“If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you..."

If you DO bring forth what is within you, what you do bring forth will save you.”

-Gospel of Thomas

I don’t even know when it began, this desire to write. I don’t even know where it came from or when exactly I became so bold as to hold this dream, a dream that surely isn’t mine to hold.

Did God get it wrong?

Did God somehow get confused and implant someone else’s dream in my heart, surely? I have to be the least likely candidate to write a book.

I fumbled my way through school, a bottom class English student, who didn’t know the difference between an adjective and a pronoun.

To be fair, I was a middle class English student in years 8 and 9. But I saw the bottom class kids getting rewarded with chocolate cake if they’d done well, so I deliberately failed my tests because chocolate cake was more important than an education, right?

Anyhow, I didn’t read a full book until I was 22 - Scar Tissue by Anthony Kiedis and I didn’t even know how bad my spelling was until I began using a computer and there were about 100 squiggly red underlines on every page!

A while back I shared a poem I had wrote with a friend and she said “interesting”

Really?! Interesting?! You might as well just kick me in the sack and say it’s shit.

“It’s kind of like prose”. I had no idea what she was talking about and just smiled and said “yeah, prose, exactly.” (I later Googled Prose and still had no idea what she was talking about.) Not to mention, I’m also from a small town that no one has ever heard of and don’t have a platform to sell a book to.

Despite all of these reasons not to write the sensation still remains, yep, there it is, thumping away in my chest, calling me into action. The funny thing is that despite what is popular to say, I don’t even want to write for anyone else, the world has enough books. This writing is for me. It feels like I want to write to save myself, not the world. Such is the nature of Dharma.

I don’t think it will go away. Like the drive to have sex and procreate. It may get temporarily satiated, even writing this email is a kind of writers masturbation, buying time until I commit to the real relationship and engage myself to a book. The urge will come back, time and time again. Sometimes it does, the same night, sometimes the next day. Sometimes a week later. But the urge returns. It isn’t a violent summoning, it isn't something I would say I even have to do. No. It’s more like a silent, gentle beckoning. It’s a still point in the middle of life that I only recognise and remember when there is space from the necessities of everyday life.

Even now as I sit here, fumbling my way across the keyboard, pretending to be able to touch type (I have come a freakin long way!) I feel this familiar, gentle thud in my chest. It is as if the acknowledgment of the dream makes the dream celebrate - fireworks and marching bands are causing a ruckus just behind my ribs. Who knew, the dream has words, there is a song that goes with the marching bands rhythm. The lyrics of the song are simple -

“This dream is for you, shall your dare to claim it. This dream chose you, shall you dare to own it. It is the complete absurdity of the dream that makes it exciting and the doubt that makes it interesting, it’s the complete defiance of the odds that make this dream worth living. No dream is real, yet a dream is the making of what is yet to become real. Therefore it is what we do with that dream that counts. All dreams have one things in common, regardless of the contents of the dream, they want to be brought to life. Bring this dream to life.”

It is odd that I have a dream to write, uncanny even. But I have faith that I have these feelings for a reason and that all I have to do is say yes and take one step at a time and each time I lift my foot to take another step, well, I guess another step on the path will become clear. This is living. Ah the uncertainty of it, I love it! I have no idea when, why or how, just that this is happening.

I really hope that by reading this you are reminded of the dream within you that you can’t escape. The dream within you that you don’t believe you can live. The inability to escape these dreams might just indicate that our ordinary lives are the dreams and what we are calling our dreams here is really us waking up to truly living.

This post doesn’t end as I sign off. It is a beginning that doesn’t need an end; for an end is closure. This declaration, this realisation is anything but closure. It’s an opening.

Opened wide, ready and willing. My foot is lifted in preparation to take the next step, in this still and steady second, foot lifted, where a moment extends into eternity, I wonder - where will my foot land?

Walk with me my friend, let’s move towards our obscure and unique dreams, one step at at time. I will hold you just as I know I am deeply held by this great life. Let’s watch, marvel and rejoice in the great and continual becoming of ourselves as we bring forth what is within us and bring our dreams to life.

MK