Something lurks in the shadows…

I’ve always asked you about your dreams in the morning. Not every morning but often. At first you only told me about your nightmares but now you tell me about a variety of twilight adventures. You seem to enjoy it and you generally have something to say.

You had a recurring dream for a while that you were in a dark hole. A cave like. And you were trying to get out and you couldn’t. You felt a rope and started following it and then mommy appeared and it was ok. Your mommy had a long labor trying to have a natural birth and you were stuck in the birth canal for a while. Suddenly your heart beat became erratic and Dr. Vormbrock performed an emergency C section. I feel pretty confident this left a psychic imprint and you were reliving it in your dreams. It scared you at first but after telling me about it a couple of times it lost its power and went away.

Then you met little red riding hood and the big bad wolf.

For some time after hearing this story the wolf grew in power and started to take over your dreams. It scared you to the point that I felt compelled to make an intervention and tell you that there were no wolves around here but “even if… even if the big bad wolf did come to our door… I would stop him. I would tell the big bad wolf no way was he getting in this house and I would make him leave and he would. No way was he getting by me under any circumstances. Not even a question.”

I was concerned that the boogie man was creeping into your head so I delivered the message with such sincerity and intensity that you believed me. It was only natural that the authority I had over you was the same authority I had over the wolf. You would often replay the speech back to me and say “right daddy?” as if to assure yourself. To make sure that I still meant it. I would reprise my stern daddy voice and say “That’s right Evelyn. No way would I let that wolf past the front door under ANY circumstances.”

After that, the dream lost it’s power and went away. Helping you defeat the big bad wolf is one of my proudest moments.

Lurking in the psyche of everyone is “the serpent”. A dark shadow that lurks in the forest. The thing we seek distraction from lest we have to face it. We twist ourselves into knots trying to avoid it. Unfortunately there’s only one way forward and it’s towards the snake. That is where “change” lives. No change, no growth.

We have to face our fears to grow. If we don’t go after them, they will come after us. It’s a basic duality of our existence. To be a star that burns forever, you have to address the blind spot. The other side of your choices. Those things you reject, and in so doing convince yourself that they have nothing to do with you. But they do, and the repercussions lurk in the shadows.

There are many dark spots we create in our psyche but none more obvious than our own looming death. We fear it. We lose ourselves in the material world to avoid thinking about it. Ironically the more we cling to “things” the harder it is to give them up. And we have to give up everything. Our cars, our clothes, our money, our friends, our family… our body… our memories… our ego. We are stripped bare. Nothing left but the bright burning star that is REALLY you. But like the snake, we slither back and forth between life and death, embracing change, and our star keeps burning. We find the echoes of the past in our dreams, in our stories, in our myth, in our collective unconscious. We only need to look and listen and continue to grow.

Face death and accept it. Only then can you “discern” what is really important. Only then can you truly embrace all the wonderful things you have yet to experience, in this life and beyond. Only then can you REALLY live.

In the garden, Adam bit the apple and “chose”. He made the first real “choice” of his own and thus gained the power to alter the natural course of things and redirect it to his own ends. In that moment we became “man”. We began our descent into matter, seeking to be our own god. We create our own fates one choice at a time.

God created temptation by forbidding us to take from the tree of knowledge. The serpent was the change agent who convinced us to take matters into our own hands. We listened to the snake and we plunged headlong into the unknown.

We’ve been chasing the snake ever since.