Do you go right or left at the next corner? How do you get there? No doubt you’ve heard the old joke about the visitor who got lost and stopped at a roadside farm to ask for directions. The farmer scratched his head and told the visitor to take a right at the next barn and then go left at the grocery, but no—that won’t work. Then he pointed to the left and said to go across the river and take a right at the first stop sign. But then he said that wouldn’t work either. After trying numerous other suggestions, finally in utter frustration the farmer threw down his hat and said "You just can’t get there from here!"

Giving directions is sometimes not much better than trial-and-error. But Blake said that there is a string which if wound up will lead you out of the cave of darkness. Rumi said that the gnat in your buttermilk becomes your buttermilk. Paul said that in your weakness lies your strength and that adversity is a blessing in disguise. The prophets said that the furnaces of affliction turn ore into gold. I am arguing that your symptom is your surest guide, just like the failed Messiah showed us the path to renewal.

What does it mean that you can’t get there from here? The Bible begins with the statement in Genesis that God put Adam to sleep, and it concludes by saying "Awake thou that sleepest." Even the nursery rhyme has it that "Life is but a dream". Do you turn right or left? Do you play cop or robber in this grand human drama? From my vantage point there now appears to be a cop in every robber and a robber in every cop.

Every night we dream, and every day we live our dream. We are dream-makers. We are dreamers who forgot that we are dreaming. But there are dream-catchers. You can catch yourself dreaming. I notice that I am interested in buying every book that gets published on dreams and dreaming. But dreaming is far more extensive than we ever dreamed!

Something awakens us from our nightmares, and there is something to awaken us from our day-dreaming. Not a day passes without the experience of dream-making and dream-breaking. The only thing between you and what you want are your nightmares and daydreams. Whether you become a law-keeper, and follow all of the rules in all of the holy books, or become a law-breaker and violate all of the rules in the holy books, you are still in dreamland. You are still a victim of your finite belief system that you have dreamed up through your infinite imagination.

But life gives us wake-up calls every day. I have made a list of my wake-up calls to shock me back into the center of God:

Anxiety in any form

Victim experiences in any form

Anger or fear in any form

Physical, emotional or mental illness in any form

Addiction in any form

Manipulation in any form

An enemy in any form

A negative thought in any form

Any win/lose games I play

Any sense of guilt or blame I entertain

Any hopelessness or helplessness that I conjure up

These are all symptoms of dreaming, of amnesia, of delusion, and of self-betrayal. You can’t improve upon infinity, upon perfection. Just wake up, you are already there. How can you "get there from here," when you are already in the center of God-consciousness which extends forever in all directions? Wake up, you are in the center of God.

You struggle, you vent your anger, you depress yourself, you punish yourself or others, you experience cynicism and anxiety, you seek to win this power struggle, you try to prove your guilt or innocence, you struggle to be right? That is what we have been doing all along in our story and it is nothing new. You can argue that you are a realist and that I am a dreamer. Each of us makes his own determination about reality, but we have no choice about our symptoms. Symptoms are the result of unconscious beliefs about what is real. Symptoms are wake-up calls provided by providence to awaken us from our dreams and nightmares. I call it paradoxical shock therapy. You can’t get there from here because you are already there. It’s all God. "Awake thou that sleepest."

Romans 13: 11 "Now it is high time to wake out of sleep."

1 Corinthians 15:34 "Awake to righteousness."

Matthew 8:25 "And his disciples came to him and awoke him saying "Lord, save us, we perish."

Ps. 73: 20 "Oh, Lord, when thou wakest…"

Luke 9:32 "And when they woke, they saw his glory…"

John 11:ll "I go that I may awaken him out of sleep."

Joel 1:5: "Awake, ye drunkards, and weep…"

Proverbs 23:35 "When shall I awake?"

Ephesians 5:14: "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light."

Isaiah 23:19: "Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust."