I mentioned recently that I had a dream where I was at a party and saw
a sloth walking around in a diaper, smoking a cig. That image stuck with me for
a few days. Sloths are weird creatures; they’re oddly out of proportion, and
sssssslow and deliberate in their movements. They’re a combination of profoundly
evil and sweet. At the same time. This
kind of strange might not have the same effect on others but it freaked me out.
In my dream, other people at the party were like Hey, there’s Sloth, what’s he
doing here? That question was never answered because right after he turned his
head ssssssslowly to look at me, I woke up.
Thank God.
But still, as the days passed, I couldn’t shake the image.
Even though I know and believe that things can come to us in dreams that we may
not be able to articulate in waking life, I’ve never really studied my own,
except as sort of symbolic movies about things that have already happened. I’ve
never thought of using them as a sort of map to figure things out and move
forward.
I asked my Mom, who has been to a few workshops about
dreaming and the meaning of dreams, what she thought it meant. She suggested
that I sit in a quiet place, where I wouldn’t be distracted, and talk to this
freak and ask him what the hell is going on (but in a loving and kind and
non-judgmental way).
So I did.
And yeah, the freak was me, (I knew that, come on) but what
he said made enough sense that it made me cry (in a good way), and though I’m
not going to tell you what he said (have your own goddam Sloth tell you), I was
surprised at the way the response just dropped out, really, without my being
aware of what was coming. I felt the way the Evil Queen must have felt when she asked the mirror who was the fairest of all. I took myself by surprise. How often does that happen?
And I realized that this can work with other quandaries or roadblocks: sit quietly and ask the sloth in a diaper, or the old man in a dress, or the baby/acrobat, or yourself, the answer will come.
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