Getting my wings out of the left luggage

Omega Institute, Rhinebeck N.Y

"Where is the rest of me?"
    I offered this question to the group at my Omega workshop as the theme for a high-octane meditation, fueled by shamanic drumming, during our first evening session. I then suggested that we put the scene to the night, before going to sleep, to see how our dream producers would respond.
    From the first moment I arrived at the Omega campus, walking in light rain over fallen and falling leaves, I felt my batteries recharging. I was back in the neighborhood where an ancient Native shaman, the mother of the Wolf clan of the Mohawk people, called me in dreams and visions 25 years ago, leading me to change my life and follow the path of a dream teacher.
    Here the trees and the animal spirits are intimate familiars. Hawk speaks to me, Bear comes to heal and protect, the Deer offers the gift of regeneration, White Wolf teaches me to gentle the wolf in man, and carries me to the heart of the Peacemaker.
    As I settled in bed in my cabin before midnight, I repeated the question I had given the group:
    Where is the rest of me?
    I slipped into this dream:

I am at an airport. A friendly agent shows me magical passes. They are simple, and powerful. One makes me think of the raking motion of a bear bringing his paws down, but there is no hint of violence in it. Another pass is a scooping motion.
    I find my way to an area where there is a great pile of left luggage.
    I find a suitcase that belongs to me in the heap, and open it to check the contents. I see fresh white linens inside the bag. Surprised, I unfold the linens and see that they are a pair of huge, shining white wings, like angel's wings. My heart is filled with joy.
    Below the wings, in the body of the suitcase, I see toys and games: a ball and bat, children's books, toy soldiers, art supplies a badminton racket. I am happy that the energy of my boy selves is here too.

I woke fully charged with vital, bounding energy. On my walk to the dining room, my first three observations keyed me to think about another, ancestral, aspect to the question, Where is the rest of me? The mist lay deep over the green campus, and I thought about how, for my Celtic ancestors, the mist was a preferred portal to the Otherworld. In the mist, I now saw a man striding along in a kilt, and felt the Scot in me stirring. In the dining hall, the first food I saw on offer at the buffet was steel-cut oatmeal, a favorite of my Celtic ancestors. I carried it out onto the deck and ate it, with sea salt, as I watched the sun slowly parting the mist.
     This was a perfect cure for the fatigue and temporary soul-loss occasioned by my grueling recent travel experiences, including those described in my recent post, "The Ghost at Chopin Airport." As I rose from my dreams this morning, my inner soundtrack was playing "In the Arms of the Angel".