Dreams do come true. Really.

San Francisco airport. I'm at an international gate waiting to board my flight to Osaka. After several years of dreaming, planning, saving, and most recently stressing, I am embarking on a journey of yearlong travel to India and Japan by way of dreamtime.

Eduardo Duran, author of Native American Post Colonial Psychology, says that what we understand as reality is created in dreamtime. This yearlong trip was born out of dreamtime and the dream that launched my journey is of a Kagyu monk, His Holiness XVII Karmapa. Karmapa is the supreme head of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism. Over the last few years I've had dreams with the Karmapa where he’s given me instructions for receiving an empowerment as well as other teachings with symbolic meaning that I don’t yet understand. Before this dream came the vision of a meditation retreat in Asia.

So now I am making my way to learn what it is I am supposed to learn and to embrace the journey of making my way to the Karmapa’s public teachings in India and to wherever I am led beyond. Many people helped me to get ready for this journey. The gift of a two healers has cleared and energetically reset my journey’s pathway. A community of life coaches has given me the gift of aligning my intentions, lovingly witnessing and holding the space for me to take the first steps of my travels. Tia Susana sent me off with the blessings of protection that will always keep me safe. My family has imparted me with well wishes and just enough worry to keep me cautious. My partner has blessed me with a journey that crosses mine, also karmicly linked with the Karmapa.

My Tita (aunt) Sony sent me off with the well wishes of finding my bliss. “You find your bliss,” she said. In preparing to leave, I learned that bliss is more easily found with intention. Prior to leaving it seemed as if I came upon an obstacle at every turn. A shady short man says he can’t pay me for work I’ve completed, someone hits my car (my primary travel funds) shortly before I get ready to sell it, my insurance company drags its heels in processing my claim. Stuck in the trenches of stress and worry, my energy was focused on Plan B, not what I wanted. Luckily for me the stars aligned and two life coaches shared their insights and questions. One asked me what ideal outcome I wanted. The other shared her insight of intention and the power of attraction. The energy of stress, she said, clouds the desired outcome that is entitled to us. If we stay stressed we attract stress. With that important insight, I was able to immediately present the ideal outcome I wanted with the certainty that it would happen – I would get my car back from the body shop tomorrow so I could list my car and sell it by Tuesday. Well, after aligning myself with that intention, it was like Moses parting the Red Sea. Stress and worry were moved aside to make a passageway for my desired outcome to rush in. My car did come back from the body shop the next day AND my car sold only a few hours after I listed it for sale, which was several days before Tuesday. I also got asking price for my car.

I put the intention out there that my bliss is found. After all, my bliss is in this journey and what I will learn. My bliss is the freedom I carry in this trip. I am free of any strings that hold me down and back. My bliss is in this dreamtime that willed this journey.