fly awake

Thanks to all of you who purchased my pudu journals.  I was able to collect $200 to donate. The original plan was to give them money to the Patagonian Land Programme but, I started feeling very nervous about this European organization because I couldn’t find any information on them. So instead the money was donated to the Nature Conservancy’s Patagonian grassland conservation program.  Here’s some of the creatures their program will benefit:

(from their site)

• More than 20,000 species of plants;
• More than 370 species of mammals, including the vulnerable pudu, the world’s smallest deer, measuring just 18 inches at the shoulder;
• More than 1,000 species of birds, including the Andean condor, the world’s largest flying bird.

So thanks again for all that contributed. Hopefully the Pudu will be more protected with their assistance.

Pudu says, “Thanks! Check out my cute bum, and mini antlers.”

Meditation: Focusing on grounding and my deer legs come back. I am sitting with deer legs. I’ve got rusty fur that’s a bit course and black hooves. I sit with my legs like that and feel the deer in my head, my forehead is elongated and flat and I have antlers at times. I feel the movement of the dancing leg energy/the deer dance. I feel connected to astral information by the antenna-like antlers.

Wake: Deer is such sexy energy. I am thinking, “what to wear?” and I hear: “something to show off your deer legs.” Tee hee, so I put on a short skirt and start dancing around on the balls of my feet, doing deer dance. I think about sex, but in a magical, elevated way. I think this is a gift from deer–tuning in to the animal nature in a more elevated way.

Walking down the street later, and still feeling the deer legs. This way of walking, on the balls of the feet, is so much more precise, delicate, and energized.  When I walk on my heels I feel like a neanderthal or a sasquatch! It’s funny how the way you walk changes your energy. Wahoo. Then, since it was my birthday, I celebrated with a giant piece of cake. That also changed my energy. Tee hee, again.

Finally I am doing something for the Pudu, aside from telling everyone about how cute he is.  I made some Pudu journals from scrap paper and gocco. Check them out on my etsy site:

http://lilymichaud.etsy.com

$10 from each sale goes to buying land for a Pudu (and other local animal) refuge–the Patagonian Land Programme.

A couple animals have crept into my city life.

On New Year’s Eve I was in a group meditation and bear appeared to me. I saw bear’s head and shoulders as the bear was standing and growling/talking. The last couple times I saw bear, bear was pawing at me, waking me up.

A couple days ago I was down at Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge, checking out an area I hadn’t been to yet. I was walking the trail along the river and saw one deer foot print. Just one! It was very nice to see deer.

In Iowa the crows come in the fall. They are the perfect mysterious addition to an already awesome season. Hundreds of them sit in bare trees, making noise that, for me, is synonymous with the mysterious waning nature of that time of year. This summer, actually my second in Portland, OR, I keep feeling like it is actually fall. It was a little different than last summer in Portland, and it just seemed so much more like an Indian Summer in Iowa than the height of Summer, (we’ll just forget about the days being about 5 hours longer than they would be during fall). Then I realized that I was surrounded by crows. Here in Portland the crows come to enjoy this particular type of weather, then they will move on to places like Iowa and enjoy the weather their. Apparently crows are short distance migrants, only traveling up to 100 miles. There is a difference in these summertime crows, something I hadn’t seen in Iowa. There are young crow among them–perhaps teenagers, they are only a little smaller in total size but, they are fluffier and so, look fatter, they also don’t seem to move around as fast as the adults do. Perhaps it wasn’t the confusing 80 degree heat that was having me think it was fall, but rather the lovely crows. I have always loved crows, partly because they were wrapped up in my favorite time of year, but, now maybe having the crows in the summer will add a little mystery and night to what is otherwise not my favorite time of year.

Dream:

I am laying around with four deer. I can rest my head on their big bodies. Now, one is standing in front of me, looking into the setting sun. I am standing next to one that is laying on the ground. It has four arrows in its neck. It is alive but the arrows are causing suffering–it is sick and can’t move because of them. I take them out, one by one, it seems like they should be hard to remove, but they come out fairly easily. As I pull them out, I put medicated salve into the holes. I look accusingly over my shoulder at the man who had been standing by. I wonder how he could have left the deer like this. He thought maybe it wouldn’t be good to pull the arrows out, maybe it would do more harm. The deer is grateful and the deer will be okay.

Dream:

I go to see a moose, but the moose is laying on the ground–dead. I am supposed to be zen about this. I don’t react externally, but I wonder why it is that I am to see this dead moose. In fact I think it is the second time I have been brought here to see this. The first time was a bear. 

Wake:

Moose is one of the members of the deer family that I am working with for my video project. Moose is late fall/early winter, an unusual animal, having self-esteem and self-respect–returns to water.  Bear is also a bit watery, working in the realm of dreams, crystals and berries/herbs. Waking from the moose dream I was reminded of the buffalo dream I had a while ago about a bringing the life back into a buffalo hide, maybe that is a way to deal with this type of dream encounter.

Dream:

Part A (1/24/08): I am going to show my video to some people for a critique. This will be the only critique I receive for this video. The auditorium is black and gray, it is dirty and, surprisingly, no one has arrived yet. I watch my film on the big screen. The film is low quality black and white with images of people and things (nature–the ground, a face), it reminds me of an old French film. I have told a story over the top. My dreams are with my slow and soothing dream voice, but my voice is higher and lighter as I begin to talk about “when I pray…”.

Some people come into the auditorium, including my mother. I set up the film for them to watch. I get distracted by them and start to talk with my mother about the film. She tries on the ornate wedding dress I made while we talk. She says, “So, there are four parts/subjects, and four _____. 4 x 4 x 4 it seems.” “Four interviews,” I think. I let go of the dress-up session and turn back to watch the film again.

Part B (6/6/8): I’m walking through a forest with a friend. I see that the forest has the same glowing white furry chest as the deer. It seems odd at first, that the forest has a furry chest. I am told that this white furry chest is about integrity, then I think, “why shouldn’t the forest have the same chest–it makes total sense.”

There are four animals, four legs, four seasons, and four stories. The deer, elk, moose. They are the stories of being a woman, and each one has a gun they can kill you with.

I find myself as a young girl, about eight years old. I am facing a moose, the moose has the same glowing white chest. The moose faces me, even though the moose is not the animal for a child. Because this is not the time for me to see the moose I wonder why the moose has not killed me, but here I am. And here is the moose, the moose is calm and confident and proud, in a healthy way. The moose is very peaceful with me, just eating grass in front of me. I am so alive, standing here with the moose.

Later (C): (I wonder about the gun) “It is about energy and time.”

……..

Wake: I had the first part of this dream in the winter, and I knew that I wanted to create this video in waking time. In part A one interview was with a deer and the other may have been with the Earth. The second part happened just before I left for a trip to Orcas Island where there many, many deer. In between I had many dreams working with Calea Zacatechichi about healing through the elements. Here are somethings that are coming together:

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter

Deer, Elk, Moose

Maiden, Mother, Crone

Air, Fire, Water, Earth

East, South, West, North

Above is a deer from the island. I’ve been missing the deer so much since I moved to the city. Seeing them (everywhere) on the island was like finding water in the desert, very healing.

Here is an interesting astrology article about working with your North/grounding.

This week was a little challenging, but in the end it was a positive experience.

Wednesday morning I woke up and took the triple threat (my chihuahua plus my brother’s chihuahua and chiweenie–stand back!) out for a walk. I saw that I had parked a foot into my neighbors driveway. I am usually very careful about such things, so I felt bad. But really, it was enough to be annoying, but not enough to actually prevent him from getting his car out.

So I opened up the note he had left under my wind shield wiper. It started out by saying, “I hope you fuck better than you park.” It didn’t really get much better after that. I was pretty upset and ended up crying for way longer than I would like to admit. I was really shocked that a neighbor would act like this. I’m from Iowa, where there are plenty of problems but being unneighborly is not one of them.

My first instinct was to write a nasty note, but I decided to use the skills I learned from deer instead. So, I wrote a note apologizing for my parking and expressing my hope that next time he made a mistake he would be greeted with less hostility. 

Also, I realized that being upset and thinking about the situation and others like it that had happened since moving to Portland was just reinforcing that reality. So I sat and did mantras for a friendlier, less stressful life. As soon as I had done this I started to notice a difference. People were friendly and went out of their way to be helpful. Also, I bumped into my friendliest neighbor.

Thursday, I had another incident involving name-calling and general immaturity, and was beginning to think that my approach of being nice and expressing the highest aspect of the situation was for bitches.

Friday, I woke up from a dream wherein I was hanging out with two fancy Italian vampires that were invited to my dinner. One was a seriously evil murderous vamp who lived for the art of killing. The other was a relative newbie who was trying to make right and had only killed 30 or 40 people. The less experienced one started pursuing me. As I ran away I came to a path where there were animals resting/relaxing on the left hand side. First there were two glowing spotted fawns sleeping on top of each other. Second a glowing kitty playing idly with something. Third a young glowing fox that was running around. These were my tools and I decided to throw one, the fox, at the vamp. The vamp swatted away the fox.

When I first woke up I was thinking, “What the heck was that all about?” Then I started thinking about these meanies, shall we say, and my response to them. I began to think my little animal approaches were lame, and maybe something more aggressive, like egging, would be better.

Later in the afternoon I was again walking the triple threat and saw that someone was sitting on the porch of the house belonging to the driveway I had failed to respect. I decided to go have a chat with him so we could get to know each other as neighbors.

He immediately came down from the porch and started apologizing, and saying that he was going to write me another note to that effect. This went on for a while. As he is telling me his story and apologizing, the dogs are trying to kill him and I am watching happily, after all I have to appreciate what my little animal friends offer in the way of support and strategy.  He said he was sorry for the hostility, but his intention was to be nice and not tow me. I told him that if that had been necessary I would have preferred it. He seemed to find this incredulous. Then I said that I had cried all morning.  I don’t think that he had really thought about how the note would effect the reader when he wrote it.

I don’t think I expressed this quite right but, in the end I was really happy about how it turned out. It probably worked out the best way possible. Thanks to the grace of God and Guru, the mantras, and deer, (fox and kitty too).  I felt like taking the high road actually worked. Instead of making further anger we now know each other better and have more respect for each other, hopefully. Plus I think that being nice allows people to think about what they did, rather than just get defensive.

In the dream fox, kitten and the deer were all young–not fully matured. I think this is that I don’t recognize their full abilities/gifts yet, and that they are still developing. Fox is the master of camouflage who can be invisible and is an excellent protector of the family. I used fox to do a little diversion when I wrote the note, disguising how I was really feeling and instead showing the neighborhood in a good light. Kitten/Cat is a leader and a fearless hunter. I used cat when I decided to directly speak with the neighbor to show him that the person he wrote to had a face, etc. And deer… 

Deer lesson: I was living in Iowa near my family. My family is not the easiest to deal with. I would use my medicine cards and see the deer card, but never pull it. Deer stands for gentleness, which was somehow very mysterious and elusive at the time. I kept asking deer to reveal itself. Deer did. Thank you deer. Deer taught me how to write a letter (because sometimes people don’t listen as well when confronted) and say the problem, but in terms of all my best hopes and wishes, and say it with love. This helped me so much during my last several months being near my parents. I often felt I was run roughshod over, but at least I knew that I was doing well, not just exacerbating the situation for me or them. And occasionally, even with my parents who are tough nuts to crack, it brought healing outcomes. It is can be easy to feel trampled on when being gentle, but ultimately the lessons learned are very sweet.

Before I went to sleep I asked the crystal to show me a more gentle way of working with it. I also asked for it to share with me more about how it works and how it makes people lighter (as it did in my last dream).
Dream: I am helping dead people. They are dead people who don’t know they are dead yet, or perhaps they have a strong suspicion but they know that if they admit it, they will be giving up even the illusion of their body. I am given an assignment, which is a picture of the person (how they appear energetically) and what I am to do for them. With each person (assignment) the idea is basically the same. They come to me, we interact, during the interaction I bring them to their happiest memories, while they are in this state of happiness I somehow facilitate their leaving their body. At that point they have totally released their physical body and it is a much better state for the soul to be in.

This process helps many people.

One assignment is for a man–his picture is of an albino deer with a mouth and eyes that close and open like a fish’s mouth. He reminds me of a peacock that I have seen. When I see him “in the flesh” he is more man-looking, but with pale blue green peacock feathers, these grow out of him and he plays with them nervously. He avoids me, even while he stands in front of me. He leaves without our interaction taking place.

I go on to my next assignment which involves taking the woman back to the happiness that came during the ultrasound of her pregnant belly. Before this happens, I see the man again. He is still avoiding me, although this time I see him as he appeared while human. He is skinny, with a thin frame and short dark blond hair. He wears a zip jacket and pants. He was a scientist. He is young. I talk to him about how if we do our thing together then he will be able to go to the meeting. (He is standing outside the room where the meeting is being held, as though he wants to go in. Several people are entering the room.) He says “If I do that then I will really be dead.”

Wake:

This dream left me feeling very good, even though “assistance from the body” wasn’t able to happen for the last guy. It seems very weird to say I did anything to help people let go. It just seemed like I was there for another force to work through. Something very subtle.

Perhaps the crystal can be used to help in the process of death, to lighten souls and return them to their unformed state. I think this dream also was informed by a conversation I had with Kevin yesterday about the heart as a reality generating device.

We’ve had many discussions about the mind as a reality generating device, i.e. lucid dreaming while waking and asleep–imagine it to be so and it will be way more likely to happen. Kevin had heard something about how you can imagine that the thing you manifest has already happened, visualize this, but then feel how you would in that reality. According to his source, the heart-mind working together has more success than just the mind.

In the dream the heart was the way to release people from their fear of death/loosing the body. When people die in our country is their a lack of care for the heart? It seems so cold when people die in the hospital, but who am I to say. The man in the dream reminds me of a patient I worked with last time I was at the hospital. He was young and so sick, and had been sick for most of his life. He seemed very distant from his heart. In the dream it is almost as though the man says “If I feel what it feels to be really alive, then I will really die.”

In the hospital I often try to figure out what makes people happy (i.e. kids, hobbies) to distract them from what I am doing, (which they usually do not like, but have to deal with). With this man, I was unable to connect, he was so sick and so withdrawn from his body. I wasn’t worried about not connecting when I left the room, but I was concerned for him. I see so many people everyday–this has been a gift that has taught me how very differently people deal with the stress of illness. I often find our medical system to be strange. I am much more a fan of natural medicine, heart centered approaches, and empowering the patient. These seem deficient in our hospitals, but every unique person that works at the hospital has the opportunity to bring these things to the patient. Perhaps working with the crystal has helped me and could help me to do more in this area.

Dream:

I walk next door to Dee’s house. There is a small gathering at that white ranch house that had bunnies in the backyard, like we did when I was a kid. The gathering (maybe a wedding?) is Indian catered. There is a small russet colored deer (pudu?), gorgeous color and fur, and a beautiful cow laying in the yard looking at me. The Cow and Pudu are radiant with life and health. I really want to talk to the Pudu. I look over at him, a little awkwardly. The Pudu comes over to me and takes me across the street (in front of the olive colored ranch house) to talk.

He says, “If you are going to keep living here you’re going to have to change your lifestyle.”

I ask the Pudu, “Aren’t you the Pudu?”

He says, “It doesn’t really matter.”

In response to his statement, I immediately think of midwifery school and some other places I could go besides here in Portland, that wouldn’t be so costly (in both money and time). (”Wasn’t there one I really liked in Vancouver?”) I go check it out.

Wake:

Hmmm… Happy to see Pudu and the Cow, both so gorgeous. And, I love talking to people and animals in my dreams. The Cow and Pudu seem suspiciously like Anandi Ma and Dileepji. Yeah!!! I was glad for this warning. As I’ve thought about my wanting to go back to school, I’ve always been leery of the money and lifestyle crunch involved. I really don’t want to go into more debt. When I thought back on the dream, I immediately imagined myself working full-time, having a baby and going to school. There was no art in that vision of the future for obvious reasons. But, I’ve started to look into other options…and that is yielding some interesting/promising results.

This dream also made me think about my friend Dee. Dee is my oldest friend. She lived (and still lives) across the street from my childhood home. I hadn’t called her back for a couple weeks because I was sad that she might not be able to come out to visit for my wedding like I was hoping. The dream reminded me to let go of my crap and call her. Happily, it looks like she will be able to come after all, and more importantly I got to touch base with my longtime friend.