Category: Dreams

Butterfly

On By Alethea KehasIn Animal Messengers, Dreams, Gaia & Elementals, ReflectionsLeave a comment

If I could I would paint you a picture, but I’ll have to settle for words. Right now, as I write, I also watch two robins work to build a nest out of my lilac bush.  I am reminded again of black and orange.

Yesterday morning my body needed to rest, so I placed my cloudy head against the pillow of my couch. Right side facing down. The side that ached. But, in truth it seemed my entire body was out of balance. I thought I might throw-up. I thought I might faint. I thought I might have a migraine. I had just read my mother’s email, which said nothing upsetting. Still, my body reacts to her energy. Long before she sends her words I know when she is thinking about me. Recall “Weight of Water”.

As I rested, drifting in that space between waking and dream, a picture flashed inside my brain. From a branch filled with deep pink blossoms, a butterfly emerged with orange wings veined in black.

I’ve been thinking a lot about butterflies since I began to see them appearing in the forest two months ago. The first butterfly I saw was brown with ivory tipped wings. It was so early, only the 20th of March.  I thought for sure it was a fairy, only realizing later that it didn’t matter. Weeks turned into months, as I watched more butterflies appear and follow me along my walks, heedless of the dogs, even Rosy who joyously tried to chase them into the shadows.

Butterfly is perhaps the most overt symbol of transformation. An earthbound caterpillar slowly eats its way through vegetation, growing until its body is ready for change. Inside the womb of a chrysalis the caterpillar’s body dissolves into a sea of cells that reorganize to form a new being. Colors dissolve and new colors emerge. Wings form. The creature that emerges, although of the Earth, is no longer bound to it. When it desires to, it can take flight and experience the unencumbered element of air.

What though, of the vision sent to me as I rested my unbalanced body?  The pink blossoms I see as the chrysalis of the heart. From the pink womb of the heart our true selves are born, and when we allow them, they emerge. My butterfly was orange. The color of the 2nd, sacral chakra, the seat of our basic emotions and our creativity. When it is imbalanced our bodies react. Our minds cloud over. When it is humming with health, it allows us to create from our truths.

The butterfly was veined in black, symbolic of the source of all creation. When I asked my guides what they wanted me to learn from this vision, they told me it was time for me to “Wake up that which was latent.”

The Weight of Water

On By Alethea KehasIn Dreams, Gaia & Elementals, MemoirLeave a comment

The weight of my mother rests inside my chest. Last night, in dream, I saw her face as it once was, young and full of beauty. Inside her blue eyes there was the light of hope and understanding. My urgent words had started breaking down a barrier and through its thinned walls I could see the beauty of her soul. I wonder does she know that we all hold pain within our bodies, but each of us has the will to set it free?

Later, I walked through a land covered in blue-gray. A still water rose with my steps, covering the earth. Together, the water and I reached a transformer station, where electrical energy is caged behind wires before it is sent to our homes. I wondered what would happen when we all met: water, electricity and me. What would my body do with the surge of power?

When I was Two #memoir #dreams #animalmessengers

On By Alethea KehasIn Animal Messengers, Dreams, MemoirLeave a comment

When I was two-years-old, my mother left my father. She took me and my sister with her, fleeing without a note of where we could be found. It was just the three of us and a duffle bag filled with our belongings. For six months, we went from one Hare Krishnas commune, to another. The first was in Seattle, then, when my mother caught wind of my father searching for us, she headed south to California. Our final stop was West Virginia, where the “Palace of Gold” was being built. My mother, when I have asked her about this time, of which I have only muted memories of landscapes stored, does not like to share our experiences in hiding.

When children are two-years-old they are learning language in the form of voice; they are learning how to control their bodies; they are learning independence.

My first clear memory was formed when I was two. It is not of a time when I was with the Hare Krishnas, but occurred just after our return.  Growing up I would sometimes replay the movie inside my head, wondering if it was an artifact of a nightmare. A few years ago I discovered this memory was created out of an actual event.

In my memory I am sitting on my Grammy’s blue and white checked sofa with my sister and our older cousin. My cousin is in the middle, reading us a picture book. Above our heads hangs my favorite print, “The Fairy Tale” by Sir Walter Ferle. The three little girls in the print could almost be us, but instead of frozen in happiness, I am frozen in a scene of terror. Outside the room I can hear the voices of my mother and my father. I imagine my mother running across the halls of Grammy’s house, my father chasing after her. I imagine he catches her and she falls. I imagine he hurts her. I want to run and save her, but I am frozen on the sofa.

The details of my memory are not a complete match of the events, which were, in part, created inside my two-yr-old imagination. This, in many ways, is irrelevant. What matters is what my mind and body decided to retain.

Last night, I dreamt I was hanging from a large boulder at the edge of a forest. Below me was a steep decline leading to the forest floor. If I looked down I could see trees through the twilight, and in between the trees I could see animals. In my dream I was wearing only a shirt, naked from the waist down.

As I clung to the boulder with my two hands, a bear appeared above me, standing on my rock. The bear was large, but not immense, with dark brown fur. The face of the bear was so close to my own, that we were peering into each other’s eyes. In that moment I knew I should be afraid, in fact there were people above me on the lawn warning me to be careful. Instead, I felt my heart open to the place of love, willing the heart of the bear to open in return. She was there to teach me something, and I wanted to learn.

Below the bear I saw her two cubs, playing among the trees. A spotted cat (a panther or a leopard), which passed nearby me while its family playing among the trees. According to Ted Andrews, Bear teaches us to go inside and find the source of our inner power and the source our dormant creation. Panther/leopard/jaguar, is symbolic of the dark, female power. Moon energy. In his book, Animal Speak, Andrews writes “…longstanding wounds will finally begin to heal, and with the healing will come a reclaiming of power that was lost at the time of wounding.” (p. 227) According to Andrews, Panther is a symbol of rebirth, “Those things of childhood and beyond that created suffering, and which caused a loss of innate power and creativity are about to be awakened, confronted and transmuted.” (p. 299)

Don’t forget your dreams.

Clot, a poem

On By Alethea KehasIn Dreams, PoemsLeave a comment

This morning I awoke still breathing the emotions of my dreams. In my last dream, the one I remember, I was stuffing clutter in the form of clothing and food into suitcases and bags with my family as we attempted to move our belongs out of a house. I subscribe to the dream symbolism of house as a metaphor for our bodies or an aspect of ourselves that needs attention. Clearly there is much more I am trying to purge (recall yesterday’s meditation blog).  Not coincidentally I listened to a Denise Linn replay this morning where she spoke about our dream state and how it can be used for healing (ourselves and others). I decided to pull out a poem I wrote awhile ago on this topic.

Clot

You may find your dreams
caught in your breath

Tangled inside the inhale
you forget to let them go

A snare of regret grows
covered with thorns

Each prick points to a bleed

If you follow the red trail
you will arrive at the clot

A muddy pool colored with a past
in need of thinning

Beyond flows a stream
that will slacken thirst

Remember first to empty
your cup

 

The Spider’s Dream Tale #spidersymbolism #dreamsymbolism #animalguides

On By Alethea KehasIn Animal Messengers, Dreams, Gaia & Elementals, Memoir2 Comments

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Two nights ago, before I went to sleep, I placed Doreen Virtue’s Divine Guidance book on  the shelf beside my bed, closed my eyes and took her advice. I asked the Divine to show me my life’s path in the form of a dream, knowing it would be my job to interpret the symbolism in whatever form it manifested.

Here is the dream I was given:  I was at my parents’ house, sitting on their expansive breezeway. It was dusk, the light coming in through the open wall was darkening, creating shadows around the chairs where we sat and scattered the light around the brick floor.  My mother, stepfather, and two other men were there with me. One of the men was Stephen King, the other one unknown. Stephen was there because he was working with my stepfather on a building project for his house. He was lounging on a chair, acting aloof. After we were introduced, I told him I knew his niece ( I really do know his niece). He seemed largely unimpressed.

I then noticed a large white orb in the form of a tarantula spider’s sac under his leg (or my stepfather’s, I’m not sure which). When I realized what I was looking at, I started to panic, knowing this orb would eventually hatch and countless baby spiders would emerge and find their way into the house (I appeared to be still living there). I noticed more small white sacs throughout the breezeway, and my nervousness increased. I wanted to box them inside my daughter’s pink poodle lunch box and send them down the stream beside my parents’ home, but my mother beside me argued against this.

The next morning as I thought about the dream my initial reaction was disappointment. This was my vision? Another difficult dream with my parents and spiders to boot! Then I remembered reading about spiders in Ted Andrew’s book, Animal Speak, in which he refers to them as the totem of the writer (see pages 344-347). In lore, the spider is sometimes called the “weaver of illusion,” or the “grandmother – the link to the past and the future.” It was starting to make sense. I am actively weaving the past and the future together in my life and in my memoir writing.

The body of the spider is in the shape of an 8, the symbol of infinity, “the wheel of life.” The body itself is a bridge, connecting the past with the future. What then of my fears? It could not be an accident that Stephen King, the writer of fears manifested, appeared with the spiders. My anxiety was clearly palpable in my dream. It could be said that many of my childhood fears, aside from my earliest memory, originated within my childhood homes and the words and interactions I had with my mother and stepfather. It could be said that my greatest resistance as a writer is birthing from these sources. Hence, the impulse to send the spiders down the stream.

Spiders, Ted Andrews also writes,  balance the male and female energy. Perhaps it is not accidental that the mother in my dream was urging me not to send those unborn spiders down the stream, even though in actuality her life reaction to my writing has been quite different. We are, after all, the writers/weavers of our own destinies.

Spider is also symbolic of death and rebirth. Andrews writes, “Spider teaches us that through polarity and balance creativity is stimulated.” Life is about balance, as is writing. Sometimes this balance is hard-won, but when we get the hang of it, we realize falling off is nearly impossible. Through my writing, I have certainly been reborn.

Although tarantulas don’t spin webs, they do spin threads. They also make their homes within the earth. They combine gentleness and strength, as well as agility. They are night workers, linking them to the moon and dreams – a source of creative inspiration and wisdom for many, including me.

As I do each morning, I took my dogs for a walk in the woods, listening and looking for signs from nature.  As I turned into my driveway, I saw before me in the sky a large eagle formed out of the clouds. Its head was turned toward the south (the direction of overcoming obstacles and awakening the inner child; trust; and resurrection). The eagle itself was in the eastern section of the sky (the direction of healing, creativity, and rebirth).

Eagle, according to Andrews (see pages 136 -141), is the symbol of healing, creation, and resurrection. The “balance of being of the earth, but not in it.” The bald eagle feathers have links to grandmother medicine, wisdom, healing, and creation. They are connected to the number three, new birth, and creativity. “The willingness to use your passions to purify and to use your abilities even if it means being scorched a little.”

Eagle vision is 8x greater than humans, linking it, like the spider, to the infinity symbol. Andrews writes, “To accept eagle as a totem is to accept a powerful new dimension to life, and heightened responsibility for your spiritual growth. But only through doing so do you learn how to move between the worlds, touch all life with healing, and become the mediator and the bearer of new creative force within the world.” Was this a sign telling me that my pull to be a healer and a writer, somehow combining the two, was a path that was unfolding to me?

A half an hour later, I was outside hanging up the laundry beside our apple tree. I heard the voice of Chickadee and looked up to see three of the little birds singing down at me. This was not the first time Chickadee has appeared to me, asking to be heard. The last time it was seven birds leading me to feathers, this time it was in the form of three asking for my attention. Andrews states that the chickadee (see page 125 – 126) is the bird of truth.  The number three is associated with birth and creativity. Because there are seven types of chickadees, the bird is linked to the number seven and the seven primary chakras in balance. I have had chickadee in my life since I was a child, just as I have held fast to the symbolism inherent in my name.

Animal Messengers

On By Alethea KehasIn Animal Messengers, Dreams, Gaia & Elementals, Memoir2 Comments

Before I began this post, I scanned the blogs of some of my friends. I try to check in every couple of days. Today, a friend of mine wrote of seeing an eagle after she was thinking about this new year and what it means to her. She was born in the year of the dragon.  My friend’s animal encounter gave me those chills that fill you with the wonder of the universe. She was, I am sure through Eagle, given a sign.

On Monday I began a psychic development course taught at a nearby high school. During the class the instructor spoke about animal encounters, encouraging us to pay attention to them and record our observations in a journal. Each one, she told us, holds a message, whether it be a spider, a bird, a deer, etc. Even the number matters. One crow, brings a different message than five. We may encounter animals while driving, those deer staring at our headlights are asking us to take care; the blue jay flying across our path may be giving us the nudge to speak our minds. And, we may also meet animals through meditations and dreams.

I love Eagle. The eagle, in its ability  to connect the air and the earth, calling both places home, sends us messages of strength, healing, creative expression and magic. Not unlike the dragon. My friend is a hard-worker and a writer. She’s a survivor. Eagle has visited her before. I hope she has faith (as I do) in her ability to transcend perceived limitations.

A few years ago I had what I thought was a nightmare. During my dream state I ran naked from the waist down, through a dark path in a forest. Danger, it seemed, lurked within every shadow, but I knew I needed to reach the end of the forest. At the end of the path I found myself inside a building filled with people who all looked the same. No one seemed to notice my presence. I stopped a man and asked him for directions back to the forest. “Are you sure you want to go back there,” he asked me. “Yes,” I told him, “I need to.” I didn’t know why I needed to go back, until I got back on the path I had just left. This time, running, I was not alone. I carried a small child upon my back. The child was a girl. She looked like my daughter. She looked like me. Suddenly the stakes were so much higher. I had much more to lose. Much more to save.  I ran past those shadows determined not to trip, or let loose my grip on the child I carried upon my back. Eventually, I saw through the separation of trees in front of me a distant light, indicating the end of the forest. In the instant before I woke, before I reached my destination, a small white unicorn ran across my path.

I think about my dreams a lot. I have come to realize that dreams are sometimes more real than life. As my psychic instructor told us, we are often more awake in our dreams than we are during the day, going about our busy, technology-foused lives. I took a class on dreams over the summer. During the class the instructor told us that thousands of years ago, before medicine as we know it was starting to evolve, there were dream hospitals. Literally, patients would gather in these rooms to sleep and to heal.

If an animal comes to you in a dream, pay attention. Even, a unicorn. Perhaps, especially a unicorn. As I have discovered, unicorns have incredible gifts to give us, and an immense ability to heal and show us the “light.” My unicorn dream, I came to realize was rich with symbolism, reminding me of the child-self I still needed to heal.

For more on unicorns, see books and resources by Diana Cooper. She has a website: www.dianacooper.com and has written some wonderful books and has created decks of oracle cards. There are numerous resources online to look up animal totems and symbology. Animal Speak by Ted Andrews (I have not yet read this), was recommended by my psychic instructor. I flipped though it, it looks wonderful.

Perhaps this year, more than ever, the animal world will speak to us. Hopefully, we’ll take the time to listen.

Rebirth

On By Alethea KehasIn Dreams, Energy HealingLeave a comment

Some people believe that the year 2012 is the end of the world. When the Mayan calendar ends in December, so will our world. A belief seeped in fear. But, the foundation holds truth. Spiritual leaders throughout our world speak also of this year as an ending. The ending though, is a shedding of old beliefs that drag us down; a shattering of the structure of our individual and societal foundations, so that we may rebuild and evolve at a faster, higher vibration. It includes every being on this planet, as well as the planet itself.

This upheaval is palpable. You have only to open your door, or your newspaper, to see it. You have only to open your heart.

Over the past year, in particular, I have begun to explore the seat of my spirit, my heart chakra. When I first stepped into my heart chakra through meditation I tried to design this sacred place with my mind. I’m a writer. I wanted color, texture, characters. I thought it must be green, like the energy it harbors, verdant with the elements of the natural world. It was fun to play with…but it wasn’t real.

Today, when I stepped into my heart chakra while listening to Jennifer McClean’s 1/12/12 Prayer Circle replay, http://www.mcleanmasterworks.com, I allowed my inner sight to open to my surroundings, resisting the impulse to paint my room. I saw red. I saw flesh. I saw a womb. This, I realized, was the image that comes to me first when I visit. My sacred place of birth and rebirth. My heart as a womb. It was not grand, but it was perfect, for me.

Later today I received an email from a dear friend of mine; a fellow writer/poet; an artist. She wrote to me about waking from a dream where I appeared with her and another friend of ours. It matters only to her that I was there and our other friend, as most often, characters in dreams are facets of ourselves. In my friend’s dream she drove to my home, which appeared to her as an old, red brick building in need of some TLC on the outside. When she walked inside though, wearing her bright red sweater, my friend saw warmth and texture, plants and more colors, including red. She saw me holding an infant I had just bathed.

You may notice, as I am observing with myself, that your thoughts and life events will eerily spread and seek connection, through no conscious effort of your own this year. Two days ago I was sitting at a pub in New London, NH, eating lunch with a dear friend, another fellow writer, the other woman in my friend’s dream. We spoke about the upheavals in our lives, we spoke about seeking roots to ground us back to the earth so that we could make sense of, and work through our chaos, and we spoke of the pains of our past. Red. Root chakra issues that had blocked our other energy centers.

My lunch companion was reopening her heart chakra, and in doing so, giving balance to the more masculine energies that had ruled her adult life. This was her fortress of protection, wrapped around her heart, from feeling unloved and unwanted as a child. For weeks she had been crying, releasing the dam and allowing the female side to find space. She was learning out how to love without fear. I couldn’t help but think of the 10 of Cups card I had drawn for her  a year ago in December, as well as the World card. Through her pain, I could see her destination of becoming whole. I was witnessing a part of her rebirth.

A year ago I had also done a tarot spread for my friend who shared her dream from last night. Her destination card had been Judgement. Literally, in the Rider/Waite tarot deck,  the card of awakening to new life. Rebirth. The baby, recently bathed in her dream. Self-babtism. Only she knows how she will evolve.

Later, during my meditation with the prayer circle, after I explored my heart chakra, I took a journey through my own body. I looked for the blocks, those shadows that shun the light. The shadows are always on my right, including my brain.  I played with the possibility of light and watched what it would bring for me. A landscape opened before me, textured by gentle hills. I stood tall upon one, ready to climb the next. I was so tall, I almost doubted the vision. I almost laughed. How could I be this giant who had conquered fear? Still I let it play out, and watched as I crested the next hill and took flight. My body found its form, naked, it became light. From my back I sprouted wings.

Voice

On By Alethea KehasIn Dreams, MemoirLeave a comment

When I was a young child, after my mother and stepfather moved us from Oregon to NH, we had an outhouse. In back of the outhouse there was a stream, and beside the stream, tucked in amid the ferns, were white sheetrock buckets holding leafy green plants. The plants were a secret. One of many. They looked like tomatoes, but they were not.

At ten past five this morning the phone rang and I was pulled out of a deep sleep to listen to an automated message informing me that my children’s school had been canceled for the day.  After I cursed the superintendent, my mind began the replay of my dreams. In the first scene, I saw myself standing in a room with my mother and stepfather. My stepfather loomed in front of me, my mother was in the shadows to my right. It was Christmas and my stepfather held before me the partial skeleton of a quilt. Triangular patches of scrap fabric had been sew together (presumably by my mother), but the shape of the quilt was just taking form. It was his gift to me. “Take it,” he told me, “I want you to finish it.” As he spoke my stepfather pointed to bins of calicos in the colors of Christmas behind him, gesturing for me to choose the fabrics of my choice to finish the project. He was insistent, this was something he thought I should do.

I refused. I didn’t want the beginnings of a quilt that he thought I should make on my own. (My mother once helped me make a quilt for my bed, he had much to say about it while the project was occurring.)

Instead, I stood before my stepfather and started to talk. The first words that came from my mouth were muffled and strained, as though I were trying to talk through a clot or a windstorm. There was no strength to my words. But, as I spoke, my voice became strong and clear. “I don’t want the quilt,” I told my stepfather, “Instead, I have something I want you to hear.”

I told my stepfather that for Christmas I had given my birthfather back his name (I did, in fact, give this “gift” to my birthfather this past Christmas). The name my stepfather had taken from him. “Dad.” As I spoke, my heart was racing my words and winning in its mad sprint. I tried to look past the mix of anger and hurt in my stepfather’s face, not willing to allow my voice to stop inside my throat. “I can call two people Dad,” I told him, “There are no rules that say you can’t do that.” I argued my defense to a mute audience, listing the reasons why I should not be denied the right to have and love two fathers. I didn’t stop until I had emptied my body of the words I had been holding inside.

The scene changed and I was standing in another building, a public building with many people, talking to a couple with a child in a stroller. My mother and stepfather were behind me and we asked about the child, a girl with long light brown hair hunched within her too small seat. There was an aura of gloom around the child, a sadness so deep the air around her was heavy, gray.

“How is she,” we wanted to know. The girl lifted her head slightly as her parents spoke of how she was recovering from the depression that had filled her after she had been to Oregon for a visit. They told us that now that she was back she was beginning to improve. As her parents spoke, my heart reached for the girl. This seven year old child with long brown hair, whose too large body sunk into her stroller, needed me. I knew the source of her sorrow. In my mind I saw her standing on the sand beside the rocky gray waters of the Pacific. I felt her open her mouth to a scream whose sound was immediately swallowed by the greedy mouth of the wind. I felt her body absorb the violence of the swirling air as though it were my own. I knew I could help her.  I would teach her how to recover her muted voice.

Letting Go

On By Alethea KehasIn DreamsLeave a comment

When I was in the fifth grade I had a dream that I was falling. I awoke in the early hours of the morning to the sound of my voice calling for my parents. My jaw was twisted out of shape from the impact of diving head-first into the pine floor of my bedroom from the four-foot height of my bunk-bed. Blood was already filling my mouth from the hole my tooth had left under my bottom lip. My fear of falling off my home-made bunk bed without a railing had been realized.

Last night I had a two dreams that I can remember. In the first I was walking through a foreign city in asia with my daughter. The streets were crowded with buildings and street vendors. We found ourselves passing a tall building with many stories, and stopped in awe to observe the people who lived there. Outside the large windows that faced our side of the street, instead of balconies, there were beds. As my daughter and I watched, the inhabitants of the apartments within the building were in various states of getting in and out of their beds, which were all double-sized, canopied and attached to their windows, but without any sort of railings to prevent their occupants from careening out of their sides onto the street below. I was captivated by the scene. How did they not fall? Why did they not fear?

In my second dream, I found myself inside my maternal grandmother’s apartment. I had just gone shopping for her and was unloading bags of groceries in the kitchen when my ten-year deceased grandfather appeared at her kitchen table. Instead of taking on the age he was when he died, he appeared to be in his twenties and looked like a cross between his own son and my nephew. We had a long conversation while I tried to assemble a salad.  I asked my grandfather why he was still hanging around my grandmother’s house after ten years. He seemed unaware that he could let go, and he wanted to be there for his wife who didn’t want to let him go.

The scene within the dream switched to my grandmother weeping. Still, after ten years, my grandmother was incapacitated by her grief for her deceased husband, crying on the cushions of her sofa. She was clearly holding on. I found her vulnerability frustrating. I wanted to shake her back to life. Instead, I told her it was time for her to dance. And, literally, as I watched my grandfather leave the table, my grandmother, in the other room, started dancing back into herself. Her face filled with joy, her body moved to a music all her own.

I have learned through my study of dreams that the characters we dream about our manifestations of ourselves. Yesterday, I had listened to a World Puja Network broadcast by Pippa Merivale. For more about Pippa, go to http://www.metatronic-life.com/. Pippa channels the angel Metatron, and during this broadcast the focus was on the New Year and cellular cleansing. Pippa spoke of the memories and experiences the cells in our bodies hold onto, sometimes focusing into pain within specific points in our bodies. I know where mine is held, most likely, you do as well. As Pippa said, there is no need to ignore these “shadows,” and, in fact, we should not deny their presence. What we can do though is free the trapped pains, cleanse our cells and give them a chance to renew.

So, I ask you, as I did myself, what are you holding onto? What is trapped within you that seeks the light of recognition? In this New Year, why not offer your body the chance to let go, renew, and dance into all the possibilities of your spirit?