What’s your calling? When did you first realise it? Or are you still listening, or waiting for all your stars to align and open the way?
Earlier this month I dreamed I was standing on a hilltop, looking down at a stunningly beautiful peninsula, all golden and glowing. Furthest away, at the tip, was the beginning of time, and the whole evolution of life played out between there and where I stood in present day.
On waking I remembered a caller to a radio show, many years ago, who was excited to tell me about a dream in which he found a fossil from the beginning of time. It was 56,000,000,000 years old. “Are you 56?” I asked him. “I am! Why? How did you know that?” he replied.
Whatever your beliefs about time, reincarnation, and continuity of your spirit after death, ‘the beginning of time’ as referenced in dreams is usually symbolic, and more often than not represents the beginning of the dreamer’s life, or the beginning of a significant slice of time, or slice of life. Why was my life, last month, laid before me as a glowing peninsula?
The day after my dream, a friend posted a question to my Goodreads page: “When did you first realise that writing was your calling?” I was stunned, perhaps in much the same way as my dream peninsula had been stunning.
My writing, a calling? The question didn’t compute. I have always thought of my dream work as my calling.
I sat back and reflected. I have written six paperbacks and six ebooks (in addition to the six ebook versions of the paperbacks), and have been avidly writing this blog since 2009. Most of the writing has been about dreams, but not all.
Some slow part of my brain started to awaken and stretch. A lifetime of writing memories emerged, some quite dramatic, like turning down two good publishing offers – one in my very early twenties, one in my early thirties. I can hardly believe, remembering this now, that I did that.
The first one was from an esteemed academic press that was interested in some research I had done. That scared me. I lacked the confidence. Who was I to write a book?
The second one was through a literary agent who saw the opportunity to partner an idea I had for a book with a commercial sponsorship venture. “Could you handle being a millionaire?” he asked. He spooked me. I wasn’t sure I could trust him. But rather than investigate, I said no and withdrew. His proposal was a good one. It might have worked, but I didn’t stay around to find out.
Maybe my intuition was sharp in both cases. Maybe it wasn’t. I wish I knew what I know now about dreams. Real, practical help would have been laid at my feet in my dreams at those times. I would have been able to read and understand my unconscious fears and beliefs, and make clear informed decisions based on a deeper knowledge of myself.
Is writing my calling?
Is writing my calling?
A torrent of other writing memories surfaced, quite magical now that I look back, but those are stories for another day. Oh, perhaps just one: At age 10 or 11, my school teacher, Miss Long, caught me writing a story on a piece of paper on my lap under the desk instead of paying attention to her lesson. Instead of the punishment I expected, she suggested I write a monthly magazine. (You might think that was punishment. I saw only opportunity, something exciting to create and do.) I decided on the name ‘Allsorts Magazine’, got my classmates involved in writing articles, and then laboriously handwrote, stapled, drew, and glued the one copy each month that was handed around the class after the school headmaster had first look. There must have been ten or twelve issues, a year’s worth of Allsorts, all done in my spare time at home as I still had to pay attention to Miss Long’s lessons while at school.
Having turned down two book publishing opportunities, you’d think the universe would have taken the huff and decided to call on someone else to be a published writer, someone who would get excited, take the challenge to make a difference, say yes.
Do missed opportunities call again, and again, if it’s in your karma?
Sleep On It, first pub 1994
My first publishing contract for my first dream book, Sleep On It (published by HarperCollins in 1994), was a gift from the heavens. Doors opened, it just happened. My part was to simply state, spontaneously and much to my surprise, during an ABC radio show where I was interpreting callers’ dreams, that I was researching to write a book about dreams. I invited people to come forward to take part in my research surveys. They did, and so did a journalist who was listening and who contacted me to suggest I talk to his literary agent. I signed the book contract with HarperCollins a few weeks after that radio show.
Was my calling so strong that it knocked three times? And why was I so confident, the third time? Was it because I now understood my dreams, and could see the path more clearly? Or was it because I felt my calling was dream work, and writing was not so much a calling as an avenue to share the dream work on a large scale?
So let’s return to my dream of last month, the dream of the golden peninsula.
Did you notice the play on words my dreaming mind came up with? There’s pen and insular in peninsula. I started writing stories and articles, with a pen, before the age of computers, and much of my writing has been a solo, insular journey for me. On some level, in my dream, I was reviewing, from a hilltop, my evolution as a writer. I suspect I still have a very long way to go, but at least I can now acknowledge and appreciate the body of work I have created so far, and decide where I’d like to take it from here.
If you’ve been following my dream work, you’ll know that our dreams are the result of our brains and minds processing the last 1-2 days of our conscious and unconscious experiences, and comparing these with our entire mindset, the mindset we have each been building since the ‘beginning of time’, since our birth. So how does my golden peninsula dream relate to the couple of days beforehand?
I had spent a day setting up my author’s community page on Goodreads. Some lovely readers had posted some of my books to Goodreads over the years, and I was advised to upload the rest, bring myself into the reading community, and invite everyone in to play, rate my books, write reviews, ask me questions, compare notes on other books we’re all reading, and so on. In a few focussed hours all editions of my books and ebooks flashed before my eyes as I uploaded them and moved them around on the screen. Consciously I acknowledged the number of books I’ve written and the decades of effort behind all of that. Unconsciously I awoke memories of a lifetime (so far) of writing, of opportunities magically presented, opportunities lost or let go only to return in a new form.
Your calling, like mine, is to make a positive difference in the world. Surely this is everyone’s calling? And the best place to start is within the self. Listen to the nightly calling of your dreams, calling you home to know yourself so deeply that you discover how to work your magic in the world.
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