Scenes from Sunday and Signs of a New Earth

I haven’t mentioned them in awhile, but my longstanding “life in death” dreams continue, with lots of waking life bleedthrough. I described some of these dreams in the Precognitive Blues series, and also mentioned them in a post called “Ringing in a New Decade and a New Earth,” alluding to my powerful experience in The Womb exhibit at Meijer Sculpture Gardens, which began a spontaneous ritual initiation for me on the Eve of Winter Solstice 2019.

On Sunday, David and I went to Lake Michigan for our fourth time out of the past five weekends — a welcome recharge of walking along the edge of and in the water, as well as sitting on an eroding sand dune of eerily upturned trees. The exposed roots form a kind of Otherworldly forest of open tunnels and hilly sand passages to get there. We like this area, because it’s quiet and somewhat secluded, with shade for fair skinned me. Here was our view to the left this past Sunday:

On the way there, we stopped at Geoscape Rock Shop in Paw Paw, MI. David had seen a sign for it while out there for work one day. The outside of the shop features huge chunks of unusual landscaping rocks like sodalite, lepidolite, Mookaite (aka Australian jasper), lavender rose quartz, and more standard selections. Inside, they offered a large and varied collection of unusual items, including the Zebra Onyx Crystal Skull, pictured below.

This jumped out at me because of the zebra and owl dream I described in the post Owls, Dragons and Zebra Elephants: when dreams spill into “real” life. To the right of these skulls, was a statue of two owls, which again echoed the two owls I was drawing at the end of that same dream:

The stone wasn’t listed, but when I showed crystal goddess Tania Marie the photo, she said it looked like agate. In any case, it’s a beautiful piece, with echoes of two owls emerging from the same egg, or guarding some kind of birth canal. This same image filled the end of a dream after seeing the statue — a dream I titled “Birth,” which referenced “A New Earth.”

Whenever something’s “up” for me, owls appear in big ways. People send me owl photos, text me that they heard an owl hoot and know it’s for me, and/or I start seeing owls in dreams and waking life. Last week, a friend sent me this photo:

When I asked if they were baby owls, she said,“Yes. Was a post — the 2 babies were orphaned and the bigger one in the middle was alone in a rehab facility. They all bonded.” I said awesome and thanked her for sending and she said, “Yeee! I’ve been having this interesting bubbling up of giggles and spontaneous laughter over the last few days. I am paying attention to the things that bring that up or out. These littles did it so much!”

She’s not an owl person. She just knew to send it to me, like my mom and other people do at key moments.

Speaking of my mom, before we left for Lake Michigan, on Sunday, I received a bunch of intuitive downloads about owls and an article I’m writing about following the signs. I chuckled to myself, wondering if they’re really so obvious, then turned on my cell phone from Airplane mode to find this text from my mom:

“Owl alert: I heard a persistent owl hooting between 6 and 6:30 this morning. I couldn’t get back to sleep until he stopped. Maybe he’ll help me arise earlier.”

This morning I awoke from this, slightly edited for the blog, dream:

8/25/2020

“Round House + Doorbell”

Kept dreaming of a 1960’s style round house, very Mod Squad, maybe 1950’s. There was a tall, thin man always on the bottom floor. The house had circular ramps like the Guggenheim to get from one floor to the next. There were many rooms, and towards the top, some kind of party, where you were required to bring a food dish, like a potluck.

Type of food you could bring was unclear, except whenever I went to make something I was told or it was implied, “no.”

At one point there was loud rustling above, and no one could figure out where it was coming from. Panels were removed, and there were many strange looking owls up there on the roof and in the attic. They were owl sized but had the weird shaman-like masks of my “Evergreens Down” dream. [also referenced in the Owls, Dragons and Zebra Elephants post] It was terrifying in the dream, because they were kind of marching up there, not acting at all owl-like.

Then it focused back on the tall, thin man on the first floor. …  I kept being shown Pluto conjunct Lilith in Virgo. …  Again and again, I was shown Pluto conjunct Lilith.

I kept trying to get out of the dream. … All of a sudden, in real life, the front doorbell started ringing over and over. David was already up, waiting excessively long for his coffee to brew. The repeated, urgent doorbell snapped me out of the dream and heart-pounding awake.

I asked David, “Is that the doorbell?!”

He said, “I think SO!”

He turned on the porch light and opened the door, with the glass door locked. No one was there at all. No package and no sign of anyone anywhere around. Then he said he needs to get out the other coffee maker from the basement because “This one’s dead.”

Doorbell rang a few times again later (as I was still writing up the first doorbell experience). Again, no one around. I keep hearing, “Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me.” ~ Emily Dickinson

END of dream journal.

Soooo, it was an eerie start to the day, and yet, as with all of what I call my “life in death” dreams, there’s a sense of wholeness (the round house) and ongoing life. The owl statue from Geoscape looks to me like a birth canal, which also ties into my experience at the Womb Exhibit on Winter Solstice Eve.

In my 12/30/2019 post I said:

My experience inside this corridor and womb (made of nearly one million dried flowers) was so personal that I don’t feel led to share it here. Entering the floral womb in the center, with a loud heartbeat over just imperceptible music, and all that fragrance triggered an inner rebirth that then continued to spill forth throughout the day, in synchronicities with my exact birth time, first breath and finding a perfectly hidden, (yet intuitively revealed to me and then validated) dead coyote in half-frozen sand sculptures on the edge of Lake Michigan’s waves. Just before sunset. On the Eve of Winter Solstice. I’m still unpacking the entire day’s events. Too personal and interwoven with synchronicity overloads to share more here.

When I entered the Womb exhibit, I closed my eyes and inhaled the heady fragrance of a million flowers. I suddenly saw and felt the stars in and around myself. It was like outer space became my inner space, and I felt fully connected to the entire Universe. Moments later, I had powerful back-to-back synchronicities involving three owls that linked back to another highly charged event in Traverse City, which I shared on Halloween, and then we got into the car and the song The Air That I Breathe came on right at my birth time — linking this Womb experience, three owls, liminal times and my first breath.

We ended Winter Solstice Eve walking along Lake Michigan just before sunset. Frozen sand formed sculptures where waves had crashed, but as I walked by one of these sculptures, I said to David, “This one looks real. Like a dead animal, doesn’t it?”

We kept walking and then I heard inside my head, “Turn around.”

The “sculpture” was, in fact, a dead coyote, its fur matching the sand, only visible from this other angle. “Death of the trickster” crossed my mind, but also a feeling of sacred awe. Seeing frozen death on the edge of moving water, just before sunset on the longest night of the year … after the powerful Womb and stars rebirth … I felt very small, and somehow beautifully loved. All was in order, life in death, death in life, full circles and ongoing waves.

A recent dream echoed the feeling of inner and outer space. In this dream, I sat under a dark and starry sky on a New Moon, with no ambient light. The stars looked amazing, so crisp and clear. I ran my fingers through deep, rich, fertile soil and again, felt the stars in and around myself. The feeling was exactly the same as inside The Womb, including “I didn’t want to move.” “I never wanted to leave.”

This past Sunday, at Geoscape Rock Shop, I felt drawn to some pieces of a crashed meteroite from 4600 years ago. I picked up a piece, and it immediately brought me to the stars inside and around myself. I put it down, and the feeling evaporated. Picked it up, and immediately attuned again to inner and outer space. I bought a small piece, because that feeling is just so marvelous!

I’ll leave you with Emily Dickinson’s full poem, which somehow echoes the feeling, especially the final stanza. As Jupiter, Pluto and Saturn continue their potent conjunction in Capricorn, so much of the old feels like it’s passing away. I share these dreams, experiences and visions not from a place of fear, but because I sense both the death and the rebirth. As much fades away, essence reveals itself, along with a chance … and a promise … of something beautiful and new.

Because I could not stop for Death – (479)

By Emily Dickinson

Because I could not stop for Death –

He kindly stopped for me –

The Carriage held but just Ourselves –

And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –

Or rather – He passed Us –
The Dews drew quivering and Chill –
For only Gossamer, my Gown –
My Tippet – only Tulle –

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –

Since then – ’tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity –

THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON: READING EDITION, edited by Ralph W. Franklin, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1998, 1999 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1951, 1955 , by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1914, 1918, 1924, 1929, 1930, 1932, 1935, 1937, 1942 by Martha Dickinson Bianchi. Copyright © 1952, 1957, 1958, 1963, 1965 by Mary L. Hampson.