Where the Dreamer and Dream are ONE

   One day, a man had a dream. He dreamed that he died and went to Heaven. When he reached the place where he was to talk with his Creator. Everything in him and around him became silent. Out of a great mist came the vision of a face. Slowly, this face became clearer and clearer the closer he came to the vision that stood before him. It was a great vision and beyond anything he could describe at the time. Gently and softly came a voice out of this great midst who asked the man one simple question. "What did you do with the gift I gave you?" The man curiously answered realizing he was in the presence of a power greater than himself. It didn't take long for this man to realize that he was being asked a question that no human being would even think to ask of him, and the only being he felt had such interest in his dreams would be his Creator.   
  He asked the man one more time in a deeper tone than before, "What did you do with the dream I gave you?" He said perceiving this to be one who was in authority to do so, I kept it in my heart while growing up as a child and shared it with no one. He went on to say to this great being in front of him that "I was afraid that if I shared it people would make fun of me, so I hid it in my heart." This great being groaned in agony at the man and became quiet. The silence was more than the man could bear, so he broke that silence with these words. "Wait, I did grow up and shared this dream with my family. We had a good life together. It was filled with abundance and love." Again, this man heard an even louder grown coming from what he now perceived to be his Creator.   
  This time, the man grew silent. He seemed to be reaching deep inside himself this time. It was a place where great joy filled his heart with abundant energy that seemed to flow through him and no longer from him. It was the place where Creativity took over his mind and body and transformed him from a place of believing to knowing who he was in that moment. This touched the Great Being in front of him and grabbed his Creator's full attention with a growing curiosity of what was happening to the man in front of him. He took on a different appearance, a glow, a magnificent beam of light that reached into all corners of the earth.
  God shook his head and looked closer at the man in front of him as though he could finally recognize just who this man really was. And, this time was different. The man was asked one more time. "What did you do with the dream I gave you?" The man replied, "I realized as I matured in life that my dream was not just for me and my family. I realized that the more I had faith in the dream you gave me the more I shared it with others. Over time, my dream became so large that I had to have others help me with this dream and it made many families happy and abundant. It just kept multiplying. It took on a life of it's own. When it came time for me to die, I gave this gift over to my friends and family to carry on it's mission. I noticed the great faith they had in this dream you gave me was no longer about me. It was about having faith in the dreams that we are given from the purity of our hearts. From this, there were no limits to the joy that could be shared from this place for it came from YOU didn't it?"
  His Creator never said a word in return. None was needed at this point. He simply turned to move away from this man. After a few steps in the distance, his Creator turned around with a smile filling this man with a joy he had known the moment he took the dream into his heart as a child. In that moment, the man transformed into a child and ran to his Creator. God opened his arms wide to embrace his child with tears filling both of their eyes. They were both "IN JOY." It was an Eternal Joy. God's child had finally returned home. It is the place where the dreamer and the dream become ONE.           

Sam Oliver, author of "What the Dying Teach Us: Lesson on Living"