Clink, Clink, Clink

That first clink was the sound of 5 cents worth of emotional riches hitting the bottom of my empty heart well and evaporating on the day I wrote that prayer.

If you heard that sound more than once, it was simply the sound of a single drop falling, echoing through empty space, down through the passages of time and into this present moment as a reminder of the deficit, of the emptiness, that turned the sound of one drop falling into an endless reverberation.

This is one of the many things complex trauma does. It creates profound emotional emptiness and a seemingly endless reverberation of its patterns and habits; a multiplication of its impact.

Complex Trauma

Something pervasive that disturbs the context of our lives consistently and persistently such that we never achieve the proper foundation for thriving.

∞ Rebecka Eggers

Complex trauma robs us of the nourishment and guidance that forms the rich, fertile earth from which potential blossoms. It blocks the rays of the sun that would otherwise coax Destiny from its hiding place.

Complex trauma disguises and diverts the many life affirming deposits of love and nurturing that would otherwise be made between our physical birth and the much later, much more urgent, arrival of our yearning to extrude (to press through) that which we have never tasted:

the rich, honeyed milk of life
that tempts dream seeds to sprout
and to flourish.

Some people get their first taste of this Sweet Milk suckling at their mother's breast, listening to her heartbeat, knowing it beats for them. You might call it the milk of human kindness.

Just as a woman will stop ovulating without proper nutrition, without this wholesome ambrosia, we will never release the treasure buried in the destiny kernels we hold within us.

And so it was for me on the day I wrote that prayer.

I could feel the seeds of my potential practically bursting at the seams, but never quite achieving the shear force and mass necessary to break loose. I was stuck in a perpetual state of expansion and contraction. The expansion always took me to the point of almost. Then the contraction immediately followed. It lead me right back to the shrinking point of near oblivion.

But on the day I wrote that prayer, something new was definitely afoot.

A couple of years before I wrote it, I had a vision that I would be a midwife to other people's dreams.

My potential spoke!

To me!

That vision became a passionate, vivid, irresistible temptation. It brought me face to face with the juicy, ripe, red, forbidden promise of my Destiny, not a seed pod after all, but a full blown apple tree.

Destiny, that wily temptress, seduced me with the sensual energy of dreams moving through my hands. She promised me that someday I would be the dream catcher. Destiny urged me to just reach up and pull down the fruit of my passion.

God how I wanted to snatch the fruit from that tree.

The vision of my potential future tortured me with bittersweet yearning day after day, after night, after night. It was like a thorn planted in the core of my heart doing summersaults in the soft, confining flesh. But I could no more reach up and take the fruit than I could fly.

My legs were bound, held fast by phantom restraints. At the time I didn’t even know what they were. I just knew that those ghost chains held tight against my struggle. They burned me. This was not the violent, bottom-brush, cleansing wildfire that makes room for new growth. The burn I felt was the slow burn of coals applied like leeches. They could do nothing but weaken me and sap my spirit.

Those chains were the outer limits on my expansion. They were the genesis of my epic frustration, the author of my distraction run amuck.

It seemed that this would go on forever.

And yet, in the exact moment when the dream spoke, a tiny crack opened up in the cover over that empty well in my heart and, on the day I wrote that prayer, one tiny drop of honey-kissed, sweet milk finally seeped through. It wasn't enough to evoke the potential in the seeds. Instead it was like a drop of water hitting the parched lips of a woman lost and near death in the desert. It sparked hope. It made me curious. It called me to move.

Eventually I listened.

About a year later, I set up my altar. I cut every single cord with every last thing that was inconsistent with the realization of my dream. I asked for the resources to become the woman I had been, for one instant, in my vision.

In a split second, those villainous manacles broke loose and there I stood with my beloved fruit in hand. Only it wasn’t an apple at all. Like my yearning, it was a bittersweet fruit, and when I tasted it, the flavor unleashed every demon hiding in the gristle and torn flesh of my heart wounds.

On the other side of the apple orchard was a vast wilderness of shifting shadows. With death as my constant companion, I entered that dark, untamed place and I began walking my dream path, my Passion Path, one plodding step at a time.

At that moment, I didn't know it, but when my scissors sliced through the ritual cords, they also sliced through the very fabric of my soul. It took MANY more years for the vacuum pressure created by that hole to eventually pull through the white hot ambrosia from the far reaches of my consciousness, and with it the cleansing, inseminating wildfire hidden within those old, life-leaching coals.

In the fall of 2016, more than five years after I launched The Passion Path® and nearly seven years after I wrote the prayer, I had a dream (the kind you get when sleeping).

In the dream, a voice spoke to me very clearly. She said,

You have been serving the skim milk for so long, no one around you even has a taste for the flavor of the real milk.

I had all but forgotten my prayer!

That day I began the work to bring to you The Sweet Milk, which eventually became, Dream Alchemy, The Revelation Story™, a complete dream realization adventure that will take you through:

• the re-collection of self in the form of soul retrieval (working directly with your trauma);
• the destruction of the habits and ways of being instilled and installed in you by trauma;
• becoming the solution for someone else; and finally
• out into the world AS your dream walking and broadcasting the dream signal clear as a bell.

And speaking of dream fulfillment...

People think dreams are supposed to just come true.

But that is not what dreams are for. Dreams are the emissaries of Divinity. They belong to our wholeness. They are the voice of hope calling to us, encouraging us as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death and through the deep dark forest of our healing.

Dreams are the hands that steady us in the wild gyrations of spirit set off by the cleansing wildfire. Ultimately, they are the ripe, red apples dangling seductively from our life tree...

...and the sweet fruit that finally falls when the medicine in the bitter rinds has done all it can.

For this reason, if I could wave a magic wand and hand you your dreams, I would not.

Dreams are the blazing fire of Divinity calling us home to ourselves.

We are called to bear the mark of LOVE on the inside (the first drop) and then to reveal it in the visible marks of our characters honed step by step in pursuit of Destiny.

Character

We are meant to share this mark of LOVE, to multiply it, as we become the solution for someone else by telling of our dream stories and by broadcasting the dream's signal to those for whom it was born.

This is the joy and the hope of spilling over: We become the Sweet Milk, pouring ourselves out as the nourishing milk and honey of human kindness. In the process, we are nourished, as the power of the dream realized pulls through heaping buckets full of riches.

This is, in fact, a tall order, perhaps the tallest.

Dreams, therefore, call us to the place of sacrifice. But if we were to give all the material wealth in our storehouses, our dreams would only call it scorn.

Destiny will not settle for less than the full surrender of everything we think we are for everything Passion knows we can be.

And in turn, we must never settle for less than the full return on our investment of self!