At the heart of the mosaic of the mended self

Morro das Pedras, Santa Catarina Island, Brazil

She set this intention for the night: "Help me to find and bring together all the parts of myself."
    All night long, it seemed she dreamed and re-dreamed the same scene.
    She is looking at a set of beautiful large tiles, covering a spacious area. One of them had been broken into many parts, of differing sizes and shapes. But it has been reassembled. You can see the cracks where the tile was broken. The earth shows through the cracks. Strangely, the effect is to make the mended tile very beautiful.
    Asked to describe the colors and patterns of the mended tile, she recalls that the colors were red and blue, white and yellow. One of the larger shards, pointing in to the center, was a long triangle. There was perhaps a pattern, reminiscent of the Mediterranean, but she can't visualize it clearly now.
    I suggest, in the midst of our circle of dreamers, that perhaps she'll be able to find the pattern if she chooses players to represent the different colors and shapes in the mended tile.
    She is delighted by this suggestion. She picks red and yellow people, white and blue, pieces of every size and shape. And a smiling, maternal woman to play the big triangle pointing to the center. She wants the actors to spread out on the floor and find how they fit together. We mustn't forget the earth that is showing through the cracks and providing a foundation. The dreamer chooses earth people.
    She claps her hands in delight as the living mosaic forms at the center of our space.
    The woman who is the triangle looks as if she is giving birth.
    We invite the dreamer to step into the center of the living mosaic of herself and see how everything looks and feels from there.
    She can see the whole pattern now. "I was borken and now I am whole. Amd what was broken and is now whole is more beautiful than the tiles that were never cracked."

I am constantly awed by the power of active dreaming to show us where the missing parts of ourselves can be found, and to help us bring them together, and by the power of spontaneous dream theater to bring all of this through, into embodied life, in joy and compassion and celebration.