On the Wisdom of Silence

I remember my dream and wonder at its source . . . We are surely not its makers. How gentle these voices that connect us with the Mystery!

Last night I awakened from a dream and for a long time lay in bed luxuriating under the warmth of the soft down comforter, recalling it. It is a crisp fall evening. I am standing on a dock of weathered planks as thick as railroad ties. I slip over the side into a wooden rowboat and settle into the rowing seat.

As I row across the lake, I am no longer just a boy in a rowboat. I am also the boat and the lake and the sky. I feel in myself the density and weight of water, teeming with life, every living being, every fish, crustacean, weed and lily pad a part of me. I feel the forests of cedars lining my shore, their roots reaching into damp soil. I feel currents running through me. I feel night air cooling and see mist forming at the coves. Boundaries dissolve into the mystery of infinite consciousness, and it becomes clear to me that, from that day forward, it will always be enough to bask in that mystery, just bask in it. That was all I would ever want or need.

Four decades later, I still draw from that teenager memory. My boat and the lake were great teachers, with lessons extending way beyond my youthful understanding. It has taken me a lifetime to appreciate some of them.

When my father was dying, those early experiences on the lake emerged in a guiding dream. I was living in California when I got the call informing me Dad was dying. Grief-stricken, I retreated to my study where I recalled a dream I'd recorded in my journal three months before. Finding that entry, I read the following:

I am on a dock at the edge of an ocean that seems to stretch on forever. It is dusk. I have led my father down a long ramp to a pier where a boat is waiting. He is nervous, reluctant to do what he is about to do, but he has screwed up his courage and is doing it anyway. I lead him to a wooden speedboat tethered to the dock. Its owner is standing nearby, waiting. As we approach, he greets my father and they shake hands; immediate camaraderie is established. The boatman expresses a kind of melancholy that I cannot quite identify. He seems aware that this is difficult for my father. My father and the boatman turn their attention to the front deck of the boat, which is a beautifully finished mahogany. My father, who was a furniture maker, has a deep appreciation for this work. He and the boatman talk about wood, how to finish it, etc.

Finally the boatman says something to my father, and my father turns to me and says it is time for him to go. We hug and kiss goodbye. My father and the other man get into the boat. I help them shove off, and in moments they are moving out over the water toward the east and toward the endless horizon. I stand on the pier watching until I can no longer see them, and I know that I will never see my father again.

As I read the dream, I recalled my earlier years on the lake and felt reconnected with that period of my life. But there was another message recorded there. Perhaps because my father had been in good health at the time of my dream, its archetypal meaning had escaped me.

For several minutes I felt in a state of shock, deeply moved by the poignancy of the vision. The Roman poet Virgil, I remembered, had told of the aging boatman named Charon who ferried souls of the dead over the water to the farther bank. If my dream imagery reflected that ancient myth, there was also another meaning that was much more immediate. The dream suggested that I was to lead my father down the dock to the awaiting boat.

Happier memories of my early life mingled with my dream. I knew I had to go to my father's bedside. In some ways that I was yet to discover, I was to assist him in his passage. Trusting this message, I immediately made airline reservations and set off to be with him.

In the days and weeks that followed, my mother, brother, and I took turns sitting at Dad's bedside. I found that when I was with him and meditated on my dream, I at first saw only an empty dock. The boat wasn't there.

Over the next two days, I saw my father going down the ramp with me to the pier. The boat still didn't appear. Then, on the third day, my vision changed. This time the boatman was there, just as I'd seen in the original dream. Late in the afternoon I saw my father greet him, and they began talking, admiring the beautifully finished deck of the boat. I stood back, waiting, weighed down by feelings I could not name.

That evening my brother picked me up at the hospital and drove me to our parents' home. Dad seemed to have lapsed into a work all his own, no longer acknowledging our presence. At three the next morning, the hospital called. Our father had passed over silently and peacefully in his sleep.

Clearly our dreams can transport us beyond ourselves, giving us access to knowledge and guidance beyond everyday understanding. At such moments, we bask in unlimited resources ordinarily invisible to us. It seems to me we are never more ourselves than at such moments, nor are we greater or more vulnerable.

As I ponder the images of the boatman, I wonder where the dream began or if it was carried in the Norwegian seafaring genes I inherited from my mother's side of the family. From as far back as I can remember, I have felt the pull of the sea. Ancient imagery, stretching back for many generations, guided me to the water and to my first book. Rowing on the lake revivified images and sensations that were not of my making but placed me in the stream of the vast mythology that has no boundaries or limits.

Even the stories of Ocean, the Titan Lord of the great river that encircled the earth, as the ancients told the myth, began much farther back in time than we shall ever know. Who knows what ancient fisherman first dreamed that story and began telling it to his comrades? Nereus, Old Man of the Sea, whose daughters danced even in the fountains and streams of Mother Earth, still speaks to us from places too far back in time to measure. Perhaps there is no beginning place, but history, like time, is an endless circle.

I remember my dream and wonder at its source. Wisdom like that runs in our blood, carried through air and water. We are surely not its makers. How gentle these voices that connect us with the Mystery!

Hal Zina Bennett is the author of twenty-five books. His latest is Write from the Heart: Unleashing the Power of Your Creativity, published by Nataraj/Hay House Publishing, 1995. To order the book or to receive a catalog, call 1-800-654-5126.

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