Dreams and the Dreamer

Dreams have been my teacher since I was very young.  My great grandmother, Sarah, taught me to listen to and respect my dreams, and after her death she often visited me in my dreams.  

Because dreams were important to her they were important to me and became an adventure I would engage in as I fell asleep as a child.  They took me on journeys, held information for me, and helped me to navigate my waking life.  As an adolescent I resolved issues through dreaming, although I did not really understand that then; I was too busy being a teenager.

The summer following my high school graduation I began having my first recurring dream.  I was leaving for the university that fall and was ambivalent about moving so far away from home.  In this dream I was at school, it was final week, but I had not been attending classes.  In fact I am not sure where the class is held.  My anxiety and ambivalence about moving away from home was manifesting in my dream time.  This dream has recurred throughout much of my life and is always an indicator that I am experiencing stress somewhere in my waking life.

Dreams help me be honest with myself as well as being an indicator of where I am emotionally in dealing with waking time dilemmas. 

My dreams often give me future information and encourage and guide me into and through choices I make.  In my mid-twenties I began what would be a series of three big dreams that were to help me make a transition into adulthood.  I have written down my dreams since my early twenties, so I have kept a journal of my nocturnal activities.  Of course I did not know that the first dream would be one of three; I only knew that it was significant.  I was also working in therapy with an excellent analyst who worked with dreams, and who encouraged me to remember this dream.

It was to be my first tower dream.  In this dream I come to a tower outside a city but I can find no way into this tower. This tower stands on the prairie.  I can not find a door or an opening and in my dream I walk round and round this tower trying to find an entry point.  I do not enter this tower but look up at it wondering what is inside.

My second tower dream occurs in my early forties.  In this dream I am not only allowed entrance to the tower but I live at the top and my offices are located in the middle of the tower.  Because I recorded and processed the first tower dream with my analyst I understood that this second dream was important.  It was 20 years later and seemed to be a continuation of the first dream. The first dream came in early adulthood when I was establishing myself in my adult life. The second dream arrived as I approached middle age when I had moved through the uncertainties of young adulthood and was more established in my world.   

The first dream seemed to symbolize that I as a young adult sought refuge from the hurry of daily life and saw this tower as such a place.  I was not mature enough to take refuge there, but my dream was showing me that such a place existed.  Of course what I realize now, but did not know then, is that this tower, this place of refuge, has to be created within my own psyche.  A task of maturation.  The second tower dream took place as I approached middle age and in this dream I live and work from this tower; an indication that as I matured I was learning to create refuge within me.

My third dream of a tower occurred shortly after my sixtyith birthday.  In this dream I occupy a room at the top of a tower with my partner.  This person is the personification of my inner masculine and we live in sync with each other, as we represent the whole and complete self.  The complete self that accepts the totality of being.  This dream, like my first tower dream, points toward and suggests the next stage of my journey in which I approach the integration of my feminine and masculine selves.  Understanding that these are not separate people but that by integrating these parts of me I will move beyond individual consciousness and into a sense of cosmic awareness that will allow barriers of separation to dissolve.... and integration takes place.

             
Throughout my life I have learned the value of dreams.  From Sarah - to working in my own therapy - to my working with others dreams.  As Edwin Arlington Robinson says, "I am not one who must have everything...but I must have my dreams if I must live, for they are mine."  Through my dreams comes wisdom and wisdom is like a dawn that comes slowly out of an unknown ocean.  Listening to and understanding my dreams allows me to tap into my wisdom.    

Tales of Wild Woman Archetype

Have you ever felt you could fly free defying all physical constraints?  If you could what would you do?  Being confined to a wheelchair I have reawakened and re-realized this ability in me.  Writing allows me to do this.  Blogging helps me work with ideas and thoughts in a manageable format that I can post and share.  Perhaps a book will grow out of this, but in the meantime I will continue to blog.

So today I will introduce the place where I often connect with my muse, and to one of the many archetypes that guide me.  It is the Garden Of Soul which lies just a little way down the road, to the left, and across a bridge that leads off the beaten path.  It is where my creative self resides.  Over that bridge lies my wild, instinctual, and creative being. It is in this landscape that I have met another of my archetypes, La Loba, the wolf woman, and through my writing and story telling she borrows my voice.

Gather close and I will share her story with you:


There is an old woman who lives in a hidden place that everyone knows but few have ever seen.  As in fairy tales of old this woman waits for lost or wandering seekers to come to her place.
 

She is circumspect, often hairy, always fat, and especially wishes to avoid most human company.  She is a crower and a cackler, and has more animal sounds than human ones.

Some say she lives among the granite slopes in the Tarahumara Indian Territory.  Others say she is buried outside of Phoenix near a well.  She has been seen traveling south to Old Mexico in a burnt-out-car with the back window shot out.  Others have seen her living under a bridge in a city much like the one you come from, and still others say she can be found walking the shores of the rivers and streams that wind their way through this prairie land.  She is called by many names in many places – she is La Huesera, the bone woman, La Trapera, the gathering woman; but today we will call her La Loba, the Wolf Woman.

La Loba’s soul work is the collecting of bones.  She is known to collect and preserve that which is in danger of being lost to this world.  Her cave is filled with the bones of all manner of creature; the deer, the rattlesnake, the crow, the owl – but her true specialty is said to be wolves.

She creeps and crawls and sifts through the hills, valleys, and the riverbeds looking for wolf bones.  When she has assembled an entire skeleton, when the last bone is in place and the beautiful white sculpture of the wolf is laid out before her, she sits by her fire and thinks and dreams about what song she will sing.

When she is sure of the song she stands over the skeleton, stretches her arms over it, and sings out.  As she sings the rib bones and the leg bones of the wolf begin to flesh out and to be covered with fur.  La Loba sings her song loud and clear and more of the wolf comes into being; its tail curls upward, shaggy and strong..

And La Loba sings more and the wolf creature begins to breath.

And still La Loba sings so deeply the earth shakes with the force of her song, and as she sings the wolf opens its eyes, rolls over, leaps up and runs away down the stream and riverbed of this land.

Somewhere in its running, whether by the speed of its running, or by splashing its way into a stream or river, or perhaps by a ray of sunlight or moonlight hitting it right in the side, the wolf is suddenly transformed into a laughing woman who runs free toward the horizon. 

Now it is said that if you wander La Loba’s land, and it is near sundown, or perhaps sun rise, and if you are a little bit lost, and most certainly very tired, that you are most lucky, for La Loba may take a liking to you and show you something – something of the soul.

 

La Loba began visiting my dreams many years ago.  It was a time in my life where I wanted guidance, and from the first remembered appearance of La Loba she began to offer that to me.  She tested and teased my ideas of reality, taught me not to take myself too seriously, and to let go of my expectations.  If I wanted to live with my creativity I had to let it grow.  I had to nurture my creative self like a child giving it room and letting imagination roam free.  So I began with tentative steps and La Loba pushed me to take more steps, bigger steps, and stronger steps.  In that time she was the crone who arranged my bones and laid them out in her cave next to the fire.  La Loba's voice rang out over me as she sang her song through me and my bones fleshed out and I emerged as my wild woman self running free toward the horizon.

La Loba searches for nearly extinct species, like wild woman, and she breaths, sings, and dreams us back to full productive lives.  At times she is a clear presence in my life; at other times she is a shadow trailing just beneath my conscious awareness.  She is always there, recognized or unrecognized, encouraging me into a life filled with adventure.  

Have you met La Loba?  If not I hope you will.  If you are fortunate enough to meet her know that  she will teach you something, something of the soul....  It is her gift to all of us beings in human form.

  

Wildcat Springs

Wildcat Springs is a real place from my youth.  It existed across the river of my hometown, a place within the keeping of my adolescent years.  It was a place that mother’s warned their daughters from – fearing their reputations would surely be ruined.  It was a place where the sons of passion’s ecstasy took the daughter’s of desire – a place of young love, youth’s passion; star filled skies and warm summer nights.

Passion’s Ecstasy

Sons of Passion’s Ecstasy

Dance with Daughters of Delight

Under a canopy of stars

On a warm summer night

They speak of dreams and dreamers

Of cabbages and kings

Their language is of poetry

Their landscape is Wildcat Springs

Oh, daughters have been warned

By mothers throughout time

Do not dance at Wildcat Springs

The place of sacred rhyme

This is the place of youthful lust

Where childhood innocence is lost

Passion and desire run free

Never knowing there is a cost

The loss of youthful trust

To the desires of passion and delight

And dancing free and unrestrained

Innocence does take flight

Mothers have warned their daughters

From the desires of Passion's sons

Of hot summer full-mooned nights

When the end of day has come

But daughters will not heed the words

From mothers' ancient time

For mothers have forgotten

Their own youthful prime

Sons of Passion's Ecstasy

And Daughters of Delight

Meet on youth’s fertile fields

On a starry full-mooned night

In time they too will learn

The caution that comes with age

But tonight they dance free

Unaware of this ancient sage

PSG

© 08/12/05

MEMORY

(of my first love)

Sometimes he appears for no reason . . .

Yet, at others I cannot glimpse him.

He flits across the shadows of my mind.

I wake up in the night and have missed him.

He is just around the corner. . .

The sound of his voice is almost within my hearing.

I feel his breath in the wind on my neck.

The sun that bathes my body feels like his warm caress.

He is there, but I am unable to hold onto him.

He slips through my fingers. . .

Glides through my mind like a skater. . .

And he is gone.

PSG

© 2004

written in the spring of 1967

LOVES FIELDS

Words of love whispered on a star filled night

Spoken aloud under the vast prairie sky

Passion of youth spent in dark moon touches

Across a sea of green corn stalks

Here we met as young love

In the heat of youth with desires deep

As the swollen river at flood time

With love rich and fertile

Like the soil of the river valley fields

That brings forth the tall stalks of yellow corn.

Our love a rampage of desire

Too strong to be held

Too fragile to last beyond the summer’s rain

Too young and yet too old

A lover’s paradox

We met on those fertile fields –

Fields of youth, fields of passion

Those dark moon filled nights

Across an ocean of prairie grass

And ripening corn

The summer’s rain has long ago passed

The words spoken aloud across the sea

Of corn stalks and tall grass

Now lie silent against the north wind

Fertile fields no more

I call your name aloud

Across a sea of time

I whisper it to a moonlit night

Young no more

My love can be contained

It will last far beyond the summer’s rain

PSG

© - 1995

These poems are dedicated to the passion and desire of those hot summer nights of youth – that lead to the autumnal warmth of adulthood. They are dedicated to all of the sons of passion’s ecstasy with whom I traveled to and through the wildcat springs of my youthful self.