am and I’m ready to serve; send me.” It’s famous for its use by Abraham willing to sacrifice his son, Moses at the burning bush, and the prophets Samuel and Isaiah, each standing up to be available to divine service.

And now we are being called to say “hineini” when and where we feel in our bones that we must put ourselves and our truth on the line. Last Saturday some millions of us stood up or marched with signs. Every day many of us call our Congresspeople, write letters, and put our strengths to work consciously in our personal and professional  lives to turn this ship around.

I believe strongly that this is a time when we cannot afford as individuals or as a society to waste our energy on efforts that don’t connect to our central force which both anchors us to the ground of our being and pulls us forward in ways that we each recognize as true for ourselves.

In 1981 I had what I later learned is called a “Big Dream.” As soon as I woke up, I knew it needed to be shared, and more, I was sure that others must be having similar dreams that pointed to a planetary awakening flowing through each of us. I felt that if I could collect these dreams we might see a map of sorts. I came up with a name for this project: “Dreaming Humanity’s Path.”

Over the next ten years and with no timeline, I reached out to as many people as I could find to tell them about my idea, to solicit dreams (I got several), and to broaden the project. Finally, Roberta Ossana, the publisher of a periodical called the Dream Network Journal, called me after having heard about the project. Roberta recognized the intention of this idea to collect Big Dreams and told me she’d been thinking of just such a project. As she wrote in her introduction of our project in Volume 11 issue #1 of Dream Network Journal, "Upon receiving her introductory packet, the goose bumps raised to a recognizable one inch level in every part of my being; I immediately called her to voice my excitement. There were so many similarities in our experiences; I, myself, had been profoundly influenced by dreams of a similar nature ... during the same period of time." As time went on I realized the project would be in better hands were Roberta to assume ownership of it, and I was delighted when she was willing to continue with the project without me. She was enthusiastic about it, I gave her my blessing to take the project, “Dreaming Humanity’s Path,” as her own, and the project grew through her publication.

(Note: If you do happen to click on the link to the journal entry, you may notice that my name then was Bobbie Bowden. I changed it to Leiah some years later; "Bobbie" felt too small for my burgeoning self.)

Here's my dream:

May, 1981

                Last night I had a wonderful dream. It started out with Lee (my husband) and me walking somewhere in a strange but comfortable-feeling neighborhood. John and David Amram and a whole lot of other people were there, too.

                All of a sudden there was a kind of an atmospheric blip. A brilliant light flipped the atmosphere faster than I could responsibly register, but it was tangible. There was  an unmistakable sense that Something had happened, and we all knew that the time of the New Age had come. There was a feeling of an immense, collective Presence: the great being for whom we had been waiting had arrived, and we were all ready to shift into gear. We formed spontaneous circles and danced in the streets   everyone was hugging and kissing and being so happy that at last it was here.

                Then it  seemed that people were moving in a certain direction, so Lee and I followed the direction, and found everybody clustered on and around the porches of a very bright, white, two family house. The house had three stories and lots of windows. The main porch on the first floor was enclosed with windows, all of them very clean, very clear. Everybody was gathering to be there and experience whatever it was. People were hanging off the porches, crouching on the ground, all looking intently at the small grassy plot in front of the house.

                When Lee and I got there, people welcomed and included us immediately by saying, "Look!" They scratched an area of the earth away with their fingers, and stretched out their hands to the earth, and made little in gathering movements with their hands. Soon green things began coming up out of the earth. First these green things were grass, and then they were little, pale green segmented worms with dry skin.  I scratched the earth, made the little in-gathering movements, and they grew in front of my eyes. Then a young woman with one arm (she had two arms but the one she used was this one) that had just a stump. The implication was that although her one-handed physical vehicle wasn't whole, her substance was complete enough to evoke this spontaneous growth. Then someone made the movements near my hand, and the green worms came out of the earth and also out of the palm of my hand. As they emerged from my skin, I felt a gentle tickling.

                I was aware that I wasn't alarmed by this strange event because my whole consciousness was open to learning the words and music to this new song which we all understood instinctively and certainly to be the Next Phase of our evolution. The growth of the little green things out of our very bodies felt like an elementary school lesson, showing us a dynamic that we understood was something we would be using in its more complex and varied forms as the new phase unfolded through us. We knew that this force was ready to be activated, and wherever it was evoked, it would perform, or come into being.

                Then we all went home, and while Lee and I were in the kitchen (Seth, our baby, was asleep in his room) we saw out of the window that on the miles and miles of plowed but fallow land outside (it was winter and so there were no crops growing) there were rows and rows of fertilizer appearing out of nowhere, and the appearance was moving down the rows really fast.  I stood at the kitchen window marveling at it, and said something about doing something with it after dinner. Lee hopped up and said, "What!? You think we're going to sit in here and have dinner? We have to get going!"

                All at once I knew he was right, and that what he meant was that this was a BIG EVENT that, if we treated it like anything else "normal," would pass us by, and we would not have done what we were supposed to do. It reminded me of those situations in which one is not allowed to be told the rules, and the test is whether or not the rules are known and followed automatically. I had almost closed the door by yielding to my old pattern and pretending that this new order - this miracle - would stand still and wait for me.

                I immediately dashed for the door, Lee alongside. We went out into our field, and seeds were put into our hands from above, a few at a time. We threw them onto the fertilized rows, and they arranged themselves in straight lines. Then I made the same evocative motions with my hands  that I had learned to do earlier, when everything first began to happen, and green plants came up and grew to maturity right there.

                I repeated that with three other rows, and the last row was a row of young men. I knew, as I was dreaming, that this particular manifestation was connected to my fascination with the warriors who sprang from the dragons' teeth which Jason the Argonaut had sown. The name that came into my head for these gentle warriors was David, which means love ( which I believed then, as I do now, is THE creative principle in the universe.) I thought maybe it was David, ( a friend of ours who had died several years before) but it felt wrong, so I gave the young men another identity, and that stuck. It was a whole row of handsome young clonish men, who were there to be helpers. After the rows were sown ( and matured instantaneously ) I went back into the house.

                The third phase of the dream was that later in the same day   or maybe it was the next day   I was in the urban center of a large, metropolitan city. People began to run in a certain direction. I knew the time had come for everyone to run   to get on with it, to leave the cities, where collapsing buildings would crush people, and where life was about to become unbearable imminently. I began running out of the city. I didn't have anything with me, not even my purse. No one else did either, but everybody seemed to understand that the lack of personal belongings and material identity was really trivial and would somehow be compensated. I was aware that Lee and Seth were back at the house, and that I was not going to be able to warn them. Through the nearby speaker of a huge public address system a man's quiet, authoritative voice announced simply, "It is time to run. Begin running at 6 o'clock."

                I looked at my watch, and it was 6:10, so I knew that I had better start. I didn't even feel really bad about going without Lee and Seth, although there was some concern. I knew that the time when everybody would be doing the things that they were supposed to be doing had come, and you just had to go from where you were.

                So I ran, and there were all these other people running, too. We were all dressed in whatever we had been wearing when the announcement was made: business suits, dresses, sweat suits, house-dresses; the whole mix of people who had heard and who were responding to the message. Soon we came to a series of obstacles   a metal, slippery bridge, a then a comfortable looking chaise lounge, in the middle of the road. It didn't occur to me to sit down, and I knew that it had been put there as a kind of test. As soon as I realized that, there were a whole bunch of chairs   but I kept on running, and there were fewer and fewer people running with me. Meanwhile, I was aware that Johnny Carson and other media people were all regarding this  running, this mass movement, as if it were really only one more in a series of inconsequential popular fads. But I knew that they were going to get zapped.

                I came to one of the fields that I had planted. The plants had taken the form of tomato plants. I grabbed a matured tomato on the run, thinking, "How handy. If Lee hadn't thought to do the planting immediately, I wouldn't have this tomato to eat."

                You could only take what you could grab on the run.  So I put it to my mouth, and I had the feeling that it was not really to be eaten, but that I should only hold it to my tongue and lips, to the things that I used most importantly   the things I use to speak with. I had the sense that in my own running, what I was using most importantly was my ability to speak, and so that was the only part of myself that I had to think about nourishing.  So the last scene had me running off into the setting sun with a tomato in my mouth.

I used this last vision to come up with a name that eventually became the name of my business: Lightspeak. Through Lightspeak I have run into my life speaking my nourishment, the light that I can feel and see flowing around and through me, and which I depict in as many ways, forms and idioms as I can find or invent.

I haven’t thought about that dream in a while, and this morning, during an inner journey, I found myself again being conscious of how I am moving through the world, carrying what I can most authentically that I can share, and it is this sense of light, of possibility, of hope and the necessity to look for what points to solutions rather than to dwell on problems. It is who I am and who I came here to be.

We are living in the shove and we may be tripping as we move forward but we are moving forward, and I firmly believe – I KNOW – that if each of us pays attention to what is true for us, what guides our steps most reliably, we will all travel together with the greatest strength possible.