Last night I had this strange dream. Someone I am close to (not someone I know in my waking life) and I were in prison. Some other inmates were planning to gang up on us and things were about to get ugly. I’ll save you the details, but as things were heating up and I was getting scared, I thought “Lisa, just walk away.”

In the dream, I realized that I didn’t have to engage the gang of inmates, try to muster up brute force, develop a quick plan to high-tail it out of there, or try to talk my way out of it. I could just walk away.

I took my loved one’s hand and said, “Let’s just go.”

Though I was trembling inside, there was a “sureness” deep in me: this is what we had to do…no matter the outcome. Not one of the inmates tried to stop us. Not one snarled at us, jumped at us, or tried to hurt us as we had feared earlier.

Instead, as we began to walk away, one by one each inmate turned into a stone-like structure and began to crumble, falling to pieces, turning into a heap of ash.

Now in that half-awake half-asleep state, the thought popped into my head, “What if this is how it is with anything that keeps us imprisoned? Any fear or habitual way of thinking loses its power and its grip on us once we just decide to stop feeding it…and walk away.”

Instead of mustering up brute strength, developing an intricate plan of attack (or way of trying to keep the fear at bay), or talking ad nausium about it…just get up and walk away. Stop trying to do anything about them and just walk away.

This is similar to what we do in meditation – observing our thoughts (along with sensations and emotions)…seeing them as passing clouds or like leaves floating down a river without engaging them, clinging to them, or trying to stop them. Our fears begin to have less of a grip on us. With no power, they just dissolve.

When I told Brian about this dream, he said this reminded him of a quote from the book, Dune, by Frank Herbert, “I will face my fear. I will allow it to pass over me and through me. And when it is gone I will turn the inner eye to see it’s path. And where it is gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”