During those times when I conscientiously discipline myself to spend intentional time at creative pursuit a very interesting thing almost always happens... My dreams get weird!I'm not talking about my daydreams (they're pretty much weird all the time), or my goals, plans, etc. I'm talking about the long theatrically surreal excursions that I take in the nighttime. I have a pretty vivid dreamlife most of the time,and I regularly write down my nocturnal experiences and try to bring a modicum of reflective energy to understanding them on a fairly regular basis. But the dreams I have when I am more intentionally in creative mode, get downright personal... and fast. Thus was it the case last night.
I went to bed at about 11:00 pm with the intention of waking up some time in the wee hours in order to go catch a glimpse of the Leonid meteor shower. However, when I first awakened at around 1:30 I didn't want to get out into the cold and I didn't really want to rise out of sleep, so I spent several hours drifting in and out of sleep with the constant awareness that I wanted to get up and take a look at the sky sometime before dawn. When I finally woke up at 4:30 it wasn't because of needing to see the meteors... It was because I had just been attacked by Kali...a raging green eyed, red-haired kind of Irish Kali! In my dream I had been discussing new work and travel plans with my seemingly understanding lover when I hesitated and began talking about why I couldn't do the things I was planning to do... At this, the lovely understanding lover transformed into the threatening, raging, terrifying female goddess that even crushes the great God Shiva under her feet. She screamed that I was "timid" as her eyes turned to green and yellow stars and her hair transformed into red flame...
That's when I woke up.
This isn't my first encounter with the Goddess of Creativity and Destruction. I first became acquainted with her when she crawled in and out of my bedroom window in a small hotel in Calcutta. I thought I was being attacked by demons, but over the several days I spent in her weird hometown (with her shrine and Mother Theresa's hospice sitting next to each other on the same block) taught me much about acknowledging and listening to The Shadow, and the experience ultimately launched me into a study of these dark manifestations of the Goddess (both in literature/religion and real life, but that's another story). This encounter also, ultimately, led me to the creation of my first screenplay; interestingly, a story that I thought about returning to and revising only recently. Perhaps last night's visitation was her move to get me to take up the task... Or perhaps she just showed up to do some mental and emotional house cleaning.What I know about these visitations is that they always come when I begin a new creative journey, and that they are not to be taken lightly.
Like most women... Kali does not like to be ignored.
