Dream us in furs

Dream, night of 4/30–5/1/13

Scene is an impromptu market, under a fractured overpass, in a shattered city, under leaden skies. Several hunter/warrior archetypes are staffing tables of pelts and furs. Off to the side, a gaggle of pasty masculinity tourists teeter slack-jawed, fidgeting, as one of the hunters patiently prepares them for some weekend work involving minor pelts: squirrel, rabbit, dog.

Armael Malinis

I am here on my own, drawn by something grander, but I can't remember or articulate my desire. An old hunter, also a shaman/magician, knows exactly what I'm here for, and digs out a magnificent elk, with lustrous, wolf-like fur, a real magic carpet of a pelt, and we admire it together, in silence, and are deeply moved.

But then my doubts creep in, and I ask myself: What would I do with it? I wouldn't want to waste it. I bet it's really expensive, and I know I have rejected the offering, and failed the initiation, and the dream collapses into sour, wistful wakefulness.

By happy coincidence, I saw my Hakomi ptherapist later in the day, and was able to journey to the dream and re-engage with the old hunter:

At first he presented as stoic, yet loving, waiting, with the perfume of sorrow and disappointment that I could not accept his gift. I became the unsure boy, and was ashamed, recalling other gifts, unopened, squandered.

I was invited to enter the wise old man, to view the boy from elsewhere, but my boy-self could not take that step, could not claim his power. Instead, I knew the boy must address the gift: what would he do with it? what would melt his reticence?

With gratitude, with tears, the boy wraps himself in the magic cloak he thought was a pelt, and knows thereby he has the protection of the helping spirits, and their love. Now, he can accept himself as an unsure boy, a boy who needs love and protection. And suddenly he is both boy and man, wise old hunter and tearful initiate, occupying all the roles in the spiral of his life.

And now he can see the pasty gaggle as the boy he was, and see them with love, and hope. And the view from the market, once fading to dim chaos, receding across the blasted city, now opens to vistas of subtle magic, to realms uncharted, and the not-boy, wrapped in his cloak, calm and clear-eyed, takes his next step.