dream magic – The Light Behind the Story

If you read my last post, Dream Guardians, you may have sensed that it was about love and partnerships (the clue was also in the hastag😉). I decided I would let it sit before I lended my own interpretation. Sometimes our dreams hold meaning for others too. To me, the dream spoke quite clearly in symbolism of insecurities I am attempting to unravel and come to terms with: How two people can love after growing together, then growing separately. That union of allowing individual space, while still supporting each other.

In symbolic terms, horses are often associated with strength, but also of freedom. They are wild animals who are often domesticated. On the magical side, they are thought to be one evolution away from unicorns. In the dream, it took a child (a representation of the inner child) to show me that the magic/life force/love was still there, it just needed to be fed. The inner child is that ever-wise voice of truth, even though we may often ignore/neglect him/her.

And so together, the child and I fed and watered those two wooden horses and saw life begin to return to their rigid forms…

Early this morning I woke from this dream:

I was at Laguna Beach in California with my family. The name is important, as names seem to be in our dreams. Laguna Beach is the place where my birthfather gave up the chase to find me and my sister when we were in hiding with the Hare Krishnas. After months of trying to follow the cryptic trail of our sitings from commune to commune, he took a break to surf the waves of Laguna beach and suffered some broken ribs. It was, you could say, his moment when he surrendered to the tides of life.

In my early morning dream, I was standing on a cliff facing the ocean. In one fleeting moment, a scene of pure magic unfolded before me. The tide had receded, and suddenly a world of wonderment was revealed. The light was soft and cast incredible shadows over the patterns of the ocean floor, which became undulating hills of sand. I grabbed the camera of my phone, knowing I had but moments to capture its splendor. I started to text the family, on a ridiculous band of fabric. An impossible feat. The scene was mine alone to capture.

And so I did what I could to take it in. I watched the unfolding of play and felt the pure joy it held. Would-be swimmers were now building endless castles in the sand, their spires reaching to the heights of mountains. How could it be, I wondered, knowing that within seconds the tide could take it all away…

It was pure euphoria. I can only liken it to the ideal of heaven. In the dream I was in England, running in a field of white flowers. They were puffed out like dandelions gone to seed, each step lifted their tufted wishes into the wind. It felt like freedom, unbounded. The wild, untethered soul roaming in the landscape of home.

There were other dreams nestled around it. Equally vivd, and all weaving together in the complex mysterious way that dreams do. The crowded bus with black seats and no bathroom. “Wilder’s Barn” beside an earthen mound filled with rubble. The black bride in the white wedding dress who wove in and out of each scene. A perfect marriage of yin and yang without a groom. And there was me, again, now flying over Earth’s power lines. The return of euphoria as I followed the dragon of stones in my helicopter. Strange vivid dreams that seem in many ways impossible to decipher, but their imprint strikingly clear.

I imagine there are as many definitions of “heaven” as there are people, and I have no doubt I found mine in this network of dreams. When I left the field and the dragon lines, I lost it. The mundane and all its clutter surrounded me with its burden of worry and obligation. Other’s needs to be met and mine left not quite filled or released.

But, this is life, isn’t it? One can hardly escape the realm of “needs and obligations.” “Wilder’s Barn” is never quite open to the magic of the wild soul. It may open briefly, but the doors eventually close around us and we must, inevitably, return to the mundane.

It is said that true freedom in an inside job, but how many of us can say we really live inside of it? To be unaffected by life is not the norm. We may feel love and experience, in moments, euphoric joy, but we also feel fear, pain, suffering, angst and the entire spectrum of human emotions. That’s part of being human.

Yet what a gift it was to run in that simple field of flowers, alone and unencumbered by life. How exhilerating it was to fly above the land and trace the pattern of Earth’s power lines through the body of rocks. To be reminded that magic is always there, waiting to be felt, waiting to be freed. Waiting to be born. Even if just in the land of dreams.