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I’ve mentioned parts of this to various people, but wanted to post the whole thing in one place.
My whole visit to Pasadena was full of amazing things, starting with the cold rainy morning in Chicago, the kind of weather I usually see only in January in SC. I sloshed through puddles to the bus and got on the plane wet—and my suitcase still had water on it when I got to Pasadena, where it was sunny and 85F, at least (and had stopover in Tucson Phoenix (duh), where CW was enduring about 98F, but couldn’t wave from the plane!) And Pasadena’s so full of old houses and beautiful gardens—but sadly not my son, who was in Germany (he usually works in Pasadena during the week.) So he had arranged for me to stay with the grandmother of a friend, an incredible 95-year-old living in a wonderful old house, full of arches, sun porches, fireplaces on porches, great old pictures, and a garden with a huge bird-of-paradise plant, as well as much else. Her great grandfather had been a cowboy as well as a mayor in Nebraska, and accompanied Lincoln’s body on the funeral procession (less than 6 degrees from me to Lincoln!)

I’m cutting the rest because many of you may not be interested, but can’t guess who might be, so I’m not posting through a filter.

( Dalai Lama teachings )
( Dalai Lama public talk )

The night after the public talk, my step-daughter (who came up from San Diego by train) and I had a nice dinner, and then I tried to take her back to the LA Amtrak station, driving my rented Cadillac (!! I had paid for the smallest economy car—guess nobody wanted the Caddy, so they stuck me with it). She didn’t remember the exit from 101, so we were getting off into various unlikely looking neighborhoods in our ridiculous car, asking for directions…finally I took her downtown and she got a cab.

And we all got home.

So many various people on my flist have been posting about dreams lately. Dreams fascinate me--one of my best experiences was being in a dream interpretation group. This particular group worked on Jungian premises (as developed by Jeremy Taylor) with some assumptions that I still find very helpful, especially when I have a disturbing dream:

1) that all dreams come in the service of health and wholeness;
2) that no dream comes simply to tell the dreamer what he or she already knows;
3) that only the dreamer can say with certainty what meanings a dream may hold;
4) that there is no such thing as a dream with only one meaning;
5) that all dreams speak a universal language, a language of metaphor and symbol
(From Taylor, Where People Fly and Water Flows Uphill)

What I found so helpful in this group was learning the language of my own dreams, which I did mainly by keeping a dream journal and by discussing dreams and interpretations with other people, allowing me to see my own patterns by contrast with theirs. For example, I had a long period where every dream had in it somewhere an old house--which I was always outside of. Eventually I found that for me, the house was the shelter of a family, and I came to realize that the marriage I'd been holding on to was not giving me that shelter that I needed, and that I needed to be free to find it. Dreamwork wasn't the only thing that led me to that realization, of course, but it definitely helped!

As with the symbols of the tarot, the images in dreams that are often shocking and horrifying often actually carry hopeful or at helpful messages from ourselves to ourselves--stuff we know but avoid seeing because the knowledge entails big changes that we're reluctant to make. The horror of the images doesn't necessarily mean that the message is horrible, but that we must remember and pay attention to the message. In some of my old house dreams, the houses were frightening, haunted, or I was pursued and trying to escape into the houses but was locked out. But I think the message I had to see was not the danger of ghosts or pursuers, but my need for a house. Which, by the way, I have now (in the symbolic sense of a sheltering family--that would be my husband. I actually owned a house at the time of the dreams).

Lately, however, I've been looking at the world through Buddhist eyes. I've found this commentary on dreams from that perspective: http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma7/dreams.html (which mentions Taylor et al.) Not sure where it will take me.

Would be very interested to hear how others approach dreams and working with them.

So here are questions from ladystarlightsj and my answers:

( Click me! )

So let me know if you--anyone--want questions from me.

x-posting to buddhists and tibetanbuddhism

Today is actually the very end of Losar, the Tibetan New Year's celebration. My little dharma group had a fund-raising dinner, for which our teacher, a geshe who lives in Charleston, and a Tibetan cook who works there in a restaurant, came to create the meal.

( There were many beautiful things. )

And best of all, to share all that with a group who also feels this, all of it. Just like my joy in sharing things with all of you.