The Burning, The Birth

Photo by Timon Studler

Some dreams bring a truly "shamanic" experience. A dismemberment, a rending, a burning, a dissolution of what was so that something new may be born...

Dream Journal Entry October 14, 2011:

Dear God, Must I suffer? Must I die for You? I enter the dark tunnel and this is where you lead me? To this place of horror and pain? Where has the garden gone?

Upon an ancient stone slab, your flesh is burnt, and yet you live. What is this grisly countenance, seared and desiccated flesh, blackened bones? Though you are unrecognizable, you carry the crown of thorns so that I might know you . Why are you restless? Why do you stir and rustle? Your eyes burning into me, wanting me to see. What is this dark chamber with its blackened walls and seething stone? Have we died here? Did this thing happen? What do you want me to see?

The fire is gone and in the cooling embers I see galaxies. I see my place on the stone altar, my place in our bed, my burnt offering. I am gone, destroyed but not dead. I see three white stars glowing in the depths of the ash. I think they are teeth, gnashed out in the anguish of the fire, unrooted by the collapse of my body into sooty ash. But in fires this hot, even teeth burn. I look down upon this molten alter and I see through time. I see young, hot galaxies; a place of chaos, a place of creation; the formation of stars and the universe expanding through time, a supernova. If I am seeing it, then the explosion must have occurred long ago. The burning has already happened. Where am I in this vastness?

I am now the girl in the water. I feel my young girl body, no breasts, thin arms and legs, coasting through the brackish deep. Dark, hot, amorphous water flows across my flesh. The chaos of galaxies is here too, in the fluidity, in the liquescence, in the potential of the briny depths and in my salty tears.