One of the questions I am asked the most is “What is dreaming?”
This week I saw the movie Oz the Great and Powerful, starring James Franco, Mila Kunis, Michelle Williams, and Rachel Weisz. It is one of the most perfect descriptions of what dreaming is that I have ever seen (and it’s a GREAT movie!). Here’s how it goes:
The movie starts in black and white. Franco plays Oz – a nickel-and-dime, smoke-and-mirrors act in a traveling carnival. We see him with a woman where he lies through his teeth presenting her with a music box he claims was his grandmother’s last possession in order to elicit empathy and get a cheap kiss. From here he goes on stage and goes through his routine, wowing the audience, until a little crippled girl asks him to make her walk. In cowardice he can’t tell her the truth so he runs off stage where he’s met outside with angry, jaded past recipients of his act (we see more music boxes held by other pretty women), and he races to hide in his cart where the pure-heart, love-of-his-life surprises him. His assistant asks him if he wants another music box and Oz says no, not for this one. But his one, true love asks him to stay in town and commit to her, and he can’t. So he again flees, running outside into the middle of the storm, where he’s whisked up into a tornado and passes out.
The set-up of this movie is the set-up of our lives. We shield ourselves from the fear of confronting our True Self by putting patterns in place that work… somewhat. After all, Oz did get the cheap kiss, and he was making a few bucks with his smoke and mirrors act. But it was black and white – e.g. colorless, routine, boring – even to him. And he missed the Big Bang, a meeting with his one, true love. And, just like the movie, when we let these patterns perpetuate, they build-up into ever increasing chaos until they become a great storm. Throughout it all, however, our dreaming self – which is our True Self – will constantly ask us to stop and confront our fears so that we can merge with our True Self (the little crippled girl, the one, true love who asks him to commit). In fact, the one, true love is the True Self. And the real question the dreaming asks is “Will you commit to all you really are and all your possibilities?”
So here’s life after the storm.
Oz wakes up (!) in a TECHNICOLOR world where everything is blooming, birds buzz about, water flows, and treasures abound. Each person who he meets in this new world asks him one question: Are you the Great Wizard? In the same way, when we wake up to our True Self and enter a world of fluidity, creativity, dynamism, we will be asked over and again if we are the Great Wizard – are we the Great Dreamer of our life? Oz says yes with his mouth while visibly retreating – inside, he sees only that he is the guy who lies, the coward who can’t commit. And so his journey begins. Us too – waking up to our dreaming is just the beginning of our real journey. Before that, we just went through the motions.
At the end of the movie – after Oz has healed the crippled girl, chosen the good witch over the sexy, treasure-hoarding bad one and the more-sexy, easy one, and after he’s rallied the good townspeople to overthrow the evil kingdom – he gathers the good witch (his one, true love) in his arms and thanks her for opening his eyes. She asks him what he sees. He says he sees a man of courage. Her reply? That’s what I saw all along. WOW! And so is our dreaming.
If we let our dreaming lead us along our path (yellow brick road) and we summon the courage to heal the broken parts of ourselves (crippled girl), fearlessly discern the truth (good witch over tempting ones), and then put it all into action (rallying the townsfolk to overthrow the evil kingdom) we merge with our Tue Self, which is our heart’s real longing. Without dreaming we risk living a life of colorless routine, seeing only our failures. If we learn to listen to our dreams, however, we will be led into a Technicolor adventure where we will be introduced to our courage and greatest aptitudes and then we can fully embody The Great and Powerful. Then we inherit the Emerald Kingdom (and by the way, emerald is the color of the heart!).
Happy dreaming!
