Last night I dreamt the most beautiful dream. It was the dream of a hug. I don’t think people realise how beautiful a hug like that can be. I have not been hugged like that for so many years that it doesn’t even matter that it was only a dream, because I really felt it.

It’s the kind of hug that is soft. An enveloping warmth, comfort, safety. A knowingness of another’s soul. A connection. I was standing at a kitchen counter and the hug comes from behind. I don’t know who from. I am between awakeness and dream, so I know it is a dream, but the hug tells me it doesn’t matter. There’s familiarity, simplicity. It is not grand. It is just a moment in a normal day. And it is the breath. The feeling of another person’s rhythm – another person’s life, wrapping itself around your own so that you’re in a cocoon. It does not need to be in sync with your own breath and life, because for that moment you are simply standing there together.

You are not talking. And the moment isn’t even very long, but when you really feel into it, it can be like one of those moments when you can’t remember anything that came before and you don’t think anything of the future. You stand there, feeling that if the warm glow of morning sunshine really were a feeling, this is how it would be. A radiance, not a brilliance. Understated. Free.