Saturday, February 18, 2017

Imagery

I find imagery to be more powerful than other forces at times. It comes to me when words won't do, and here I am trying to use words to explain the imagery. Silly me. Maybe imagery shouldn't be dissected and explained and analyzed. Maybe it should simply be felt.

Still, words are my currency, so that's what I do.

There's been a lot of imagery in my dream life lately. And I had wanted to write about the imagery of the cairn, which has become a symbol of my entire life. I don't know where to focus. So I'll start with the cairn.

For those who need a refresher, the night I learned of my dad's death, I was at a writing retreat and we did a guided meditation to build a cairn. It was full of emotion and power for me, and I used that in my talk at my dad's memorial.

The base of the cairn in my meditation was a large granite rock, rounded and eroded from eons of time. Granite symbolizes strength, abundance, and balance. A great foundation for the entire tower, for the entirety of life, for almost everything. There is strength is something as simple as breath and as motionless as a rock. There is strength in the roaring of water and the creation of a star. Abundance to many means material abundance, lots of stuff and money. I am fortunate to have material abundance--at least enough for me and many others. I find abundance to be far more than mere stuff, though. It can mean knowledge, memories, gratitude, love. I think of abundance as a positive word. Balance is the third essence of granite. Balance feels safe. Centered. In tune with the world. At rest, at peace. When I think of strength, abundance, and balance, it reminds me of mountain pose in yoga, which is also foundational.


Now I'll mention the imagery of my recent dreams. One dream indicated a person on a gurney being rolled into an operating theater. The next one was just the image of a drill, such as one you might use to drill a hole in a wall. This one had a huge drill bit. And the third dream was kind of scary. It was a dream of myself dying, knowing it was coming, trying to hold on to life, and then the moment of death itself, everything simply stopped and turned dark. But consciousness was still there. In the dream, I thought, "so this is the afterlife? okay."

Dream imagery is something I love to delve into. You all know it's metaphor, right? I'm not actually dying (well, in a way, we all are dying, but I digress). These three dreams all deal with themes of leaving behind the past in some fashion, ready to start a new phase, drilling down deep, removing old patterns and ways. It's actually really positive stuff, even though the imagery in the dreams is sort of scary. But is it positive? Change is big, it's scary, it's not always something we hope for. Change can be marriage, birth, new jobs, new friends, new work. It can also mean endings, death, things being ripped apart. Change is often uncomfortable, even painful. Even good change.

So this is where strength, abundance, and balance come in. Whatever change, death/rebirth, removal of past patterns or habits, and drilling down that is coming my way, I face it with the foundation of strength, abundance, and balance.

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