There is a snake in the tree.
I can see her but no one else knows she is there. I am warning some friends of her presence and telling them why they should move away. After all, you never know what snake might do.
It’s too late, snake has come down and is taking up her space on the road, the whole road. I back up as well. She is not one to be trifled with. She enters the house. On the landing is an orange house cat. Snake devours the house cat. I wake up.
Perhaps it’s something I ate?
Or a show I was watching?
Or a random disturbance in my psyche.
Or, perhaps Dream Maker has chosen snake for a reason and that there is something for me in the images of my dream.
I believe it is the latter one.
Dreams are not random. They are for you, about you and desire to transform you.
No one else will dream your dreams.
The images are yours.
So what role has snake played in my ongoing journey?
First I will tell you how I worked with her and then you can see how she impacted my life.
To start with, I did some shadow work around what snake triggered in me and who I knew in my waking world that embodied some of those characteristics….things I would say, “Thank god I’m not like THAT person!”.
Snake….makes people uncomfortable, does what she wants, takes up space, she devours. And that’s just from my dream. Snake has also always been the symbol of the sacred feminine, of the goddess so it’s no surprise that the Christian church made satan a snake in the Garden of Eden. Snake cannot be controlled. She shed’s her skin when she out-grows one version of herself and expands into another. Snake lives in connection with the ground, with nature, with her own coiling, meandering, slithering self.
But my big take-away…she makes people uncomfortable, something I, as a good girl, was loathe to do.
And who did I know in my waking world that embodied some of these characteristics and what gifts could there be for me in that?
One way to play with your dreams is to re-enter the dream and ‘become’ the various beings in your dream. This can even work with inanimate objects….everything in your dream is there by design so it is all wanting to speak to you. And, everything in the dream is YOU. So, snake IS me…but a part of me that I have labeled dangerous and I am even trying to warn the other various parts of me away from the snake of me. Our ego self, our dream ego, knows that certain other underused aspects of our personality are dangerous to the establishment and our ego would rather we didn't step into these parts of ourselves. Better to continue as a good girl than to live the snake of me into the world. Less costly to my ego and to my well ordered life.
So, as a way to work with snake, I enacted my dream as part of a Theatre of the Soul I was doing at an Animas program I was in. I was the dreamer, warning people away from snake…telling them that they should move back because you never know what she might do. I saw her take up space on the street and then I became the house cat of myself and got down on all fours. Another person in our group had been tasked, by me, with being the snake of me at that point in my enactment and she through herself over me. Time stopped, the room stilled and I began to cry. What I had ‘accidentally’ done was offer myself to the snake of me to be devoured. I say accidentally because my soul knew what I needed so was it really an accident? The house cat of me was currently in charge of my development and it was time for the snake of me. So, the house cat has to be devoured.
What if, in order for me to become who I am really meant to be, I NEED snake and all she offers? What if I need to be wiling to make people uncomfortable and be willing to shed previous versions of myself in order to step into larger and larger skins?
What if being devoured by her is a way of stepping more and more into my larger self and the life my soul has imagined for me? What if what I need to shed is a way of being in the world that makes people comfortable, my house cat self, but doesn’t help them step into their larger selves either?
I can tell you that that is EXACTLY what needed to happen and that the process of being devoured by her probably took 3 or 4 years.
So what did that look like on the outside?
It was me waking up and realizing that I didn’t want to be in the marriage I had been in for 25 years and it helped me begin the process of leaving and kept me on track until I had done it.
It helped me let go of friendships that were in line with my smaller skin but not in line with the larger one I needed to step into.
It changed how I worked with people, seeing and speaking to things that made people uncomfortable but brought transformation, not sameness.
She helped me take up more space, MY space.
She helped me shed outdated versions of myself and to continually do it.
I would say snake totally changed my life.
I am not the person I was when she revealed herself to me.
She has become an ally.
She has become a soul image.
She devoured me and then she invited me to help other people devour their own lives, shed their skin, expand into bigger versions of themselves.
She invited me to partner with her in the work of transformation.
And how she shows up in my dreams keeps evolving.
Recently she has revealed herself as the HAG of me, the fierce old woman who holds nothing back and fully lives her own truth into the world. She is the Baba Yaga, the wise woman whose tag line is ‘she will help you or she will kill you but she will always serve you’. That’s snake, whatever she does will be in service to your unfolding, to your larger life, but it will definitely cost you your old one.
One last thing.
A little while ago, on a wander, I was gifted with a snake skin, as in, I looked down and there at my feet was a snake skin. A gift from snake. Never before has that happened to me. I was ecstatic.
I then found a woman in the market who makes jewelry and asked her if she would be able to make this snake skin into a pendant. That is the picture you see, my pendant. I feel like this is another step in fully integrating this one of me, the snake of me. There is something so sacred about bonding with this one from my dreams in this way. She is a gift from my soul…she might even be my very soul.
So, I tell you all that so that you can see how partnering with our dreams and the images they reveal to us, has the power to change the trajectory of our lives. Our images can transform us. They can show us where we are stuck, where we are not fully living, where we are afraid to go. They can show us the largeness of our soul. They invite us to connect with our deepest selves. They reveal us to ourselves.
The blueprint for your life is already inside you.
Turn inside and look.
Ask yourself, ‘who is visiting me in my dreams tonight?’
Ask how this one wants to partner with you for your own unfolding.
Begin the conversation with your insides that only you can have.
Make your unconscious, conscious.
And then keep doing it.
You have a larger life inside and it is wanting to get out.
Recently, bear visited me on the trail during a walk and has now been showing up in my dreams. Hmmmmm…..that would make for an awkward pendant.