mars goes direct

I’ve been sleeping soundly for the past week, dreaming the kind of dreams that only can be described as sweet.

My rhythm seems to be congruent with the season, and the movement of planets. Fern tells me that Mars went direct last week, and things that have felt stuck, will begin to move. For me, that move was immediate, and my mood found its mirror in the brilliant spring days.

It’s nice to have a good friend who is an astrologer, who tells you when planets go direct, and who also gives you the heads up when a new moon is a particularly auspicious time for making wishes, Fern told me to do things yesterday that I wanted to bring into or maintain in my life.

Check. And then some.

Over coffee and with the magic of skype, I talked to a dear friend in England and we did some planning of Avalonspring. My son had the day off from school and we worked happily together on some details around next year's college. My son helped me garden, and I mindfully planted seeds for things that are delicious and nurturing. I got news that a beloved friend who I haven't seen for 2 years will visit me in April. An unexpected connection was made and my weekend dance card became delightfully full. I worked in my art studio. I challenged my professional association to not bow into the religious right and to stand up against hatred. I put money in the bank and was grateful for the work I do. I went for a walk. I swam for an hour. I got an 80 minute massage. Then, I went out to dinner with a friend who had just finished a book and feasted on good food and even better conversation. I walked home, loving with every step where I live. And, wonderfully, time expanded and the day felt long and spacious. Then I slept and had sweet dreams.

Equinox, here I come!!! From being off kilter for months, I suddenly seem to be coming into some balance. If yesterday planted the seeds of the coming years, then everything is sure to be coming up roses.

And, I am trusting that those roses will be of many colors and all smell divine.

Turn and face the strange. changes.

"We cannot change anything until we accept it.” Carl Jung

I come from a spiritual tradition that believes that magic is the art of changing consciousness at will and that practicing this magic is our sacred duty. I have been in large groups of people more times than I can count, holding hands and doing a spiral dance, chanting “She changes everything she touches, and everything she touches, changes”. She, of course, is the Goddess. She is paradoxical gal, and she knows that the only constant is, yep, change.

In the past months, I’ve been going through changes. Big Ones. And, oh, how I want to use my will to change this!!!! I’ve done countless cleansings, purifications, furniture has been moved, and every closet and drawer organized. I’m that kind of magician. I know how to cast a circle and wave around my athame and/or wand with charged gusto, but I find cleaning my refrigerator just as effective. Incantations, of course, are involved in both.

So, I’ve done my best to meddle, to spell out where I want to get to; that calm (tidy and well organized) beach across this stormy emotional sea. Yet, the sea is still stormy. So, acceptance is the damn issue. And that takes awhile. How I want the winds of change to whip though, followed by fires of transformation, me emerging like Yemaya from the healing waters of this stormy sea, emanating self-love and pearls of wisdom dripping off me from the irritation of this experience! But no, as it turns out, the only way to really endure a stormy sea is to invoke the deep gravity of the earth, accepting the weight of time and doing nothing but enduring.

Everyday in my work I balance the power of silence with the power of the word… when is my job to intervene, engage and spell out change and when is my job to simply be silent and bear witness? The truth is, to be an effective change agent, we have to have both hands holding these different reins, open to changing consciousness at will, and open to doing nothing but accepting what is.

My hands are on these reins. My closets are clean, my pantry organized. Even my taxes are done! And, I’m accepting that my heart is still one big mess and breathing into it and letting it be okay. But, I will still keep cleaning. And muttering incantations. Balance is the issue and thank the Goddess, her time is NOW.

To sleep: perchance to dream: aye, there’s the rub.

Being a therapist, and good friends with not just one, but TWO world-class dream workers, I am well acquainted with the transformative power of dreams. As a woman who has been grieving, I also am too well acquainted with the power of dreams to disturb and disrupt sleep. How many times can a person be run over by a white van, the dream shifting ever so slightly in whether I see it coming, stand firm, run , or get it from behind as I’m happily pulling weeds in a big garden? Apparently a lot, with even little additions like a hose that comes out and sprays boiling water on me, and a sound system blaring salsa music. Understanding the dream hasn’t made it go away, but I am working in dreamtime to get a vehicle of my own that can simply pass the white van and keep going.

I know these white van dreams, and others like them, are part of the process of integrating loss into my being, are normal ways my unconsciousness is trying to make sense of the what makes absolutely no sense to me in my waking life.

But, I have to sleep. Without it, I lose my ability to function. I can’t listen to clients, and truly want to spend my day curled up in bed, with only the bandwidth of attention needed for bad television. Naps just lead to more dreams, and make sleeping even harder at night.

So, I have to sleep. There’s been lots written on good sleep habits, on making your bed a comfortable and inviting place which you only associate with sleep (not hard in my present circumstance), and drinking warm milk or herbal teas before and the art and practice of winding down.

I got these all covered, and still. The truth is if you have a big loss or huge stressor, it perchance and the perchance is high, will come into dreamland with you. And it will wake you up, again and again.

Alcohol doesn’t help, that just makes it worse, as it assures waking in the middle of night, left to toss and turn with only muddied memories of bad dreams and no hope of going back to sleep. I’ve tried varied herbal sleep formulas, and I can’t say any of them kept back the dreams and kept me asleep.

My sense is that the dreams do need to come. And I need my sleep. So, we juggle, dreamland and I, with a triage approach on what will keep me the most functional. I have a nice white and effective jar of sleeping pills that I know if I take regularly I will end up hooked on. So, I use them only when needed, and no more than three times a week. And I am so grateful for them and their power to give uninterrupted sleep.

The night before last , I woke up bone tired, my heart chakra feeling ripped open by the nightmares I’d dreamed. Trying to make it to a car of my own, as the white van headed towards me, I opened the door of what I thought was a VW and it turned out to be made of beautiful tissue paper – like a Japanese kite. Soar, I started to incant, soar!!!! Epithets cames streaming from the white van as it aimed itself at me. I woke, sweating, the feel of torn tissue paper all around my legs, not sure if I was truly broken from the dreamtime.

Last night, I opened my white jar and embraced better living through chemistry. I slept and even dreamed. This time about the salad variety of mache. I dreamed I had a beautiful packet of seeds and was putting them in the garden and suggesting to Andrea and Bryan, who live below me, that we become mache farmers, that I was sure it was going to catch on and be the next gourmet lettuce.

This is the kind of dream that will help me through my day, and the tenderness and irritability of yesterday is gone. Tonight, I’ll do all my good habits and practices and perhaps and perchance, I’ll have sweet dreams. Sandman, bring me some, please? And barring a sweet dream, how about a really nice Jaguar, Rolls, or Benz that I can jump into?