Interesting dream last night– descended from a dirty and dark indoor BMX track through a door, down a twisting concrete passageway to an underground swimming pool. The water was warm, the water was clear, and two companions were alright diving and splashing around when I arrived. According to Jung, Joseph Campbell, and other readers of the psyche, dream images of descent into the earth symbolize an entrance into the unconscious, the underworld– the deeper realms of our beings, hidden beneath the surface of our day-to-day lives. The image of water – and especially submersion in it – is also often associated with the subconscious, with emotions, with intuition… strong currents that exists at a level below the buzz and hum of the rational mind.
So what does it mean when your unconscious is a swimming pool?
I’m emerging into this new year – and decade – feeling clear and strongly grounded. I wrote in my journal the other evening: “I am warm in a whole new way / the feeling of settling / in the body, Here, present, in love / with what is / like pulling back the curtain / and seeing life / perfection / pure / as it is”.
What a powerful moment – to see our lives fully, exactly how they are, and love them. In that moment, I felt and knew through every corner and every cell of my being that life is perfect. Perfect. Everything I have ever wanted is Here, right now.
Bill Plotkin writes, in his eloquent and powerful book Nature and the Human Soul, about “the power of Here”:
Your soul is your true home. In the moment you finally arrive in this psycho-ecological niche, you feel fully available and present to the world, unlost. This particular place is profoundly familiar to you, more so than any geographical location or any mere dwelling has ever been or ever could be. You know immediately that this is the source, the marrow, of your true belonging. … Acting from this place aligns you with your surest personal powers (your soul powers), your powers of nurturing, transforming, creating: your powers of presence and wonder.
The first time you consciously inhabit your ultimate place and act from your soul is the first time you can say, “Here” and really know what it means. You’ve arrived, at last, at your own center. As long as you stay Here, everywhere you go, geographically or socially, feels like home. Every place becomes Here.
… Before soul initiation, wherever you go, there you are. After soul initiation, wherever you go, Here you are.
Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul, p. 40
I am Here. This is my place. There is no elsewhere – and nowhere else I’d rather be. Nowhere else to be, really. Soul is a place, and it is right Here.
2010 feels to me like a time for deepen. So much was established in 2009 – now is the time to dig in, focus, do what I do and do it well. For the first time in my life, I am not looking any further than what is around me, who is around me, right now. My work is here. My family and friends are here. Something substantial has been established – a foundation has been laid. Now it’s time to build up.
Now it’s time for a swim.
