On New Year's Eve recently, I had an extraordinary dream, which came to me as the story below. Enjoy, and pass it on.

Just Perfect was born a traveler. She knew life is a journey from the get-go. Oh! And how she loved the journey.

Soon after birth, Just Perfect learned that she was not perfect because she was not a boy. She spent many years proving that she was just as good as any boy. Finally, one day, in her 37th year, someone finally believed that she was as good as any man, so she could also believe that she was.

Just Perfect loved to solve puzzles. She studied and studied how to solve puzzles. Then she worked and worked and worked solving riddles, and enigmas and brainteasers for other people. Often, she found their answers by solving the conundrum of herself. After decades of toiling day and night, running the supercomputer in her head till it was overheated and crashed repeatedly, she began to find puzzle solutions that did not require her to compromise her self in order to help others.

Just Perfect spent enormous amounts of time putting together the pieces of the puzzle of her arch nemesis, Not Perfect. Not Perfect was a particularly worthy adversary because Not Perfect was a shape-shifter. Not Perfect could be a man or a woman, a family member or a stranger, a trusted friend or teacher, a co-worker or client, a stain which would not come out, a strand of hair that wouldn’t lie right, or software program that froze just when she needed it most. One night, in a dream, all the little triangular pieces of the puzzle of Not Perfect came together. Lo and behold! They had the same name as some of Just Perfect’s family members. In the dream, Speaks With Joy Woman told Just Perfect that she had been given Not Perfect as her most perplexing puzzle precisely so that she could see her self as the pieces came together. Speaks With Joy Woman recommended that she make a copy of how this puzzle looked all pieced together and keep it handy right next to the puzzle-solving program she ran daily. She was told to consult it frequently, and to study it especially when Not Perfect revealed an especially challenging new shape.

When Just Perfect held up the perfect equilateral triangle of the completed puzzle of Not Perfect, she unexpectedly saw that it was a mirror. She simultaneously heard the perfect voice of Whitney Houston belting out a beautiful song saying “I…. will always love…you.” And precisely then, Just Perfect felt a place inside her crack open. Light poured through the crack, the light of the Source within her. And she knew for the first time, deep in her viscera, that she and Not Perfect and the Source are One. One Perfect Equilateral Triangle (P.E.T.), her pet project, the why of her journey. The Source, in Its infinite love for her, had given her precisely the vexations and irritations and strife and struggles of encountering Not Perfect at nearly every bend of the river on her journey for the specific purpose of shining the shards of a mirror back at Just Perfect, so that she could see for herself, and feel in her self the love that is the very fabric of her being. Just Perfect grasped the unbreakable bond of her P.E.T: She was born to know her Self as the Source and Not Perfect and Just Perfect same-ul-time-ously, in fact, beyond all time-ously.

And Just Perfect quietly appreciated that every step of her journey had brought her to this place, this knowing of why she was born, why she had chosen to travel this road with all its dust, potholes, muggers, boulders, trees, oceans and vistas. So she picked up the two-way mirror of the now-solved mystery of Not Perfect and she held it up, holding it to focus the Light of the Source so that each and every person she touched, or who touched her on her travels could see the magnificent reflection of his or her own P.E.T. project. Now it is your turn to look in the mirror and see the perfection of the Source, shining as YOU in every nook and cranny, in every crack or blemish or weakness or failure or limitation of your life. Every fragment of you is magnificent, no matter how it appears “out there”, or reflected back in the mirror. You are always loved and always lovable, no matter what. You are the Light. SHINE ON!