The dying pig mother and her suckling piglets

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The image above was created using text prompts on Midjourney. I didn’t want to create anything as photorealistic as my dream, but I will describe it in detail below.

Nightmare, August 29, 2022

I rarely have nightmares. Not all dreams evoke positive feelings, most are perplexing and paradoxical, but never this gruesome.

I come across a mutilated, dying pig mother. She is bloody and there is a litter of piglets suckling her. She is deflating and losing all of her life force. I want to help, but I don’t know what to do.

If her piglets continue to feed off of her she will flatten and die. She needs time to rest and recuperate, but the piglets are too young to wean off. They won’t survive without her warmth and milk.

There is no happy ending for this event, which makes this a nightmare.

The gift of this gruesome imagery arrived when I realized I am both the pig mother and the piglets. I can be draining and co-dependent and I can also give and give and give of myself until there is nothing left.

Love needs boundaries. When I feel imbalanced or unhappy in love, I ask myself who am I right now? Am I the dying pig mother or am I the draining piglets?

Love does not need an object or objective

“In the church of my heart, the choir’s in flames.” — Vladimir Mayakovsky

Love does not need an object or objective — it is a persistent fire within my heart. It does not need to spread or burn everything down. This is a controlled blaze. I fan the flames with my dreams. It is a consciousness that lights up all of my cells. It does not grab or hoard or need anything. It just continues to beam out of me, like a laser toward the cosmos.

Things that do not belong to me

For the past month, I’ve been dreaming a lot about things that don’t belong to me — things like houses, lovers, jewelry. I covet them. I steal them. I fall in love with them. But in the end I wake up with none of it.

When I was a child, I would sometimes burst into tears upon waking, because the really cool thing I found in a dream did not exist. I still remember how badly I wanted those x-ray glasses, or the treasure chest filled with gold, or that fallen star gleaming in my hand.

I don’t cry about that anymore. As an adult I learned the hard way that not every beautiful thing belongs to me. “Sometimes the grown-up thing to do is ooh & ahh & walk away.”

But there are dream gifts that you can pull into real life. They come in the form of words, or images or in the spatial dimensions of an emotion. 

I pay closest attention to Full Moon dreams, New Moon dreams, dreams while traveling or menstruating, birthday dreams, and even dreams on holidays can carry gifts. 

Last night’s Full Moon dream had edges.

I found myself at an open house. As I walked through, each room was more beautiful and extravagant than the last. Exalted ceilings, ornate wood, gilded mouldings, stained glass. There were murals and mosaics and unearthed marble tile that had been restored. All the colors were rich and lustrous, and my heart ached to be bathed in their light.

I knew I could never own this house. It wasn’t for sale. They were only looking for a subletter, anyway. Someone who would live in the smallest room, without a view, and remain fairly unknown. There would be no lease or binding contract. No proof that I ever belonged there.

At the end of the dream, I stood there in the largest room — a Turkish-style bath — staring at the fairy-tale like murals. So much history that I was not a part of, so much future that I would never know. And I cried. Not like a child. Not because I couldn’t have something beautiful. I cried because I loved it anyway. I cried because it existed, and I appreciated it, and I would never forget it. And it didn’t matter who would live in this house or own it, I was here now, grounded in the moment, surrounded by walls that I loved — walls that I would let keep me forever.

Even after I awoke, I was still within those walls. That is the gift I brought back with me. My heart had a new shape — as if the dream had tugged on its edges and stretched it out further into the world. A new appreciation for all the beautiful things that will never belong to me, but that I get to see and love anyway.

Planetary objects as the heart

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A dead comet

Are you a comet? Or are you a planet? 

I woke up in the middle of the night asking this question. What I really meant to ask is are you passing me by or can I live on you? I don’t have a satisfactory answer for this.

I have been a comet to some people and a planet to others. In all cases, it’s the heart’s gravitational pull that influences the orbit.

Something beautiful I read this week:

How to Connect by Thich Nhat Hanh

Every morning, I go out into my backyard and I worship the Sun. I stand facing the East. I let the Sun warm my body. I whisper my prayers and gratitudes for life, for love, for inspiration, intuition and intelligence — all of which helps me to participate in the creation of the universe. Now I know the Sun is my heart.

Heart exercise” day

A love doodle I made when I was dating my husband (2014). Back then there were a lot of “heart exercise” days …

When I have a hard day I reframe it as a “heart exercise” day. I wish I could say I never resist what is out of my control, but of course I do. Nothing goes my way and I resist harder, past the point I think is possible. Eventually, I am forced to give in. I always feel defeated by the day, but the resistance still strengthens my heart in the end.

I am grateful for all my hard — heart exercise — days.

The ladder of divine ascent or how to love better

The Ladder of Divine Ascent

If life and growth is a ladder, we are meant to go up and down. The whole ladder is made of love. You fall only from shame, guilt and repression. Sometimes I find myself on that first rung — possessive and guarded. I know I’ve been up higher than this. I can love better than this. It’s easier to get back up there once you’ve descended so many times. Each step is a perspective you’ve inhabited before. The ascent is no longer arduous but swift. Just climb back up. Someday we’ll all reach the top of this goddamn ladder. There has been movement since the beginning.

The ways we protect our hearts

The ways we protect our hearts. “He took certain liberties to protect his heart.” Only in costumes, only comedies, only short plays. But then he said we could wear whatever we wanted to wear on stage, and write our own lines, and as he told us his new plan for our show, his whole face lit up and I thought I saw God in the room.

Sailing stones

We were two stones sleeping in the desert,

when I woke up you were miles away,

I asked you why you left,

you said a strong wind had stolen you,

I asked if you still loved me,

you said yes and no,

I wanted to throw myself at you,

you said you and the wind were in love,

I asked what that felt like,

you said like sailing.

What happens to hearts while dreaming:

He said he would call me later that night while we were both sleeping, because in dreams our hearts disrobe themselves of muscles and tissues and details of life and they become entangled in light. Light, he said, that twists and forms shadows of every thing, and the shadows of things are not really things, but fragments of things that care for nothing but love.

Every beautiful thing

Before you become miserable in love, remember: not every beautiful thing is meant for you. sometimes the grown-up thing to do is ooh & ahh & walk away. 

What has carried me (an ever-expanding list)

What has carried me from birth until now has been this: love, the openness of the world, wild overgrown yards, imagining I am a princess warrior, digging for dinosaur bones, calling out for god in the dark, what prayer is, wishes, the sky at night, that one star brighter than the rest, my grandfather communicating from the dead, love, the dimensions of dreams, coincidences — no — synchronicities, magic spells that work, love, being alone but not feeling alone, love that grows claws, my mother in my throat chakra, art as a choice, stretching past my shame, a wide open sky, walking in nature, aliens, the believers, love, a murmuration of birds, love, falling down on my knees, getting back up, a warm bed, nostalgia, oh my god, so much nostalgia, animals as familiars, freedom, every beautiful thing, this incessant flowering of time and life — each day, I open my heart up for the looting.

Found notes

This note is not dated. Possibly an attempt to time travel. Not sure where the quote came from, but good advice nonetheless.

Dear Claudia of early ‘03 — you will get your heart broken a bunch of times more.

____________

“You should be cooking on all 4 burners.”

What a healthy relationship looks like

How to Love (Mindful Essentials) by Thich Nhat Hanh

1. Hugging meditation is a practice of mindfulness. “Breathing in, I know my dear one is in my arms, alive. Breathing out, she is so precious to me.” If you breathe deeply like that, holding the person you love, the energy of your care and appreciation will penetrate into that person and she will be nourished and bloom like a flower.

2. The roots of a lasting relationship are mindfulness, deep listening and loving speech, and a strong community to support you.

3. When your loved one is talking, practice listening deeply. Sometimes the other person will say something that surprises us, that is the opposite of the way we see things. Allow the other person to speak freely. Don’t cut your loved one off or criticize their words. When we listen deeply with all our heart—for ten minutes, half an hour, or even an hour—we will begin to see the other person more deeply and understand them better. If they say something that’s incorrect, that’s based on a wrong perception, we can give them a little information later on to help them correct their thinking. But right now, we just listen.

4. Recognizing our habits and smiling to them is the practice of appropriate mental attention, which helps us create new and more beneficial neural pathways.

5. If you’re too upset to speak calmly, you can write a note and put it where the other person will see it. Here are three sentences that may help. First: “My dear, I am suffering, I am angry, and I want you to know it.” The second is: “I am doing my best.” This means you are practicing mindful breathing and walking, and you are refraining from doing or saying anything out of anger. The third is: “Please help me.”

6. When our bodies are very close, we feel it will relieve this loneliness. But if we don’t share our aspirations and what’s in our hearts, then even if we live together or have children together, we can still feel very alone.

7. To love is not to possess the other person or to consume all their attention and love. To love is to offer the other person joy and a balm for their suffering. This capacity is what we have to learn to cultivate.

8. We cling to objects and to people like a drowning person clings to a floating log. Everything is impermanent. This moment passes. That person walks away. Happiness is still possible.

9. The sixth mantra is, “You are partly right.” When someone congratulates you or criticizes you, you can use this mantra.

10. We are aware that blaming and arguing can never help us and only create a wider gap between us; that only understanding, trust, and love can help us change and grow.