Milfoil said:
I'm glad you are healing enough to say "No", as you say, it is a pivotal moment when we can turn such a longstanding intrusion around.
Yes, it was wonderfully freeing! Even in 2005 I don't think I could have dreamt along those lines without waking up as from a nightmare. In the last few months I had several dreams in which the abuse was re-enacted. It is because I was able to go through these dreams with acceptance and not guilt that I at last came to this point. I can thank another dear friend from this community for her advice on how to deal with these disturbing dreams, it was most successful. It is likely also that from the sexual healing involved in saying "No" that I was then ready to sleep with Lady Death, that I was assured enough in my own sexual identity that I was able to surrender to her.
Milfoil said:
Can I ask you why you call the bow a begging bowl? I've never heard them called that before.
Yes, I too wondered why I wrote it that way - I do try to recount my dreams exactly the way the words come to me. Usually these are called singing bowls, and this is the exact model
here, although I actually got mine from
Mid East Mfg.
I first encountered one of these bowls at Cynthia Bourgeault's Vancouver Island Wisdom School in 2005. Cynthia used one to begin and end our times of centering meditation. She said that originally musical bowls like these were used by Buddhist monks as both a rice bowl and begging bowl. Of course it is unlikely that one would beg with a bowl as ornate as this one, or eat out of it for that matter. This theme of the Buddhist begging bowl may relate to the one significant dream I have left to post from these missing few weeks.
Milfoil said:
The conch and bowl look beautiful btw.
I seem to be willing to fill my room more and more with beauty as much for its own sake as for any possible function, and that is very pleasing! Currently it is filled with the boxes salvaged from the kids stuff - but not for long.
Milfoil said:
Did you 'feel' different when you played at the Christmas recital?
Other than the playing of the conch horn I felt pretty much myself. In other words, when I sang my solo, "Sweet Little Jesus Boy", I was pleased that it was almost as good as at the last rehearsal, but I was in what would be a more typical artistic trance - it was still me, although a deeper and more essential me. This artistic trance can be extremely ecstatic and holistically healing, and it is a regular part of bodhrán playing for me.
But the trance during the playing of the conch horn was much deeper, and I think it was best described as a possession. The egoic self was completely gone during that period, but yet the control was perfect. This is different from regular performance, in which the right brain assuredly predominates, and the left brain is simply there to make the occasional executive decision (rather like the process of driving a car).
I suppose one could consider that the conch horn playing came from a place of
unitive consciousness, and I guess I cannot rule that out. But my instinct is that archetypal forces were at work, or to restate this in religious terms that the goddess herself was channeling through me. In conservative Christianity this could be seen as demonic possession.
As far as I can remember, I may have only experienced this archetypal possession once previously, and that was during the drumming at the Medicine Wheel weekend at the beginning of December. In this case one could suggest that the archetype at work was the Sky Father: the channeling of Reiki crown energy, or "Holy Spirit". Of course this possession would be more acceptable in conventional Christian terms.
I do not judge one possession as better or worse than the other. Both are extremely powerful and potentially dangerous. But I seem to have a distinct lack of concern for either, just an intrigued curiosity. So I suspect that this is appropriate to the current stage of my journey.