Compass & Quill

Today is the first day of a three-day lecture series that I’ll be attending on shamanism. The classes are all online, so I’ll be doing them from the comfort of my couch. But I still want to give them my full attention and intention. The first class starts at 11am (a little over an hour from now), so I plan to make this post short. I’d like to take a quick shower beforehand to scrub with sea salt, annoint with rose oil, smudge the house, and really bring my full self to the classes.

For the last two nights, I’ve had troublesome dreams. I’ve never been a good sleeper, and lately it’s been getting worse. It might be perimenopause, or maybe it’s the state of the world. Perhaps I just need to lay off of the caffeine and start taking better supplements. (I’m pretty sure it’s a combination of all of these things.) But sometimes my dreams are just dreams, sometimes they’re messages that I’ve gotten off track, and sometimes, as you know, I’m visited by dead loved ones and spirit messengers to point me in the right direction.

The last two nights’ dreams have been messages to myself, and they didn’t feel good. Maybe “right,” and maybe positive in the longterm, but right now they’re anxiety-inducing. On Saturday night, I dreamt that my animal friends and I had to save our friend Nova (my real name has been redacted). She was being held captive by an evil witch, and worse than being stuck in a cage at a witch’s house, she was in danger of getting frostbite on her toes. Our mission wasn’t to take Nova out of the cage – yet, anyway. Instead, it was to break into the witch’s apartment (6th floor NYC walkup), visit Nova in her cage (outside the kitchen window in late autumn), bring her some warm fur booties that we’d made, and tell her to hang in there for just awhile longer. I was both the Nova in the cage and the Nova who was visiting to bring booties, but both of us felt anguish when we had to leave the caged version where she was – even though we knew it was short term.

One interpretation of this could be that I feel trapped and unsure of what to do in my daily life. I have a general idea of what I want out of life, but no clear idea of how to get there. Maybe it was a message that the cage isn’t as permanent as it seems, and I just need to stay calm, realize that the small comforts have great value, and know that nothing is forever. I’ll win out over the cage. It’s nowhere near as dire as it might seem. But perhaps there are more things to learn here, and that’s why I need to be patient.

Last night’s dream was worse, and at present I don’t see a positive interpretation. I was a young Native American woman in modern times, and I lived on a reservation with swampland bordering three sides. An outside force was invading. They were something like mercenaries hired by an oil company, or another trained, militaristic group whose mission was to take over our home by any means necessary. They gave us warning that they’d be coming onto the land, and if we didn’t fight, we would be OK, but we had one chance to leave peacefully and after that they’d start shooting. We didn’t believe that they would be peaceful. It seemed inevitable that the shooting would begin.

For some reason though, instead of fighting, we all rushed to find hiding spots. They weren’t good hiding spots; some people just stood behind trees, and others went into their houses. For some reason, no one was willing to go into the swamp at the back of the reservation land. I got to a small levee area right before the swampland and decided to preemptively play dead, even though the shooting hadn’t started and playing dead would make no sense. It felt like a bad idea in the dream, and it feels like a bad idea now, but I sprawled out with my eyes open and breath shallow. Paramedics traveling with the mercenary group came and examined me. Someone said, “What beautiful eyes!” and then someone else realized I was breathing but seemed paralyzed. They decided to leave me there and go grab lunch, since I wasn’t going anywhere. Once they left, I got up to hide better, but then I realized there was nowhere to go, so I laid back down to wait. For what, I wonder? I can’t begin to interpret what this means. Maybe the same thing as the other dream? It felt much darker, though.

It’s nearly 10:30. I need to sage the house and cleanse myself to start this training. I’m worried. What if it doesn’t feel right? Or what if the teachers are too woo woo, or unaware (or worse, uncaring) of possible cultural appropriation? What if it’s a money grab, or a flight of fancy? What if, what if, what if?

I am in a cage, yes, but it’s not forever. My calling is going to pull me right through the bars. It’s gonna be a squishy situation, but I’m flexible – I’ll make it. I have a good idea of which way I’m supposed to go, though I don’t necessarily know what I’ll find there. And there’s no specific path to get there; it’s more like a scent trail – I’ll know it when I come to it, there might be some backtracking, but it exists, even if I’m the only one who can sense it. I’ve made it this far, and I have the strength to keep walking. That’s all I have to do – one foot in front of the other, for as long as it takes. And that’s good. That’s good.

All is well.