Releasing Some Creativity
So here I am in my dream last night (early this morning) yelling at a young pre-adolescent girl for messing up some tables with a mixture of what seemed to be lipstick and paint. It seems like the activity is over and we are moving onto something else, but each time that the tables are cleaned, she messes them up again with her mix. Prior to that I am dreaming of being in a war in a really chaotic country being concerned about being protected and how my gun is giong to fire.
I know enough about anger to realize that when it appears that I should be looking in the mirror rather than at who I am aiming my anger at, i.e., I am angry at myself, but I am yelling at her for being like me. So when I think of the dream, it just seems like she wants to be more creative but doesn’t seem to have the time or space to become more so. I am just trying to get her to clean up and move on and when she insists on creativity, I yell at her and threaten to send her to the principal. Yikes!!!!
So if I analyze this, it is apparent that a part of me wants to be more creative and expressive, but a really strong part is trying to make things neat and tidy. It is a battle between creativity and order and order seems to have more authoritarian power.
So now I am a day later from the dream. Yesterday I had two staff meetings and they were both about the same things, procedures to maintain tidiness and order, but I notice when I am in both meetings that the leaders in both meetings already seem really tired and school has not even begun. They seem to put all of their effort into making the procedures so air tight that nothing could go possibly wrong, but the thing that seems to have gone wrong is them. They look like they are ready collapse from having raced around for the past couple of weeks.
I am not against order, but I don’t think order is the issue. I think that the issue maybe has something to do with speed. It seems like there is a big rush to make everything look perfect and having everything set. Underneath the rushing around is something else, the great disease of our time. What is it?
So I am asking myself the question, what would I be able to accomplish if time came to a standstill, if time did not exist. If time did not exist, then all there would be is the present moment. There would be no future and no past. The disease that many people have is to rush around in the present at high speeds so that nothing bad will happen in the future. There seems to be a future out there that many people are very fearful of. It is like every ounce of energy is put into not having anything bad happen, to live in a safe bubble. But the big consequence is being too burnt out to even have a single moment of joy in the present.
I am not against planning and safety, but it seems to me that there is another motive than safety and order when people have to rush around like crazy to get things done. I think that, in many ways, burning yourself completely out is an expectation, and is seen as a virtue. It says, “Look at me, I am working so hard, and doing so much.” It is the want of recognition and most people will die for it.
So I think that I am going to take my time to get things done this year, not by being lazy or sluffing off responsibility or even doing less. I am going to stretch the moments out so that my creativity and joy can exist fully in those spaces. I am pretty certain that rushing around accomplishes a lot less than when I am relaxed and slowed down inside.
I am going to be like I feel in this photo.
Richard Hastings is an expert in change work and dream work and author of Dreams for Peace. He is a 
Dreams For Peace 
What a wonderful photo! I hope your school year starts out great! I was trying to figure out my dream this morning. I dreamt early this morning that Naren, Svara, and I were going “home”. We entered our “home” which apparently we had been gone from for quite awhile, since she was a tiny baby. It wasn’t anywhere I’ve lived before, but in the dream it was. The house outlay was similar to Naren’s parents’ old house. I was walking around the house looking at all of my knick-knacks and such, thinking I might have to move some of them away so Svara doesn’t get at them. It was pretty dusty, but I was feeling really good that we were going to get to move back home. My older brother was there watching TV with Svara in a bedroom, my niece was there getting some food out of the fridge which I had to take away from her and throw away because it was expired. In the dream I was trying to remember why we had left in the first place and where we had been all that time. I vaguely remembered something about Svara being a small baby and maybe being a bit sick so we had to move away to have some more help with her. And then dear Svara woke me up from the dream for her morning nursing… ah well, that’s how it goes!