In 2004, I can't remember the month off the top of my head but I have it written down, I had a really profound dream.
This was the year, of course, that I was coming back down to Earth after the euphoria of giving birth to our Ella. And coming down from the floating, nothingness of learning how to live life without her. And yet, with her. For she was both in my life and not.
At first thought, it didn't seem like much. The dream, I mean. It was about an ocelot. I didn't know what an ocelot was, but I sure did after that. I seemed to know, as I was dreaming, this was what this animal was.
It was a terrifying dream. One of those ones that grips you and, even four years later, I can remember the fear and dread I felt even when I woke up. A cold sweat dream. One that you come out of, realising, by the sensations in your body, that you've had adrenaline coursing through you and when you connect it's because of the dream you just had, it kind of freaks you out a little bit more.
The dream was this: I was somewhere outside, in the pitch dark. My eyes were wide as saucers, trying to adjust to the lack of light. Eventually, I was able to see a little bit in front of me.
I was in a forest. A forest of dead, bare, white-bark trees. It looked as if a fire had gone through and razed all the vegetation, everything seemed to be white ash. It was beautiful but almost lunar in its appearance. That is... if the moon had dead trees.
And then I saw something flash, not too far away from me. It was an animal and I was seeing its eyes glinting off the light source. I was the light source, I realised. I got scared then. It looked hunched and it was coming towards me. It was staring fixated at me as it padded closer, obviously hunting me like I was its prey.
I backed up and found myself standing alongside one of the trees. I clamboured up the trunk, trying to get as high off the ground as I could. I was becoming petrified but I don't know what of, exactly. The dark, the unseen animal, the silence. All of it. I was hyperventilating and panicking by now. This was not what I had bargained for, this dream, when I had gone to bed that night asking for a message or visit from Ellanor (something I had grown used to doing, for I learned to look out for her or her words in my dream state), I remember thinking.
And then I saw this animal. Wow, it's beautiful but it looks spooked, I thought. It looks menacing and out for my blood, why is it hunting me so fiercely? It was an ocelot. I was told in my dream it was an ocelot.
Its staring eyes never left mine. We gazed at each other as this animal came closer and closer, really getting low to the ground now. And then it leapt towards me.
I was up this tree, nowhere else to go. It sank its sharp, feline claws into my right thigh. And I screamed. The pain was searing and instant and still lingered after I woke up, the silent scream still in my lungs. I let the air of that scream out just as I woke. I was still petrified, but was now in the relative safety of the darkness of our bedroom, Steve sleeping peacefully at my side.
Four years later, I looked up that animal. The Ocelot. I wondered only this year what it had been trying to say to me. And I am astounded and grateful at the message it was trying to deliver at that time. It patches another part of the quilt of my healing at that stage, for it was also the beginning of my new awakening into the more aware, more open, more willing person I have become.
Animal Totem: The Ocelot
(taken from this website that came up high on my Google search)
Comfortable in the high trees and in water,
Ocelot can show you how to adapt to whatever environment you find yourself
and how to look at your surroundings from on high.
Ocelot also shows you how to regenerate
through solitude and quiet meditation.
Because they live in both land and water,
they have a connection with both the physical and spiritual world
and the ability to be in two places at once.
Use Ocelot as your meditation guide to connect to the spirit world.
Putting aside the obvious - that it was a confirmation of my connecting to Ella in the world she had so briefly left to come here - this was so profound to me when I came across this particular wording of this totem.
So much of this makes sense or at least gives clarity, even so long after the fact. When I think back to my earthly landscape at that particular time, my life was much different. It did take looking from things from a higher perspective - my soul's perspective, or my higher consciousness - for that is where I learned to forgive myself, give myself a break, solace and, most important to my survival, a place in which to regenerate over and over, sometimes apparently daily. For this was our new life; it was a life pummelled by insecurities, feeling bereft, gathering strength for the next day's trespasses by people I was supposed to learn to accept even though they were clearly not accepting me in my newfound state.
My fear of my ability in this area of other-worlds, too, becoming more and more obvious to me and seemingly running away with me sometimes, was also clear to me in this animal's wisdom. I was the Light source, a point not lost on me now I look back on it. It gave me some confirmation, at least, that I had been on the 'right track', even back then. This was something that was delivered to me so purely, while I was 'out to it' and under no real, conscious, control of what was going to flash up on my screen in my dream state. There was no chance for me to wave it off, to be too afraid to be open to it (although I was at my uppermost limit on the fear stakes, even in my subconscious state), to reason it away. And look, it has taken over four years for me to seek its learning. I was only ready to really receive the message now. In right time. And guess what, Wednesday (today) I'm doing Indigo Ray class..... Can't wait to see what that's all about.
"If they can't get it through to you while you're awake, they'll do it when you're asleep!" Jen once laughingly told me. How right she was.
