Fly Higher

January 24, 2025

Sometimes it takes a dream to make someone wake up.

I’m being hunted by a killer, pursued down a street and then chased into the killer’s home. The would-be assassin has superpowers or magic, and I have none, but try as he might he can’t kill me. Even though I have no weapons, I’m resourceful and agile. We keep fighting to a draw, and I keep resisting and then escaping, but neither of us can kill the other. Our battles are stressful, intense, and endless. Then I hear, or sense, or know, a message: “Don’t feed the beast. Step out of the story, and fly higher.”

As I awakened yesterday morning with those words, I realized that on one level I could follow that advice by simply getting out of bed, thus ending the dream. But as I did so, I intuitively grasped the deeper meaning of the message.

Like many of you, I have been disturbed by some of the harsh rhetoric, threats, and chaos emanating from Washington this inauguration week. As a lifelong consumer of current events journalism, I often get temporarily sucked into the dramas and conflicts of politics, wars, and social issues. And I intend to continue being well informed on many of those developments.

But it’s one thing to educate myself about concerns such as climate change, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or having a convicted felon in the White House. It’s quite another matter if I allow myself to be triggered enough to participate in the culture of contempt, or what some sociologists have called the outrage industrial complex, that is being exacerbated by greedy social media companies, malevolent Russian hatemongers, and self-serving politicians.

When my dream voice told me “Don’t feed the beast,” I understood as I woke up that it was advising me to cease feeding the primitive human instincts of anger, resentment, and revenge, and instead to replace that resistance with something more positive.

I can, eventually, learn to let go of my story of who I think I am – my ego – and let go of the tribalism, nationalism, and delusional stories of who the human race thinks we are. I need to get my spiritual pilot’s license, and fly higher.

How do I do that? How do we do that?

I’m attempting to raise my vibrational frequency, my attitude, my consciousness, through singing, prayers, breathing meditation, positive intentions, and reading inspirational materials. And elevating my awareness of divinity through an appreciation of nature. Oak trees are my saints, redwood forests are my cathedrals, and the crashing waves of the nearby Pacific Ocean are my heaven.

But an interesting question remains: who, or what, was that dream voice, the author of that profound message?