IN MY DREAM: CREATIVE PROCESS & DREAM WORK
The first lion to appear
IN MY DREAM: CREATIVE PROCESS & DREAM WORK
Exploring Dream Images, Growth Edges, Setting Boundaries and Lion Energy
The images that appear in dreams can be potent allies. Sometimes representing energies that we have disowned or abandoned—image is the voice of the unconscious.
What are you letting lie fallow, what edges are flirting with you through this night-time foray in the world of color and light, what characters seem to haunt or seduce your imagination?
And this waking dream too has its own cast of characters who reveal our hidden fears and edges to growth. What are your daytime flirts? What symbols, news headlines, colors, images or body symptoms are catching your attention?
As I paint images emerge from a canvas of color and shape. In the course of a week, I have painted two lions. A week later I have a dream where my mom’s elder sister proclaims that her dharma name means fierce lion.
Her proclamation is like a lion’s roar. And I awaken, feeling distant from that woman, the roaring lioness, the fierce lion in my soul.
But the lion continues to hunt my imagination. I see it, blue as the night sky--as I look in the mirror before meditation. Later he appears stalking with my own body through the dark unlit path, as I return home for the day.
It’s awakening my instincts. Reminding me of all the times in a day when I know exactly what to do, what is needed. How something within is in constant response to the requests of the moment.
I reflect on one of Byron Katie’s exercises on saying NO. The lion knows how to say NO without getting mixed up in the dance of needing someone’s love, approval and appreciation.
Byron Katie says, “A no to you, is a yes to me.” And it's that simple and straightforward.
I let the lion fill my body as I walk and choose something for dinner. I feel its strength and certainty as I sit down. As I talk to others, the lion is there--ready to listen and to get up when it is time.
Anne Baring says that in our patriarchal culture we have lost the mother, we have let the feminine qualities of body, soul, matter and earth become of lesser importance--to mind, spirit, transcendence, power.
I feel the instincts of this lion body (even though it is appearing male with a mane), as a reminder to love this body, this earth, this ever evolving soul--who speaks to me in dreams, in creative process, in image, in body sensations.
I encourage you to pay attention to your dreams. To the images, colors, body sensations that arise and linger. To the images that appear in your creative endeavors, or the ones that are asking to be painted, drawn, sung or danced.
I find bringing a dream being or imaginal being into form through body movement, dance, song, poetry or art to be a healing integration with the energy of the dream-world. It’s a gentle way of befriending the shadow, whether the form is of a foreign nature or something familiar yet disowned.
Being in relationship with the dream being does not mean turning one’s life over to it. But exploring who this being is and why it has shown up, is the noble & creative work of soul discovery. I wish you much enrichment and joy in befriending your soul. I am happy to receive any photos of paintings or artistic representations of dream images as you engage creative process with your dreams!
