and for a Neptunian weekend...

"confirmation is always available, if you're looking for it" (Paracelcus)

For some reason I feel as though I should be diarising like a voyager on a doomed mission - a kind of 'ship's log'; day 31, we're running out of food. The work of keeping the engine running is keeping me from going insane but I'm so tired, even in my dreams I lie down and sleep. I don't know how much longer I can go on. If anyone finds this please tell my children I love them, that I tried....

Yeah OK, I'm overdramatising things a bit. Everything's alright. I look around me now and can see plenty to feel happy about. The house is gorgeous and scrubbed clean; a minimalist paradise (all the clutter is boxed up in the garage, which looks anything but minimalist). With the exertions - scrubbing, shifting around and boxing-up - I've toned up somewhat, so I'm feeling simplified physically too. Not to mention the 'make over' cost not a cent, so my financial fitness is increasing, as well as having avoided that 'decorated all in one day' look that so many professionally styled homes have. I've lived my axiom 'I have everything I need' to the highest this week, and proved my own resourcefulness. Yep, its pretty good.

So what if the house is officially 'on the market'? In the meantime we live in it, we're here.

Psyche, of course, has something to say about it all. In contrast to my dreams last weekend, which wanted me to wake up, snap out of it, check out of denial; last night's nocturnal images had me lying down under a table where I'd been preparing a meal with the Rigger, unable to stay awake any longer. 'Morning sickness'; I'm pregnant and need to rest. It occurs to me, in daylight, that its more like mourning sickness that points me to the floor, toward less emphasis on being on top of things. Maybe take a time out... I guess I'll dwell on it a while - things aren't always what they seem.

James Hillman writes that the soul makes intelligent statements to our conscious selves all the time. We only have to pay attention to what's being shown and then resist the urge to substitute images for their literal counterparts. What I've found, apart from that the resistance he suggests is easier said than done, is that if I allow it, the message of a dream, image or event really will be understood.

I've written about this before, anyway, so this is revision.

I don't think I can rest yet - there's a lot to be done. There are things that've been calling me - finishing up my series of articles on parenting with soul, for one. I have more to say about soul mates, about dreams and cledons and divination in general, and I've a book to write. Birds land on my back fence, asking to be part of it all - to be drawn into the scene.

The cosmic climate is strange and brilliant and more than ordinarily tricky, just the way I like it. Expect the unexpected...and dream on...

celebrating 5000 readers

For the duration of the triple conjunction of the Sun, Venus and Mercury (that is, this weekend) I'm offering a dream analysis to any of my readers who has had a dream in the past week that needs a bit of clarifying.

All readings are private, free of charge, and remain the property of the dreamer.

Simply email me with a short, one paragraph summary of your dream, including the overall feel (that is, how the dream made you feel) of the scene, and I'll email you back my thoughts.

... and Thanks, to all of you who have continued to read each week, who've passed on the link to my blog, who've sent other reader's my way, who've contributed on the comments stream and to those of you who read and move on. I appreciate you all.

love, Dan

five ways to live soulfully

'because i can' all rights reserved d sinclair '08

Why are we always striving for improvement - to fix things about ourselves and our lives? Imagine what it would be like to fully accept the way things are with your self and your life, whatever your current state of affairs.

Here are five simple practices that are about soulful living - that is, being at peace with the present and with yourself.

1. Give yourself more fully to the little things that you do everyday - the dishes, making the bed, cooking meals; your daily tasks - even if you can't stand doing them anymore. Especially if you're tired of doing them. Do these things without thinking, without struggle and with care - paying attention to the doing and not the story of needing to do them. Practice it, one thing at a time.

This is your life and everything in it is important because each part is part of you.

2. Forgive yourself for something. Pay attention to that which you find hard to accept about yourself - if you want thin thighs, but you continue to have the thighs you have - forgive yourself for that; if you believe you should be kinder but find yourself sniping anyway, give yourself a break. Do this as often as you can.

Its OK to be who you are, exactly as you are.

3. Notice what's in your life. Look around where you are right now - take it all in. You created this scene, these people, things, experiences. Breathe it in and be grateful. See that your choices have brought you here and let go of ideas of 'good' or 'bad' about those choices. Things are as they are, no more and no less - as they should be.

However things are, you can change all of it if you want to, one choice at a time. But you don't have to.

4. Listen to yourself. Really listen to the way you speak - to others, about yourself, about others, about everything. Listen to your thoughts too. Your words are telling. What are you saying? All the answers you could ever need are coming out of your own mouth.

Your words are your witness. Love them or be silent.


5. Give yourself what you want from others. Whatever it is you think anyone else can give you, and won't, give to yourself. Allow yourself to have all the pleasure and kindness you desire.

You want what you want, so have it. Go all the way with it and watch what happens.

bibliomancy, mischief and the anatomy of a dream

"Hermes...is not the source of light, as the sun is, but rather the source of this source. He also begot the moon-like and dark Pan. His world originates before sunrise, and as the source of his world he can only be the one who himself allows a source of illumination to originate in the outpouring of souls...

...in the prehistoric depths of the life-source, light and its mirror are begotten simultaneously; there as great Greek philosophers also knew, the source of light and the source of soul are one and the same..." (Kerenyi, Hermes p144)

There's a lot to be learned from venturing forth into the blogger-sphere. One Can Not, for example, post comments about misfortunes to one's cat on the blog of a cat lover - even with the most light-hearted intentions.

Really.

No seriously, I'm trying to lighten up, and step out from under my rock at last. And the story about my two cats called Arkie is funny, and has a happy ending. Well, apart from the bit where I accidentally killed the first cat, and reversed over the second one also completely by accident.

So, OK I'm not good with pets - this is something I'm working through.


Meanwhile I'm getting the picture that my style isn't going to have a 'typical' audience, and that being a virtual stranger just won't do.

And having said that, I see how things here could be less cryptic - and so (da da daah - *cough*) I set about explaining myself.

As far as bibliomancy goes I tend not to 'interpret' but rather to 'analogise'.

It is a form of divination and there's the temptation to rant on about possible manifestations of, say, the current transit of Mercury through Aquarius and occurrences like sudden (a trait of all things Aquarian) illuminations (Mercury ruling the mind) that come from venturing forth into community (also an Aquarian thing).

Or the odd little synchronicity involving technology (double ditto). The urge to express the soul's eccentricities; perhaps play a few tricks, Hermes-like.

But no, I prefer the moonlight and mystery and the possibility a passage points to. The act of defining is too orderly and interpretation is, to my mind, heroic - solar. I'm blinded by the light.

So I mostly ignore the quote I'm lead (oops I mean led) to and write my lived experience, knowing that there's a correlation and that all will be revealed - like undoing an origami crane. (There! that's how it started - that's how it became!).

If you interpret a dream, which is not far removed from divination, its intelligence is in danger of disolving - of being melted down and remade by daylight meaning and definition. That horse, no longer a horse but a sex-act; the snake a phallus - every character a stand-in for something else.

Too literal! A dream's lunar, night-world images - frightening, arousing and confusing - are the life lived by the deep unconscious mind.

A deeper, darker approach to a dream or a mystery is called for.

So lamp in hand we can ask - what does this image, this scene, this passage show me? What does it want?

Let it come to you.

Watch, wait - allow - and exactly what you need to know will turn up.

Try it. Take a dream or the above 'bibliomancy' and instead of penetrating it, let understanding surface. Leave 'symbols' out of it and get in touch with the nature of each image. A horse is still a horse - and its horse-ness. 'The source of light' is what it is - and its light-ness, its origin and its destination.

Yes, in the spirit of 'lightening up' - I'm willing to see things differently - if you have a dream you are yet to understand, perhaps this is exactly the bit of mischief you've needed to show up - maybe I can shine something on it after all - let me know, I'm all yours.