Author: Denise

(Sunday, July 29, 2017) moon first quarter Scorpio / tarot seven of wands

This dream is opposite my two recent dreams of being complimented and supported by women who are spiritual teachers.

The dream feels like it lasts throughout the night, with many scenes that illustrate the same theme over and over.

It begins at a business conference. All of the executives, at least the ones that I work under, are women. I have submitted some of my design work to a contest that is being judged by the executives. I submit three designs, which I understand to be the contest requirement. But at the last minute the women change the rules. A fourth image is required, and I don’t receive this revision to the contest rules in time to make their deadline. I am deeply disappointed because I feel there was a strong likelihood I would have been named the winner. I feel unsupported, as if the rug has been pulled out from under me. I am the best designer on staff; in many ways, I am the only real designer in the department. Everyone else has the skill set of a production artist, technically proficient but not visually creative. None of the women are good enough at marketing to see that truth. The norm of American business culture is to pretend that everyone’s ability and contribution is equal to the success of the company. Until they fire you.

That scene feels like it is about my present employer. The next one is about my prior employer, although one character, an East Indian engineer, is from the present.

The next scene takes place at the old Shakopee office building that was across the street from a large oak forest, near Mystic Lake and the Mdewakanton reservation. (My grandmother was a member of the reservation. The forest is long gone.) Couples in the company who were suspected of having affairs would walk in the woods together at lunchtime. The company had many HR issues: blatant racism (especially against the local Dakota people) and sexism, plus overt conservative political and evangelical religious pressures. Being a privately held company, they got away with a lot.

In my dream, I am creating a simple clay sculpture of a small building, about six inches long by four inches wide and four inches tall. In the middle of my process, the Indian engineer checks the resiliency of the piece. He is able to pull the base layer of the foundation apart from the rest of the tiny red clay bricks. So I slaver the row of bricks with super glue to make the repair. Done. In spite of that success, I am very conscious of, and emotionally disturbed by, all of the unprofessional chaos in the office environment that surrounds me.

The final episode that I remember clearly (though there are others) is about a young woman I work with at my present job. I have dreamt of her, or at least her name, before. Tonya/Tanya. In my dream she is being horribly abused by Jane, the former VP of Marketing, even though everyone agrees that Tonya is highly talented and a very valuable member of the team. I feel terrible. The young woman is being stalked aggressively by the older, manic, cruel older woman.

Day notes:

I awake from this dream saddened by the content. I seldom have dreams with this obvious psychological structure any more. I do know what has been the prompt: I contacted a former coworker in Portland via LinkedIn. There had been a mass firing a month ago of people who were coming to work under the influence of crystal meth. My former coworker had worked in HR for many years and she refused to take the drug test that was now being required to keep one’s job because she felt there were racial implications (Hispanic temp workers who failed the drug test were fired, full-time white workers who failed the test had a second chance.) Therefore, she was fired. I shared some of my story of the sexual predator and because of her experience and her history in HR, she had an interesting take on what I have been going through. It is making me rethink everything. She told me to check state regulations and perhaps contact a few organizations. I know she is researching her own situation with the ACLU. Will she hire an attorney? That was the recommendation I got at the IASD conference.

There are three women involved in my sexual predator case: the VP of HR, the VP of Marketing and the predator’s boss.

The name Tanya is derived from Tatiana, an early Russian Christian martyr.

Today’s tarot card, the seven of wands, has this query on one website: “Are you about to become a whistleblower?”

(Thursday, July 27, 2017) moon waxing crescent Virgo / tarot eight of pentacles

This dream has the wonderful, sensual feeling of the earth after a healing, soaking rain. Everything is vibrantly alive and joyful. Fully conscious.

I am at a retreat center with a bunch of women and children of all ages. The room where the dream begins is quite crowded. Bustling with activity. Scenes of my life are being shown to the group. In the dream I wonder about this because I am seldom captured on any kind of camera. And the scenes are more intimate than video. When I awake I realize these are recordings from the Akashic record.

Lauren from the IASD is presenting in her distinctive, humorous and passionate way. She wants to show everyone how radiantly happy I am. She shows scene after scene of me with wide, heartfelt smiles on my face. Seeing my own emanating energy of bliss makes me surprised. Peaceful. Lauren goes on to compliment other aspects of my soul. Her charm and creativity is infectious. I feel loved and appreciated by an incredibly wise woman.

At the same time, interesting and psychedelic events are underway. A woman has a glass orb that when lit with a special kind of light reveals a rare, exotic plant inside of it, just beginning to bloom. A 12-year-old girl is working on an experiment. When she balances a robin’s egg on a silver spoon, the experiment will be complete.

The dream shifts to the outdoors. I am seated on the front lawn of the retreat center, inside a small spiral hut made of leaves and other organic matter. It is shaped like a snail shell. I have just had a fresh shower and I am wearing very little clothing. A cool breeze blows through the side opening of the shell. I am enjoying sitting on the moist ground, inside my simple, musky nest.

A tall, lithe man peaks his nose into my hut. His physical appearance is astonishing. He looks like the manifestation of The Fool. Shamanic. Absurd. He is lightly clothed in coyote fur, but he is not indigenous. He looks like a lanky Londoner wearing ancient hunter-gatherer gear.

The trickster element of his personality shines like a laser beam. He greets me and begins to tell a tale of Bette Midler. A part of me reminds him of Bette’s fiery uniqueness. He has known Midler and hundreds of other musicians over the course of many decades. He dances off with a grin that reaches deep inside of me, to my innermost being.

I am so affected by his presence that I go back into the center to ask about the musical shaman. One woman tells me that his name is Cinny. Synergy?

Continue reading “Down The Rabbit Hole”

(Sunday, July 23, 2017) new moon Leo / tarot six of wands

I am walking with a beautiful woman I met in Glastonbury. I have forgotten her name. Hannah? She is from Vancouver and is a former nurse who is now a healer who works with sound. At the time of the mandala retreat she was on her way to France to spend a month training in sound healing. She is very tall, probably six feet, calm and thoughtful. Warm and serious but able to crack a good joke too.

In the dream I am following her to a sound healing event in Vancouver. We are briskly walking through a university campus, down steep stone steps and across communal green spaces. We may have to cross the continent. Since her legs are so long, she is quite a few strides ahead of me. She turns her head back to give me a series of compliments: she says I am elegant, intelligent, and many other effusively positive characterizations. She says them in a very matter-of-a-fact style. I say, “Oh, you are talking about —-” but she says “No. This is you.” In the dream I perceive these as qualities that make me attractive to men. Something I never think about in waking life.

We come to a wharf on the ocean. A father wishes to drive his vehicle onto a ferry headed to Russia. He is feeling panicked. He does not wait for the ferry to connect with the dock, and the car plunges deep into the sea. I am lucid at this moment. I cannot bear this catastrophe. I recreate the scene in the dream and the vehicle makes it safely onto the ferry. In the dream I do not understand the Russia connection. This beleaguered, rash man must be Trump, the “father of our country.”

We arrive in Vancouver to a large retreat center with many rooms and many levels. We sit down in a small dining area and are joined by other women. We start to sing and chant. The sound healer is in the same serious and distracted mood she has been in for the entire dream. Her mood is not related to me, but to something else she is responsible for. Still, her mood affects me. She has to leave us temporarily. I keep chanting with the group.

Day notes:

Jill and Rupert have a house in Vancouver. Jill does sound healing retreats there, as well as in London, Glastonbury and New York.

When I wake up I feel the positive, strong affect of the compliments. It feels really good. Oddly, they are very similar to the ones provided by the Sexual Predator at my job. He has called me “elegant.” On Tuesday he followed me closely down a hallway, all the way to my desk. I was in shock. I felt stalked. He had just been moved to a different cubicle so that I would not need to have contact with him. He started babbling at me as if nothing had ever happened. “I thought of you yesterday,” he said, and that made me cringe. “I was reading an article about Apple’s new corporate headquarters. There were beautiful photographs but when I turned the page they used a really ugly font in the design. I’ll bring it in to show you.” I just stared at him with huge, angry eyes. Then I went into his boss Michelle’s office to tell her about it. Later that night I sent him an email. The subject line was “Boundary issues (again)” and the message said: “You are not my friend. The only permission I give for conversations between us are for work-related matters, for Ergotron projects only. Do not respond to this email.” He is like Trump. He doesn’t get it. Michelle calls him an egomaniac.

I was having a conversation with my yoga teacher today about the gongs they used at the Yellow Barn Wellness yoga class I went to last week. She was very distracted. It felt like she wasn’t interested. It turns out she had to leave early to pick up her grandkids. 

07/15/2023: I reread this dream and realized that it is prescient. I went to Vancouver in 2018 for another retreat by Jill Purce and one of the women I met in Glastonbury was there. She helped Jill at the retreat, a coworker.