DREAM that I was standing on a 2nd or 3rd story balcony looking down and seeing the back of a slender young woman or girl walking on the street. Apparently I knew her in the dream but I can’t recall who she was now. She had a very long haired wig on. It was bright orange. Then I suddenly realized it was the day of Halloween, that’s why.
Then I was with a few people, mostly or all women, gathering around a long work table (again!) C. appeared to be the leader or chairperson of the meeting. She brought out several folding chairs made of brightly printed canvas, still in their plastic wrap, and covered the whole table with them. For some reason she was talking about jewellery, and I went over to a side table and picked out one and brought it back to the table. I had in mind a pendant but it was a bracelet I was holding. I had this impression she was talking about gems or jewels, perhaps that’s why I thought of a pendant, but the bracelet was just silver metal without adornment.
DREAMWORK:
I must now ask the question, again, what is a work table to me, after having so many dreams with them.
It is a central place for gathering to hold a meeting, to do creative work, as a community. It is a symbol of my vision of the kind of life I want. A community of kindred spirits who come together, on all levels, to work and create (I now use this term with my new understanding of creativity; as a short term for ‘allowing Creativity to come through us’) for the highest good. It is the hub of Life, Creativity, Connection, Exchange, Communion, and Worship. It is the long house in indigenous cultures, sacred ground where we are closest to the eternal source and spring of life force, where we can come to cleanse, recharge, repair, regenerate, renew, recentre ourselves in oneness, and reconnect to the flow of Life so that its beauty and glory comes through each of us in its endlessly unique and wondrous ways. There may be nothing new under the sun, but the soul is delighted by beauty over and over again. Each snowflake is a joy to behold, each imprint on the soul wholesome.
Now that I’ve got that out, let’s go back to the dream from the beginning…
Halloween, hallowed evening, holy night. A night when all beings and spirits are honoured and acknowledged, even those we normally shun. Particularly, it is these denizens who walk the shadowy side of life who are given one night’s reprieve by the light of society, and a place deserving of our respect (however grudgingly) as the counterpart and balance to all that’s light and bright and good. And it was daylight in my dream, the day of the holy night. Bright sunlight on the shocking orange of the girl’s wig. But even though the wig was artificial, it didn’t seem garish to me. In fact, it felt becoming. Something that’s normally perceived as garish and fake suddenly seems ‘natural’, because it was the day of Halloween. Only on this day is the normally dark and scary and reviled and suppressed side of our dualistic world allowed to be ‘normal’. The only day it is publicly recognized and received in its rightful place—alongside the light. Yin beside yang, becomes yang, is yang, and vice versa.
So the day will come, in the foreseeable future I gather, when we will openly and naturally perceive that dualism in its true balance, without judging and fearing and favouring one over the other. But for now, this dream is telling me to dare to be different, dare to wear darkness in the light of day, as if everyday and anyday is Halloween. Be bold with my vision and beliefs and work with the dark mysteries of life, of the unconscious. Walk down the main street of society like a bright orange flame, carrying messages from the other side, until it is no longer ‘the other side’.
Why was I upstairs looking down though? Because I haven’t grounded myself enough yet. Action and manifestation happen on the earthly plane. Okay, so I need to come ‘downstairs’ a couple of floors, from my solar plexus to my root.
In the next part of the dream, C. was the leader of our group. I’ve had dreams of C. before, so it’s worth exploring why and what she has to tell me. As she is a leader in real life, I take it to mean leadership is part of this dream. A woman leader who is successful in the world and one who made her success in the field of healing and spirituality, she has my admiration as well as my envy. Comparing myself to her, even though I know it’s bad for me, I am more or less a failure by the accepted set of standards.
She covers the table with chairs, which are naturally associated with tables. We sit on chairs to rest our bodies, unlike what we do on tables: work. They perform seemingly opposite functions, yet work together as a pair serving the purpose of work for us. In the dream C. puts the chairs, the ‘merchandise’ or goods, on the communal work table, as if to ‘sell’ us on them, or something involving them. I sense that it was a project or an idea she is presenting to us, trying to get everyone on board. The idea has to do with the opposite states and their functions, the complementary nature of the relationship between them, like the table and the chair. Resting serves working.
I am reminded in this moment of a line of poem by Thoreau: “I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.” Three or more chairs are meant for society, and the idea C. is tabling (pun!) is one she wants to sell to society. Which, incidentally, is what she has been very successful at with her yoga business enterprise, along with many other like-minded entrepreneurs, making it a mainstream choice in the alternative field of health and fitness. Mixing business sense, common sense, and her own vision, she invested in what she believed in: herself, even though as a career path, it was, at that time, a path less trodden. Let that be the lesson to me, whose faith in her own vision still hangs by a thread most days. BELIEVE IN THE VISION THAT YOU SEE IN YOUR OWN HEART. Lately my own work has brought me to this question of my vision again and again. Here it is again.
So why was she talking about gemstones and jewels in the dream? Because they are PRECIOUS. Investing in one’s own vision, faith in oneself, building society, leading with innate purpose and foresight, dare to stand in the light of one’s own individuality with conviction and confidence, staying grounded and centred (with yoga!) through it all—these are what’s precious in the journey of a life’s work. She wants me to know what’s precious, what’s more important here, even more than the success—it is the process. This is the “how-to”, the expanded edition.
The design and make of the chairs in the dream are cheap and cheerful, appealing to the majority. So ‘packaging’ is another piece of the teaching. It needs public appeal if it is meant for public consumption. Translating this for my own learning: Don’t let your arrogance and my need to be different override my objectivity. In other words, get off my high-horse and make the product for the target audience, the masses.
I went over to the side table in the dream… What’s the side table? There was a side table too, in the last dream I had. The side table holds things not central to the issue at hand, but they feed into the issue from the side. They enhance or support the meaning of the main issue, for added value. In this case, there was a discrepancy between what I thought I perceived and what was being presented to me. With my usual arrogance, I believed in my judgment of C. as someone materialistic, greedy, and shallow, whose work promotes and targets people with a superficial image of health and beauty. (Gawd, if I’m not careful getting off my high-horse I might break my neck, it’s so high and mighty!) This, along with envy, makes for a nice case of the sourgrapes.
I got the cheap, fake version of her that I reached for, instead of the authentic and precious, deeper wisdom of her essence and her work.
Heavy teaching for me, but very, very precious.
Something else… a true leader always stands on the same level as her collective… humility. True humility is not in keeping the bigger picture or the vision to myself (and holding it against the others because they don’t know it), but getting down on the ground, showing and explaining it to everyone involved until they have it too. Translation: Don’t use the excuse “they won’t understand” to justify being a lone wolf.
One more thing… misconception is sometimes a subtle shift in perception… what does that mean pertaining to this dream? It is about how I saw C. as a person. When I saw her with my own (judgmental) filter on, I saw what I wanted to see (in order to boost my own ever fragile and frightened ego)—someone I could put down like a piece of cheap jewellery—then I could not see her past that filter. Without that filter (they say dreams are always honest) I could see immediately how I really see her—the (enviable) good leader and successful businesswoman, the teacher, the goddess and wise woman.
Thank you, All, for this deep, deep teaching and healing.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Friday, February 25, 2011
A Vision of Life and Love
Dreams were only fragments… I was with a lot of people outdoors in the open, this time packed tightly together, lying down side by side like sardines in a tin, even layered head to foot. But instead of claustrophobia, there was a feeling of playfulness and willingness to accommodate and co-operate. We were laying long scarves on one person’s length, like a coverlet, and letting the bottom half extend down so another person could lie on top of it, like a bottom sheet. In this pattern of order we were closely connected.
Ahhh, the great tapestry of Life that holds and weaves us together…
There was a sense of being surrounded by an abundance of earthy textures and colours and richness, and interestingly, maturity. Then a man’s face was in front of mine, mere inches away. He was middle-aged and white, with very closely cropped receded white hair. (I am aware, as I write this, that he is the representation of an ex-love but purged of all the bad blood that was in our relationship.) He moved even closer and kissed my left eye. It felt easy and natural, not sexual nor erotic, no angst or yearning. I was only a little surprised because this had never happened before. It was love gently and effortlessly given and received, no strings attached.
I welcome this energy into my life. May it flow unimpeded always. My immense gratitude for this lovely gift of a dream, showing me what my vision of Life and Love is, collectively and personally, telling me that this vision is entirely possible, and very near.
Ahhh, the great tapestry of Life that holds and weaves us together…
There was a sense of being surrounded by an abundance of earthy textures and colours and richness, and interestingly, maturity. Then a man’s face was in front of mine, mere inches away. He was middle-aged and white, with very closely cropped receded white hair. (I am aware, as I write this, that he is the representation of an ex-love but purged of all the bad blood that was in our relationship.) He moved even closer and kissed my left eye. It felt easy and natural, not sexual nor erotic, no angst or yearning. I was only a little surprised because this had never happened before. It was love gently and effortlessly given and received, no strings attached.
I welcome this energy into my life. May it flow unimpeded always. My immense gratitude for this lovely gift of a dream, showing me what my vision of Life and Love is, collectively and personally, telling me that this vision is entirely possible, and very near.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
On Seeing My True Self
I don’t know if this was in answer to my request last night for a dream to see my True Self, but this is what I remember:
In the dream some guy was telling me that I got a big ticket (parking?) but if I could get 10 reference letters from 10 people then maybe I could be ‘spared’ in some way…
I was with a large group of people and we were waiting around for a ride after an outing. I remember being on the phone but not what it was about. We were in a meeting hall kind of room, the ceiling wasn’t very high and the lighting was a bit low. There was a well-used, long, wooden table which took up most of the space. Alongside the table, I was trying to walk and balance on at least 3 pieces of wooden ‘steps’ the size of footstools, like a kid trying to balance on the edge of the sidewalk or a traintrack rail. One of the pieces was convex and wobbled from side to side.
At the other end of the table, tea was available from a side table. But I didn’t like any of the flavours. Nevertheless I chose one, without looking at the label I knew it was cinnamon. It felt like I did it just for something to do, conforming to the norm but begrudging it.
DREAMWORK:
I woke up from this dream feeling that something was ‘off’. As I start to probe around inside, it tells me that it was something emotional… loneliness… This was a surprise to me, because I’ve rarely felt loneliness in my life. More often it’s been the opposite—that I crave solitude and felt I couldn’t get enough of it. Althought strictly speaking loneliness and solitude are not truly equivalents, certainly not emotionally. So if there is loneliness in me, it has existed unfelt, except for times during Guided Self Healing sessions when I went into other lifetimes and/or planes of reality, and accessed stories of feeling utterly abandoned by the entire universe, completely alone in an interminable dark void. Those were the closest experiences I recall of existential despair. There wasn’t even physical pain to distract me from it.
Is this my True Self then, this utterly lonely being in despair, cut off from everything, even her own feelings. Particularly her own feelings. I am completely alone in this universe, stuck in a timeless, hopeless, helpless place of nothingness. The darkness around me could be endless, or it could be 6 inches thick, it made no difference to me, because I am in it. But somehow every time I experience this ‘state’, I saw myself being shone on by a small circle of intense white light, like a stage spot light, the circumference only slightly larger than my body. Perhaps that contributes to my ‘blindness’. I wasn’t able to develop night vision, even if I could.
I think now that this spotlight is my self-absorption, and self-limiting, because underneath the deep, wrenching despair there was always a thin veil of romanticism over the whole ‘scene’—the most lonely but innocent girl abandoned by all, how tragic! Such unjust and cruel fate! As if this is a play staged in my innermost life, and the tragic heroine languishes and awaits rescue…
But this ‘spotlight’ also wants me to see the yearning on the face of my True Self (and I thought our true selves are always happy and helpful and loving!) which is turned up towards the source of the light, even if that cannot be seen. The yearning is of connection, as if connection is her salvation, the key to her doorless and cell-less prison. As if there needs to be a cell so there can be a door, then she can find a way to get out of the spot she’s in. I guess this cell is loneliness, and for the first time in my life it takes form as a tangible emotion.
I am compelled to go and get my bottle of cinnamon essential oil and take a big sniff…
Back to the dream for a moment…
The big ticket is like an offense against known and accepted authority in society, and apparently I’ve committed a big offense. I see how I’ve done that by turning my back (and my nose) on the rules and expectations of the status quo, by leaving the rat race, spurning the climb up the corporate ladder, flipping patriarchy the bird. I wasn’t very gracious in my leavetaking, even though I pretended to be. Mostly, I was reactionary, out of the hurt I felt. I can, and must, own this little truth now. And it will take the making and cultivating of 10 relationships to bring me back to neutral ground, to peace, to centre. Well, I think I’ve a sense of some of those 10… One is my relationship to my Self, one is with M., with Am., with my grandfather (though not with my parents, for some reason), with my dead grandmother, with my ex-husband (again?? still?!?), with ex-friends Sara, Mark, Tony, and Yvonne. Wow, I didn’t expect to know all 10 right away. This is going to be my work for at least the next month, I see… Reconciliation and completion of unfinished karma…
In the next part of the dream I am in my frequent state of waiting—waiting for God, the real control and driver of our collective, the mothership—after this phase of our journey. I am about to enter a new phase of my life, though I cannot see what it is yet. In the meantime, we are invited to go down into the basement (the dimly lit hall) and do some work. I chose to challenge myself physically with balancing on the 3 wooden rectangles. The 3 are similar but not the same, and as I said, one (in the middle) was convex in shape and moved from side to side as I tried to land on it. I think that one is the meditation practice I’ve begun recently, and still feeling shaky doing. The other 2 are yoga and qigong. Those have been easier to get into because there is movement involved, though I am aware that mastery is when movement becomes a state of stillness and oneness, as with meditation.
So, I have a chance to work on my personal practice and grounding while we wait for the big bus to come… in 5 months…
The last part of the dream is also something for me to do while ‘waiting’: to refresh and soothe myself with something healing. In this case, cinnamon, not a flavour I would normally choose. Not my usual cup of tea, but apparently one I ought to ‘resign’ myself to. It will relieve some tension and constriction in me, expand my senses and perspective. A cup of comfort for frayed nerves.
Going back to my earlier contemplation, and exploration, of that inner lonely place in myself, it occurs to me that if I allow myself to go all the way with feeling, and wanting, then I would want to experience a few relationships that touch me deeply, deeper than any I’ve ever felt. A new and amazing place in me that I’ve never been to, perhaps never even knew existed. I would want to feel so deeply into another person that it sets off an echo resonating deep in myself. I don’t know if it will be a place of profound love or bliss or meaning or union, but I know it will be connection. I want to feel that connection, not just know it. Perhaps then, too, I can truly connect, relate, and love myself.
It’s more than mere irony that I dream so often of being part of a large collective, and that I’m always safe and belonged in it, no matter what’s going on, when in my waking life I feel very much the opposite…
In the dream some guy was telling me that I got a big ticket (parking?) but if I could get 10 reference letters from 10 people then maybe I could be ‘spared’ in some way…
I was with a large group of people and we were waiting around for a ride after an outing. I remember being on the phone but not what it was about. We were in a meeting hall kind of room, the ceiling wasn’t very high and the lighting was a bit low. There was a well-used, long, wooden table which took up most of the space. Alongside the table, I was trying to walk and balance on at least 3 pieces of wooden ‘steps’ the size of footstools, like a kid trying to balance on the edge of the sidewalk or a traintrack rail. One of the pieces was convex and wobbled from side to side.
At the other end of the table, tea was available from a side table. But I didn’t like any of the flavours. Nevertheless I chose one, without looking at the label I knew it was cinnamon. It felt like I did it just for something to do, conforming to the norm but begrudging it.
DREAMWORK:
I woke up from this dream feeling that something was ‘off’. As I start to probe around inside, it tells me that it was something emotional… loneliness… This was a surprise to me, because I’ve rarely felt loneliness in my life. More often it’s been the opposite—that I crave solitude and felt I couldn’t get enough of it. Althought strictly speaking loneliness and solitude are not truly equivalents, certainly not emotionally. So if there is loneliness in me, it has existed unfelt, except for times during Guided Self Healing sessions when I went into other lifetimes and/or planes of reality, and accessed stories of feeling utterly abandoned by the entire universe, completely alone in an interminable dark void. Those were the closest experiences I recall of existential despair. There wasn’t even physical pain to distract me from it.
Is this my True Self then, this utterly lonely being in despair, cut off from everything, even her own feelings. Particularly her own feelings. I am completely alone in this universe, stuck in a timeless, hopeless, helpless place of nothingness. The darkness around me could be endless, or it could be 6 inches thick, it made no difference to me, because I am in it. But somehow every time I experience this ‘state’, I saw myself being shone on by a small circle of intense white light, like a stage spot light, the circumference only slightly larger than my body. Perhaps that contributes to my ‘blindness’. I wasn’t able to develop night vision, even if I could.
I think now that this spotlight is my self-absorption, and self-limiting, because underneath the deep, wrenching despair there was always a thin veil of romanticism over the whole ‘scene’—the most lonely but innocent girl abandoned by all, how tragic! Such unjust and cruel fate! As if this is a play staged in my innermost life, and the tragic heroine languishes and awaits rescue…
But this ‘spotlight’ also wants me to see the yearning on the face of my True Self (and I thought our true selves are always happy and helpful and loving!) which is turned up towards the source of the light, even if that cannot be seen. The yearning is of connection, as if connection is her salvation, the key to her doorless and cell-less prison. As if there needs to be a cell so there can be a door, then she can find a way to get out of the spot she’s in. I guess this cell is loneliness, and for the first time in my life it takes form as a tangible emotion.
I am compelled to go and get my bottle of cinnamon essential oil and take a big sniff…
Back to the dream for a moment…
The big ticket is like an offense against known and accepted authority in society, and apparently I’ve committed a big offense. I see how I’ve done that by turning my back (and my nose) on the rules and expectations of the status quo, by leaving the rat race, spurning the climb up the corporate ladder, flipping patriarchy the bird. I wasn’t very gracious in my leavetaking, even though I pretended to be. Mostly, I was reactionary, out of the hurt I felt. I can, and must, own this little truth now. And it will take the making and cultivating of 10 relationships to bring me back to neutral ground, to peace, to centre. Well, I think I’ve a sense of some of those 10… One is my relationship to my Self, one is with M., with Am., with my grandfather (though not with my parents, for some reason), with my dead grandmother, with my ex-husband (again?? still?!?), with ex-friends Sara, Mark, Tony, and Yvonne. Wow, I didn’t expect to know all 10 right away. This is going to be my work for at least the next month, I see… Reconciliation and completion of unfinished karma…
In the next part of the dream I am in my frequent state of waiting—waiting for God, the real control and driver of our collective, the mothership—after this phase of our journey. I am about to enter a new phase of my life, though I cannot see what it is yet. In the meantime, we are invited to go down into the basement (the dimly lit hall) and do some work. I chose to challenge myself physically with balancing on the 3 wooden rectangles. The 3 are similar but not the same, and as I said, one (in the middle) was convex in shape and moved from side to side as I tried to land on it. I think that one is the meditation practice I’ve begun recently, and still feeling shaky doing. The other 2 are yoga and qigong. Those have been easier to get into because there is movement involved, though I am aware that mastery is when movement becomes a state of stillness and oneness, as with meditation.
So, I have a chance to work on my personal practice and grounding while we wait for the big bus to come… in 5 months…
The last part of the dream is also something for me to do while ‘waiting’: to refresh and soothe myself with something healing. In this case, cinnamon, not a flavour I would normally choose. Not my usual cup of tea, but apparently one I ought to ‘resign’ myself to. It will relieve some tension and constriction in me, expand my senses and perspective. A cup of comfort for frayed nerves.
Going back to my earlier contemplation, and exploration, of that inner lonely place in myself, it occurs to me that if I allow myself to go all the way with feeling, and wanting, then I would want to experience a few relationships that touch me deeply, deeper than any I’ve ever felt. A new and amazing place in me that I’ve never been to, perhaps never even knew existed. I would want to feel so deeply into another person that it sets off an echo resonating deep in myself. I don’t know if it will be a place of profound love or bliss or meaning or union, but I know it will be connection. I want to feel that connection, not just know it. Perhaps then, too, I can truly connect, relate, and love myself.
It’s more than mere irony that I dream so often of being part of a large collective, and that I’m always safe and belonged in it, no matter what’s going on, when in my waking life I feel very much the opposite…
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Elevator to Consciousness
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
DREAM that I am in an elevator just about to go up to the 5th floor, the door closes though I could hear 2 men talking loudly out in the hall. I pressed the ‘close’ button just as the door starts to open again. It closes without me seeing them. I was saved from the intrusion.
DREAMWORK:
The 5th floor reminds me of the fact that I am reaching the end of my 5th decade in this life. Other than that I can only relate levels to those of the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual, but the 5th one following these 4 I can’t say with any certainty what it might be. Perhaps the purely energetic?… The 5th dimension is one of timelessness and oneness-awareness, while individualized consciousness is still retained. Hmmm… that would be lovely!
Although I didn’t feel any wrong in wanting to preserve the ‘sanctity’ of the space I was in (the elevator), I did feel a bit guilty about forcing the door shut on the 2 men who wanted to get on the elevator. But now that I think about it, it was more a conditioned response (“That wasn’t very nice, was it?”) than compassion for the men.
The elevator imagery is tugging at me because I don’t have it nailed down for myself, even though I’ve had countless elevator dreams. So, what is an elevator to me? What goes up and down in me like an elevator? Consciousness. And my subconscious or unconscious wish is to go past the first 4 floors of the person, to the transpersonal or collective or the superconsciousness. The state of oneness is what I consciously desire.
The deeper lesson though, I fear, is one that has taken me a couple of days to own and admit to. Beneath the twinge of guilt I felt at shutting the door on those men (in more ways than one!), is the more expansive knowing that they were trying to teach me something. These men were the outside world, full of noise and activity and disturbing energy, with all of its pursuit and competition, push and shove, powers of oppression and aggression—exactly what I have been trying to shut out. Behind the thin glass of my pretend-safe world, I know I cannot shut the world out, that it does me no good to do that. Why can’t I just let them in, onto the elevator so to speak, and share my journey for a little while? Because I am afraid they will distract me, disturb my peace, somehow knock me off course or cause me harm. But like so many of my fears, it is anticipatory, a conditioned response, and nothing more than a fear. It is a story I made up to tell myself, that’s all, even though I may have learned it from someone else’s story. More precisely, it is my vulnerability telling the story, because it is still shaky, being newly ‘owned’ and brought into the light of my world, it is still learning how to stand up on its own legs.
Aaahhh, so that’s why yoga, meditation, qigong, zen, and dao have come to prominence ‘suddenly’ in my life recently—I need grounding. And although I’ve been aware of my lack of incarnation and rooting for a few years now, I also see now that it is an on-going cycle of construction and destruction, repair and maintenance, daily and perpetually. It’s finally sinking in (pun??!) which for me, means sinking down into the flesh and the earth, into the physical and material, the manifest and incarnate. I think that’s what they mean by late-bloomers. But I will bloom as the nightblooming cereus blooms, only once a year for a night or two, but gloriously and wholeheartedly (and wholebodily). Then it withdraws into itself again for another year. Hmmm… is that me? Is that my contentment? My vision of the life I want? Perhaps it is on some level… I sense a slight shift in this vision of my life that I’ve been cooking and refining, maybe it’s time to add a new spice…?? A dash of new configuration? A sprig of refreshed perspective? Mmmmmm!!!
I do digress in a grand way today… back to the dream… so the 2 men were teaching me about my vulnerability, and the prescribed remedy: grounding. Prognosis: Flexible boundary and free-flowing exchange of energy in and out of myself, and eventually, the 5th floor – Oneness.
DREAM that I am in an elevator just about to go up to the 5th floor, the door closes though I could hear 2 men talking loudly out in the hall. I pressed the ‘close’ button just as the door starts to open again. It closes without me seeing them. I was saved from the intrusion.
DREAMWORK:
The 5th floor reminds me of the fact that I am reaching the end of my 5th decade in this life. Other than that I can only relate levels to those of the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual, but the 5th one following these 4 I can’t say with any certainty what it might be. Perhaps the purely energetic?… The 5th dimension is one of timelessness and oneness-awareness, while individualized consciousness is still retained. Hmmm… that would be lovely!
Although I didn’t feel any wrong in wanting to preserve the ‘sanctity’ of the space I was in (the elevator), I did feel a bit guilty about forcing the door shut on the 2 men who wanted to get on the elevator. But now that I think about it, it was more a conditioned response (“That wasn’t very nice, was it?”) than compassion for the men.
The elevator imagery is tugging at me because I don’t have it nailed down for myself, even though I’ve had countless elevator dreams. So, what is an elevator to me? What goes up and down in me like an elevator? Consciousness. And my subconscious or unconscious wish is to go past the first 4 floors of the person, to the transpersonal or collective or the superconsciousness. The state of oneness is what I consciously desire.
The deeper lesson though, I fear, is one that has taken me a couple of days to own and admit to. Beneath the twinge of guilt I felt at shutting the door on those men (in more ways than one!), is the more expansive knowing that they were trying to teach me something. These men were the outside world, full of noise and activity and disturbing energy, with all of its pursuit and competition, push and shove, powers of oppression and aggression—exactly what I have been trying to shut out. Behind the thin glass of my pretend-safe world, I know I cannot shut the world out, that it does me no good to do that. Why can’t I just let them in, onto the elevator so to speak, and share my journey for a little while? Because I am afraid they will distract me, disturb my peace, somehow knock me off course or cause me harm. But like so many of my fears, it is anticipatory, a conditioned response, and nothing more than a fear. It is a story I made up to tell myself, that’s all, even though I may have learned it from someone else’s story. More precisely, it is my vulnerability telling the story, because it is still shaky, being newly ‘owned’ and brought into the light of my world, it is still learning how to stand up on its own legs.
Aaahhh, so that’s why yoga, meditation, qigong, zen, and dao have come to prominence ‘suddenly’ in my life recently—I need grounding. And although I’ve been aware of my lack of incarnation and rooting for a few years now, I also see now that it is an on-going cycle of construction and destruction, repair and maintenance, daily and perpetually. It’s finally sinking in (pun??!) which for me, means sinking down into the flesh and the earth, into the physical and material, the manifest and incarnate. I think that’s what they mean by late-bloomers. But I will bloom as the nightblooming cereus blooms, only once a year for a night or two, but gloriously and wholeheartedly (and wholebodily). Then it withdraws into itself again for another year. Hmmm… is that me? Is that my contentment? My vision of the life I want? Perhaps it is on some level… I sense a slight shift in this vision of my life that I’ve been cooking and refining, maybe it’s time to add a new spice…?? A dash of new configuration? A sprig of refreshed perspective? Mmmmmm!!!
I do digress in a grand way today… back to the dream… so the 2 men were teaching me about my vulnerability, and the prescribed remedy: grounding. Prognosis: Flexible boundary and free-flowing exchange of energy in and out of myself, and eventually, the 5th floor – Oneness.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Saturn's Second Call
My sister and I were sitting aside quietly while my dad worked on some kind of task. When he finished he looked at us coldly, as if he was angry that we didn’t offer to help, and now he will withdraw his affection or abandon us…
DREAMWORK:
Patriarchal disappoval and my conditioned fear of it. Fear that I will lose its/his affection and worse, be abandoned, banished from its support and sustenance, which I am also conditioned to believe as my lifeline. This is the punishment, or the threat of it, when I do not do what I’m expected to do, which is to work and earn. His love is not unconditional.
How can I transform this conditioned belief, because something inside tells me that it’s not a matter of letting it go? My shadow sister was there too, so I’ll ask her…
I see us sitting side by side on a low wall. We are little girls dressed identically and looking like twins. I reach out and hold her hand because I am scared. Should we go to our mother for help?? We hop down onto the ground and walk over to where dad is, still holding hands. We begin to circle around him, singing ‘Ring Around The Rosy’, circling and circling. Then I or my sister takes his hand and he is drawn into the circling. He takes our hand that’s free and we make a closed circle, singing and circling, smiling gently.
I realized then that he wasn’t really mad at us or wanting to punish us. He was hurt that we tried to separate ourselves from him first, believing that we can survive without him. I am guilty of that. Even though I know that it is impossible to be whole if I reject any part of myself, not to mention half of myself, my masculine. I don’t have to embrace patriarchal rule, but I shouldn’t throw the baby (boy) out with the water. I’ve visited this issue before, so there must be something else I’m not getting…
He appeared as the stern, Saturnian figure of a father; does Saturn have something to teach me?
He wants me to learn discipline and commitment, not as blind rules or routine, but as a practice that can become a pillar of real strength and fortitude underlying whatever ‘task’ I am to do in life. I admit that this has been sorely lacking in my life so far. Crippling, really, to always trying to balance on a rickety foundation, though it’s taken me this long to own that.
I think, this is my cue to keep on and NOT DROP the yoga and meditation practice I’ve just started beginning of this year.
DREAMWORK:
Patriarchal disappoval and my conditioned fear of it. Fear that I will lose its/his affection and worse, be abandoned, banished from its support and sustenance, which I am also conditioned to believe as my lifeline. This is the punishment, or the threat of it, when I do not do what I’m expected to do, which is to work and earn. His love is not unconditional.
How can I transform this conditioned belief, because something inside tells me that it’s not a matter of letting it go? My shadow sister was there too, so I’ll ask her…
I see us sitting side by side on a low wall. We are little girls dressed identically and looking like twins. I reach out and hold her hand because I am scared. Should we go to our mother for help?? We hop down onto the ground and walk over to where dad is, still holding hands. We begin to circle around him, singing ‘Ring Around The Rosy’, circling and circling. Then I or my sister takes his hand and he is drawn into the circling. He takes our hand that’s free and we make a closed circle, singing and circling, smiling gently.
I realized then that he wasn’t really mad at us or wanting to punish us. He was hurt that we tried to separate ourselves from him first, believing that we can survive without him. I am guilty of that. Even though I know that it is impossible to be whole if I reject any part of myself, not to mention half of myself, my masculine. I don’t have to embrace patriarchal rule, but I shouldn’t throw the baby (boy) out with the water. I’ve visited this issue before, so there must be something else I’m not getting…
He appeared as the stern, Saturnian figure of a father; does Saturn have something to teach me?
He wants me to learn discipline and commitment, not as blind rules or routine, but as a practice that can become a pillar of real strength and fortitude underlying whatever ‘task’ I am to do in life. I admit that this has been sorely lacking in my life so far. Crippling, really, to always trying to balance on a rickety foundation, though it’s taken me this long to own that.
I think, this is my cue to keep on and NOT DROP the yoga and meditation practice I’ve just started beginning of this year.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Saturn, As Masculine Authority
Another sliver of a dream: A girls’ school that is a whole street, that is, all the stores and buildings were the school, although the street was only on one side…
DREAMWORK:
Learning for the feminine, offered as merchandize for sale in a marketplace, which is a frequently recurring theme of my dreams. It is also a reflection of my mental process: wandering and sampling from store to store, stall to stall, room to room, but never getting any deeper into the experiences. I am not getting all that I can, all that I ought to, from what I’m learning about the feminine. Most recently, the feminine has been embodied in my dreams as the little girl child who belongs to me, and by whose wound I’ve come to know her as Vulnerability. My vulnerability. It has taken a while just for me to own her, and all of what that means. Maybe I haven’t yet realized ALL of what it means…
Ah, the other side of the street that didn’t seem to exist in the dream, at least there was nothing there except pedestrians like me. It ought to, following common sense, be the counterpart of the masculine, perhaps a boys’ school? I remember now that this series of dreams of babies and toddlers began with a couple of dreams of boy babies. What happened to them since then? Nothing. I’ve come so far as to find out who the little girl was, but I’ve not gotten around to the little boy.
If the little girl is my vulnerability, who is the little boy that I’ve yet to own? I know who he is, my inner knowing says. His name is Physicality, and I know I’ve denied him most of my life too.
The 2 dreams I can remember most recently with small boys were from Jan. 7 and 8:
Jan. 7: I was holding a baby or a toddler, his face forward. Everything was fine until I discovered that he had wet himself and my arm that was holding him. He said that he doesn’t do this very often anymore. I took him to his mom and she looked for a diaper for him but found the bag empty, because he doesn’t do this very often anymore she didn’t bother to restock. I decided to wash him and noticed that his body was that of a small dog with white hair, now damp.
Jan. 8: I was holding Luke as a small child. I was lying on my back and he was half lying on top of me, in my left arm. Tina, his mom, was a few paces away but attentive. Luke was sick with a fever, flushed but lucid. I smiled at him and said that I was the only one who could stand him because I couldn’t smell, as he was practically mouth-breathing into my face. I looked over at Tina to make sure she wasn’t upset by my having her child.
Looking at them again now, I can see that in both boys there was something wrong. But that’s not the point, says my inner voice, ever the wiser one. Okay, so what is the point? The point is the discharge, the expression of water as flow, and the expression of fire as breath. And if Vulnerability is the fear of receiving, then this is the fear of giving, of expressing, of creating, of making manifest the inherent nature of my Self, including my raw, animal nature, which has always intimidated me, in myself and in others. Boys are harder to handle, we all know that as women, they are like little animals.
So he is the Physical Animal, full of life, and the energy rearing to burst forth into life. His is the power of water needing to go (water always wants to go somewhere, said John Daido Loori), and the power of the fire needing to burn. This is formula for creativity, as far as I can tell, and manifestation of that creativity.
And I have yet to embrace, own, and love this awesome and unruly energy in myself. I feel up to the task of mothering him, but he needs a father too, so I hope my older and wiser masculine (my animus, maybe?) is stepping up to the plate… Apparently I ought to access this mature masculine in myself now (I wasn’t sure I even had it)… *Saturn, the Taskmaster, whose lesson to us is to teach us to own our own authority. I have trouble with that, and all authority, I’ll admit.
Age 7, rebeled against/succumbed to authority. Age 14, rebeled against/succumbed to conformity. Age 21, rebeled against/succumbed to conventionality. Age 28, rebeled against/succumbed to more conventionality. Age 35, rebeled against all of the above and became fed up with it all. Age 42, surrender in progress. Age 49, surrender complete, having risen out of the ashes, hopefully…
In the meantime, this feels like a tough lesson to learn, from a harsh master and father. My personal experience with him has never been an easy, or pleasant one. It seemed to me that he’s always trying to trap me in a box, and I’m always trying to escape, or kick him in the crotch. I know now that he’s been trying to teach me about myself, not least through my Saturn in Aquarius and Saturn in the 9th house.
Saturn in Aquarius says that I need to have clear limits with who I call my friends and my community. Who are the friends true to my heart, who are my spiritual familiars? That’s been a process I’ve become much more aware of in the last decade. At the moment I’ve winnowed my friends down to the ones I live with, although if I am quiet and listen, I can hear the faint calls of those kindred spirits out there, ones I’ve yet to meet. I know they’re there, these searchers of truth. My tribe, as I call them.
Saturn in the 9th house is about my quest for truth, the truth that can only come from experience for me. This is Saturn as a teacher that says to me, get out of the books and get out there, the only truth you can rely on is your experience. This is a necessary kick in the ass for me, I must admit. I’ll also say a big thanks to Saturn now, for cracking that whip over my recalcitrant butt, and pushing me out of the nest.
We’ve had such a history of love-hate for so long that, even as I thank him, I do not know how to love him. (Knowing Saturn, he’d rather have respect than love.) Perhaps I can start by surrendering myself to him, opening to what he has to teach me, the little boy in me who carries the power to incarnate, and together we can bring him up into a truly responsible adult flourishing under my own authority in the world.
DREAMWORK:
Learning for the feminine, offered as merchandize for sale in a marketplace, which is a frequently recurring theme of my dreams. It is also a reflection of my mental process: wandering and sampling from store to store, stall to stall, room to room, but never getting any deeper into the experiences. I am not getting all that I can, all that I ought to, from what I’m learning about the feminine. Most recently, the feminine has been embodied in my dreams as the little girl child who belongs to me, and by whose wound I’ve come to know her as Vulnerability. My vulnerability. It has taken a while just for me to own her, and all of what that means. Maybe I haven’t yet realized ALL of what it means…
Ah, the other side of the street that didn’t seem to exist in the dream, at least there was nothing there except pedestrians like me. It ought to, following common sense, be the counterpart of the masculine, perhaps a boys’ school? I remember now that this series of dreams of babies and toddlers began with a couple of dreams of boy babies. What happened to them since then? Nothing. I’ve come so far as to find out who the little girl was, but I’ve not gotten around to the little boy.
If the little girl is my vulnerability, who is the little boy that I’ve yet to own? I know who he is, my inner knowing says. His name is Physicality, and I know I’ve denied him most of my life too.
The 2 dreams I can remember most recently with small boys were from Jan. 7 and 8:
Jan. 7: I was holding a baby or a toddler, his face forward. Everything was fine until I discovered that he had wet himself and my arm that was holding him. He said that he doesn’t do this very often anymore. I took him to his mom and she looked for a diaper for him but found the bag empty, because he doesn’t do this very often anymore she didn’t bother to restock. I decided to wash him and noticed that his body was that of a small dog with white hair, now damp.
Jan. 8: I was holding Luke as a small child. I was lying on my back and he was half lying on top of me, in my left arm. Tina, his mom, was a few paces away but attentive. Luke was sick with a fever, flushed but lucid. I smiled at him and said that I was the only one who could stand him because I couldn’t smell, as he was practically mouth-breathing into my face. I looked over at Tina to make sure she wasn’t upset by my having her child.
Looking at them again now, I can see that in both boys there was something wrong. But that’s not the point, says my inner voice, ever the wiser one. Okay, so what is the point? The point is the discharge, the expression of water as flow, and the expression of fire as breath. And if Vulnerability is the fear of receiving, then this is the fear of giving, of expressing, of creating, of making manifest the inherent nature of my Self, including my raw, animal nature, which has always intimidated me, in myself and in others. Boys are harder to handle, we all know that as women, they are like little animals.
So he is the Physical Animal, full of life, and the energy rearing to burst forth into life. His is the power of water needing to go (water always wants to go somewhere, said John Daido Loori), and the power of the fire needing to burn. This is formula for creativity, as far as I can tell, and manifestation of that creativity.
And I have yet to embrace, own, and love this awesome and unruly energy in myself. I feel up to the task of mothering him, but he needs a father too, so I hope my older and wiser masculine (my animus, maybe?) is stepping up to the plate… Apparently I ought to access this mature masculine in myself now (I wasn’t sure I even had it)… *Saturn, the Taskmaster, whose lesson to us is to teach us to own our own authority. I have trouble with that, and all authority, I’ll admit.
Age 7, rebeled against/succumbed to authority. Age 14, rebeled against/succumbed to conformity. Age 21, rebeled against/succumbed to conventionality. Age 28, rebeled against/succumbed to more conventionality. Age 35, rebeled against all of the above and became fed up with it all. Age 42, surrender in progress. Age 49, surrender complete, having risen out of the ashes, hopefully…
In the meantime, this feels like a tough lesson to learn, from a harsh master and father. My personal experience with him has never been an easy, or pleasant one. It seemed to me that he’s always trying to trap me in a box, and I’m always trying to escape, or kick him in the crotch. I know now that he’s been trying to teach me about myself, not least through my Saturn in Aquarius and Saturn in the 9th house.
Saturn in Aquarius says that I need to have clear limits with who I call my friends and my community. Who are the friends true to my heart, who are my spiritual familiars? That’s been a process I’ve become much more aware of in the last decade. At the moment I’ve winnowed my friends down to the ones I live with, although if I am quiet and listen, I can hear the faint calls of those kindred spirits out there, ones I’ve yet to meet. I know they’re there, these searchers of truth. My tribe, as I call them.
Saturn in the 9th house is about my quest for truth, the truth that can only come from experience for me. This is Saturn as a teacher that says to me, get out of the books and get out there, the only truth you can rely on is your experience. This is a necessary kick in the ass for me, I must admit. I’ll also say a big thanks to Saturn now, for cracking that whip over my recalcitrant butt, and pushing me out of the nest.
We’ve had such a history of love-hate for so long that, even as I thank him, I do not know how to love him. (Knowing Saturn, he’d rather have respect than love.) Perhaps I can start by surrendering myself to him, opening to what he has to teach me, the little boy in me who carries the power to incarnate, and together we can bring him up into a truly responsible adult flourishing under my own authority in the world.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
An image of the rearview of my ankles was the only thing remained of my dreams… there were vertical lines of writing on either side of the lower calves and ankles, in English, as if tattooed…
DREAMWORK:
My Achilles’ heel, my deadly weakness. Although I don’t recall what the words were in the dream, perhaps I can try and access them now.
What is my Achilles’ heel? Apparently Achilles was invulnerable except for that heel, interesting, that I’ve been working so much with my own vulnerability lately. Furthermore, he became invulnerable except where the water touched him (his mother Thetis dipped him in the river Styx while holding him upside down by the ankles, which remained dry). I take this to mean that my Achilles’ heel is where I am not touched by emotion (water), where I’ve avoided getting wet, avoided flow of emotion, which, I’m just beginning to learn, has been the keynote symptom of what ails me my whole life. “Never well since, denial of this or that emotion.” as homeopathy would say for my case. And the ‘red thread’ symptom, again in homeopathy, would be my lifelong denial of my feeling of vulnerability, deeply repressed, until recently.
Quite possibly, one of the words written on my ankle in the dream was ‘vulnerability’, because as I remembered it, the word on the left was long, which was on the outside of the left ankle, the word on the inside of that ankle was short, like a 4-letter word, probably ‘fear’. I can’t recall anything about the right ankle at all.
I take it then, as the next step (pun!), that I ought to get my ankles wet. Soak them thoroughly in the immortal waters of the river Styx, which borders this world and the underworld, the realm of the Subconscious. Hmmm, perhaps that’s why I’ve not been recalling dreams much lately, instead, I’ve had more nudgings of information and insights during the hypnagogic and hypnapompic periods of subconscious awareness.
Moving up from the unconscious into the subconscious… does that mean I will wake up to the conscious world soon?!? Spring is coming, and with it, Jupiter returns to its place of my birth. Amen! to that!
DREAMWORK:
My Achilles’ heel, my deadly weakness. Although I don’t recall what the words were in the dream, perhaps I can try and access them now.
What is my Achilles’ heel? Apparently Achilles was invulnerable except for that heel, interesting, that I’ve been working so much with my own vulnerability lately. Furthermore, he became invulnerable except where the water touched him (his mother Thetis dipped him in the river Styx while holding him upside down by the ankles, which remained dry). I take this to mean that my Achilles’ heel is where I am not touched by emotion (water), where I’ve avoided getting wet, avoided flow of emotion, which, I’m just beginning to learn, has been the keynote symptom of what ails me my whole life. “Never well since, denial of this or that emotion.” as homeopathy would say for my case. And the ‘red thread’ symptom, again in homeopathy, would be my lifelong denial of my feeling of vulnerability, deeply repressed, until recently.
Quite possibly, one of the words written on my ankle in the dream was ‘vulnerability’, because as I remembered it, the word on the left was long, which was on the outside of the left ankle, the word on the inside of that ankle was short, like a 4-letter word, probably ‘fear’. I can’t recall anything about the right ankle at all.
I take it then, as the next step (pun!), that I ought to get my ankles wet. Soak them thoroughly in the immortal waters of the river Styx, which borders this world and the underworld, the realm of the Subconscious. Hmmm, perhaps that’s why I’ve not been recalling dreams much lately, instead, I’ve had more nudgings of information and insights during the hypnagogic and hypnapompic periods of subconscious awareness.
Moving up from the unconscious into the subconscious… does that mean I will wake up to the conscious world soon?!? Spring is coming, and with it, Jupiter returns to its place of my birth. Amen! to that!
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