Dreams | contemplativeinquiry

A HEALING DREAM

I’ve been unwell for most of this month so far. But now I seem to be mending, and this is partly due to a dream.

I don’t have deeply healing dreams very often, but when they come they affect my whole bodymind. They don’t require much roof brain interpretation. I find it more important to tune in to shifts under the surface, and intuit guidance there. The dream feels like part of my inquiry, offering itself for contemplation, so I have decided to share it here:

“A grey shadow space, unformed … out of which comes a desire, rightly or wrongly framed as a necessity, for an important encounter. Perhaps a revelatory one.

“Now, the descent into a well-defined yet dark (because night-time) space. I am in a large city, which I know to be coastal. There is someone I have to meet within the next 48 hours. I know their name and neighbourhood, but not their address. I have hope, if not confidence, that I will find them. Nonetheless, I am anxious in this night.

“Walking out in the morning, I feel simple pleasure in being at large in the city. An unfamiliar locality approached from a beach suddenly becomes familiar when I realise that I have been here before from another direction. I am on a wide street, actually an avenue with trees. There are shops and businesses of various kinds on both sides. I could eat anything that the world offers, here.

“Later, still in a flaneur rather than questing mode, I become aware that time is passing, and indeed is running out. But instead of becoming anxious, I remain attentive to the scenes in front of my face. They seem like blessing enough, as long as my openness and attention are engaged.

“Now the scene has shifted again. I am in bed in a room, watching a clock with a severe Gothic face. It is two minutes to the midnight on which my time runs out. Then 10 seconds – (it no longer matters about meeting anyone). Ticking down – the clock becomes simpler and friendlier. I’m curious. At the very end I am relaxed and happy.

“Then I wake up, check out my surroundings, and enjoy the feeling of being blessed with a healing dream. I deeply believe that I am on the road to recovery, whatever recovery turns out to mean.”

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February 14, 2022

LUNAR LIGHT

Today I felt settled enough in my new sacred space to consult the DruidCraft Tarot (1). It goes with a sense of full arrival in a new home and of readiness for a psychic check-in: what possibilities are latent or emerging in my journey through life?

I was presented with a three card narrative that I found encouraging. The first, the context that I am coming from, was the seven of wands with its sense of challenges successfully faced. The third, the Lady (DruidCraft’s Empress), heavily pregnant, points to abundance and fruition. But it was the middle card, the where-I-am-now card, that got my attention most. The Moon.

For me, the Moon points in particular to the deeper rhythms and tides of the unconscious, aspects of life that have their being outside the bright light of solar awareness, too easily edited out of my narrative identity. This is a world of powerful, yet dimly remembered dreams, unquiet moods and sensations, and half-articulate intuitions. There are qualities here, in this shadowy, softly lit world, to welcome and companion. They hide a distinctive wisdom of their own, unlike that of the image-conscious, yarn-spinning ego.

Much of my focus in recent years has been on the state I call, in ritual space, ‘the peace of the centre’ – sometimes the peace of the Goddess. This is well-anchored now and allows a more panoramic view. Under lunar influence, the peace of the centre is complemented by a perturbation of the margins, also part of the ecology of being human. The process of moving house has reminded me of my talents for anxiety and catastrophising ideation: limitations, perhaps, at times disabling. But they protect me from a blind trust in the world. They generate a wary alertness, and balance my deep sense of peace.

(1) Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm The DruidCraft Tarot: Use the Magic of Wicca and Druidry to Guide Your Life London: Connections, 2004 (Illustrated by Will Worthington)

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April 8, 2021

TREE MANDALA: BLACKTHORN

In my wheel of the year tree mandala (1), blackthorn (ogham, straif) covers 8-30 April, the final twenty-three days before Beltane. It has a beautiful white flower and elegant sharp thorns. I have seen descriptions of the latter as ‘vicious’, but they only hurt us if we invade the blackthorn’s space. The plant is not a triffid. It doesn’t come after us. So I don’t follow the line of tradition that links blackthorn to harsh fate. Blackthorn doesn’t ask to be turned into guardian hedges or crowns of thorn. That is down to our fellow humans.

The picture above comes from my magic year of 2007, happily well documented, when I was much engaged with trees and Druid study. I felt a pull towards blackthorn, more than towards the generality of hawthorn during that period. (I will write about the Glastonbury Thorn, the exception, at Beltane, my last tree mandala with a ‘memory lane’ theme).

I am drawn particularly to the strand of tradition that links blackthorn to powerfully creative magic – for it was long used in the making of wizards’ staffs. The text of The Green Man Oracle (2) suggests that “we have forgotten the magic that lies within us”. Blackthorn in particular has the ability to “foster waking dreams”. The Oracle adds that, “to access this personal magic, we must step away from busy, surface consciousness, and sink deeply into the ever flowing stream of our magical dreams. The ideas, scenes and presences that throng the deepest levels of our understanding require intense listening” Such magic, the Oracle continues, brings a light into the darkest places. For me that would mean just enough light to illuminate them, and not so much as to dazzle them into negation. How otherwise can the denizens of the dark be offered a welcome home if they want it, and in any event a better understanding?

(1) This mandala is based on my personal experience of trees in the neighbourhood as well as traditional lore. Moving around the spring quarter from 1 February, the positions and dates of the four trees are: Birch, north-east, 1-22 February; Ash & Ivy, east-north-east, 23 February – 16 March; Willow, east, 17 March – 7 April; Blackthorn, east-south-east, 8 – 30 April. The summer quarter then starts with Hawthorn at Beltane. For a complete list of the sixteen trees, see https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2020/autumn-equinox-2020-hazel-salmon-awen/

(2) John Matthews & Will Worthington The Green Man Oracle London: Connections, 2003.

November 30, 2020

DREAMING THE MAGICAL CHILD

I often experience winter as a time of powerful dreams, and I had one yesterday night. It moved through three phases, ending with the image of a magical child as guide.

First phase: I am in a crowded place in a sizeable town. I am apparently in charge of two or three young children – close relatives, by the feel of it, though I am not clear on the specific relationships. I do know that I am of the grandparental generation. Suddenly, I notice them running off towards a stretch of park and woodland. I need to catch up and keep them safe.

Second phase: As I mobilise and follow, I am not catching up as rapidly as I had hoped. I notice that the terrain is wetter and rougher than fits with the initial image. The location feels quite different. I may have to cross water and am I not dressed for it for this eventuality. I assume that the children find this easier than I do, and I have confidence that they are OK. I am less sure about myself. This pursuit is a bit of a stretch.

Third phase: I halt at a riverbank. The boy – only one child, the others somehow no longer present or relevant to this dream – has stripped to the waist and taken like a fish to the water, swimming strongly against the current. He seems to be older than when I last looked. I have a moment of panic and dismay before leaping in after him. Fortunately for me, a sort of backpack I have been wearing turns into a comically inflatable throne. There is no doubt now that the boy knows what he is doing and is purposefully leading me upstream towards the source of the river. Paddling with my hands and arms, my task now is to follow as best I can. As I start following in earnest, I wake up.

The ‘I’ of the first phase is apparently in charge, yet vague and inattentive. Only action by the children gets me to notice and pay attention, though I continue to sport an air of responsible authority, with the felt need to keep the children safe. In the second phase ‘I’ am different, becoming aware of a more rugged environment and feeling challenged by it. I am more positive about the children’s capacity, and less so about my own. The third phase is different again. Halting at a riverbank, I recognise the boy as a version of the archetypical magical child, who naturally finds the sacred in all things, connecting us to a larger life. He is numinously present in this phase of the dream. He is the leader. I am the follower. My means of locomotion is clumsy and absurd. But at least I have one, and I do follow. The constructed ego has a significant part to play, it seems, on this journey, but not the leading role it has imagined for itself. Once I start ‘following in earnest’, I am free to wake up.

At the outer world level, culturally, perhaps the wisdom of age includes recognising and making space for the wisdom of youth. In Irish myth, the elderly poet, shaman and sage Finnegas spent seven years trying to catch the salmon of knowledge. When he finally caught the salmon, he asked his apprentice Demne to cook it. As he worked, the boy burned his thumb and instinctively sucked it – and so it was he, not his teacher, who became imbued with the salmon’s wisdom. Finnegas graciously gave Demne the whole salmon to eat, renaming him Fionn. Fionn went on to become the legendary hero Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool).

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May 20, 2020

AWEN: FRUITS OF DREAMING

The image above is from The Dreampower Tarot (1) by R. J. Stewart and Stuart Littlejohn. It is called the Sleeper, and concerns dreams and unrealised potential. The pack as a whole is underpinned by R. J. Stewart’s view that “the surface world is reflected out of the Underworld, not vice versa”. Its imagery is drawn from “the mysterious inner and Underworld story of life before surfacing or outer birth”. An inverted tree stands at the back of every card, indicating a path of interiority and descent.

Over the years I have been deeply impacted by R. J. Stewart’s work, and I think of awen as an Underworld gift. Although I am not using the Dreampower pathway directly, I share its sense of a staged descent from physical (stone) to psychic (pearl) to causal (whirlpool) dimensions. The whirlpool is a field of stars at the deepest interior level, as physical and psychic reality dissolve into creative void, and the whole cycle is repeated.

In my last post https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2020/05/17/touching-awen/ I described a dream, which moved through three locations. Today in my awen mantra meditation, I followed the resonance of the mantra into three discrete images distilled from the dream. Moments rather than narrative vignettes, I find these slightly different in their new constellation.

First, I am in an almost dark tunnel. It is all encompassing but for a very distant light. There is a feeling tone of unease. It is not due to the pervasive wetness. It is due to what I would now language as an intimation of being separate .

This is pre-birth and approach of birthing imagery, womb imagery, perhaps with elements of something like pre-personal memory. In an awen context, it reminds me of the womb imagery in Taliesin – the lake, the cauldron, Ceridwen’s womb, the night-sea journey in the coracle. I am also reminded of Thomas the Rhymer’s journey with the Queen of Elfland:

For forty days and forty nights, he wade through red blude to the knee

And he saw neither sun nor moon but heard the roaring of the sea.” (3)

Second, I am present in the sunlit city, on one of its hills, and looking down. A sense of appreciation, at-homeness and freedom – familiarity and belonging within absolute novelty and strangeness.

I am in a state of simple innocence, which I might call grace. In this otherworldly place, pristine experiencing is normal.

Third, I am on the promenade at the beach, for me the most significant part of the city. I am aware of the sparkling sea, and of looking at the beautiful café nearby, wanting to eat and drink there. But I have got hold of the idea that I am not allowed to. I do not know what the penalty for this imagined transgression would be. My worst fantasies involve permanent entrapment in this space, or complete exile from it, no longer able to walk freely between the worlds.

There is a different feel to this part of the meditation. Thinking arises, with a strong sense of dilemma. Am I or am I not meant to obey this instruction, if there even is one? Is it a test of obedience or initiative, of acceptance or self-determination? This time, I know, it is OK to simply visit the beach, enjoy it, and be safe. I can feel restored just by looking at the cafe and the sea. But if I come here again, and do nothing, I may fade into primal non-being. If I go to the cafe, I am likely to empower hidden or lost potentials – at an unknown cost. I am the Child of Light in my own universe. It is entirely for me to decide.

At this time of writing, I know that I am engaged. I am in the slipstream of awen. Although I have talked of an ‘awen inquiry’, this no longer seems like skilful framing. For there is a surrender here, that asks for my trust and a different language. Finding resonant and empowered language, and knowing when silence works better, are part of this path. All that is asked of me, at this stage, is to consolidate my practice and to continue writing this blog.

(1) R. J. Stewart The Dreampower Tarot: The Three Realms of Transformation in the Otherworld London & San Francisco: Aquarian Press, 1993

(2) R. J. Stewart The Underworld Initiation: A Journey Towards Psychic Transformation Wellingborough: The Aquarian Press, 1985

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May 17, 2020

TOUCHING AWEN

This post describes a meditation in the late evening followed by a dream overnight. The two together became a way of touching awen. My intuition tells me that I need this dimension of experience to weather the pandemic and its aftermath.

I have a modern Druid’s understanding of awen at work in the activities of creativity, healing and the cultivation of wisdom. For me this means that each domain is at its best when influenced by the others – creativity, for example, as a form of healing and of wisdom generation. All of them have both a personal and collective dimension. We cannot be effectively creative, healthy and wise in a world turning to Waste and cursed with a Wasteland common sense. Even at its most apparently individualised and withdrawn, awen pushes back against Wasteland culture. Knowing this gives me resources and adds substance to my path.

For the meditation, I lay on my bed star-shaped, with my legs and arms spread out. I began with an awen mantra meditation synchronised with the breath. I let this go as I sank more fully into the meditative state I call ‘at-homeness’ in the flowing moment. Here, conventional distinctions between world, body and mind soon lose their hold. Words like ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ no longer describe anything. The at-homeness becomes dispersed and dissolved into simple experiencing, freed from any notion of a person having experiences.

What then arose, on this occasion, was a sense of the timeless origin of all possibilities and potentials. Narrating it now, I might talk of the feeling of an infinite space that is no place, where worlds and times are yet to be formed or named. In clock time this was a brief yet compelling experience. I ended the meditation with a strong sense of connection to source, and in the night that followed, I had a dream.

I find myself walking beside a river after sunset. I anxiously think: ‘I am not from around here. I need to be back by dark’. I have to go through a tunnel under a major intersection of modern roads. In this sparsely lit place, I realise that I am walking through water. It is over the top of my boots. They should be inundated, but they are not. My feet are happily dry. As I near the tunnel exit, I get a glimpse of the city ahead.

Then I am in full sunlight, in this city that I know and love, despite its never being in the same place or having the same architecture. This time it is metropolitan and coastal. It has wonderful buildings of varying vintages, intriguingly laid out, and calling me onward. Whenever I think about needing to get somewhere (and I’m not even sure where that somewhere might be, or what reason I would have for going there) new urban vistas appear before me, as if saying ‘Come and look at this … and this … and this’.

Now I am in a beach area – estuarial, rather than facing the open sea, and so a little sheltered. There are numbers of people around – walking or cycling mostly, not many in the water. It is far from overcrowded. As I continue walking, I see shops and cafes perched on a low cliff that seem tastefully designed and lovingly kept. But there is a prohibition on my interacting with anyone in this city, and my money is good for nothing. I settle for the simple enjoyment of this place. It is enough.

I wake up. The dream leaves me with feelings of lightness and wellbeing. I have a sense of touching awen.

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contemplativeinquiry

Tag: Dreams

March 13, 2022

A HEALING DREAM

February 14, 2022

LUNAR LIGHT

April 8, 2021

TREE MANDALA: BLACKTHORN

November 30, 2020

DREAMING THE MAGICAL CHILD

May 20, 2020

AWEN: FRUITS OF DREAMING

May 17, 2020

TOUCHING AWEN