Breathing Underwater
You know how you’ve been told your whole life that when you go underwater, you have to hold your breath? Or very bad things will happen? Like dying?
I used to have recurring nightmares where I would see a tidal wave coming and I would be running away and screaming for my family to run, but knowing that no matter how fast I ran, I was still going to drown. And the inevitability of it made me feel so desperate and terrified. As the water crashed over me, I struggled against my fear and my impending death.
Until a funny thing happened. One night, when the wave came down and I found myself underwater, I just accepted it and relaxed, and breathed. And then I realized…I could breathe underwater. And somehow, just mastering a recurring nightmare and the element of inevitable doom within it made the biggest difference in my waking life.
That dream is so symbolic. We’ve all been told that no matter what, when you’re literally underwater, you hold your breath or very bad things will happen. I mean, obviously, it’s scientifically proven that if you try to breathe underwater, you’ll probably drown. But it also represents the things in our life that we’ve just accepted because we fear the consequences that have been ingrained in us, despite the fact that we’ve never challenged those assumptions. We’re put in cages early on in our lives, and have just accepted our captivity, never testing the door to see if it is, in fact, unlocked.
In my dream, once I’m underwater, I assume I’m gonna die. But once I challenge what others have told me to accept as the Truth and find that it’s actually untrue, the freedom I felt was beyond words.
Sometimes I think dreams are test runs. You test the boundaries of life, the rules and technicalities. While whatever consequences that arise are erased by the morning hour, the lessons learned and secrets unraveled are your keys to empowerment in your waking life.
In this case, once you realize that you can symbolically breathe underwater, you’ll realize that you’re so much bigger than just your life here on earth and therefore, there’s nothing within it or about it that can cage you or destroy you.
