Diving Deeper

Found objects: natural art

Outside the cabin where I live chimes, windspinners and other hanging art catch the light and breeze of the day.  Inside, I like to create mobiles from found objects, like the two pictured here.  The feathers catch any air movement and turn them also.

Both mobiles have masks of death in them, the first a skull (as yet unidentified) and the second a turtle's shell. A metal coyote belt-buckle and hematite pendulum allude respectively to the calls of darkness and the wild blood in all of us.

Author of  Soulcraft Bill Plotkin says: 'The Underworld Journey awaits those who already hear mystery whispering in their day and night dreams, in unusual occurrences and encounters, in water or wind, and whose profound longing is to sense and navigate life by these deep currents'.  The mobiles remind me of those currents.

Tom Crockett's book The Artist Inside also talks of exploring the images of sleeping and waking dream states for creative expression (finding, arranging, altering and making).  These simple practices connect me with place and with deeper levels of meaning in my engagement with the land and its beings.

 Coyote's dreams: image copyright Sara Firman 2011

Image-making: shadow-play

 

A puppet that looks like a wind chime in a nearby closet

comes to rescue me.

This image was a spontaneous attempt to capture the shadows of the oak tree and bamboo chimes just outside my window today.  It made me think of a single phrase from a dream I had last summer that has become a kind of koan for me.  I subscribe to the idea that dreams may be continued in our daily lives, as well as the reverse.  I have sometimes created poems from dreams in order to see if more insight might arise but images have never occurred, until now.

Aside: A useful and insightful account of Listening to Dreams from Steve Beyer's blog Singing to the Plants.

... I dream I am reading a guidebook entitled Great Diving Down by the Continental Shelf. I ask: What is this earth object you call a shelf? I reply: A shelf is a place where you put things that are no longer useful; you shelve unimportant agenda items. I ask: Then what is a continental shelf? I reply: It is a place off the continental coast where the water suddenly becomes very deep. I ask: And what is this diving you earth people talk about? I reply: Diving means deep sea diving, which means adventure, risk, fear, beauty. And it means journeying inward, diving inside oneself.... [SB.  Read more]

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The bear's lair (a poem by Sulis)

The bear's lair by Sara Firman, August 2008

Recoiling from one embrace
wound and bound in thickness
clutching a forked stick I forge
a path to the Bear's lair.

Belly to belly the roar inside
wells and quells my sickness
claws at my throat like a face
twisted with more pain than mine.

Divining for water's vortex
the land beneath the land
in a labyrinth of mystery
no treachery can reach.

A willow bends over me
and roots itself in a forest
the rocks hiss and glow
singing out sadness.

Earth, blend this hot darkness
of danger and dreams
soak up the blood of fear
grow an herb of healing.

Let snake guard the pulse
rising and falling in me
until the ash of my scattered
life settles out.

This poem was written after a Walking Meditation experience on a Shamanic Workshop in August 2008.  I set off feeling anxious, with my 'journey stick' clutched to me like a spear of protection.  When I saw some gardens with a huge metal sculpture of a Grizzly in them, I made a beeline for that.

I put my stick at the Bear's feet and noticed that it seemed to be standing in water.  It had its head thrown back in a roar and its front paws outstretched with claws.  Climbing up in front of the bear, I found that I could put my hands on its shoulders and feel my belly aligned with its belly. 

My insides were churning and this position helped me to feel steadier, stronger, protected.  The Bear's message to me was that I needed to shout my pain, smell danger, use all my senses.  Since I had been through a period when I felt I had not protected or defended myself, this support was welcome.

Bear is still with me.  Earlier this year, I had a dream that seemed more like a waking vision.  A big dark and shadowy animal, appeared in the dawn light, sitting beside the twin tree I see  to the West from my desk at the dining table in the cabin.   I felt well-guarded.

I've included this poem as part of a my series on creating outdoor sacred spaces to show how walking meditation can lead us in surprising ways to our 'helpers'.  For me, Bear stands firmly in the West of my Wheel and my life.  She protects me from the darkness of memories I no longer need.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes beautifully on 'Marking territories: the boundaries of rage and forgiveness' using the story of the Crescent Moon Bear in Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype.  Highly recommended!

Other posts in this series:

• Creating sacred outdoor spaces in nature
• From labyrinth to medicine wheel
• A forest medicine wheel garden
• Is there a reason? (a poem by Sulis)
• The art of navigation and the medicine wheel
• The bear's lair (a poem by Sulis)
• A medicine wheel garden walk

Water dreams

Soul speaks through our unconscious and through our dreams.  Dreams of water may be particularly potent.

Last summer at an astrology conference I had the pleasure of meeting one of my partner Joe Landwehr's friends, author and professor of Counseling Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, Greg Bogart.  We attended a workshop he presented there on dreamwork and astrology which was refreshingly interactive and open-ended, as dreams themselves are.

This year Greg published a book called Dreamwork and Self-Healing: Unfolding the Symbols of the Unconscious (Greg Bogart, Karnac Books). I am currently enjoying the insights it adds to my own attempts to dive deeper into dream life.  I find it interesting that, until I began aquatic bodywork, dreams were rarely accessible to me.  Since then, my remembered dreams have brought strong messages.

Snakes (two poems by Sulis)

Growing up in tropical countries and now living in the Ozarks (southern Missouri), snakes have a certain presence in my life.  They also occur in my dreams.  The first poem below was inspired by one such dream along with a discussion with someone who feared snakes and the discovery of two snake skins in the same week (one in water, one on land) back in 2006.

The second is a healing poem written to express some anger and sadness I was feeling (2008).  Both, in fact, describe the repression and expression of emotions which in many of us (and certainly in me) are often stored in the abdominal area. 

When these feelings are held down over long periods of time, years perhaps, they can have physical and health consequences.  A recent series on the website describing my aquatic bodywork practice considers this from a personal and professional standpoint.

Here is some of the symbolism of snakes and serpents which can also be found in my personal references:

• umbilical cord, joining all humans to Mother Earth
• Earth mysteries of renewal, rebirth, regeneration
• immortality as depicted by circles and spirals
• guardians of underworld or messengers between the worlds
• guardians of temples and other sacred spaces
• associated with water especially the primordial ocean
• connected with deceitfulness and vengefulness
• poison and medicine - expanded consciousness, divine intoxication
• wisdom, healing and creation

Snakes

I dreamt
that snakes covered
my lower body
or were they
moving out?
I knew they would
not bite me
if I remained still
in perfect calmness

A brave woman
I know fears
snakes
but draws them
to her
These snakes
were inside me
She would have
been terrified

Awake I found
a snake’s skin
floating
in water
Rippling life
though translucent
flawless
I kept it
between glass

But I yearn
to translate
the strong clutch
of my insides
into seething chaos
into undulating pulse
To see diamonds
in my dreams

To be fearless

Hysteria

I know how
the black snake felt
when she fell
from the steamy rafters
of the homemade sauna
on to the slippery shoulders
of an oblivious man.

Her heavy looped length
like a witch's tresses
broke his certainty.

The cup of water hissed
and evaporated.

His heart flailed
while she flashed
dark lightening.

Interior her hysteria
like hot vapor
escaped into the crack
of a violent night.

Watership: birthday thoughts

 

 

Wild Rabbit's Dream

Out of the labyrinthine
underworld warrens
came a lone wild rabbit.
It was dawn and a glow
on the farthest horizon
touched half-open eyes.

A blur of dew clung
to the grass glistening.
As so many water bells
this night moisture sang
of Moon and the vortex
in which she had slept.

As wild rabbit became
accustomed to new light
she saw mirrored in each
droplet faces of memory.
Like tears they shone
with love's compassion.

Wild rabbit's thoughts
were moist as dreams.
But by now Sun rose
flushing gold on the hills
burning off ancient mists
of many past sadnesses.

She watched the sky turn
into an upside-down ocean.
Wind blew swirling clouds
moving sacred mandalas
across the open blue face
of a smiling girl child.

The child sang with joy
a good morning song that
ruffled wild rabbit's fur.
Her bright nose twitching
she tapped her back foot
and leapt out into the day.

(by Sara Firman, aka Sulis, 2007)

Fire in the East

though the yellow bird
  died the sun still rises
    in the east and the India
      of my dreams wreathed
        with marigolds is the body

of a moon goddess losing
  her blue-blind shoe to
    dogged innocence and old
      gods seeding their progeny
        in the red wars of proud lions

a sure resurrection of winged
  dreams flying over cold waters
    carrying rain clouds to dry soil
      planted with babies or beans   
        fire in the east is the true gift

(by Sara Firman aka Sulis, 2008)
 

My mother notes that I was due on July 4 and born on July 14, 1959 in London, spanning America's Independence Day and the French Revolution's Bastille Day.  A rebel perhaps but  a reticent one - apparently I resisted that birth and have resisted a few other strong but unavoidable calls. 

When I was looking for two poems that might reflect the watershed birthday I am celebrating today, the ones above stood out.  They were actually written in 2007 and 2008, respectively, but they were looking forward to the morning of something hopeful.

It's curious that they follow two posts about my father since he is linked with both of these too.  He read Watership Down to my siblings and me on a memorable holiday in New Zealand - I specifically remember staying in a hot springs motel at Rotorua for one reading.

Both poems were also inspired by my recent explorations of astrology as a path to self-understanding, under the tutelage of my new partner Joe Landwehr with whom I will spend this birthday and to whom I owe more than I can say.

Birthdays are Sun times: I have Sun in Cancer, Leo rising, and Moon in Scorpio*. 

Here is a personal astropoetic image for that watery rising sun: the sun's warmth lifting up billions of tiny water droplets to become soft humidity in the air which then moves further up to gather together as clouds in the atmosphere above.  Then rain.

Another image is of a sunrise over the ocean, as in the Brazilian film set in Rio de Janeiro 'Black Orpheus' when two little boys take solace and find renewed hope in their own ability to draw the sun up by playing the song dead Orpheus taught them.

In a sense, perhaps I too am drawing up my Sun by playing the song that my  losses have taught me, including the loss of my Leo-born father (Jupiter trine Sun in my natal chart).  I now need to break away from family psyche and honor that wonderful legacy at the same time.

To be in balance, my Sun requires me to move water energy (particularly emotional and creative energy) outward into some form of expression.  This is a natural part of who I am and something I have struggled with through both denial and shame.  No longer.

An intriguing dream reminded me that yoga is one form of self-expression that activates my Sun; there is a Sun-line going through India on my astrocartography map.   Just after my father died I went to India for several weeks to study with BKS Iyengar. The second poem hints at this yogic connection.

Writing has been another form of expression.  Following my Moon and its companion Neptune, it calls for a form of Wyrd (runic) Magic through which what I write solidifies and becomes the truth I must live.  To the extent that I am bound by the past, the ambivalence of these magical planets haunts me.

These two poems, tell of my Sun and Moon and the ever-present influence of Water.  They draw me up from the underworld of past pain where I have been for the last few years.  They call me to the frontier of the half-century of my life.  They ask me to sing another song of hope.  This is my birthday wish.

* for astrology folk Sun in 12th, Moon in 3rd.

See also this link on my aquatic bodywork website about yoga: The judicious use of natural forces

The age of dreaming has come

The karmic dust of angels is everywhere.
The secret side of things is open to us.
The time of innocence is gone.
The age of dreaming has come.
Ben Okri

Do you remember your dreams?  If you do, or if you don't, does it matter?  Is there a way in which your dreams might make a difference to those around you, and to the world you live in?  What does it mean to live a dream?  These are questions I am asking myself. 

Dream recall is a relatively recent experience for me, and coincided with my introduction to aquatic bodywork around the millennium.  Awake-dreaming in the water while receiving this buoyant form of movement therapy, seemed to give access to my night dreaming world as well.

Water, I found, could trigger an altered state of consciousness in which as a willing receiver I was flooded with images, perceptions, feelings, and sensations that made possible profound shifts in my being.  I recorded these and encouraged my clients to do the same.

Water and the Soul

In mythology, water has been associated with the unconscious.  Archetypal psychologist, Jung said that when the spirit becomes heavy it turns to water; that the way of the soul leads to water.  And one of my favorite poets of soul Mary Oliver concludes:

Nobody knows what the soul is;
it comes and goes like wind over water.

Some of us are more watery, more dreamy, more soulful perhaps than others, and many of the ancient healing methods considered the contribution of this archetypal element to an individual's make-up. My friend Jonathan DeVierville considers that 'Water is to the Body, as Dreams are to the Soul'.

Jung's theory, says Barbara Bowen, 'suggests that our psyches are born connected to a deeper collective "ocean" of awareness from which our personal dreams flow. Like tributaries, dreams deliver ancient motifs that play a mysterious role in humanity's evolution of consciousness. ...

'No matter how clarified, puzzling or outlandish their language may be, our dreams are trying to tell us something. They often require us to dwell for a time within ambiguities, to bathe in cool pools of uncertainty, before we profess to know what they have in mind.'

Jungian psychotherapist, Arnold Mindell, described the 'dreambody', the part of us that does not conform to collective materialistic definitions, but hovers somewhere between physical sensation and mythic visualization when we surrender to the water.  He wrote:

The dreambody is released in every deep, sentient body experience.  These experiences often dissolve the boundaries of time, expanding it to infinity, almost abolishing its existence.  Or they condense fate, drawing life times together in minutes. Dreambody: The Body's Role in Revealing the Self, 1998. p. 283.

Exploring dreams

I came to think of my warm water pool as a portal to the unconscious or the dreamtime where my dreambody revealed herself.   In the past year, personal circumstances kept me from my pool haven.  But interestingly, seven significant night dreams have offered me powerful water imagery.

Four water-associated dreams in the previous years, and since I encountered aquatic bodywork, have had aspects to them which make them seem very significant parts of my personal mythology and perhaps also of the role I am playing out in this lifetime with respect to others.

I've been exploring different ways to relate to these dreams and to weave them into the fabric and understanding of my everyday life. My partner Joe, whose own work, Astropoetics, inspires a creative interface between personal imagery and astrological cycles, is my fellow explorer.

As we progress with these studies, there will I hope be much more to share that is useful to others on this soul journey.  Meanwhile, on this weblog I will be writing about some of the personal insights gained so far.  The vulnerability inherent in this does call for some courage.

Dreams seem to me to be Neptunian creatures of the deep and easily mistaken.  They cannot be approached head on but they ought to be attended to respectfully, otherwise they turn from shy messengers into fearsome monsters. 

In the years since I began aquatic bodywork, I have faced a few monsters myself, and cannot say that this is an easy path.  This is what led me to consider the shamanic implications of this work when conducted in a manner that resembles journeying, diving below the surface of things (see below for a link to more on this).

To benefit from our night dreams, we must allow that they have valuable messages to convey to us; it also seems essential to adopt the ritual of setting the intention to remember them and to have the discipline consistently to record whatever we recall without judgment.  

In the same way, to dive deep into the self through aquatic bodywork, seems to require an open attitude and commitment to the process as it unfolds.  As far as I know, no-one has seriously explored (and recorded) the dream world made more accessible by water.