Yes Virginia

The past couple months have been pretty crazy for me -- intense, head-spinning, world toppling, death-defyingly crazy.  There were three events right on top of each other, which I will talk about separately, that really shook me up and left me feeling on the verge of the anxiety and panic attacks that I hadn't experienced for years.  When the heaviness of depression teamed up with the hyper-vigilance of anxiety and I found myself living in an uneasy fog, I knew I had to get some answers.  All I knew was that something had to change, but what it was, or what my next step needed to be, I didn't know.

So I turned to a good friend with whom I regularly exchange readings to shed some light on what was going on and what I needed to do.  Despite the combination of Tarot cards and my friend's mad astrology skills, clarity was in short supply, and though I left with more hope than I arrived with, the unknown task before me seemed daunting at its best and insurmountable at its worst.  I had doubts as to whether I would even survive this.

Still, the challenge was less undefined than before and we were able to determine that it sprouted from some deep soul trauma (all the cards coming up being Major Arcana) that resulted from some crisis of faith.  It had something to do with physical reality and being present in my body -- Balancing both the physical and spiritual realms.  I'm really good at avoiding being in my body, but as the oracles where telling us, I didn't totally trust the spirit side either.  A crisis of faith -- a crisis of reality.  It so resonated with my feelings of being caught in both worlds but not totally belonging to either one.  The phrase that came up over and over again was 'Hearth and Home.'  I don't know where my home is and thus do not feel safe anywhere -- hence the hyper-vigilance and the resulting exhausted depression.

I read a story somewhere about a guy who got on a bus and he was carrying this obviously very heavy backpack.  He took a place standing in the aisle as the bus continued on its route, the pack still slung over his shoulder.  Finally, a few stops later, a woman looks up at him and says, "You know, the bus is strong enough to carry both you and your backpack." And the man realized he didn't have to keep carrying the pack but could put it on the floor.

That's kind of the way I've been feeling -- like it's not been safe for me to put my full weight down anywhere.  I don't dare until I have someplace that's home.

Okay.  Baby step, baby step.  My body is my home here, and I'd already begun to be more consciously present and grounded.  I can do that. Step One, done.  Step Two -- Stay optimistic. In just the past week or so I'd rediscovered what a difference it makes to have my third eye open.  When I get caught in the hamster wheel of thoughts and its resulting tunnel vision, just opening my third eye chakra totally expands the context and perspective of whatever I'm going through.  It's like a "Second star to the right and straight on til morning" type feeling.

So I had those things going for me, and just had to bide my time -- "get comfortable with being uncomfortable," as my reading had told me -- until the answers came of their own accord.  Fortunately I didn't have to wait long.

I was going about my own business this morning at work, mulling over everything from the reading the night before, and thinking about the whole crisis-of-faith thing.  "Maybe I was martyred in a past life? Maybe I had put my undying faith and loyalty into someone or something only to find out they or it was false?" Suddenly, without warning, a memory flashed through my mind.  "Oh my gods! SANTA!!!"

I don't remember exactly how old I was but it was my pre-teens when I found out Santa wasn't real.  It may sound silly but this rocked me to my very foundations. I had had an unwavering, unquestioning, 100% pure belief in Santa's existence, and that reality -- the one where magick was real in the world -- was pulled out from under me.  In a split second I no longer lived in a world I recognized.  I didn't know what I could trust.  Not only did the magickal world get taken away, but it made the physical world less real, and less reliable.  I was lost.  I no longer had a home.

That all might sound a bit melodramatic, but think of it from the mind of a prepubescent, day-dreamer of a boy.  And silly or not, the full impact of this realization sent this fully grown man reeling to the bathroom and had him sitting on the floor sobbing his eyes out.  Tears of grieving a world torn away from me... My innocence ripped away from me.  This was huge!

So I sat there on the floor, my breath still catching in small gasps, when something shifted.  I felt as though some invisible barrier or wall had softly given way and allowed me to sink deeper into place than I ever remember, like tumblers in a combination lock aligning. There was a calmness and a rightness, and I felt like I'd just had a Soul Retrieval -- like some errant part of my soul had finally found it's way home.

I had closed my teary eyes, and suddenly the darkness behind my eyelids turned the color red.  Then I heard the laughter -- "HO-HO-HO!" And there before me stood Father Christmas himself, like he'd just stepped out of a children's book.  

I may have shed a few more tears at this point, from the joy and just the pure relief bubbling up from my heart.  And I'm pretty sure I was grinning as I sighed, "You are real."

He threw his head back and shook with a belly laugh. "Hohohohoho! Of course I am!" Then he paused, and with a sly twinkle in one eye, and a wink with the other, he leaned closer to me. "Are you?"

Two Dog Night

Recently I had a dream that has stuck with me, and it continues to unfold in my diurnal life--

I was watching a friend's house while she was away.  Of course the dream house was nothing like her 'real' house, which was evident as I walked through the gate of the white picket fence to head up the front walk to her door. Before I could reach the house, though, a boxer with its tongue hanging out came bursting out the screen door and excitedly bouncing up the path to me.  "Uh-oh! You're not suppose to be out here!" I said, greeting her with a scratch behind the ears.  "C'mon!" I said with a tilt of my head as I started back for the door, and she happily, and bouncily, followed.  Once inside I greeted the other canine denizen of the household, a very low-key basset hound, who greeted me back with a doggy smile and a wagging tail. 

After spending time on the floor scritching, scratching, and playing with these two extremes of dog-hood, I went on a walk-through of the house to make sure everything was alright.  It wasn't.  When I got to the basement, I found it totally flooded, the water apparently running down from my friend's mother's room upstairs (My friend's mom does not live with her in ordinary reality).

--There was a little more to the dream after that, but this is where my clearer memories ended. So what does it all mean?  The following is how I interpreted it...

To start with, Dog medicine is about Loyalty, representing family and relationships, as in those of my personal pack -- those I consider family whether blood-related or not.  The temperament of these two canines suggested a couple of my closest friends, one who is very bouncy and very in touch with her inner puppy, whose excitement and playfulness will not allow her to be contained in any box you may try to put her in, and the other who is quieter and more shy -- the basset actually representing the person whose house this was in the dream.

The water in the basement, aside from its obvious connotations of the emotional realms, instantly reminded me of the Tower card in the Tarot, where the water is rushing against the tower, eroding its foundation and threatening to tear it down.  However, in a reading I had by a friend in which the Tower appeared, she pointed out to me that the water that was shaking up and changing the tower was also the same water that would carry the tower down-stream to its new location -- to where it belonged. 

In the dream I take this to mean that our relationships are changing and shifting.  Indeed, there had been events that had happened prior to the dream in both friendships where I felt disappointed or let down, but which allowed me to claim back some of my own power that I'd been giving away to them.  Things had definitely shifted in a way which lessened what could be classified as areas of co-dependency, making me feel more independent and able to perceive both relationships from a different, more self-empowered perspective -- and still feel the strength of our connections.

It took a while for another significance of the dream to light on my consciousness.  As I was recounting the dream to another friend, some time after I'd had it, it suddenly occurred to me... white picket fence -- Oh my gods, it was the 'American Dream' -- True Love, happily ever after, and all that!  I also realized it was someone else's ideal -- had it been my own, it would have been a farm house or cabin surrounded by woods (with a Delorean parked out front). 

Now there has been a spectrum of emotions between my friend and I, that we've been having to sort out pretty much since the day we met, and I can't deny a certain spark existing on both our parts. But there are also reasons, spark or not, that going in specific directions would not be in anyone's best interest.  And that's what I think the picket fence symbolizes -- Sometimes as much as we may think we know what we want things to look like, just like that American Dream, it doesn't really exist and is just an illusion (and by which saying, I in no way mean to sound cynical. I'm not saying, for instance, that True Love doesn't exist -- if you know me, you know I'm one of the biggest romantics alive -- just that outdated facade of it.).  In other words, it is further validation of the shifting perspective of our connection and friendship, and that any steps in that direction would not be based in reality; would be empty without substance -- It was the importance of seeing the relationship, whatever that is, for what it is rather than projecting dreams and desires upon it.

It also reminded me of something I'd heard toward the beginning of the year in the weekly Sacred Pipe Circle I attend.  The leader of the circle was talking about manifesting what we want in our life.  She said that  when something appears, to try it on like a piece of clothing to see if it fits.  I piped up (Hee-hee! Pun intended.), asking, "If it doesn't totally fit, can we have it tailored?"  She looked back at me, intensely in the eye, and replied, "No! No tailoring! If it doesn't fit correctly, it's not yours and there's a better fitting garment coming along."

That really struck me as I thought of how many times I've settled for things that were close to what I'd wanted to manifest but needed some tweeking to really make it fit.  The thing is that they never really did -- especially in the area of romance.  And I've learned that when things come along that are close to but not completely my desired outcome, it is usually a stepping stone toward that desire.  The missing components are there to tell me that this is not the end result, while the parts that do fit let me know that I'm heading in the right direction -- kind of in the way a chef may keep sampling the meal being prepared, and adding ingredients needed as the dish nears the peak of yumminess.  It is the chance to really raise the bar and fine tune my vision, as well as to assure me that these things really do exist and I do deserve them.  I can taste them.

So I embrace both relationships for what they are, honoring and honored by the presence of these two dear souls in my life.  And I shift my vision toward dreams of farm houses, Deloreans, and that one precious soul I have yet to meet...