Coping With My Biggest Struggle

2 Mulk 162 B.E. - February 7 - 8, 2006 A.D.

I cope with my biggest struggle through prayer, meditation and interrupting my own dreams. The prayers I use are those revealed by The Bab and Baha’u’llah and written by ‘Abdu’l-Baha. These prayer cover every contingence in my life, while the feeling I get when reading them is calming. The prayers themselves have a spiritual feeling when read or recited aloud or silently. They speak directly to my soul. There are, of course, a few prayers that are my favorite, but these change over time and with the circumstances in my life. In fact my biggest struggle, while it is always with myself, changes over time as well; maybe that is why my favorite prayers change with time and circumstances.

Lately my biggest struggle is achieving the writing goals I set. Don’t get me wrong, I have improved in keeping those goal, but I am not to the point where I want to be. The prayers I’ve been saying lately are the obligatory prayer (revealed by Baha‘u‘llah, a healing prayer, one (written by ‘Abdu’l-Baha placing everything in God’s hands), the Remover of Difficulties (revealed by the Bab), and a prayer for protection when I leave the house. There is a morning prayer (revealed by Baha’u’llah) with the line “I beseech Thee, … to make of what Thou didst reveal …” (Baha’i Prayers, pages 124-126) that I say before writing in my pen and paper journal about my dreams.

I interpret my own dreams because they are my dreams and I know the symbols in them better than anyone else. While certain dream symbols have traditional or cultural interpretations they also have personal interpretations (at least mine do) and I am the only one who can tell what those symbols mean to me. My dreams (or at least those that stay with me for a long period of time) usually hold something that helps me in my struggle to become my true self. I interpret my own dream in my pen and paper journal so that they can help me achieve my true potential.

In fact I am considering writing down the symbols in my dreams into a personal dream dictionary. In this personal dream dictionary I would write a paragraph or two about the traditional or cultural meaning of the symbol and then write a paragraph about what the symbol means to me. Of course, as I said before lately my biggest struggle has been my writing goals, I seem to get interrupted in the middle or writing or have to leave the house for some reason. I take my pen and paper journal with me, but when I write in it (with the exception of my dreams) the subject is different from what I was writing about on-line or in an entry into the journal I keep on the computer.

Anyway, as I was saying, when I go to interpret my dreams I write the dream or as much of it as I can remember in my pen and paper journal. After that I say a prayer and then I meditate on what the dream might mean. I write down what I think it means in my pep and paper journal. This helps me to determine what the dream and their symbols mean to me.