Category: Denise

(Journal entry from July 27, 2012)  Today I saw Dr. Liu for my acupuncture treatment. She took my pulse, after which she never says much. So I ask how it is. She says it is getting better but that I have been very depleted. Depleted in the kidney meridian, which is causing my bone, vision, memory and breathing problems. “Kidneys rule the bones” is what they say in Traditional Chinese Medicine.

I have always thought she was treating me for the exhaustion that followed Chris’ illness last year. Today she says my kind of depletion happens at birth and she asks if I was a preemie. This level of depletion also happens with children who have suffered starvation. She says she was born during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, when 20 million Chinese people died. She was lucky: her parents were university professors, but even so she had no hair on her head until she was three years old. It was the wish of her parents that she study acupuncture so she could heal herself.

Tears flow down my cheeks as I listen to her story. And a few days later I recall this mysterious dream from 2009:

Kidney Dream 04.24.09

I had the strangest dream last night. I awoke in a kind of bed made of old wooden planks (like an old farm wagon), filled with snow. I was being operated on to replace a kidney. The snow was somehow numbing me to the pain; there was no anesthesia. Then I turned over and a transplant was performed on the other side of my body. I was fully awake.

At the time of the dream I made this comment: “Kidneys filter toxins from the blood and build red blood cells, I suppose it is a purification dream.” I also uncovered this information, before I had any thoughts of going to an acupuncturist, or of learning T’ai-Chi:

Kidney function in the body is described as Yin Water in Zang Fu theory. This can be seen as the Yin of the Yin, and should be noted as the time in nature when things are congealed, condensed and covered. A great symbol for this is the seed buried beneath the snow. It holds the memories of all the plants that have produced it through the ages, and in this memory lies the pilot light of its species. The Yin within Water is the time of rest during which this seed sits and waits. It is the will of the seed, the fidelity it has to its origins that is really stored inside.

Zang Fu theory connects the Kidney to the storing of the Zhi (memory) spirit, which is often translated as “will” or “fidelity,” and we can see this connection in the seed, the winter and the ocean. The Kidney is also connected with the reproductive function of the human being, and this is easy to see with the seed metaphor. Through the controlling of the water metabolism, the Kidney also plays a role in separating the clear from the turbid, which is a major function taking place during the winter time.

(Monday, September 2, 2013)  Interesting how the 4000 year old practices of Taoism echo what I have been learning about lucid dreaming from Robert Waggoner and others:

http://www.healingtao.org/deutsch/artikel2.htm

I particularly like this paragraph:

“It has been discovered since ancient times that if the circulation of the life force is not balanced, the resulting imbalance manifests very clearly in the quality of one’s dreams. Generally as the meridians are opened and one learns to regulate the emotions through specific energy practices, there is a reduction of ordinary dreams. One begins to have less and less of turbulent emotional dreams which originate from congested organs and in its place the luminous dreams of profound experiences begin to manifest from time to time. A practitioner, who for example has been keeping dream journals for several years, after a months of intense meridian exercises and meditations usually report very infrequent dreams that are very widely spaced apart. After some time they also begin to experience greater clarity in dream state. Dreams are more vivid, the images more powerful carrying a sense of transcendence.”

I went to Fridley High School yesterday for Aarthi’s Bharatanatyam Arangetram (dance recital). I hadn’t been there since my graduation in 1975. Part of my experience mirrored my consort dream: Several male members of the dancer’s family tried to escort me to a celebratory meal in the old cafeteria but I didn’t feel well. So I ducked into a bathroom, then made my escape to the empty part of the building, the sciences wing. I had to push through double doors (two sets) to exit the building.

The day before the recital I awakened from an emotionally powerful, but simple dream. I’m floating in space. My Tai-Chi teacher flies up from behind me and embraces me. I am filled with love and turn to face him, returning his gift. We hover together in space, filled with warmth and love.

I wish I could make sense of these dreams where Rob appears. I think this dream may mean that he forgives me for making my irritating statement in class two weeks ago that left him visibly angered. Most likely the lover is not anyone I know from my daily life, but is my animus. The sacred union.

(Wednesday, August 28, 2013)  I am sitting on a wooden chair on the front porch of a large, two-story beach house, facing west. The house sits alone on a huge, barren plain, like a prop on an empty stage, in the midst of a black light sky. There’s a dim glow at the horizon all around. The ocean is too far away to be visible.

Chris is standing next to me. He has dark hair and is twenty years younger, but I still recognize him. He shows me a metal structure that’s shaped like an open, ribbed seashell at the front of the porch. It curls up into a low barrier. The house seems to sit inside this shell. He’s a little distressed; he waves his arms about and says, “Can you believe it? This is all the protection they give us!”

I telepathically understand that he’s fearful of a tsunami. I’m caught off guard by his expectation to be protected from a wall of water ten stories tall. I wonder who “they” are. The dream architects? The tsunami is Chris’ fear of death and in the dream I wish he didn’t feel he is the only one to face the inevitable.

Because of the surrealist surroundings (it all looks very much like a Salvador Dali painting), and because of my telepathic ability, I know I am dreaming.

I walk into the house and sit down at a table to play cards with Chris and a few other people. I look up to see a double row of Souls who are watching us play. No one else at the table seems aware of them. A female Soul in the back row leans forward and focuses her brilliant blue eyes on me. She has an electric aura that crackles with power. She is Chris’ favorite aunt Jo, who died of dementia in 2009. It’s very important to her that I recognize and acknowledge her presence.

Day notes:

We received an unexpected check from Jo’s estate last week, just in time for Chris’ birthday and his trip home to Chicago. I often find myself thanking her for the generous gifts she left us in her will. I have wondered if she can hear me.

The way Jo looks at me in the dream is very much the way she locked her gaze in on me the last time we met in the nursing home. She stared mutely for several minutes. It seemed she was trying to tell me something: something big, something overwhelming. It broke my heart.