Dragonfly Dreams and Better
We’ve all done this. Once in a while we’ll ask for a special experience in a dream. Maybe a chance to feel what it’s like to fly or to speak with a lost loved one. Once in a while we’ll be inspired to ask for a special indulgence, To experience something outside of what we can fully experience in our waking life, because sleep is where we are allowed to experience all possibilities without having to answer to logic. My special request had to do with the artist in me. I was feeling stagnant and stuck. I could paint a pretty picture but felt unable to create art that would inspire anyone to feel anything on an emotional level.
During a before bed meditation and prayer I put out a dream request to experience what it is like to see through the eyes of a dragonfly. Dragonflies have a 360 degree field of vision. They see a much greater range of colors than humans starting at orange (no red but that’s not one of my favorite colors anyway) all the way up the range of UV light not visible to the human eye. What a magnificent world they must see! To experience that just briefly in a dream could teach me to see like an artist again. The first and most important part of being an artist is to see through the eyes of an artist. Any technical skills are mechanical and can be learned, or not, depending how you chose to express yourself.
When I woke up the next morning from a very sound sleep I couldn’t remember any of my dreams, let alone a dragonfly dream, but not to worry. Answers almost never come when and how you expect. Just stay open and you will recognize it later, when you are not looking for it.
Later that day we had gone through another series of earlier evening thunderstorms that were quickly dissolving as the sunset became visible. What was left of the storms created a deliciously fluffy kaleidoscope of colors. Bright burning orange cottony clouds piled along the eastern horizon, bordered by beautiful blue, purple and gray frosted outlined clouds occupying different places in the atmosphere. At first I just wanted to sit back and enjoy because it was wonderful just watching the colors and shapes change. Part of me wanted to grab my camera because I would probably never see those colors again but my logical mind said “Why bother? In 10 minutes there are going to be ½ a dozen pictures of the same clouds on face book. Any more there are an infinite number of pictures of magnificent clouds on the internet”. But something deeper inside told me the pictures were an important part of holding onto the inspiration.
The next day I downloaded the photos onto the computer for a closer look. It was then that I realized I had lived my Dragonfly dream, confirmed by the dragonfly caught very clearly flying through a photo against the brightly burning clouds in the background.
– P.Ciavardone
click pics to enlarge
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