It is simple, really. Intend to live the life your heart and Source desire, have faith that you are stronger than the world believes, then live that intention. Simple, really, but not so simple for many of us.
Intend your dreams, my friends.
The Dragonfly’s Student
“Row, row, row, your boat, gently down the stream,” the old childhood song played. “… merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”
In my schooldays, this song was a regular chorus round that tested each singer’s ability to stay in tune while singing just a step ahead of or behind, another singer. But, today, that last line made me stop.
“Life is but a dream?” What esoteric wisdom has been given to us as children? Reminds me of Billy Joel’s River of Dreams…
And I’ve been searching for something
Taken out of my soul
Something I would never lose
Something somebody stole
El Juglador got to thinking, too.
“Imagine a droplet of water living as one of a Great River meandering through a vast countryside,” he said. “Gently, the river moves over sandy banks, between rocky cliffs, over smooth river boulders, but always the droplets remain near each other, like a family, never knowing anything but together.
“I imagine that when the river meets a waterfall, just over the edge, the droplets separate, some falling faster than others, some being blown distant by a passing gust of wind. As they fall, the droplets, who have lost their sense of self after being part of something greater, suddenly experience a separation from the family, floating and falling alone, experiencing the exhilaration and possible fear of the fall until the crash at the bottom, where the drops land unscathed to flow again down the river with the family.”
I remember when he mentioned this before, his belief that life is like a river. This song brought up the memory once again, and we both drifted off in thought. He pulled out his flute. I opened my laptop.
What if we are each like a drop of water? After all, we are practically all water ourselves. What if, as the song says, this reality we imagine is really just a dream? That 9-to-5, only a routine. That search for the perfect mate, really only a search for the comfortable family of the river, where we were one of many, never alone, never rejected.
Sometimes, water remains united, as in a chunk of ice left over from the winter before. When the warm spring rains come, the ice thaws and weakens and, when it hits a boulder or the hull of a speeding boat, the ice breaks apart. The water droplets, however, are never far from each other. Cohesion draws water to water, even fighting forces of gravity and wind with just the simple force of desire, never separating too far from the mass of the familial comfort that is the River of Home. What if this life we’re living is the drops of water falling off the cliff?
We are never too far from the moment of cohesion, but, as we fall, we are separated. Although the distance is only the empty space and the rush of the fall, we can’t remember that meandering river where we originated or the peaceful Home where we know we are returning eventually. We have become so enmeshed in the reality of our waterfall experience that we forget what it’s like to be part of the family of the River.
That moment of separation is when we humans need the power of faith most, that belief in one, unifying force that reminds us of the meandering river we used to call Home. The belief in the one God of the Great River of life is our only common denominator, many times.
What if God is that for which we search? Maybe that’s the reason we seek out relationships, why we swarm to social media and water-cooler friendships at work? Maybe that’s the reason we feel alone as we crash down to the blaring music of the roar of the waterfall?
I wish that, in lieu of the incessant bombardment of sexual propaganda and racial separation we get in our society, we were, instead, constantly reminded of ourselves as just one part of a falling river looking for the way home. Frozen in fear as we fall, we build our own sense of separation. In this reality of superficiality, we judge with our eyes in a racism that goes beyond the dictionary definition and goes all ways … the black man who speaks from his education is judged by his peers as too white, the white man working two jobs to feed his family must lead a privileged life because of his race. The black woman who doesn’t react to a traumatic situation the way others think she should is considered a liar by YouTubers looking for a new conspiracy, regardless of the reality she lives in an increasingly dangerous America. A woman who was born a Fernández is not recognized as Hispanic because she writes and speaks like the English-language writer she always dreamed she would be as an American-raised Cuban. An Ojibwa Indian flute player is not received as a Native American flute player because his eyes are too blue and his skin too light.
What if this Great River on which we’re traveling is simply the Universe; this life falling into a clear, refreshing lagoon, simply a dream full of experiences. Along the way, the River’s path changes, sometimes smooth, other times becoming rapids. God forbid, it swirls into a whirlpool with a vicious undertow or even a steep drop, like Venezuela’s Angel Falls. In the end, we will rejoin our family and realize we are all one. Imagine what we will Know when we splash down together at the end of the long ride.
I hope our actions during this free-fall of our return into The Great River of the All That Is will not make us feel too much guilt.
Namaste, my friends. I am, ever-faithfully,
The Dragonfly’s Writer
Dear beloved students,
As I wrap up the semester at MDC, I look over the names of students who started out doing well and continued through to the end. I look over students who started out poorly and learned to improve their work in my class.
Then I see the others, the ones who let someone or something pull them from their focus on this class they believed they needed to make their dreams come true. I’m not saying ENC 1101 or ENC 1102 are necessary for those student to live their dreams. Far from it. What I’m seeing, though, is students who thought this is what they wanted but, some time during the semester, decided something else was more important. Sometimes it’s family issues, children, parents, grandparents … I’m not talking about that. Family issues are personal and nothing to be judged. What I’m concerned about is something else.
There’s the students with two or three jobs that won’t allow them to attend class or do their homework.
There’s the employers who schedule you despite the fact they know about your school schedule.
There’s the employers who beg for help because one coworker or another is slacking and you’re the only one who can help. Sure, that makes you feel good about yourself, like you’re appreciated, but, many times, it’s an employer ruse, a lie to keep you working loyally.
Let me tell you something I’ve learned over years of working in a variety of jobs: No one will give you the benefit of the doubt if you need a degree to attain that promotion. They will forget that they, themselves, (the employers) are the reason you do not have a degree.
You need to speak out for yourself.
I tell you this because you need to decide what is more important, a good education or a job you enjoy. If you enjoy your job and they don’t care if you have a degree, then accept your life and don’t feel bad about the choice you make. You will probably lead a very happy life.
If, however, your employer needs you to have a degree but refuses to work with you, then that contradicts their ultimate goal and you’ll get left by the side of the road when they decide on promotions and pink slips.
There used to be a time when employers prided themselves on creating a family in the workplace. They supported the employees and took care of them whenever they could in order to keep the work family happy. That rarely happens now.
I’m not trying to be preachy. I just don’t want you to be taken advantage of like it has happened to those I love time and time again.
Above all else, I want you to understand what you really want out of life, and, once you do, I want you to believe it can happen for you, because it can if you allow it. There’s a long life ahead of you, make it your own, follow your dreams, not someone else’s. And, like a good man once said, don’t let the assholes bring you down!
Much love, your teacher,
Prof. Locklin
Live your passion.
I received that message a few days ago. The message didn’t come from my Dragonfly Teacher or from El Juglador. Rather, it came from something deep within me, something that came from a higher source.
I know I haven’t revealed this much about myself here because, really, I don’t think it’s that big a deal. I think anyone and everyone has the ability to connect with and talk to beings from what we deem “The Other Side.”
A year and a half ago, as my journey into this was beginning, my guides had me construct a covered bridge between this reality and the next into my meditation space. <https://thedragonflysstudent.com/2013/12/28/a-little-piece-of-heaven/#more-651>
The reason for the bridge, they said, was to illustrate how the magic-trick for so long reserved to psychics can be universal. On that bridge, I met, among others, my grandparents, my Beloved, and the angels who urged me to fly cross country to visit a Facebook friend. (*I say they in reference to the beings I feel are my guide, but, in truth, the guides are one, yet all. They are me, yet God. It just makes it easier to accept if I claim multiple versus the Creator, which makes me feel heretical!)
Now back to the recent message that opened my eyes.
The question that preceded that answer was thrown out in frustration – In this whole mixed-up world of haves, have-nots, and the searching, how can normal people learn to survive well?
The answer was quick, and repetitive. I got it half a dozen times that night, then more the next day as I was doing some random reading on the Internet. I was researching the Hopi End Times prophecy, which I find fascinating, (more on that some other time.) Here’s the web site where the reference originates: <http://www.v-j-enterprises.com/hopigrey.html>
In fact, your medicine is your passion. (If) Your medicine always makes you feel high while dancing, then dancing is your medicine. If you feel high while cooking, then cooking is your medicine. Your medicine will always help to cure that which ails you.
Your medicine will always give you the power to rise up and continue. (This medicine is of the spirit) Your medicine is also that which you do. Your conduct in the Land of Living Things, what you do is your signature in life and it is your medicine. How your treat others and how you react to the world is your medicine. (http://www.v-j-enterprises.com/hopigrey.html)
The most brutal truth in that paper is simple – that which is your power could be another’s poison.
What does that mean to you and me, you ask?
Simple. Let’s go back to high school, for a second. You’re a senior, suffering from a fatal case of Senioritis, when your parents sit you down and ask you what you want to do with your life. It’s time to decide about college. Your dreams, however, aren’t realistic, they say. There aren’t many jobs available for Video Game Designers or Rock Stars. Instead, they suggest law degree or a civil engineer. Yes, some people want to be lawyers or civil engineers, but others want to be bakers or candle-stick makers instead of being stuck in a high-rise cubicle.
For me, it was easy, I loved writing, but I wanted to study music and be a famous singer. I auditioned and was accepted into the University of Miami Music program, and then my mom’s cousin pulled me aside (at the request of my grandfather, I think.)
I’m paraphrasing here, because my memory is hazy on the specifics, but “What careers are there for musicians who don’t make it?” he asked.
I fought and stood up for my dreams and my choices. I mean, really, this was my life, who was he to make me second-guess my dreams?
But some time that summer I caved and switched my major to a nice, respectable journalism degree. (Hah! That certainly got me far before the degradation of the 4th Estate of journalism launched me into my second career as a teacher.)
Here’s where this “Live your passion” philosophy comes into play for me.
If we are truly living our passion, doing what we’ve always wanted to do, we won’t care how much money we make or where we live, because our joy is in ourselves and our daily existence.
It took me 30 years to finally come to terms with that.
Now, I’m a writer who makes no money from my writing while former classmates of mine rake in awards and publishing deals. But I am ecstatic. My writing is beholding to no one and my life is completely in my own hands.
I’m finally living my passion.
I ask you all to take a deep look at your lives and see where your own passion lies. Then, love yourself enough to research how you can make it your own reality.
Good luck, my friends.
The Dragonfly’s Student
Today’s blog is like a journal. Please forgive my personal musings…
I rarely remember my dreams. It used to bother me. I have friends who remember such amazing details from their dreams that it’s like they’re living a movie. They even have dreams about me. One friend dreamed that I couldn’t remember my dreams because I was “like the dead” … as if I was fully there in the afterlife in my sleep.
In fact, I’ve had a feeling for a very long time that I don’t remember my dreams because I’m working.
Another friend had a dream where real angels, like those with wings, visited him and told him that what I was doing (the road trip) was okay and was part of the plan. We would be protected and the angels agree with my plans.
The last dream I remember having was shortly before I left for my road trip this summer. I was the granddaughter of a property owner. When a prince visited, my grandfather allowed me to go with the prince on a search around the outskirts of our property to search for something precious that would be in a box.
I carry that dream with me still. That search around the outskirts of our property, I believe, is my road trip that began this summer. The prince in the dream is El Juglador, who has become my new teacher. Maybe my Dragonfly Teacher was the grandfather in that dream, because the dragonfly led me to my new teacher.
That’s it. That’s the last dream I remember. It doesn’t bother me anymore, though. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I still try to remember my dreams, but I’m satisfied with the feelings I wake up with. If I went to bed worried about something and wake instead feeling safe and secure about it, I take it as a message from my higher self.
I’m okay with it because I feel more connected to my Spirit friends than I ever have before. I don’t need to be asleep to hear them.
What I need you, my readers, to understand is this – you, too, are connected to that other dimension. Maybe it’s through your dreams. Write them down. Maybe it’s through that nagging voice in your head that tells you to talk to your former best friend. You should. Maybe it’s through the music that seems to be talking to you. It is.
We are all looking for that something that seems to be missing in our lives. Sometimes, we wish we could talk to our friends and family who have crossed the veil and are no longer living on the same 3D Earth where we live. We can.
Think of it like that old Verizon cell phone commercial – “Can you hear me now?” See, the thing is, they CAN hear us. We’re the ones with the lousy reception.
I got a new tattoo before I left on my road trip. It was designed by a former student who listened to what I wanted. It’s a bracelet on my right wrist. On the top of my wrist, an infinity symbol with a red rose sitting on top of it. On the underside, a pair of angel wings.
It is my mantra – I am ephemeral (like a rose), I am eternal (infinity), I am divine (angel wings.)
I tell you because I firmly believe we are all divine. Our home is that world where our essence is light. Most of us, however, are so stuck in this matrix of our human existence that we can’t see the glory of our being.
Close you eyes and imagine, for once at least, yourself as a being of light. Feel the love of the universe in your heart. Then accept it.
We are light beings living a human existence. Make your life truly divine.
Much love to you, my friends.
The Dragonfly’s Student
When I woke that morning, all the signs pointed to one lesson — I don’t belong. From the song playing on the alarm clock, to the angry neighbor who growled at me for stepping into the hallway.
I ignored the signs as just my overactive imagination and went to class.
When the Dragonfly buzzed into the classroom, he hovered over each student until flying over the stage at the front of the room and transforming. The iridescent purple and blue of his dragonfly form carried over into the costume he wears today which, miraculously enough, isn’t that unusual. He’s wearing blue flannel pajamas and a purple nightcap.
“We have different experiences in sleep, don’t we?” he said, touching a finger to his cheek in a strangely curious manner.
He glances around the classroom and nods toward one particular student near the far corner of the room. The student, a new kid many of us have never seen before, seems to be in a world of his own.
Teacher calls us around him and we approach the sleeping student. The kid, his round head resting in some kind of pretzel position on the rolled-up backpack on his desk, is breathing deep, regular breaths that would make any insomniac jealous.
“Do you think he’s dreaming?” Teacher asks.
I shrug, as do many others. Irreverent Ivan is more vocal. “Don’t all people dream?” he says, not caring if his voice wakes the sleeping student.
“You would think, wouldn’t you?” Teacher says. “We all are, after all, working or learning after we nod off to sleep.”
He steps away from the kid and signals us to return to our seats. “Let’s let him continue his studies.”
But as we walk back, the room transforms into some kind of barracks with row upon row of single beds.
“What, dear students, do you do when you sleep?” He grabs a pillow and sits, legs crossed, at the end of a bed that has been placed on his stage. His bed, however, is not a military-style single. The mattress he sits on is thick and it’s sitting on top of 20 others so that he towers over us.
“You’ve heard the story of the Princess and the Pea, right? If the girl sleeping on the mattress piled one on top of the other could feel the small pea placed under the stack, then she was a real princess.” He rolls his head and steps off his bed, landing, without a sound, at the foot of his bed.
He reaches under the head of his mattress and pulls out a pea. “I mean, really. This is so annoying.”
He flicks the pea across the room and it bounces off the sleeping student’s nose, waking him. “Good morning, sleepy head. How was school?” Teacher’s voice is as sweet as a kindly grandmother’s.
“What?” the dazed kid wipes drool from his chin and glances around at all of us watching him.
“How was school?” Teacher asks again. “Did you have dreams? Were they vivid and lifelike or more like something out of a Manga fairy tale?”
“I’m sorry, sir,” the kid, still dazed, shrugs. “I won’t do it again.”
“Oh, my boy, what you don’t understand is that you are the lesson today.
Some of us snicker, assuming Teacher is playing a joke on him, but he’s not.
“Did you have dreams?” he asks again.
“Um,” the kid runs a hand through his matted red hair. “Yeah, I guess.” He pauses, but when Teacher refuses to interrupt, he takes the hint. “I was at a football game. I was an Offensive Lineman, you know, the guys who protect the quarterback. But I was naked.” He shrugs, an embarrassed smirk on his face.
Teacher pops next to him, in a new costume. He’s wearing a purple wool business suit. In his lips, he holds a purple pipe that is emanating a trail of smoke the same color as the pipe. “And then we woke you up?”
“Yes sir.”
Teacher changes again. Now he’s dressed in blue army fatigues. In place of the pipe, a purple cigar. “At ease, soldier.”
He marches across the bunks in the classroom-turned-barracks.
“Do you all dream?” He barks the question.
Many respond in the manner they believe is appropriate, “Sir, yes sir!” But I can’t, so I don’t.
“Writer! Your response?”
I shrug because, really, I didn’t sign up to be a soldier. “Sir, I barely dream.”
Then Teacher-turned-army-sergeant laughs. He waves his arms and the room in transformed once more into the classroom we know and love.
“Of course, you don’t, my dear. That’s because you remember the lessons.”
He walks up the steps to his stage and turns to the class again. “When you sleep, you return to us in that world on the other side of the veil. You visit and you learn and, if you think you won’t be able to remember, you progam a dream into your memory.”
He turned to the board that has become an old-fashioned black chalkboard. White chalk in hand, he proceeds to write our homework assignment with a flourish, complete with a cliché squeak of the chalk:
My arm inadvertently shoots into the air, but he ignores it. I wave it harder. Finally, he turns.
“Yes writer, even you.”
“But I don’t dream,” I say, my voice barely audible. I’ve always felt abnormal because of my lack of dreams, now I’m feeling even more so.
As my classmates start their dream journals with lessons they remember from the night before, Teacher skips down the steps toward me.
“My dear, I know you don’t dream, but there are other signs. There are feelings and synchronicities set in place to remind you of the lessons from your Night Walks. Have you noticed any of those today?”
And then I remember.
“Teacher, why don’t I belong?”
“That is a question for you to answer yourself, my dear. Only you can answer that question.”
Until next class, my friends, I remain, faithfully,
The Dragonfly’s Student
