Be Careful What You Ask For!

It’s story time! Feel free to curl up with your favorite quilt and a cuppa. Or whatever. This story, like life, wanders a bit. And, it’s one of those stories that is not only true, but actually happened!

First, you need to know that I actually slept last night. In the bed. For about five hours.

This is something of a miracle these days. One of the ways that I know that I slept is that I spent some time wandering around in a Wizard of Oz-like dream in which many things come together from different times and worlds. Things you wouldn’t usually find together, but somehow teach you new things when you notice.

Before we get to the dream, though, you need to know that, historically, I’ve had a very hard time telling right from left.

When I was in tenth grade, I started fainting. A lot. Usually at school. The nurse would call my mother to come get me, though I was generally much better by the time she got there and she’d grumble a bit in that way that made it hard to figure out whether she was mad or worried.

One day, though, I fainted in gym class while I was on the top bar of the uneven parallel bars. I was scared and very grateful for the mats below the bars which preformed admirably and kept me from being truly injured.

About that time, my dad got involved and carted me off to a fancy medical center a couple of hours away for a neurological workup. The eventual conclusion was that I had grown considerably taller, quite quickly, and my circulatory system was having a hard time keeping up. The “answer” involved little red pills I was instructed not to take to school lest someone might want to steal them.

Oh, and there was also the part about the neurologist telling my dad to “teach that kid right from left”!

Now, I may have mentioned before that I never went to Kindergarten, which might explain why I was probably 30 years old before I caught on to the little trick that it is possible to tell which hand is your left because your thumb and first finger make an actual letter “L” when extended just so. (At least possible for lots of people.)

But back to my dream…

I was in a school someplace I didn’t recognize, in a big room with my eighth grade English teacher. We seemed to both be adults, though not quite as adult as we actually are at this point! Despite the absence of bells ringing, groups of students wandered in and out of this magical room, reading poetry and singing and acting like intelligent, capable human beings.

There was also something going on about having a wheel fixed on a very large piece of luggage I was, apparently, taking along on my journey.

Now, as we’ve noted before, the first question of dream interpretation from a depth psych perspective is:

Why is this dreamer dreaming this dream at this time?

Which was exactly the question that got me out of the bed hunting for tea and my laptop about 6:30 this morning.

The answer didn’t take long to appear. You see, I wandered through my studio space on the way to the kitchen and there, like a huge road sign, stood my CODEX painting. (Well, one of them.)

Yesterday was a day for soup and paint and a dear friend. And what we were working on, with our magical paint brushes, was integrating our consciousness.

Old stories and new. Lots of learning from lots of years. Right and left brain access. And appreciation. We actually stated our willingness for anything that was available to be conscious and integrated to be so. (You kinda had to be there… and some of you have been!)

The dream, I think, was a reminder of a moment in my journey where I had a guide who valued both right and left brain work. Creative imagining. And linear, getting it done processing. The linear part, conveniently being the “L” or left part!

Lately, I’ve started using an old hypnosis/NLP trick called anchoring again. When I need to move from creative concept to the step one – step two kind of planning, I do the “L” trick with my left hand and ask for that kind of information. Rather like the favorite quilt and cuppa we began with may be anchors for comfort. Perhaps it sounds bizarre, but it works, which is a good thing because it’s time for the “L” part of a quilt project to begin quickly around here.

Watched over, no doubt, by my CODEX canvas(es) leading me to a place I’ve never been before but is, at the same time, somehow home.

Oh, and the art today is from my Cosmic Smash Book. My very own left hand. Complete with red and purple yarn which is, by the way, also a handy way to tell which is which!

Psssst… In my last post I shared an opportunity to learn from the amazing Shiloh Sophia McCloud about conversing with yourself in ways more likely to get you where you want to go than the ways most of us learned growing up. There’s still time! Tempted??? Click here for more info!