Follow Your Myth

A DREAM REVISITED

I have written in the past about the Ouroboros symbol of the snake biting its tail before.  This symbol had adopted me, or I had adopted it after a dream I had in 2017.  Perhaps it was always there, buried in my unconscious.

The dream I’ve written of before was at my parent’s house, where most of my important dreams occur.  Perhaps others have dreams that return to places.  I have written in the past theorizing that we all have an inner landscape in our dreams, of places we return to.  For me, there is a house in the woods with a wrap-around porch. In another dream, I am at a clover highway overpass in the middle of nowhere in particular.  In still another, the location is a tall, narrow house overlooking the ocean with unfinished walls covered in plastic sheets and the wind blowing through unfinished windows.  

Then there is my parent’s house on Highland Ave, where many dreams take place.

In thinking about these things now, I am struck by how we can slip into the personal unconscious dreamscapes, and yet archetypal universal symbols may slip in from the collective unconscious spaces that we can feel are deeper – perhaps shared by all.  

The archetypal creature that slipped into my dream was a snake, the Ouroboros specifically, which is the snake (or dragon) biting its own tail.  I say it is archetypal because the Ouroboros is one of the oldest symbols we have.

In my Ouroboros dream, I am in the living room and looking up the main stairs as this thick, large snake comes down toward me, floating a foot above the stairs, and I don’t move. 

Of note when analyzing my dream afterward is that I stood on the patch in the floor that marked the torn-up floor from when the house had been badly updated to an oil-burning furnace, which was enormous for that time period.  The break in the floor was not feathered in to disguise the work that had been done, it was simply put in place with wood that didn’t quite match and marked the floor in a large rectangle.

The details of this dream may not seem important, but they are important when it comes to dream analysis.  I stood at the scar in the house above the heart of the house. These things point to the scars from my past, the traumas that my family went through, and others that were just mine alone to carry.  I stood at an inflection point in my life as if standing at a place of trauma — that part of me has always been fused with.  If it seems like an exaggeration that the furnace was the heart of the house, consider that when it stopped working in the winter, in a bitter rainstorm, we would wake up to the silence and the cold and know something was wrong.  On the worst occasions, we formed bucket brigades in the dirty, damp basement, bailing out the rising water before it could completely drown the enormous now still heart at the center of the house.  My mom passed buckets down the line to row of 8 children of various ages standing on boards in the water.

In my Ouroboros dream, when the snake came down the stairs and bit me in the side, I began to bleed, and suddenly, in the dream, I was standing 10 feet behind myself, observing as my white shirt became soaked in blood. 

I knew this was my death, or rather “a death.”  

END OF THE YEAR, DEATH OF THE WORLD

Why are these things important?  Why am I talking about houses, dreams, snakes, and dragons as the year comes to an end?  Because something archetypal happens as the day shortens and we reach the end of the year.  We go through an unconscious journey that humans have been taking for many generations.   The days shorten in the northern hemisphere, which coincides with the new year.  

During this season, there is an increase in depression and loneliness.  During this season, the expectations of a perfect holiday are unreasonably hoisted on us. We are bombarded with holiday films, and commercials designed to get us to spend. It does this by tapping into our need to feel connected, and our need to be reassured.

For tens of thousands of years, humans have observed this time of year with some measure of fear and dread, and we have found ways to turn it instead into a celebration of light. 

The days become colder, the nights longer.  We envisioned the Sun as being devoured by a snake, and that snake was the Ouroboros, the symbol of death and rebirth.  The symbol is circular in that life and death are seen as interconnected and continuous, starting and ending at the same place.  Just as we may envision the face of a clock as circular, or how we may envision in our minds the year as circular.   There is a circular quality to time and even our trip around the sun. There is a connection to the Ouroboros.  Under the feelings of being alone, or not sharing collectively in the bigger celebration with others, we feel that dread, that maybe the days will continue to wane.

There have always been uncertainties in our world, and there likely always will, in part because there are no guarantees in life. Like our ancestors, though, we may at times need reassurance that the sun will be reborn and that the Earth will go on.  

It may be time to lean into acknowledging this death and rebirth and owning this feeling in ourselves.

TRUST IN THE RETURN

It must have been like this for humans for thousands of years, though. It reminds me of the ritual I created for my birthday – to ascend into the Rocky Mountains in January when it is snowy, icy, and so cold the wind whips me, and I slip into a slightly altered state as my mind struggles against the cold.  

In these times, I ritually embrace the cold and the painfulness of the cold and take photos. I reflect on my life and where I am going. I feel drawn to the mountains at this time, and I try to heed this call.  This is all weird because normally, I hate being cold, but in that state of mind, I go toward being uncomfortable and miserable. 

It is my ouroboros hike, my completion of another circle in my life, and it coincides pretty closely with the new year.  

It coincides with the rebirth and lengthening of days.  It coincides with when people feel drawn to make New Year’s resolutions. It is part of my resolution, and yes, I believe in making resolutions. I am not the type that scoffs at taking a look at one’s life.  It is the laughing at resolutions and dismissing them that I feel undermines our ability to embrace change and growth.

How may this time of year have felt, though, for our ancestors?  

The shortest day is upon us, and we move toward it, embracing it as a celebration of light.  We do this because, at the core, we are celebrating the rebirth of the world, or more specifically, a rebirth of the Sun.  

We have marked this time of year for generations, for thousands of years.  We have made monuments like Stonehenge in England, and Newgrange in Ireland to track the seasons.  We have sought reassurance that the world will continue and that the sun will return.  In itself, this is not just about self-awareness which is amazing in itself, but it is also understanding our connection to the Earth and the Sun.  We acknowledge our connection to these things.

This is the Ouroboros time of year when the snake was seen to be swallowing the sun, and we were uncertain that the sun would be reborn. We studied this, tracked the shortening of the days, and learned to trust in the rebirth of the sun.

It is no coincidence that this time of year coincides with the birth of Jesus.  It is no coincidence that it coincides with our celebration of the light, of gift giving which has transformed from sacrifice to a shared giving between each other. 

These unconscious reasons we believe, share, and look toward the light are deeply ingrained.  

DARKNESS IS A TIME TO GO INWARD

Perhaps the darkness brings another thing to us, a time to be self-reflective as the days get shorter.  We are forced indoors. We are forced into being with ourselves, and our thoughts.  This is likely the time of year when we turned to stories and created myths.  It is the time for more language as we hunkered down for the long winter.

The word that comes to mind overall, the takeaway is around the word Trust.  

We want to trust that the Sun will rise, and the world will continue. We want to trust that the Universe is a good and loving place.  We want to trust these things, and we can also take time to acknowledge at this time of year if we have trouble trusting, where our own trauma and experiences come in and undermine our connection with something that is bigger than ourselves.  Will we choose to live in trust, or will we despair and move toward despondency?

Living in trust does not mean not participating in life, and not trying to make changes in things we care about. It might mean though believing that underneath things we see as dark, is something else, that we can trust and gain energy from even when it seems like all is dark, and like the sun may never return.