Issue 46, June 2002
The Back Button
©Jane Teresa Anderson, June 2002
I'm going to take you back, way back, but slowly. First stop July 2001. What was happening for you then?
Memorable for me for many reasons, July 2001 was also the month when I pressed the Oops Button. I'm not sure whether such a thing existed before I pressed it, but a button powerful enough to have such a devastating effect needed a name and so the Oops Button was born. (If you're curious you can read the whole story here.
Now travel back to July 2000, then to July 1999. Take a trip, turn back the pages of your life. As you do this, write down a single word to capture the essence of every July for as far back as you can remember. (To get something really powerful from this exercise, do the list before reading on.)
In a recent dream a quiet yet charismatic man walked into my studio and asked me to show him how to use the Back Button on a computer keyboard. A little taken - hmm - 'aback' at his lack of knowledge I illustrated how the Back Button takes you back to the previous web page you were viewing. "Show me again," he said. I pressed the Back Button again, this time revealing the second last web page I had visited. Suddenly we were both caught up in a magical trance of flicking back through pages and pages. Dozens became hundreds and hundreds tumbled into thousands as every web page of my entire life flicked across my screen, mostly presented in black and white text.
And then I came to the very first page of my life. Vivid, intense oranges and yellows swirled into view on my computer monitor. It was like looking into a psychedelic universe of galaxies in constant motion, but the emotional effect was peaceful and harmonious. I was blown away but present enough to look over my shoulder and see that other people's computers were all screening the same movie.
My student (the one I was demonstrating the art of the Back Button to) smiled wisely. Aha. So he wasn't the student after all. He was the master in the guise of the student and he had delivered his message in that classically successful style: hands on.
"See," he said, "in life we all start out the same. We are a beautiful swirling orange-yellow harmony. This is our basis. Our love. The collective unconscious. Our days begin and so we experience life and create the web pages of our journey, constructing the illusion, recording the details we believe to be true, linking and hyper-linking our beliefs, weaving them firmly together to form what seems to be substance. But when you click through all the Back Buttons you erase the illusions and rediscover the original source of your being. This is the power of working with dreams. With a clean slate you can write the life of your choice. We are all from the same origin. We all have the same potential. There are no limits."
(Well, really he just smiled. But I knew what he meant ...)
My Back Button dream reminded me of a time when I fell a long distance down a snowy mountain that I was under the illusion I was climbing. Just before I slipped I had eaten a Mars Bar. After the first frantic kind of thoughts you get when you are falling I had the bizarre thought that I had wasted the chocolate energy because I wasn't going to reach the top of the mountain now. From there many months rolled back as did I. My whole life didn't flash before me, but enough of it did for the speed to astound me when I thought about it later. As I fell I saw some of my future choices as well as the outcomes and made decisions. That complete, my fall was broken by a snowdrift and I knew that something profound had happened.
We go back to go forward.
Okay, now look at your list of words describing the essence of all those Julys you have notched up. Can you see any repeating patterns or themes? Can you find a word or a sentence to capture the essence of all those Julys?
Now it's time to choose the essence of the next ten Julys. Are there changes to be made? Choose single words for each of the next ten Julys, as you did before only now you're looking forward, writing your own script. (Your dreams will go to work on your list, once you've made it, to give you the insight you need to get you there. The "Oops Button" article has practical tips to help you with this.)
Where will you be in one month's time when you read the July 2002 Dream Sight Newsletter?
Jane Teresa Anderson
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