Dreams, Intuition, and the Will to Change
Change begins with our willingness to listen—and act on what we hear.
How strange, you might think, that change has to be willed. Well…that’s simple! Just will it, and there it is—BAM. Change. Except that’s hardly how it happens, no matter how much juju you conjure, how fiercely you sweat out streams of intent, or how many souls you enlist to help through prayers or magical workings. Nope. Willing change asks something deeper of us. It grows through sincerity and humility, through having suffered enough to understand, in the words of the song, that you can’t always get what you want, but you just might get what you need.
When I read that opening aloud, someone dear to me thought of a musician in his eighties who had remarked, “It’s a bitch to get old.” Yeah, I replied, it certainly can be, especially when you’ve spent much of your adult life being hard on the body. How we’ve lived, how willing we’ve been to change, says something about how we grow old within the possibilities of our circumstances, our genetics, and whatever Life—with a capital L—has in store. Our willingness to change helps shape how we meet whatever Life brings and however it brings it.
So, after 73 years on this planet and 40-plus years practicing depth psychotherapy with sincere, suffering souls willing to do the difficult work of healing and growing, I hope to pass on a little wisdom: We have a part in this, beginning with how we live today. Nourish what’s good—right now. Begin letting go of what wears us down—right now. Then give Life room to respond, to surprise us with possibilities we couldn’t have cooked up on our own. There’s something wonderful about recognizing that we have a say in how we inhabit this one life of ours.
Our dreams and intuitions help us find our way. Listening through them, we begin to sense what wants our attention and where change is asking something of us. Wanting matters. So does our willingness to follow through when the familiar starts pulling us back. Old habits have their charms, especially when they whisper that we can have a different life without changing a blessed thing.
A pal shared a dream in which he traveled a path lined with stones carved with mythic griffins. When he reached what appeared to be his destination, he discovered there was farther to go. Two wise old ones appeared, a man and a woman, and spoke to him of life’s mysteries. A certain span of time had been allotted to him in this world. That particular span would be over, yet the path continued beyond its apparent end, and something essential in him was meant to go on.
He could continue if he chose. Off to one side, however, another fellow spun round and round in the twilight, caught in an endless circle of dizziness. Afraid to change, he went nowhere. The sight brought the dreamer to a point of decision. The ancient wisdom, approached along a path guarded by griffin spirits, urged him onward. Going on meant keeping on, and keeping on meant leaning into and willing change, now and into the forever nows to come.
We talked together at the curb, my friend and I, and he told me how blown away he was. Here was a man in his eighties, surprised—and somehow unsurprised—by the simplicity of what the dream had shown him. Its truth resonated through him, awakening hope for his life now and for whatever lay ahead, wherever Life might take him.
How wonderful, I thought, to witness that willingness to change, to lean into the forever nows, in someone I knew had been profoundly tried by heartache and had also known deep love. He was still listening. There was more life to meet, and he wanted to meet it. The wise old ones had found someone willing to hear them.
The dream’s invitation came down to his willingness to change. The fellow spinning in the twilight dramatized what happened when fear took over and movement collapsed into repetition. Most of us know something of that dizziness: returning to the same grievance, rehearsing an old argument, waiting for circumstances to shift while we keep doing what we’ve always done. Round and round we go, wondering why the scenery looks so familiar.
What eventually becomes of that spinning soul? Who knows? The dream leaves him there, and its invitation belongs to the one who can still choose his next step. We have our own deepest stirrings to attend to, our dreams and intuitions, and the life-given will to change.
And that will is good. Very good. As the old wise ones convey in their twilight realm, it participates in Life’s onward movement. Something opens when we consent to take the next step, even when we can’t see where the path will lead. For me, that’s enough of a guiding light for this moment and this day, enough to nourish my own will to change as the days unfold.
Let’s give this force somewhere to take root, you and I, somewhere good and deep in the ordinary ground of our lives. Listen when a dream stays with us, when an intuition quietly persists, when love asks something fresh of us. Then put some will behind what we hear. The griffins haven’t guarded that path for us to stand around admiring the stonework forever. There’s life to be lived, now and in the forever nows to come. Let’s get on with living, loving, and willing ourselves onward.