When I dreamed about the “Temple In the Wilderness” I was puzzled by my dream ego’s fascination with the beautiful waxy white flowers. I loved flowers, but in those days I saw nothing particularly meaningful about them. I do now. Here’s why.
In response to my second post, Dream Along With Me, William Horden wrote, “For the ancients of Mexico, the height of their Lifeway was expressed in the philosophy called ‘Flower-And-Song.’ By ‘Flower’ they meant the ability to perceive that everything is perfect as a flower, yet passing before our eyes. This boils down to grasping the emotional reality that everything I know and love is both perfect as it is and already dying. To be a warrior meant the ability to hold these two profound emotions in the heart-mind at the same time.”
At the heart of this enlightened philosophy is a deep reverence for feeling. The ancients of Mexico, like spirit persons everywhere, knew that living a full life was about more than being rational and clear-headed. It’s fine and good for me to work out an elegant theory about the meaning of life, but thoughts are abstractions, not concrete realities. Like dead flowers, they are dry, useless things when cut off from the juicy life of our bodies. The point is to merge our mental and physical lives in a sacred union of opposites.
In theory, this makes perfect sense to most of us, but it’s quite another thing to actually live and relate to others with this kind of balance. Some of us get so swamped with strong emotions at the least provocation that we become impervious to reason. Others habitually repress our feelings to the point you would swear we had no hearts at all. And of course, most of us vacillate between these two extremes, here overly emotional, there all business, forever buffeted about by unconscious compulsions we don’t understand and can’t seem to control no matter how hard we try.
Which brings me back to my white flowers. White, the color of light, purity, and perfection, is often worn at rituals of transformation like baptisms, first communions, marriages, initiations, and for some people, death rites. Wearing white signifies respect for the logos/thinking/spiritual side of life. Conversely, flowers symbolize the mythos/feeling/soulful side of life. We send flowers on sad occasions to represent our feelings of grief and caring, and on joyful occasions they convey our love.
The moist, creamy white flowers in the wilderness temple filled my dream ego with awe, symbolizing that after years of living in my head and dismissing my feelings I was awakening to the life of my soul. Kneeling in reverence before the flowers indicated that a hard place in my wounded heart was softening and melting away. And because I was honoring honest feeling, a Prince appeared to be my guide. Where did he want to take me? For me, the couple walking hand-in-hand through the distant mist prefigured a sacred wedding of balance between the opposites, a potential future reward if I persisted with my journey to self-knowledge.
I’m here to tell you that dreams are not “just our imagination”. These messages from the mist are factual events with profound meaning for us, and our souls know it even if our egos do not.
What’s the Point of the Three Kings?
December 24, 2024
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Those of us raised as Christians know this holiday is about a lot more than rushing about, partying and shopping, and many of us enjoy warm memories and nostalgic feelings this time of year. But why are the moments of love, joy and peace so difficult to find during the holiday season? Where do the feelings of exhaustion, anxiety, disappointment and depression come from? Why do we keep missing the point of Christmas? How can we recapture it?
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an absolutely beautiful post, jeanie!
i would just add the Tarahumara people of the Copper Canyon in Mexico to this day talk about those of us who live “with cobwebs over our eyes,” by which they mean the stricture of reason that limits our native ability to directly perceive the world as it is….
….and: while the idea of an unconscious is pretty well accepted by most of us today, it generally seems like everyone has one except “me”…..this being, of course, because i am not conscious of my unconscious—hence its name!
one of the very few places i can see my unconscious—in full bloom, like your flower—is in my dreams…..here, in that arena where time is irrelevant and space is inside-out, i can witness, no, correct that, i can experience, my unconscious and, by remembering what i can, bring its contents back into the light of my conscious mind…..a feat that seems all but impossible otherwise.
this alone argues for the magical nature of dreams: they strip away the cobwebs from my eyes in one fell swoop and, by changing my vision, change my participation in this mystery of a world…..
thanks for your generous posts!
william
Sally,Thank you William. You have beautifully expressed why dreamwork is a spiritual practice for me. They show me the mystery and my relationship to it, thus supplying the meaning for which I yearn.
Warmly, Jeanie
Years ago, a sensitive soul, a singer, gave me a book of photographs of flowers by Irving Penn, a master photographer.
You have written about the perfection of the flower passing before our eyes. What astounded me about Penn’s photographs was that there was not a single picture in the entire collection of a flower in its robust prime. All the photos in the book were photos of wilting flowers on their journey to, or at the edge of their death. Yet, these were some of the most beautiful pictures I have ever seen. It made me appreciate and see life in a new way– in all of its manifestations.
The life of a flower as well as dreams help us to appreciate elusive nuances of reality. Thank you for your insights.
Sally and William,
sorry for the double name thing above. I’m writing from an iPhone on a bumpy road on the way to a rafting trip on the Colorado River. More soon. J
Sally and William,
Too bad we can’t photograph our dreams like we can flowers. But then again, maybe their value lies in their lack of concreteness. How else would we learn the symbolic meaning and eternal reality of the inner life? Jeanie
Really its a nice blog,well written.thanx for sharing.Flowers is the best way to shows love feelings to someone special.now i am so excited to read your next blog so plz tell me,when do u post your next blog ? i am waiting your reply
Thank you. I’m glad you liked it. New posts are usually posted on Tuesdays.