The Blue Dragon

 I am at sea, there is a giant blue dragon, about the size of a 12 story block of flats.

The dragon has in its hands three people - a woman, a man and a child. They are a family.

The man is black with long dreadlocks, he wears a gold silk dress and trousers. He is quite 'feminine'. The dragon gnaws his head off his shoulders and casts his body aside.

The child is about 6 years old, she has fair skin and blond hair. The dragon throws her along a large arc, her body turns in space until it sploshes into the sea where she drowns.

The woman has dark hair, the dragon holds her in his hands and carries her away. The dragon has killed her family to kidnap her to sing. In the dream I sense it is a tragic situation. The woman has lost her family and there is the sense she will spend an eternity singing for the dragon, that there is no end to her pain and torture.

Followup

(not a dream).

I am in the gym, a new regular visit that I am really enjoying both for getting fitter and as a mediation too. I love also that my local council facility has all ages, genders, ethnicities, body shapes and sizes and I guess, a diversity of economic situations* using the gym. It feels very inclusive and friendly, not how I imagined gyms to be at all which is why I have avoided them till now.

I was on the rowing machine, with the resistance setting turned up to a new high. I noticed at one point an inner voice saying words like "rip it, smash it, kill it ...". I was quite shocked by this voice, inquiring into it I found it to come the "blue dragon" in my nervous system.

I began to be curious as to what would happen if the feminine black man in the couple hadn't been killed, how would I row then? What part of my nervous system did he represent? After a while contemplating this, I settled into a pattern of saying internally "love" or "strength" on each half of one stroke. When I said it would was interchangable, sometimes "love" when I pulled, sometimes "strength".

I can honestly say it was the most exciting, fun, alive, awake, energised and energising 10 minutes that I have ever had on the rowing machine! I felt like I was flying, it was so much fun. It was still hard but also at times I was able to ask inside "what if this were to feel easy?" and intermittently, it would.

Towards the end of my 10 minutes, internally I looked for the blue dragon. I found it behind me, wings open, like a guarding over "love" and "strength". I am not sure if I found the little girl in my contemplation - though maybe she was there in the bubbling joy and feeling of fun.

What I do know though is that as is so often the case - my dream showed me how the trauma in my nervous system was playing out. The dragons "rip, kill, smash it" felt like an old fight response, coming from a more primitive reptilian part of my nervous system, represented by the dragon.

In the unity of "love" and "strength" I found how these qualities can be combined and turned towards achievement driven by care and "power with" - rather than a "power over" relationship within and towards the world.

It was interesting to me that the dragon was there at the end behind the union of these two qualities. In my rowing it felt like a felt sense quality of a larger 'spirit' guiding and protecting.

* As I build my new business and rent a new therapy space, cash is very tight. I started going to the gym predominantly because it was the only exercise facility I can afford right now, because I am now entitled to a 'senior citizen' council funded place, which means each session is just £2.

Because these "pay and play" users have to queue for up to 20 mins to buy a ticket - rather than sweeping through the electronic gates flashing a monthly subscription on a smart phone - you get to see who is cash strapped enough to need to queue.