I had another one of those dreams that I died. I die all the time in my dreams. It's no big deal. I can remember having a dream when I was a little tiny kid that a war broke out in the dining room and I was shot ( I was a little kid when the Viet-Nam war was being broadcast on the nightly news). Then I would float around in the dark for awhile, then I'd wake up.

So one day, when I was a little older and in elemetary school I told some kids about this dream. They said, "Nuh-unh! You're lying! If you died in a dream you'd be dead in real life. Same as if you ever hit the ground when you fall in a dream. Your heart would stop when you hit the ground."

This, apparently was "common knowledge" that I didn't have. Even our playground monitor, who was a grown up, thought they were right

"But I have hit the ground before!" I insisted. Well. I always was a little on the weird side. This is not a new development.

A few weeks after that, I had a dream that I was walking down the Hanover Pike and got into a fracus with some people who pushed me off of a cliff which is not on the Hanover Pike in real life. I fell to the bottom, hit the ground, THUD, got up and brushed myself off.

"Hey!" My Dream Adversaries shouted down to me from the top of the cliff, "You can't do that! If you hit the ground, you die!"

I thought about it for a minute, cupped my hand over my mouth and yelled back to them, "Obviously, that's not true!" then walked off.

Maybe this explains why I have never been particularly afraid of heights....which, really, is not so desirable in a person with balance problems quite as bad as mine are.

Anyway, I promise there is a point here....

I have dreams that I die fairly regularly, but usually there's some next step. Often, the afterlife is different things for different people in my dreams. Just like in real life, I'm in the same place with other people but not experiencing them the same way. Only, in real life, when this happens, I am pretty sure that I am crazy, whereas in my afterlife dreams when this happens it is just because that's the way the afterlife is set up.

In this dream I had gotten aboard a train with a bunch of other people who were going to heaven. I was trying to see the scenery, but it was very foggy. All I could really see was deciduous forest all around me. But the train went over a bridge and the bridge went over a river....only the river was as wide as an ocean, and it, I knew, was a small river, a stream, really, a river without a name. "Heaven is BIG" the conductor remarked, "Be sure to tell people that."
So I am.

As the passengers disembarked, he said to me, "You a little old for this heaven. But, it be the right one for you. The Boss, he never make a mistake"

I didn't know what he meant, but then I did. I was at a very rustic camp ground with cabins and infrastructure from the 1950's. And I knew that to the conductor, time was linear only...that he said I was "old for this heaven" because I died in 2004....he didn't consider when I was born, because age was irrelevant, and I had belonged to God from the beginning of time, so the only "time" he was aware of was relative to that beginning. Some of my companions complained that the cabins were musty or run down, but they didn't look that way to me. They looked simple, uncluttered, and restful.

"Excuse me, is there a place where I could freshen up" I asked someone passing by. Ah. My language fits the infrastructure, I noticed.

"Sure. You just go to the lodge, and down the first hall, you'll see a door. Actually, that's how everything here works. If there's anything you need you think about it, and after awhile you see a door, and open it, and what you need is there. That's one of the things you're here to learn." my companion said, walking with me in the direction of the lodge, "Actually, it was like that on Earth too, but people don't realize it."

I stopped. "No it wasn't. You get many people here from sub-sarahan Africa? They thought about what they needed,thought about it plenty, and it was not like that on Earth. Not while I was there."

"You're right" my companion smiled, "It's true that there is a little more to it than that" But there was also a rest room behind the door at the lodge. Then I woke up.

The point of this dream, I think, was that more than one thing is true at the same time. I read these books about "achieving your dreams" and "opening doors to sucess" and a lot of them are just so much hooey. Starting a business requires a great deal more than sitting around thinking about how much you desire it. You can visualize something in your head all you want, and what that's going to give you is a very clear picture in your head. That, and 50 cents, will get you a cup of coffee - at least it would in my 1950's heaven! But, on the other hand, I am starting to believe that things are not as difficult as many pragmatic people say they are. I keep hearing about how "you have to have a business plan" and "you need an accountant and a lawyer". "You need accounting software/ a database/ a filing system." I keep thinking, "No I don't. I mean I may need those things in the future, and probably the near future. But what I really need are some customers and then I need to show up and do a good job so I can get paid and ask for referrals. That's the main thing I need."

Sure, I would like to believe the Depak Chopras of the world, who say to think good thoughts and don't worry about the outcome and let everything take care of itself....but, I still feel that, even in heaven, there's a little more to it than that. But, I think it's going to be a little like what I found out when I first moved out on my own. When a bill would come in, I would have to pay it. I had to make sure that I had enough money to pay the bills I knew I was going to have and some set aside for the bills I didn't know I was going to have. But, often I had 30 days to get the money together, and once I paid the bill, that was it. I didn't have to keep worrying about it. I fully expected life on my own to be nothing but a constant state of worry and fear over not having enough money. It's true that I did often work more than one job, and didn't spend money on things other people my own age considered nessesities, like alcohol or cable t.v., but I remember having paid all my monthly bills and looking around my little roach infested apartment and thinking, "hmm. Now what?" Notwithstanding the occassional roach that was as big as my shoe and took up a fighting position intead of running down the drain when I turned the light on, by just using common sense I was able to function pretty well.

I even got to be sort of a roach expert. Note to college kids and others: the best thing is those sticky traps. The roaches make an aweful noise in there sort of skiddering around, but, if you stick them under the sink or in places where you can't hear it so much it's not so bad. Then just pick them up with and wrap them in a paper towel. DON'T LOOK. Just throw them out and get new ones & spend the money to keep them fresh - it's worth it. And don't read that Kafka story, it will give you nightmares....if you have to read it for a class, don't dwell on it.

So that's what I expect business to be like. There was an article in the newspaper that stressed, "Many people who are starting a business have to work 10-12 hours a day." I was thinking to myself: Okay, that would be different than me working for an employer in what way? I mean, if I take "county wages" for a 40 hour a week job I'll have to have a part time anyway. I've always worked hard. Working hard is not the problem. And I'm willing to look for the door. Hell, I'm willing to build the door. The question is, will I have enough guts to go through it if what's on the other side doesn't look familiar to me?