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.
