Rune of a Dream

The Rune of a Dream
The Traveler Coming Home

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Excerpt from a book begun today:

Have you ever had one of those mornings where dreams kept right on coming? You open your eyes and there they are, alive. I had one of those mornings today.

A woman named Oran stood by my bed, all in black. Lace skirts shimmering. Midnight gloves with her fingers bursting through. A rainbow feather dangling, tied into her wind strewn hair.

We stepped into the night, the dreamer and the dreamed.

Oh many wonders of dreams and wandering!

We walked out through the dew as the jet sky was offering herself up for the sun’s silver coins. We glided into the powerful part of the day when everything is between this or that. I invited her into the cabin. Inside the light was already alive above my desk of many hues. A song stream of paint flowed off the linoleum desktop. There, onto the floor, flooded a story of a rainbow and a god’s promise fulfilled. Oran looked at me, still dreaming. “In the colors is the telling of the universe.” she whispered along the nape of my neck.

She swayed into the room; her skirt was many waves rustling. I followed. I implored her as an unrequited lover: “Please stay. Take any seat you’d like. Please stay. It’s been so long.” She looked up to me with her voice of a thousand soft winds, her breath sweet grasses, blowing and swirling in my hair. Her feet ruffled all the loose paper and project strewn on the floor. The shelves of poetry rattled in a shiver quake of recognition. The books came to life, remembering the One who wrote every word ever written.

“I’ll be here now.” she said. She flew her right hand into the air, scrawling a sign for the deaf and longing, for the pilgrims of earth, for the dreamless and the worried, a gift for the found and the ones searching. Her index finger was outstretched. Her and and fingers followed loosely like a wing.

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Just Be Ordinary

Stairway into the Columbia River.

In my shamanic training I learned about three spheres of our universe. There is a upper world which is a realm with the ascended ancestors and light beings. There is a lower world, with the animals, humbling beauty and echos of earth. And there is this place that we live. My teachers called it the Ordinary World. This middle place is our home right now. I learned how it is mixed and stirred with spirits and elements and people and all beings. I always thought it ironic and humorous to call our world ordinary. Ordinary? Yeah, right. It's the most amazing place of all.

Walt Whitman said "I know nothing but miracles." When you really witness the creation here, really let the terrible beauty settle in, how can we not think we're in a miracle? Yet there is pain here and loss and misunderstanding. There feels like a brooding dark glass over our vision of what is real and lasting. Maybe moments outside of the brooding and homeless feeling can be found in the ordinary. Right here.

Remember the questions my counselor asked me to consider when I feel lost? Where are you? and What are you doing? I have many pat and scintillating answers. Like: We are spiritual beings living our lives in physical form. Or, I'm growing and evolving with a richer experience as a person. Maybe these are true answers. Yet I wonder if much of my life is spent in a landscape of metaphor. Where everything has to be compared with something else or an ideal.

What my counselor said after I came back with few well chosen answers was this: "Rick, just be ordinary!" Puleeze... just be here with what is. Be right here, in your own body.

OK. I'm sitting in the early gloaming of Sunday evening. The kids and neighbors are playing and laughing just outside the door. I'm at my desk seeing the bright white screen with a hundred trees in the mist around my windows. I am in my body and I am musing to my friends and fellow human beings on the web. I press Send... and I'm on to the next experience.

Just be ordinary! Ordinary? This experience is a miracle!


Is this experience of our life only a reflection of something greater?

Are we sufficient just as we are?

Is this simple breath, in and out, really ordinary?

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Where and What

Woodland, WA in about three months
The sun is patiently burning her song of colors within the quiet earth.

I have seen a therapist for several years. Yesterday, in her familiar office I had memories come forward in the forms of physical sensations. I could actually feel an event from the past occurring here and now. I realized a couple of things. One is that the whole body is a mind connected with the heart, thoughts, spirit. Memory that comes forward from a dynamically charged experience is not always recognized as a memory. It may be here as a physical experience. It may feel like a past event is occurring right now, right here. This is particularly true of folks with past trauma. I am amazed at the complexity and wonder of the body mind. I am amazed at the wisdom of it's many voices.

I have a new and simple tool that I use when I am reactive or hyper vigilant. I use this when I am triggered by an external stress or a rising discomfort. I simply stop and ask the questions:

Where am I?
and
What am I doing?

For many, the experiences of the past can flow into the psyche and sensations. How many times is this an unconscious process? I can be more of a witness for the charged physical experiences that can occur within me. I can be less reactive. An example is when a shot of adrenaline comes when a child is being sassy . We can seek to center ourselves with the two simple questions. And then proceed with actions that match the actual situation. Many times that action is just to take a deep breath, feel the feelings and let it go.

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Perspective of Wonder

The next time you are caught up in the details and worries of daily life remember the beauty and majesty of our universe. Remember our planet so powerful and unique. Hear our world and our universe singing in your heart. Such wonder, such awe, such brilliant presence in the creation. Remember the Spirit that enfolds our finite years here on earth, Our Mother.

Two videos of images taken from the space station, aircraft and the Hubble orbiting telescope showing our place in the cosmos:

Earth From Space:

Our Universe:

This year I vow to remember the Great Song that is all around us, to remember that we are all made of the vibrations and the particles of everything seen and hidden.

Peace
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Promise of Dawn

Traipsing out to the hut in our field at 7AM. The night still ruled. I walked into the welcoming space and lit the dark with three candles. I sat on the cushion. I was still as I could be. As I breathed, thoughts of discouragement came: "No one I know is reading these blogs, except my family". A little sad... and inaccurate.

Then the names came out of the dark:
Felicia, Richard, Holly, William, Janine, Doyle, Rick, Rudy, Edna, Mike, Dan...

and many more.

They came and said "We read from your book!"

I had more reason to create and write, a promise from the dawn. The ancestors read me. Even my descendants, even the daughter I never knew (yet). And there are the living, all out there on other strands of this singing web.

Then I breathed in a prayer for all of us:

We are home
We are seen
We are loved

I breathed out and opened my eyes. The night had retreated. The silver light of sunrise was roiling in clouds filled with rain from far away. The light fell in through the windows. I stood up and I was free.

Peace to you, my brother or sister, the living or passed, the lonely or revealed,

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Truth and Compassion

An essential conflict in becoming aware is: How do we tell the truth while being compassionate at the same time? How does the truth become helpful rather than just tolerable?

I have a wise friend who says that a measure of an organization's health and resiliency is to be able to ask the hard questions. This is especially true for families. What is so hard about asking: What's really occurring for me and what do I really feel about it? Does a difficult answer require making a choice? How does one ask these questions and stay true to kindness, especially if the answer is uncomfortable?

I made the effort to go through a juice fast this weekend and Monday. A truth that still comes forward is that I'm addicted to sugar. I crave all forms of the white powder and corn syrup. I crave and eat it even if it is detrimental to my mental functioning and physical well being. That's an uncomfortable truth that presents me with clearer choices. Fasting also brings up other habits into a spotlight. Like how I'm nice to a fault with the kids. How my default answer is Yes, almost as a knee jerk reaction.

I want to start with my own basic truths without working on another person. Yet there are aspects of my external family life that push me into primitive emotions concerning feelings of basic respect, safety and balance. How does one experience the "true" feedback from another person without going numb or reactive? How does one become a compassionate truthsayer in their internal life?

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Time To Rejuvenate

Forest above Salmon Creek

To Moses on the Holy Mountain:

Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy

When I was a child none of the stores were open on Sundays in my home town in Southern Idaho. It was nearly impossible to buy gasoline or to get a load of groceries. I've been thinking about the Sabbath, how it was written as a commandment, not a suggestion. I'm not suggesting that we go back to the "good old days". Yet, I wonder about the losses we've experiences by constantly consuming life and growing.

Today both of us pretty much vegetated. We weren't exactly spent or lethargic. But we rested. Both of us commented how strange it felt to just let the ongoing conversations about the kids be for now or how to let the house maintenance lapse for a day. We bought nothing and sought no entertainment outside the home. I felt as if I should be doing something.

Like the forest in winter, our minds need fallow times. Dormancy to rewire and to integrate all of the information continually flying at us. A time to gather silence in order to fill our words and deeds with more compassion through the coming week. Why is it so hard to be still? Are there moments of Sabbath throughout the week? What is the significance of the ancient wisdom handed sown in a commandment?

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