Symbols
I use the "Tree Journey" meditation to find balance and healing when I feel really stuck, but lately I have also found that it is helping me to understand more about how we use symbols in our minds. I find this stuff fascinating.
In this meditation, there is a point where we meet up with wise, healing beings or angels, and we are given a gift or information that can assist us through something in our lives.
For example: A week or two ago, I was in a mess about something. I forget what right now, but it upset me enough to seek wisdom and healing under the tree.
In the meditation, after greeting the beings of light, I symbolically handed them my problem and asked for assistance. I didn't decide on the symbol in advance, I let it be whatever it needed to be at the time. I looked down at the symbol and thought, "Oh my gosh, that's a box of poop!"
The beings of light just laughed at my horror. They gravely and laughingly accepted the box of poop and then a short time later, just as gravely and laughingly, they gave it back to me as a part of the healing.
But this wasn't just a simple give and receive. Symbols like these are more than they appear to be.
If pictures are worth a thousand words, symbols are worth a million. They tell stories that link with other stories - that link with emotion - with thought - with spiritual understanding - with physical manifestations - and more. The connections are endless and they can lead us in different ways through our own mental landscapes.
My little box of poop represented much more than just a problem to have healed. In my inner world, poop represents things that are dirty, germy, unsanitary, unhealthy, it represents something that's moving out of my body. And it is smelly and unpleasant. In the session, I could even see a little cartoon wisp of bad smell rising off it. By giving this gift to the beings of light to be healed, I was offering all these inner meanings. Poop was the perfect symbol to represent all that.
By giving it back to me, the healing angels were also giving me more. I felt reassured that I had their help and company. The graciousness and dignity and respect in their handling of it reminded me that even poop is a divine manifestation. I was even given the impression that I could be grateful to have this difficulty in my life (which I thought that was a bit of a stretch, but I knew there was an inner truth hidden in there.) Then as I watched this symbol in my hands, it changed. It smelled better. It transformed into a daisy - another of my symbols, one that represents self-esteem and self-value. This clued me in that self-esteem issues might be involved.
The journey gave me all I needed and more to move ahead just with these simple symbols.
Our lives are full of them. Dream symbols often act powerfully because our daily consciousness is at rest and isn't as likely to interfere. And we use symbols in waking life, too: ritual objects in religious ceremony, the cards I use in readings ... they are everywhere.
By using symbols, we see more. They may seem like they are imagination, but they are our mind's way of breaking open new ways of perceiving things or opening passageways to deeper realities. They help us circumvent the same old tired mental paths we have been using and show us new stuff.
I find this fascinating.
The "Tree Journey" is here.
Stories like these are a regular feature of my free monthly Ezine, Starry Night.
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