I had a potent dream a couple of nights ago that I am still working with deeply. The dream was about my car (a common symbol for me) getting stolen by an irreverent, narcissistic, nonchalant and arrogant drug-lord thief! I tried everything to get the thief to give me back my car. I got hysterical, wailing and pounding my fists on his chest. I tried getting scary, threatening him. I tried appealing to his empathy, pleading with him that I needed the car, as a single mother of 2, more than he did. He didn’t flinch. I tried insulting him, meanly, and castrating him with my words. Nothing impacted him.

Finally, at the end of the dream, suddenly and surprisingly overcome by compassion for this drug lord thief, I wrapped my arms around him from behind, one hand on his chest, the other scooping around him on his belly. I just held him, breathing, and loving him. He asked me, accusingly, what was I doing? I told him: “This is what I do. I help people rediscover the love within, that they have been looking for in all the wrong places. I help them remember that they ARE the love they seek; that nothing else is needed.” This big irreverent macho thief started to cry then, in my arms, and pulled my arms close, tighter around him. After a little while, he said: “You can have your car back now.” And I woke from the dream crying deeply myself in my bed.

I’m working with this dream very personally, but also as a powerful dream for these times. What is it that I have been demonizing, internally and externally, within myself, and out there in our world? What do we most judge and hate and want to destroy in this life? What do we polarize against~ whether it’s the politicians in their embarrassing puppetry, or the cops seemingly standing on the wrong side of every issue? The big bad oil companies, Monsanto, Fukushima, Isis, and all the rest. The dark, cruel, life-killing one. The irreverent, narcissistic, arrogant thief~ who steals that which we cherish, who ruins that which we hold dear? And what about that which we judge and hate and wish vehemently to destroy within ourselves? Whatever that is~ the fat, the poor, the addicted, the liar, the cheater, the cruel one, the bad mother, the distant father, the failure, the one who is terrified of life? All that we justify as being hate-able and judge-able~ inside and outside.

Do we dare embrace it from behind, sneak up on it with our healing love, and courageously remind it of the truth?