Tinker, Tailor, Teacher, Spy? Chosing Purpose

Remember this rhyme from your childhood for counting and choosing things, “Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, doctor, lawyer, Indian chief?” Sometimes I wonder if between lives, our soul is messing with us in the same way and our choice of “what to be” is determined by a seemingly random children’s song? But then I have a dream and I remember who I am.

Who am I? About every other month, it seems, I question myself. Not quite, interrogation, I can nevertheless be hard on myself as I wonder what my purpose is, and if we have a purpose or a soul plan for our lives, how is it to be expressed? I have concluded, without a doubt- I’m always doubting, so this is big- that archetypally, I am a teacher. I may teach in the form of a mentor or guide, and my “teachable” is dreams and spirit, not history or math, but teach is what I do.

I studied Caroline Myss’ Sacred Contracts with my students many years ago. Being impatient, I cast the wheel of my archetypes when I first read her now classic work, and then cast it again as I refined it with my students and the help of Martie Hughes from Lilydale. At first, the Teacher was in my 6th house of work and health, but in the second approximation it came to rest in my 3rd house of communication. Rather than continue to beat myself up for doing it twice, I now understand that to mean that what in my younger years started out to be just a job, came to rest later in the area that speaks to who I AM and is just as fundamental. I am a communication-loving Gemini after all! It makes sense to me that teaching is as core to my existence as communication and that it infuses every aspect of who I am and my daily life. (As an aside, that may be interesting to no one but myself, in high school, I joined the Future Teachers of America because my mother was a teacher and I thought that’s what women did. Later my mother and her cousin both ganged up on me and talked me out of getting my teaching credential. I ended up teaching anyway, Mom!)

This year, as my husband reinvents himself, I find that my own sense of direction has gone offline. I have always thought of him as my rock, I just never imagined that my own direction would flounder because of his own career changes. That’s so 1950′s! On further refection, I know that that view is a simplistic one but after all the Sturm und Drang (storm and stress), guess what? I’m still a teacher. I don’t like having to market myself and beat the bushes for students, so that makes me an underpaid teacher! I’ve been waiting for a dream to confirm my direction, but since I clearly know what it is, my dreams have been telling me other things.

If all of this meandering through my mind resonates with your own path, then let my own struggles with my purpose and direction serve to comfort and support each other. I struggle just like you do and if I can figure it out, so can you! Here’s what’s key to this exploration:

• Truth- Be honest and let the truth of who you are come through…Even if you don’t like the answers, ask for the truth always.
• Patience- The answers don’t always come when we want them so much as when we are ready to hear them. Ego time and Soul time (or Chronos and Kairos) aren’t usually on the same schedule, though they can be.
• Trust- Trust that we will be directed and find ourselves exactly where we are meant to be and in spite of what appears to be the situation, you will get where you are meant to go. (See “mom” above)
• Self-love- Even when we struggle with healthy self-esteem, if we don’t love ourselves even a little, then it’s hard to honor the answers we get from our Higher Self.
• Dreams- Both inner GPS and early warning system, your dreams will help you see the truth of any situation in your life.

Actually, now that I think of it, these qualities are essential to any journey, not only the journey to discover your purpose. Send me your reports from the road and I’ll do the same. If you think you know what your soul wants for you, then when each opportunity comes along, ask yourself, “Is this in alignment with my soul’s purpose?” If it’s a good match then go for it. You will feel the truth of your choice in your heart and your body!

Potty Chairs and Other Dream Messages

You Can Do It!

Dreams are sometimes so clear, so elegant that they take my breath away! Take this little fragment that I caught when the rest of my longer dream got away. I will include my own resistance, which is just like yours, I might add, so you can laugh along with me!

I dream that my mother is in a hospital bed, situated smack in the middle of my home office. I am in the next room which we refer to as the family room, trying to poop on a toddler potty chair. My mother’s helper (not from waking life), an Asian woman, is straightening up in the family room. A woman who I casually know from waking life, who is in her early 40′s, walks through quickly to visit my mother, sees that she is asleep and turns and leaves. I briefly wonder why she wouldn’t leave a note saying she was there. 

Minimize The Dream’s Importance: Most dreamers like to write off their dream themes and details saying, “Oh I just saw a movie, or had this conversation, or saw that person” as if that explains the dream’s details and no further meaning can be elicited. I can do this just as well as my clients! But our Dream Maker doesn’t work this way. We see, say, think and experience millions of things in the course of one day, so why “this” detail is used and not “that” indicates that the symbols in our dream are specific and meaningful. “Resistance is futile” so we have to work at getting past this resistance to connect with the dream’s meaning even so.

Too Much Analysis: Sometimes, it’s not the dream analysis that doesn’t resonate, it’s the fact that we jump right in and lead off with too much thinking! Sometimes, we need to let go of what we think we know (what did I need to let go of, with my mother taking up space in my office and me trying to let go in the family room?)  and just feel the dream and it’s events. As I reread my dream I had to admit that this scenario took me by surprise. My mother had a brain bleed last summer and a visit to California and frequent long-distance calls are now part of the landscape, but I didn’t think that this situation was filling up so much psychic space in relation to my work, the setting in my dream story. It became clear to me that I had to look at this dream without assumptions about what I thought I knew about my life and my dreams. The “beginners mind” of Zen practice was required. So I paused to feel and be in the dream. When you can’t remember the feelings, you can go back into the dream and feel them from an awake but relaxed place. You can also use your body and emotions to feel and gauge your reactions to different possible meanings. If you feel it, there is energy there and something is waiting to be discovered!

Arguing with myself: I thought about what it felt like to be on a child’s potty chair. It wasn’t a good fit and I was straining. But, I argued with myself, I don’t feel like a little girl in regard to my mother! Well… mostly I don’t. I suppose we are all our parent’s children until they are no longer here….. and of course the topic to potty training came up recently in regard to my grandson! (see Resistance #1) And why did I dream about that woman who I hardly know or see? What happened to me in my 40′s that might also be part of the dream’s message? And the Asian support worker (a foreign part of myself?) was fussing about and why didn’t I really feel embarrassed (just a tad) given what was going on in the potty chair? Back to feeling….

Why Bother to Write it Down? So many resist this one because they A) Are too tired and too rushed in the morning, when most dreams are caught, B) They don’t want someone to find their journal and therefore don’t feel secure and  C) They have no one to share it with so why bother? I didn’t write this dream down until a day later. And I only did it then because it was still hanging around! To my rational mind, I thought, ok, that’s a funny little fragment…yawn…. but my psyche had a message to deliver and made sure it kept popping into my head. Unlike people who don’t do dreamwork,  I do know enough to not fight this for long, but like potty chair effort, I couldn’t release the dream fragment. Because I generally focus on other people’s dreams in my dream groups, and for entirely selfish reasons, I have trained my husband to work with dreams for my benefit! This is a great thing to do for those who are in a trusting, respectful relationship. If not, friends who share this respect and interest in dreams is also a good choice. Finding or starting a dream group will have the same benefits, multiplied many times over.

The Inner (and outer) Masculine to the Rescue….This tip isn’t “resistance” but some general good advice: give body function dreams to a man or a 10 year old boy to mull over!  It was my husband who nailed it. He went from my description of “pooping” to other words for excrement,  and finally got to doodoo…”doodie”… And then the light bulb turned on for us both. He said “You are trying to do your duty towards your mother!” Bingo! That resonated. And when it does, you will feel it in your whole body, and it will be so much more than a thought. The other two women in the dream reflect two other sides of me and how I cope with my mother’s health challenges and the main news is that the situation that I thought was taking up space in my working life, isn’t what I thought it was. It’s my mother and her failing health, but also about the MOTHER (achetype) or the Feminine. Exploring this on a deeper level could be about connecting with the Feminine energies and this takes my dream exploration even further. I can reflect on what ideas had I swallowed from my mother, possibly around the time of toilet training that I am now ready to release, as well as the possibility that this mother/daughter/feminine archetype story IS my work and that’s why it is in my office! Is there a mother/daughter story here for others? Probably.

Sometimes our dreams are deeply mysterious and take a lot of unpacking to find the message, but other times they are simple as poop and one’s “duties” in life. Even the smallest fragment, or even a single word is all we need to get us started. As the Talmud says, “A dream uninterpreted is like a letter unopened.” That was one letter that I finally opened and I’m glad I did… and I’m still laughing about it!

We Don’t Know the Whole Story

I’m devastated by the news that Denise Linn and family are being muscled off their forty acre Summerhill Ranch in central California by a Denver oil company. Denise is author of more than 16 books, healer, Hay House radio host and the founder of Soul Coaching®. She is soul-sister and friend, Mentor and Teacher all in one.

I like to think I’m more highly evolved than I am, but when someone or something threatens those I love, I turn into an angry mother bear. And my Mother Bear has certainly come out! The thoughts I’m thinking about this company, who has bought up all the land on three of their surrounding sides are leaning towards old world curses.

I, too, have to leave my home of 25 years this year for reasons not of my choosing,  as do countless other people I know, and I have to wonder why. Is our energy needed elsewhere? Was something out of alignment with our soul’s purpose or the energy of the place? In Denise’s case, a healer/teacher that reaches thousands and thousands, is there somewhere else that she is needed? Or is a cigar just a cigar, and greed and power have just won the day?

In challenging and heart-breaking times like these, I am reminded of a story Denise tells. It’s a long story and I don’t actually remember it all, except for the mantra that runs throughout the story: We don’t know the whole story! Yes, in this case, we do know the story of this company’s greed, but we don’t know what’s next and where else Denise and all of us who are moving or being moved are needed. Nor do we know why.

When healing, asking “why” too soon can stop the whole process dead in its tracks. It throws us into our head, whereas feeling our feelings, helps us heal.  Asking “why” just pushes us into the victim corner, with “why me” following on its heels shortly after! Detachment, on the other hand, helps us move to the top of the hill and survey events from a broader perspective. Like the mighty turkey vultures that circle the hills over Denise’s home, we can gain another sense of the scene below.

We don’t know the whole story. And if we think we understand events as they happen, then we suffer from myopia. So I will curse the fates for Denise, for me, and for all those who are going though tough and unjust times right now, but I will not imagine that I know what the Creator has in mind for us. In the end, we don’t know the whole story, so all we can do is send each other love. That’s all we really need. This includes oil companies, I suppose.

Dreams~ A Holistic Kind of Learning

Image via Wikipedia

It’s January and the kids will be back to school soon. They are probably learning reading, writing and ‘rithmetic as the old song proclaims. They study history, science and many other subjects depending on their age and stage. Schools, if they are good ones, engage a child’s mind and allow their innate curiosity and creativity to blossom. But I worry about their hearts and souls. Are they taught compassion? Is the practice of kindness encouraged? Are they taught how to calm themselves through meditation? And of equal importance, are they taught how to understand themselves; their feelings and emotions, their likes and dislikes, their hopes and dreams?

What if dreams were taught in the classroom? It has been done in small samplings around Canada and the United States when the teacher was following his or her interests but never in an official way as a regular part of the curriculum. Studying dreams offers the perfect holistic learning vehicle. One could study the history of dreams, social and cultural studies through tracking all the inventions, innovations and creative masterpieces that have come to scientists and artists through the ages in their dreams, practice creative writing, and perhaps most importantly, they can learn how to understand and work with dreams in a simple age-appropriate way. This will ultimately help them understand themselves. Perhaps that would even cut down on the number of people who drop out in later life to “find themselves”.

Last year I went into a grade four classroom to talk to 9 year olds about their dreams. Not only were they interested and full of questions, they were actively engaged for nearly two hours! Their questions were brilliant, rivaling any adult’s questions. Here are a few—all in the children’s own words:

• Are my dreams something that will happen or something that has happened?
• Can two people have the same dream?
• How do dreams come to your mind?
• Do newborns have dreams?
• Why can’t we wake up from night terrors?
• Do nightmares try to teach a lesson?
• Why if you have a dream, sometimes it repeats over again?

I’ve also talked about dreams with other age groups and the reaction is always the same. First they are amazed that their dreams mean something then, they want to be taught to “crack the code”. Their excitement tells us that not only are they intellectually interested in the topic but it deeply resonates with their emotional needs and curiosities. Dreams are the perfect holistic and integrative subject that encompasses so many important goals of learning but most importantly, addresses body, mind, emotion and spirit. Ask your child’s teacher if they can do a unit on dreams! If they don’t know how to get started, refer them to me!

It’s time we take dreams further into the classroom and teach the children about themselves and their best dreams.

Defy Gravity

Last year, about this time, I experienced the strangest weather ever. The wind was blowing, up to 100 kilometers per hour, and it was mixed with rain, fog and bits of dirt that filled the air. It was extremely frightening. I was in Jerusalem and praying (a good place for that) that the winds would calm before I flew home the next day!

I started thinking about the wind and how mysterious it is. The very air that we breathe, that is generally unseen (smoke, fires, dust and smog notwithstanding) relates to the mental realm of thought but also to Spirit for me. When I am in sync with my spirit, it is easy to trust. The trust that I had to have last year—trust that I would get home safely and that all would be well in my world, certainly got tested at a time like that. We may like to think that we are in control of our lives, but a simple thing like extreme weather (and Mother Earth is giving us plenty of extreme weather to contend with) can blow that philosophy to pieces.

Breath and spirit are linked and this is reflected in many languages including English. The words spirit, inspire, respiration and more all come from the Latin words spiritus (breath, spirit) from spirare or ‘breathe.’ Spirit also refers to our mood or the alcohol we drink to deal with our moods! Of course one way to access our “Spirit” is through our breath. We can mindfully and simply meditate by following our breath. Breathing in; breathing out. Our breath can both calm an anxious mood and help us access that trust that will, in turn, calm our spirit further. So to get to our Spirit we need to use our spirit (breath). The opposite is true as well. When we can’t catch our breath, because we are anxious or worried, we can call on our Spirit to help calm our lives, whether physically, emotionally, or spiritually.

All of this brings me to Oz. Maybe it was a recent revisiting of the music from Wicked, maybe it was my Australian colleague’s invitation to do a workshop in Oz, but most likely it was the wind that continued to howl for quite a while last year. Everything was blowing horizontally, and I remember walking, head down in the wind, praying a house wouldn’t land on my head. It was then that I remembered Dorothy who had the ability to return home all along. She had the ability– seemingly through the ruby slippers that she wore—but she had to go through the journey to get to that place where she could access this ability that was within. The shoes were only a symbol. The journey home to which I refer, is the journey home to our Spirit. Sometimes external forces or experiences, symbolized by the wind and other events in life, help us get there, and sometimes we just breathe ourselves home (meditation or internal forces). Other times, we can use the help of synchronicities and I often use the inspiration of music that pops up on the radio (or on my iphone when the music is in “shuffle” mode) to help me catch my spirit/breath and these lyrics from Wicked popped up for me and can help you get there too.

“Something has changed within me, something is not the same… It’s time to trust my instincts. Close my eyes: and leap! It’s time to try defying gravity.
I think I’ll try defying gravity! And you can’t pull me down!”

May the winds of Spirit help you defy gravity and reach the heights your soul is meant to travel!

RADICAL DREAMING

Let the river run, let all the dreamers wake the nation.

Come, the New Jerusalem.  (Carly Simon)

Dreamers unite! It is time to take back your power. Be a “radical” when it comes to your dreams, and don’t accept the status quo! You may think that you don’t understand your dreams but all that you need is inside you. You know enough. You do not need to defer to some random authority or trend in dream work. You do not need to learn one particular system or philosophy either. All you need to understand your dream symbols is yourself. Here are a few steps to get you started or deepen your dreamwork.

Throw out your dream dictionaries. At best, there are some that will give you a jumping off point for your own associations. The worst of them were based on ancient dream dictionaries and that’s not who you are. If you dreamt that your teeth fell out, the ancient dictionary of Artemidorus (pictured above, 200 c.e.) would tell you that your upper teeth have to do with the death of someone in your household; the lower teeth refer to the less important household members i.e. your servants or your slaves! Can you relate? Of course you can’t!

Make up your own dictionary. Start by recording your dreams. I know I’ve said this before but it’s required! Without the details of your dreams, you will quickly forget what you dreamt and when you dreamt it, let alone the context for your life when you had your dream. You will also have difficulty seeing the patterns and commonalities in your dreams and dream themes that connect them over time. Next, ask yourself these few questions to unearth your own dream meanings. These are based on the work of Gayle Delaney who empowers dreamers to say what their own dreams mean. (In Your Dreams, 1997)

Let’s chew on the teeth theme, for example. Imagine you had to explain teeth to someone from another world who didn’t know anything about our planet or our culture. What are teeth? What are teeth used for? Why wouldn’t someone want to lose his or her teeth?  What were your feelings in the dream when you lost your teeth? Do these feelings connect with feelings you have had in your waking life? You can do this for anything you can dream up, whether object, setting, characters and so on. Most generally, describe the object in the dream. Ask yourself why we have them (or use them, or what they are like) and how you feel about them in general. The more subjective your response, the easier it is to get at the metaphor. This process doesn’t require accuracy in your definitions. What is important is for you to unearth your associations, prejudices and preferences, not someone else’s theories.

Years ago I had a series of dreams about me driving on a highway that I frequented on my way to work. So I asked myself “What is a car? What is a car used for?” Once I knew what it meant to me (notice I’m not telling you what that meant because I want you to figure out your own car associations) I then asked myself about the type of car I was driving. Was it my current car? Was it a car from my childhood or something totally different? Was I even the driver? I continued on in this way, looking at the highway, at the action in the dream and what that meant to me (as I might describe it to an alien). And finally, when I had some good associations for everything in the dream, I looked at the feelings and looked to see where they connected with what was going on in my waking life at the time. It was an extremely important series for me, all the more enriching and insightful because of the self-dictionary that I developed. Now when I dream of cars, I have this shorthand that emerged through this exercise, that takes me right to the message.

You can start your own dictionary doing this too. If you have a lot of animals in your dreams, start by describing the animals that appear most often. Do you dream of owls? Do you associate them with wisdom, fear, evil, night vision or something else? Remember, one dreamer’s nightmare is another dreamer’s exciting dream. Whatever common dream themes or objects appear frequently for you, start with them. If you have a nightmare or dreams that you can feel strongly in your body and your emotions, start there. Start wherever you are and become a Radical Dreamer, defying dream theories, dream authorities, and even gravity as you soar to great heights in self-understanding.

IMAGINE THAT! By Patti Allen

Imagine that you have come to the end of your life. You’re not sick or infirm but you somehow know it’s the end. Imagine that you walk slowly up a path that leads to the top of a gentle, rolling hill. From the top you can see for miles around and at the base of the hill, people have gathered. These are people who have had contact with you, who know and love you, but also people who have heard of you. Your reputation has grown over the years and you are known as a person of wisdom and insight and have touched many lives. Imagine that you are on that mountain top to tell everyone what you have learned in this life. They are waiting and you begin…

“We cannot know everything”, you say. There is Mystery in life and we need to allow and make space for the unknown. But we can come close if we listen to our dreams. All the clues that we need to decode our own lives are there for us if we pay attention.” You pause and breathe. Then you continue, “Take the time to pause, breathe more deeply, and open your heart without fear and guarding yourself from the pain of being hurt, abandoned or unloved. Don’t be afraid to love. You are safe. Play more.”

And finally, because it’s the end of your life and you are so much less concerned about what people think of you than when you were young, you start to sing, “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”  All the people join in singing with you because they understand what you mean.  They understand that you are telling them to row, meaning they have to be co-creators in their lives and do their part. They know that you are saying that they can do it gently, by rowing down-stream with the current, without resistance or struggle. They can do it with merrily with joy and finally, life is a dream. “All the world’s a stage” and they are playing their various parts, trying different roles in order to grow their souls, whether over many lifetimes or just one.

What if we were to actually do this? What if we climbed to the top of a mountain and surveyed the road we have travelled, looking at our lives from a higher perspective and then shared the wisdom from the journey? If you haven’t been to the top of your mountain lately, you might want to consider the possibility of getting a new perspective on your life, your problems as well as your joys and triumphs and then sharing it with the world. You can do this by taking some time for yourself to pause and reflect. It doesn’t have to be a huge chunk of time. It can be done in an hour. But you do have to take the time to step back and survey the land by raising yourself up to a higher vantage point. From there, your life and your problems may look different. Then share what you’ve seen with someone you trust.

Know this: You have touched more people than you can possibly know and there is an intricate web of connection between you and others, between your thoughts and the ideas that are “out there” and your life. You have touched your family and friends, but also all those “strangers” who are gathering at the foot of your mountain. I imagine that they are waiting to hear from you.