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Dream Interpretation
The following are my opinion based on thirty years of active dreaming:
1. Dreams are best interpreted by the dreamer. To me, dreams are a message or code from the soul or superconscious mind to the conscious awareness of ego or self operating in relationship to a perceived world. The symbols and storyline are chosen by the superconscious precisely based on what will trigger the semi-conscious emotions, memories, issues, beliefs, m.o., etc according to the soul’s intentions. Thus the symbols are meant to “filter” through your mind and give you the intended message. Therefore, even when you study someone else’s dream and give advise keep in mind that the symbols and storyline are interacting with your own “filters.”
Dr. Jeremy Taylor has an amazing approach to dreamwork that expands greatly on this theme: Projective Dreamwork. In essence, it is hearing every dream “as though it were my dream.” What a powerful way to help another and own one’s projections in the process.
2. Since they originate from the superconscious or the soul, dreams are always true or meaningful. This means that no matter how a dream is interpreted, there are endless and multi-faceted “layers” of truth embedded in them. The deeper the reflection or conscious process upon a dream the more powerful the impact it can have on our lives. Dreams can be continued or resolved in a waking state no matter whether one is physiologically awake or not.
3. Dreams are candid or most valuable for a certain period of time after it is received. The higher or more spiritual the dream the longer it will be valid to assisting you in your life. The higher the spiritual quality of your dream, the more impossible it is to forget throughout your life. I find that the most valuable application period for most dreams expire at around sundown the following day. So if you write in your dream journal first thing in the morning, then you have about 12 hours to apply the lesson of the dream to your life. Of course, the dream itself is still valuable as a story or ideas for paintings, music, poetry etc. and the lesson is still valuable as a future reference. But the dream you have in the morning is directly linked to your immediate future in an extremely mysterious and powerful way. Dreams are the voice of creation operating in your life, laying a bridge across the sky before you one stone at a time.
Dream Interpretation Part II
In the first part of this discussion I mainly focused on the purpose of dreams, the importance of dreamer as interpreter, and the most valuable time to apply the wisdom of a dream based my experiences.
Now I’d like to offer my method of dream interpretation, which is a simple four-step process. You can even fold a sheet of paper into four columns for each of the four steps.
Aristotle said ‘A dream that is not interpreted is like a letter that is not opened.’ This shows us that dream recall is only the first step. After recording the text or ‘plot’ of the dream, getting to the deeper meaning requires 3 more steps: Extracting from the text elements or symbols, excersizing a free association of emotions or thoughts for each symbol, the subsitituting the meanings of the symbols back into the text of the story line.
The last step is the most important as it brings together and makes all your work meaningful.
I’ll give some examples.
Example 1:
A friend of mine dreamt that his cat, Fluffy, was hiding in the closet. As he wondered why, he saw a snake curled up in the corner of his room.
Symbols:
The symbols are the characters and their actions. These symbols are little packages of tremendous information cloaked in decorative gift wrapping.
We must unwrap our symbols by using free association.
Fluffy the cat= represented to him companionship and friendship;
The cat is hiding = repression or suppression.
The snake–represented to him fear
Substituting the meanings into the text:
My friend dreamt he saw a friendship and companionship suppressed or repressed due to fear.
In discussing this dream he realized it applied to a situation he was having with a potential romantic partner, a friend he was avoiding because he was afraid of the feelings he had for her. Thus, it seemed thru this dream his soul was telling him not to sacrifice his friendship but rather face his fear of rejection etc.
Example 2:
This experience is a good example of what I mean by point3 in my dream interpretation model. Every dream is valuable for what is termed pre-cognitive or pre-sentiment work. In general, there is a 12 hour window to apply the lesson of your morning dream upon waking, but some dreams last weeks, months or even years in the power of spiritual maps that they present symbolically.
Here is a basic one-
I once dreamt that I was driving a VW bus into a parking lot. Everything seemed fine until I applied the brakes which didn’t slow down the van, which bounced over the parking block and into the hibiscus hedges, feeling foolish.
Symbols:
VW Bus + Parking– traveling or working, parking= a normal daily routine.
Applying Brakes w/o stopping– brakes= self-control, not stopping= not working, malfunction.
Running into hibiscus + feeling foolish– hibiscus= other people’s property, beauty; running into= personal liability, responsibility.
Substitution of symbols back into dream text:
I dreamt that, in the course of my daily routine of working or traveling everything seemed fine until I presented with a situation which required self-control. A lack of self-control will make me foolishly liable for damaging other people’s property or beauty.
Application of the lesson in my day:
In the course of that day after waking up with that dream, someone said something to me that unexpectedly provoked a sharp reaction inside of me. I almost replied emotionally charged… but then I remembered my lesson for the day and simply held my tongue.
The brakes were applied when needed, and an important relationship in my life preserved mostly because I saw the situation coming before it happened. This is the kind of wisdom that is natural to human consciousness when we are able to pay attention on subtle levels.
The Ceremony
My most vivid recent dream, I find myself participating in a large gathering of people in an island setting. It feels very politically charged, racially charged (because I am a foreigner clearly, yet somehow being welcomed into the local indigenous community) and the various players in that transition project themselves onto me and what I represent to them.
Finally, the day of ceremony begins. I am in a huge hall that seems like a throne for a kingdom. The ceilings are 50 feet high, the room a hundred yards long seemingly and 25 yards across. The walls were strewn with windows so that no lights were needed inside during the day and they both curved up to meet at a center line down the middle of the roof so that there was no flat place above the inner structure. The wall at the front of the hall (and the back far behind me) was essentially shaped like a leaf – flat at the bottom and pointed at the top.
Before this wall I stood with the Chief and his court waiting for a ceremony to begin. What was this ceremony about, anyway? Was I being married into the tribe? Was I having a spiritual bar-mitzvah? Was I going to be strapped to a fire-ant hole and left to deal with the pain in a coming of age ceremony like I’d seen in movies?
My attention seemed more concerned with the court than the chief. I could still feel their disdain, and their acceptance because I had the love and trust of the chief.
Everything was coming to a climax. I didn’t know what this ceremony was and somehow neither did they. Everyone just seemed to be looking around and waiting for something to happen.
Finally a signal snapped everyone into attention and I was presented by the chief, standing side by side towards this leaf shaped wall. Then, he bid me to step forward alone. As I did so, at that moment a black robed old woman appeared from the crowd pushing past the court and king determinedly. Her cronely form was not weak, and her black eyes pierced my heart, her presence enveloping me as she took my arm and led me outside of the temple hall to the beach and walked me long enough for everything else to disappear.
The dream shifted and upon this beach, the wise crone and I came across an animal lying in our path. “This is my mongoose,” she said. “Mongoose” I repeated, smiling – hoping that I wasn’t disrespecting her in that way. The animal I saw was a fox, with a black hide, black face with white marks, and a white belly and chest. The forelegs were black and the hind of each leg white as were the paws.
The crone picked up her mongoose and set it upon her shoulders, carrying it towards me. Only then did I notice that magic was starting to happen. The back legs of the mongoose had a distinct shape flanking the rear haunches. The back of each thigh was almost metallic and shaped like a serrated clamp not unlike the shape of a bottle cap, but twice the size and inverted as though they were clamps to grasp onto something of that shape.
The fox looked at me calmly, with no will to escape her master holding her legs and body draped over shoulders. Only her head was propped up and tense as though wishing it had a rock to lay its weight on.
“See her legs,” the crone said matter of factly. “My mongoose can be set upon the legs of an eagle.” And true to form when a wise heart meets vision, will and energy – an eagle did appear, the mongoose looking up as it flew over the crone’s head and it leaped into the air and clamped its rear haunches onto its legs.
It looked like an eagles’ mating ritual where they fly mirroring each other by the legs. The crone and I flew over them watching, now as one being. From our perspective, mongoose was above the eagle who was flying upside down. The mongoose was growing wings of her own, pushing out against the resistance of the wind beating all sides of her. As the mongoose’s wings grew and grew, she took the form of a black raven as large as the eagle – both with 9 foot wingspans or so.
As the now fully emerged raven felt propulsion of her own in the wind, the clamps in her legs were the ones to feel pressure now, lifting the eagle higher in the air with her force until the clamps themselves gave way. The raven flew right. The eagle now upright flew left, and I awoke from dream vision.
Top Ten Web Conferencing Solutions
| #1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5 | #6 | #7 | #8 | #9 | #10 | |
| Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro | GoToMeeting | MegaMeeting | FUZE Meeting | WebEx | Dimdim Pro | InterCall | iLinc | Microsoft Office Live Meeting | Yugma Pro | |
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For information on setting up Web Conferencing using Adobe Connect Pro, click here.
Why Web Conferencing?
Web Conferences enable users to hold collaborative meetings with interactive whiteboard tools, give sales demonstrations with real-time efficacy, stage presentations with full and select moderator control or hold enhanced, multimedia roundtable discussions. With parallel developments in telephony, such as VoIP, and available full duplex webcam support, users can defray the cost of traditional teleconferencing even further. And, with recording and playback tools available in the leading Web Conferencing Service providers, audience members and authorized users can access meetings, presentations and demonstrations again and again or continually reference whiteboard sessions.
Functionality aside, Web conferencing has many economical advantages:
- Travel expenses: Web Conferencing Services can substantially reduce meeting-related travel expenses.
- Material expenses: Web Conferencing Services can reduce overhead related to meetings materials.
- VoIP and beyond: Leading Web Conferencing Services offer VoIP functionality, giving it a serious advantage over traditional teleconferencing and video conferencing.
What to Look For in Web Conferencing Program
Web Conferencing is a fairly recent development, but one that has evolved rapidly and progressed far beyond its initial functionality and capability in only a few years time. As the Internet has accelerated due to new methods of data transfer and new telecommunications media like VoIP have been developed, Web Conferencing has been enriched further, making it possible for meetings to occur in real-time, with hands-on interaction and advanced multimedia integration.
Despite the advances made by Web Conferencing, not all programs are created equally. Below are the criteria TopTenREVIEWS used to evaluate Web Conferencing Services:
Conferencing Features
Web Conferencing shouldn’t be a cheap substitute for physical, location-based conferences. Rather, they should be an improvement upon them or equal to them. By offering a variety of feedback and interactive whiteboard tools, as well as other features to simplify the meeting process and make ad hoc or improvised meetings a possibility, Web Conferencing can improve the quality of meetings, making them more focused, democratic or a combination of both.
Audio/Video Features
With the development of VoIP and other enhanced telephony, as well as the advancement and integration of webcam and video into real-time efficacy, Web Conferencing should have a variety of telephony and webcam/video options to fuel their meetings and give it the personal touch necessary to remain effective. Many users still find traditional call-in/call-back and toll/toll-free telephony to be more effective than newer VoIP technologies. Web Conferencing providers should offer a variety of telephony functionality and, as is evident in the best of those providers, full integration of a variety of telephony methods for added flexibility.
Security Features
As the Internet has advanced, evolved and expanded, so too has its threats. Web Conferencing programs should offer seamless security with user registration and authentication and end-to-end encryption while remaining firewall-friendly.
Help/Support
Web Conferencing is fairly complicated. Even those with experience in teleconferencing and video conferencing may find themselves in need of assistance. Web Conferencing programs should come with built-in help menus and step-by-step guides for every stage of the meeting, from initiation to termination. Web Conferencing Services should also provide technical and helpful resources on their site in the form of tutorials, guides, FAQ sections, knowledgebases, direct chat and moderated forums. Many Web Conferencing providers also offer 24/7 support for meetings.
Web Conferencing programs are a functional and cost-effective technology that provides consumers with an alternative to physical, location-based meetings.
Our objective review of Web Conferencing programs rates Adobe Connect Pro the overall best bet but we stress that the most important measure of any Web Conferencing program is how well it meets your personal needs. Take a look at our review of GoToMeeting for another outstanding service that offers Web Conferencing with simplified pricing. Each of the ranked programs has advantages and disadvantages worth considering.
Top Ten Content Management Systems
| #1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5 | #6 | #7 | #8 | #9 | #10 | |
| eZ Publish | Joomla! | Drupal | WordPress.org | Movable Type | Expression Engine | Mambo | Textpattern | b2evolution | Frog | |
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How Content Management System Software Will Change Your Online Life
Whatever your business, content management system software (CMS) is designed to store, organize, create, publish, process and power all your online endeavors. Having just invested the better part of a month testing and experimenting with a wide range of blog software, we realized that a CMS was a natural, even more powerful extension of the blog concept and decided CMSs really require a separate site to explore and reveal these emerging and dynamic programs.
There are literally hundreds and hundreds of content management system software programs from which to choose (500 in Europe alone). For this content management system software review site, we’ve narrowed the field down to some of the most-used Open Source software based on the PHP language and using a MySQL database, with the exception of Expression Engine which is proprietary. Our selections represent only a small cross-section of what’s out there.
For anyone working and living online, a content management system will be your best friend.
When it comes to life online, we all use content management systems in one way or another: blogging, building websites, maintaining websites, selling products online, marketing them and more. The refined notion of CMS in the 21st Century involves creating a system that can separate the creation of design and content, then work together to publish the elements.
A web content management system is a CMS designed to simplify the publication of Web content to Web sites, in particular allowing content creators to submit content without requiring technical knowledge of HTML or the uploading of files.
News articles, blogs, operators’ manuals, technical manuals, sales guides, and marketing brochures are just a sampling of the kind of content managed by a CMS. The content managed may include computer files, image media, audio files, video files, electronic documents, and Web content.
We have chosen to concentrate on web content management systems that are publication-oriented CMSs, not e-commerce like osCommerce and not enterprise portals such as LifeRay. Commercial or hosted products are excluded too.
What Goes Into Content Management System Software?
Joomla!, eZ Publish, WordPress.org (as opposed to WordPress.com) and Drupal are our top-ranked systems. Not only did these systems consistently finish at the top of the side-by-side comparisons, in many cases the gap between these and the rest is significant. Begin here by narrowing the field based on your most-needed features. From there, move to a test phase – spend time on the demos – in the end it will be up to you to determine what the best CMS is for your specific project and skill set. For example, WordPress.org is shown to be one of the best when it comes to scope and purview while Joomla! seems to be the first choice for business and e-commerce sites (for non-developers). But every potential user is searching for a unique set of features.
Built-in Applications
These are the features and functionality that come standard with each CMS. Blog capabilities are standard across the board but only WordPress.org and Movable Type offer a built-in photo gallery. As you will see on the side-by-side matrix, though many of these systems offer free add-ons (also called plugins) or the capability to write and install your own plugin if you’re of the developer persuasion. Chat, classifieds, contact management, data entry, database reports, forums, document management, events calendar, FAQ management, guest book, link management, mail form, dashboard, newsletter, search engine, site map, product management, syndicated content, wiki capabilities and front-end web services are the other potential criteria reviewed for built-in features.
Security
Security is a no-brainer on the web. If you want a CMS your employees/customers/clients can trust you could need a whole variety of security measures, many of which are reviewed here. Audit trail, Captcha, content approval, email verification, several different types of authentication protocols, login history, sandbox, session management, SSL compatibility (logins and pages) and versioning are all listed here on our side-by-side matrix. Some of these content management system software programs build these in – others offer them for a cost or for free.
Management
On our side-by-side matrix, management of the users, design and content assets are all reviewed here. These management features describe the inherent or pluggable way the systems organize, schedule and deploy the information contained within the system. Advertising management, asset management, clipboard, content scheduling, content staging, inline administration, package deployment, sub sites/roots, themes/skins, trash, web stats, web-based template manager, web-based translation manager and workflow engine are all standards by which this category is measured.
Performance
Performance of a potential content management system is a vital, though largely behind-the-scenes component. This criteria rates the advanced caching, database replication, load balancing, page caching and static content export capabilities of these systems. Some include these as built-in architecture, others offer them free or for a price.
Commerce
Commerce is a largely optional feature set in this particular type of content management systems (which are more focused on the publishing abilities). But if you are looking something with advanced publishing capabilities as well as expandable commerce components you can check here and see if your potential CMS offers them. Affiliate tracking, inventory management, pluggable payments, pluggable shipping, pluggable tax, point of sale, shopping cart, subscriptions and wish lists are all e-commerce functionalities that could possibly be added on to the web content management systems reviewed here.
Ease of Use
When shopping for a CMS, whether you are a blogger, developer or designer ease of use is probably the most desirable feature, second-only to the actual publishing and performance components. For a CMS, ease of use includes drag-n-drop content, email to forum, friendly URLs, image resizing, macro language, mass upload, prototyping, server page language, spell check, style wizard, subscriptions, template language, UI levels, undo and WYSIWYG editor. If you find you don’t exactly comprehend what server page language means, we’ve also defined that and chances are you will recognize the functionality once explained.
Support
Support is another vital component of Open Source content management system software. Since the core and component code is updated and changed often, user forums, skeletons and comprehensible online documentation has to be readily available as an ongoing guidebook. Commercial manuals, commercial support, commercial training, developer community, online help, pluggable API, professional hosting, professional services, public forum, mailing list, smoke tests, third-party developers and users conference are all standard aspects of support for these complex and powerful programs.
Content creation, content management, publishing and presentation are the four main categories of CMS functionality. Here are just a few benefits your online business can gain by implementing a CMS:
- Reduce costs of site maintenance
- Streamline authoring process
- Increase security
- Greater consistency
- Reduce information duplication
- Improve site navigation
- Quick turnaround time for new pages and changes to your site
- Increase site flexibility
- Support remote authoring
- Increase growth capacity
Our trademark side-by-side comparison can only compare the type of the features offered by each but doesn’t really address the power or usability of those features. It is in this way that each of these systems distinguishes itself from another. Ratings and check marks fail to really capture the full worth of any CMS – only each specific user can make the determination of what is the “best” CMS. Every one of the systems reviewed here has a demo version that gives a more accurate picture of the capabilities.
You might choose to explore these aspects individually by first reading our articles related to content management system software or you can view them all on our side-by-side comparison of content management system software. Either way, let this site be a starting point to discovering the CMS of your dreams and how to make it work for you. Whatever system you choose, there are many online resources to aid you in setup and use, and everything reviewed here offers a demonstration product so you can get a feel actually using the system before you commit all your content and assets.
The 8 Virtues Medicine Wheel – Western Mountains
One brisk dusky nightfall about 4 years ago, I experienced a transfixion with the horizon. And took the time to follow it, taking advantage of an empty house to pursue the inner adventure, the inner communion with cosmic nature.
Standing straight, cool air on my screened in porch, sky now completely dark. I stood straight, facing the western horizon.
My body started to make spontaneous taichi movements, as though I were communing with the western mountains themselves, the setting sun directly in its orange trails setting upon a distant land over the hump of the earth’s great tortoise shell.
My movements seemed to somehow pierce and play into the energy of this region, and move in tune with them like a flowing human instrument.
Senses heightened. Entering higher awareness.
“This is the place of devotion.”
Fixated west, I visualized all that I was devoted to, as well as where in my life the spirit, and the virtue of devotion needed work. I, as a small human, looked upon the eyes of the great parent deity “out there” with love and the desire to serve and the desire to be supported in “my” highest vision. In a timeless space, 15-20 minutes later perhaps – maybe more – when I felt complete, it was time to turn 45 degrees to the Southwest.
The 8 Virtues Medicine Wheel – Southwestern Opponent
Knowing not what I was facing, but knowing something would come, my movements slowly greeted the Southwest, in my 45 degree rotation counter-clockwise and bid goodbye to the dark yet illuminated Western summits of Devotion and Vision.
Streams arising from the Southwest now, and moving with its energy – I felt angry, and shameful and forceful. Intensely focused, as though my hidden opponent were “out there” somewhere, the Southwest reflected in me, the need for my own inner warrior.
“Tenacity.”
The inner mind radiated a single thought, the depth of which seems to fill the whole landscape upon which I stand.
Tenacity. My conscious mind echoed, body following the rigid and strong movements that can move mountains, that dig into the earth and do not budge in the ever-focused desire to push forward.
Push forward? I paused. The warrior evaporated into thin air. Push forward for what?
“Tenacity. For the Truth.”
Ah-hah. Now I had something to lodge onto. The warrior returned, rooted in the earth, pushing forward and digging in to pierce the heart of truth in my life.
“This is the place of Veracity.
Veracity is Tenacity For Truth.”
A timeless space of time passed, each 45 degree swath of the cosmic spectrum taking about 30 minutes to complete. Together with my movements and the streams of energy from my opponent in the Southwest, I reflected on how I was doing in that arena of Veracity. Where did this need work in daily experience? Where had I forgotten truth and mission? Where had I lived it in my life and honored it in others?
The 8 Virtues Medicine Wheel – Southern Expanse
Filled with the fire of Tenacity, and observing the places in my life that I lacked in Veracity, I allowed the Southwest to come to completion and turned toward the South. Almost immediately, my perspectives on things changed.
Still continuing the spontaneous, taichi-like movements, my awareness was no longer just limited to my body, or even my screened in porch. Rather, it flowed outward on the gently respirating breeze – like wafting incense taking larger swaths the farther from its source.
My arms spread wide, feet rooted deeply in a wider stance, my awareness encompassed the block that I lived, then my entire neighborhood, then further and further in ever wider circles. The energy of the South was like playing with Google Earth. I could see so much at once.
The context of my exploration shifted to my life. My accomplishments were no longer just my own, they rippled outward and affected everyone around me for good or ill. It was overwhelming. It seemed there was no way to predict how things would land in every direction, like dropping marbles down a pinball chute and watching them collide and disperse. So did my energy disperse into the lives of others with every interaction.
And their energy fueled my existence as well. The shirt on my back, the plumbing under the city, the food on my table – all the unseen hands that had brought all of these blessing into my life were acknowledged and thanked by the energy of the Southern realm.
Then the context of expansive perspectives shifted to the realm of data analysis and statistics. Millions of bytes of data, millions of experiences of people, the lifestream of humanity all compiled into charts and graphs, growing in 2 dimensional planes like crystalline structures- showing trends, trends that can reliably make predictions about the future within a certain range of error.
The graph lines pulsed and grew and breathed in upward and downward trends over time, spread across grids depicting variables unseen. The power that was held here, the sheer breadth of human experience that was represented here, and the potential for improving human life was vast.
“This is the place of Expansiveness.”
Expansiveness. I thought of all the places in my life where my awareness lacked in expansiveness, like driving in traffic upset, not seeing the accident at the end of the road, nor the suffering of its inhabitants nor the service of the emergency crews.
Expansiveness. I thought of the ways that I could estimate all the data on my life into these kinds of charts and graphs, way more advanced than the slow mental calculator could ever achieve. If only I could consciously live in this place of instantaneous calculation and analysis.
For 20 more minutes, my body continued to move, as though my hands themselves were as large as several states on the map of the U.S. – and the place of expansiveness slowly came to completion.
The 8 Virtues Medicine Wheel – Southeastern Balance
Having just been focused on the Southern consciousness of expansiveness for 20 mins or so, doing spontaneous taichi-like movements, I was complete and bid farewell as my body rotated a quarter turn towards the Southeast.
Leaning into this region with my knee facing forward, my hands and wrists flowing outward into the Southeast, the energy seemed so quiet compared to the vastness of perspective I had just come from. My heart throbbed heavily, and its loving energy was awakened as my hands passed in front of it towards this place.
As I focused on my heart, a divine being seemed to rise from the Southeastern horizon. It was a woman, or womanly energy – flowing, succulent, beautiful and yet somehow formless or at least ever changing in form.
Tears of sadness seemed to press on my eyes for escape as I communed with this precious energy that so completed me. The divinely feminine energy responded and embraced every energy I projected, sending back loving energy and support. My heart opened further.
Suddenly, the femininity I worshiped in this place seemed less personal. I could truly see it as an extension of myself and less as some female form “out there.”
Then the thought occurred to me, “What If I were a fully feminine-embodied woman communing with the Southeast? Would I not surely be in communion with divinely masculine energy?” Then my higher mind responded, its thoughts pervading the atmosphere with complete presence like a booming microphone from every atom in my vicinity.
“This is the place of Male/Female Balance.”
Ahhhhhhh….. a great exhale of relief as my conscious outer mind released in the presence of such a powerful thought, my body seemingly naked and alone as I danced in the night without a thought of my own. Body, heart, sky, mountain, breeze, moon, movement – all elements were just together in peace and at the time I had no thoughts to describe any of it.
Male and female balance. Yes. The mind activated again, now riding on the guidance of this place. I reflected on my current relationship at the time – its dysfunctions and the imbalanced energy that emerged from both parties when together. I reflected on all my past relationships, and how when I was presented with divinely feminine counterparts I was unable to love and embrace them in the divinely masculine way that filled them best. Every face that I ever loved and worshiped was suddenly passing before me all with glassy eyes and open hearts, searching mine – all seemingly asking:
“Why couldn’t this love last? Why couldn’t this love last? Why couldn’t this love last?” My answer was different for every face.
When the faces of lovers had passed, then they started again from the beginning. The eyes were happier, the hearts lighter. The question now seemed to come less from them as from a deeper part of me:
“How is this person’s love still blessing my life? How is this person’s love still blessing my life? How is this person’s love still blessing my life?” My answer was different for every face, and I was filled with joy ever more with each response.
When the last face passed, a single thought occurred: “How is my love still blessing the destinies and circles of their life? Of her life? Of her life?”
I couldn’t know or fathom the answer to “How.” So the question rephrased itself: “Is my love still blessing their life?” Affirmatively, a smile drew upon one side of my closed mouth, breathing more deeply and relaxed now as I reached out with my knee leaning toward the horizon as though I could reach and bring it closer with every swoop of my hands.
Then all the ways I may have hurt them, always on the back of my mind before, but now directly at the forefront were presented and embraced with compassion. Most importantly, the ways that I had run away from painful or hard times, seeing from this perspective how that situation could have been overcome, and how much more love would have been on the other side of distress.
And now the past seemed clear. There was peace. And yet my work with the Southeastern Male/Female balance was not yet complete.
The present, the future.
“What kind of masculine qualities can I bring?”
“How can I invite the divine feminine more into my life? How will I bless and sustain her when she does?”
These two questions shaped my inner life for the next half-decade. I was determined, not to run away, but to be still and bring what has to be brought until one of two things finally happen: the one I am with changes inside, or the one I am with changes naturally on its own. I resolved then and there that I wouldn’t be the one to “try” and make this happen. Everyday I took the time to retreat into my inner female goddess, and she carried me through the hard times. She embraced me when the one before me could not, and after many years and a direct visit through inner ritual, everything in my life rearranged itself according to this new inner reality.