Hi all,
Last article we delved into how dreams work with many levels and many narratives all at the same time – how what we learn radiates out to so many parts of our inner and outer lives.
Including our spiritual lives. Including spiritual narratives we learn. Including spiritual narratives we build on our own from our own experiences.
We also have been exploring the ways dreams return and circle around lessons we need to learn and integrate, as well as learn and grow into new narratives based on our own intuitive knowing.
Which circles me around to the idea of practice again.
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The dreams from my own work we have been using as examples have been dreams from many years ago. Dreams when I was just beginning to see the connection of wanting to always be “helper” or caddy to everyone and how that was connected to my father. How that radiated out to lovers, friends and teachers.
And how it affected my relationship with the teachers/archetypes in my inner life.
Which is why we need practice. Practice not just for a little while for issues that are deep embedded in our DNA, but maybe even for our entire lives.
So, let’s look at some of my recent dreams that are still threads in this tapestry of the larger arc of my life and work.
In one dream from a few weeks ago, the whole dream I think I am helping a big “star” get ready for something like the Met Gala. I am helping because, in the dream, I assume I am her assistant and my job is to help her get dressed, get all her accessories together, etc.
Another version of being a caddy – being the assistant!
The interesting thing in this dream, though, is that I never see the “star” I am supposed to be helping. I never lay eyes on her or her fancy fashion or anything. It is just me in a swank hotel getting stressed out because I don’t feel like I am doing a good job. The dream ends with me sitting in bar with Woody Harrelson giving me some kind of good advice.
There is no star because I am the star, and I do not know it. Woody at the end of the dream is trying to help me to know this, but I am still so clueless.
Still learning after all these years. Still need the practice.
It is a good leap in my learning around this particular issue that is deep in my DNA that there is no one to actually be assistant to in the dream. There is no one there but me, no one to chase around.
The “star” or main player or teacher is now gone, so the work becomes the practice of being the main player, the “star”, if you will.
Ugh. This is a hard one for me. STILL!
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I also had the following dream, just a few days after the “star” dream:
I am at a conference of some type, but not quite part of it. I can see people “presenting” but it all feels like a dog-and-pony show in a very bad way. I go into the main gathering room where there is a big fireplace and sit on a big plush rug with pillows in front of the fire. As I sit down, I have the nagging feeling I am forgetting something. Then, oh lord, I remember. I look to the edge of the room and there she is, my lion, sitting on an enormous pet bed, just staring at me.
Oops, I think. I walk over to her and give her a little rub down, scratching her behind her ears before returning to the center of the room, assuming she will just stay there at the edge of the room. She does not. She gets up, stretches like the enormous cat that she is, saunters over, flops full bodied onto me and proceeds to wrestle and play with me. Like she is saying, Oh no, you will not put me to the side anymore.
I love the combination of these two dreams together – the old thread of me playing the assistant, this time to no one, and me forgetting that I have put my lion to the sidelines.
Just as my father had sidelined me in his life, so I have sidelined the beautiful power and tenderness of my lion.
Without my lion, how do I know I am “star” or am who I am? Without my lion, how am I not doing a dog-and-pony show just as I see so many people doing in the world? Without my lion leading me and showing me how to play, wrestle and be fierce, how am I to know myself in all ways – from my spiritual to daily life.
With my lion, there is not a “star” or “teacher” or anything. There is just me with her. The whole structure which includes a hierarchy does not exist as soon as she tackles me. The whole, old structure of how to be in the world – as it was taught to me – makes no sense.
Takes a lot of practice to get here. Will take a lot of practice to learn what it is to live this.