The Dream

I was a participant in the dream, though I never saw myself.  It was a feeling of being in my own body and observing/interacting with the other dream elements.  I did not know the other male in the dream.  Tall, thin, strawberry blonde hair…but the dream me indicated that we’d been friends for awhile.I was to accompany him somewhere, for which we boarded the RTD LightRail train and headed north from somewhere in south Denver.  We arrived in northern Colorado quite quickly and disembarked onto a landscape that featured a gray sky (daytime), and a quite barren landscape surrounding us.  I held a conversation with my dream-friend, but don’t recall any of the things discussed.

In order to reach our destination (and I wasn’t certain at that time why I was accompanying him), we had to pass through a bazaar of some sort, with dilapidated shacks peopled with poorly dressed merchants hawking their wares (kind of a third-world country bazaar, though I cannot recall any specific details.  These are primarily emotional memories rather than intellectual).  We passed through this with me wondering to myself why I needed to see it.  Throughout this dream, I knew I was dreaming, and was also analyzing each symbol as it was presented.

We continued walking, our path ending at a gray-watered lake, which we were then going to cross using inflatable rings like the kind typically used in swimming pools.

The water was slightly choppy, and I still wasn’t sure what our destination was, but eventually we ended up in another lake that was more of an inlet, the shore containing an entire town built right up to the water, like Venice, but more American.  Thinking of it now, it reminded me very much of northern Michigan and my memories of that from boyhood.

Once there, my dream-friend took us to lunch at a Bennigan’s-like place, where we ate and chatted.  (Again, the dialogue is vague, though I think I recall him saying that he was searching specifically to get laid.)  It was at this point that I realized my role in this scenario: I was to guide and protect him during his search.

We went to another local business, where he met a beautiful young blonde woman, who immediately agreed to lay with him.  I led the way back to the water and lowered myself  back into my floating ring while the two of them joined numerous others who were also coupling.  However, they were all doing so beneath the water, which was very, very clear.  I could see all the way to the bottom and the specific details: rocks, crabs, fish…  And I had the feeling that I was “watching over” the procreative scene playing out below, not voyeuristically, guarding.

I waited until they’d finished, while they floated in the post-coital glow, knowing that my job was completed.  I drifted toward a house whose door and porch was really a sort of cement dock that ended directly in the water.  I floated up (the door was open, it was painted bright red), and a woman came to the door.  I asked if her dog could come out and play, and she agreed.  It was a terrier mix, and I was very comforted by the animal’s presence.  However, it was soon time to leave with my dream-friend, and so I bid the dog goodbye.

As I led us from the private cove, we were greeted by dolphins.  I distinctly said, “Dolphins!  Beluga dolphins!” and knew that they were really whales and my personal guides and a sign that my job as a sort of midwife was successful, and I was filled with a tremendous sense of well-being and of accomplishment.

On our journey back to the train, I realized that the water represented “Life” in every form, as in “The sea of life.”  The dolphins were friends, and their presence made me feel complete, secure, satisfied.

Upon awaking, besides the urgent need to urinate (all that water!), was a deep feeling of inner change.  It was as if I had acknowledged that I had successfully become the person I have always wanted to be: nurturing, caring, and in service to those whom I was always meant to teach.  It was a “teaching” dream, in which I felt as if I was my dream-friends’ mentor or teacher, though the lesson was not the important factor, but the fact that I had “graduated” to a higher state of enlightenment.

(Next post coming December 22nd)

Living In The Past

On a recent Oprah show, she had a world-renowned hypnotist as her featured guest who seemed to “stumble” onto a phenomena that changed his world. Originally the man was a respected psychotherapist who utilized hypnotism as a tool to help his clients stop smoking, stop overeating…things like that. During one session with a woman who wanted to stop smoking, the hypnotist regressed her in age to try and discover the source of her need to smoke. Instead, what they discovered is that the woman regressed into becoming a young boy in 1700 Yugoslavia.

The hypnotist then worked with a man (on-camera) who was troubled by his very rough relationship with his sister. The man also complained about a deadly fear of anything pressing against his chest, to the point of outright terror for he felt he was being suffocated.

During the age-regression portion of the session, it was discovered that the man had been a fighter pilot in one of the Great Wars, and had died as a result of his conflicted feelings about shooting the gun mounted on his fighter plane, and was in turn gunned down by the enemy. When his plane crashed to the ground, the crushed metal of the aircraft impaled his chest and he died from those injuries. Further age-regression…

The subject reverted to boyhood in some unnamed city. Most likely he was a street urchin, living in alleys and on food found on the street. It was here that he witnessed the brutal rape and murder of a woman who he immediately recognized as his sister in his current life.

All very intriguing.

I’m not set on my belief of the methods of hypnotism, for I feel that the cellular memories we carry cannot be so easily accessed, only those that were the most forcefully imprinted. I do believe that some day in the future, we will learn how to access those deep memories in ways other than hypnotism. There are far too many reports of supernatural or other-natural events for such things not to exist. And anyone who knows me also knows that I don’t believe in coincidence.

Many years ago, I underwent a “past life regression” through a spiritual teacher here in Colorado, at her behest, as at that time I truly didn’t believe that we could travel so far back into our memory so as to be able to access anything that happened before our current existence. Linda, the guide for my “journey,” knew about my troubles with my family and especially my mother. She asked me to focus on that relationship as she took me through a series of visualizations.

After what could have been a minute or two hours, I suddenly found myself in a deep woods. The trees were old-growth, tall, both deciduous and pine. I was very aware of myself standing there, as well. But it wasn’t the me I know now, but a very tall, strapping man with pale skin and black hair. Lots of it. A great bushy beard hung halfway down my barrel chest. (I can’t even grow decent chin pubes currently!) I lived in a cabin I had hand-built in the woods, and I lived there with my wife and daughter.

At least I did at one time.

As Linda guided me along the path of that real or imagined lifetime, I knew that I lived in colonial America, eastern seaboard in a small town reminiscent of the set used in the film Witches of Eastwick. The men all wore odd black suits, and the women black dresses with bonnets. The church was also the town hall, and many decisions were made there by those in power. However, there was a particular stoic woman who everyone in the town deferred to. She was shorter than me, round, apple-cheeked, with half-moon glasses that rested perpetually at the end of her nose. It was her eyes that I immediately recognized: cold, slate-gray, hardened by a lifetime of bitterness and hate.

In this lifetime I knew her as my mother. In that lifetime, she was the unofficial leader of the town, and I had married her daughter, and borne her granddaughter…both of whom died shortly after childbirth. The woman blamed me for their deaths in spite of the fact that it was illness that had taken them both. Regardless, she had me ostracized from the town, just as she did a century later by banishing me from her house.

That vivid scene has stayed with me, still as potent as the day I experienced it. I remember seeing the lineage of our relationship and gaining a deep understanding of our love/hate relationship throughout my entire life.

It didn’t help mend any broken fences, but understanding can go a long way to easing the pain of any bitter relationship that had no obvious source of discontent.

And oh yeah, during another regression we learned that I was also a Mayan priest…but that’s a blog post for some other time and place.

Recurring Themes

It’s just a dream.

A tall, large city brownstone. I am inside with a number of people I don’t know (or don’t know I know).

An earthquake. I am just senses, no body. I clearly see/feel/hear what’s going on.

We’re in an abandoned loft-style space. I am at a window, and I see the center stairwell work loose from its moorings and slam against the retaining brick wall.

People panic. Their eyes roll in their heads like horses frightened in a storm.

“Nothing bad will happen as long as I’m here,” I say, and they are calmed.

Then I’m at another window, this one frosted glass, opaque. On the other side, dusk has arrived. Silhouetted through the glass are two horned owls. Their call prickles my skin, and…

I awaken. The owl’s call follows me into the darkness of my bedroom. One of the dogs snore softly on the mattress next to me, sprawled as she typically is across most of the space. Another hoot, this one beyond the window in my apartment. I crawl over the dog and go to look out. Perched on the balcony railing just beyond the glass is a tremendously huge owl, facing away from me and into the quiet night. It seems big enough to carry me away if it wanted.

In my half-awake state, I briefly recall reading I Heard The Owl Call My Name and remember that hearing that forlorn sound in the night can be a sign that one’s own death approaches. Intuitively, I know that this is not the case. Rather than frightened or alarmed, I am calmed.

That event took place about a week ago. Since then, I have been noticing owls everywhere. My friend, Goddess Ra, says that this is a wink from powers greater than myself referring me back again and again to that moment, that sense of pristine calm I felt standing in the early morning hours at my window.

The past two mornings, while out with the dogs, there have been several owls in the tall and arthritic trees at the end of our road, sounding their call into the frigid air. I see their masked faces peering down at me from their tremendous height like all-seeing deities.

And my soul loses its burdens.