Dreams, birds and symbols

The Way of the Sage

It's funny how fleeting dreams can be.

Vivid one minute, so intense and tangible but the minute you are awake, like mist they disappear. And yet, some dreams linger long after waking, running on repeat in our mind as we try to make sense of them.

Someone once told me that a dream remembered was a dream with a message. I'm sure they are right but the dreams I remember, don't always make sense.

A dream remembered is a dream with a message.

The dreams I remember are mostly out of context. In the dream, I might be living in a different house, a house I don't recognise when I wake yet it feels very much like home in the dream. What I'm doing in the dream may also have no correlation to anything I'm currently doing in my life.

Once I started looking at dreams as metaphors, things changed. Like when I'm dreaming about being able to breath and swim freely under water, realising it might be more about the freedom I have in my waking life to explore new places, careers, or other aspects of life.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a dream interpreter but I do understand a bit about symbols and how they show up in life. I spent ages learning about numbers and numerology after I started to see repeating numbers show up constantly. You know, 1111, 222 or 1234. I wanted to know exactly what the precise message was that I was seeing.

Now, I'm less worried about what the actual numbers mean and am much more aware of my presence or lack thereof at the moment when I see a "sign". That in itself is a powerful message. The message is really, "Stop and pay attention to where your mind is right now!". Then I can identify what is currently distracting me, slow my breathing and reset my focus with intention rather than remaining unconscious.

There are messages like this all around us. In the words that stand out on the page, like they are in neon flashing lights, in the natural world around us (a bird, leaf or clouds) even in the number plates on the cars driving past. We see symbols constantly, often without realising.

We see symbols constantly.

As a child I learned the saying "Red skies in the morning, shepherds warning. Red skies at night, shepherds delight". How many other sayings do we know that point to symbolism, reading the signs, or reading the 'skies', as in the case of the shepherd, to guide us in life.

Where I live, if the bird chatter suddenly changes tone to a particular sound, I know that means there is a hawk or eagle nearby. I can have completely tuned out the bird song but the moment their tone and intensity changes, I notice, and sure enough there are a dozen tiny, twittering birds chasing a massive bird of prey away.

Perhaps learning to read symbols isn't something we have to learn at all. Maybe it's something we remember. Children notice everything. The birdsong, clouds, even the shape of a special rock they've collected. Somewhere along the way many of us become so preoccupied in life that we stop noticing what's quietly unfolding around us.

A Seed to Carry

In the days ahead, notice what catches your attention. A sentence in a book, a bird song you've never heard before, or a dream that lingers. Without rushing to ask what it means, can you simply notice what you noticed. Sometimes that's where wisdom begins.

My aim today is to remain open to whatever is happening around me, to be present. To fully appreciate the world around me, the physical world in which I live rather than the world I've built inside my head.

Before I go . . .

You might be wondering why I started The Way of the Sage. If so, I've written a short article about why these letters matter to me and what I hope you'll find here.

Read Why I Write The Way of the Sage.

Until next time,

Leeanne