Journal

WHOSE DREAM IS IT ANYWAY?

Posted on Saturday, August 16th, 2014

Recently, a friend was giving a presentation about her creative/healing journey, which included a dream. Knowing that I do a lot of work with people around their dreams, she asked me if, after the presentation, I would tell her what I thought of her interpretation; I agreed.

 

Wonder of wonders, this experience actually highlights what I tell people all the time: Do NOT rely on so-called dream dictionaries, as YOU, the dreamer, are the best interpreter of your own dreams. So, when you give feedback to another dreamer, it is useful to preface that feedback with the phrase, “If it were my dream. . .”

 

In brief, the dreamer came upon a body of water which lay inbetween her and her goal, but there was a ladder there which she used to climb over the water and into the third floor of the building she was heading towards. She felt good about this accomplishment, which she viewed as reaching a more mature stage of her life without letting her emotions (the water) rule her life.

 

After the presentation, and the other attendees were gone, I went up to my friend, laughing. “If it were my dream, I would think that I had just avoided some useful information in my unconscious.” My friend thought for a moment, and then laughed along with me. Though water can and often does represent unconscious material, it doesn’t have to, nor does avoiding going into it always mean an avoidance of such material.

 

In hindsight, I think I was being influenced by a very powerful dream the daughter of a friend of mine had as she approached puberty (a very different time of life). She was trying to get to the other side of a river by crossing a bridge, but the bridge broke and she and other girls fell into the river which was filled with snakes. Though the girl heard the other girls screaming, she was peaceful, and had a very powerful encounter with a snake. Snakes often represent transformation, and this girl was clearly approaching a time of great transformation, and was doing so with a sense of peace and calm.

 

The girl needed to fall into the water and have her encounter with the snake; my adult friend did NOT need to go into the water to continue on her journey. In fact, what the dream seemed to say was that she was rising above old, unconscious, emotional patterns.

 

So. . .if either of these dreams were yours, what would you think? What lies beneath the surface of your psyche? What are your associations with water? (My relationship with water is mixed: I love taking showers, and I love being NEAR water and listening to its various sounds but, as a child, I had the felt experience of nearly drowning, which continues to color my feelings about water as something not entirely safe. Still, I recently had a dream about calmly facing a huge tsunami, and having it simply dissipate. So. . .my relationship with water appears to be evolving.)

 

Posted on Tuesday, March 11th, 2014

 

“The rose shadows said that they loved the sun, but that they also loved the dark, where their roots grew through the lightless mystery of the earth. The roses said:You do not have to choose. ”
Robin McKinley/Sunshine:

RosebushWithRoots

Commentary on The Zero Point Agreement—How to Be Who You Already Are by Julie Tallard Johnson

Posted on Sunday, November 24th, 2013

“How blessed we are to have teachers to show us how to climb the mountain [of knowledge] and sail the ocean [of body awareness].” The Lunar Tao by Deng Ming-Dao

Julie Tallard Johnson is one of those teachers. She not only knows both terrains, but also that good teachers can only point the way—they cannot take the journey for their students.

So. . .pick up this book only if you are prepared to learn by doing. . .by practicing at least some of the many ways Johnson suggests for climbing the mountain and sailing the sea. You won’t be alone; she, her teachers (whose quotes accentuate Johnson’s teachings), and their teachers going back centuries, provide the ground for you to walk on as you make your way in to your own center.

For the most important teaching Johnson provides is that the treasures you seek are already yours, and once you give up the search for them in the world, you will find them within. Give up the search for meaning, and make meaning of all the circumstances of your life.

“The zero point agreement states that you take one hundred percent responsibility for your experiences.”

~Julie Tallard Johnson~

Find the book on amazon:   http://www.amazon.com/Zero-Point-Agreement-How-Already/dp/1620551772/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381068697&sr=1-1&keywords=the+zero+point+agreement 

 

And check out Johnson’s website:  http://www.julietallardjohnson.com 

Synchronicities, Part II: Dreams

Posted on Sunday, September 15th, 2013

BurgundySubaruI’ve been asking the universe for a new car to replace my aging, standard shift, Subaru. In a dream, I was given a burgundy Subaru Outback with automatic shift and 11,000 by my mother. In waking life, I was given a car to use for work—it was a burgundy Subaru Outback with automatic shift (but a little bit more than 11,000 miles). Close, but no cigar; at least, not yet. 🙂

SYNCHRONICITIES, PART 1: PORTABLE LABYRINTHS

Posted on Thursday, September 5th, 2013

PortableLabyrinthLGMShortly before going on vacation this summer, I emailed a fellow labyrinth enthusiast and asked her for some ideas about labyrinths that I could quickly put up and take down in my yard. She sent me a picture of one she had just used at a weekend retreat; it was made out of floirst silk tape, anchored with hairpins. Alas, I didn’t have time to make a labyrinth before flying out to visit a friend in MN, but our first evening together she began telling me about a workshop she had just attended which ended with the most beautiful labyrinth made from white florist tape. Of course, it was my other friend’s labyrinth.

To see my portable, quilted finger labyrinths, go to my etsy shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop/innerlandscaping

Dream: An Energetic Tsunami

Posted on Monday, January 21st, 2013

 

 

 

 

 

Last week Western North Carolina endured several days of torrential rains, which were supposed to be followed by several inches of snow. Luckily, those never came, though the freezing temperatures still left me with a car which was like an ice cube; it took me 45 minutes to chip my way into it and get it started. On my way out my driveway that morning, I discovered that the creek which had swollen to three times its usual size had spilled over my driveway, but not enough to impact my departure.

About a week before the rains came I had this dream: I was a passenger in a car heading for a friend’s house on the northern outskirts of Duluth, MN. We were driving right next to Lake Superior, and it had been raining for a long time, long enough that the lake was overflowing and spilling onto the roadway. We stopped to consider our situation; upon getting out of the car, we realized there was only about an inch of water on the roadway and we would most likely make it to my friend’s house. Before we got back in the car, I looked ahead and saw a tsunami about 200 yards ahead, coming right towards us. I grabbed hold of the car door handle, thinking to hold on; my friend said the force of the water would probably drive the car right into us. I let go, closed my eyes, and just relaxed; when I opened my eyes a few moments later, the tsunami was gone and I was fine.

Interpretation:

1. On a purely literal level, this dream predicted upcoming events in my life quite well and suggested that, as long as I remained emotionally calm, I would be fine.

2. On a metaphorical level, there is a lot of information in this dream, only one aspect of which I will touch on here. A few months before this dream, I actually had another dream which, energetically speaking, was almost exactly the same. In that dream I was also a passenger in a car, this time high atop a mountain. We were circling a meadow and a rear tire went over the edge, followed by the rest of the car. In this dream, too, I closed my eyes and relaxed into the situation, and everything was fine.

Physically, and in other respects, there is a lot of strong energetic movement right now. My dreams suggest that, for me, the best response is to relax into such a situation and let the energy flow in/around/through me, and everything will be fine; I will be fine.

Interestingly, since having these dreams, I seem to have some heightened perceptions of the energy which is flowing around me. And, I am, for the most part, remaining quite relaxed about it. And my life is flowing quite well right now.

THE HORSES ARE BACK!!!!

Posted on Sunday, December 23rd, 2012

To my utter delight, since I’ve lived in my current location, the meadow on the other side of the creek from me has always been the winter home for several horses. I was afraid this year might be different, since the meadow had been cultivated and, as of yesterday, the horses still weren’t here. Today I had the thought: the best Christmas present I could get would be for the horses to return. Less than half an hour later, as I was leaving the house, I looked up and was stunned to see the horses. A grin formed, and stayed on my face for the next half hour, and my heart was filled with joy.

Potluck gathering as sacred geometry

Posted on Sunday, August 26th, 2012

Last night I was at a potluck dinner where I began knowing only a couple other people. As is my tendency, I gravitated to a corner from which I could talk with the person on either side, or sit back and just listen to other conversations, or watch the proceedings, which is what I did, but this time with different eyes. At first I simply took delight in all of our surface differences the tattoos, hairdos, clothes, ages, levels of engagement with each other. Then, given our differences, I wondered about what drew each of us to this gathering, not just on a social level, but on the underlying level(s) – those of energy, geometry, gravity. I began to “feel into” the energy of the group, and found a cohesion there, even as people moved toward, and away from, the center(s). And, as I began to move towards “separating” myself from the group, I wondered what would happen to the feel of the group as I did that. When I look back on it now, I imagine a large bubble of water, from which a single drop emerges, and the bubble reforms, slightly smaller, but still with an attraction for the individual water drop, now forever connected and transformed by, energetically, that bubble. I am now more likely to reconnect with that group than I was to go there in the first place. These people are now part of my memory – the boy with curls just like his sister’s at that age, the man with empty holes in his earlobes, the teenage girl sitting on her mother’s lap. And beneath that, circles within circles; spirals; spheres. What will happen when we all see the entire universe this way?

The Gold at Rainbow’s End

Posted on Wednesday, August 15th, 2012

Yesterday evening I was frustrated by a lengthy process I had just gone through without obtaining the result I wanted. It was raining really hard, which I love listening to, so I tuned in, and then I realized it was sunny.  RAINBOW!!! I thought, and raced outside, and there it was, and it was actually coming to ground. . . right in my field! I ran inside and grabbed my camera, hoping it would last until I got back out there; it did! My spirits lifted, and I stayed with this new vibration all evening, and then called it forth again this morning, as I set my intentions for the day. And, at 9:30am another “miracle” occurred! So, I’m going to make several prints of this picture and place them in strategic locations around my house to remind me that I get to choose my emotional state of being (which might actually translate into more miracles).

My Kind of Happy

Posted on Friday, June 1st, 2012

My main style of happy (#2) is going into my studio and playing with fabric and color and emerging several hours later, wondering where the time has gone. I also enjoy (#1) sitting on the patio of a favorite restaurant, sipping iced tea, reading and/or conversing with friends. And let’s not leave out #3, which shows up in my coaching/dream work, sharing the labyrinth with various groups (such as retirement communities), and helping older adults stay in their homes through Seniors Helping Seniors. If I can be of service to you or a loved one in any way, please let me know.