Solstice

I'm feeling so many things tonight that I feel I need to type my journal entry. There's too much to say to hand write tonight.

For the last week, I've been feeling drafty or exposed in my life. Like I'm trying too hard to be heard or appreciated. Like the people I'm reaching out to don't want as much of me as I'm offering. It's such a subtle thing, but I trust my instinct. The primary person is someone I like, someone of high quality, someone I would like to have as a friend. But it feels like I want this more than she does. So I'm going to pull back by choice.

At the same time this is happening, I'm feeling a need to examine her and figure out why she isn't a good match for me. To find out what is wrong with her, or at least, wrong for me. I don't know if this is a smart thing, or something I'm doing out of self defense. I do feel at some level that this is a follower, someone who doesn't feel capable of having her own backbone, creating her own life and business. She wants to follow, to be part of the respected entourage of someone famous in the petri dish. While I understand this, it isn't a quality of a person I really want in my own inner circle. Especially because of the galaxy she has chosen. There is a real disconnect here. And yet, for the most part, I do know that she forms her own opinions and speaks her mind even in that geography. And good for her.

She's connected to another person that I had wanted in my life in a larger way. This other woman has limited her access with me very clearly. It's so funny... when we see each other, when we speak, she says that she wants to spend time with me. But when I initiate contact, she diffuses it. I realized with her a long time ago that her actions are not in sync with her words, and listened to her actions. These two women are connected, that's partly why this other woman is coming up for me now.

But really, I'm feeling the pattern. I'm feeling the other times I've felt this energy with people. I know I have a lot to say tonight, but I truly don't want to just vent about these uncomfortable feelings. I really want to move beyond this level of processing to reach a new point of clarity. But I'm willing to explore and see what is coming up, with the intention of releasing it and moving on.

I think I've almost always felt either that the people around me don't want so much of me, or that the hollowness around me is good because it is honest and there isn't really anyone who wants in. I wonder if this is a true understanding of this experience. I'm certainly open to a new way to see this, and to reach a new point of healing on this. Both of these are extremes related to feeling disconnected, one while surrounded by people, the other while being alone. That's certainly a theme of my life. And yet, it contains profound truth at the same time.

But what catches me here tonight is that this is about the duality of life, and I really want to transcend duality when possible. I know that transcending doesn't mean I won't still breathe in and out in this world of the illusion of separation and duality. But I can step into the space where I recognize duality and find the oneness solution point. I may not be able to live in that space, but I can make it a habit to return there when I find myself outside it.

Tonight, I also starting retreading the worst professional experience of my life, the worst points of the entire two year time I spent in that job. I know that tomorrow's event is triggering this memory in part, but it is also related to this feeling.

Perhaps this hermit life, this connection/separation lesson that I have come to believe is part of my life lesson, perhaps this is actually little more than a myth that I've taken on as a mantle, and that I can cast off just as easily. Perhaps I wrestle (that's too strong of a word) with this because I expect to wrestle with this.

I dozed on the couch tonight, and when I awoke, a PBS special was playing. It talked about how people are frustrated, how they feel beaten down because their business efforts and financial life during this economy are not what they expect. I found myself listening, and taking a strategy. I thought that if I could take this knowledge, this position that people are reaching, and accept that it is real, that I could find a way to transcend it. As I woke up, and as I observed this thinking, I was first disappointed with myself, and then, I felt enlightened. I was disappointed that I would allow other people's experience of their lives to limit what I believe is possible for my own life. That I would accept this assemblage point for myself. And then I realized that my strategy involved finding a way that I could feel good in the midst of this feeling bad. It was me trying to find alignment in the midst of misalignment. That's something I can celebrate. The entire strategy is flawed because it started out from frustration and lack of vision, but the fact that my entire being is oriented to finding alignment, a way to feel better and more powerful in my own life--that's something to appreciate and celebrate.

As I lay in bed reflecting on these many experiences around this theme, I realized that I had some things to process (hence the writing) and that the most helpful thing I can do tonight is to meditate. To clear my own mind, to find my alignment with my own dreams and aspirations, to gird my loins with my own vision and empower myself to launch fresh tomorrow. And every tomorrow that follows. That's true alignment, and the greatest path to my own empowerment.

People. Relationships. Space. Silence. Doing it my own way. Stubbornly, sometimes. Dreaming. Working hard. These are the themes of my experience so far. I suspect that I can just drop many of them and they will melt away like a mist around me. I feel that as I stand here this morning in the near solstice pre-dawn hours, that I'm reaching some deep core place inside me. That's I'm seeing what is essential with x-ray vision, and that I can step forward when I'm ready, when I feel compelled to step, into a fresh life, a fresh vision. Unencumbered with baggage. Strengthened with clarity and courage. Inspired by my own dreams of what is possible in my life.

I've been putting up with a lot of things in my daily life that I just don't like. I've gotten used to wrestling with them. I'm ready to step out of this cloak into the fresh new day that awaits me. That my soul longs for. That I've been dreaming about. The space around me begins to fill up with the things that are a match for me now. Now. Now. As the universe responds to who I feel I am. Who I choose to be in this instant.

I stand waiting, eyes closed, mists whirling around me in the darkness. Feeling goosebumps of anticipation. Waiting for the moment when that inner nudge says it is time to step into the magic of who I choose to be.

What Do I Want Now?

I dreamt tonight that I encountered Philip and he did something to me. We were in approximately the same area, we noticed each other, and he seemed to be quite willing to talk. As time wen on, I ended up talking to him face-to-face. He was talking me through something, not exactly on the physical level. I was explaining to him that I didn't start talking to him so he would work with me. At that time, I noticed a flare of bright white light in his right eye and my left eye responded by opening up wider. The energy built up in his eye for just a second, and then he released a huge ball of white light energy into my left eye. I reeled a bit from accepting it, but I did accept it and it integrated with my being. I was still saying that I didn't expect him to work with me when it all happened again, except this time I was paying more attention and noticed more about the light. It was blueish white light. It looked like a fireball. It went directly from his right eye into my left and was absorbed into my energy field before it entered my physical eye, but it happened so fast that I didn't notice this distinction the first time.

I woke up soon after. I know that this really happened. In fact, I' considered contacting Philip in real life to ask him about it. But my sense was that he would say I already knew what happened. Isn't ti strange to have him appear in my life now, at this time when I'm considering so many options for my life?

In the dream, before he started to work with me, I was telling him a little bit about the options I was considering, that they were huge, life course changing events. And he kept repeating something like "well, isn't that odd/unexpected" as if to say, "Of course you are, look at what is hitting your chart."

All of this has left me wondering what is in my chart. But as soon as I had that thought, I suddenly questioned his motives and wondered if he appeared in my dream to get me to buy a reading. Isn't that strange? Don't I have better protection than that?

Now I am wondering.

I feel like my thoughts about this possible life change are very important. But what matters most, I'm starting to think, is the positive power I put into my next big vision for my life. I've had a smallish vision for myself. I wanted to keep myself employed, and I have done that. I could have had much greater success if I had asked for it. Now, I want it. I don't have to make a huge life change to just bring in more success to the life I already have. But this is the perfect time for me to consider what I want to do next, and to dream a different dream in every way that I want something different. But I can just dream a larger vision of the same dream with a few changes.

what do I want now?

"You Need to Deal With This"

I woke up this morning and the first thought on my mind was: You need to deal with this. I had dreamt about my situation with TW and the situation is what I need to deal with. I know this. I just don't know what to do.

In the middle of the night, I went for a long drive to think about some things. I asked that the wind blowing through the truck would wash away the clouds and confusion so I could see things clearly. It was an insightful drive. One of the things I pondered was my situation with TW. I have no idea how to fix what is broken inside me to really resolve the whole thing. The only thing I know to do is to deal with symptoms in the meantime. I can do that. I can remember what I want my behavior to look like and remind myself to follow that. But my heart and mind are a different matter. I find myself wanting to be pulled into that world, wishing it we already so. It's like an addiction. The only thing I know to do is to stay in my center and be calm when I feel its pull on me. I can't stop wanting that, but I can stop acting on it.

Other things that came up tonight were quite interesting. I'm considering submitting a proposal to speak at a conference next spring. I've never considered doing that before. It suddenly gave new importance to a couple of the activities on my schedule at the end of October. They could almost be seen as practice events.

I changed my avatar on several social media websites tonight.

I am feeling a bit of pressure about current events because I'm starting to think that they are critical for the future. They may be important, but nothing is critical and there is no reason to feel any pressure. I do appreciate realizing that the time now is important. But I don't need to worry that I might mess up things or that I could blow the future. Yes, there could be consequences for decisions I make now, but if not that future, another comparable future. I need to really chill with this.

Dream Window to My Soul

My dreams have been quite rich lately, but last night was especially vivid and full of images.

I was visiting my mom at the house where I grew up, only it was different from my real home. Mom was working in the yard, working to manage the land. She landscapes and manages it, maybe I should say manicures it, into submission. There was a side of the house with almost an alley that I had never been down. I walked down it and realized that it opened up to a large field, and that were was a series of these large fields that turned corners and traveled a path between open farm land. I wasn't traveling between crop fields, but open spaces of land with grass, like a plain, and trees, and along the edges of thickets.

I set out to walk to the end of the property, and it was several miles away. There were some farm houses, and from my perspective, they seems to be landlocked, but they had long, winding driveways. I never encountered a road, only this open space land and some trees. I was walking mostly on grass the entire way. When I reached the end, the land came up between two homes, and a woman came out of one home. I watched a mother and daughter walk up to the other home, and knew they maintained a garden on that land. The woman asked me who I was because she knew everyone who belonged on the land and she didn't know me. She said the people who belonged there were so close that they participated together in a blood drive. I told her my relationship to my mom, and immediately I was accepted.

She joined me and started talking to me about the land and about mom. Later, we were joined by another woman from one of the farmhouses I had passed. She also knew mom and told me that she was having financial troubles and I was to keep that information to myself. She was trying to sell some land to turn her situation around. She told me there was something I should see. We walked just off mom's land to a sort of thicket of sycamore trees. They were so tall I had to lay on the ground to take in the height of them! They were about 300 feet high! The second woman had worked to get this piece of land a special designation to preserve those trees for future generations.

The whole time I was walking, I kept thinking that mom will be happy to know how nice the rest of the land is, but that she will overextend herself to control it and manage it so it is as manicured as the rest of her land. I remember that as I was walking out alone, I originally thought that she should fence off her land to protect it, but realized after a while that some of the beauty of the area was from the openness and that fencing it was not only not necessary, but it would diminish the beauty.

The snakes. While I was with mom, I had three separate snake incidents. First, there was a huge snake that turned towards us and I feared we would be bit so I killed it by slicing it with some papers I had in my hand. I picked up the pieces and took the carcass to the trash. Later, there was a garter snake that I saw but was going to ignore until it starting flying through the air and on its second pass, flew right at me. I grabbed it, and pinched it behind the head. I think I decapitated it, or it stranged, because it was dead also. There was a third snake in a pile of dried oak leaves, but I walked in a different direction to avoid it.

----------
Blogger lost most of this entry. I spent a lot of time interpreting this dream and it is all lost. I'm going to recap what I learned, but the magic of what happened in that time is lost.
==========

There is a classic Jungian dream where your home is suddenly larger, and it signifies that you have made a leap in your consciousness into a larger world. This is my ancestral home, so I believe it relates to my core, the deepest and oldest part of myself. The fact that it takes place outdoors instead of inside the house indicates that it is part of my instinctual nature. Jung makes a distinction between domestic and wild animals, and I'm drawing the same sort of parallel between indoor spaces and outdoor spaces. The expansion is not part of the person I've learned to be, or that I've been socialized to be. It is within the part of me that came into this world. Could this mean that more of my self is present in my daily life? That would tie in with my latest round of heartbreak and healing, releasing old energy that fit the pattern of disappointment and heart break that allows more of me to be present. I have to believe these things are related.

The fact that the land is cozy, not the desert where I live, means something to me as well. The desert is a great teacher, but she is not a place where you go to refresh and recoup. This land, with the openness and naturalness (not farmed) filled with grass and thickets of trees, this is the kind of land that embraces you and allows you to explore and feel safe. In the desert, you must maintain vigilance at all times.

I walked to the end of the land alone, and then was joined by two other women in my return trip. Women I didn't know. One told me about her financial challenge and her plan to alleviate that. I'm not getting anything about that.

The whole "blood drive" bit is also somewhat confusing. It seems to indicate a blood bond between the people, a family of choice perhaps. The mother and daughter were there to garden, to work the land, to be fruitful. That draws up the image of nurturing and being part of the larger cycle of life.

The large trees could be phallic, but it seems more that they represent the growth of a person. The roots providing the grounding, and the branches showing a reaching towards the heavens and enlightenment. They were extraordinarily tall, and they had just been designated as a trust so they would be saved for future generations.

The snakes are another story. The snakes represent transmutation, and I remember thinking that when they appeared in the dream. Jung also says that snakes represent a conflict between the instinctive nature and inner person. It echoes the outdoor setting for the dream, something about my instincts not being in synch with who I truly am. That is a natural effect of personal growth. The instincts are developed through experience, and they are a bit slower to change because they hang on to past experience. I can't remember ever killing a snake in a dream, or even being attacked by one. I think this image is about fighting my instincts, about not trusting them. There is so much change going on in my life right now that I often observe my instincts and impulsive behavior and hold them before acting. Most times, after a little time passes, the wisdom from within me bubbles to the surface and I realize the folly of the original thought for a course of action. That is being deliberate instead of impulsive.

In summary, I think the images of this dream are talking about the large change taking place in my life. I feel it confirms my own thoughts and awareness that a deep and important change is happening from my core outward. I do see some awkwardness in my daily living and awareness as I try out new behaviors and put myself in new situations. I can't trust my instincts yet, they are tied to old patterns that I'm choosing to change.

What's Going On?

I've really been scolding myself lately to keep my energy to myself. I can hardly contain myself because of the shift in my energy caused by my interest in this man.

On the one hand, I know that my energy travels and that at some level, he is aware of what is happening. It's not just my behavior that I'm focused on, it's my stray thoughts and running energy. My intention is not to pursue this man, so that means not just my behavior, but my energy needs to conform.

On the other hand, it's really exciting to feel myself so open and vulnerable. This has nothing to do with him, but with me. I try to reign myself in with that remembrance. At the same time, I'm trying to let myself feel everything I feel.

I'm a little off balance with this change. My static energy and my routine sense of balance are disrupted. It's a new thing, and of course it will take me a little bit of time to figure out what is going on and how to manage it.

When I woke up this morning, I realized in my dream I was visiting him at work. It felt like I was stalking him at work. I immediately started scolding myself and said STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT, as if words could reign in my energy.

I'm really in a quandary about this.