Monday, January 24, 2011

Lying down with lion: energy doubles and animal messengers


When I lie down for an evening nap (I keep very erratic hours) I become aware of the full-formed energy presence of a maned lion on the bed with me. He settles down, nose to nose, like a friendly dog. He is all lion, except that his breath seems sweet; I am fully aware of his strength and killing power. But he is my very dear friend. I drift off into a delicious nap. And dream:

I give an impromptu speech to a large audience. It's all about how to get to the Place of the Lion. This requires you to speak and act, always, from the heart. I talk about Aslan, how "he is terrible but he is good". My voice rises to a roar, then drops to a far-carrying purr when I remind my audience, "When the lion speaks, everyone listens."

Feelings: delight

Reality: Yes.

This sweet encounter got me thinking about the many ways in which energy doubles and visitors have turned up in my field of perception in animal form. I started to make a mental inventory of bedroom encounters in that drifty hypnagogic zone prior to sleep, or to hyper-awakeness.

While the lion in my bed might be seen as my own energy double, the jaguar who turned up in the night many years ago in my bedroom was definitely something else. He startled me, though he did not scare me. When he made me understand that he was a messenger, I agreed to travel with him, and sped through the astral to come down among lush tropical vegetation at the home of a Maya shaman in Belize, who proceeded to instruct me in songs of healing and rituals of divination.

Then there was the white wolf who showed up in my bedroom another night. Though I knew him and loved him, he was not a part of myself. I let him lead me out the window and across the night sky, to the far North, to an encounter with a radiant being who seemed to be entirely covered with glowing white shells. Deeply moved, I felt I had been blessed to encounter a form of the Peacemaker.


Serengeti Lion from Flickr

12 comments:

  1. The white wolf has shown up not only in my dreams but once as a vision experience at my lower back porch. He was clearly there but wore a translucency that allowed me to still see the objects behind him on the porch. He was not mine. I knew immediately that he belonged to a long-time friend who is native American. Each time I have seen the wolf I have either heard from my friend within days or knew that I needed to get in touch with him. The last visit was only a few months ago - I called and asked if he were OK. The wolf was ill in the dream. He said he was fine. He called last week to tell me I had dreamed correctly. He had been diagnosed with cancer, its first symptoms appearing physically just days after my dream.

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  2. Wanda - sorry to hear that the condition of your friend's oyaron (animal double)was manifested in his human body, though we all know this was to be expected. The oral traditions of his people are full of tales of how damage caused to the animal counterpart rebounds on the human body. Both of you have been engaged in a very ancient and powerful way of dream-seeing and dream-travels, which an ateshents (dream shaman) of long ago would instantly recognize and understand.

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  3. Are you familiar with the book, The Jaguar That Roams the Mind.

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  4. I avoid books and approaches that focus on "spirit plants" and hallucinogens, in this case ayahuasca (one of whose indigenous names is "that which makes me puke"). In our Active Dreaming approach, we produce our own chemicals.

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  5. At the Gore Mountain gathering last fall, the Jaguar paid me a surprise visit, claimed his place as my guardian and instructed me on how to toggle my energy between the two cat states - hungry and hunting versus satiated and resting. So far I've excelled at being in the satiated/resting state...

    My latest nonhuman visitor was a Sumerian man-bird. This Mr. Harpy creature was unfamiliar to me. A naive Google search turned up Zu, a Sumerian demon in service of the chief god Enlil. Zu stole from Enlil the Tablet of Destinies that made their bearer the master of the world.

    This Sumerian Gazza Ladra showed up in response to my attempts to invent a continuation for a dream tale about a magic fabric. Zu appeared after I had decided that the magic fabric should be the Fabric of Destiny, not of Invisibility, and give the owner the knowledge of and power over one's fate.

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  6. I am having brand new animals coming to my dreams + its very exciting to stop + listen. These elephants + giraffes are showing up every where, waking + dreaming. I miss seeing the white and black wolf - in my dreams + haven't seen them much. But now when we go visit our claim in the mountains - beautiful wolves stop by our campsite - its chilling -they are SO beautiful

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  7. Louisa - woo-hoo. I guess it's safe from the jaguar to take a digestive nap if you have a galla demon watching out for you, cloaked in the Fabric of Destiny, no less. The gallas feature rather prominently in our oldest dream report - also the oldest signed literary work - the "Dream of Dumuzi" in the Cycle of Inanna.

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  8. Star - The animal spirits come stalking us in the natural world as well as in dreams, though (unlike you) few of us live close enough to nature to encounter wolves - let alone elephants - in an average month.

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  9. Hmmm ... is there some danger in reading that I am unaware of?

    Is reading a gateway drug?

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  11. Nina - Now that is truly sweet. Thank you for sharing the songs of the snow lion. However, mine does not have a green mane (except when he's spent too long in chlorinated swimming pools :-)

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  12. I love the visuals you give in your blog posts - thanks for the constant inspiration! :0)
    L.

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