Dream Prayer: Loving The Thief

Nov 5, 2016 | Musings From A Prayerful Heart

Picture

Heading into prayer space this weekend. So deeply grateful to have the chance to gather with kindreds around the flame and sit with what is churning in our hearts, and in the great heart of our world in these tender, troubling times.

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?

This is my current dream, my inquiry and my prayer, Beloved Friends.


Facebook Comments

More Blog Posts

On Grieving Fully What Broke

On Grieving Fully What Broke: Lately I’ve been feeling a deep tenderness about us humans in this world, grappling with our many losses; contemplating how we come to live in wholeness with the undeniably broken pieces of our lives? From a perspective of spiritual...

Speaking From Our Center; Claiming Our Medicine

After we got home this afternoon from the children’s all-morning orientation at their new school, I was fully ready to ground out, clean our home, and relax. But Ezra (5) had other ideas. He wanted to go to the skatepark and work on his new tricks. I told him clearly,...

Me: A “Spiritual Sham”? Yes, Perhaps…

Yesterday, someone was so triggered in my presence that they called me a “spiritual sham”, and angrily claimed that they were “not the only one” to think this.

I must say it is pretty unusual at this point on my path to attract such volatile insult…. And I must confess that at first it stung my ears and my heart, and I felt defenses rise, in being someone who cares deeply about integrity, and about truth, and about embodying love with authenticity, accessibility, ruthless honesty and realness, about the courage it takes to truly walk my talk in this world.

And then, later, as I examined […]

Giving Up vs. Giving In To Life~ An Invitation

I’ve been really loving lately finding the juicy aliveness inside this sacred distinction between giving up and giving in to life.

It feels to me like we get to a certain place in our growth as human souls, where we’ve been truly ripened and honed, seasoned, matured, wounded, humbled and deepened by life.

We’ve come to see that life is not what we thought it would be. Our […]

Telling Our “Medicine Story”

The older I get and longer I live, I notice that from my soul’s perspective the essence of my life’s learnings and lessons can be narrowed down to a sacred handful of potent life teaching moments, experiences and passages.

In the Peruvian Q’ero Shamanic tradition I was trained in, I learned to associate this soul perspective as an aspect of wisdom medicine from Hummingbird, Siwarkente, the joy bringer. Hummingbird teaches us how to engage fully with life and drink deeply of the nectar of life, learning how to receive the “nectar” even from those life experiences which caused us the greatest suffering.

I often love to invite my clients and students to share their life story with me from the perspective of their soul. How would you tell your life story from the perspective of life being a profound, exquisite and often ruthlessly true response to the very lessons and learnings you actually took birth to receive?

It can be an especially […]

“Letting Our Hair Down”: (aka: The Risk & Beauty of Bold Bigness)

I wore my cherry-red dress and shimmery gold pants to Ecstatic Dance last Sunday (dressing up for God again) and I was playfully inspired, as I have been more so lately, to bravely let down this wild mane of golden curls, and dance with my immense hair all over the place. The response was really interesting! People seemed to really like this wild-haired version.

I’ve been thinking about this idiom “Letting Your Hair Down,” since it’s been many years since I really let my long curly hair all the way down for more than a few minutes while it’s drying, or of course while sleeping. Mothering young children with small grasping fingers, needing to focus on many life tasks at once,  has naturally inspired the impulse to pull my thick curls up, back, off my face, and away.

It’s a slightly uncomfortable edge of extra “bigness” for me to allow this wild mane to just be as it is, nakedly uncaptured by a rubber band. Already 6 feet tall and statuesque, with a very large soul presence; […]

Everything Follows the True Breath of “Yes.”

Everything follows the true breath of “Yes.”

There is nothing to do and nothing to be done. Only to tell the truth, generously, fearlessly, and let every moment be given. If the focus switches from “What am I getting from this life?” to “How does life want to use me in this moment?”, therein lies the hidden fruit of wholehearted surrender.

Whatever stories have surfaced within my own consciousness about why it’s still not time to fully surrender in this “Yes”, why it’s best to postpone, until I’m more healed, more perfect, more financially resourced, more articulate, more ready to receive the consequences of this “Yes”, more comfortable with exposure, these stories are a dharma bell for falling to […]

Mundane Mother/Daughter Rites of Passage

The other day Arayla (9) and I went through a mundane yet potent, mother/daughter rite of passage. We were getting ready to attend a concert, and we were all feeling inclined to wear white. I was deciding between two of my favorite white dresses, Ezra had his white button shirt, and Arayla had a beautiful lacy white dress she loves as well.

But, as tends to happen these days, there was suddenly something entirely wrong with the dress she had planned to wear. The slip that goes underneath it was missing. She was distraught: “I am NOT wearing this without a slip Mom. I’m just not.” I tried to console her: “Oh Love, I think it looks lovely without the slip, so airy and sweet?” She said firmly, frowning: “I’m not comfortable […]

No Second Thoughts ~ A Call to Fearless Generosity

The last time I was with my spiritual mother, Gangaji, physically, in person, last October, she asked me to come up on stage and share one of my poems with the many people gathered. I happily and somewhat shyly shared the poem “Sorrow’s Home.” 

Later in the meeting, circumstances unfolded such that she gave the stage to some beautiful musicians who were offering a song, and in exchange she took one of their seats, directly behind where I was sitting. After 17 years of a uniquely intimate relationship with her, I felt blessedly comfortable to lean back and blissfully lay my head in her lap. When I did, she stroked my hair tenderly […]

Resourceful (Hilarious) Sibling Consolation in the Face of Upset

Yesterday the kids had their first day of a 1-week Art Camp at Summerfield Waldorf school. Their Papa dropped them off, and somewhat typically, our beloved boy Ezra (5), in all his deep-feeling sensitivity, had a tearfully difficult time with the transition to a new, unfamiliar environment, unfamiliar teacher, rhythm, group of kids, etc. After about 30 minutes of helping him make the challenging transition, Chris had to leave for work, somewhat heart-wrenchingly, since Ezra was still clearly upset and uncomfortable. Thankfully, not longer after he left, Chris got a call from the teacher, assuring him Ezra was now peacefully integrated […]