Eagle with Snake

While driving in my car via a new route for me, from Ithaca to finally settle in at my new lakeside community retirement house, I watched as a Golden Eagle carried its living prey: a snake, dangling from its beak. The eagle with snake flew in front of my car in my same direction for a long while, weaving back and forth like blazing my trail forward; then it veered off to the northwest, precisely in the direction of my new home.

I certainly accepted this unusual experience as a waking dream, and one that relates greatly to my June question: ‘Why Am I Here?’

My initial personal associations with this sign include that the Eagle could be understood as an Animus (a masculine energy form) in Jungian terms, with keen vision, sharp talons to provide for its young; also as positive purpose and clear directionality.

Online some of the information I discovered about this image revealed:

•  Eagles and hawks have the keenest vision of all birds; therefore they are symbols of visionaries and messengers;
• eagle with snake, in mythology, represents the conflict of opposites (a dialectical, dynamic fusion);
• the Mexican flag contains the image of a golden eagle on top of a cactus, grasping a snake: “the very image the people had been promised would direct them to the place they would make their new home.”
• Golden eagles do eat snakes but only as 2.9% of their usual prey; this has not even been reported to occur in New York state.

images are from pixabay.com

I am grateful for this sign which feels like a blessing for my purpose in my new home. May I serve Life here in whatever capacity I am able.

I welcome YOUR Story and Comments!

A Waking Dream

A few days ago I was stressing out about my next direction after the big move I have recently undertaken. I found myself reading my Cancer horoscope, which is something I have not done in quite awhile. Here is what it said:

There is a part of you that is not your body.  It is not your thoughts, your words or your feelings. This part of you is doing something mysterious and exciting. Let it be. Give it space.

I take this horoscope message as a waking dream, one way that Spirit or the Universe communicates and brings about daily miracles.  In this month of focusing for this blog on the Life Theme of Spirituality, it is wonderful to be gifted with such a message. It helps me to accept where I am at and welcome the new possibilities open before me after this Big Move.

Soul IS doing something mysterious and exciting. Is it so for you as well now?  It is good to remember who we are NOT, so as to remember and better come to appreciate what IS!

images are from pixabay.com

I welcome YOUR Story and Comments!

Message in a Bottle, Part Two

Did you open and read your “message in a bottle” from Tuesday’s self-development tool at this blog (see A Message in a Bottle for You)? When I used this tool myself this week I found it to be surprising and extremely helpful. The message-in-a-bottle came to me via an active imagination or contemplation mode as a non-verbal but clear awareness. It helped me see something about my own recent behavior that I had not recognized before. I realized how I had invited myself to a situation with someone else (my agent!) in a way that revealed me as trying to control or manipulate a process that is really up to someone else to advance.

So, my message-in-a-bottle exposed me to a “secret” that my unconscious COMMUNICATOR was able to deliver; a secret which otherwise I would have remained in DENIAL about.

There is more to my story, too. A few weeks ago a trusted friend jokingly called me a “control freak”. This was in relation to my writing advertisements for some spiritual events which I coordinate here in my local community. I didn’t understand why she would say that; no one has ever described me that way before and I definitely have never thought of myself that way. Now in retrospect, her statement was a waking call in itself, something that might be called “golden tongued wisdom” or a waking dream that presaged the message in a bottle insight.

Maybe my inner COMMUNICATOR has been trying to get my attention for a while now!

As I like to practice taking an active role in responding to my own dream images, unconscious promptings and inner spiritual guidance, I responded this week by honestly contacting—by email—the person I had been overly ‘controlling’ toward. Whatever follows, so it goes.

It is often helpful to respond actively to inner promptings. It can help you to make progress in your life as well as to remain open to further promptings and dream insights. Acting in tandem with your inner Archetype Allies or inner guidance that you trust in any form and paying attention to dream and waking dream messages can provide the inner steering you may seek, even when it leads you to insights and awareness that challenges your complacency or your own longstanding ideas about yourself.

I welcome your insights and stories!

A Portal to Other Dimensions

 

Blogging has been a great blessing to me in and of itself. I thank all of you who are reading these posts. They have become for me a new kind of journaling as a conversation with Self and Spirit (including the spirit in You). This year’s process of combining positive life metaphors with monthly archetypal profiles and dialogues has been truly alchemical for me already, as conducting these blog posts engages me in deeper connections with my own archetypal inner assembly.

This week’s pairing of the metaphor Life is But a Dream with the archetypal orientation of Teacher has opened a portal to a profound realization for me, so I hope some of you will also apply the techniques to arrive at your own realizations.  What I have realized this week is how the recognition of “life is a dream” provides access to other dimensional levels of awareness!

Here’s an example. Last Saturday night after putting up the blog about The Learner–where I dialogued with Rumi as an inner Teacher–I had a dream in which I was simply petting my cat in bed, yet when I looked I saw that the cat I was petting was neither Loki nor Emily (my living cats), but it was Arthur, my cat friend that I lost to dental surgery a few months ago. Not just that, but this form of Arthur that I was petting was a little lion cub! His hair was bristly to the touch and he had a short mane forming. The reason this is significant is because I had ‘felt’ after Arthur passed that he may have been in this life here to protect his petite sister Emily, and that he was meant to go on after this life to become a lion in the veld. Arthur, you see, never seemed to me to be fully happy as a domesticated house cat; he was always more the loner type of feline, except for his dinner tidbits and delightful brushings that he could not resist!

So perhaps Arthur came back within my dream state for some loving attention that he remembers from me as he is “now” in a wild lion embodiment.  Never mind about dimensions or time frames being simultaneous since time is an Illusion.  My personal insight is that because I recognize that this waking life is as much a ‘dream’ as is the substance of a nightly or daydream, this very awareness opens a portal BETWEEN these alter-dimensions. That is, there is less of a divide and rather a continuum of consciousness that you can shift between, seamlessly.

 

I am grateful. Arthur, you are welcome in my universe of consciousness, any time!

I welcome YOUR insights and stories!

Change Your Dream, Change Your Life

So, what is your current dream-life about? What story does it tell? Who are you in your current story? Who are others? What messages does your dream express? If you were to interpret this dream, what might you learn?

One consideration based on the metaphor Life is a Dream is to ask, Where is this dream leading to; how might this dream story end?

A common dream technique (mentioned in The Art of Spiritual Dreaming, by Harold Klemp) is to wake up from a dream and if you don’t like where it was going or how it ended, go back to sleep to finish it better, or simply use your imagination or journaling to alter the ending of your dream more to your satisfaction. This may help you to feel better throughout your day rather than carrying around tense feelings from your dream.

But think about this: if you can change how a nightly dream develops or ends, you can do this with your waking dream, too!  Simply reflect on a situation in your day to day life that is not going as you would like and apply your imagination to creatively envision how you could handle the situation differently and better.  You can also use internal dialogue with someone you are having an issue with, changing how you might normally interact with or speak to that person.

If you can DREAM or envision a more positive outcome, you can act consciously to bring that about, or at very least you can learn to respond better to how the situation needs to be. It is important that you are empowered with this approach; you can take the responsibility to alter your own attitude or behavior in a manner that allows the outer situation to change. For remember, you are the Dreamer!

Have you had an experience in your life where you have been able to change the outcome of a ‘stuck’ or a habitual situation? Standing back from your life-dream to reflect upon what is happening, as if “life is but a dream” you can interpret, can offer you the distance to apply a more mindful solution; your “recurring dream” can thus be resolved!

Recognizing that your waking consciousness is only qualitatively different from your dreamstate helps to strengthen the link between your conscious and sub-conscious awareness, so you can become more receptive and accepting of important messages coming to you from within. 

I invite your comments and stories!