I jumped from one nightmare to next last night. It was as if I became Bunnicula on an early spring night. The string of nightmares gave me enough horror stories to write a series of your worst dreams coming true.

1. The onions on last night’s sandwich never did digest right.
2. These investigations of 2016’s election year and the hijinks of Russian and Russian-inspired hackers were unsettling.
3. The connect-the-dots scenario of our President’s Russian-connected associates disconcerted me.
4. I grasped how fear foments gullibility, separation, and eventually war.

War.*

So, there’s this guy in North Korea who, I suspect, would be less of an international menace if he allowed an unbiased psychological professional to treat his emotional issues for at least a year — daily (and every minute he’s awake!). Ditto on the guy at the top of Russia’s oligarchy. I know, it’s not easy ruling millions of people on half of a Pacific island, or within a large mass of the Eurasian continent. It’s not easy to prove to the world that your missile is bigger and more provocative than say the fertile missiles ready to launch from the U.S. It’s not easy being the richest man in the world and looking to rule all the other richest people in the world, because wealth isn’t everything. Right? Power —almighty power — is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

Then there are the loons who twist an ancient religious document to behave like imbeciles and explore the hacking of history, other’s blood, and simple terror. And just like their Asian and European brothers in power, satisfaction is always just another moment of poor behavior away.

For everyday people like you, like me, regardless of where we live, these are nightmare ingredients that fuel our fear and open the door to the very thing that these three sorts of men wish to stir within us.

Basically, it goes like this:

• North Korea: Big Missiles
• Russia: Disinformation, Computer Hacks, Blackmail
• Middle East/Africa: Bloody Terror

So back to last night’s darkened dreamscape.

While the onions bubbled and brewed in my digestive system behaving like some head of state from North Korea, my mind could not shut down the revelation that some guy from Russia has likely manipulated our presidential election, all while so many of my fellow citizens fell prey to the terror of false news and became a cult of good people confused and walking in fear.

We lost our connection.

To believe that there are not those persons who do not respect the planet on which we live, is a sure path to living like fools. To believe that some one person can make your life good again, is a sure path to living like a fool. To believe that there is just one path to follow, is a sure path that ends at the edge of a deep crevice or brick wall.

I write this in confidence. Like so many, I have stood at what seemed to be the end of the road. It gave me two choices: Fall into the unknown, or turn around and explore the path that led me to land’s end, and then find another path. I discovered that there were actually three paths offered. I knew that one dropped off, and I discovered another path hit a brick wall. It was the path in the middle that was balanced and without end. But to take this path I had to shed fear, anger, and distrust of my inner knowledge. The middle path is no more easy than the other two. But I can report that any fear of dropping into the crevice or hitting a brick wall is removed. Now there is nothing but possibility.

The truth is, we are our own masters who dwell in this planetary garden. When we reconnect to this garden, no single person can take that away by injecting fear, disinformation, and/or hate. Those individuals lose their illusive power. But at the same time it is incumbent upon us to communicate with open minds and hearts. It is incumbent upon us to shut down the noise and take a look at the path we presently walk. If the path chokes you with dust, or if the path clouds you with fear, or if the path exterminates your reasonability, it might be time to turn around before you walk off a cliff or hit a brick wall.

And such was my nightmare road last night. It brought me back to that middle path.

* War. “At the root of all war is fear: not so much the fear men have one another as they have of everything. It is not merely that they do not trust one another; they do not even trust themselves. If they are not sure when someone else may turn around to kill them, they are still less sure when they may turn around and kill themselves. … It is not only our hatred of others that is dangerous but also and above all our hatred of ourselves: particularly that hatred of ourselves which is too deep and too powerful to be consciously faced. For it is this which makes us see our own evil and others and unable to see it in ourselves.” Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation