Of Aardvarks and Elders

My last post was "Walking Through Walls."  Something synchronous and magical happened this week on that topic.  I worked on a dream with my dream group the other night.  It was a short and rather pleasant dream (unusual, that!) in which I was walking with an old friend along a series of beaches.  We passed the last ones that had shade trees, looking for one where we'd want to hang out.  We came to a cove that had a small waterfall, and we turned in to head there.  As we walked up the path towards it, an animal passed by us, headed in the opposite direction.  For some reason, I thought it was an anteater, but when we looked at pictures of anteaters in the group, I knew it wasn't.  The next day, I began looking at animal pictures and pretty quickly ran across what it was - an aardvark.

I googled "spiritual meaning of aardvarks" and discovered that some magicians in Africa use parts of the aardvark for magical purposes, one of which is to allow a person to walk through walls!  I love that.

One of the other main associations with aardvark is fearlessness.  Boy, this simple little dream had plenty to tell me.  If you know the Enneagram, you know that the major fear-based personality is the six.  That's me.  It's a trial, believe me; my first reaction to almost everything is to go into fear.  I need more aardvark energy, for sure.  This past week, I had a big opportunity to work on it.

Barry and I were at a friend's wedding and had given a ride to another friend who is an elder and very dear to us. (I have been so fortunate to have a number of friends who are a good bit older than me and who are tremendous role models for what an elder can be.  She is one.)  After the ceremony, she got quite weak and almost passed out.  We had to watch her taken away in an ambulance, and we followed to spend the rest of the evening in the ER, rather than at the reception.  It was an honor to do so with her (and she is recovering and will hopefully be fine, but we all learned something about the need to eat, hydrate, and stay out of the hot sun).  But right in my face were the prospects of getting old, loss of loved ones, illness and mortality.  I have to say, I've been spending a chunk of time on these considerations recently, anyway. Welcome to the fearful world of the six!

I made a SoulCollage® card a few months ago that has become a guiding image for me.  I call her Wisdom Keeper.  She's old, and she's beautiful.  It became clear to me not long after I made the card, which was just after my 65th birthday, that she was to be my teacher for the next 5 years, until I reach 70 (if I am lucky enough to get there).  She and I have had some excellent conversations.

Here she is.

 I guess I need to make an aardvark card now, to keep her company.

There was other good stuff in the dream.  I'm still working on it.