Monday morning. Moonday, the day of the moon, is a time to welcome a new dream – a new story, born from the realm of highest and deepest awareness of the reality of Being. Today’s dream was a great opportunity to practice my theory on nightmares.
I was in a hotel room in Asia, with a man who was head of the spiritual center I attended about 10 years ago. He embodied in many ways aspects of all the spiritual teachers I’ve ever had, and spoke to me this time from a Tao-like perspective:
“In all things, seek the lowest point of being.”
I then heard a group of ladies approach the hotel room and the saintly man nodded. I opened the door as they knocked then stepped aside as these three uniformed attendants entered the hotel room. My teacher stepped forward and welcomed them. On hearing their intent to clean the place, he offered to help, which made them laugh. Despite their resistance, he insisted.
I left the hotel room, not prepared to insert myself in any kind of “low” way onto other people. It seemed an imposition on them, and I took a walk with a troubled heart.
The dream shifted and I found myself on a beach gilded in pink and purple rays of the promise of sunrise. It was one of the most serene and vivid displays of visceral color ever experienced in dream-time. The beach I stood on was soft, warm to my feet, and sandy beige. Behind me was a path leading up a mountain. To my right the sand followed the foot of the mountain. The ocean water in front of me was relatively calm and the surf that did come in was only about a couple feet high. I must have been in some kind of inlet or bay, because I could see land very near on the other side of the ocean, which also rose to a mountain, and the sandy beach followed its base inland as well. Eventually both beaches gave way to the river that carved this mountain in half on its way to meet the sea.
To my left, however, was a different kind of water altogether. It was much calmer, somehow not subject to the incoming waves or outgoing river – or so it seemed to me at the time. It was a wide estuary, which seemed relatively shallow, but it was the water’s calmness that drew me in most, free from the tumultuous meeting of river and sea. I wanted to explore its rocky beaches and tide pools.
I looked around again, taking in the amazing display of colors and sounds and smells. I looked right, down the beach, and noticed a couple had headed off that way on a walk. At least I wasn’t alone. That was comforting. I looked down and saw an old abandoned surfboard. It was only long enough to support my body if I lifted my ankles into the air. About to paddle it out into the calm bay, not the wavy river, I noticed that its nose had been grinded off and the styrofoam innards were exposed. They would get completely soaked and eventually sink the board. “Oh well,” I thought naively, “At least it would help me see what’s in the bay a little ways.”
I looked again at the estuary. It was 80 feet across to the jetty-like formations that protected it from the sea, but it was hundreds of yards long. The point of land that I stood on must have looked like some kind of arrowhead from a birds-eye view, an arrowhead pointing diagonally outward to the wide-open ocean.
Not able to help myself anymore, I set the surfboard on the beach on the calm side of the estuary. It floated, and would probably hold me up for a few minutes to get a look around. With my feet still on the beach, I laid on the board. It was a bit wobbly, but it would give me a look. Letting go of land, I paddled into the water, and saw my first prize. The large rocks I passed on my left gave way to an inlet and I saw some fish scurry away from the large predator that I must have represented. I looked more closely at them as I followed and saw they were 3 puffer-fish, spotted brown atop a pink glowing set of rocks a foot underneath them. They scurried farther into the inlet and just then my board wobbled again, enough to make me fall in the water, now about 8 feet deep. I noticed pink coral atop the pink rocks while I was underwater. This place was so surreal.
As I regained my position, I noticed that this water was only free from waves on the surface, but underneath, the water was churning with an undertow current that carried me down the shore and there was seemingly nothing I could do about it. Now steadily on top of my rapidly sinking surfboard, the side current carried me to the next rock formation 20 yards down shore. The rock pile was about 20 feet tall and 40 feet across, with water on both sides as it formed the inlet around it.
Now the dream was steadily taking a nightmarish quality. As the current carried me in front of the rock pile, I noticed that some parts of this rock pile looked less and less like rocks. I was passing what looked to be a reptilian skin, shiny, brown and thicker around in diameter than my whole body. To boot, it was coiled around the south side of this rock, facing the rising sun in a repeating infinity symbol at least 3 or 4 times (figure-8’s) and each coil was longer than 40 feet long. I started to hold my breath and “sneak” past, but when I reached the giant head of the snake, it’s detection of me was no longer just curiosity.
As it dropped its head down towards the water, I could feel its thoughts sizing me up. “What is your name?” Was the only thing I could stammer out in reply. I heard the name, “Ka’a,” then he dropped his giant head down to the bottom of the 8 foot water to come back up underneath me at my feet. The master’s words “Always seek the lowest point of being,” came ironically to mind as the snake obviously employed this wisdom to reach his prey easily without a fight. He was “underneath me” rather than the other way around.
I forced myself to wake up. It was 4:45 a.m. Good. Plenty of time to work. Please see my article on nightmares to understand the premise for my work.
I then spent the next hour going back to sleep and re-living the snake over and over again, working out infinite myriads of outcomes for the dream. Turns out the snake’s domain was fully and completely the spirit embodying every aspect of the place, from the river, to the shape of the land, and even the “couple” on the beach who were put there by him as part of the lure. They were more like cardboard silhouettes with his consciousness rather than human beings.
Here is my rough drawing of the place:
It is difficult to see the details in this but enough to get the jist. From land it looks like an arrowhead. From the ocean it looks like a snake with an open mouth. The infinity symbol in the middle of the estuary is Ka’a.
My main question to Ka’a in reliving the dream over and over was, “What do you want?” When I let him, he didn’t seem very interested in actually eating me. He literally wanted to be below me. That was the main theme that came “up” over and over again. He just wanted to be below me. I finally let him carry me and a cobra-like seat sprang up at the midpoint of his ‘shoulders’ behind the neck for me ride comfortably in.
Yes. The serpent Ka’a could fly as well. Perhaps that is why the ancient Mayan’s called him “feathered,” but he had no wings, just energy. I thanked Ka’a for “imposing” himself and seeking the lowest point in relation to me. Finally I asked how I could seek the lowest point in relation to him. He took me up to a place in his sky domain that I drew as “sky cliffs,” he placed me upon the cliffs then showed me how he rubs his belly with them, much like a bear scratching himself on the bark of a tree. Finally after showing me on the rocks, he did it on me, rubbing his belly on me as part of the landscape. I could feel every pearly white segment of reptilian belly as it passed over me, and it was amazing to experience his body from this perspective. I could also perceive how it benefited him.
Ka’a still wasn’t done with me for some reason. He was trying to get me to “see” for him. One of the images I saw was of a standing cobra statue with ruby gems for eyes. He was blind for the most part and could only sense the world with infrared and with smell. Perhaps that is why the whole place looked pink and purple to me. He was trying to figure out a way that we could either unite or temporarily swap our senses or the way we perceived the world. I couldn’t smell through my tongue, nor see the heat around me when I closed my eyes, and when I opened my eyes he couldn’t see through them either. The best that he could do was to let me upon him and ride, feeling my thoughts and experiencing the world through my eyes in this way.