Time for a funeral

I think maybe I’m getting closer to figuring out this latest dream series, or at least closer to peeling off the first layer of meaning. Here’s last night’s version:

I’m with a number of other people—family? friends?—getting ready for a funeral. I think it’s Dad’s funeral—it’s not very clear—or maybe it’s Gram’s funeral. It’s also not clear if they’re still alive or not. At any rate, Dad has been ill for a long time, and Gram is, of course, very old. I don’t remember any of this very clearly now, but there was more about traveling from home to wherever this was to take place, about packing, about trying to get everything done in time. Just a very busy dream. Not sad at all, just busy.

“Gram” is my father’s mother, Anna, whose ambition and drive were all projected onto her family, particularly onto her only son. Dad was always busy, always driven to do something, to keep moving. He, in turn, projected this need onto his own family, and we were brought up believing that sitting still, reading a book, or (worst of all!) daydreaming were signs of that cardinal sin, laziness.

This is the second time in the last few days that Dad and Gram have appeared in my dreams. The other night, in the dreamworld, we were traveling somewhere with lots of family and friends (of course). I was in our motel room, trying to pack up to leave. Somehow I’m the one who has to pack up the stuff that everyone else has left. All my things fit easily into my suitcase—I have packed very lightly for this trip—but there is a ton of food and dish soap and wet towels and odds and ends of clothing that still have to be jammed into my suitcase. I end up having to leave some of it behind.

So last night Dad and Anna show up during preparations for their funeral. Interesting. I think the message is that “Dad” and “Gram,” those two hard-driving, type-A personalities that I’ve internalized so thoroughly, need to go. I’m carrying all their baggage in addition to my own, and it doesn’t fit any more. Let’s get them properly buried so that I can move on.

This makes perfect sense. It’s that constantly moving, constantly judging part of me that makes me unable to meditate, to journey, to work properly with my dreams, to just be. Those things, to the Dad-and-Anna part of me, seem so worthless and—the perfect word just popped into my head—unproductive.

Sheesh. Those “activities,” those states of reverie, are the only thing that will help me move along my chosen path! None of this busy-ness that I so often get mired in will help in the least; it only distracts me from what I need and want to be doing. My soul-work gets neglected because it’s done in stillness and silence.

Well. That’s food for thought.

I'm missing something....

My dreams lately are filled with people.

Some are folks I know from dance, or from school, or from the barn; many--most, even--are people I never saw in my life. And I'm moving: traveling, moving house, walking through shopping malls and convention centers.

All is public; there is no privacy, no doors on bedrooms or bathrooms or living quarters. Or, if there are doors, they're unlocked when they shouldn't be. "My" apartment or house is either completely empty, or filled to the brim with junk, laundry, trash, or inheritances from my family. I haven't even been able to record most of them, because they are so busy and filled with seemingly random detail.

It is exhausting. And, not surprisingly, I'm not sleeping well.

I am missing something here, and my imaginal friends are determined that I will get this message.

This morning, I went outside to mow the lawn. Got most of the front yard done, but then the mower quit on me, and no amount of jerking on the starter rope would bring it back to life. I was so hot, so sweaty, so frustrated when I came back into the house! And then I noticed the tell-tale, blindingly bright spots in front of my eyes: an "optical migraine."

For me, these optical migraines almost invariably appear at a time when I'm overly stressed and trying desperately to avoid seeing something that's right in front of my face. So I guess it's not surprising that they should show up now. What, I wondered, am I missing?

That question posed itself in my mind, and within a minute, the spots were gone...so I went upstairs to lie down and try to meditate. Nope. Not bloody likely. My mind was--and still is--all over the map. Anything but silence, anything but understanding.

So tonight, I expect, all my "friends" will be back in my dreams again. Sigh....

Κυκλάμινο (Cyclamen)

Back when I was in the hospital after falling off my horse and fracturing my skull, a dear friend brought me a plant: a beautiful cyclamen with blood-red flowers. When she lived in Greece, she explained, she always saw κυκλάμινο, the cyclamen, growing in wild and dangerous places. When she saw the plant in the gift shop, it reminded her of me.

Photos I’ve seen of the cyclamen in the wild show its flowers springing up from leaves nearly invisible in cracks in the rocks. That lovely, tenacious, tough little plant flourishes in “impossible” situations. The cyclamen feels like a symbol I can hold on to, not just because my friend sees me like that, but because I recognize those qualities in myself. And I need that symbol in my life right now, when I’m trying so hard to find the next steps on my life’s path.

I have never thought of myself as a risk-taker. I was a pretty timid kid who never rode fast on her bike, was scared to cross a creek on a log, hung out by herself, and never broke a bone (until a month ago). But there were exceptions to this.

Throughout my life, I have found myself taking on certain risks and challenges because of something I believed in very strongly. Sometimes the risks were in relationships, sometimes they involved goals or directions in life. Like the cyclamen growing on a dry and rocky slope, I’ve persevered at these times, sometimes with little or no encouragement and, seemingly, with little or no chance of succeeding. Sometimes things worked out; sometimes they didn’t.

One example is my dissertation. The dissertation was its long and wrenching process, or maybe the process was the dissertation. Either way, to call it unconventional is an understatement. It took six years of watching “nothing” happen, of trying in vain to piece together pieces that didn’t seem to go together, and waiting—just waiting—for understanding to emerge from chaos. Not even my advisor truly believed I’d finish—I know he was convinced that I was going to be just another “All But Dissertation” PhD student.

But I just kept going, despite how dangerous it seemed in terms of ever getting it accomplished. It took a very long time indeed! My dissertation defense occurred within a week of my "drop-dead" date, the absolutely last day, after which my entire eight years at Pacifica would have been for nothing, at least officially.

I certainly never envisioned myself as radical in any way. But when I first proposed my topic, my advisor said, "Wow. That's really out there!" And the statement in the abstract, “a radical approach that … refigures the traditional distinction between research as scholarly reflection and the act of being in the world” is almost verbatim my advisor’s response when, after a couple of years of hearing nothing from me, he read the final draft. Interestingly, the same friend who gave me the cyclamen was with me the evening I heard those words over the phone.

The dissertation process itself was so emotionally risky. During that time I ended up questioning pretty much everything I thought I knew, everything I thought I was. Some of it held true, some had to be let go in order for new wisdom to enter. But I kept it up, day after uncertain day, until finally the thing coalesced and I could piece together the final story.

I need to keep that process, that journey, in mind as I move along the path toward building a viable career with my horses. It seems so unlikely that I’ll ever make a go of it financially, and no matter how emotionally and psychologically rewarding the work is, I and the horses have to eat and have a roof over our heads.

I just have to trust the process as it unfolds, follow where I am led, and keep moving. No old, outworn story of loss and defeat must stand in my way. I choose to move forward now, toward my dream.

Κυκλάμινο, be my guide!

Back to Grazing

The last few days I’ve been mulling over a journal entry from some years back:

She who dances in the moonlight becomes the lady cloaked in sorrow. Dance the grief…. Oh God, let my heart be pierced, let my heart be opened so that joy may flow once more.

The entry is the record of an active imagination session, a waking dream, that occurred in the aftermath of an emotionally devastating relationship. The grief still haunts me, and there are days when I become pretty much nonfunctional because of it. Lately I can feel myself sliding back into that depression, just when I most need to be alert, alive, and aware of the excitement that a new direction in my life offers me.

Worse yet, this entry seems to represent a kind of pattern in my life. Not just the relationship itself, or its outcome, but the story. I am a closet drama queen. Well, in truth, my friends would probably dispute the “closet” part. I prefer the terms “high-strung,” or “sensitive,” but call it what you will: I seem to thrive on intense emotion, and what better way to keep it alive than by spinning it into the myth of my life?

So, I realize now, I tell myself these stories over and over again, like re-reading Jane Eyre or some other beloved, romantic book. The brave but beleaguered heroine faces poverty and despair, but ultimately triumphs over it all…. So satisfying to read. So uplifting, in fiction.

However, it’s not so uplifting when it’s your own life’s fictions that you’re re-telling. I’m finally starting to get bored with the plot, and it’s holding me back. But I’m having a terrible time changing my habits. It’s not so easy to let these kinds of stories go—not nearly as easy as putting down a book. I think I’m addicted to the melodrama.

I’ve recently been using Linda Kohanov’s The Way of the Horse, which accompanies a set of cards bearing gorgeous images of horses created by artist Kim McElroy. Like “angel cards” or the tarot, these “wisdom cards” allow one can do readings or get advice from the Guides by pulling a card or cards at random. Whether or not the cards one pulls are meaningful depends entirely on one’s point of view. As you might imagine, I use these types of tools pretty much every day.

This morning’s card was #19 in the Horse Wisdom set, “Back to Grazing,” which speaks of emotional agility and letting the story go. Horses live in the eternal present. They remember, of course; but they spend no time or energy re-living the past or worrying about a possible future. When they are frightened or angry, they react. When the moment is past, they let the emotion wash through them, and they return quietly to grazing.

If I could let my story go, I could simply experience the emotion that is actually present in the moment and not re-live the past and its destructive patterns. The story, alas, can just keep playing over and over in my mind, robbing me of peace and energy.

In point of fact, I am not cloaked in sorrow right this moment. Yes, there are times when that is true, and I can deal with those times. But for the most part, I am, in the moment, feeling quite fine, and am often joyful. So, as the Horse Ancestors might advise,

Let the story go, Kay. Let the grief wash through you, and get back to grazing. The world is a salad!

[Cross-posted on The Alchemical Horse]

Synchronicity, again

I’ve been reading Linda Kohanov’s second book, Riding Between the Worlds, this morning. In order to be able to relax and focus on the reading in spite of an appointment at 11:30, I set a timer to let me know when I needed to quit and go get ready to leave.

In the chapter on “The Music of Connection,” Kohanov talks about how difficult, but how necessary, it is to let go of past patterns of behavior: old ways of being-in-the-world that kill off parts of the soul, or at least don’t allow those parts to grow and thrive. She notes how this kind of pattern leads to depression and sometimes even to suicidal thoughts as the person fails to recognize that it’s the “False Self” who has to die.

This resonates with my own experience. She goes on to describe how horses have helped her clients see how this operates. It made me realize the absolute importance of knowing myself as I move forward with this work.

Then, as I read her example of the woman who was completely unaware of her own fear, though the horse felt it and was badly spooked until the woman returned to her physical body (pp. 130-132), I burst into tears:

“Do you think [the horse] was acting out my hidden fear?” Jane asked.

“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe she was spooking for her own reasons, most likely a bit of both. Either way, you gained her respect, not by denying your fear and talking a good game, but simply by being present. And you showed everyone outside the arena what being present really means. It looks like nothing to the untrained eye, but it means everything to a horse.”

At that moment, just as I absorbed the import of that sentence for my own life and work, my timer went off, leaving me laughing and crying at the same time, marveling at the “synchronicity.” Such a blessing! So my “homework,” it seems, is to just be present with my horses, with no other agenda. Just be present. Which is, of course, much harder than it sounds.

[Cross-posted on The Alchemical Horse, my other blog.]

A healing memory....

The other day, out of the blue, I remembered something that happened a couple of months before my father died in 2004. I don't think I ever shared it; I didn't even write about it in my journal until months later. For some reason I wanted to share it now.

We all knew he was dying of pancreatic cancer. He had always said that when his time came, he wanted to go quickly, and not linger on in this life debilitated and unable to continue his active, independent life. The cancer claimed him within six months of the onset of symptoms, and even the night before his passing, thanks to his little scooter, he motored himself off to sit at dinner at the retirement center with his friends and family.

Here is the only entry in my journal at the time this particular incident happened:

7:30P. What a day! Dad called me about 9 last night to say he was in a lot of pain; he called again at 3A and I went over and took him to the ER at Barnes. They’re going to admit him, if they can ever find him a room. When I left at 4:30 this afternoon he was still in the ER, and I haven’t heard from him yet!

Nearly a year later, I was finally able to write about it more fully:

I was sitting in a curtained “room” in the ER, and Dad was dozing uncomfortably on a gurney. We’d been there since about 4 in the morning, and it was then mid-afternoon. The nurse had finally come to fix Dad’s IV once again and give him some more morphine.

I put my head down awkwardly on the chair and was dozing as best I could with all the noise and commotion. I found myself in that rare and strange place where my waking mind was mostly asleep but my consciousness was hyper-alert and receptive. Wish I could reach that state more often! I decided to do some Healing Touch with Dad, since I hadn’t been able to do it much at all since he got sick. There was just too much emotion.

I started the usual chakra connection sequence. His energy was quite strong and vital, and I had no trouble connecting. When I got to the hips and connected across them, I was instructed not to continue with the root and sacral chakras, as would normally happen, but rather to follow his spine upward. I did so, connecting each vertebra with the ones above and below as best I could.

I had absolutely no idea why this was necessary, but just went along with the instruction. I finished energetically connecting his spine, then quickly finished the chakra connection about the time the nurse came back in. I left shortly afterward to go home, still puzzling over it.

It was some time later when I realized, with a start and a flood of grateful tears, that what Dad had needed at that moment was courage: he needed to stand straight and tall to face his fears and the difficulties that he was enduring. That was what I was asked to do: help him keep his back straight and strong.

What a blessing to be able to help in this way, and an even greater blessing to understand it. I love you, Dad.

Early Summer

The First of May. Terrific storms in the area last night left no damage here, thank goodness. Today is cool, cloudy, clean; headed for the upper 70s, with more storms to move through late in the day. The Dame's Rocket and the iris are in full bloom, and the first rose opened during the night. The little wren once again sings, “Sweet! Sweet! Sweet! Sweet!”

May Day: Sumer is icumin in, lhude sing cuccu….