Change of frame

Once upon a time, about twelve years ago, I bought new and rather edgy eyewear, quite different from the more-or-less transparent frames I had been wearing. I stepped out, expecting comments from people who knew me well.

“I love your jacket!” several people said, while others asked if I’d changed my hairstyle, and almost everyone generally commented that I was looking really well. I’d been wearing that jacket all winter, and hadn’t changed my hairstyle. Not one person mentioned my new glasses.

I wondered if people were being polite, covering their surprise with a compliment that deflected from my frames, but no, when I pointed out that I had new spectacles, I could see from their responses that they hadn’t noticed. What the change of frame had done for my friends was to highlight my jacket, my hair, and my skin tone. What the associated change of lenses had done for me was to help me see more clearly.

When you work with your dreams you discover the unconscious mental, emotional, and spiritual frames and lenses through which you see and respond to life.

You may then decide to apply dream alchemy techniques to change that unconscious frame (to reframe, to shift perspective) and upgrade those unconscious lenses (to gain more clarity). The overall effect, if you’ve chosen wisely, will be a more positive and meaningful life experience on every level, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. The old life – like the old jacket and the old hairstyle – will look quite different, glowing, healthy, revitalised.

This all came to mind this week because I had my eyes tested and needed a new prescription, and since I’ve been wearing the same frames for several years, it really was time for a change. I loved those frames! It was hard to let go! But any day from now, when the new ones are ready, people may notice my jacket, my hair, my health, or maybe, even my new eyewear.

There’s an even bigger change of frame coming up for me this year, since we have decided to move from subtropical Brisbane, where I have lived for 23 years, to temperate Hobart. For those of you unfamiliar with Australia, this country is a very big continent spanning every climate from tropical to temperate. Hobart is the capital city of Tasmania, an island state off the southern coast of the continent, the next stop being the Antarctic. I have loved living in Brisbane, but we’re over hot and humid summers and craving cooler weather, amongst the many other enticing blessings Tasmania offers.

We chose November for the move for logistical reasons, but when I was reminiscing about eyewear and glasses, I remembered writing about my first pair of spectacles and a childhood recurring dream, so I looked up the article. It turns out that I wrote it for the very first issue of the original incarnation of my newsletter, Dream Sight News, twenty years ago, in November 1998. It seems appropriate to include it here.

I was intrigued by the team of white-coated people who arrived at our Infant School one week, calling on each class in turn to line up outside the Head’s Office and read letters from a chart propped against the wall. Special children came away with envelopes addressed to their parents. I was five years old, and I hoped I would be special enough to take home one of the envelopes. As the days passed I heard that the visitors had come to test our eyesight and that the letters were for those singled out to wear glasses. My wish escalated: Oh, wouldn’t I be really special if Mum and Dad had to take me to choose glasses! I guess I must have wished pretty hard for a five year old, because by the time I got to the front of the line I couldn’t see the big letter at the top of the chart and I’ve worn glasses or contact lenses ever since.

It was a revelation to me a few weeks after taking home the precious envelope to discover that houses were made of bricks all the way up to their roofs, rather than being brick near the ground and then a kind of reddish smudge the rest of the way up. Trees grew leaves to replace the green clouds that had floated around them, and the night sky was neatly scattered with precise pin-point designs instead of huge, glaring, intermingling white blurs.

I wonder if it was then that my dreams opened stunning new vistas – worlds beyond worlds and worlds within worlds? My previous childhood dreams of being threatened by wolves or finding myself waist deep in snake pits gave way to a recurring dream of mirrored lakes which, if I laid on the ground and looked sideways in a special way, revealed their hidden depths teeming with tropical fish. In those dreams I used to plead with everyone to look at the water in my special way, to take my sideways look at the magnificence that thrived below the surface of an English lake where the presence of tropical fish, to the uninitiated, was merely a ridiculous fantasy. No-one ever looked.

Now I can see, with or without the aid of my glasses, that in the same moment that I was a child needing to feel special and loved for who I was beyond the surface, I needed to learn that the world did indeed have depth of meaning. My short sight became a blessing enabling me to experience a different view, to see different perspectives and to have faith that what may seem confusing one day can leap into clear focus the next. Through short sight I learned INsight – I learned to see within.

There are people, places, and things about Brisbane that I will miss, and some letting go to be done. When I was in the eyewear shop looking for new frames, I noticed a current trend for a certain style that I wore when I was about ten, and then again, when I was in my mid-thirties. The third revival has come around, but I’m not going there. All the styles and trends I’ve worn throughout the years flash before my eyes, as do memories, perspectives, and lessons learned as we sort through our garage letting go of so much stuff to lighten our load for the move. A mirror of dream work really.

 

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