Can you feel it? Take a moment. Wherever you are, breathe. If you can, step out your front door, or look out the window. A leaf falling off a tree? It is early days, the warmth of summer still teasing us with brilliant sun. But you can feel it, the change–autumn opening her palate of crimson, purple, and gold, calling us to enter a new world, not only the one of color and cool nights, but a new dimension deep within our souls.

Have you ever dreamed you are in a strange house? One you don’t recognize from waking life? There is a haunting quality to it, as you walk across an unfamiliar space in dream time; open a door that leads to a staircase, onto a roof garden, a tree with ripe golden fruit; beyond, you can smell the ocean, feel the mist of salt water on your nose.

Change is our only constant experience. Buddhists teach that everything in the universe is in a consistent state of transition: the sea, the sky, our bodies. Only the center of the soul, the subtle mind, is unchanging. Philosophers of ancient Greece wrote of the world in “flux”, and in China, Lao Tsu wrote of the Tao, “the way” of consciousness through never ending change.

It can be frightening. Many people say, “I hate change!”. Often this fear comes from childhood. If changes came hard and fast when you are little, it can culminate in a feeling that you have no control over your environment, your destiny, your body, your mind. And so often, we don’t. Working through this fear is a hallmark of psychological maturity, what Jung called “Individuation”.  Finding a place inside of us that sees the inevitable changes of life with open eyes, while holding a hand over our hearts, seat of the subtle mind, as eternal as a smooth stone at the bottom of a clear lake.

“How do I find this place?”– I hear this question often, and at times of my own fear and despair, I ask it myself. I wish it were easy. I wish it were the case that once you feel the reality of the eternal part of yourself, this connection remains firm and unchanging. But we are all humans, flawed and afraid. This connection must be renewed, again and again.

I look to luminaries like the Dali Lama or Pema Chodron. Surely they have it all figured out. But, in truth, both of them are quite open about the hard work of maintaining their connection to the divine. I once heard the Dali Lama laugh at his own tendency to inflate his ego. “Sometimes I wake up in the morning, and I think, ‘I am the Dali Lama!!’” He laughed and laughed, confessing with his great humor that we must work hard every day to step away from our silly selves and summon the humility to know the divine.  Pema Chodron has confessed that even after decades of meditating, she struggles to calm her mind and keep it from wandering off to the day’s grocery list.

We all need to find ever-changing, creative ways to connect with the eternal  inside of us, and in the world. Yesterday, I saw one huge maple leaf float off a tree. I touched the wrinkles around my eyes, reflected on yet another birthday coming up. I took a deep breath. We cannot change the progress of time, or the aging of the body. But we can look bravely at the world, feel compassion for those around us.

And listen to our dreams. Recently I had a series of many dreams of wandering in unfamiliar places, following people I don’t know, searching for something with no purpose. Then, one night, I dreamed of a woman who took me into a field beneath the full moon. She reached into the earth and held up a large slate-grey stone, as big as a coffee table. I woke in tears, feeling that she—my inner divine—was saying, “Stop all of this nonsense: see the substance of your very being.”

Dreams are a gift of the unbidden, but I believe they are nourished by our conscious efforts in waking life to connect with the subtle mind. There are many paths: meditation, song, prayer, dance, painting, long walks, a moment in line at the grocery store when we take a breath and bring our attention inward…..Our divine soul, is there, waiting patiently for us to tap Her on the shoulder and say, “I am here.”