Matt enjoyed artist Ani Rose’s follow-up comments on the dream he had last Thanksgiving Night and thought you might enjoy them also.

Matt’s response is below Ani’s comment.

From Ani Rose...

of www.livingstonesunlimited.com 

Hello again, Matt.

Wow, I love the information about tryptophan and the quantum physics insight!

I have spent some time thinking more on your dream, and the process you have started by giving it over to a whole community of people.

I wonder if some of the meaning of the dream has changed, or been enhanced, by the interaction of community.  If you had not shared it, the meaning is up to you and you alone, and you are the only one who would "know" the truth of it.

But it belongs to more than just you now -- and has different meanings for different people, which may be just as right.

So, here is another thought:

When I read first, and as I have re-read the dream and considered it, I am not left with any sense of hopelessness at all.

This was the story of a man who said, “No, don't let me run away from such a grand task.  I really do still believe in it.  I don't believe I am wasting my time by speaking from my heart to people who might not get it, but might.”

That's a good thing -- it offers courage to everyone else, a certain defiance against despair, and added inspiration.

The fact that maybe there were only four people, in the end, who “got it,” does not take away from that.  There were four.  And if each of those four found four more, and so on and so on, then it works -- at a grassroots level, which, like so much in the history of non-violence, really is the way to get things done.

I also started thinking about my own passions and how sometimes I feel angry or sad or tempted into hopelessness when it seems as though so few people "get it," let alone want to do anything about it.

This brought me to one of the profoundly freeing insights which has fueled a lot of my artwork and writing, particularly in the last year or so.  What other people think of me is really none of my business.  If I am following my heart, following as clearly as I can, then the great spirit within me (and all) is all I have to worry about.

The rest is up to god, through things like electrons and spirit and the ways in which the natural world is constantly re-creating.  The earth is never NOT regenerating, and that's a good lesson for us as individuals.I am far more able to be free and solid in my words and artwork and daily life when I remember these things.  I find myself much happier in general, and like the challenge to focus on what I am doing only.

Maybe, Matt, you need not carry the burden of whether or not people hear you right away, or ever.  Others have responsibility for themselves, and their own journey with god/dess/life.  What yoy HAVE -- and this is what speaks most anyway -- is firm belief and inner inspiration and guidance to do what you do.  That's clear in the dream.

Again, it seems significant to me that the four who "heard" in the dream, were the ones with Sheila, in a separate room.

It confirms to me that your job is to just keep doing it.  People who "hear" will gather and be moved whether or not you are aware of it.

I wonder what a creative digital would look like as a view from space looking on earth, and there were vast colors in various areas where the umbrella parades have been.... each area like a spot of paint would slowly soak in and expand...

You are not alone, Matt.  Not in wondering if it is hopeless, nor in wanting peace so desperately.  Please continue to speak and do parades and paint for your passion, freely and joyfully as you can.

Thanks again for sharing this, for letting us be part of the dream’s gifts.

Ani Rose

Ani, thank you for your second meditation on the dream!  Very thoughtful, very insightful, pulling it apart...

A number of things popped right out as I examined your dissertation.

One:  The communication and collaging of many different minds over the same incident of the dream really reminds me of my philosophy of painting:  We all see the same thing, we all see something different.

The dream points out the fact that the human spirit is different in each one of us, so even though we have the details of the dream, each one of us looks at it from our individual prism.

I believe it expands the horizon of not only “We all see the same thing but see something different” in painting, but we can challenge ourselves even in the written word, which is supposedly written in stone.  Maybe nothing is really written in stone.

Two:  On your other point of wondering whether people are getting the message...  I think of how I was early on in my quest for using art as a tool for bringing peace to the world...  I am known as a prolific artist.  I learn by doing, not by talking.  I learn by experimenting, not by reading about things in a book.  I’m always learning by my mistakes or my discoveries.

So when, in years past, I entered my studio, I would be surrounded by all of these hundreds of images and paintings, all screaming at me.  I still am.  I began to say to myself, especially when I was just coming out of the business world:  “This is so bizarre, so crazy!  I’m the only one who has ever seen any of these paintings.  Why the hell am I doing this?”  It seemed stupid to me that I would be doing this.

But I said to myself:  The spirit drives me, and so the spirit will probably kick me in the ass or do something to ratify that I’m doing the right thing.

Out of the clear blue sky, there was a message from a friend of mine whose daughter is a prophet and speaks through spirit guides.  She lived in California.  When her mother went to visit her, the daughter said, “You know an artist named Matt Lamb?”

And the mother said, “Yes I do...”

The daughter said:  “I have a message from the spirit guides and the prophets that I want you to give him.  He’s worried whether people will hear the message.  Well, he’s being told by the spirit guides that it’s not his problem.  His duty is to present, keep making the art, and present it some more, and if nobody gets it, it’s not his business.  So forget about that aspect.  Don’t question why, how, or if it’s being received.  Just proclaim.  Period.”

So the mother delivered that message to me, and then she asked me, “Does that mean anything to you?”

And I said, “Absolutely!  It means everything to me.”

That was many, many years ago, and to this day, I have relapses of looking in and looking around and these spirits are screaming at me in these paintings, and I wonder what I’m doing here, and the answer comes:

“Shut up, keep working, that’s not your problem; it’s somebody else’s problem!  Keep your mouth closed!”

So that probably is hidden somewhere in the dream also.

Thanks for your response, and I’ll see you down the road,
Matt