Tag: Buddhism

Faith Hill, Elephants and Prophetic Dreams

~ soulunfold ~ Leave a comment

 

Last night, I dreamed I was Faith Hill, famed country music star. I had a cap of blonde curls on my head and I just thought I was amazing.

I was asked to speak at a kids’ event in a school. Being the lovely Faith Hill I was, I said yes!

I was in the gymnasium with the teacher and all of these kids. All of a sudden, some IDIOT releases an elephant into the gymnasium. This GD thing is trying to trample me AND THE KIDS.

I went running out of the gymnasium to get help. I’m walking around, trying to convince people to help us, but A) nobody believes me and B) nobody knows who the hell Faith Hill is. I spend most of the time yelling song titles and then referencing my husband, Tim McGraw, who I then also realize I don’t actually know personally.

One of the funniest parts about this dream is I was having some successful prophetic dreams every night this week, right up until this one. I’ve been doing a new brain wave sound meditation exercise with an alpha/theta wave track that I think is affecting my dreams.  This week, I had dreams that warned me of encounters I would have, heightening the emotions and stakes, so that I would know in my waking day how to tread when I encountered these situations.  Both times, I kept a tight rein on myself and played the situation calmly and rationally, when I might have made a mistake if I hadn’t been warned.

In all seriousness, the dreams resulting from this new meditation have been sharper, clearer, more memorable.  Our dreams are the first spiritual experience most of us have.  Your body lets go and your soul is free to commune with its higher self and the guardians from beyond.  If you can begin to harness your dreams, this is the first ticket to opening yourself up spiritually.

Meditation itself is something like a waking dream.  When I do a psychic reading and I really need to dig deep to communicate with someone on the Other Side, I have to go to a place inside where it feels like I am on the cusp of falling asleep.  I think this is what some mediums call a trance, but it doesn’t look crazy.  It just looks like my eyes are closed and I’m being still. I learned how to find that stillness through regular meditation, and sometimes, to be honest, IRREGULAR meditation.  All that matters is that you put your heart and soul into it and do it as much and as well as you can.

THIS dream better not be prophetic, though.  I love elephants, I’d be both literally and figuratively crushed if that happened. The truth is, it probably is prophetic, in a different way than the others.

For me, the elephant typically represents the idea of being a gentle giant, and the spirit of the Hindu deity Ganesh. Ganesh is the remover of obstacles and the bringer of success. He will create a path for you where previously none was possible. Is it any coincidence then that, as I build my business and my blog, I have this dream about being a famous woman who nobody recognizes, being chased by the God of success, scattering children in his wake?  It’s almost laughable how dead on this seemingly ridiculous dream is. I am running away from my own success, assuming I already know what I’m doing. I apparently also have some fears that success at what I want to do will crush me, so I better learn how to harness it. And apparently my subconscious is also pissed that i am not famous yet. What can I tell you, it’s not my rational mind watching this movie, it’s my lizard brain!

In my heart, I am already doing what many well-known mediums and spiritual figures claim to do (some are authentic, from what I can ascertain, many are not). I am living a genuine spiritual life, warts and all, and reaching out to connect with others on my path. I want to bring the messages I have learned from the Other Side to other humans here who want to know them. More importantly, I want to give others this gift of knowing their spiritual selves, knowing their guardians, coming into contact with life beyond organic life.

Once upon a time in the past, I was afraid I wasn’t going to make it any further in life. I was depressed to a point of exhaustion and didn’t want to keep trying. All of that shifted and changed, an inch at a time. I started by saying SCREW THIS SHIT and reading everything I could get my hands on about spirituality (reading has always been my savior, my happy place, my comfort zone). Ultimately, a friend posted an article from the New Yorker (to this day, she doesn’t know what impact she had, I’ve never told her) titled Jumpers about people who had leaped from the Golden Gate Bridge.  One man, named Ken Baldwin, survived, and his tale changed my life.

From Jumpers:

“I wanted to disappear,” he said. “So the Golden Gate was the spot. I’d heard that the water just sweeps you under.” On the bridge, Baldwin counted to ten and stayed frozen. He counted to ten again, then vaulted over. “I still see my hands coming off the railing,” he said. As he crossed the chord in flight, Baldwin recalls, “I instantly realized that everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable—except for having just jumped.”

As I write this, a song by the Avett Brothers titled “Swept Away” plays, and tears run down my cheeks:

Well you send my life a whirling
Darling when you’re twirling
On the floor
Who cares about tomorrow?
What more is tomorrow?
Than another day.

When you swept me away

I see the end of the rainbow
But what more is a rainbow
Than colors out of reach
If you come down to my window
And I climb out my window
Then we’ll get out of reach

Then you swept me away
Yeah you swept me away

You said with such honest feeling
But what’d you really mean
When you said that I’m your man
Well how my darling can it be
When you have never seen me
And you never will again

That you swept me away
Yeah you swept me away

Life is ever changing but I will always
find a constant and comfort in your love
With your heart my soul is bound
And as we dance I know that heaven can be found

Well you send my life a whirling
Darling when you’re twirling
On the floor
Who cares about tomorrow?
What more is tomorrow?
Than another day.

When you swept me away
Yeah you swept me away
Yeah you swept me away

The energy of Ganesh is the sweeping energy of change. He will move through a path and change it utterly for you. He is a natural force to be reckoned with, and the one thing he promises is utter transformation.

Ken Baldwin may have been swept away for a bit, but he survived the jump. As he danced over that chord and spun through the air, he suddenly knew in an instant how heaven could be found. Heaven is peace. Heaven is certainty. Heaven is hope. Heaven is faith in the face of change.

In essence, the old Ken Baldwin was swept away that day and a new one took his place. I don’t know where he is today or what happened to him since 2003, but in my heart, he took that plunge for me and for so many others, by telling that story of his to that reporter (Tad Friend, I don’t know you, but thank you). I hope some day I can talk to a room full of people looking for hope and infuse them with this same feeling. How powerful is that: to know that on his way out, he saw the solutions for all of his problems in a flash, and they were all fixable.

My old self was swept away, too, and she’s slowly being replaced by someone more resilient and, I think, wiser. I’d like to grow more gentle and joyful, but I am grateful to accept this new woman as my identity.  She knows more than she says, and she’s wild and tougher than she used to be.  I may have a new self-esteem burgeoning of my own design, but I also am working to stay humble. Lord knows I’ve humbled myself enough to stay real.

“Swept Away” was followed by “Make You Feel My Love.”  I hear you, Spirit.  I think many people, my former self included, don’t realize that the guardians from beyond are right there waiting for us to notice. They want to drive us forward in our quests. They want to make us happy and help us. Yes, we have a contract with our higher selves to DO IT OURSELVES, this is true, but not without help. Trust me, they can make you happy, make your dreams come true, and they would go to the ends of the Earth for you. It just takes some work.

I hear the winds of change coming back around for me, and for once, I think I’m actually prepared to ride them and not just be swept away. As Spirit tells me here, the storms raging down the highway of regret are bringing the winds of change. I ain’t seen nothing like this yet, and I’m ready to further embrace Heavenly love.

The storms are raging on the rolling sea
And on the highway of regret.
The winds of change are blowing wild and free,
You ain’t seen nothing like me yet.

I could make you happy, make your dreams come true.
Nothing that I wouldn’t do.
Go to the ends of the Earth for you,
To make you feel my love.

Thank you for the dream, Ganesh, and for the laughs. Thank you for the change and for the love. I will go to the ends of the Earth for you and the rest of Heaven, too.

In love and light,

Erica

Life: Cubed

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Life: Cubed

In my last post, I discussed the concept of homeostasis and began to touch on the search for homeostasis during our journeys here on Earth. Psychologists use the term “homeostasis” to refer to “a state of psychological equilibrium obtained when tension or a drive has been reduced or eliminated.” Many of the spiritual-minded who read this column will hear the echoes of Buddha in this definition, as Buddha posits in his teachings that desire is at the root of all suffering. To achieve psychological homeostasis, one must release the tension and the drive to succeed—one must release expectations. Similarly, to achieve spiritual homeostasis, one must release desire, which is a product of fantasies, expectations, and living in the future.

Let us look at life today like a puzzle—like a big Rubik’s cube. All of the facets of your life, all the multicolored squares of your existence, have the potential at every moment to line up as if by magic, but most of the time, you have to experiment with many, many permutations, many different scenarios, before you can convince those multicolored squares to fall in line perfectly. According to http://ruwix.com/, there are approximately 43 quintillion permutations in a Rubik’s cube, meaning if we had as many 6 centimeter-large Rubik’s Cubes as there are permutations, we could cover the surface of the Earth 275 times.

There are 43 quintillion possibilities in a Rubik’s cube—and it seems like a daunting task when you first approach it, if you have no strategy. However, if you try hard enough and for long enough, you will solve it. Anything with hands or tools to shift the planes of the cube could eventually solve it. The squares will line up and fall into place with a click just like you want them to. Unfortunately, first you need to get many sides of the cube incorrect while you get other sides right, all while you’re trying to figure out what makes the cube work . That is a perfect microcosm for life—you’re seeking balance the entire time you are here.

A Rubik’s cube with each side a consistent color is in homeostasis—but it is also a singularity, a rare occurrence, one in 43 quintillion. More often than not, the Rubik’s cube exists in a state of flux where each row of tiles is zinging by the other rows as you seek that perfect balance. To find balance is rare, although we put this premium on balance like it should be our default. No, our default is chaos. We are human. We were created to screw up. That’s what we do best. Our karma is achieved in how we recover from those screw-ups. Our destiny is defined by how we bounce back from the imbalances, from the misaligned events. When we do not screw up, we should reward ourselves for it, yes, but when we do screw up, we should recognize it for what it is. Life. The natural order of things. This is where compassion is born. Compassion is born of knowing that we are more chaos than we are order and that “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” Balance is to be sought after, yes, and treasured, but that does not mean you cannot find peace in imbalance or accept imbalance in others. Knowing that we are all always only a step away from the inevitable breakdown, the fated unraveling, gives you a sense of companionship with the rest of the human race.

As humans, we often obsessively seek order. Who has not known someone with a disorder that causes them to check the door lock 14 times before leaving, or someone who controlled their caloric intake to a dangerous degree, or someone who cleans compulsively to the detriment of health and normalcy? Even in order we find chaos, when we become too orderly and it rules our lives, creating chaos outside the boundaries of the order we have instilled. The obsessive search for order is a search for a singularity that may always elude you.

Similarly, in chaos, we can find order. In the unraveling of a life can come helplessness, a removal of agency, that allows a person to throw up his or her hands and start fresh. There is no place like rock bottom to give someone a new beginning, a chance to do it all from scratch. Even when we fall apart, and it seems like all is lost, and a life is lost, nature reasserts her order, breaks our bodies down and uses our molecules to fuel something new, and that energy lives again.

True spiritual homeostasis, true spiritual balance, is about trial and error. The boy who inspired this column is a stranger to me—he was rolling through 4 Rubik’s cubes in varying color schemes like they were easy, and I was fascinated by his genius. Unless you’re a genius at the Rubik’s cube of life, then you need to accept that having a strategy and then accepting the reality and consequence of trial and error are the only path to authentic peace and balance in this life.

Some part of each one of us will always be out of balance—the lines of our Rubik’s cube rarely all line up simultaneously. It is more likely that you will have most of the colors of each side showing the way they should, with a few stray lines still poking through. While we seek the peaceful balance we all long for, what if along the way we also chose to accept each version of ourselves that we twist into existence? Every click of the cube brings a new you–and there will be many permutations of the cube in your lifetime.

What if you accepted each permutation as perfect, as part of your journey toward balance?

What if you accepted you, just as you are, while also allowing for new permutations of you to be born with every twist of your story?

In love and light—Erica.