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Quickstep Becomes Free Skating

Dreamed 1976 by Gayle Delaney

"The Quickstep"... is one of a series of national test dances that an ice-skater must pass in order to get a gold medal (like karate's black belt) in ice-dancing. In waking life, this was the last dance I had to pass before receiving my medal in 1967.
I've just taken (danced) my test on the quickstep. It was pretty good and I think I've passed. But lo! the judges fail me! All three of them! I think, "Oh well, I'll take it again as soon as the forced two-month waiting period expires. I do want it to be a great test if it is my last before the medal. But I am disappointed, because I thought I had done well.

I read the judges' comments on my score papers. "Lean back more here. Extend this edge there," etc. These comments are absurdly picayune and petty. They in no way justify failing marks. I am angry but again think that it's OK, because when I pass this test it should be so good that no one could give me anything but very high marks...

Then, Wow! Wait! This is 1976 not 1967. I've already passed this test, and I don't have to worry about pleasing any judges. And because I'm dreaming, I can skate with wings on my blades. I then start to skate again, but this time I can do anything. When I jump, I am weightless, and I fly as I turn in the air. When I spin, my balance is perfect, I feel a happiness that is one of the most profound I have ever known, and I am at one with the world. I feel all the forces of the harmony of the universe in my skating, and the intensity of my joy knows no bounds.

This dream deeply impressed me with the way I restrict my enjoyment of skating (and other aspects of my life) by being a picky, perfectionistic judge of it. The dream has brought about a significant, enduring change in my attitude toward skating. The morning after the dream, I skated with my partner Bob and secretly decided not to work but to play at it.

Bob is something of a perfectionist himself, and when he began to comment on how much better my skating was than usual, I knew that my dream had had a tangible effect. I think that our dream producers' most powerful agents of change are not threat and fear (which are powerful) but pleasure and peaceful, yet exhilarating, joy.

A dream producer can show you what it is like to let go of an attitude or complex that limits you. Then, once you've seen the world, it becomes awfully hard to keep yourself at home tending old and comfortable, but limiting, attitudes. This is especially true in lucid dreams, where the intensity of perception can be so marvelously heightened.

SOURCE: Living Your Dreams by Gayle Delaney (1996 ed) p.253


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