The Most Important Thing

Many people shrink in dismay at having to spend family time at a funeral or wedding; I've mentioned before that I'm lucky.  As diverse a bunch as Chirino's are, we tend to stick together. Our glue is love.

I just returned from a memorial for my friend and sis-in-law's brother in my high school home town.  What I experienced is that, despite our sometimes day and night view points, we have each other's backs.  Love does that. You can believe that I am immensely grateful and appreciative of that reality in my life.

Still, these differences I mention can be like day and night; like living only in the waking world and never in the dreaming worlds, living as if only waking experiences matter.  Why has the art of dreaming been so diminished in our culture?

 A short while ago I was at the wake of a friend's mother. The preacher was a lovely young man who suggested in his eulogy, with existential Christian honesty, that he didn't know what happens after death, nobody knows. He goes on to offer the promise that faith in the death and resurrection of that amazing man, Jesus Christ, whom we must worship according to a rigorous set of precepts, depending on religious denomination, is the only road to a happy eternity.

And Jesus knows, I say this with no irony intended. Jesus is amazing, especially as a divine son, derived of this colossal six millennia long patriarchal cultural myth we've been living on this beautiful, endangered planet earth.  Thank goddess for the example he set while he was with us.  Too bad the patriarchy that killed him found ways to use his legacy to their own gain.  Following Jesus is pretty simple; Love Is The Answer.  Following patriarchal religious 'biceps' leads nowhere good.

The joke Jim and I share about that particular memorial is that when the preacher proclaimed that nobody knows about life after death, (think Monty Python, "The Life of Brian")  I could barely contain myself from raising my hand and saying,  "I do".

Anybody who pays attention to her/his dreaming life, and brings the same attention to her/his waking life, can tell you the same thing; consciousness is much greater than the brain.  Anyone who has had an NDE, OBE or lucid dream encounter with the numinous knows that there is more to heaven and earth, Horatio, than has been admitted in patriarchal theocracies.

The most important thing each of us has is our own spirit; we are connected to our spirit home through our dreams on a daily basis.  It's another perspective.  It helps me live twice as long because I live my dreams as well as my waking experiences.  The best symbol to embody this wisdom I know is the Yin/Yang, the great Balance.  That is who we are: Spirit/Physical.   It's not opposites that are either/or; it is compliments that are best in equilibrium, in a constant dance of balance.  The relationship between Yin and Yang is the dance of Life.  Living aware of our waking and dream experiences is a reflection of this equilibrium.

The most important thing is to stop putting mommy/daddy responsibility on whatever Mystery it is that makes us tick and take responsibility for using the tools we are each born with to solve the problems that confront us here in the physical.  In other words, as Ecclesssiastes aptly stated, "Naked I'm born into this world, and naked I will depart."  You take nothing from the physical, but you can develop so much understanding to take with you!  There is always help available in a dream practice.

I've found my way to so many soul answers in dreaming, very few in listening unquestioningly to others.  I've also found so much in books, or film, or art or dance. I see my task to live from the heart and do as much as I can for myself and others, in balance.  But one very important thing is to pay attention to my dreams and to respect that the dreams of others can only truly be interpreted by the dreamer, her or himself.

So, while maybe some of my tribe wants to fine dine, I want to hear about people's dreams.  Does that mean I don't enjoy fine dining with them?  Of course I do; it's awesome food shared in love.  But I also enjoy how we talk about things more intimately in person and how my topics never fail to come up, eventually.

"My dreams are weird; I don't dream except sometimes."  So are everyone's dreams weird from the perspective of waking paradigms. When you look through the lens of dreaming as an experience, however, you recognize that the laws of the physical may not apply in many dream scenarios.    And as I love to say when someone tells me they can't remember their dreams, "Well, do you want to?"

It's the new year.  We're in a shit-load of confusion.  As former president, Barack Obama, suggests, what are you going to do about it?  We feel small, powerless to alter the big picture, but if the big picture includes our own journeys through this life and on into others, in other dimensions, then perhaps we can brave up and do whatever we can, however insignificant we deem it to be, to help make it better for others, as well as for ourselves, before we inevitably move on.

The art of dreaming always involves a correlation to the art of living a waking life; it's up to each of us to create the lives on both sides, the spiritual and the physical, that we truly want.  I say the spiritual first because without a spiritual anchor, we tend to seriously drift on the oceans of existence.

However, if we let ourselves be tethered with fear and inhibitions, hate and hopelessness, we'll miss our opportunity this time around to contribute something useful to the expansion of the spirit in the physical and the salvation of this planet.  Religions barter in salvation, but when I say salvation, I mean in the physical sense, as in survival rather than extinction on this beautiful planet Earth.  Otherwise, I don't have much to fear, and I devote a lot of my time to understanding my spiritual existence, because my dreams are a window to my soul.

The most important thing is that we are eternal beings, because we are, not because we have to earn it.  We also have nothing to fear but for the damage we can do to ourselves in self-hate.  A social/psychological paradigm that includes original despicableness (sin) is not a good place, psychically, from which to live.

You will die.  I will die.  What we believe about death will color everything we do in life.  Dreaming is our spiritual companion all of our lives long.  We're not born into ignorance, abandoned by our inner resources and beholding to some mercurial male deity.  We're born eternal; we probably asked to be here.  We are responsible for everything we do; we have a connection to spirit, that which we are, that cannot be broken.

All That Dies Shall Be Reborn

This is an important time of year for me; I chose to marry my dear man on October 31st.  It's a sacred day to the earth religions, the pagans of the planet.  It's the day of transition between life and death, autumn and winter, into the dark, the still, the cold, the lifeless. It's also a time to give thanks for the bounty of the summer's harvest.

In pagan thought, all that dies will be reborn: Spring follows Winter; Life follows Death.  Spirit doesn't die; it transforms and transitions from matter to energy, and back again - from here to there, and back again.

Today, a friend spoke to me of her reservations about Halloween and all its hype.  Someone very dear to her died on this date and the practice of dressing as scary ghosts and ghouls repulses her. Me, too. The dead are not ghosts and ghouls; among them, are our beloved.

I shared with her the pagan understanding of Samhain, the Celtic holy day we now call Halloween, as the time in the circle of the year when the veil between the living and the dead is the thinnest, when we're even closer to those we love who've died to the physical, where we still reside.  I celebrate my beloved dead at this time of year.  I forgive them their trespasses and ask them to forgive mine.  I know I'll see them, in dreams and most probably, after my crossing, so I strive to keep in touch.  My relationship to both my departed parents has grown immensely through our continued interactions in the dreaming.

All Hollow's Eve is a wonderful time to tune into the energy vibe of wishing those we love who've transitioned from the physical continued blessings on their spiritual paths and the assurance of our heartfelt love.  It's also a time to let go of attachments to the dead that may cause us unnecessary grief.  The veil is the thinnest for the benefit of both sides.  I wish you healing dreams to help you connect to those you love across the divide we call death.

When the Dead Come Visit

My husband’s younger brother died unexpectedly last week; while Jim was down south taking care of the funeral arrangements with his sisters, standing outside the hotel he saw a luna moth on the tree.  Luna moths are pretty rare sightings, as far as I can tell.  They are the most lovely creatures of the night I know. 

Yesterday, during a dream workshop I was leading, one of the participants told me a story of how her grandmother always said she wanted to transform to a butterfly when she died.  This makes good sense as butterfly is a classic symbol of the transformation of the soul in death because of the catepillar, chrysalis, butterfly existence they have.  The Greek word we chose as the name of our video production company, Psyche, means soul and butterfly.  Well, at her grandmother’s funeral, at the gravesite, her sister nudged her and pointed out a beautiful butterfly flying near the grave and said, "Here’s Gram."

Yesterday evening my husband called me and told me about the luna moth and sent me the picture he took of it.  We talked about how maybe it was Charlie visiting.

Today walking on the beach, trying to be present and open to the beauty around me and not stuck in the jabberwocky of thoughts in my head, (Thanks ET for all your excellent teaching.) I caught snatches of a conversation between a couple headed the other way.  I caught the words “funeral” and “ladybug” spoken by the woman as they approached me, then I caught more of her words as we intersected, “How does a lady bug show up in the car when we’re driving down 95?”  He says “Do you think it’s symbolic...?” the last words I hear as they move out of earshot.

I felt that thrill of recognition, three’s a charm.  Three times in a row, someone is comforted by the appearance of a beautiful butterfly or insect at the very moment when it counts, experiencing the loss of a dear loved one.  Maybe because insects have such short little life spans, the departed get to speak their comfort through them and then move on, leaving that beautiful image for their loved ones to share forevermore.

I pay my respects to Charlie in this post. Your brother loves you; thanks for comforting him just when he needs it the most.  May you travel to your desired home and may Love and Light guide you.

I also want to re-emphasize how natural it is for spirit to speak in symbol and dreams.  Just because someone tells you it’s all bullshit, don’t let that stop you from paying attention and seeing for yourself if this is true.  I ask myself if the person who is dissuading me with intellectual arguments has any dreaming experience; also, if this is a happy person?  If they have neither of these qualities, I tend to find their claims dubious.

I have a collection of visitation dreams told to me by men, women and children.  It’s probably the most frequently remembered dream by those who don't keep journals; usually remembered in vivid detail years later.  Wish fulfillment?  Do you really like Freud?  Ask yourself, what would Carl Jung say?  Most renoun dream teachers today, (Robert Moss, William Buhlman, Patricia Garfield) devote a great deal of attention to dreaming as an art of mid-wifing the transition of each person from the physical to the energy or spirit dimensions.  Listening to these stories is among the most beautiful experiences I have teaching Active Dreaming.  Dreaming is an amazing bridge between life and death, if only we hadn’t been made into scaredy kitties, (my apologies to my cats) by our religions, our out of control left brained, scientific paradigm or Hollywood.  Dreams have been tagged “of the devil”, just biological, mechanical, necessary but irrelavent and then we’ve got freddy krueger, ugh!

Yes, you’ve got to have some gumption to develop a dream practice, but as soon as you start, you get hooked.  Why?  Because it works.  Dreaming is a bridge, a lifeline for the soul.