Africa Journal #2, Tunnel Vision

Written by Tayria Ward on January 3, 2012

Hut in Kibera Slum

Last night was my first full night in Kenya, and today the first day. Though I barely slept a wink, I did wake up with a powerful dream.

Let me preface the telling of it. The days of preparation for leaving on a trip like this can be the hardest part. Aligning oneself mentally and spiritually, and preparing physically, take focus, courage and unflagging attention. I kept having the sense that I was putting myself into one of those little chambers you use when you do drive-through banking – the tube that whooshes through the machinery and takes your deposit from outside to inside and back. I felt like I was putting myself into a vessel similar to that, preparing to whoosh myself to Africa. The chamber is tight, so only what belongs on the journey can go, internally and externally, or the transmission won’t go well. I needed to constantly make careful adjustments in emotions, attitude and intention.

Then last night, after a mercifully safe if long journey, I had this dream. Looking around lovely Kenya, seeing familiar sights and smells, something like worm holes appeared all through the visual field. It was like seeing the space between atoms, demonstrating that nothing is solid. The thought came to me while still in the dream, and more fully as I pulled awake, that the worm holes are passageways through to vast worlds of potential and possibility that exist right here and now. Humans tend to look at the world in 3 dimensions, missing the fact that matter has infinite dimensions. Our reality intersects multitudes of other realms.

In my middle of the night dream note I wrote “tunnel vision” to describe what I was seeing, not meaning  limited vision the way the term usually refers, but the opposite. This tunnel vision is seeing through this apparent “reality” into worlds inside of worlds of infinite possibility. I felt the dream telling me something about this trip, how to see, not to be discouraged by the circumstances here, especially in the Kibera slum, but to see potential. The only thing limited is human vision and faith in possibility, not “reality.”  Masters of mind, science, soul and spirit have said it every which way for aeons, and string theory is pushing toward scientific evidence that all dimensions of possibility are here and now, ready to be entered, and integrated.Looking into the eye of the level of deprivation and poverty I am visiting here, the dream is a timely revelation. I want to see all that I am faced with for exactly for what it is in our consensual reality, but also hold the vision of what else is here and the potentials that reveal.

I have not yet been to the orphanage I came to visit as we are working at another school this time, but that visit will come soon. I will write more details of the journey as I go. Since my dream began my time in Kenya with that dream, I wanted to start my blog with it as well. The above photograph was takenas I jumped out of the van, just as I put my foot on the soil in Kibera. Look at it. Look at it for what it is. Can you see the worm holes too, though?

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