Night terrors and fertile soil

The Morrigan delivered some heavy hitting dream transmissions this morning. “Honor the Divine Mother in ALL her manifestations... Let the rage catalyze your greatest work-- Service as Healing.” Perhaps the most fierce and necessary transmission was the return of the blade.

Starting around the age of thirteen, my nightly dreams became saturated with brutal attacks on my person, sometimes by gun, but more frequently by blade and penetrating forces being applied relentlessly to my solar plexus and womb space. I felt everything and begged for reprieve that never came.

Through so many stabbings and lost lives, I eventually devised ways to resist and fight to sustain my life. I developed ways of bargaining that could distract my attackers from the task at hand. And when that was not successful, I cultured techniques that could keep the blade from penetrating too deep.

The “night terrors” began fading about two years after they commenced, once I started feeling more empowered in my waking life.

Enjoying the benefit of hindsight and the passage of time that tempers trauma, I consider these nocturnal trials an initiation and conduit for both my empowerment and re-membrance of self. If nothing else, I’m convinced I’ve developed the skills necessary to expedite exsanguination and generate one hell of an attention-grabbing horror scene.

These painful encounters eventually ceased, remaining absent from my dream space for long stretches of time. But they tend to return at times of high stress and when I feel the victim consciousness creeping in and demanding my attention. Having endured a real life disemboweling via an unmedicated emergency cesarean this past August, I am moved to recognize the night terrors of my youth a kind of useful foreshadowing for future events. Strapped to the operation table, amidst the throws of incomprehensible pain, I never lost consciousness or went into shock. The sensation of having my womb mercilessly ravaged was a familiar one, and I believe this acquaintance with agony is what saved my life.

This morning’s dream was not an overly distressing one, despite being attacked by a man wielding a butcher’s knife and threatening rape. I was superficially stabbed in my armpit and may have suffered other defensive wounds on the hands and forearms, but that man lay dead as a doornail and white as a bed sheet at the conclusion of “his assault.” I am sitting here with blood in vein, typing away and burning Palo Santo.

The majority of my dream took place before the attack and was packed with pure transmissions, offering guidance and revelation. Would I have been content with just those messages, avoiding the return of the blade? Sure, but don’t think the attack or its position at the end of the dream was random at all. I am thankful for the return of this ghost. Its emergence at the very end of a relatively passive, but powerful dream reminds me that there are very real energies that wish to thwart us from our path of reclamation and re-membrance of self.

These entities are not always outside of us, as in the form of a physical attacker or opponent. They can appear a myriad of ways internally, including self-doubt, relentless self-criticism, envy and resentment toward the light expressed in another. The fear these restrictive energies attempt to instill can pose a major distraction to our growth, having us switching our gears from nurturing openness and expansivity to scrambling to raise stalwart defenses in preparation for battle. I read recently that the human body cannot physiologically be in a state of growth and defense simultaneously. It’s one or the other. And the sneaking ego, with all its convincing illusions, knows this fact well.

As we make headway on our path and begin manifesting our visions into this physical realm, we will undoubtedly spark the attention of those who support us and those who are threatened by our forward movement. Understanding this as truth, we must strengthen our commitment to open more to receive the guidance of our higher selves. We must resist the temptation to dismantle temples that nurture our growth to procure building materials from which lifeless walls of defense can be erected. When hands become infused and trembling with fear, their creations will bear the same vibration. What kind of energy do you want to infuse into your creations?

I resolve to move from a place of reflection, not a place of reactivity and fear. Whether it’s a ghost with a blade or the promise of certain physical disintegration, these scare tactics cannot touch our true essence. Illusions of impending catastrophe will try to convince us to abandon the sowing of seeds. They will urge us to remove our hands from fertile soil and trample precious new life as we run to erect unnecessary defenses. We have the capacity to dismiss the illusion of urgency. We can reject the fear and invite these lower vibrations to help us turn the soil and water our seedlings. If they refuse and press harder, compromising the sanctity of our garden space, I hear blood really enriches soil quality.