Tending the Waking Dream

Suddenly, there was a crash into the window directly in front of me. Startled, I jumped up and ran onto the deck where I saw the injured bird, its little chest rising and falling rapidly trying to catch its breath. I scooped his warm, feathered body into my hands and felt its life force slowly drain away. I cradled him as he transitioned to the great sky beyond, blessed his precious life and placed him in the backyard to bury him the next day, as it was pouring rain at the time. As nature would have it, he was gone the next morning and had obviously become another’s meal. I felt sad but also aware of the great circle of life.

The next day, sitting in my living room reading, there was another crash into the window with the same outcome.

Since I knew the woman that lived in the home prior, I called and asked if this had ever happened in the years while she lived there to which she replied “no”. This got my attention, and it was then, that I approached this living dream the same way I tend any nighttime dream, for I know that each image provides a portal for deep self-discovery. I gently befriended these feathered friends through active imagination in my mind and heart and a few nights later, I had the following nighttime dream:

I woke up in the morning and went into the backyard to bury the bird I had originally placed there and again, it was gone. I then saw a trail of blood through the snow, that led to the shed that was on the opposite side of the yard. There stood a pregnant woman with huge bird wings coming out of her back. My bird had morphed into a pregnant bird woman.

I share this sequence of events to shed light on the power of the waking dreams that appear in our day to day lives containing messages if we take the time to contemplate and become curious about them. When we acknowledge that our dreams (nighttime and daytime) can be a valuable source of wisdom, we give ourselves yet another tool for comprehending the intricacies of our precious existence. Oftentimes, we discount the validity of the messages we receive because we are not accustomed to trusting what comes forth from deep within our souls through the synchronicities that life presents.

However, our days are filled with these opportunities that oftentimes we disregard or give very little attention to. It might be a moment that gave you pause, took your breath away, or something that stays close to your consciousness; an out of the ordinary experience or possibly something simple and seemingly mundane. Engaging in active imagination with our day-to-day images, can be just as powerful as tending to our nighttime images, in my experience.

The following by Paulo Coelho speaks to this:

“We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment. A little parenthesis in eternity.”

This “birdwoman” that appeared in my backyard a couple of years ago, showed me that it was time to take flight. With tending and deep inquiry, tremendous changes occurred in my life.

Just recently, on my new front porch, in my new home, in my new life… a bird built a nest and laid four eggs in our hanging fern. I watched these eggs quietly incubate until they hatched just the other day, reminding me of the circle of life; reminding me, yet again, that death and rebirth are a real part of our soul’s journey. It’s a process that asks us to be patient and keep the faith. I give a deep bow and a hearty “thank you” for these images that literally “flew” into my life offering me my next step forward ~ the pull of the future that is a beautiful gift that dream tending often brings.