Tag: dream symbolism

What our dreams may tell us in our search for service during these troubling times #dreamsymbolism #peace #healing

On By Alethea KehasIn Dreams, Energy Healing, Reflections, yoga14 Comments
How to use our dreams to find direction, purpose, healing and maybe even joy during challenging times
A recent photo of me taken by my husband. A reminder that when we live through our heart we find the thread of joy.

Last night, as so often happens, I found myself churning through scenes reflecting my fears and insecurities. Few would argue the fact that we are, collectively, living in challenging times. The upheaval that is occurring in our global community can be overwhelming to the point of feeling helpless. Many are wondering what to do. How to be of assistance to those in need. How to find their own inner sense of peace and wellbeing.

Last night, as so often happens, I found myself back at school. Each time I would wake from the dream-state, I would fall back into the same scene of unease. No more! I tried to convince my subconscious. I have had enough! And, then, finally, a scene of peace, healing and transformation. Out of the chaos, I had found my hope.

Our inner worlds reflect our outer worlds, and vice-versa. We are microcosms of the macrocosm. In each of us exists the universe the holds us together. I’d like to share the plot of my seemingly endless dream last night with you in the hope that perhaps it will be of use to not just myself.

As I mentioned before, I was at school in this dream. Being is school is a common theme for me. I believe I have these “school” dreams because my subconscious is literally asking me to learn something. Quite often, these school dreams are frustrating for me. I find myself back in high school, college, or graduate school often struggling with something I am holding onto. Last night, I was back in summer school, at the St. Paul’s School Advanced Studies program. I think this is significant because during that summer before my senior year in high school, I not only met my husband, but I solidified a career trajectory that I would later discover felt inauthentic to who I am and why I am here in this lifetime.

In the dream sequence(s), I discovered that in order to pass my course of study, advanced biology, I needed to complete a short, one page or more, essay on who or what inspired me to fall in love with this field of study. I was in a panic. I had forgotten the assignment until the very last minute. The dream turned incredibly chaotic as I tried to figure out a way to write the essay, literally at the last minute. I knew I could write fast, that was not the primary problem. Other obstacles kept being thrown in my way, including my inability to find my true source of inspiration for choosing this field of study.

And then, suddenly, before I could write this final essay to pass the class, the dream shifted. I found myself in the future with some of the people I work with in my per diem job. We were in a bus on a field trip. As we drove in this open-air bus, we traveled through beautiful coastal scenery. In reality, I find this job mostly unfulfilling and irksome. I stirs up my ego’s insecurities that I have not done enough with my life, and it is, more importantly perhaps, not soul-fulfilling. Yet, in the dream, I was given an opportunity.

Suddenly I found myself standing on this open-air bus holding a young man battling cancer. Beside us was his finance, and other members of the staff, including one of the physicians at the practice. As the bus moved along its journey, I stood in my brilliantly blue shirt holding steady this young man against my body. Healing and peace infused us. Amid everything that was going on around us, I stayed focused on this young man in need, fully present with him. I knew this was what I needed to be doing, holding this young man against my body. Blue, it is worth noting, is the color of the throat chakra; the color that represents our truth/purpose in life.

The messages here may be quite obvious, whether you know me or not, but I would like to extrapolate to a more universal meaning. In this chaotic global time, I have been searching for how best I can use my skills to be of service. My insecurities (that I have clearly not completely released) reside around this struggle between my ego and my heart and the feeling that choosing one over the other may not be enough.

The dream provided me clarity and guidance. It reminded me of who I am and why I am here, and that the essence of who I am is enough. None of us can do it all, or even perhaps, more focus on more than one facet of need. So if you, too, have been searching for how you can be of service in these difficult times, I hope you come to the realization that what your heart is calling you to do is enough. That you don’t have to try to do too much, or do something that doesn’t feel authentic to you. And if you are still uncertain, take a look at your dreams. What are they showing you? And if you can’t remember your night dreams, take a look at where your daydreams take you.

The Monk in the Bunker: A Visionary Experience #visions #mindfulness #dreams

On By Alethea KehasIn Dreams, Reflections, yoga28 Comments

Not exactly the vision I was given, but I like how this image presents a similar concept

I wasn’t exactly dreaming, in fact, I wish I were at the time. It was the middle of the night, or rather the wee hours of the morning long before the sun rises over the crest of Earth were I live. And, I was awake, too awake. My mind had become a playground for my thoughts, which ran amok in wild abandon, swinging from the neuron’s of my brain like defiant children refusing to go to bed.

As a teacher of yoga, you’d think I’d know how to tame these wild beasts into submission. I have plenty of tools tucked away in my yoga toolbox, but on nights like these I often find myself on the losing side of the battle. When the stress of life overwhelms me, I am reminded of how much I have become attached to worry. And, usually that reminder arrives around 3 am.

So, there I was, with my eyes closed upon the pillow encased in a womb of stillness, and a mind ablaze with color and action. Then, suddenly, in the midst of it all, the truculent children of my worries dispersed and a metal fortress began to take shape. The metal grew behind my closed lids in breadth and height until it was all that I could “see,” then wrapped itself into a half oval. It was, I realized, a mighty bunker so large and impenetrable I was sure it must be holding the most powerful of weapons known to humankind.

I was right. Even though what I saw inside was not what I had expected.

Floating within his own aura of light, sat a monk. His eyes were closed, his brow unfurled into a smooth canvas, and his lips lifted into the slightest of smiles. The armored shell that I thought was encasing him was nowhere in sight. Instead, all I saw was the monk, floating in his bubble of light.

The angst outside that armored fortress had disappeared and a pure, unfettered peace had taken its place, dissolving that false sheath that seems so real at those times when we succumb to our own distress. And that’s when sleep found me and welcomed me to rest.

The Land of Oz & Alice: Adventures in Dreamland #dreams #dreaminterpretation #dreamsymbolism

On By Alethea KehasIn Dreams15 Comments
I journey into a Wonderland and Oz-like dream realm with Sue...
Image by Please Don’t sell My Artwork AS IS from Pixabay

It should come as no surprise to me that Sue would find a way to weave her wisdom into the realm of my dreams. She knew me better than most, and what better place to seed the journey than through the map of the subconscious.

Sue also knew I loved to study dreams. In my weekly journal correspondence I could not help including a dream or two as they always, inevitably, related to waking life experiences. That’s the way dreams work, even though they may appear random and irrational at first glance. There is always a lesson (and usually many) to uncover when one takes the time to delve into their symbolism. Mostly Sue made me uncover them for myself. It seems nothing has changed 🙂

Thankfully, as Sue well knew, I love symbolism. My mind is ever-searching out the meaning hidden below the surface of life. And, to be quite honest, I was surprised and a little dismayed that she hadn’t appeared sooner in the land of my dreams.

It was, alas, a mere cameo… about two weeks ago. I nearly missed her. She came and went so fast from the dream I could have doubted it was Sue if I didn’t know her better. And she uttered just one word: “Jabberwocky.”

You’ve got to be kidding!

No doubt she was chuckling a bit. Fair enough. I do like a good puzzle, and certainly this one was intended to draw me down the rabbit hole…

And as I usually do when messages are cryptic, I asked a few intuitive friends for their thoughts. Each one gave a different answer, but each answer had relevance. I read the poem, more than once, and pondered each possible meaning. Days passed and then another dream came to me. This one per my request.

“Could you give me a message,” I asked her before I fell asleep, “Something, anything, to let me know what you think I should do.”

Instead of “Wonderland,” I was brought to Oz. You, as a reader, no doubt will already be drawing the parallels between the two. Sue is undoubtedly clever. But this was not exactly the Oz of Dorothy’s dream, this was an Oz designed for me. The journey, rich and filled with symbols at every turn I took, took me into a different aspect of something I either had overcome, needed to overcome, or was in the process of overcoming.

When I finally reached “Oz,” I found myself atop a magnificent waterfall. It was a straight down vertical dive from the height of at least the Eiffel tower. A wonderful source of power…then the dream shifted one more time.

Suddenly I was at the bottom of the fall and the water had been replaced by sand (note the parallels to “The Wizard of Oz” movie, as a friend pointed out, and the “sands of time.” Up a ladder I began to climb while the sand poured through the rungs. Using, somehow, only my left hand while my right clutched a stack of books. I hauled those books all the way to the top of that darn latter. Then, looking down far below, I released them. As they scattered into a circular on the ground, a woman appeared and laid in the bare space in the middle one book, The Wizard of Oz, smiled and left. After she left everything else disappeared and I found myself gazing into a sky so vast and beautiful it felt like heaven. Shapes formed out of the clouds, the first and more prominent of which was a lion.

Thank you, Sue. I get it, I think. Mostly. Now to find that courage within. 🙏

Photo Credit: Pexels

I wake to a cardinal singing at my window after a semi-existential crisis dream #cardinal #parenting #midlife

On By Alethea KehasIn Animal Messengers, Reflections24 Comments
Image by Chris Chow from Pixabay

I had been dreaming about being at school. That is not unusual for me. Last night I was back at Bowdoin College, but it really wasn’t anything like the Bowdoin I attended nearly 25 yrs ago. Instead, it felt foreign and strange. I was enrolled in four classes, yet hardly even attended the lectures. I couldn’t seem to remember where my classrooms were, let alone the room number of my dorm room. The dream was filled with angst, reflecting the, well, let’s just call it a semi-existential crisis I’ve been battling these days: What the heck am I doing here and where the heck am I going with my life?

Yep, I know that sounds extreme and dramatic. And, quite frankly it’s something I circle back to from time-to-time. I’m now at the stage of life when my kids are nearly ready to head off to college. As they get ready to embark upon life outside of their childhood home, I can’t help but think about what that means for me.

Once again, I’ve found myself circling back to the idea of returning to school, myself. It doesn’t matter that I’ll be 50 in less than three years, I seem to have a passion for life-long learning. The only thing that tends to hold me back is the money. Which is an underlying block in my current semi-existential crisis.

School seems a foolish thing to think about for myself when my own two kids will be heading out the door in just a few short years. Even though our household income is higher than most, it’s not enough to pay for 4 yrs x 2 kids’ college tuition costs. When my husband recently announced our current rate of college savings and how he had hoped that I would have been able to contribute more through my meager income, I felt a wave of panic and guilt set in. Every dream and hope I had for my life, and our shared life as a family of four, began to dance in spectral forms around me.

I don’t mean to be dramatic here, but I wonder how many other stay-at-home-parents feel the same way and are haunted by similar ghosts of a future that could have been, but never was…

Even though I wouldn’t trade back my time at home with my kids, if I could do it over again I would have a plan in place for this time in my life. I would have thought long and hard about a career that could be picked up again after a long absence, or one that could be nurtured part-time as I nurtured my children full-time from home.

I don’t life in a society that makes it easy for mother (or fathers) to return to the workforce after long leaves of absence, at least not in careers that honor higher degrees of education beyond the high school level. Nor does it assign monetary value to the work that is done by a stay-at-home-caregiver. It is, for the most part, an unpaid and thankless job.

Yet, despite this, I would not trade in my time with my children. I also know they are grateful for my presence in their lives. As the saying goes, it’s nearly impossible to have it all. So we must instead as ask what is enough?

In my present state I have come to realize that I tend to define my own worth too much by monetary values without allowing myself to accept how much value there is to the unpaid work that I do. That’s where my friend the cardinal comes in.

After a night of struggling with my inner-demons, I woke to birdsong. Mind you, it’s the middle of February and temperatures are below freezing when I wake most mornings, including this morning. I am not used to hearing birdsong in the middle of winter outside my window.

At first I was a little annoyed. I rather liked the idea of a few more minutes of sleep on a day when an early rise was not needed. But there was no further sleep to be had. The bird was insistent, and soon after I pulled the plugs from my ears I had a good idea of what type of bird it was. I wasn’t, though, quite expecting it to be so bold.

The cardinal was the first thing I saw as I pulled aside the curtains. Its crimson coat, a bold contrast to the snow-brushed hemlocks as it peered back at me and sang. It was eye-level. The only bird in sight. The only bird singing. Fine, I told it, I’ll look you up in Ted’s book later.

I should not have been surprised by what I read, but somehow I had not recalled that particular bit about the cardinal as a messenger. In the last sentence of Ted Andrew’s description of cardinal in Animal Speak, you will find these words, “…remember that everything you do is of importance.”

I am sharing them here, because if I needed the reminder, perhaps you do too.

Castles in the Sand #dreams #dreamsymbolism #lagunabeach #freesoul

On By Alethea KehasIn DreamsLeave a comment
Image by Michael Gaida from Pixabay

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…

Dream Guardians #dreams #love

On By Alethea KehasIn Dreams1 Comment
Image by Susann Mielke from Pixabay

Last night I found myself under an arbor of branches with a young girl. It was dusk, I believe, in this landscape of dreams. The colors were muted as though we were on the verge of darkness. The space, wrapped with the remains of two trees. Or, at least I thought they were remains…

When I tipped my head I could see the forms of the branches as they bent to create a natural roof that filtered in light. There were two. Guardians, I decided. Their heads close together, but not quite touching. I thought them beautiful, but also sad. As I studied them, I realized they were horses.

Lifeless, or so I thought. Their lips, mere inches away from union. The thought of love frozen in place before it could be realized filled me with melancholy.

“They are dead,” I declared as I reached up to stroke the wooden neck of one.

“No,” the young girl declared. “They are not dead. They are only in need of care.”

And as I listened to her child-wisdom, I saw that she was right. Ever so slightly, the two wooden horses began to move. I followed the girl to the place where food lay forgotten in the dust and helped fill their bowls with nourishment. Together, we brought our offerings to the pair of guardians.

“See,” the girl said. “They just needed our love.”

Dream musings #dreams #symbolism

On By Alethea KehasIn Dreams, Reflections2 Comments
Image by Comfreak from Pixabay

There are dreams that you wish you never woke from and those that leave you grateful for the exit from a nightmarish realm. I’m not sure one is more valuable than the other if you seek to learn from their teachings.

Our hidden, or not so hidden, terrors often take the form of nightmares. They can adopt fantastical and gruesome visages, leaving us breathless for want of air when we wake. Sometimes our voices scream us out of their grasp, and sometimes our words strangle our voice into silence. The voice, then, becomes our key to opening their mysteries.

Although it can be equally terrifying to journey through the dream realm, as it is to unravel its symbolism, it’s well-worth the effort. Even the seemingly nonsensical dreams can make sense if we are willing to look into why our minds chose to play their forms.

If you don’t tend to remember your dreams, there are techniques you can use to train your brain to recover them. One of which is simply telling yourself before you wander into sleep to remember what you have dreamt. When you do this, you may find you start to wake up after each dream. I tend to do that a lot, which can be both an inconvenience and a blessing.

Instead of transcribing my dreams after I wake from them, I’ll often spend some time mulling over a dream I have woken from before my mind succumbs to a new one. Although perhaps not has valuable in some ways as having a written log of the dream, this allows me to observe patterns, themes and symbols, as well as gage my emotional response.

Symbols in our dreams often reoccur over and over again. For example I quite often dream about water and stones, both of which hold a lot of interest for me in the literal sense, but also quite often teach me about where I am residing on an emotional level. I also dream quite often about bathrooms, and going to the bathroom, which inevitably leads me down the exploration of what I am holding onto or seeking to release, as well as personal struggles with exposure and privacy.

Themes, patterns, and symbols in dreams are important to notice if you want to learn from them. Equally important, I believe, is how you feel during and after you wake from your dreams. As well as how you felt before you fell into the dream. For example, I can go to bed feeling pretty good about the day I have experienced, only to find myself falling into a fitful dream world. When I wake, I feel significantly more unsettled than when I fell asleep. Unpleasant, yet revealing. When I examine the dream I find the clues to why. Although I had thought I was feeling emotionally balanced, there was a hidden aspect of my self that was calling to be revealed. What our dreams unearth for us are often opportunities for self-examination that can lead to both healing and release of the emotion tucked away inside of us.

Some people believe we can dream other people’s dreams and travel to other dimensions and realms. I tend to agree with these theories based upon my own experiences. If this is the case, and we feel we have dreamt a dream that is a bit “outside” of us, what does it mean? Perhaps we have traveled into a past of future life memory to retrieve valuable insight. Perhaps we have dreamt another person’s dream because our energies are too intimately intertwined. Or, perhaps we have traveled to another realm to learn something about “Life” on a larger scale.

Entire books, poems, inventions, and scientific discoveries have been gleamed from the realm of dreams. I find it nothing short of remarkable how our minds can form such complex and vivid scenes in the dream world which always, I believe, point to a deeper truth that begs to be explored.

Each dream, when examined, becomes a puzzle of the hidden, or not so hidden, self. Some, I admit, are so crazy at first glance that I cast them aside for later, hoping that their cryptic nature will reveal themselves overtime. For those of us who enjoy a good mystery, there’s no better place to explore than the world of our dreams.

At the moment, I’m still mulling over last night’s dreams, and dreams that I dreamt many nights ago. Through them I thread the lines that join symbols and take note of the patterns that are formed from them. Sometimes I chuckle at themes captured from TV shows or lines I have recently read, wondering why until the emotional symbolism is revealed. I marvel at fantastic forms and how far the mind can stretch reality until I realize that the limits are always self-imposed. Anything, absolutely anything, is possible in our dreams.

Running Alone in the Fields of Heaven #dreams #freesoul #dreamhealing #dreamsymbolism #dreaminterpretation

On By Alethea KehasIn Dreams, Reflections1 Comment
Photo by Belvair Nash from Prexels

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.

I Dream of Laundry, Resisting Letting Go #dreams #denial #death

On By Alethea KehasIn Dreams, Reflections14 Comments
Photo Credit: Pixabay

Another night passes fitfully, laden with soiled laundry, much of which is not my own. Each night I slip into uneasy sleep only to find myself sorting soiled clothes of family and sometimes strangers in homes that I once lived in. Washing. Ever-washing to try to get them clean of the stains left behind.

There are always machines waiting to spin the soiled garments clean. Sometimes too many to the point of the absurd. Homes becoming laundromats to cleanse the filth of the outer layers worn to shield the inner. The symbolism does not escape me, yet the dreams continue and I must ask myself why I turn backwards, again, to release the stains of the past.

If you study the mysteries, you may be familiar with the symbolism of robes/clothing worn to cover up, or mask, the true self. We often hide what we don’t want others to see, but most importantly, what we don’t want to see ourselves. Yet what resides inside the layers needs no washing.

Stripping ourselves naked requires trust and vulnerability. And it requires faith and letting go.

Each night as I pour through the soiled garments, a stack of towels waits for me. Their surfaces colored with floral blooms, drawing my eyes to their tall stacks. Yet the towels will do nothing for the garments, and I have yet to strip bare and immerse myself in a body of water to find my own cleansing. To release and rebirth.

Instead, I travel back through past homes, even though they are no longer mine. Seeking belonging, no doubt, but also approval. Acceptance. Healing. “Heal me,” my mother begs, showing me a leg riddled with arthritis, her face grotesquely distorted, too big for life and thrust too close for comfort against mine. How can I say no? She is my mother after all. The one who birthed me in this lifetime.

Sometimes life seems more cruel than kind to the human mind that tries to find reason and logic. If I could collapse time it would be by thousands of years and not a mere lifetime of long months. I would go to the place of heather and stone and find the one who wears the feathered cloak and embrace home.

I know why I am sorting through these endless garments soiled by life each night, yet I cannot quite let go of them. “It’s time,” they tell me, and I want to shout back, “I am not ready to let go of her, though.”

“You will and you must. Just like the bird trapped inside your porch, you will release this tie to life. Just as you must release the others that hold you back.”

The wren appears in uncanny ways, surprising me with her visits in the daytime. “I will never be truly gone,” she reminds me, but I want to hold her. To cup her feathered body against my heart. Just once, before I let her go.

A Forest Walk and a Dream about Beauty #dreams #foresthealing #badgersymbolism #namaste

On By Alethea KehasIn Dreams, Reflections18 Comments

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Photo Credit: <a href="http://Image by Myriam Zilles from Pixabay” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>Pixabay

I have been thinking about ephemeral beauty and how we cling to form like raindrops to branches. Our lives, individual only for a millisecond in the great cosmos of time. One shimmering spark holding onto a momentary existence, and yet the soul sings an eternal symphony. We are born through the woven membrane of light. Released into density for a moment, we cling to existence to become defined by matter.

At night, my dreams show me the clutter of the brain and how it folds memories of lack and doubt until darkness lets them loose to run amok. Our minds form impossible fantasies and horrors we think could never be real until we open our eyes and see the world we have created.

As I released to slumber last night, Badger threw open the veil to stare me in the face. Fearless digger, unearthing what I may try to hide, Badger gave way to Owl before I was flung into the shadowland. It’s almost funny how we tumble restless to the surrender. Revisiting old haunts we thought we had exorcised in the landscape of dreams. Least we think we are watching reruns, familiar specters morph into new forms and find another curtain to tug open.

How exhausting it can be to tumble backwards when life holds you for a mere millisecond, urging you only to let go.

Yesterday, I walked into the woods nearby our home with my family and our two dogs. Zelda led the way, choosing a trail we had never taken together. Only Rosy, myself and Daisy, who passed more than five years ago, had ventured down it before.

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Rosy trailing the pack just ahead of me. Zelda, somewhere up ahead with Alex.

The day was over-cast and windy. The clouds, eager to rain, darkened the trail littered with last year’s leaves. While we walked, I took in what the forest reveals before growth unfurls. There were more fallen trees than I cared to count, their bare trunks leaning on their neighbors. Others were already splintering into decay in their final resting places on their forest bed. Beach leaves lightened the ground, bleached  by winter to the color of sand. They lent a light to the forest that was absent from above.

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You can just make out Zelda here, between Ava and Alex. 

As we walked, I found myself wondering about the hand that guides unseen. Perhaps Daisy had urged Zelda’s feet to take us off the beaten path we were used to traveling together. Perhaps not. It doesn’t really matter. What matters was that we were there now, individually and together. Each of us mindful of our own moments.

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Me and Daisy 12/25/14. Less than two months before she passed back into light.

“There goes the camera,” my daughter, ahead of me, caught the sign at the same moment I did. She knew I would linger to take a photo. While I did, I found myself wondering how long the sign had been there. If somehow I had missed it walking the path years ago with Daisy and Rosy.  Who had placed the sign, and when?

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The Namaste Tree that caught my eye.

I don’t remember too much from my jumbled dreams last night. Perhaps it’s because I choose not to. There were travels with familiar people, and those who were not so familiar. There was lots of clutter and the feeling of being pulled into too many directions, through no will but my own. There was the feeling of tending more for other’s wants and need, while neglecting the self. Perhaps it is not so surprising that there is one scene, in particular, that lingers with me.

I am sitting on a bus filled with people, traveling to some forgotten destination. A woman sits beside me. My guide for the night. She looks with intention into my face, then presses her hand to my heart. “I see the beauty of the light that is you,” she tells me. Even though her words are genuine and almost urgent, I’m not sure I believe them. Yet, it’s enough. Enough to weave the darkness back to dawn.

The word “Namaste,” is Sanskrit in origin. It is a greeting of one being to another. A bowing to honor, often with hands joined at the palms above the heart, of the light that resides in the other, that is also in the self.  It is a gesture of reverence and of unity, and through Namaste we are reminded of the tapestry of light that threads through all life.

I like to think we are being reminded of this thread right now as we reside individually, yet together, in our shared millisecond of life. Reminded that within each form resides the beauty of the light that finds a temporary home inside each heart. A beauty that perhaps radiates more readily in some than in others, but only because of the block of fear.

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Photo Credit: <a href="http://Image by 李磊瑜伽 from Pixabay” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>Pixabay