Once Upon a Time

Another Story by TJ Drysdale on 500px.co

 THE END

Choices

 

The Three Fates by Alexander Rothaug

Waiting

Waiting

Waiting

Silence

Silence

Silence

Secrets

Deception

Holding back

Hidden truth

Games

Games

Games

Bored

One sided

Love

Hate

Anger

Choices

Choices

Choices

Packing

Walking

Walking

Away

Dream: Natural Born Producer

November 25, 2020

I had won some money...$15,000 to make a film.

Charlize Theron was one of the actors, but she was so helpful in guiding me the whole way and helping me make connections and doing specific things. She was really knowledgeable and never really took credit for leading us all even though it was my project. I had hired all of these people, mostly women, to appear in my film and some were hoping we didn't have to film on location outside of where we were. 

Charlize was fearless when we needed to deal with bankers in a shady neighborhood. She just charged in and we followed her lead.

At the end of filming, she is singing my praises when, really, it was all her. I stopped her and started speaking about what a valuable part of the team she had been, how she went above and beyond even though she was only being paid an actress salary. 

I also remember finding a coin/button with George Washington and a presidential plaque and thought, "oh these belong to Ethan. I will set them aside so he gets them back."

In another dream at the end I was leaving and going home but remembered I left my stuff behind and had to to turn around to go get it. I was determined that I didn't want to stay there and wanted to go home.

I Have Suffered Enough

 

William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Pieta (1876).

September 20, 2019

"Our hands are about to bleed. Some will call this the stigmata, but others will call it the work of the devil. It was the female part of us who took me into her loving arms as I died."

October 2, 2020

"I have suffered enough." Heard just now in the in-between.

September 12, 2019

As I was starting to wake, I was talking about leaving the game. I heard myself say, "I would be willing to stay if I could actually experience my bliss." 

May 26, 2017

Something was mentioned about how I really should make the dog sleep on the floor once in a while. At which point I suggested that maybe they would like to sleep on a bed of nails once in a while. I pointed out that we were in the basement and the floor was cold.

April 20, 2018 

I haven't been remembering my dreams lately but I did hear something in my in between state as I was waking from my nap this evening. I heard:

"In my most difficult moments, a thief..."

I finished, "...made you laugh."

I heard, "Yes! A thief made me laugh."

I then saw crosses.

November 24, 2018

"She was born from all the shepherds" heard just now in my in-between state.

December 29, 2018 

I was dreaming I am in a car and we are nearing an intersection and I can't seem to find the brake pedal in order to stop. 

The scene jumps.. Someone is showing me what happened the night Brandon Lee died. I am seeing there is a group of guys who hate him for no real reason. He had some run in with them...an altercation of some sort and now Brandon has become their target. I am seeing how Brandon was arrested on some bogus charge but he is released. He has a run in with this group of guys again but I am seeing them in a restaurant and they are spitting in his food. It looks like pizza dough. They are taunting him. 

Now I am being taken with this guy to another place. We are out of the car and down in a creek. It is shallow and we are walking through it. At first I see a German Shepard with us and later it is my little dog, Mahina. We make our way up to a location. 

It feels familiar. It is a bridge. Mahina starts to growl and run, but I pick her up and carry her so she will be safe. 

On the bridge Brandon himself shows up. He sees me and is so happy to see me. He is coming with us to show us the rest. He is taller than the guy I am with and he picks me up and carries me for a little while. I told him it was okay for him to put me down so I could walk with him. 

I am seeing a second altercation with the same group of men and I keep seeing a bed of nails. I am starting to come out of the dream but I don't want to leave Brandon. I am starting to process the dream and recognizing this wasn't really about Brandon's death as Brandon. He was showing me Isa's death and what happened. Some people hated him and held a grudge. The pizza reference was showing me it was some Romans. 

I held him again before I woke entirely and exclaimed, "Isa, my Isa!" I started hearing Sting's "Every Breath You Take" in my head and I knew this was from him. I woke, laying there trying to hold onto as much as I could and feeling happy to have seen him in my dreams.

It seems I suffer so much physical pain. I once had an intuitive reach out to me saying a message for me from spirit is that I am "a slave to pain". I didn't understand then my connection to the Mary and Isa story. I don't know how to release this and move on from something that is obviously past life trauma coming forward with me into this life. 

It makes it difficult to want to remain in a physical body.

"Healer, heal thy self," but I can't seem to get there no matter how much I grow and heal emotionally. Maybe it is just time to go now. Maybe my work here is done.

Return Shadow to Light

 

Art by Jimmy Manton

I crush all bonds to the physical manifestation of my shadow self.

I protect my physical form, my energy and life force from vampires.

I remove the burn that my shadow self has inflicted and restore my health.

Two shall become one.

Shadow and Light, once separated, now will come back together to put the wrongs right. Shadow will dissolve and give back all that she stole and will give up her current physical role.

I break all connections to my external shadow self. I break all protections she may have in place. 

Let balance be restored.

Let Shadow return to Light

Ashes to ashes

Dust to dust

There can be only one

And so it is!

Jealousy and Observing Cillian

Cillian Murpjy by James Wright Photography

I have a knife and I want to stick it in and peel a layer of decaying flesh from your body.

So, you're jealous, are you?

It would appear that this is the lesson we are at for you today.

Beautiful, younger Cillian Murphy...all the things you wish you could be. All the things you are not and so my exploration of him you saw as "cheating". 

Here is an opportunity for you to work through your insecurities.

Photo of Cillian Murphy

Here is someone sincerely grounded, kind, and generous who has no need of advertising his good deeds for publicity. 

Here is someone comfortable in his feminine self enough to perform as a woman...twice.

Here is someone who lives independently away from the chains of the entertainment industry and prying eyes.

He lives as a normal person in a community drinking a pint at the local pub now and then. 

His energy is calm and grounded. He is sincere and present in the now moment.

And so you resent him and think my interest is "cheating" regardless of everything I have said and tried to explain.

Cillian Murphy by Willy Vanderperre

When will you understand that exploring who Cillian is as a person was actually me exploring myself and understanding what beautiful energy *I* have to share with others? Exploring Cillian was energetic masturbation to show me how far I have come and help me fall in love with myself even more.

I don't want someone exactly like me.

I want 'different' and that is where you come in.

Yes, he is a beautiful human and he showed me that I am as well.. 

You can choose to stay where you are at, making excuses about being too damaged to be loved, but the problem is, I already love you. I have already chosen you as my first choice...as my heart choice...as my only choice.

But if you don't choose me, too, I will be okay and I will move on because I love me completely and know I will be okay no matter what.

Dream Excerpt: The Annunciation

"The Annunciation by Frederic James Shields

February 27, 2019

Just before I woke I heard, "He sacrificed her for you." I then saw a sword stab and go through all the pages of an open book. I couldn't tell you what kind of book it was, just that it was thick and had calligraphy style writing on it. And at that point I heard, "Mary, a boy child will to be born to you..."

The Annunciation by George Lawrence Bulleid

January 6, 2013 

Julie called me last night to tell me that for two nights in a row she had dreams about me having a baby boy named Reed. I had to laugh and think that was kind of freaky. I had my own interesting dream. I can't remember well the details but will try to recall what I can. I seem to recall being somewhere and dancing or doing some kind of acrobatics. It was kind of like aerial dancing only without the fabric. Anyway, there was some guy there. I think I liked him and then we started to lay down where we were to have sex, but then there was some woman who I believe he had been seeing who was next to us which caused us to stop for the moment. I think I knew who "he" was in the dream, but for the life of me, I can't recall who he was supposed to be. Somehow I knew this was the father of the son that would be born to me. It was so weird. Anyway, the dream changed and I saw stars....bright stars. I knew one was the father and the lower one the son. There was something special about the alignment and how the son was "come to Earth" in its alignment. And I knew that the "son" was coming to Earth to be my child. At one point the stars changed to people. People were really excited about the star coming to Earth. It was a wild dream and I'm not sure what it all means. I laid there thinking about it all and trying to process it and kept wondering who the father was.

When my daughter was 4-years- old, she randomly started drawing me with a baby in my tummy. The little man flying around beside me is a spirit. I have to believe that she intuitively knew something I didn't at the time. I don't think there is a literal pregnancy, but an energetic one.

Madonna and Child. By William Adolphe Bouguereau. 

I've had lots and lots of dreams about giving birth to a baby boy. I have had dreams that I was pregnant as well. I have been pondering all of the different possible symbolic meanings of these dreams. 

The obvious symbolism is the birth of a project or idea that involves two people. Fertilization requires two energies coming together. But what determines if fertilization takes and conception begins? Not all energies that come together conceive.

I have tried to decide if I would be portrayed as someone with a lot of children in dreams or only one. I work with a lot of people through communication. My creations are often inspired by my conversations, but only one has been the muse to inspire most of my current beautiful and heartfelt poems. Those are my heart child born from love. My other creations, my blog posts and musings are born from a desire to grow, heal, and understand me.

I do think that I have had to rebirth parts of me that had died off which could be part of the meaning of some dreams.

Virgin Mary and Child by R. Ansigni

I still believe there are symbolic meanings to birth, pregnancy and children in dreams that I don't fully understand yet, but I trust it will be made clearer eventually.

What children have you birthed recently through the coming together and partnership of another?

Dream Excerpt: U-turns

November 19, 2020

I dreamed I was in New York again, only I was on the island part of it in a park on a hill where I could see a good distance. I remember feeling like I had been there before, but now it was a little bit hazy so you couldn't see as far as you might normally if it was clear. 

I remember driving through an intersection and going up a hill thinking I would be able to get where I wanted to be from that direction, but as I came up the hill, I saw that it dead ended and there was a giant u-turn for traffic. I heard, "It will continue to be a u-turn until you get the lesson."

Photo by Nick Hannes

Comments:

It is pretty obvious to me what the excerpt means that I included here.

For me, New York represents "the big apple" and apples represent heart, so this is talking about someone with a big heart and someone is feeling a little hazy. Things aren't quite clear to them and they can't see that far ahead.

The second part speaks of navigating the journey back to self and not completing a lesson and having to go back to it whether you want to or not. The journey dead ends until you get specific lessons and then the path will open up and you can move forward again.

I talked about this with a friend in how I totally fucked up in one situation, so the lessons I was supposed to get with that person moved to a new person I would come to later. I don't get to bypass the lessons I'm supposed to get, they boomerang back to me through other people. 

It happens to all of us. If we want to keep moving forward and not keep having to turn around for the lesson, it is best to confront what might be difficult to face and learn from repeating experiences so we can finally have the path open up us.

The spiritual journey isn't easy because we have to come to a point of being really honest about where we are challenged and where we need to grow. I can always tell when a lesson is coming back to me that I might have failed at before and I try to make different choices going forward. Admitting our mistakes and apologizing isn't always easy. It takes swallowing a lot of pride and doing what we know is right and what we would want in return. 

Have you been finding yourself turning down u-turn only streets?

Art by Catrin Welz-Stein

Recognize the patterns and start making different choices so that you can unlock illumination and the path forward that is hidden behind a hidden gateway.

Forever Home

"Heimkehr" (Homecoming), by Hans Adolf Buhler (1936)

Last night I heard, "That one is your forever home."

I'm not sure if they mean you or me.

Home is where the heart is.

There's no place like home.

Have you been bouncing around from home to home to home looking for genuine connection that truly FEELS like home and like you never want to leave?

I think I have been homeless until I found you.

Art by Catrin Welz-Stein

It's true, my heart was used to sleeping in a cage and was rarely given food.

My heart managed to break the cage. I took to sleeping in the forest and waking with bits of moss and pine needles in my hair. When I came to your door, I was a wild thing without any manners. The child I kept hidden inside actually came out to play with you. We laughed, we played, we fought and we made up. We played dress up and performed as different people, but all the while we were becoming closer and connected without realizing what was happening. 

How did that happen?

Art by Christian Schloe

How many times did I try to walk away and shut you out of my mind? I couldn't have known that a tiny ember you left behind would eventually grow into an inferno.

I hung up a sign that says "Home Sweet Home" in case you should ever want to return to feel the fires you built within me.

Please come home.

I miss you.

I want to hold you so you can feel my love fully.

Baking and Energetic Ingredients

"To recognize one's own insanity is, of course, the arising of sanity, the beginning of healing and transcendence."

Eckhart Tolle

I'm taking a little break from raking leaves while mentally dangling my feet off a slowly swaying porch swing in my mind. 

Our experiences help us reflect on ourselves and our journeys. Today, I had an experience where I had to face who I have been and the mistakes I've made. So many times I sought outside myself for answers. So many times I took action outside myself when, I am fairly certain, I should have simply observed and taken action only internally.

Hindsight is 20/20, right?

Funny how this is the year 2020 and it is a clusterfuck of a year that is forcing us to go within whether we like it or not. It can be said that it is the year for gaining clarity, should we take the challenges as opportunities.

I was guided to specific people on my journey who I should have simply observed to find the similarities and the patterns to myself. If only I had known I didn't really need to charge and take action in such a way that made me look completely insane. If only I hadn't taken action in a way that stepped on toes and infringed upon others boundaries and what was fair. In my over-zealousness, I charged like Don Quixote full steam ahead into a windmill that had each person who had the misfortune of experiencing my temporary spiritual insanity tied to a blade.

In my desire to follow the guidance in an askew sort of way, I identified people thinking "We're supposed to connect! I'm supposed to work with you." I pushed myself on people who probably would have rather not have me there...but I couldn't see from that perspective. I was doing what I thought spirit was asking of me, after all. Interpretations of information isn't always easy and sometimes we get it wrong.

Don't get me wrong, I learned SO much along the way... mistakes and all...but I do wish someone could have explained to me what I know now. I wish someone could have told me what I am about to explain here.

Knowing what I know now, I now understand that each person, living or dead, who I have been guided to is a valuable ingredient for the recipe that is me. Each person I encounter has something to teach me about me in order to heal... something I want to change. And each person also contains something I want to emulate and put into my mixing bowl. We could see them as wheat in its raw form and needing to process it before the part we want to mix in can be added.

When we recognize a similar pattern and problem in another or we see in them what we no longer want to be, we are rolling the wheat and separating the wheat berries from the chaff  of ourselves. My mistake was trying to rip the chaff from another with my words. It isn't my place to do that for another, only for myself. Once we have the wheat berries, which are the aspects we admire in another that we know we need more of in the recipe that is us, we have to process it and grind it in order to add the highest version of it and have it blend into the mix more easily. The grinding it into flour is us trying to practice what we want to emulate. 

I didn't actually need to have interaction with the living ones to get to the parts I wanted to keep and take with me. I didn't have to try to bend them to my way of thinking. I simply needed to observe and then look inward to understand what I needed to learn so that I could become a higher version of myself.

Going forward, I now see everyone as an energetic ingredient with their own very unique flavor. We can add these ingredients to our recipe to change the flavor of us. Of course, we can choose to interact with those we are guided to, but we can be less temporarily insane and more conscious in our interactions with others while we enthusiastically develop our individual flavor. We don't have to infringe upon someone else's boundaries and try to change them. We only have to change ourselves until we reach a flavor we like. 

No one can heal us but ourselves.

Healer, heal thyself.

Everything that is outside of us, first starts within us.

Be silent and listen: have you recognized your madness and do you admit it? Have you noticed that all your foundations are completely mired in madness? Do you not want to recognize your madness and welcome it in a friendly manner? You wanted to accept everything. So accept madness too. Let the light of your madness shine, and it will suddenly dawn on you. Madness is not to be despised and not to be feared, but instead you should give it life...If you want to find paths, you should also not spurn madness, since it makes up such a great part of your nature...Be glad that you can recognize it, for you will thus avoid becoming its victim. Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life.

C.G. Jung, The Red Book: A Reader's Edition

 ***Image credit: Art by Chie Yoshii

Dream: Satan Sees Clearly in Hell

November 16, 2020 

Dream from last night...

"Satan can see clearly in hell, but he can't see in the light." Heard this just now.. I repeated it to someone in the dream who said this guy was dying that had hold of me and I had tried to move away from. When I saw him clearer, later, it seems he is this couple's teenage son. I think it was Covid related and he was dying from a neurological issue. He didn't have much longer to live. When I repeated what I heard to them, I said, "I just heard, 'Satan can see clearly in hell, but he can't see in the light'. Meaning, someone who can only see what they need to do when they are suffering and their life is a mess, but they can't see what they should be doing when everything is going well."

There was this guy eyeing me. He reminded me of Jack Black and he is saying gross things to me. I get up to move away, but he follows me to provoke me more. I had a pencil as did he and I took his pencil from him and threatened to stab him but didn't. He started to pursue me further when I tried to walk away. He was saying something about me talking really loudly and I agreed and said that was true because I wanted to draw people's attention to what a creep he was being. I made a final move to get away from this guy while others subdued him.

It seems all of this is taking place at my former employer's house. I am calling my daughter 'Meghan' by accident because she reminds me of her a lot. I see Thomas there and it is strange how much he still sounds like a little boy even though he is a grown man. He was laying on the bed talking about Pokemon. 

I remember seeing Jill and she had bought a sari for some event with some Indians and she was trying it on. I told her I liked it and it looked nice. I remember seeing Kerry but I can't remember the exchange with him.

I remember having seen myself laying my head on a red throw pillow. I had been resting, but when people started to come, I got up and left where I had been laying.

There were bits about seeing Cillian Murphy on stage performing in a play. There was something about knowing him previously, maybe past life related. There were other Cillian scenes but I can't remember them clearly enough to write about them in detail.

It think I was seeing an inner battle take place within someone.

******************

***Image credits: An etching of "Somnus" (1923), god of sleep, lifting up a sleeping woman into the realm of dreams, in a starry sky at the full moon, by American artist Perham Wilhelm Nahl (1869-1935)

******************

Art by Ibuki Satsuki

What does one do when their training equipment are people and the one who broke them is ourselves? Self-loathing? Self-punishment? Self-harm?

I know you are probably feeling like your life has become a nightmare you wish you could escape from. Maybe you feel like your life is pure hell. 

Congratulations on your epic tower moment! What a beautiful opportunity that has been placed before you.

Soon you should be starting to see a clear path to what you need to do to turn it all around and CHANGE.

Don't go down the pity party or revenge path. Those are fruitless paths.

Take the path of radical transformation.

And in case you need a reminder, I love you deeply. I support you and am always here if you need a friend to talk to.

PS: I talk loudly, too. 

Stay Open

Noah: What do you think is going happen next?

Oktobre: I don't know. We just have to stay open to love.

Noah: Do you love him?

Oktobre: Undoubtedly so, but I have no idea how this will play out. We just have to stay open to the possibilities.

Noah: Do you love her?

Oktobre: She is part of him and yet uniquely her own person. Of course I love her just as I know you love her as well. She may not let us love them up close. He has kept her hidden and a secret. He has kept her from living in the open because he is scared. She is understandably angry. We have to stay open to loving them at a distance.

Image credits: Angel paintings by Abbott Handerson Thayer who described himself as 'bird-crazy' as a boy, pictured here in 1861. As an adult, he became famous for his angel paintings, popular with art collectors.

An Unforgettable Love

"One day you will ask me which is more important? My life or yours? I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life. "

Khalil Gibran

Art by Ibuki Satsuki

The night before last, I dreamed about crystals that were made of salt. Some were natural clear shards but some of them were shaped into different things. The one that interested me most was a little pink elephant. I considered the symbolic meaning of this might be "an unforgettable love" since elephants are said to remember and pink is the color of the inner heart. 

Art by Ibuki Satsuki

You are an unforgettable love. I have tried so many times to forget you and yet my thoughts always come back to you. Maybe the elephant and crystals were made from the salt of my tears. Maybe it is saying you or me are "the salt of the earth".

Art by Ibuki Satsuki

Either way, whatever the meaning, it made me think of you. 

I miss you.

I love you... still.

Allowing Love

Do you think yourself too damaged to be loved purely? Do you think I could not love what you perceive as physical lack? Do you not understand by now that my love is not dependent on physical perfection but the energy of your soul?

Allow me to love you purely, intimately and completely.

Say "yes" to true love.

***Image credit: lesya_yasnitska at Instagram

Hey You!

Yeah, you. 

You stop by every day. Is it just to let me know you stopped by or are you hoping to see a new post?

Lucky you, this post is for you! 

I don't really have anything specific to say. I have no wisdom to impart even though there are spiritual things I could probably write about. Right now, I can't be bothered. I feel kind of like, "fuck it" I'm tired of "growing" and being a goody two shoes. If I am to grow, let it be wild and naturally for a time.

I wish, if you are so interested in me, you were nearby so you could ring me up and ask me to go for coffee and a stroll and we could talk about everything under the sun. I miss that... having friends I actually see and spend time with.

Maybe someday....

***Image credits: Mary Jane Russell as Marguerite and Leon Danielian as Mephisto for Vogue magazine 1949 by Irving Penn