I wake up in the morning
with vivid, brilliant memories of a dream,
and felt I'd lived through a day -
or days -
in a life that is solely mine.
The year before I became a married woman, on a walk with my mum to somewhere unknown, I was struck by the breathtaking sight of a woman and a man setting up a flower shop under a beautiful tree - one that could only have been imagined in a fairy tale. The tree was glowing, full of light, its leaves swaying softly and twinkling in the breeze.
We were getting closer when a big crowd appeared. We couldn’t get through, so we turned away, and it started raining.
Then I found myself with my mum on a strange vehicle - part train, part Ferris wheel, part staircase. We were holding tightly onto a metal bar to keep from falling out. Other people were with us. My mum did it with ease, while I was frightened, since it was my first time.
We seemed to be travelling downward in this rapidly revolving vehicle, constantly placing one foot in front of the other on steps that would appear and vanish in an instant, all the while clinging to the metal bar.
When we finally touched the ground, I felt relieved. I was then facing a giant glass window. A helicopter had just landed on the other side, and muscular men came rushing in, accompanied by policemen. They were looking for a diamond.
I found myself standing next to a short, big man. I said something to him. He smiled. Again, I felt relieved.
I sensed I had glimpsed something beautiful and worth yearning for - a union, perhaps. The choice would be mine, and the journey would be very, very hard.
In Women Who Run With the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estés tells tales of “handing down the blessing on women’s power of intuition from mother to daughter, from one generation to the next... This great power, intuition, is composed of lightning-fast inner seeing, inner hearing, inner sensing, and inner knowing.”
Eight years on… dressed in a tight skirt and high heels, I was trying to pick apples from a tree at the top of a hill. I knew that afterwards I would have to get to the airport on time, bringing with me all the necessary documents, where my family would be waiting. I felt anxious and stressed, worried about messing things up.
I’ve often had dreams in which I’m late for something important, can’t do a test, or wear the wrong clothes for an occasion. This time, it was different.
A male presence was accompanying me, offering sympathy and advice. The first thing he instructed was that I change into more comfortable clothing. In an instant, I found myself in loose trousers and a shirt.
I arrived at the airport in the end, reunited with my family, and all was well. Strangely, no one seemed to notice the presence of my companion.
I woke up feeling grateful - and more than ever before in my adult life, connected and at peace with myself. I recalled a memorable encounter with a fortune teller, who told me, the first moment we met, that I had the protection of a male spirit.
Was this spirit there? What was it I counted upon?
"When women re-surface from their naïveté, they draw with them and to themselves something unexplored. In this case the now wiser woman draws an internal masculine energy to her aid. In Jungian psychology, this element has been named animus; a partly mortal, partly instinctual, partly cultural element of a woman's psyche that shows up in fairy tales and in dream symbols as her son, husband, stranger, and/or lover - possibly threatening depending on her psychic circumstances of the moment. This psychic figure is particularly valuable because it is invested with qualities which are traditionally bred out of women, aggression being one of the more common. When this opposite-gender nature is healthy, as symbolized by the brothers in "Bluebeard," it loves the woman it inhabits. It is the intra-psychic energy which helps her to accomplish anything she asks. He is the one who has psychic muscle where she may have differing gifts. He will aid and assist her in her bid for consciousness. For many women, this contra-sexual aspect bridges between the worlds of internal thougtht and feeling - the outer world." (Women Who Run with the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estés)
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