Tiredness, though it feels like an unwelcome visitor at times, takes me on a disciplined journey into some of the darkest recesses of my mind and my body. Sometimes wanting to fight away its grip and unpleasantness, still it feels a necessary dream that wants to be dreamt. And as I sink further into that dream I can see the images and pictures that become fruitful and inspiring, urging me to move with them, merging with the softness as well as the ferocity of elemental forces that they carry.

Letting go, letting go, there is no need any more to hold on to familiarity but allow my boat to rock into the waves, journey down the river and allow it to take me further and further into the mists, as water meeting air creates a dense fog that I am unable to see through. There is no knowing what is on the other side or even if there is another side, another gateway or what, if anything, is beyond this illusion that encircles me. Maybe a dream of what lies ahead is all it would take to plant my feet firmly into fertile soil. If I could trust that dream fully like a laborer trusts his tools, when he takes good care of them. I too can trust my own tools, my own medicine to grow into the light, into being, to expand that dream fully even when I am unsure what it really is. How can I know if I do not ask, how can I know if I do not communicate fully, if I do not allow the dancer to ride the currents along with the rocking boat, along the river and streams of life, sending it into the misty depths of the ocean, to meet with the life forces that grow there?

The ocean, so vast, so universal, such a wide, expansive energy! I fear it and respect it, learning to tread carefully and allow one touch after another, through flesh and each of my limbs and every movement of the dancer. My own dancer, the one who knows all I need to know and remember in any one dance – the one who knows, that there is no need to ask another or to seek advice from willing minds who would like to fix or make right for me. The dancer knows that to truly empower myself I need to go within and to ask from that deeply personal place, where here resides my ancestors, where here lies the gifts of spirit , where here is where I can stand, tall and strong, offering my gifts from the center of my being – the essence of my soul. The wisdom of this dancer IS the mighty ocean, is all that I love and all that I fear. These things come from no other place and the more I remember this then the less I will separate myself from what is the truth.

Here now, here within, mirroring the darkest nights and the lightest beings, there is no teaching to be had elsewhere. Trusting the tired stories that they may guide me on that journey to seek ever deeper into the hearth of my own fire, the belly of my own ocean and the mothering of my own earth as it breathes in the winds of change, cleansing my life of unnecessary burdens and clearing my own path and valleys for more creativity. Following the dancer – flowing on the breath of time, listening to the dreamer and trusting there is no other way to be.