Saturday, February 26, 2011

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.

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.

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…

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.

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.

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.

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!

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Just managed to salvage a couple of dream bits… first was an image of paintings or coloured photographs on stones, apparently my sister had made them. I was very impressed and thought it a great idea to silk-screen photos onto stones… second was a scene filled with mud, deep, sucking mud everywhere, and a yellow digger was trying to dig or move itself out of the spot it was in. But instead of a scoop it had 2 prongs like a forklift. It moved forward so the fork sunk into the earth, and I thought for sure it’s gonna get stuck, but it managed to push up and out somehow…

DREAMWORK (4 days later):

First. I’ve been fascinated by stones since meeting them on the beach last summer. Something about them awes and expands and delights me. And I’m still not quite sure why. My sister, my shadow familiar, had put these beautifully and meticulously rendered images of people on the stones, perhaps for the sole purpose of wowing me. It is Miss Artifice again… alas, and I fell for that scintillating first impression, again. Then I take that first impression and blow it up into a fantastic possibility, pushing the limit as far as it can go, feeding on the brain candy of the thrill of sky’s-the-limit, getting high on the soaring and the speed and the rapid firing of the synapses in my head. How fortunate I am that my brain can produce the substance I need to supply my addiction. Is there an AA group for this, I wonder?

It’s pathetic really, like baiting fish in a bowl. Something catches my eye’s fancy and I fall hook, line, and sinker. I think possibly I came back to working on this dream after watching a couple of movies last night that were cinematically sophisticated, but not much else (The Illusionist, and Orlando). They were like strings of TV commercials, nice visuals to look at, lovingly birthed from the artistic director’s ego. But the thing is, the thing that my dream wants to remind me is, that I used to, and still do, fall for that skin-deep glam and glitter. In my advertising days, which included my art school days, that was the milk of superficiality we not only grew up on but venerated as a source of genius.

It sickens me a bit now to remember that I thought Orlando was a movie I liked from those days, I couldn’t even watch the whole thing last night. I guess it’s true that I have to find out where the outer limits of something is before I can know where I stand. It is the learning style of the boundary-less.

Second. Mud, is water and earth. The emotional blended with the material. It sounds like a good thing but I am afraid of it, afraid of being mired in it, afraid of the difficulty of moving in it, even though I am a digger in the dream, made for the task. It is sticky and messy, threatens to swallow me whole, and there’s no end of it in sight. What, in my life is like that? My debt. (which I wrote about 6 days later, 4 days before working on this dream) But even though I seemed to be equipped to dig myself out, I was surprised to find that I didn’t have the conventional tool used for the job. Well, I shouldn’t be surprised really, so few of the bones in my body are conventional. The real surprise to me was that the tool I had, which shouldn’t have worked, worked. And it struck me this very moment that my intent in the dream was actually to ‘lift’ myself out of the mud, not to ‘dig’ my way out, as one would assume automatically on perceiving a digger. In fact, digging would have made me sink deeper. So what happened, though unconventional, was the best thing that could have happened. I have the best equipment for the job after all. And I am a forklift, not a digger.

This last discovery bears some contemplation. If the field of mud is my current financial outlook, at least how it presents on the surface, as a quagmire of anxiety and fear and threat to survival, then what does it portent if I am to lift instead of dig? Ah, I see… instead of digging down into my psyche, the way I have been, to get at the ‘source’ of the fear and whatever block there might be, the better way to attain the desired result—freedom—is to lift myself up and move on out of there.

What might that look like in my waking life, to lift myself out of the sucking mud of financial woes? Do I need heavy machinery such as a forklift, some seriously heavy-duty strength to equal the gravity of the job? But I AM the forklift, I have it already in me to do this. But, oh but, I am not the driver/operator, therefore I have to wait for the moment when the juice is turned on and flow begins. So I wait, as the tool, as the vessel that I am.

Lyndon Johnson, JFK, in Oz

Dreamed about a dark-haired young woman named Lyndon Johnson Somebody… there were a couple of other women with her…

Lyndon Johnson succeeded JFK, that’s about all I know about him. So he moved up in position because the beloved head of state was killed at the height of his power and popularity. What is the JFK in me? He was the part of me that loved and cared fearlessly his subjects, especially the underdogs—my lesser nature and qualities, my shadow parts.

Have I the courage to love my shadow ‘subjects’ openly, into the light of day? Or am I embarrassed and ashamed of them still? I do believe it’s easier to accept someone else’s faults than one’s own, but then again, the faults I see in others are the ones in me. Furthermore, does my courage extend to actively and publicly working to find balance of ‘justice’ for the underdogs in me, as JFK did, flying in the face of established mores of the time? Or do I continue to suckle at the teat of public approval and reward?

My god, I just realized that I am all of the characters in the Wizard of Oz (not just the Cowardly Lion, as I thought), each believing himself to be lacking the one thing that prevents him from ultimate happiness and fulfillment. When in fact, brain (intelligence), heart (feeling), gut (courage), and the wisdom and power that Dorothy discovered in herself, therefore in the 3 friends, were always there within. Never missing, never even had to be earned or acquired elsewhere. It was in us all along.

All we have to do now, is take off the green-tinted glasses of pre-conditioning, and believe in the beauty and abundance we see, in ourselves.

Shadow Artifice

Friday, February 4, 2011

Vaguely recall an impression of a dream:

I was working in a huge hive of a place, where people were at their specific tasks in groups like departments. A young woman I knew in the dream (but not in waking life) came running up to me, excited with good news, she said, that she had found someone else to take my place, which happened to be ‘last place’. “Two negatives make a positive,” she beamed with positivity as she said this.

So I am ‘saved’ from being in last place because two negatives make a positive? I don’t get it.

Her piece of news was rather a shock to me, I had thought I was trying for first place. Being in last place was not even in my awareness, obviously. This is a clever way of breaking bad news to someone, I’ll admit, to wait until there’s an improvement on the situation, and deliver the message all at once, kinda like a shit-sandwich.

Being in last place definitely implies failure, but, I notice now that the woman in the dream never said which place I had been ‘promoted’ to. I assumed it meant second last place. There were so many people around, competition would be fierce. Again, I assumed that.

Was she my shadow, but one that I had met before, as she was familiar to me in the dream? She was certainly the epitome of positiveness herself, almost too much so, like a salesperson who congratulates you on winning a prize, when you both knew that the ‘prize’ is just a gimick or a ploy of marketing.

Was she ‘artifice’? And was she showing me how I use artifice to deceive myself? By using cliché and blind logic like ‘two negatives make a positive’, pun on the ‘positive’? The cliché is definitely not always true, in fact I can’t think of any instance where it is true, other than the purely mathematical/logical. Perhaps it’s tellling me that much of what I hold to be true is only ‘true’ on the rational plane. I can feel the truth of that (ha!) and while I am quite capable of intuitive thinking, so often I am kidnapped by self-doubt on the way.

~~~~~~~~~~

I dreamed
the Little Mermaid had stayed
in the Piscean realm
of the ocean of boundlessness,
mutable,
fluid. I wish
I had never been told
that we are separate,
limited,
insignificant,
mortal puddles
of defenseless
tissue. Even though

I now know
that
Paradise Lost is
nothing but a man-made
smoke screen, and the
Garden of Eden is
only
a belief away, I
have yet to
penetrate
to the other
side.

The question
isn’t
whether
I have the power
to bring Heaven
to Earth, but would I
allow
Heaven on Earth to come
to me, into my life.

Heaven
is always
knocking
on our door
—do we
open the door?

Earth is
just there
outside
my door
—do I step out
now?

Healing PTS

Woke up this morning from what felt like a long, extended dream, and my ex-husband was with me the whole time… I wasn’t particularly thrilled about it, but there was some kind of process or objective we had to accomplished, but I just wanted to get it done and over with.

DREAMWORK:

I’ve had dreams about my ex-husband now and then, but the question that remains is a basic one: Why him? I am not aware of unresolved issues where my relationship with him was concerned, yet I know there must be something—that he represents some part of my own psyche that I’ve not come to terms with…

I went into sleep last night with thoughts about what my life would be like without my nemesis, fear of insufficiency, and its underlying cause of The Split, the dualistic view of life. I didn’t know that this fear is so big it blocks any possibility of even imagining my life without it. It is that glass wall again. And I am nose to glass, so close to it that I cannot even see where it ends. Perhaps this dream brings some light to that…

What my ex represents that I reject is the primitive nature of man, particularly of men, the masculine manifestation. It is also the earthiest part of human and animal nature. I can see that by denying and disowning it, I am cutting myself off from the earth, its support and nurturance. Aahhh! It is my vulnerability again, afraid to get dirty, afraid of possible violation and trauma, afraid to be invaded, overpowered, plundered.

The breach of that trauma has penetrated my sense of safety so deeply and violently, I have not been able to get close enough to the open wound, because I’ve been too busy screaming from the pain and anguish, still. I think I’m simply(!) stuck in the impression or image of the events—primary symptom of PTS—and do not have the wherewithal to get myself out. I’ve worked on this every time it came around on the healing spiral, and it has healed to the point that I am conscious of all of this now, which for most of my life has been filed under ‘phobia’ and left like an inoperable tumour. So it’s time to let go of these frozen memories, these stories of my life, at least this layer of it.

I surrender them to the Oneness of Life, from which they came, to which they shall return, and become part of the flow of life again. I wash them from me, into the ever-moving and living water of Dao. I immerse myself in it and let it wash out my wound, calm and soothe it, love and care for it. Dress it with the healing wisdom of plants and minerals, fill it with vital, raw earth. Drench me in showers of prayer and blessing so that I take root in this earthly life, this beautiful and abundant life where fears come and go, but love is always there. Here. In me. With me. In and with everything. In and with the 100 Huskies killed by their employers yesterday. In and with the employers.

Love is like the sun. It rises for everyone.

Raising Vulnerability

Yet another dream of having a little girl—a daughter—this time she is with me and we are on a bus. I was wearing a frilly, flouncy white shirt, ultra-feminine with a plunging neckline. I had to pull the sides together to keep from exposing too much of my chest. My daughter was in white too. I was standing and holding her hand at first, then I saw an empty seat. We went over to it and I lifted her unto the seat, debating whether I ought to squeeze in beside her or let her sit by herself. Out of my periphery I could see there were more empty seats just beside us, but it did not occur to me to sit there or to have her sit on my lap.

DREAMWORK:

I am still trying to protect my vulnerability, my defenseless little feminine, which I have rejected and over-protected in turn. It’s been a lifetime of love and hate. I am beginning to love and cherish her now, but I feel so much still, for her defenselessness and innocence, which I want desperately to shield from the dangers of the world. I want her to have a chance to grow up, at her own pace, and have the time she needs to mature. Am I using her as an excuse not to go into the world? Somewhat. That’s the fear in me talking. The flipside of the fear is love. My love for her, my young, tender, darling child, my self, who is finally growing up into my Self. I do want her to have the best, as every parent does. I want her to stay on her path, guided by Source.

I know I cannot protect her, that would only get in her way, so I’ll love her all that I can, but let her sit by herself in her own seat, stay with her as we are meant to be, on this bus ride into the world together.

The Unmaking of My Artifice

Saturday, January 29, 2011

I’ve been sitting and marinating in this ‘new’* insight of the artifice in myself, ever since it came into my awareness the other night. Last night gave me a few more glimpses of the constellation this is a part of. That this artifice I have created is my first layer of defense. It has become for me a general, daily wear kind of wall that I put up around myself, in defense of my vulnerability, which is the fear that I am not enough, that I don’t have enough. I dare say that all of my fears and anxieties are rooted in that. Even with the yesterday’s episode of ‘I hate cleaning up after and taking care of someone else”—an ancient re-run of my relationship soap opera, there it is, way down, that fear that I don’t have enough (energy, time, resources, whatever) for myself already, I don’t want to give anymore away, because I won’t have enough left for myself… The poverty consciousness of the Head Types.

But this wall, this artifice, is made of glass, so I can see out into the world from a safe place, and still see what’s going on, so I can continue to live vicariously through it and feel ‘productive’ and ‘useful’. But this transparency also allows others to see me, which, from my lofty (glass tower) vantage point inside the wall gives the illusion that I am somehow superior to those outside, and most important of all, my sincerity and honesty are on display, so as to uphold my holier-than-thou image to others. “Look how smart I am! Look what good work I am doing, working on my own healing and spiritual growth!” Because I am nothing if I am not smart.

But my life of cultivating ‘smart’ seemed to have masterminded this glass screen I am now imprisoned in. The sophisticiation of my intellect created this double-blind that is so cleverly deceptive, I find myself now lost and trapped in the jungle of my own mind. I’ve outsmarted myself, and now I can’t get out.

In my dream of the glass tower, I didn’t or couldn’t leave because I did not have my masculine: the courage and confidence and drive to go out into the world. I flirted with him (all 3 of them!) but did not commit myself to him, so he did not take me with him. Because deep down I don’t really want to leave my glass tower, my false sense of safety, even though there was a revolving door, so I was not even really trapped. The only thing that binds me is my fear of not enough.**

*the quote marks around the new are there because I’ve had inklings of these notions long before they appeared in my consciousness in these particular forms. In these 2 instances, they came as words or labels.

**this is also very true of why I’ve been hitting that wall of artifice in writing poetry, which manifests as the symptom of piling on as many adjectives and metaphors and images and words as I can (as I’ve just done) into every line, for fear that I might miss some crucial embellishment or novel turn-of-phrase that could distinguish me as ‘a cut above’. Even though it is the simple, matter-of-fact, unadorn truth and wisdom that move me the most. I can’t seem to stop myself. It is an obsession, a compulsion, a knee-jerk reflex of fear.

Is there anything to be done with this, on this loop of the spiral? Surrender it to Source. That is all.
_____________

Friday, January 28, 2011

There is a layer of artifice in myself I must penetrate, as thin and transparent as it might be, for that is its disguise. I have been aware of its presence for some time now, but mostly the awareness came and went, until I began to write poetry lately, until I began to strive to be a poet and kept hitting a wall once I get a few lines into it. I think now, that the wall is my artifice. It is the same glass wall that was in my dream a few days ago, of being with 3 love interests in a glass building, then watching them leave through the glass revolving door with other women.
_____________

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Had another DREAM of a small girl child, this time she was with her mom with me looking on, again, full of concern for her welfare, but from a few feet away. Her mom had just set her down to sit, and I thought, I’ve never seen her run around like kids usually do, she’s always just sitting quietly. I had to admit though, she looked healthy, and sweet. Meanwhile, off to the other side, someone (I think it was actually me) was holding and showing a plant and saying, this is what happens when a plant has potato bugs. I saw that there were russet-coloured pudgey wedged-shaped things hanging from the stems of the plant.

DREAMWORK:

I am still keeping a ‘safe’ distance away from my ‘concern’, fretting needless no doubt, but not realizing that my anxiety is caused and fueled by the distance I’ve placed between myself and ‘other’. I am powerless because I’ve removed myself from the position of participation, therefore the right to act. I don’t want the role of a nurturer or caregiver, in effect giving up my right to keep the little girl as my own, even though I know she is mine. Even though I say I want to heal the split in myself, I am holding the sides apart.

The russet-coloured wedges on the plant seemed more like ‘fruits’ than the result of potato-bug infestation to me. Perhaps I believed it to be an infestation—a negative influence—but it’s actually bearing some kind of fruit, or hanging chrysalis. The colour red is one that signifies life to me, though somewhat stagnant in this case because of its darkness. They were full and healthy looking too. I think the potato bugs were my fears, and from my fears I did not expect anything ‘good’ to come, but the dream is telling me otherwise.

Judge less. Wait more.
___________

Unmake Me

In half sleep it came
with an untidy jolt
that before anything else ought to be contemplated
I must unlearn

all that I have
all that I know
all that I have invested
treasured and venerated

in language and words
art and sensibility
sacred and the profane
indeed
how we stand, how
we take our place in
the order and orientation
of all things created

the clay pot that I am
in a long line of vessels
is taken up by an unseen hand
dropped

in a heartbeat
shattered

in front of my own witness
I knew then

the worst
and the best
all the rest

have yet to come.

~~~~~

So I am to be unmade, broken into pieces and reconfigured into a new design for a ‘new’ vessel, as I was once before. Or so I thought… Perhaps this is how it goes, how we are renewed, life after life, life within life. Remembering still the pain of dismemberment the last time, I can only pray that this time, it might mercifully be a process less protracted, IF I can surrender to it with less of a fight, and more stillness.

Ready. Set. Stop.

Cat & 2 Dead Mice

DREAM about touching a dead mouse accidentally, because I was trying to reposition food I saw for a cat so that she’ll be sure to see it. I was doing it habitually on the run, in a rush to go somewhere…

DREAMWORK:

I felt disgusted when I realized what I had touched, kept looking at my hand not knowing what to do with it. There were 2 little dead bodies when I looked back, but I swore I didn’t see any before… Mice, are a personification of my deepest fear, my phobia extremis. It’s a sticky, messy ball of irrational terror wrapped around raw vulnerability and powerlessness. I’ve been around to this groove on my healing spiral a few times already, and here I am again.

Well, at least the mice are dead now. They do not have the kind of paralyzing effect on me they used to have. But the memory of the wrenching repulsion is still with me. They don’t set me off into the farthest orbits of sanity anymore, but the aversion is still vivid and visceral. This all takes place in the area of my abdomen, solar plexus down. It’s as if I’ve been entrained into a Pavlovian response to become immobilized by the shock of suddenly finding myself in a trap.

How to break this entrainment, neutralize the charge of this memory? I’ll look for the answer in the dream… The cat from the dream was Moxie, one of my sister’s brood who went to kitty heaven recently due to old age. She was spunky, wiry, highstrung, and a loner. She was very vocal and demanded attention with full-body urgency whenever she was in need, which wasn’t easy to satisfy in an uneasy tribe of 9 cats. As cats go I admired her for her individuality and her assertions of it, even though she wasn’t recognizably sweet or charming. She insisted on her ways, and lived by her own strategy in the constant turf war that was her communal life.

I suppose I identify with her, her personality and her power, particularly on the level of sheer animal survival. She wasn’t at the top or the bottom of the pecking order, she was an outsider that came and went as she willed. It’s what I would like to be, given who and what I am. To ‘belong’ to a tribe, yet still have the freedom to come and go, leave and stay as I feel called to. To always have a home and hearth and temple to return to, fall back on, accepted unconditionally by, to love and commit to in my own way.

I wanted to make sure she has food (in the dream it was something red—passion? liveliness? Creativity?), but I was going at such high speed I barely managed to grab it and put it in the ‘right’ place. The dead mice (there were 2 in the dream, though i only touched one) slowed me down though, made me stop dead in my tracks (literally!) and look back. Unfinished business needing attention. Standing firm in my true self and finding my own roar like Mox, while grounding my roots and home base in my own ‘tribe’ will help me break the spell of this traumatic memory. Well, I haven’t found my tribe yet, not as I can recognize as such, but in the meantime, I can do the ground work, in all the ways it means.

Stay true and rooted in the Self, then nothing can defile or diminish who you really are, because You are rooted in One and All.

This dream is probably in response to the irritating and disturbing feeling of being unmoored I’ve woken up with in the last few days. We may be called to let go of the shores, but we are still emphatically attached and held by the sometimes invisible web of life, in which loneliness and powerlessness are nothing but hallucinations of the mind drunk on fear. Sober up.

Choice & Surrender

Friday, January 21, 2011

DREAM that all 3 of my love interest have just left me, each with another woman. We were in a big modern business building, glass and steel, and I had just spent time laughing, holding hands, and dancing with each of them in turn. Yet when it came time to leave the place, they chose someone else. I was smiling and hurting inside as I saw them go through the revolving door. I remember goofing around with J.P. earlier and ending up on all fours on the floor, and he on all fours as well on top of me, like nestling tables, both of us laughing uproariously. J.D. was there too…

DREAMWORK:

The hurt was palpable even after I woke up. The pain of rejection, confusion, disappointment, crashing shock. Then having to hold myself together with sheer pride. Meals on wheels of hot humiliation and cold grief everyday from now on. These are old, familiar feelings that I haven’t thought about for a while now.

The glass tower was the areana of status quo life I’ve lived most of my adult life. We were all going after the same things, following the same routines, navigating by the same laws, living and dying the same way. This was how we related. This was how we stave off loneliness, how we fit in. This, of course, began in the teenaged years, under crushing peer pressure. At any rate there was safety and security, regularity and normalcy inside this hot house. I could have chosen to stay in it, laugh and love my way into old age, leave and grieve relationships regularly, just like everybody else in there, and die when the black hole gets too big and there isn’t enough of me left to stay on the ground.

But this glass tower was a place for the young. The 3 men were youthful, romantic figures, perfectly preserved as moments in time by my memory. Yet I have not recovered completely from loss of love. These were loves I wanted but stopped myself from reaching all the way for. In the case of both J.P. and J.D., out of fear of defying my conditioning. More than likely, it saved my heart from being broken, but it also eliminated chances to experience love, however imperfect they might have been.

I remember so clearly the playfulness and spontaneity of our bodies tumbling like a litter of puppies, loosened with total abandon into laughter. I have never laughed so loud and hard in all of my life. It was all so innocent. Yet I expected more.

Was it also because I did not take them seriously, did not declare my commitment to love so was taken for a player? Had I played at love like children rough-housing for the afternoon, then had to go home when dinner was called?
~~~~~

For some reason this dream is frustrating me, as if it’s hitting me below the belt and I don’t know why. As I settled into sleep for the night I let it run as it will in my mind, and it came to me that the glass tower shows false freedom, like the fishbowl idea most of the modern business buildings are fashioned on, it is a pretense at being transparent. What is false freedom to me? I’ve a feeling this is the blinders I can not see past. I’ll just let my thoughts run…

I thought I was free, after leaving much of my early conditioning behind, to choose who to love and to love whom I chose. Because I felt I had lost control over that before, I should have it back. I should have control over it. I didn’t know control is very different from choice. Control is procured with fists tightly clenched; choice with hands open. One is hot, the other cool. One is black-or-white, the other a rainbow.

It’s true that in the dream I had no control over the outcome, but I had 3 men to choose from. I ‘explored’ my options but did not make a choice. I waited for them to choose me. I was entirely passive, right up to the end. I swallowed my disappointment and smiled through my heartbreak. I have to choose, when the freedom of choice is presented to me.

It seems such a hairline of difference between manipulation for a desired outcome and making a choice based in surrender. Surrender is not synonymous with passivity. I’ve never felt very clear about this. But if surrender is not just sitting around doing nothing and waiting for fate to knock my door, then what is it? Surrender is looking at the choices I have with hands and heart open, grounded in love and stillness, and letting that love (for myself, for the greater good, for Life) guide me to the best choice for me, accepting and trusting that this is the best choice, even if I can’t see it at the moment.

So what does this mean to me now, with the choices I am facing? I have the choices of going out to get a job for money, or continue to focus on self-healing and honing my skills in writing, or stop trying/doing everything and see what comes, or combinations of the above. Looking at these choices with as much openness and love and stillness as I can, I allow love to guide me now. Love, what will you have me do?

Love says:

"Love yourself. When you love yourself, you stop struggling like a fish caught in a net. The net is the struggle. Ditch the net.

When you love yourself, you wouldn’t beat yourself up. Again, ditch the net.

When you love yourself, you allow the best to come your way, and when it does, you do not turn away from it because it’s not what you expected, because it’s too expensive and you’re on a budget, because it’s too this or that. Ditch the net, the struggle, the fear.

Surround yourself only with love."

Stay loose, spontaneous, playful, and in the moment, as we were in the dream, but stay alert and open to choices. Make the choice of loving myself.

Loving Girl Blue

DREAMBIT:

I had a little girl, about 2 or 3, who I had just taken back from someone who was taking care of her for me. She was quiet in my arms but moody looking. I felt her skin which was cool and wondered if she was sick, though she seemed healthy. I carried her upstairs to a desk (mine?), then I put her down so I could clean up the desk. I sorted through some books and magazines to decide what to keep. In the end I decided to chuck them all.

DREAMWORK:

Ah, my little baby again, this time a girl… but why is she melancholic? I feel that she wanted to be with me, but perhaps I had been away from her too long? This had made her blue and withdrawn. There is certainly a big part of me that is blue and withdrawn. She’s been there for a long time. And even though I love her I still put her aside for my work. I become preoccupied with learning and forget about her, at least for the moment, even though I ended up throwing out all the books. Perhaps then I could devote myself to her? Perhaps then I could devote myself to connecting, loving, and nurturing myself? Forget the books. I know all I need to know from them.

What I remember most viscerally is the feel of her skin against mine. The velvety baby softness that gives, the temperature lower than mine, as if she has cooled from her former fiery passionate self, like a baby who’s exhausted herself crying and demanding, and is now pliable and limp, given up.

Poor baby, I promise to do better.

Love & Power

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

DREAM that I am with my sister and my mother in a big house full of people, a communal place. But even though I “belonged” there, I didn’t exactly feel at ease. I didn’t have anything to do and I was bored. So I told my mother I was going down to the store to buy myself some tea. Then I was with my sister, practically stuck to her side, kind of wedged against the wall while she was setting up for a group photograph of some group of men, some kind of committee with power. She wanted to leave lots of space around them in the shot, but I told her I wouldn’t bother, they always crop the pictures very tight. I remember seeing Christopher Pett as a grown man, when the men started coming in.

DREAMWORK:

I have known for some time that ‘my place’ is with community, even though I appear reclusive and live like a hermit in the middle of the city. In my dreams and waking life I travel always with the feeling that I don’t fit in, that I don’t belong anywhere. I think I started to get this feeling just before puberty, the age of discernment, of separation, when I started to take life apart. In the dream I also did not have purpose, one of my own and therefore one for being in the group, as if the two are the same, or intertwined. My birth chart tells me the same thing, my sun, Chiron, and Mars all in the 10th house of career and vocation.

What is my purpose then? It seems intrinsically at the core of career and life’s work that I can’t go on without knowing what it is. I’ve known for a long time that it has to do with healing, and I still feel certain of that. But to say that my life’s purpose is to heal and help others heal no longer suffice for me as a purpose. It is like a gushing tonnage of water without a container. There’s no direction, no course, no form, at least not apparent to me. I need that apparency (is that a word?) now, certainly more transparency.

Healing from individuals into community. Bringing the nuclear way of life into the tribal, like a midwife. That’s all I got for now, but I sense more is coming, soon. Back to the dream…

My mother and my sister were both there, so this is my people, this is where I belong, even if my feelings deny it. I told my mother I was leaving for a while, perhaps to go get some ‘wake-up’ and comfort (tea). At any rate, I wanted change. But I don’t remember actually going anywhere. Instead, I was literally stuck to my sister, my shadow familiar, who was preoccupied with the image of patriarchy. (Am I obsessed with the image?) But she is trying to show me something different about this image I have of it, by giving it lots of space around, more space than I thought necessary, as I’ve formed my perception of it already. To see patriarchy with more breathing room, more leniency, more freedom to move, more possibility, will perhaps bring more flow into it too.

Christopher Pett was a boy I went to grade school with, he had just immigrated from England with his family. I hadn’t remembered him until now, but I would say although he was a ‘foreigner’ just like me, he and his background was much less alien than mine. He was an introvert and kept to himself, just like me, but he didn’t stick out either. He appeared to be himself, and fit in. Now he is shown as part of the power collective in the community, so it is saying to me that even someone as reticent as he can be powerful and be comfortable with it. But they are still all men, at least in my image of what’s powerful. So I still associate power with the masculine, but is that ‘wrong’? It is if I believe it’s still ‘a man’s world’ and allow that to hold me back from what I need to do. It is if that power is locked up and segregated within myself so my feminine is left powerless.

Another scab to pick off and jettison, another layer of dead skin to shed. So I can welcome into the spotlight the new girl, pink and fresh with health. I want to love her, this new baby girl, an auspice for a new way of life for me. And I believe I can love her as my own, as much as anything or anyone is my own, as myself. I shall call her Meme** (as in me-me).

It was kind of a strange little scene to see my head tucked into the side of my sister’s neck, and felt the need for that degree of closeness in the dream. I have come to rely on her a great deal, my shadow feminine, and I realize just this moment that I love her too. Now I want the power of my masculine to flow in exchange with the love of my feminine, so power and love are available to both, and become as one.

**Interestingly, meme means “an idea, belief or belief system, or pattern of behavior that spreads throughout a culture either vertically by cultural inheritance (as by parents to children) or horizontally by cultural acquisition (as by peers, information media, and entertainment media)”, according to the Urban Dictionary.

Current Moon Phase

CURRENT MOON

moon info

The Charlatan of Self-Deception

Saturday, January 15, 2011

DREAMBITS:

1) Sitting at a table with a teacher who was telling us how great a package of ‘art’ pencils are. He was holding up the pack in his hand and pointing to it as if there was a camera rolling somewhere, a commercial being made. I noticed there was one pencil missing, leaving a gap in the pack, and one of the pencils was like a carpenter’s pencil, flat and wide, but the lead was inky black. A class was about to start, but I did not belong in that class so I began to collect my things and go.

2) I was methodically re-positioning a small clear plastic curtain by moving the 4 suction cups holding it up. The whole background was a big glass wall. There were 2 clear plastic disks already on the glass, but I just stuck the suction cups over them as if they weren’t there. There was something else to the right but I can’t recall what it was now. Some kind of measuring device I think.

DREAMWORK:

1) Am I still wasting my time and energy on the charlatans of the world, even ones selling ways to creativity? I think this is referring to all the books and websites and people I am giving attention to, because they are supposedly artists who have ‘made it’ in the world, whose strategies and recipes for success ought to be my guiding light. I am beginning to find that this is not necessarily so, that perhaps it is time I learn from a greater teacher, Soul.

I don’t need the pack of pencils the teachers of the world are selling, I already have the one I need, that’s why it was missing in the pack. What he had that I didn’t though, was the carpenter’s pencil, they ultra-black, hyper-real, artisan’s tool. I am missing the tool of manifestation, of actually making something real and tangible. I chose not to sign on for that class because it didn’t feel right to me. But I still need to and want to manifest my full and true Self in this world. I need a different path to get there but I have no idea how or what. Perhaps the second dreambit will give me a clue…

2) I can see how this image of the borderless glass wall is a metaphor of my current life. I am separated from the ‘real’ world as I know it, on the outside looking in, and on the inside looking out. But even that isn’t enough for me, I’ve put up a personal-sized curtain on the wall, although it too is transparent, so I’m not sure what purpose it serves. It offers a distorted view of me from the other side at most, so I cannot be seen as I truly am. That’s a kind of disguise I suppose. So if others cannot see the real me, it’s because I’ve ‘hidden’ it. And some of the ‘work’ I’ve been doing has been this fussing with lining up the suction cups—to give myself a sense of purpose? a sense of order? I want to present my image to the world in a certain way, with a bit of a twist. It is based on the real me, but still, it’s not authentic. I’m not being authentic. I’m still trying to hide something of myself. I am pretending to be transparent, but I’m not. I am working towards wholeness (the number 4) but I am also using that work for a cover. I am the charlatan, selling myself. I think it’s wholeness (4) I am showing to the world, but it’s actually still the older split (2) underneath. But the 2 were whole circles, and transparent… They are the personas that I have been, as a designer, and as a healer. Even though they were only personas, they were at least presented as shown. I did not try to present them as something loftier.

But now I am seemingly doing ‘nothing’ with my life, I feel the need to pretend to everyone else as if I am doing something, by telling them I am doing the great and important work of healing myself. Not that that’s not true, but I think this dream is saying it’s not about what’s ‘true’ and what’s not, because that’s subject to opinion therefore an illusion, but that I am using it as self-validation. I am using it to get acceptance and love. But worse, I am telling myself a story I can turn into a belief, a belief I can hold on to. And like everything else, a belief can serve the ego, or it can serve Life.

It wouldn’t be untrue to just say I am doing nothing, because that is what I’m doing. It is the subject of what I am working on, the nothingness of existence. Egads, this is difficult to keep straight… What I’m feeling is caution, that I must keep my eyes peeled and stay alert to what’s inauthentic, not least self-deception, which is as wiley as a fox.

The moral of this dream: Beware of labeling yourself, lest you buy into it. True Self cannot be labeled.

A 3 a.m. Nugget of Truth

The thought came that because both my parents and I are Pisces, we were as one big pool of water, and to become my own person, I’ve had to fight to separate myself from them. Then immediately the thought continued to say, that’s not true, that’s just an intellectual arrangement and conclusion from what you’ve been fed as ‘facts’. And I could see what it meant then, that I had taken what I knew about Pisces, that we are without boundary, and extrapolated a romantic picture about my relationship with my parents from it. I know I do this quite effortlessly, and often, and all the other times I had done this I went along with these rationalized constructs not only willingly, but smugly, as if they are proof of my mental powess (discreetly of course, wouldn’t want to be blatantly arrogant, would we?)

What kicked me in the gut though, is how often I’ve done this, this reconstruction of notions I have, into a picture to my liking, because I know that it is falsehood. Is this what they mean by ‘building castles in the air’ (with bits of floating material like ideas and concepts), or the ability of the Enneatype 7 in reframing? I think I might be about to construct again… There seems to only be the threadiest hairline between this being a blessing and a curse… We’ll focus on the curse for the moment…

So, if these are stories I made up to tell myself, then I did it for reasons that weren’t immediately apparent but were meant to protect my ego from the pain of knowing the truth. What were the reasons and what were the truths? I’ve a feeling that I ought to begin with the tiny kernel of truth that is within the lie it is wrapped in. Looking at what came up in the night as an example, I could say honestly (perhaps clarity is a better tool of assessment) that what’s true is that I felt I had to fight to get away from my parents, to be my own person. This is a typical part of individuation, common in teenage years, but I’ve taken the fight much further in my own life, largely because my ego was nurtured and accelerated into development—precocity—so early on, with the brain-candy belief of achievement leading to reward, that the desire for individuality came very early and strong. My ego was raging and overgrown for my age, but being emotionally naïve, it knew no bounds. Or at least it liked to believe that. I think that’s why I’ve always believed, with a fervor atypical of me, that sky’s the limit. Sky’s not the limit, more like. I see now why that’s called inflation.

So the painful truth my ego wanted to be protected from was that I actually wanted to be separated and distinct from my parents (and any collective which threatens to swallow me up) not because of an accident (or synchronicity) of birth, such as our birth signs, but because my ego wanted its own space, to expand, to inflate. That’s the ugly little kernel of truth in the middle.

I wanted to end this ‘investigation’ here, but for some reason the image of the fox came unbidden, reminding me of the first time I experienced a ‘journey’ through guided meditation, the fox was the animal that appeared, waiting for me at the entrance into the dark wood. Was she a personification of my ego, the stealthy, subversive, and clever one? Yes. Hmmm. I recall now the house I came upon in the woods, a cozy looking cottage with a light on but no one home. The instructor who led the meditation told me that the fox was about sour grapes (drawing on Aesop’s fable), which did not feel right to me, and smirked at there being no one home in my house (I see now that he was not much more mature than I was, though our egos were always competing for whose was bigger). I think now that that house was where and what I long to be, what I am journeying toward in this life. A warm and glowing sense of belonging and haven of rest, silence and solitude, and that ultimate surrendering of the self, the ego, so there is ‘no one home’, because the Self is, by that point and in that place, more than a being who lives in the house, more than the house, more than the woods even. It is all of that and more. I will know what it’s like when I get there ☺

What I remember vividly too is the quiet gaze of the fox, as she sat perfectly composed, patiently waiting for me. She is also the discerning, assertive, quick-silver mind, capable of synthesizing details and relevances into a cohesive whole. She is ego in its totality, necessary to growth.

I have a flash of the ego being a car, getting us from one place to the next on our life’s journey. I suppose then, once we reach enlightenment, or heaven, or oneness, wherever that destination is, we would have no need of a vehicle, our ego, and it will simply cease to exist, because it will no longer have meaning. But for now, I shall keep in mind that my car is my ego, for better or worse, as I often dream about driving in a car.

Thinking about that time in my life I remember too the great rush of freedom and exhilaration I was in the thralls of most of the time. It was shortly after my separation and a whole new life had begun for me. I was the fish in a bowl put back into the ocean, a bird taking its first flight out of captivity, finally living and loving it, awkwardness and all. Life was moving at a speed previously unknown to me, and I wanted to go even faster (manifesting in a wad of traffic tickets and a car accident). And yes, I was inflating faster and bigger than a hot-air balloon on steroids… Ahhh, the ride continues…

Hands on a Green Sheet

An image of many arms and hands gripping a mint/sage green cloth by the edges, which were crumpled a bit so as to give the hands more substance to hold on to, and pulling it as tight as possible. I had the sense the cloth was held aloft.

DREAMWORK:

The cloth is the colour of our bedsheets, so this is something personal. Although I don’t recall seeing the bodies and faces attached to the arms, they didn’t feel like strangers to me, nor did they feel exactly like kin. I think they were ‘my people’, though I have yet to meet them. I’m not sure what they were doing, or for what purpose, but they were doing it together, in one accord. There was a strong feeling of solidarity and strength, as if they were all told to and agreed to grip as tight and as they can, pull as hard as they can to make the sheet as taut as possible in all directions. It almost seemed as if it’s a matter of life and death, as if something or someone’s going to fall on it, although this is at the very edge of the feeling in the dream.

It’s a temporary shelter, my inner knowing tells me, for me, for where I am in my life. The hands of my people (though I haven’t met them they are already there, aligned with me somehow) are hard at work, intent with purpose, in making and giving me shelter. I have an image of a little green shoot, freshly broken ground, shielded by the canopy of mature foliage above it. The coverage is light but sturdy, sunlight and rain can come through, but not so much they sear or crush the young seedling.

Now that I have ‘come out of the closet’ with my vulnerability, standing on the threshold of the nursery and the big wide world, I am that young plant, again, open to this re-entry as a being reborn, having reclaimed more of myself this time.

So I thank these generous and purposeful folks, my people, for paving the way and providing for me. I hope to see you soon some day, and thank you and join you in person.

From Hiding to Flowing

1) I was standing naked in my bedroom, going through my clothes, getting dressed. Alex was there. I decided on a chartreuse summery sheer dress, but somehow in the end put on a long-sleeve t-shirt and a skirt. When I went out I realized I had forgotten to wear a bra, so I crossed my arms in front of my chest. My body seemed quite thin.

2) I was walking down some steps outdoors, in the country or in a park. Suddenly birds flew out from a small paper bag sticking out of the riser of the step I was just about to step down from. Different kinds of birds but I remember distinctly a pigeon with grey, white, and brown feathers. I was taken by surprise. A man who was crouching by the side of the path saw it all.

3) I had to pee and went into my parents’ quarter of the house. Passed by my dad lounging on a daybed reading in the first room. Then I went into their bedroom and saw through a half open door my mother was already in the ensuite bathroom. I left and went back out to a much larger bathroom adjacent, but found that my mother had filled the sink, the bathtub, and the toilet completely, and left the water running slowly and overflowing. I hesitated for a moment then flushed the toilet to see what would happen. It worked normally so I was relieved. There was a yellowish foamy jelly-like mass at the base of the front of the toilet.

DREAMWORK:

1) Alex, a guy from my most recent participation in the rat race. My animus, watching over me while I choose what to put on to go out into the world with? The dress I decided on was very feminine, cheerful, alluring, vibrant, carefree, pleasing to the eye (and the ego too). I wanted to look good. But somehow I ended up with boring, plain, dowdy, and embarrassing. I want to be myself, show my true self—am I being delusional about what I really look like, or am I frumping myself down when I show myself out there?

I have to admit, when I was at my last workplace (where I worked with Alex) I did not present myself as I truly and wholly am. I was a role being played, a job description being enacted, an unit of productivity being generated according to someone else’s script. Alex probably saw more of my real self than anyone else there, but even that was minimal. We saw each other as the uniform we wore, a hat we put on, one of the many we wear in a lifetime.

The real woman I am is that beautiful chartreuse dress, eager to go out into the world and society with a smile and an open heart, ready for the adventure of the extraordinary and everyday. That, is the only way I want to go out. I don’t ever want to wear a hat (or clothes) that someone else has made and labeled, that obscures who I am and limits me in what I want to be. I don’t want to ever hide myself, make myself invisible or plain, dumb myself down, or show myself as anything less colourful and exotic than I am. Eccentric and unconventional I may be, socially unfit sometimes, uncompromising other times, but I will find that hole where my weird round peg can fit into, somewhere out there.

2) Nature, was the first thing that came to me as I see the dream in my mind now. It has to do with Nature.

The descent was gradual and leisurely, the scene peaceful. Slightly darkened, as if under trees. The steps were well-worn, either just earth or wood inset into earth, and only a person wide. Old, but not ancient. Then, sudden shock, birds as an element of Air, flew out from inside the earth under my feet, through a paper bag tunnel and exit no less. Why paper bag? Why not just a hole they flew out of? Is it akin to ‘letting the cat out of the bag’? This is letting the birds out of the bag?? Birds symbolize freedom to me (didn’t I just have a dream about this a few days ago, except that was a wooden toy bird ?!), freedom manifested and expressed. So unexpectedly, though not unpleasantly, freedom came on my way to deepen into Mother Nature, out of the element least associated with flight—the earth. How lovely is that!?!

Birds also embody creativity, their flight is the movement and expression of creativity to me. Does that mean my creativity, and sense of freedom from its expression, is to come from my deepening connection to Nature? I see that that’s where Mary Oliver writes her poetry from, and I would love to tap into the same source. I suppose all poetry is about Nature, but her subject is so often, Nature herself. (Does Mother Nature, like us women, have masculine qualities and energy innately?? She must, as I am a part of Nature. At any rate, my masculine, my animus, is always nearby, even if only on the sideline.)

A paper bag is quite fragile, humble and commonplace, yet it is a container of a sort, usually for purchases. So perhaps these birds are freedom and creativity that I have paid for, earned with hard work. That’s why the birds were of different ‘feathers’, they are specific forms of creative expression, personal to me. There were about 6 or 8 of them. The pigeon with the brown/grey/white features, I realize just now, was most likely from the cover image of Karen Solie’s book of poetry called “Pigeon”, for which she won the Griffin Award last year. I just read it last week and felt that it took me to a different place I’ve not been before, not somewhere I wanted to go, but now I’m glad she took me there. In a way that’s even more powerful than having been taken to a place where one would willingly go, somewhere one already knows will resonate; but to be ‘forced’ to go to the unfamiliar, possibly unpleasant, and then being persuaded and converted into a fan, well, that’s awesome. I hope I can create something with that kind of transformative power someday. Maybe that’s my pigeon in the dream, taking flight…

3) Funny I was just thinking yesterday that I haven’t had a toilet dream in quite a while, I guess I was either planting the notion in my subconscious or channeling the unconscious…

I wonder if I get these dreams when I have a need to unload emotionally (and also having to, coincidentally, go pee), and if that’s true, what emotion did I need to unload now or yesterday? I haven’t felt much urgency in needing to express my emotions consciously, nor do I feel pent-up about anything. But water could mean so many things to me that perhaps it is not necessarily emotions this dream is featuring…

I have the feeling now that this time it is about flow, in general, of energy, because for me, being of mostly a watery nature in a watery phase of my life, my energy move as water does. In my own writing lately, I’ve used the image of the opening of the floodgates several times, at the same time, I wish for and try to ground in stillness. Hence the quietly and slowly overflowing bathroom fixtures in this dream. There was a pervasive sense of calm and peace to the whole scene, except for my need to pee which was physical and real. The only obstacle, in a way, was that I did not find what I needed from my parents, my masculine and feminine familiars, what I was used to, where I expected to find help and resources. They were quite peaceful too, but I had to find ‘satisfaction’ outside their domain, though still within myself.

It was a large space, lots of room to move around in, and everything was cast in a mellow, golden light or tone. Slightly low lighting, so not entirely in my consciousness. And even though the water was overflowing the containers, there was no flooding on the floor. My first thought was that my mother had done this for a reason unknown to me.

The only thing perplexing me is the yellow stuff at the base of the toilet. I didn’t get the sense it was something dirty or awful, more like it had ‘grown’ there by itself, like honeycomb or plant resin. But why at the base of the toilet? Expectedly, it would be yucky and disgusting stuff that accumulates there. But this dream has an element of the unexpected, the ‘think, see, expect differently’ written all over it. Ambrosia is the word that comes to me now, and we all know that to be nectar of the gods, at least the Greek ones, but did I know that it is also known as “beebread: a mixture of nectar and pollen prepared by worker bees and fed to larvae”? Maybe it was already in my subconscious, maybe it’s from the collective unconsciousness. Doesn’t matter as much as its connection to my earlier sense of it as honeycomb, or rather, honey from honeycomb, the gooey, golden yellow ooze.

Hmmm… If I follow this line of inquiry and connection, it would seem to say to me that instead of expecting to find the usual negativity that I associate with emotional or any kind of overwhelm (overflow), I am finding something surprisingly rich and heavenly delicious and magical, a divine elixir for immortality.

Always, leave room to be surprised.

Boyfriend's Coming!

DREAM that I was in a place with many people, my community. It was a large space with white walls, almost everything was white. Then I got word that my boyfriend was coming, but I just went about my work in the back as usual. I smiled and said to another woman, “My boyfriend is coming and everyone’s all excited.” Many had rushed to the front door already. I felt calm and content. In a corner of the room I found some tubes of homeopathic remedy mixed in with balled-up white paper or cloth.

DREAMWORK:

Is he the biblical bridegroom, or is he still just a boyfriend because I have not claimed him as my own, just as I had to with my baby masculine? Apparently, part of my lesson and healing on my trap/responsibility/giving issue is on claiming these estranged parts of myself, because claiming them means accepting them, accepting the responsibility of having them—caring, nurturing, and loving them with all that I have. Claiming them, as opposed to denying and refusing to have anything to do with them, holding them at arm’s length, dangling them away from me as if they are repulsive as plague—what I’ve done for so long.

I see also something else I had not before; that I am working on healing many of these parts of my masculine at once—the infant, the toddler, the young man, as well as the mother—and each piece I reclaim not only adds to but resonates and impacts the whole, so the effect is at times exponential. How exquisite!

Okay back to the dream… I was happy that my boyfriend was coming, and his presence so well received by my people, but the deep calm and contentment in me remained undisturbed. I went to the backroom (a recurring motif, of my penchant for the unconventional, also my tendency to avoid being in the spotlight due to my self-consciousness and introversion) to do some work (because clearly I still have work to do there!) and found, amidst all the ‘whiteness’ and ‘lightness’ (so this is something I know about already), several tubes of remedies tucked in between wads of padding, the kind you use to cushion fragile items in storage or during moving. I remember the familiar and vivid blue (intensely emotional, but not dark) of the plastic tubes.

Perhaps the deeply rooted calm and poise is what I need to face the highly charged emotional response this dream is imparting to me (I feel the curling edges of panic already), that I am going back to healing work with others, with homeopathy and other modalities I know. Is this true, Great Spirit? Yes… And I am afraid of that, have been afraid of that, but had not the courage to even allow the possibility into my consciousness, until I am forced to now.

What am I afraid of, exactly? The memory of it being a heavy burden that I carried 24/7 because someone could call at any moment of the day for help, the guilt that I ought to help them because I had put it out there, the powerlessness at times when nothing seems to offer the relief they sought, and the ultimate failure I considered my work, myself, to be. As a healer, I was not a success according to mainstream standards. The question that comes now, is why had I tried to go the conventional route (even for a field called ‘alternative’) when I knew that that’s not who I am? Setting up clinic space, soliciting, marketing, appointments, follow-ups… these are all part of the requisite mould that I’ve been told is the tried and true way to success, just as with all conventions in our society. But why did I buy into it, again? Because I did not have enough of myself then to stand true for who and what I am, I did not know enough to ask what my heart’s true desire was. I needed more of me, and I needed more time to ‘find’ me.

So this is the work I’ve been doing, the time I’ve taken off from running that treadmill. Do I have enough of me now to go out and help others heal, in the way that is divinely intended? Yes, though I still feel fear. Hmmm… I am to do this work in spite of fear, even with fear, because it will not overwhelm me this time, because I have surrendered control to the divine, that I am but a vessel for the work. My ego is wringing its sweaty hands already, but it stays on the sideline.

I am stronger and more whole now, and even more so as I reclaim and re-integrate these parts of my Self, so when the time comes I will be able to step up to the front door, in full sight of everyone, everyone that matters to me, everyone in my tribe and community, and carry the light that came to me to be carried, full of the confidence and serenity I radiated in the dream.

Thank you, Great Spirit, my dreams, and Jupiter (currently in Pisces; more and more I am seeing how my life is celestially designed, engineered, and powered)!

Oneness, Separateness

DREAM that 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.

DREAMWORK:

Another dream of holding someone else’s child… this one was an old client and her only child, one that was diligently if not obsessively cared for.

Why am I holding and caring for someone else’s child? Because I have been afraid to claim him as my own. But now that my issue with taking on others as my responsibility is mending, I am given this opportunity to redress this aspect of it. I had never wanted children because it meant to me an unnecessary burden and sacrifice of my own life, and ultimately a loss of personal freedom. Now that whole picture I’ve painted for myself is being re-configured.

This child is literally and fundamentally a part of me, not merely an extension of me. Now I have the feeling this is touching on my personal paradox of boundary/boundary-less, my ‘to be, or not to be’. But I shall stay with the dream for the moment…

I am not afraid to claim him as my own anymore; I want to, in fact. It felt good and right to me to hold him, in both dreams. I am learning to nurture and provide for him as a mother would. In this dream, we were lying heart to heart, and even though he was sick with fever, vulnerable as children are, as I am, I am not turning my nose up at him or away from him anymore (couldn’t smell). I don’t mind that he is weak and helpless, and I know now that this vulnerability can only be held and healed with unconditional love and nurture, and I am the gatekeeper of that ocean of love.

!!!!!!!! A most bizarre thing just happened… I stopped writing at around noon to feed Nemo, and just when I was about to sit back down a few minutes ago (12:25pm) my cellphone pinged. I checked and found a text message from none other than Tina, who was in my dream! I think she sent it to me by mistake, because I’ve disconnected from all of my clients a year ago. The message just said [Jack]Jack, which means nothing to me. Perhaps she meant to write to someone named Jack, but hit my name instead… Nevertheless, there is a meaning to this… Is it a personal ‘message’ to me and me only? No, it involves her as well. Oh oh… Is she sending someone to me? Yes. Ought I to ask anymore about this? No. Okay then. Anyway, Tina was a good mother in my opinion.

I didn’t want to alienate or upset the mothers in my dreams, because I want to stay connected to the embodiment of motherhood, and be the good mother that is in me to be.

Something else I haven’t gotten from this dream yet… Oh yes, that boundary issue of mine… It occurs to me now that the boundary I had held for so long between myself and another, has come under scrutiny due to this recent re-examination and its consequent healing. It was necessary for me to draw a hard line between myself and other, so that I could be ‘safe’ from being responsible for them, this separation also served as a wall between us. It is as if the wall is unforgivingly solid, utterly and indiscriminantly impenetrable. It kept out potential harm and pain, but it also stood between me and love that came my way. But now I’ve found a way to soothe and heal my vulnerability, raw, exposed nerve endings of fearfulness, and slowly, gently, the big old band-aid can come off, so I can feel again, so I can open to experience and connection again.

As one carrying the essence of Sepia, an inverted mollusk as she is seen in homeopathy, I came into this life a Pisces child, naked with vulnerability and victimhood, without the inner resource to protect myself, and became overwhelmed with fear of the dangers of this world. In time, in compensation, I grew a psychic layer of armour with my bitterness, cynicism, and indifference, because that was all I knew to do. This insulated me from the harshness of reality as I perceived it. But as I said, it also cut me off from Life as a whole. Now I know I have the power to choose, I am an adult suddenly it seems, and I don’t need a wall to keep what’s not good for me away. I simply choose to open to only what’s good for me, now I have a better sense too, of what that is.

Osho was right, maturity is having the power to choose.