The Remodeling Begins - Chapter 4 - Part 1

You may notice I jumped most of Chapter 3. It is still unfinished but Chapter 4 is ready to be published. Stay tuned.

The Dream seemed to consume my every thought from this point. I would drive around town trying to focus on my job, but my mind constantly wished to dwell on the details of the garden and I wanted to begin transforming and redesigning this masterpiece which is me. I wrote the following a week and a half after the original dream.

June 11th, 2002

The Garden of my Heart dream has been with me constantly now for a week and a half. I have been thinking a lot about the entrance. The Garden needs to be accessible to others, yet guarded from those who might try to destroy it. I am thinking of leaving the main gate unlocked, during business hours of course, and building a small receiving garden just inside. This would be a place with benches and such, simple in design, maybe somewhat of a Zen Garden. People could enter here and wait and relax and meditate and prepare to be invited in to the Garden for a tour or journey. I am thinking the secondary gate will be a Chinese Gate House with two large Phu Dogs standing as sentinels and guarding against any evil.

This entry has particularly special meaning as one of the things I immediately encountered after the original vision was a wave of new opportunities. It was as if finding myself through the Garden Vision, I had dropped my mask and I was now exposed to the world as I truly was. Instead of people being harsh and judgmental I was amazed to find that people were actually drawn to me. It was almost as if I had become magnetized and people seemed drawn to the energy around me. It would seem this would be a good thing, but I also found that although people were initially drawn in by the new open, vulnerable me, they were also unwilling to be as open in return and in time my openness became a weapon they would use to try to put me down. I found it to be like system overload for most. They wanted to know me but since I was so open they were unable to process all that I was willing to give. Many seemed to wander into the garden, mesmerized by it and then after seeing only the first few feet they would want to say they knew and understood the complexity of the Garden. Being that I was the Garden’s designer and caretaker and that I was still discovering the Garden myself I was sometimes hurt that people would want to say they knew me after such a short journey. To know me, or anyone, should be a true journey, a discovery expedition that one looses themselves in. Anyway to say the least, I, within a week realized the garden need a few layers to let people inside, but in an orderly and planned way. Hence the idea of creating a symbolic waiting room or preview garden, to prepare kindred souls for a deeper journey and as a warm welcome center to those that would not need to venture further.

And so the overdue remodel and rediscovery of the Garden Began.