I dreamed that you were a bee
That one day gaily flew along,
You came across the hedge to me,
And sang a soft, love-burdened song.
You brushed my petals with a kiss,
I woke to gladness with a start,
And yielded up to you in bliss
The treasured fragrance of my heart;
And then I knew
That I had waited there for you.

I have been having a lot of vivid dreams of late; a little pet pig and the female line of the family tree… bright blue and green pastures of the past and a big clump of mortice keys… a not so nice dream about a loved one hanging from a piece of string (horrifying but intriguing nonetheless)… and waking up and being in that liminal space with Coleridge’s phrase ‘caverns measureless to man’ repeating and turning into ‘caverns within caverns’…

What is noticeable, though, is that the majority of them have not been anxiety dreams which is unusual for me. Anxiety dreams usually don’t take much imagination to figure out. But other varieties of dreams bring up images for me that my conscious imagination can really play with.

I’m feeling more ‘awake’ because of this interplay between my unconscious and conscious imaginative excursions. Contrary to articles I’ve seen in the past about vivid dreaming being associated with bad mental health – with the focus being on how to stop them from happening, for me, I feel they have value. As Jeanette Winterson put it, ‘…the mind wants to heal itself… the psyche seeks coherence not disintegration… the mind will manifest whatever is necessary to work on the job.’ Yet, we often assume that anything outside of the ‘ordinary’ is dangerous. Perhaps it is, it probably needs to be to also have the potency to heal.

The world needs healing. It seems it always has, perhaps it always will. The dream imagery has led my conscious mind into musings about the flow of life and the unknown source from which it springs. And how best to honour its sacredness. It’s a welcome relief from the speculations of the world at large and a reminder that focusing on all the madness and the badness only adds to it. Paying attention to what is sacred, on the other hand, is like applying a soothing balm; it doesn’t miraculously take the pain away but it helps towards healing and wards off infection.

A couple of days ago I was out walking, in the lovely weather March has gifted us, and found myself looking over an idyllic countryside as the sun was softening down over it. Thinking, ‘what could be more important than this?’ Filled with that sense Coleridge describes in ‘This Lime Tree Bower My Prison’. The paradox at the heart of the poem and the turning point from self-pity to blessedness:

…and of such hues

As veil the Almighty Spirit, when yet he makes

Spirits perceive his presence…

The spirit is hidden and yet perceived because of how it is hidden. It might be easy to see the veil itself – the surface level beauty of the scene – much like how we might appreciate a nice picture postcard. But that veil is there to draw our spirit into contact with a deeper ‘Almighty’ presence. Once the presence is felt the speaker is relieved of his psychological sufferings, his ‘prison’ is transformed – he can see the beauty around and within him. His ‘healing’ is only possible, though, through his ability to turn his attention from himself and onto his friend – he hopes the scene he is imagining will be having a restorative effect on his friend.

Learning to attend is vital because it directs our imagination. Without good direction imagination can easily turn into anxiety or paranoia or other more destructive forms, as the adage goes, ‘the dose makes the poison’. It’s not about ignoring or avoiding problems or pain it’s about learning to attend to them better.

I was meaning to post something on the 1^st of January and kick-start the year with a new writing regime but it’s taken me most of January to get back into some sort of basic routine, as I’m sure is the same for a lot of people. In December there’s so much going on; the usual every-day busyness, Christmas get-togethers, travel, getting ready for Christmas day, and then the day itself, and then more meeting up with family and friends afterwards, and then New Year celebrations… As an introvert I get ‘peopled out’ very easily, so, it takes a lot of time and effort just to plan everything, in a way that takes into consideration diminishing energy levels, not to mention unforeseen winter illnesses. By the time January hits I’m in no mood for ‘new year, new me’, new anything. I just want to collapse.

Don’t get me wrong, moaning aside, I love Christmas – it’s a time for connecting with other people, for sharing one another. I think it’s important to relinquish our inner Scrooge, and open our hearts, to keep the spirit of Christmas alive all year round…or at the very least acknowledge the opportunity to renew our faith in goodness even if our actions falter. But I struggle with endings and beginnings – and the cross-over between Christmas and New Year doesn’t seem to allow time for either.

Too much crammed into a too short space of time.

Christmas, after all, is meant to be a twelve-day affair. We remember the song but not the ritual. You hear people exclaiming, all over the Christmas period, “All this build up for one day”. And then we wonder why we do it. But we do do it – whether for religious reasons, or for the sake of family or children, or simply for the joy the festivities bring. But we forget it’s not just about that one day.

Twelfth Night for my family is simply a reminder to take the Christmas decorations down – it’s considered bad luck to leave them up beyond the 6^th January – superstition has overwritten tradition. The festive season traditionally starts on Christmas day and ends on the eve of Epiphany. It’s meant to be a season of spiritual growth.

Christianity usurped the older tradition of Yule, also 12 days – from the winter solstice to the 1^st January. It’s also a time of spiritual renewal with the symbolic focus being the sun. Also in the mix is Saturnalia, a 7-day event of merriment and goodwill, from the 17^th of December to the 23^rd. Our modern celebrations have elements of all them, and no doubt a few more, besides. And on top of all that since the global agreement of the Gregorian Calander, we have New Year to celebrate too (which incorporates a lot of the older Hogmanay traditions. Hogmanay presumed to date back to the more ancient winter solstice festivities).

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No wonder there has been a dis-acknowledgement of sacredness and depth. What started as a 12-day event to help us move with the changing seasons, give praise and thanks for the renewal of life, and guide us from darkness to light (whether in the Pagan or Christian sense), has now turned into two days, a week apart, of feasting and partying and a welcome break from work and school. It’s become a brief escape from day-to-day responsibilities before going ‘back to normal’ on January 2^nd.

What was once a time to engage with the sacredness of life is now a time of turning away from reality.

So, here I am, trying to imagine how the festive season could feel and what New Year might come to be, for myself.

My body has been trying to tell me for years that the staggered and rushed celebrations followed by a heroic leap into productivity is NOT for me. I am invariably, done in, for most of January. I find myself feeling ill and run down and in need of restoration.

I find in general, that I need to begin the day slowly, so why should it be any different for the year? Maybe, instead of trying to jump into a new year, I should let it unfold naturally. Perhaps, January needs to be a time of nurturing; of reflection and preparation. What if, the Gregorian New Year marked the awakening of the year? and Chinese New Year marked the beginning of renewed activity? And let’s not forget that endings and beginnings are a part of changes throughout the year.

Life happens naturally in seasons.

(now I’ve got The Byrds stuck in my head)

Personally, I find autumn to be a good time for renewing or starting projects. My birthday, also happens to be in autumn, marking the beginning of a new personal year. Might it not be wise then, to allow for ‘beginnings’ rituals throughout the year?

For now, it is Chinese New Year (which lasts for 15 days and is based on a lunar calendar). It’s the year of the wood snake.

I like the animal symbolism that comes with the Chinese year changes. It gives me something to think about. I’m not a believer in the ability of astrology to predict the future but I am a believer in the Jungian idea of astrology being part of an archetypal understanding of human experience. So, it’s both fun and intriguing to think about what the snake represents, and its potential in us, to affect what might come to pass.

Plus, I do think it’s nice for the year to be symbolised by something other than its numeric. After all, days and months have symbolic names. January is named after the Roman God Janus, who had two faces to see both past and future (making me think, even more so, that January is a good month for both reflection and preparation).

Happy New Year!

蛇行天下，步步高升!

May you slither through life, rising higher with each step!

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We would take turns summoning spirits: only the person who summoned the spirit could see it and so that person would have to describe it to the other, what it looked like, how it moved around the room, whether it was good or bad. It was fun when it was good but even now there’s a bit of me that’s still scared of those bad ones.

We were just children but we had access to something powerful with the potential for good or evil. We were learning how to access the imaginal realm to cause a change in one another. That might sound ‘dramatic’ but I think we dismiss such things too readily as ‘childish’.

Being able to control your emotions is seen as a sign of maturity but what this really means is being able to control behaviour in response to how we’re feeling – it’s learning to be ‘civilised’ which is important. For one thing, we’re social beings and need to be able to get along and function well together. Learning how to manage our behaviour is a sign of maturity, then. But it is possible to keep our behaviour in check without developing awareness of our emotional life - this can be detrimental.

To my mind, emotions are not just abstract concepts that can be explained away with logical reasoning. They are actual physical phenomenon as much as any other force. They produce physical sensations in us. We feel tension in our chest when we’re angry, have palpitations when we’re scared, our eyes tear up when we’re sad or sometimes happy, muscles relax when we’re calm and peaceful, we fill with warmth when we feel grateful, excitement and enthusiasm send energy surging through us. Pathetic fallacy works because different forms of emotion are as much a force as other forms of natural phenomenon, like wind or waves or sunshine.

It used to be more common to talk of feelings as being located outside of the self – for example, in the middle-ages, people would speak of happy or fearful days or happenings, rather than the feeling being located within themselves, it was a quality of the world in which they found themselves. So, it makes sense that we would try to change our feelings by trying to change our outer world, but does it work?

When we try to change how we feel by trying to change external things, it might lead to a temporary change, but it might not be sustainable and in some circumstances can even lead to harm. Some examples might be:

- Having a warm bath to relieve the physical feeling of cold or tension and/or to ease mental tension

- Getting a new hair cut or outfit to feel more confident or upbeat.

- Asking the people you live with to clean up more so that you can feel more comfortable.

Now, all of these examples, are fairly reasonable measures, that can be of benefit and might well contribute to longer lasting changes, but on their own they are only temporary. Other more extreme examples are:

- Self-harming to relieve mental pain

- Having radical plastic surgery to improve self-esteem

- Telling your partner when and who they are allowed to socialise with so you can worry less about the possibility of them being unfaithful.

These examples offer a clearer picture of how trying to control emotions by trying to control external factors can be dangerous to ourselves and others.

Now let’s consider trying to change emotions internally. After a long day or week at work, a lot of people like to unwind with an alcoholic beverage because one or two drinks can have a relaxing effect but we know what happens when we drink too much… and in extreme cases using alcohol or other drugs to change how you feel can lead to addiction. Some people might think they are in control of their emotions because they have learnt to distract themselves with other things such as exercise or work but again, these distractions are only temporary, and in extreme cases can lead to addiction. Some people believe that they don’t experience emotions because they’ve learnt to supress them but one way or another emotions tend to find a way of showing themselves – it might be that undealt with stress leads to headaches, or some other physical problem, or it might be that you end up taking your anger out on the wrong people.

The problem is emotions are not ‘things’ that can be found either outside or inside of us. They are forces in and between our internal and external experience of the world. They are part of us. We cannot separate ourselves from them any more than we can separate ourselves from the air that we breathe.

Neither are they static, they take on temporary forms, but they are in constant flux. The motion of emotion is a vital aspect of life, as can be seen in practices such as qigong, which use movement, to restore emotional balance.

It’s important to recognise emotions, move with them, and through them. Imagination can help us do this, through techniques such as visualisation, but also, I suspect imagination works it’s magic at more subtle and subconscious levels too.

Those spirits that we summoned as children were visions of active forces in the universe, cosmos, nature, in us – imagination was teaching us how to recognise them. Imagination realises our feelings (as opposed to rationalising them). That awareness is key in becoming actualised, co-creative, compassionate life.

Learning how to treat our emotional experiences with playfulness and reverence is a good way to keep ourselves sane. I think it’s also important to remember, just how much of an affect we can have on each other. Learning to be responsible with our feelings is how we mature.

I would like you to imagine that I am summoning a spirit for you now:

The spirit seems to have a soft, expansive outline. Though it has no facial features you can feel a smile. It is moving lightly towards you. As it gets closer you begin to feel the warmth of a summer evening – a summer evening filled with relaxation, good company, and iridescent wings. There is enjoyment in the dance of a gentle breeze brushing against flowers… You realise you are being hugged…