Sometimes you need to go backwards to go forwards
This morning, I sat in the bow end of a small speedboat, my back to the direction of travel, as we idled along a broad river. A perfect cooling breeze, a heavenly way to start the day.
An elderly man sat on the riverbank, singing the boat into motion. This was a dream, of course. As his song picked up energy, the boat picked up speed, until we were flying so fast through the water that I held onto my seat to steady my body, though I knew I was really at the mercy of his song.
I looked behind me and saw that we were about to enter a wide tunnel, the ocean glinting on the other side. There was nothing to do but relax my back against the bow and trust the singer and the song to fly me through. And he did.
I woke up and immediately thought, ‘Sometimes you need to go backwards to go forwards.’
So true.
Yesterday I had been trying to do something technical on the internet and it just wasn’t working. Things seemed to conspire: the connection went slow, some code got lost, other priorities emerged, the site I needed to access was closed for maintenance.
“It’s like two steps forward, three backwards,” I was heard to proclaim at a low ebb, forgetting the law of vibration, the law of attraction.
I gave up. Went and did some yoga. Got ‘in tune’ and ‘back in the flow’, and when I went online again I saw a much better solution to what I was trying to achieve in the first place. I was so glad my earlier efforts had been thwarted, that I had been saved from doing the technical thing in a long, complicated way instead of in a short, simple, much better way.
I had needed to go backwards, to go forwards.
Somewhere, at the back of my mind, out there on the riverbank of my unconscious, a wiser part of myself knew a better way forward. Once I tuned in and trusted the flow, I saw the light at the end of the tunnel.
Dreams reflect the last day or two, and update our personal understanding of the world. Mine did this.
Sometimes you need to go backwards to go forwards. Has this ever happened for you?
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