Monday, December 21, 2009

Darkness and Dragonflies

The winter solstice is my birthday, and at some point during this time of year a sense of home comes over me, a settling of muscles and ease of breath. It’s as if I’m hearing my native language being spoken for the first time after a long absence. Some years it takes longer than others, but when I finally recognize it, I feel pure joy. I feel known.

I like the dark. In the dark there are no mirrors or screens on which to project. In the total darkness of the solstice, for just a heartbeat, creation winks out and I can feel the ground, the real and true ground, the tortoise that holds up the world. It is what we come from, and what we return to. Some might find it empty and strange, they might feel stripped of something they think they need; but I am grateful for the emptiness, like a gasping fish returned to the sea. I remember that I am nothing and think, “Oh.” All fires inevitably burn out or are extinguished, but darkness endures and is the source of all light.

The darkness is where we rest, where we let go of what we’ve been clutching and recombine with the “rest” of what we are. This communion with the larger pool creates intelligence in a system that has become closed. Without it, we would go mad, and think that this is all there is.

Last night I dreamed I was in a theater searching for my mother, with whom I had been seated in the front row. But the theater kept changing, and I couldn’t find my original seat. I stepped out into the night and what I was seeking became a lighted dragonfly streaking past me up into the sky. Within seconds it was met by others of its kind, and they lined up and swirled in a spiral. Then the first dragonfly went dark, and the others around it became disorganized and flew away. In the dream I thought, “Oh, I get it. Until it lights up, they can’t tell it’s there.” The dragonfly looked down at me with maternal approval and love, then lit up again, and returned to its dance.

Rest well, and may your solstice be sweet.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

A Gorilla in the Midst

I was visited by a beautiful silverback gorilla a few days ago during a meditation that sought to resolve a painful recurring issue in my life. Sometimes animals in visions do talk, but without speaking a word, he modeled a grounded state of being that my body understood and mimicked without hesitation. My muscles spontaneously discharged all the stress they were holding, and I wept with the kind of comprehension that only comes from a complete systemwide shift. I got it. Breathing with him, I felt the resolution of something that had been stealing all the pleasure off my plate for as long as I could remember.

James Hillman says in his book Dream Animals, “A snake is not a symbol.” When we are visited by something alien and wonderful in visions or dreams, there is a terrible inclination to immediately try and make sense of it. The conscious mind is always trying to make itself comfortable, to keep things within the parameters of its own limitations. So instead of allowing ourselves to be moved, affected, by this representative of a more natural state of being, we immediately paste a label on its forehead, in our minds or in our therapy sessions, and overlook the being itself. It’s a terrible elision.

Imagine if you had traveled all the way from wherever dreams come from to visit someone and they completely ignored you and talked only about you -- or worse, altogether forgot you were standing there. You’d probably hang around for a while feeling awkward and disappointed, then amble on to someplace more welcoming; and the person you had visited would be left with only an incomplete contraction of the invitation you were trying to convey.

When I’m frightened, I want answers. But a mystery solved inadequately makes me feel robbed, some part of me knowing that I have missed an important opportunity. It is a terrible loss, as if poachers had come and turned my beautiful dream friend into a pile of souvenirs, forcing me to buy back cheap mementos of an experience I wouldn’t let myself have, a place I never really visited.

So the more moments I can spend not knowing who this creature is, not deciding what he means, not penning him in with interpretations that make me less uncomfortable with the -- well, the 500-pound gorilla in the room, the more I feel the hum of an immense apparatus deep inside me coming to life. The tiny point in space that is what I know of myself connects up with the grid of potential from which we are fashioned and for brief moments I feel what is available to me. This is what it means to ground.

Ironically, this is one of the lessons to be learned from a gorilla, possibly the most grounded being on the planet. But if I had been looking for this lesson, trying to figure it all out, I would not have gotten the message.