Some mornings I just get up in the yard and look around me. There isn’t much, just corrugated metal fencing and green fields sloping up to rounded hills above. So I sit down on a stack of three to four tyres and look out into the sky. Maybe it’s cloudy. Maybe it’s clear. Maybe it’s blue. Maybe it’s grey. It’s just the sky. Nothing special. Perhaps I have my meditation cap on. That helps especially when it’s raining. Sometimes I drift. I imagine a girl who just appreciates me for who I am and a family of happy children, playing and laughing. There’s a beautiful farmhouse in the country that we’ve done up. It’s got a nice thatched roof and a stable on the end of it. I use the stable as my tool shed where I carve wooden figurines, which I bring to the market every Thursday. Outside there’s a tractor and a beautiful garden of foxgloves, cherries and sunflowers. All my favourite plants in one place!
Beyond that there’s fields planted with potatoes, carrots, turnips and cabbages. In the summertime we all go digging them up and bring them home on the trailer. My kids are beautiful. There’s Toby. He’s eight and likes to play tag with his friends in the hay meadow. There’s Kate. She’s five and the most wonderful ray of sunshine that a dad could ever hold in his arms. I know she’s going to break a few hearts when she grows up! She received her looks and blonde, wavy hair from Pauline, my rock, who helped me nurture this family of joy. Her steady disposition and gentle tenderness light up my life. Even in the thick of a heavy downpour she would help me load up the trailer with vegetables for the market. You should see her dance! I was hypnotised from the moment I first laid eyes on her. The spell she wove that night, no man could have resisted and I’m forever grateful it was I that became enchanted.
Suddenly the corrugated iron returns, creaking in the wind, backed by grey skies. I’m snapped out of my reverie by the growl of an engine as Dan Crotty’s car skids to a halt across the gravel. He’s here for some of my rubber mediation cushions. I oblige, he’s gone and I’m back to sitting. In the midday drizzle, the rain becoming heavier and starting to spatter off the walls of my metal prison, I know it’s the only boundary that stands between my Pauline and me. This time I don’t drift. The world and its distractions drift from me and I become very present. No visions arise, just clarity along with the belief that yes, I can do it and I am doing it. The world around me is mine for the shaping. These iron walls come about only through my perception. If one was to step through the gate out into the bright open landscape, then who knows what delights may come!
Seconds tick by into minutes, like water dripping into a rusty red bucket beside my office. Hours slowly cascade into days and then become years. As my vision of hope continues to flicker throughout my meditation I wait, gathering wealth and providence. It tantalises and taunts me, almost mocking this sad, sorry existence in the corrugated pen. I could do better, but why try too hard. ‘Forcing only brings desperation’, so my inner wisdom says, ‘wait a few more days to grow. Your ship will come in soon.’ Listening to its promises, I let go of the vision and my impatience, content just to be. I transcend the blue, oily overalls, the unloading and simple transfer of tyres from truck to yard to cash. I dream, perceive other realms and dimensions beyond this one. In my mind’s eye, flying above the murky clouds up into the blue, I soar towards the sun. My future kingdom unfolds through a break beneath, the holy grail of existence: a welcoming farmstead of joy and yearly renewal.
One day the metal gate opens in my compound. A shiny silver estate glides past the mountains of tyres. It’s a bright, blue morning I awaken to as free at last; I’ve sold off the business in order to move to the country, my dream holding bought. There’s no rusty wall surrounding me anymore. With phase one complete and tractor in purchase, I am ready to find my darling Pauline. Maybe she’ll appear or maybe she won’t. My heart leaps without a care in the world for tonight I’ll go to the dance.
My dad once said to me, ‘When you catch a dream in your mind’s eye, don’t waiver once you have taken aim. Keep the arrow notched and one day let fly. Let’s it’s flight take you deep into the dream’s heart.’ These words comforted me every time I sat down and drifted off to heaven. Now it’s almost fully manifested.
A new life waits for whoever will take my hand in matrimony. Our family will gladden the hearts of all who pass by. All the same I’ll never forget my tyre yard. It taught me the humility of hard work and never giving up on your dream. Without that firm foundation my farmhouse would never have been built in my heart. To me this is the true beauty of these mediations. Whatever stays the same around you, however dull it may seem, let you vision grow wider and wider to accommodate your dream. Rather than drinking my money down the pub, I poured it into love. Today this king meets his future queen!
© 13/12/07
