fly awake

Well…a lot has happened in the last couple months. Major shifts in the waking time. Realizing the dream trailer was not going to happen any time soon, my husband and I bought a house. Our plan for the house it to make it into a dream venue…a place where people can come to share their dreams, interact lucidly, and do more commercial things, like purchase information, herbs and items related to dreaming.  It has been really awesome getting moved in and starting to paint the house and prepare to open shop–we’re thinking sometime between fall 1st, 2010 and spring 1st, 2011. The house has lots of beautiful garden space full of many awesome herbs and berries, and birds! I didn’t think I’d get to be close to birds in Portland but, here they are.
Today I was out walking my dog and I heard a couple crows screeching so, naturally, I screeched back. The pair came with me the rest of my way home as we cawed back and forth. It was great to make loud wild noises, and it was so nice to connect with the crows! It has been a while for animal connections, and it tells me I am in the right place.

Now that we are situated in our house, more dreams to come.

Our dreams have different roles, and different ways to teach us. I find that my dreams often provide me the reassurance of protection, love and hope that I may not see, or allow myself to feel in the waking time. Somehow these messages are very easily received while asleep, and yet awake, my fears and insecurities, or ‘rational thought’, obscures them. Dreams such as these serve as a reminder of the benevolence and support that we are forgetting/ignoring. We may take a lesson to endeavor to cultivate deeper relationships with such forces of good in other waking dreams.

On the other hand dreams can sometimes be filled with horrible fantasies or, even worse, metaphors of the unpleasant side of waking time. I tend to look at these dreams one of two ways (well…three). Either they are a wake up call saying, “Hey, are you the dreamer or the dreamed? Time to be lucid and make some changes.” Alternately, bad things may happen in the dreamtime so that you don’t have to experience them in waking. “Well…three”, being that sometimes we have wretched dreams because we are out of balance physically, for example: extremely violent dreams often occur when people are overheated.  I find it best to consider the dreams from various perspectives. Such as, if this dream is a metaphor for my life, or warning, I might do such and such. Or taken on more literal level it might mean… For example: I dream that I need to eat a kidney soaked in dandelion. Well, on one hand it might be suggesting that I need to do some work on my kidneys (water processing system/grief organ) which may involve taking dandelion which is both a strong diuretic and great for deep inflammation/anger, not to mention investigating the role of that organ and plant in my life, and what it would mean for me to eat meat. Or, on an even more literal level: perhaps it would be good if I eat some kidneys saturated in dandelion–getting both the meat and the dandelion (I am a vegetarian, and at the time I had this dream I had had others about eating meat).  Dreams act on many different levels, and I find it very helpful to write your dreams down, you may get a great first impression of a dream, only to look back with a year’s perspective to say, “Oh my goodness–that dream was about that thing I was thinking about, but…it was also so obviously about the loss of my relationship with X”.

Just as we have beautiful moments and nightmares in dreamtime, we experience similar highs and lows in the waking time. We can learn a lot by looking at our waking dreams with similar analysis. When faced with a frustrating situation we might ask ourselves, how am I contributing to this ‘nightmare’. Is my pride preventing me from turning this disagreement into a truce? Am I not willing to let go of something bad, and just walk away? How am I limiting this area of my life?  We can take hold of the reigns in a scary situation by manifesting changes through our intent. Rather than allowing our patterned reactions to govern us, we can instead envision our preferred outcome and how it would feel to experience this.  This act can change our feelings about what we think is possible, it can affect the situation physically, and/or it can improve our emotional take on the situation.  By using our intent and imagination, we can ‘dream up’ a preferred waking reality. Because the waking dream is more of a “group project” it may not entirely change the situation, but you may still be surprised by how much your intent affects your environment.

When enriching/spiritual moments occur, it is good to take note: how did my actions contribute to this happening and how can I encourage more moments like these to occur? Regardless of whether the dreams seem positive or negative they are filled with information, in a language written for the dreamer, that can help us to live a better life.  I have learned so many things from the guidance of my dreams: To ask questions of my environment, to interact more freely with animals, crystals, and herbs. To interact with things that scare me too. That it is possible to deeply connect with time and space. That these interactions grow oneness. We can use our intent to encourage these positive experiences as well. This is a way that we can practice lucidity in the waking time.

A bit piecemeal, but here goes:

Dream (12/30/09):  I’m sitting in some sparse, wintery woods with a couple other people. We’re hiding. Some people are coming through the woods to get us. I am sewing poetry along the collar of a dress I designed (rusty red thread on a cream collar). It’s the start of a poem I’ve been working on. “Like as…” it begins.  I sense the people are getting closer. One of my comrades and I run away through the woods. We get round to the other side and I jump off the path into the thick just before they shoot him with a rifle. The enemies back off, and I step onto the path to see him. He’s dead, but a wolf with a hunchback comes to me from his body. I say, “Oh, good, you can help lead me to safety.”  The wolf seems uncertain of this. He’s thinking about going back to the place where I was sewing. I don’t think that’s safe. We run back on the path that led us to the shooting.  The poem keeps running though my mind. I keep thinking of it and working on it. Going all the way back doesn’t feel safe. At one point on the edge of the the woods  the path meets up with the back of someone’s dirty gold ranch house with chain link fence and dog. I think we can get through without the dog hearing us and attacking. I look at the wolf and scoot through the fence and make it through the driveway into the town. The town is old. All the architecture is 1800’s. I touch the curvy molding on a shop, it’s freshly painted–red and white. We run through the streets. My running is fast, but on some level I know I am dreaming and could just be gliding through the air. I run and run and run until I cross the train tracks and get to a motel. I go inside my room, still afraid that someone is after me. I crash on the polyester covered bed.  I wake after hours and am surprised to see the door ajar (not very safe of me). I go and close it and turn around to see that David has slipped through the door and is sitting in a chair in the middle of the room. He’s a bit hunched over. He reminds me of the wolf in his expression.

Wake: Here I am hiding in the woods from all the people I think are after me, crafting clothing and writing poetry. In the place I love doing all the things I love, only problem is that there are too many people and not enough woods. The poem reminds me of Shakespeare’s sonnet 118–starts off, “Like as, to make our appetites more keen…”–confession and getting sick off of preventative medicine (cathartic purging that seems downright sick). The wolf comes when my friend dies.  I think of him as a guide, but he doesn’t really guide me; we do go together. The gold house is very like a house in my childhood neighborhood. The kind of house that has been neglected for 20 years, and has a sketchy/dangerous vibe, bull dogs, etc. I associate the era of the old town with simpler times, which is appealing, although in the dream there wasn’t much feeling about it, just relief at so many fewer things to interface with maybe–no cars, computers, no people on the streets, etc. A motel is the logical place to hide. David…well, I just found out that my friend’s husband, David, joined the circus when he was younger. This changed the way I think about him. The circus reminds me of wolf people (loners in a pack). The expression of the wolf and David don’t really remind me of David. The woods remind me of the woods in Iowa that we used to live by. David and Dee are in Iowa. It’s almost like seeing this side of David makes me think twice about going back to Iowa. I am running from people and memories from Iowa in the waking time, though I yearn to be back in Hickory Hill Park. Dee sent me a Hickory Hill Calendar along with this exciting info about David. I look forward to hear the circus story some day.

Dream (1/1/10): I’m in a dark hall, with a bunch of people, we’re in line to see my Guru–Shri Dhyanyogi. When I am in front of the Guru, he tells me to draw an Om on my third eye. I am surprised that I remember how to do it–it’s in reddish orange ink. I go into a very deep meditation. I can hardly will myself to move. Guruji talks to the crowd, while I am sitting in front of him in my state. I am aware enough that I am blocking traffic, even though I really shouldn’t worry, just meditate. I eventually move to the side, which breaks my meditation. I think of poetry. I hear, “just write the Truth“. I also wonder about my meditations being not so great, and I hear, “soon”.

Wake: Poetry again, I think of my the falcon poem that I wrote for my Guru, but also of my Fly Awake installation that was meant to be poem-like in its construction. A poem you could walk into and feel, between the text and imagery I created. The dream seems like a reminder to organize my art in this way, while working aligned to the highest Truth. Also gives reassurance that my meditations, which haven’t been the best, will become infused with light again. A Day or so before these dreams, I smoked some Calea and asked for help with my art. With Calea I am not surprised to find dreams coming up long after the physical interaction.

Wake: Wow! Maybe I’ll smudge my apartment just to be on the safe side.  This dream was pretty awesome. I use sage and other smudges from time to time. I’ve read they remove negative ions from the air–with proper cross ventilation :). Rather than simply removing the negative spirit, it allowed me to see the problem and eventually release it. Sage is used medicinally for people in their later years–post menopause/post andropause (the spirit was old and gray). Reminding the spirit of God, by mentioning oneness, however inadvertantly, finally sent the spirit back to the soul.

I often wonder about the closeness of city living and apartment living. I wonder about all the people and spirits that have been their and are there, and how it affects us to be close.

I have a beautiful sage plant on my front porch of our apartment building that seems unhappy out there–perhaps it’s the abundant moisture and chillyness of Portland in the fall, or maybe some nasty spirits. I think it is time to bring it inside.

I have published Dreamtime Pamphlet vol. 3: A Pocket Guide to Inner Time and Space. It is available in my etsy shop. The booklet gives varied ideas and exercises for getting more in touch with time and space on a personal and bodily level. I hope you like it.

I also just added some blank dream journals that I have been working on.  I bound the books, printed the titling with letterpress, and collaged the covers with dream imagery.

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.

It has been a long time since my last post–time has slipped away from me, I guess. The time in between has been filled with some intense changes. Here is a story about lots of herbs, especially Agrimony, pregnancy and dolphins.

A year or so ago I read about agrimony in Matthew Wood’s Book of Herbal Wisdom I thought it might be a good remedy for me. Among other things it’s a good remedy for people who feeling trapped in a situation, or people feel tortured (physically or otherwise), but hide behind a cheery face. It is particularly helpful in work situations that meet the above description.  Agrimony tends to cause changes, for example, losing your job if it’s not the right one for you. Because I felt so trapped in a job that didn’t feel right for me, I was afraid to take agrimony! I needed my job and was afraid of changes that agrimony might bring.

3/30 Dream

There are two blue plastic dolls that are meant to be together. I rub them together like sex. From the female doll’s plastic slit, I pull a lotto scratch ticket.  I am disappointed that I am not pulling a baby out, but I am intrigued by this ticket. The ticket has dolphin stickers on it and, depending on the way that you scratch the ticket, determines your new job. The dolphins make me wonder if the job is in Orlando.

4/22 Wake

I discover that I am pregnant. This is totally awesome, because I have we’ve been trying to get pregnant for so long. At the same time I am deathly afraid/tortured by the thought that it might not work out. My husband and I had been trying to get pregnant for 4-5 years. I start craving raspberries and red raspberry leaf tea like crazy, but I’m tired and I can’t seem to get my hands on either. I’d been taking sumac, cooked rehmannia root and lady’s mantle, all of which really seemed to be improving my health.

4/29 Wake

I see an interesting posting on Craigslist for a job at a clinic that promote a healthy plant based diet lifestyle. Very intrigue, I apply.

4/30 Wake

At only 6 weeks I get tests back from the doctor showing that the pregnancy is not progressing well and I might miscarry.

5/1 Wake

I come to my herb class with Matthew Wood and ask him for his help. One of the herbs he recommends is agrimony. This seems so appropriate and ironic, seeing how I had shied away from this herb for so long. I feeling tortured by the way Western medicine often gives you knowledge of what is wrong with you, but no way to help the problem. Oy vey! While agrimony might have seemed to Wood to be a solution to the an acute problem, I knew that it would be quite transformative. With the pregnancy, and at work, I had been hiding what I was going through, my fears and discomfort were hidden behind cheery smiles.

I went home that night and immediately started bleeding, but instead of normal blood, it is a small amount of blood with lots of clear secretions.

5/1 Dream

Everyone thinks I bled on the pillow, but it came from the soaked cooked rehmannia root I’m holding onto. I try to tell them. But they don’t seem to understand.

5/2 Wake

Cooked rehmannia was something that I had been taking for my anemia. It helps anemia by increasing progesterone. When you prepare the root as a tea, you pull the root out of the water and it drips like old reddish brown blood.  I talked to Matthew Wood about the dream and he thought that perhaps my progesterone was too high and that was in part responsible for the pending miscarriage.

I am not bleeding enough yet that I am totally hopeless, so I look into ways to prevent miscarriage. Turns out that, just like my body wanted, red raspberry leaf is an excellent miscarriage preventative, (as well as a great general women’s tonic), and is also good for excess clear secretions (more often related to running fluids in colds, but in my case it applied to my bleeding). Lady’s Mantle has also stopped early miscarriages. I actually had some Lady’s Mantle, so I did as the success story I had heard told. I prepared a very strong tea and placed the wet leaves on my foreams. I meditated on the plant and my situation.

5/2 Meditation (Lady’s Mantle)

The dose of Lady’s Mantle is so strong, I immediately hear a list of female situations that alchemilla helps with. I ask about my pregnancy though, and response is not hopeful. I feel very soothed and comforted, as lady’s mantle is so good at doing for women. In the end I get the same response to my pregnancy question a couple times: Take St. John’s Wort.

While this was not good news it was practical. In the end I miscarried, but with the help of St. John’s Wort and the comfort of Lady’s Mantle I felt it went as best as it possibly could. I rode the emotional roller coaster that would be expected, but I was able to recognize that a lot of the suffering was chemical.

Back to agrimony and my dream at the beginning, there is a silver lining to this story.

5/10 Dream–Mother’s Day and my late grandmother’s birthday (she was my most comforting relation)

Mistletoe. I’ve been wanting to learn more about it, a guest lecturer comes to talk on the subject. She’s staying with Scott, or she know’s him best. She’ll give an exclusive lecture. She might have some to sell too. She will not tell how to gather the plant. She wants to the knowledge kept secret. The event is expensive and may be sold out. I see the baskets of necrotic looking mistletoe berries that she’s gathered, but I don’t want them–I want to gather my own. This all takes place in a bookstore like Barnes and Noble.

She leaves Scott’s house on the edge of town. I can tell because he’s setting her six rolled-up acrylic carpets carpets out in the middle of the road, near where she’ll wait for her ride. The are set in a row, at a slight angle to the yellow lines. At first I think they will leave together. But Scott’s not going. I ask him for information about the Mistletoe. Scott and I have gone inside and are on the couch now. He starts to tell me a little but he’s holding back.

I wake up and try to tell the dream and what I’ve learned about Mistletoe to everyone I see. I also repeat it to myself, trying to remember.

Wake

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of mistletoe is that it is an abortifacient.  Even though I just finished miscarrying, I thought perhaps there are some lingering products of conception. I don’t really feel this to be the case. Still I feel there is a message I need to receive from mistletoe. It takes a couple days but I manage to track some down. When I took it, I immediately felt soothed and comforted. I felt like I could release. I read about mistletoe and discover, that in addition to it’s rep as an abortifacient, (maybe the nastier side of the plant), it is also used for loss of a loved one (human or pet), emotional pain, nervous tension, and accepting defeat. This is such a sweet side of the plant, I really felt healed after this experience.

Meanwhile, I had a couple interviews with this awesome veggie health clinic job. The whole thing seemed almost surreal, everything was going really well and just seemed like it had to work out. I recognized this feeling from other areas of my life, but not jobs interviews which have never been something I excelled at. I had been feeling the influence of Agrimony strongly over the last couple weeks. It had become difficult and undesirable for me to hide my feelings. In some situations this was unwelcome, like situation where I normally poured all my energy into protecting and supporting others. But, in the case of this job it was very helpful to have a side of myself that I normally keep separate from my work self come through–my creative/dreamy side. One big unknown, was pay. It hadn’t been discussed. Finally, the night before my third interview I had the following dream.

5/26 Dream

I see a series of big block numbers on large cards, the numbers go up like a calender would go down, in rows, climbing to about 30. Some numbers have pics, or someone holding them. But my eyes are moved quickly upwards as I hear, “Pay attention the last question”. My eyes stop right before the numbers run out. Here we have a monkey in a shriner hat holding a big card with a bold “28″ and dolphin on it.

5/26 Wake

I had been trying to figure out this pay thing, what was too much, too little, etc. But basically my mind had been too busy with this and everything else going on in my life to receive an answer to my query. Finally something clear enough I could understand. I also immediately remembered the dolphin in my dream from March, and was very excited about that.

I go to the interview, armed with my best weapon against any possibility that things could go awry: vegan cupcakes. They discuss many things with me, making sure I really know what the job is about. Finally she says, “I just have one last question…” (and it sounds so dreamlike) …and the question is pay. Well it’s kind of an uncomfortable topic, but I am prepared with the answer, so after some brief hesitation, I get it out: 28?

My interviewers breath a collective sigh of relief as they look at each other. “Good because that is what we wanted to offer you.” I love it when everyone’s happy.

Tee hee. How nice to be part of a dream that ends well. While I didn’t get my baby wish yet, I did get my silver lining new job/dolphin/lotto ticket.

In the waking time I have been seeing a lot of hawks…it is nice and brisk out lately, just the way they like it. Hawks are the messengers and when you see them it is time to pay attention to messages, notice little details.

Last night in dreamtime:

I am traveling through New Mexico and I see a mountain lion crossing my path, maybe 30 feet away.  Later I am driving through Iowa and another mountain lion crosses my path even closer. He has scars and scuffs on his coat. I am very aware of his power, and for a second I worry that it will come after me in my car. I dismiss that fear, and proceed to be oh, so happy that I have seen, not one, but two! mountain lions. I go around telling people about my experience.

I talk to my mother and I say that I may come back to Iowa City for three weeks, (a surprise to me most of all). I wonder if I will have enough vacation time.

Wake:

I love mountain lions. I remember when I first became interested in them and I wished to see them so badly. The next year there were sitings in Iowa City and the surrounding areas. So close! Mountain lions are noble leaders, and solo hunters.

In my dream somehow I seemed to think that I was seeing them only because I was in Iowa. Maybe that’s why I decided to go back. Really there is so much wildlife here in Oregon, it’s just a matter of getting out of the city. In addition to the awesomeness of the lions, I liked this dream for all the roaming around I did in open spaces. It was also notable because the lions looked so very lifelike.