The Power of Words as Worlds
I never thought I'd be writing a dictionary! But here I am, working diligently to meet my deadlines for a new book, DREAM DICTIONARY FOR DUMMIES, due out at Christmas. There are a variety of lessons in writing something that on the surface seems so tedious, analytical, and detailed. I am defining each word, each dream symbol, on three levels. What would it mean, for example, if you interpreted "acorn" at the physical level? How does it connect to your body? Or work? At the emotional level — how does it connect to the kind of feelings we have? The mental-spiritual level — how does it relate to habits of thought or higher-dimensional experience?

It turns out that each word becomes a powerful intuitive exercise in merging into the core essence of what the word really means, what its essence is. It's like traveling into little worlds, exploring the terrain, learning the rules, then writing a travel journal about the trip. I begin the M's or S's, which have lots of words, and it looks daunting. Then: Be here now! Don't jump ahead. Enjoy each thought. Be surprised with each insight. Craft the nugget so it glows. I am swimming in language and what's beneath language.

I am reminded of a quote from Rev. Charles H. Parkhurst, who was me in my last life: "Faith is a great word, too great to be put to small uses. Language, as a whole, and its individual words, shrink in consequence of being made to render menial service. They mean as much as they are made to mean by the one who employs them. Language is something into which meaning has to be put as well as something from which meaning has to be drawn out... That, then, is what I mean by calling faith a great word, a capacious word. It holds all the meaning the soul is capable of breathing into it."

I'm also thinking of the film with Richard Gere, The Bee Season, which I saw recently and enjoyed very much. In it he explores, with his daughter, the secret mysteries of the Hebrew names for God, the penetration into words and their interrelationships and core sounds as a way to find the literal Voice of God. They touched into it for real, took the viewer a good way into the experience, which also relied on the capacity to be silent and still. I was intrigued. And here I am, with a chance to practice it! The way the soul works as "engineer of life experiences" is so amazing!