Glimpse In A Mirror

Dreams

I've been feeling so disconnected from myself, so unable to let out what I'm feeling, that I feel compelled to write about these dreams last night. There were many segments, that flowed together in a way that only makes sense in dreams.

Segment: Toolbox

I was walking around in a dimly lit street, in the twilight place that I often find myself whether dreaming or in a vision. The street was much like the one I grew up on, lined with huge trees, curving street, and full of people and cars parked on the sides. There was a bully, a man who was menacing people, and people were running to avoid him. I didn't run, but I did step aside a couple times to not be so obvious. But when he started to approach my area, I openned up my parked car and ignored him by being busy with things in the trunk. He came up to me and was threatening. I reached for my toolbox and let him know that I wasn't going to run away and that I wasn't afraid to stand my ground with him. I remember digging a bit in the toolbox, there were many tools within reach and I was looking for the right one. Someone else had come by, and he decided to attack her as she ran off. I gave chase, running after him with the selected tool. He disappeared as I ran through the neighborhood.

Segment: Couple Move Into School

One of the homes that was very well lit as I ran down the street had open doors and windows, with light streaming out. The rest of the houses were dark, or were closed up with faint light inside, so this one really stood out. I walked up towards the door and observed the people moving around. This was a school, where the ground floor was used for classroom space, and the upstairs was where the kids slept. While standing there, I was able to see into another house, at some distance, where a couple was living but had to leave. The woman showed up at the school now, and asked if they could take her and her husband in for the night. The kids talked and decided that they wanted the couple to move into the house with them, and the teacher thought that the couple would be given a maintenance room in the back to stay in, but the kids spoke up. They wanted the adults to have the bedroom upstairs. The couple was thrilled and grateful. It was a heartwarming site.

Segment: Killing Snakes

I found myself back inside my home, living with my family. That was not ideal. My parents had the idea that they would buy a house for my brother and me to live in, and I refused. I said that I would not live with him. Then, they said that they would purchase each of us a house. I remember being inside lots of houses, I don't know if I was shopping for a house or if all of these rooms were in the same house. It was typical dream houses, were walls are not straight, and rooms meander around in the twilight. I don't remember when I first spotted things moving on the floors, but I did. It seemed like they were dust bunnies come to life, but really, they were dust bunnies turning into snakes. I kept moving from room to room, but there were more and more of them. I reached for my toolbox again, and I pulled out a sort of modified hammer, the claw was thin, short and the gap between the claws was closed in, except for a small curve. The weight of the hammer was designed so that you struck with the modified claw, catching the snake in the curve, and the weight cut it in half. I was killing 5 or 6 snakes in each room, and moving on, only to discover that the halves were either disappearing or turning into smaller snakes. There were all kinds of snakes, also, coral, king, bull and rattlers. None of them bit me, and they didn't really try to get away from me. And they continued to appear almost out of thin air, starting very small and growing wider in seconds as I watched them.

When I woke up, I started thinking about my relationship to snakes, and snake medicine. In those first moments, I thought (mistakenly) that snake medicine was about transformation, and I was encouraged to have a snake dream during my diet plateau, taking the meaning as transformation of myself, and that the process was resuming. But now that I'm awake and writing this, snake medicine is transmutation, which is the ability to take in bad things and turn them into good things, or alchemy, the process of turning lead into gold. In my life these last few days especially, I'm surrounded by less than perfect things, and I am taking these tough things and turning them into pure gold in my life. Even though I am tired, I'm not letting all of this get to me. I've even reached the place where my diet plateau isn't getting to me, but rather that I accept this as part of the process, part of the rhythm of the experience. That has transmutation in it, also.