More Recent Notes From the Journal

Sunday, 9.7.08

I dreamt about bats last night. Large ones, as large as I am, in an alley with me at night. Three of them. One was two-headed. I was at least partially aware of the fact that I was dreaming and I asked myself, as they moved around me, if they were my totem animal and, if so, what qualities of theirs might be important for me to incorporate into my life. The only adjective I could conjure was “aggressive”.

Tonight (after the day had ended), I was walking home when I heard a sound and saw three bats swoop into the sky above me. I’d never seen bats fly in real life and I haven’t seen a bat in-person at all since I was very young.

Tuesday, 9.9.08

I arrive at the World Tree, which is huge, yet accessible. The roots form a bell shape and inside is a piano/music box. I express gratitude for the experience I am having and am about to have and touch the redwood’s thick bark with my fingers, torso, and tongue. Shooting stars streak across the neither day nor night sky above me and rolling hills stretch for miles behind me. I speak my intention to meet BAT into my hands and press my hands into the trunk of the tree. As if by pushing a button, a door opens in the trunk and a colony of bats flies out. My first instinct is to grab hold of one and be flown to where it’s going as I’ve been picked up and carried by flying creatures in the past. I realize, however, that these bats are small and I am big and should go to where they have come from.

I climb the World Tree and reach its branches. Inside, I find a dark area filled with bats. They are VERY active and quick-moving. In a “frenzy” even. One sits at the center. I ask her if BAT is my totem animal and she says “Yes, but probably not long-term”. BAT has come to help me with a particular issue I’m dealing with. I remind her of my dreams and of seeing bats fly above me and ask what issue in my life BAT medicine is for. I am quickly taken to the moment previous to my seeing bats flying above me… A young man stands in freeze frame about to walk by me and I am aware of the intensely convoluted feelings that arise within me. Lust, awe, jealousy, fear, embarrassment, desire, confusion. BAT hovers directly above him.

BAT tells me that her medicine speaks to social resonance. She shows me how echo-location relates to sending out one’s own vibration and waiting for it to come back to you after having had it been reflected off of others. Through the song in my heart, I will find allies and comrades, but that is energy that needs to be sent out. Those I resonate with will find me and I them. A lot of her medicine has to do with sound and the sounds that I, both vocally and energetically, emit.

“Speak truthfully.”

BAT tells me that her medicine speaks to issues of following one’s own rhythm while in community. Having a unique lifestyle while working and living in harmony with others. The feeling I got was the individual experiencing total self-acceptance of ze’s own habits and biological/energetic needs and tending to them (as a bat would not fight its nocturnal nature) and being a productive member of a community, collaborating and all. BAT is a very social creature and seeks a good working environment with others.

BAT told me to recognize members of my community as such and not to exclude them from my relations, even if I don’t necessarily like them on a person-to-person level. She also told me not to ignore strong personal desires financially, but I got the feeling she specifically meant giving to social causes that mean a lot to me and working on my health.

I asked BAT what to do in the face of adversity and I got the message to wrap myself in my own wings and go solo, hidden, Hermit, for awhile.

I asked BAT if I could call on her and was told “affirmative”. Specifically, I asked her if I could call on her to aid me in a ritual to reclaim lost power from past relationships and was told that that was one of the reasons why she’d come. She then told me I could honor BAT by leaving offerings of water and honey by a certain area of pine trees on campus.

I thanked BAT and the Tree and, as I counted upwards, I felt and saw a bat fly up along side me into Middle World.

It is only now, during my relating this experience, that I recognize the salience of finding a piano/music box in the World Tree.

It’s also interesting to note that less than a month later, I got a chance to participate in an amazing Sound Healing workshop with Nina Umai Spiro of Pravada Sound Healing that really showed me the power of authentic sound as a tool that’s right up my alley. I hope to talk more about this in a later post.