Listening to the cricket

I had a dream last night that I was drawing a map. It was a heart map. It was where my heart was going. The path was indicated by a dotted line that traveled through valleys and over mountains. It depicted quite a journey. And it came around again. There was even a little sketch of my heart in the key off on the side. The trail was colored with bright blue ink. I was showing my mother this map. She seemed pleased.

My mother has been gone for about 5 years. She was all heart. She raised me to pay attention to my heart and to listen to my conscience.

In the Disney classic, "Pinocchio", Jiminy Cricket sings to Pinocchio, right after the star-faery leaves with the advice to "always let your conscience be your guide". Jiminy sits down on a matchbox and starts in . . ."even though the right thing may seem wrong, sometimes the wrong things may be right at the wrong time, or visa versa. . ." I think that is how life feels for the young. But after living a bunch of decades you tend to sort it out because most likely you have done plenty of wrong things at the right and the wrong times and plenty of right things at the wrong time, and like the wise cricket said, sometimes doing the "wrong" thing was the right thing at the wrong time.

Suffice it to say, finding our way through life is not easy. I think the key is following our hearts, but not our hearts alone. We also need to pay attention to our conscience. My dream about the heart's journey reminds me of how we need a compass. If the heart is the magnetized needle, the conscience is magnetic north.

Why did that dream of my heart-path come up now? And why was my mother there, smiling approval? Because, even though I'm 66, like Pinocchio, I long to be "real", not just a puppet of my times, of my government, of my fears, of chronic Lyme, of what people think. I want to be a real human being, and it appears that my heart has the map and knows the way. (I always knew my mother did.)