I painted this in my Year of Hope journal a little while back but it applies to dreams too.

Taking the time to write "Why is this so hard sometimes" and then paint around the letters gave me space to sink into the question.

Then I filled the other side with answers.

Of course dreaming is hard right now.

If you understand what is happening in the world.

And of course dreams are more important than ever. Living our values is more important than ever.

And yet we have a LOT of cultural programming that impacts how we are experiencing this moment.

I keep noticing myself saying "Why am I so tense??" Like, my muscles are SO TENSE and I think about how I have been exercising, looking for the answer. We live in this culture of hyper-individualism that impacts the way we see the world and ourselves so we do look to blame ourselves for anything that goes wrong in our bodies and our lives.

So then each time I have to remind myself: I'm so tense because the situation in the world is so tense. This makes sense. A better question to ask is "What do I need now?"

And that is usually: more rest. More gentle stretching. More art. More meditation. More water. More sleep. More than that.

 

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