Just as I use too believe, most believe dreams are just that dreams, to be experienced in our heads and not in our present reality. Yet I have discovered my dreams to also be my reality, they are coming alive and being lived. Wow! What a feeling, wonderful yet scary at first. But! Yes there seems to always be a "But" in there somewhere (I am working on removing that) dreams also have their wrinkles and sometimes need fine-tuning. After all it is a fine instrument we are learning to play. Our physical instruments such as the drum, guitar or even the more rustic ones like the wash tub with a stick and string attached to it, need to be fine-tuned before they produce beautiful music. My belief is the same fine-tuning is needed to provide the foundation to our dreams.

This is where the question I began with comes in. Can we be completely honest regarding these dreams and the feelings attached to them and be honest about the steps we need to go through on the road to achieving them. "Honesty, Emotions " these are two very fragile things in our spiritual lives, but without them we are lost and it makes a long, long road to achieving our dreams. I personally struggle with these two things everyday just when I believe and start to understand, boom! Something may happen to put another curve in my path to understanding. I call these" The learning curves".

I am in the middle of all my dreams these days. I have married a man whom I’ve loved for years, our home our love everything that seemed unachievable to me now is the way I always "dreamt" it too be. Sounds perfect don’t it. And it almost is. The hard part it seems is adjustment, after all we both have been alone for years and are use to doing things in our own individual way. Were both very sensitive, analytical and somewhat stubborn (really) these are just a few of the feelings attached to us while on the road to achieving and connecting our dreams with our present reality. We have no doubt in our love and commitment to each other and because of this, I thought the rest would be somewhat easy to achieve.

Allot of us believe we need not change or adjust for anyone" We are who we are". This is true in many ways, yet when we go into a relationship, marriage, new job or whatever it may be, we forget there are many different personalities and perspectives surrounding us. I think if we work to understand some of these things; this will create a kind of harmony in everything we approach in our daily life’s. There will be mistakes made by all of us and I believe the big adjustment is not letting these mistakes dampen or destroy the beauty of what is in front of us.

Just in case this is making very little sense to some of you, the best example I can use is a personal experience between my sweetheart and me.

Leading up to our union in marriage there was definitely allot of emotions running high inside each of us (Excitement mixed with some nervousness and so on). Well we all know what it is like to be leading up to something we have dreamt about. Shown on a graph it would be a climb to the top peak. We tend to forget how a graph can look and forget it will have many up peaks; but there are few peaks that go down before returning to the upward climb. Sometimes when a peak is reached through excitement and the reason for all the excitement is complete it leaves us in a spot of indecision, this triggers allot of emotions we’ve left inexperienced during this time. It’s in the silent moments we experience once the excitement has subsided and all is quiet, that we can hear our thoughts. Along with this silence will come the emotions attached to each of our thoughts. I call the silent moments the straight line in our graph and once the emotions come and we begin to experience them then that is when the graph changes. There is beauty in those lines the curves, dips and straightness these represent each step taken and each step achieved while on our way to combining our dreams within our reality.

One time when my sweetheart was looking a little on the sad side my very analytical yet caring mind wanted to search out why he was so sad. I timed his moods with situations occurring and then searched my mind, not my heart. During this search I thought I had found a connection and I was on my way to the discovery.

Naturally I came to the conclusion and believed it too be me. Of course I was failing to keep the joy alive. I had observed him and this is how I came to this conclusion.

When he went to work the mood seem to be good and when home or off work it was sad and instead of asking him I was the reason for this. I let these beliefs and feelings build inside my soul; which I thought it was something I’d learned not do by now. During a time when he felt that something he’d created failed I tried to make things better through cracking jokes to cheer him up. I spoke without paying attention and didn’t even notice words came out of my mouth revealing a small part of what I’d been feeling regarding his moods. My words indicated that I found it hard to support him in these moods. This hurt Klaus allot, and later that evening to add more damage I lashed out past issues mixed with my present feelings. This brought across the impression of mistrust and no support for him.

That is not at all the way things are in our relationship I support and trust Klaus with all my heart and soul. Due to my lack or our lack of listening or expressing our thoughts and feelings honestly over those few weeks a large dent was put into our relationship. Later when we were open and listening to each other, Klaus confided in me that his sadness came from work and the project which first produced excitement then disappointment due to some of the wrinkles in it. He felt that with me he could allow the sadness to show and that I would understand where it came from. This was wonderful to hear, but much too late to take back what had happened due to my misunderstanding of it.

I believe the key to connecting our dreams to everyday reality whether it be in marriage, relationships, work or our spiritual life’s is remembering to try and understand the people and circumstances we are surrounded with. We all have different personalities, feelings, thoughts and needs. I am still surprised at times how closely connected some of our ideas are, even when they seem so different. Most call the connections between each being, animal and nature coincidence. I like to think of it as being alive and aware of what is in our hearts. Being true to our souls

Take time to step back and see with an open mind and heart what it is you want or need to achieve your dreams some of us may need space (alone time) the question is how much and when it is needed, some may need a hug or two. Can we be honest about how much is needed, when it is needed or even why it is needed, these are the questions we need to answer inside our hearts.

In order to achieve my dreams and maybe yours too, I believe we will have to learn how to mix the thoughts, emotions, wants, adjust the strings and fine tune our spiritual instruments. It may take several pieces of wood to carve the perfect drum; some pieces may crack and need filling. Others may just need a little varnish to bring out the shine, but in the end of all that patience and adjustment we have created a beautiful instrument.

Real partnership, the path of soul mates, individuals or peace and enjoyment in our work and business is about loving, understanding, trust and most of all forgiveness.

Allowing for the mistakes along the way " Filling of the cracks".

Roberta Joehle

June 1999