In the thickets of my sleep, this dream dropped in as part of a multi-layered session for a client. As much as its unfolding carried a teaching for her, it also carries one so pertinent for this time of great change that we are experiencing.
The Dream
A desolate land burned to the crust spans out before my eyes. Charred spines of trees reach upward grieving the loss of their previous, verdant form. Desperately seeking the remembered sensation of wind rippling through an abundant display of leaves, their naked, straggly limbs reach out hungrily as they stand rooted in the ashes of shame.
The Earth, but a darkened display of charcoal smudged across a bare canvas, is littered with the skeletal remains of wildlings. As far as I can see, there exists nothing but a moody, grieving land of despair and smog.
The essence that is you, arrives in the dream in the form of a four legged. You have the body of a horse but with a human torso and head. Your eyes are downcast as you meander sullenly along the blackened Earth. Upon your form, you wear the effects of the scalding fire that ravaged the landscape, your skin stripped bare of its fine-haired outer layer by the intense heat. You are left almost translucent.
As the image widens and the visual of the sky above is seen, it shows a complete contrast to what lies below. The heaven above is alive with a multitude of shades and colour. A canvas coated with a splendid chorus of gold, oranges and pink. Exploding across the shelter of the sky are planets, stars and constellations twirling abundantly in the many shades of dawn.
Its beauty steals my breath until I notice the stark contrast as it meets the wounded seam of the Earth at the horizon.
With this, the rhythm of the moment collapses under the weight of the definite absence of beauty in its earthly reflection.
As above…not so below.
Before I resign myself to accepting this fate of imbalance and imperfection, the image of the four legged you, calls for my attention. Because of your skinless form, I can see something stirring inside of you as you stand motionless in the blackened landscape.
A fluttering of movement and the pulsing vibration of colour beckons my eyes to look deeper.
Beyond the death and the decay of the earthly landscape, and even beyond your four legged centaur silhouette, a whole world is in existence within your being.
It is ripe, abundant and thrums with colour as in the heavens above.
It speaks of creation and promise and life.
All cocooned in the ravaged form of your body, positioned in a decaying environment, exists a fertile, blossoming Earth. The magnitude of its beauty is parallel to that of the heaven above. A true reflection.
And as I zoom out and once again view the entire picture with eagle eyes, I see that above is indeed… as below.
To find the balance, the true reflection … I had to look within.
I wake with a bladder demanding relief and a sobering reminder that it is when events of this life strip away all of what it is we have defined ourselves by that we may lose our form, become vulnerable, fragile more translucent.
Naturally it evokes fear, uncertainty, vulnerability, confusion, pain.. yes… but it also gives us an opportunity to expand, to see, truly see the interconnectedness of the above, below, within and without our being… to glimpse a formless dimension.
But first, reach out for support to learn how to effectively channel and navigate these emotions through with movement, breath work and trauma release exercises. These are essential to help in creating that sacred opening. Even if its a sliver of a crack to recognising a transcendent dimension in oneself, it is transformative.
Once you learn to know yourself non-conceptually, you can look at another non-conceptually, you can look at nature non-conceptually.
This is true Empathy. This is Oneness. This is Peace.
As above..
so below.
As within..
so without.
