In the dark I know my way from bedroom to kitchen.  Under the trees I make my slow nighttime way through the woods behind the house.  I know where the trees are, last year’s fallen branches, the muddy hill.  Vines wrap around my boot, but I recognize the tug and free my foot.   

Or, if I travel to Tulum in Mexico, the plane will stop at the same airports as before.  I can feel the soft water, the taste of limes.  These are familiar and loved places.  They have the measure of my step.  

I suppose from the outside it might appear that there is nothing new in my nights and days, but that isn’t true.  I top a familiar rise and gasp at what is revealed.  In a gathering of people I love is a subtle and profound shift that brings tears.  The salmon swimming upstream to lay their eggs and die is so profound I am dizzy. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I am glad I crossed the Nullarbor Plain before it was paved.  The journey up a vine draped river in a small boat that required constant bailing is sweet memory.  Crossing Mexico paying whichever group of men stopped the bus in the middle of nowhere – that memory makes me smile, too.  I have sympathy for my mistakes and admiration for my courage. 

The point is that I no longer need novelty or living on the edge to be full.  Or go deep.  Or get so entranced and engaged I can barely hang onto the bit of earth beneath my feet.  In fact, there is something almost psychedelic about the familiar at this depth.   

Yes, this is a matter of age and good fortune.  But I understand what I didn’t when I was young.  I know why old people sit silent at dusk in their houses.  We are waiting to see who comes, or what revelation arrives.  We walk in the dark to provide a canvas for conversation. 

To find my consciousness attached to this body, this person who has my name, blows me away.  I could just as easily be in the Virgo Cluster, or one of the spirits at the center of the Milky Way, the dove on the rail of the porch, sunlight though green trees.   

But I am made this, placed here.  It is just that "this" and "here" aren't what they once were.  

For a long time the pulse I inhabit is steady.  It sustains me, then, as if on the in-drawn breath, it retreats.  I look for it, wonder what is amiss.  I try to hear the changed rhythm, the tempo.  I am bereft and confused.  I remember being here.  I know there is a solution, a remedy, but I forget what it is. 

I go to the mother tree in the forest and sit in her shelter, remind myself that she is eternal, always here.  Among the trees is a painted face.  The marks are different than they were, the song a bit changed, but I recognize her anyway.  I wait.  She is reaching toward me, just as I am for her.  
 What I need is already here.  It is on the porch, in the mail, or the next dream.  When it arrives, I will laugh at how obvious all this is, how close the answer.  

Or if it is winter’s ceremonial season, I take my tired and wounded feelings to the House instead of the tree.  When I enter and hear the drums something will fall away, something will come.  Yes, sadness still has its place about who is gone, but my world will become bigger than grief, deeper than confusion.  I will travel the stars and ride dark winds.  

Or, to follow a recent dream’s imagery, I will arrive at a spirit-colored river.  A portal opens and I am relieved of my smallness.  I am brave again, climb into winter’s spiritual canoe to ride the season. 

On the way home maybe the tree will show her face.  Maybe that big wolf with fiery eyes will come.  Wouldn’t it be sweet if an Old One made another appearance?  But I know that it won’t really matter if these spirits are visible or not. 

It won’t matter because, like them, I will be wild again.  I will no longer be attached to my problematic personality, will see beyond my own death.   Like these creatures, I appear in the body, then, like them, I disappear. 

I will have found sacred ground, my sacred self, a bigger rhythm than the one I so reluctantly left.  My in-drawn breath released in holy song pleases the tides, the stars, the Old One just outside the reach of light.

Yes, I am writing about the same theme.  Stay with me.  The Dream Maker seems determined that I get this right. 

We are born holy, in the knowledge that we are adored, perfect.  Into this joy comes the reality of family and culture, the reality of sharp corners and hard surfaces.  Parents – even good ones – reshape our perfection to save us from accidents, to save themselves from what they don’t want to know.  We adapt, and the injured child results, the victim identity.  Sadness finds its way into Eden, confusion and uncertainty.  Defensiveness.  

The life’s journey is to find again the holy child, what she was about, her gifts, the intention in her making, to find our love of her.  But there is a problem – several really – the felt presence of the divine mother is not on board, nor the divine father.  Those powerful entities that might assist me to cure patterns of internalized self-criticism cannot live in the house of self-negation.  The sacred has to decamp the moment the victim  child takes over the scene.  

I don’t mean to say we shouldn’t recognize the wrongs we’ve suffered, or that we should falsely smooth over bad things with platitudes.  I do mean that wholeness is in the territory of non-defensive knowing that the universe loves us with the adoration of most new parents.  Loves us with uncensored delight.  This is the model to apply to ourselves.  If I can find this in myself for myself, the true and holy parents have arrived. 

We know this, of course, and try to find stable ground inside our psyches, but often we apply the principles of love to other people and not to ourselves.  We work on our wounds, but this is not enough - perhaps a first step, but only that.  

In other words, there  has to come an end to examining our minds and hearts as if at our core there is an unlovely secret.  To know our holiness again, we must move away from internal doubt and anxiety about who we are.  No, this doesn’t make us sociopaths – it makes us whole.  It doesn’t make us impulsive because in the mix is a knowing spirit – not always rational, but knowing. 

I wonder if this territory is the promise land, the holy space each of us must find.  When I am in it, when I manage to reside in the love of who creation made me to be, toughness falls away, cynicism.  There are no battles to fight.  Instead I am wise, filled with love, and sometimes with amusement at my predictable personality.  

So why doesn’t the holy mother chastise me when I am mean to myself?  She does.  In bad dreams and foul moods, she tells me to stop.  What she doesn’t always remember is that at times I have forgotten her language.

It seems to me that everything tries to lead me to the precious child I am, the wisdom of my heart, the presence of soul.  There seems to be something about this dimension we share that needs me to do this work of remembering.  To claim the holiness sent here with me.  To believe that this is who I am.