Chords, Cords, and the Healer's Journal
(This was originally posted here)
There is a reason I keep a dream journal like this, and it needs more explaining than has been shared so far. The deepest inspiration for keeping a dream journal like this came from another dream, from last May. So transfering it here from the journal...
"I had been given some sort of grant to go back to “the old country”, as in VERY old, ancient, and do some research. Something about my Italian great grandmother, who (in real life too) was said to have been a true healer, was woven in there, though it may have been more than this too. And I was doing some sort of archeology dig and came across two ancient images. One I can’t remember, it’s on the tip of my brain but blocked. I think there were 2 figures in this image but it’s blocked at the moment. But this other image I remember. It was of a woman who was the color blue, and on my dig I had realized her “blue-ness” was important...tears, blue, water, something. And then I came across this ancient manuscript of an ancient healer’s somehow preserved and it was about all this seemingly mundane stuff because she wrote in it nearly every day, not just special times but all the time, about this little everyday stuff of healing. And I remember thinking well, this “blueness”, and this “mundaneness” it’s the “heart of the healer”. And then I realized that was the title of the book I would use for my book being written as part of this grant in the dream. And then I woke up.
(And then written a few days later)...reflecting on her journal, on that ancient manuscript I found in the dream, and on what I feel from her when I try and tap in, I feel this: That her healing journal, that ancient manuscript in the dream, it is a way to show that the sacred is here with us in the mundane. That God is speaking when we find that meaningful stone etc, or have that dream or also that little waking dream, or whatever gift or coincidence. That if these little daily miracles and processes can be written down they will be remembered, a personal proof when one has doubt, letting one know that God actually IS here with us, that he hasn’t abandoned us. And that that is at the deepest deepest heart of healing—knowing we aren’t alone, and knowing we are loved. And so how can anyone be a healer unless they really know this, know this personally from their own life? How can they give another love and hope if they have not been able to find this in their own life? How can they help someone open up to God’s healing , the source of all healing, if they have not been able to see that God has been there in their own life? You can’t help someone open up to something you yourself have no hope exists.
So this witnessing of God in the mundane day to day business of living and thinking and feeling, this truly embracing one’s tears as part of this too, and this blueness of being able to crystallize those tears too (water becomes snow) it into words or images, this “giving feelings form”, or maybe even somehow finding that primordial heartbeat preserved in the snow (that ice age image again), well all of that is part of this healer’s heart. And it is a sacred space that this comes from, not the hectic one the world expects. I don’t see this healer running around all over the place getting burnt out or vampired, I see her nourished and in nature a lot and well loved and having a safe and peaceful and sacred sort of life. But I don’t see an ivory tower there. She reaches out. She has compassion. She does not turn aside when she encounters another’s pain, she tries to be a part of the healing there if she can. And she does this with herself as well, she doesn’t pretend there are not places where she is broken. She knows there is brokenness. But she uses her brokenness as an opening rather than a block, a way to deepen into her own healing and her ability to heal others. She can have compassion for another’s brokenness and not run from it or judge it because she has not run from or judged her own."
This was one of those turning point sort of dreams for me. Because what the healer in that dream did by keeping her mundane little healer's journal, her gathering up the meaningful "coincidences", those "coincidences" in her mundane life that showed God IS here with us, is what I do too. I gather up dreams dreamed at night, and stones on the ground that speak something, and words folks share or things they do at just the right moments, and things that happen in day to day life that you know in your gut were not coincidence but showing there is meaning, a thin golden thread we are given to follow in our lives by these "coincidences" that arent coincidences at all, these signs that say God IS here...well I gather all these little things as they happen in life like they are the most precious treasures in the world. Because to me they are. And so after this dream I stopped feeling like this little gathering obsession I had here was meaningless and embraced it instead. One aspect of this is this little dream journal, which is just a baby, but its simply my little way right now of gathering up dreams as a way to say...hey, God was here, we arent alone, He speaks to us. ""For He gives to His beloved even in her sleep."
But its more than this too, He also gives when we are awake, and one way is through the "coincidences" in our day to day lives. One way is that things can happen as signs, signs preparing for a future when we will have doubt and look back and see those signs to remove doubt. And this just happened to me recently, connected to this whole blogworld experience, when in one of the blogs that I tend to follow I suddenly had a little clash when I ran into detachment philosophy there, as detachment stuff really gets to me. I respect the blogger so it wasnt personal, its just that there is something about detachment that seems to mock everything I hold dear and believe in. It just really bothers me, the whole "pull up your boot straps and "create your own reality" and "fix things" philosophy; the if someone is in pain or struggling its because "they manifested it" idea --so you have no need to help them of course (kind of the inner aspect of Darwin's "survival of the fittest" nonsense); and the view that if something feels wrong to you well simply "disengage", that other people arent your problem anyway; that what people have needing to heal in their interactions with you, and definitely anything they need from you, well that isnt real its "just a game", maya, illusion, "unevolvedness" (the "maturity involves detachment not need" nonsense"). It all "gets my girdle up" if you will, like nothing else, because it feels to me the very opposite of "love your neighbor as yourself" and "bear one another's burdens" and "He is the Vine we are the branches". Even the detachment philosophys' image of compassion feels loaded with judgement ("I will have compassion for you because in my detachment I am more evolved than you" sort of feeling, even though we are ALL just God's CHILDREN). The thing is, it wasnt a conflict with this blogger really but rather with this philosphy popping up. I've just been around too much of this detachment stuff in my new-agey past, and been so harmed by it, so that that now when I see it it brings so much up.
And at any rate, all through the little clash what I kept thinking of was this aboriginal concept of interactions forming circles inside you. Those that we cross paths with form "circles" with us whether we know it or not, and that stays in you, you cant just "detach" from it, because you were part of the circle and it was created, its very real, not some "game"/"illusion"/"maya". And that circle doesnt just poof disapper by being broken by you or the other either, it instead becomes a broken and jagged circle. They talked about it having "jagged edges" now that harm. And so the point is to heal the edges somehow. Because the circle is in you and will, even once that person is gone, get "triggered" one day by something that reminds you of what it brought up in you, and you'll either feel that smooth healing circle inside you or the harmful jagged one.
And the new age/eastern view is directly counter to this. It says at the same time two things: that we each "create our own reality"; and that there is no "I" really but we are "all one being". And both mean the same thing---detachment. That we are either islands or one being---so neither is about being individual beings who are connected and admitting the impact we have on one another and the responsibilty to each other there and the circles we literally create. And you can't just make the circles we make in our interactions disapear, trying to detach from them only creates a broken and jagged circle; those circles cannot be just flippantly detached from, they must instead actually be healed. This image came up for me again and again in this interaction, even though I'm still trying to understand it, this circle thing. I just felt somehow it was important for me to learn from. And so that's how the interaction ended for me, feeling that. And then I was going over this dream blog also to try and learn from the interaction (because when I looked back it had started originally here, and then picked up later on her blog, oh the hidden gifts we get from blogworld...because in the end I do think these things turn into gifts).
And so anyway in looking back that's when it happened. I saw that from the very beginning, that was what it had been about. "Way back then" (all of two weeks ago lol) I had expressed in a post that her first comment on my blog had struck a disturbing chord in me and thats why i hadnt responded right away... and then in our next comments we both, one after the other, "accidentally" mistyped chord as CORD (like the very feeling of those circles). And so there it was. The sign made then so it could be seen later. Saying, no this wasn't all just random, it has meaning, God is HERE in all this someway somehow, we are not just floundering all alone in our lives.
Maybe other folks dont need this. Maybe faith is enough for them. I kind of envy that. But for myself, I need things like this, little signs and "coincidences", a thin gold cord I can see weaving in my life, making me feel I am not alone, that He IS here. I need that. And so i gather these mundane "coincidences" in my waking life, and my dreams in my sleeping life, as precious treasure. Because to me they are. They are the sort of treasure you can store in your heart, a light to look back on when you come upon a dark night of the soul (and we all will likely have them) when just like Job did you feel alone. This gathered treasure helps heal this, because these "coincidences" gathered feel like a neon sign from God saying " 'I was here' in your life...and so I will be again. If I have turned it is just for a moment, its not the breaking of the cord". That's what I see in the rainbow too, that cord. A sign the people living after the flood (and forward) could hold firmly in their hearts as it was a sign of God's connection with them, a promise He would not really turn from them and break the cord, that He loved them.
Anyway, such is the dream of the healer's journal, and the lessons from it. A dream that taught that the mundane acts of dreams and "coincidences" are as precious treasure, like a precious thin gold cord to guide us on...
PS There is a part two to this post here
(Image from Pam Garrison's lovely blog; this image of these rose filled journal pages of hers feels to me like a gathering of true treasure...)
There is a reason I keep a dream journal like this, and it needs more explaining than has been shared so far. The deepest inspiration for keeping a dream journal like this came from another dream, from last May. So transfering it here from the journal...
"I had been given some sort of grant to go back to “the old country”, as in VERY old, ancient, and do some research. Something about my Italian great grandmother, who (in real life too) was said to have been a true healer, was woven in there, though it may have been more than this too. And I was doing some sort of archeology dig and came across two ancient images. One I can’t remember, it’s on the tip of my brain but blocked. I think there were 2 figures in this image but it’s blocked at the moment. But this other image I remember. It was of a woman who was the color blue, and on my dig I had realized her “blue-ness” was important...tears, blue, water, something. And then I came across this ancient manuscript of an ancient healer’s somehow preserved and it was about all this seemingly mundane stuff because she wrote in it nearly every day, not just special times but all the time, about this little everyday stuff of healing. And I remember thinking well, this “blueness”, and this “mundaneness” it’s the “heart of the healer”. And then I realized that was the title of the book I would use for my book being written as part of this grant in the dream. And then I woke up.
(And then written a few days later)...reflecting on her journal, on that ancient manuscript I found in the dream, and on what I feel from her when I try and tap in, I feel this: That her healing journal, that ancient manuscript in the dream, it is a way to show that the sacred is here with us in the mundane. That God is speaking when we find that meaningful stone etc, or have that dream or also that little waking dream, or whatever gift or coincidence. That if these little daily miracles and processes can be written down they will be remembered, a personal proof when one has doubt, letting one know that God actually IS here with us, that he hasn’t abandoned us. And that that is at the deepest deepest heart of healing—knowing we aren’t alone, and knowing we are loved. And so how can anyone be a healer unless they really know this, know this personally from their own life? How can they give another love and hope if they have not been able to find this in their own life? How can they help someone open up to God’s healing , the source of all healing, if they have not been able to see that God has been there in their own life? You can’t help someone open up to something you yourself have no hope exists.
So this witnessing of God in the mundane day to day business of living and thinking and feeling, this truly embracing one’s tears as part of this too, and this blueness of being able to crystallize those tears too (water becomes snow) it into words or images, this “giving feelings form”, or maybe even somehow finding that primordial heartbeat preserved in the snow (that ice age image again), well all of that is part of this healer’s heart. And it is a sacred space that this comes from, not the hectic one the world expects. I don’t see this healer running around all over the place getting burnt out or vampired, I see her nourished and in nature a lot and well loved and having a safe and peaceful and sacred sort of life. But I don’t see an ivory tower there. She reaches out. She has compassion. She does not turn aside when she encounters another’s pain, she tries to be a part of the healing there if she can. And she does this with herself as well, she doesn’t pretend there are not places where she is broken. She knows there is brokenness. But she uses her brokenness as an opening rather than a block, a way to deepen into her own healing and her ability to heal others. She can have compassion for another’s brokenness and not run from it or judge it because she has not run from or judged her own."
This was one of those turning point sort of dreams for me. Because what the healer in that dream did by keeping her mundane little healer's journal, her gathering up the meaningful "coincidences", those "coincidences" in her mundane life that showed God IS here with us, is what I do too. I gather up dreams dreamed at night, and stones on the ground that speak something, and words folks share or things they do at just the right moments, and things that happen in day to day life that you know in your gut were not coincidence but showing there is meaning, a thin golden thread we are given to follow in our lives by these "coincidences" that arent coincidences at all, these signs that say God IS here...well I gather all these little things as they happen in life like they are the most precious treasures in the world. Because to me they are. And so after this dream I stopped feeling like this little gathering obsession I had here was meaningless and embraced it instead. One aspect of this is this little dream journal, which is just a baby, but its simply my little way right now of gathering up dreams as a way to say...hey, God was here, we arent alone, He speaks to us. ""For He gives to His beloved even in her sleep."
But its more than this too, He also gives when we are awake, and one way is through the "coincidences" in our day to day lives. One way is that things can happen as signs, signs preparing for a future when we will have doubt and look back and see those signs to remove doubt. And this just happened to me recently, connected to this whole blogworld experience, when in one of the blogs that I tend to follow I suddenly had a little clash when I ran into detachment philosophy there, as detachment stuff really gets to me. I respect the blogger so it wasnt personal, its just that there is something about detachment that seems to mock everything I hold dear and believe in. It just really bothers me, the whole "pull up your boot straps and "create your own reality" and "fix things" philosophy; the if someone is in pain or struggling its because "they manifested it" idea --so you have no need to help them of course (kind of the inner aspect of Darwin's "survival of the fittest" nonsense); and the view that if something feels wrong to you well simply "disengage", that other people arent your problem anyway; that what people have needing to heal in their interactions with you, and definitely anything they need from you, well that isnt real its "just a game", maya, illusion, "unevolvedness" (the "maturity involves detachment not need" nonsense"). It all "gets my girdle up" if you will, like nothing else, because it feels to me the very opposite of "love your neighbor as yourself" and "bear one another's burdens" and "He is the Vine we are the branches". Even the detachment philosophys' image of compassion feels loaded with judgement ("I will have compassion for you because in my detachment I am more evolved than you" sort of feeling, even though we are ALL just God's CHILDREN). The thing is, it wasnt a conflict with this blogger really but rather with this philosphy popping up. I've just been around too much of this detachment stuff in my new-agey past, and been so harmed by it, so that that now when I see it it brings so much up.
And at any rate, all through the little clash what I kept thinking of was this aboriginal concept of interactions forming circles inside you. Those that we cross paths with form "circles" with us whether we know it or not, and that stays in you, you cant just "detach" from it, because you were part of the circle and it was created, its very real, not some "game"/"illusion"/"maya". And that circle doesnt just poof disapper by being broken by you or the other either, it instead becomes a broken and jagged circle. They talked about it having "jagged edges" now that harm. And so the point is to heal the edges somehow. Because the circle is in you and will, even once that person is gone, get "triggered" one day by something that reminds you of what it brought up in you, and you'll either feel that smooth healing circle inside you or the harmful jagged one.
And the new age/eastern view is directly counter to this. It says at the same time two things: that we each "create our own reality"; and that there is no "I" really but we are "all one being". And both mean the same thing---detachment. That we are either islands or one being---so neither is about being individual beings who are connected and admitting the impact we have on one another and the responsibilty to each other there and the circles we literally create. And you can't just make the circles we make in our interactions disapear, trying to detach from them only creates a broken and jagged circle; those circles cannot be just flippantly detached from, they must instead actually be healed. This image came up for me again and again in this interaction, even though I'm still trying to understand it, this circle thing. I just felt somehow it was important for me to learn from. And so that's how the interaction ended for me, feeling that. And then I was going over this dream blog also to try and learn from the interaction (because when I looked back it had started originally here, and then picked up later on her blog, oh the hidden gifts we get from blogworld...because in the end I do think these things turn into gifts).
And so anyway in looking back that's when it happened. I saw that from the very beginning, that was what it had been about. "Way back then" (all of two weeks ago lol) I had expressed in a post that her first comment on my blog had struck a disturbing chord in me and thats why i hadnt responded right away... and then in our next comments we both, one after the other, "accidentally" mistyped chord as CORD (like the very feeling of those circles). And so there it was. The sign made then so it could be seen later. Saying, no this wasn't all just random, it has meaning, God is HERE in all this someway somehow, we are not just floundering all alone in our lives.
Maybe other folks dont need this. Maybe faith is enough for them. I kind of envy that. But for myself, I need things like this, little signs and "coincidences", a thin gold cord I can see weaving in my life, making me feel I am not alone, that He IS here. I need that. And so i gather these mundane "coincidences" in my waking life, and my dreams in my sleeping life, as precious treasure. Because to me they are. They are the sort of treasure you can store in your heart, a light to look back on when you come upon a dark night of the soul (and we all will likely have them) when just like Job did you feel alone. This gathered treasure helps heal this, because these "coincidences" gathered feel like a neon sign from God saying " 'I was here' in your life...and so I will be again. If I have turned it is just for a moment, its not the breaking of the cord". That's what I see in the rainbow too, that cord. A sign the people living after the flood (and forward) could hold firmly in their hearts as it was a sign of God's connection with them, a promise He would not really turn from them and break the cord, that He loved them.
Anyway, such is the dream of the healer's journal, and the lessons from it. A dream that taught that the mundane acts of dreams and "coincidences" are as precious treasure, like a precious thin gold cord to guide us on...
PS There is a part two to this post here
(Image from Pam Garrison's lovely blog; this image of these rose filled journal pages of hers feels to me like a gathering of true treasure...)
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