Of cathedrals, dragons, & blood: a trilogy of dreams

Dreams are illustrations... from the book your soul is writing about you.
~ Marsha Norman (American Playwright)

Wow. It’s hard to believe that July is almost over, and I’ve been away from my blog for three months. I was busy dealing with family, work, and health issues, all of which have improved, I am happy to report, and now I’m ready to get back to blogging (and gee, maybe even to “tweeting” on Twitter)! The trials of the past few months have all been part of my “amazing apprenticeship” that I mentioned in my previous two posts (here is the link to the most recent one). Since I’m still processing some of that, I am not ready to write about it yet.

Instead I’d like to travel back in time, and to another realm entirely: the dream state. Yes, I do recall warning you in a previous post that I’m going to be writing more about some of my strange dreams. The ones I’m going to share in this post came to me many years ago, and the only reason I remember them in such detail is that I wrote them down immediately upon awakening. I’ve kept those writings all these years, but had nearly forgotten them; I just came across them the other day when reorganizing my home office. Lucky you!

Truly, though, my purpose in writing about these dreams is not to bore you with my dream diary, although the result may very well bore you, and if it does, I apologize in advance. Rather, I simply wish to illustrate how dreams really do reflect what is going on in our lives, even if we are not willing to admit it to ourselves, or simply are not able to see the relevance of a given dream.

“Well, duh,” you may be saying. For most of you this is probably a self-evident truth, yet it is a truth that still amazes me whenever I think about it. Most of us take for granted that dreams, as distorted and bizarre as they often are, can still be filled with symbols that are screamingly clear and deeply meaningful. Sometimes, however, they are only clear and meaningful in retrospect. At the time I had the dreams I am going to relate here, their significance was anything but obvious to me. I guess you could say I wasn’t all that introspective in those days.

Life on hold
When these dreams came to me I was nineteen, nearly twenty, and plagued with doubt and uncertainty about what I wanted to do with my life. It seemed that most of my peers had their lives all mapped out: most were in college and busily planning careers, some were already married or in deeply committed relationships, and they all seemed full of confidence and optimism for the future. Not I. The future was fuzzy and scary to me. I felt as if I were standing still, nearly paralyzed, while life whirled around me.

For various reasons I had decided to take “a year off” after high school, my plan being to just work and save some money – after which, I told myself, I would begin my “higher education.” And so I began what turned out to be a long cycle of low-paying retail and office jobs. By the time I was nineteen-going-on-twenty, it was already evident that my “year off” might be extended indefinitely. I had vague and undefined fears about going to college, fears that couldn’t be reduced to something as simple as fear of academic or social failure. I think I was more afraid of a general failure: college to me represented plunging into life in a way I wasn’t prepared to do. And because I was also dealing in those days with panic attacks that bewildered and unnerved me, I just couldn’t stand the idea of being confined in any more classrooms (this was before the age of Internet education).

I was also going through the doldrums of an on-again, off-again relationship with my longtime boyfriend Phil. We had come very close to getting married but just couldn’t take the plunge. Even though the relationship was rocky, we couldn’t bring ourselves to break it off entirely. We both went out with other people occasionally but kept coming back to each other. Phil was my age, and he was brilliant, artistic, and creative, but nearly as unfocused as I. He too had decided to take “a year off” after high school and was making a pretty good living as a house painter. But both of us felt the pressure from friends, family, and most of all from ourselves, to “do something more with our lives.” Yet we couldn’t seem to get ourselves “unstuck.” All in all, nineteen was kind of a bummer year for both of us.

I think it's relevant to add that my spiritual life was pretty much nonexistent. I thumbed my nose at traditional organized religion but had yet to explore any alternatives. Mostly, I suppose, I fancied myself an intellectual and a perpetual student despite my avoidance of academia. I was certainly interested in religion and world mythology as part of my grand study of what it means to be human, but I embraced no spiritual beliefs of my own, and was unable at that time to see that much of the vague longing I felt was a yearning for spiritual sustenance. I wasn’t exactly miserable but was far from happy, and the delicate equilibrium I had created for myself was constantly threatened by the nameless anxieties that loomed in the background.

So enough background. I had all three of these dreams the same night, one right after another. They began some time after midnight on a cold night in mid-November…

Spiritual materialism?
In the first dream I was strolling down the sidewalk of an inner-city street full of elaborate old churches and cathedrals that stood very close together. I found myself thinking about what a shame it was to waste these gorgeous buildings on religion, for which I'd never had much use, and I began pondering on a possible society in which all churches were transformed either into apartment houses or large single homes for wealthy people. I decided to enter one cathedral, pretending that it was a mansion I owned, and that I was fabulously rich. Inside I found myself surrounded by breathtaking medieval and Renaissance artifacts: lovely statues and sculptures, tall, golden, elaborately carved chairs and pews, beautiful stained-glass windows. I was tempted to confiscate some of the smaller items from the cathedral, reasoning that, after all, the place “belonged” to me, as did everything in it.

I thought it prudent, however, to put on a face of piety for the benefit of the few other people milling about the place. After all, to the world this was still a place of worship. So I slipped into the sanctuary and walked up to the altar at the front, where I got down on my knees and feigned prayer (which was reminiscent of what I had so often done in waking life, as a child and teenager who was compelled by my parents to go to church). I admired the statuettes that had been placed on the altar and wanted to steal those as well. Then I realized that an actual service was about to begin, so I slipped into a front pew. I began to cry so that any onlookers would sympathize with me, thinking I had some deep problem, and would therefore not suspect I was really there to steal.

Suddenly my on-again off-again boyfriend Phil appeared to my left in the pew, and he was crying also; all at once, it seemed that we were both crying about the fact that we had never really known each other. But his was such a fleeting image that it seemed more of an apparition than reality. For a few moments, overlapping the appearance of Phil by a slight margin, my mother appeared to the right of me. Like a stranger just trying to make conversation, she seemed to have picked a topic off the top of her head; the topic happened to be a notorious local murder case that was in the news at the time. Finally, as more people flocked in for the service I couldn’t stand the thought of actually sitting through a church service, and I left. That dream cross-faded into the next one…

“Dragon ethics”
In this dream I owned a small rabbit-sized dragon. Actually it looked more like a small alligator, but I knew it was a dragon. It was very friendly with my real-life pet rabbit, and they snuggled with each other and ate rabbit pellets together, which I found endearing. I did not find so endearing the dragon’s attempts to “dominate” me by pouncing on my head or shoulders whenever I tried to leave the two animals and go on about my business.

I was attending a school that seemed to be a hospital as well. The building was quite old, almost as old as some of the cathedrals in the previous dream. It had many floors, perhaps as many as ten. My boyfriend Phil also attended the school, as did Brent, a young man with whom I worked in real life. In my waking life I had quite a crush on Brent, who was a good-looking, wholesome overachiever type, a law student who was teaching law in a university by the time he was 21.

I was very aware that for some reason, people such as myself who owned dragons were at a distinct disadvantage in this school. It was just a widely acknowledged fact of life there. They even had a name for the phenomenon: “dragon ethics.” Apparently people who were “victims” of these dragon ethics encountered the greatest disadvantage, and actual danger, when trying to get from one floor to another in this school via elevator. When the “dragon people” entered an elevator it would invariably transform itself into a long and perilous, slippery gray-and-white staircase that was really more like a winding ladder, and hence one was in great danger of falling. I had previously ascended one of these dangerous staircase-ladders in a final successful attempt to escape my pet dragon at home. Or at least I thought it was successful…

In the dream I was filled with dread at the possibility of encountering another staircase like this. Apparently the only way to avoid them was to stay off of elevators and use only the real stairways. And indeed, most floors had a gray door located near the elevator, and behind that door was a stairway. Unfortunately, not every floor had a stairway entrance, so one was forced to take the elevator anyway in order to get to a floor that did.

I found myself on one such floor; somehow I got the idea that it was the fifth floor. The weight of the dragon ethics rested heavily on me as I ran desperately from door to door, from one end of the corridor to another, in vain search of a stairway. It seemed that the fate of the dragon people was going to catch up to me anyway and that I would be forced to climb the perilous staircase whether I entered an elevator or not.

To escape this fate I slipped into what looked like a hospital ward and pretended to be a patient. I approached a young man whom I thought was a doctor, but he said he was only an intern. Then I spotted the object of my lust, Brent the law student, and tried to seduce him by taking him behind a white hospital screen that was in one corner of the room, and telling him teasingly that I needed “legal advice.” Evidently he was frightened of me, and like a clean-cut hero he defended his “chastity” by escaping. Just as he was retreating I said to him, “I will breathe fire into your loins anyway!”…and he grinned at me knowingly then, as if we were soon to enter into some conspiracy together. I left the ward, ran down the hall, and found myself in the garage at my mother’s house…

Whose blood?
In this third dream, it was early evening on a dark and rainy day, and my younger brother Kevin and I were standing together in the garage. Kevin, who was fourteen at the time, informed me that my rabbit was giving birth. I looked down into a box on the garage floor and sure enough, there was the rabbit, with several bloody masses issuing from under her tail. Sadly, however, they were apparently miscarriages. I couldn’t figure out why the rabbit was pregnant, since she had no companions but my little dragon, and certainly rabbits and dragons could not mate…could they? I came to the conclusion that a wild buck rabbit was lurking around in the yard and had mated with my rabbit on one of the occasions that I had let her out of the cage.

Then suddenly my rabbit ceased to bleed, and my brother informed me that the blood was really coming from him all the time; he had used some fantastic trick to make it appear to be coming from the rabbit. He was worried that there was something really wrong with him. I was trying to reassure him when suddenly the scene changed, and I was riding with my boyfriend Phil down the freeway on a sunny day. Now Phil was confessing that the blood seemed to be coming from him, but he suspected that in reality it had originated in me. I realized he was right; it was I who had been bleeding all along. I was scared that something was terribly wrong with me, but Phil was totally lacking in empathy and concern; he was simply overcome with relief that it was not he who had been bleeding.

And that dream faded into wakefulness, and not a moment too soon. I'd had more than enough of that bizarre stuff.

Layers of meaning
Upon awakening, I felt compelled to write the dreams down. I remember that my overwhelming feeling was one of puzzlement: I had no idea what had “caused” that extraordinary series of night movies. (I told you I wasn't all that introspective in those days.) I had not indulged in any weird or excessive food, drink, or drugs before going to sleep. I hadn’t been watching any strange movies or TV programs, nor had I been reading any books or magazine articles about cathedrals, or dragons, or strange bleeding, or any of the other weird stuff that peppered my dreams. I wasn't even in my period at the time.

I did know enough about dreams to recognize that what I had seen in mine were possibly powerful symbols. In fact it was those dreams that inspired me to do further research into dream symbolism, which led me to explore the works of Jung...and that helped pave the way towards my later acceptance of a more mystical approach to life. These days I pay close attention to my dreams, particularly after my recent discovery of what I can only assume are "guides" who now frequently come to me through dreams. (See my posts, "The Angels of Abundance," Part 1 and Part 2). And I am also experimenting with lucid dreaming in the hopes of taking my relationship with my guides to deeper levels.

Regarding those old dreams, in case you’re wondering, neither my brother nor my then-boyfriend nor I had any serious medical problems to warrant that “blood” dream. But blood, as I later learned, can be a very meaningful dream symbol that has nothing to do with health issues (see the links at the end of this post). Some parts of those dreams did prove to be literally prophetic, though. A few months later, my rabbit did indeed become pregnant. I had bought another rabbit that I thought was a female, figuring “she” would make a good companion for my bunny. The new rabbit seemed to be very possessive of my female rabbit and would plant a front paw firmly on her head whenever I tried to pet her, as if trying to keep her out of my reach. I still didn’t snap to the fact that the new addition was a male (with rabbits, it's not always that obvious) until my rabbit gave birth to a litter. Unfortunately, they did not survive; the mother seemed more interested in mating again than in taking care of her new babies. I sold the male rabbit.

In addition, I confess, I ended up making good on the mischievous “promise" I'd made to my overachieving law-student crush, Brent, at the end of the dragon dream. A few months after that dream we had a bit of a fling, and I even started to fall a little bit in love with him, but he viewed me as just a casual partner, a temporary escape from the pressures of his busy schedule. He had a gorgeous fiancée waiting in the wings, and a well-planned life that did not include directionless free spirits such as myself. Even though he let me down gently, it still hurt a little. Over the next several years I had a few more casual flings similar to my relationship with Brent. In retrospect I can see that they were distractions I deliberately chose in order to keep from focusing on dealing with deeper life issues. Those diversions kept me from having to mess with those troubling elevators and stairways! Yet ultimately they left me feeling more empty than ever.

Although I have no idea what ultimately became of Brent, Phil is doing very well, having carved out an impressive career in journalism. He and I never got married (well, at least not to each other), but we remain good friends to this day.

Much of the rest of that rich dream imagery seems so obvious to me now, in retrospect. On several levels the cathedral dream reflected not only my own philosophical struggles but also the fact that in my younger days I often felt like an impostor, and thought I had to pretend to others that I was something I was not – as in my phony display of piety in the dream. I think the lovely artifacts in the cathedral were meaningful as well; even after I overcame my disdain for religion, I struggled for years to reconcile my material and spiritual longings, feeling a bit guilty for wanting the finer things in life. (I've since gotten over that guilt!)

And certainly I wrestled with my “dragons” – the doubts and nameless fears that were behind my seeming lack of direction – for many years. If you're punnishly inclined, you could say that I was "draggin'" my fears and other issues around for many years. Less clear to me were the meanings of the elevators that turned into scary stairways. On the one hand, I tried many times in real life to avoid “the elevator," metaphorically speaking, even though that would seem to be the easier way up. And that avoidance was a product of fear, pure and simple: either fear of reaching my goal, or fear that there might be consequences to taking the easy or obvious way. On the other hand, I've also learned that sometimes there really aren't any shortcuts, and the "easy" way is actually the more harmful (or at least the less helpful) way. Sometimes you have to take the stairs, no matter how much extra work it involves. After a while, it really does get easier!

Even today, some parts of those long-ago dreams are open to interpretation. In these paragraphs I have only scratched the surface of what I believe to be multiple layers of meaning.

What's really important is that it took years of life experience for me to figure out what those dreams may have been trying to tell me, and this brings me to my main point: Dreams are valuable inner resources, but most of the real work is done in the “real” world. Our dreams may be, as Marsha Norman wrote, the illustrations in our soul's book, but I suspect that our souls are not writing the book for us. Rather, we are the ones who write much of the text that both inspires and is inspired by those vivid illustrations – sometimes lovely, sometimes horrifying, often unsettling – that we call dreams.

What are you writing on the pages of your soul's book?

Yours in Absolute Abundance, utter gratitude and boundless joy,
Kalea Makana
"The Abundance Chick"

..........................

Here are some links to pages explaining some of the major symbols in the dreams I shared above:
Dreams about cathedrals and churches
Dreams about dragons
Dreams about blood

And here's a great online dream resource: DreamMoods.com.

Apprentice or hero worshiper? (Amazing apprenticeship, Part 2)

"Come on, Kalea, you don’t really believe all of this stuff, do you?"

That’s what a good friend of mine asked me a couple of weeks ago, when looking through some of the books on my shelf. It was a sincere question, asked with affection rather than condescension.

I'm glad I have friends who challenge me like this. The truth is that I hang around all kinds of people, and although I strongly prefer upbeat and creative people,"upbeat" and "creative" are about the extent of my criteria. I choose my friends for who they are and how they live their lives rather than for what they believe. I have friends who are skeptics, agnostics, even atheists. They all have something to teach me (and I also hope the reverse is true). I'll admit that some of them good-naturedly roll their eyes at some of the things I’m into, but they love and respect me anyway, and vice-versa.

I've been thinking about this conversation with my friend because it seems relevant to the topic of apprenticeship (see Part 1). I decided to share that exchange here. Of course I didn't record our conversation so the following is not a verbatim account, but it's pretty close.

The context of the conversation was that my friend had been looking at some of my books by Esther and Jerry Hicks, Dr. Joe Vitale, and the like. "Do you really, literally believe that the Hicks have a hotline to some 'disembodied beings' who know the secrets of the Universe?" she asked. "And what about this Ho'oponopono stuff that Joe Vitale writes about? Do you really believe that some therapist was able to 'heal' a group of criminally insane patients just by working on himself?"

She added that it seemed to her that most of the people whose books line my shelves are really just in it for the money, and that they care more about marketing than actual truth. Yet they seem to have cult followings. "They're just ordinary people who happen to be good or maybe even brilliant at marketing," she said. "And yet people go all ga-ga over them," she said. "I just don't get it."

"Well," I said, "I'm not really the ga-ga type..."

"All evidence to the contrary," she smiled, going over to my computer and, with a few mouse clicks, landing on my first blog post. "You list a few of the top names in the self-improvement industry, and you make these people sound like they're the saviors of humanity or something."

"I can see how it would seem that way," I said. "And I guess I was a little bit giddy when I wrote that first blog post. The truth is, I don't think of any one person or group as being 'a savior of humanity.' When it comes right down to it, I think that saving humanity is a group effort that we all need to be involved in."

"We're definitely in agreement on that point," she replied.

I continued, "But some of the things these folks have written and spoken about have really opened my eyes. Their books and other products gave me inspiration and hope when I really needed it. They've expanded my horizons in ways I never would have dreamed just a few years ago. I've learned so much and I'm still learning from them."

"Geez, Kalea, you're starting to sound like you work for some of these folks,” she said, with mock exasperation.

"Well, maybe I will someday," I said. "Or work with them, anyway! I admire their achievements, their abilities, their creativity. I'm impressed with their stories and am wowed by the way some have come from poverty and even homelessness to where they are now."

"How do you know those stories are all true?" my friend asked.

"How do you know they're not?" I retorted.

Take what you need, and leave the rest!
"And as for being in it for the money," I went on, "I have no doubt that money is one motivating factor for many of them – maybe most of them – but you know what? That doesn't bother me. For one thing, I don't think it's necessarily my job to second-guess people's motives and what's in their hearts. But I do think that what's in their hearts is apparent by their actions, and I've seen lots of evidence that the really successful people are also very giving. They have big hearts. They truly do seem to want to make the world better for everyone."

I gave her a moment to digest all that and then added, "Besides, I want to make lots of money myself!"

"Well," she laughed, "at least you're honest about that. But what about those disembodied beings and that miracle healing in the Hawaii psych ward?"

"I'm not sure what I literally believe," I admitted. "I think that in his book, Zero Limits, Dr. Vitale did as good a job as he could of verifying Dr. Hew Len's story. After all, it happened a long time ago. I'd rather focus on the present-day results of practicing the teachings. I find the 'cleaning phrases' of Ho'oponopono to be very comforting, like a meditation, and I can honestly say that my life seems to work better in amazing ways when I consciously practice the principles of Ho'oponopono."

"But what about those disembodied beings that Esther and Jerry Hicks communicate with?" My friend was insistent, but there was a twinkle in her eye.

"Well, I"m a bit undecided about 'Abraham' too," I acknowledged. "But in my opinion, the material the Hicks have produced as a result of that collaboration, or whatever you want to call it, is beautiful and full of wisdom, and it had to come from somewhere. Who am I to say whether or not Abraham is 'real'? The Universe is full of mysteries."

My friend was looking intently at me now, as if waiting for me to continue.

"The bottom line," I said, "is that I take what I need from them and leave the rest."

"In that respect," she said thoughtfully, "you're really no different from most of the rest of us – even the most traditionally pious or dogmatic religious types." She added that it seemed to her that most people who adhere to a belief system in theory – whether it’s a religion or spiritual path or healing system or even a political platform – may not necessarily agree with all aspects of that system. And few are purists in practice. They just "take what they need and leave the rest," as I'd said.

"Or in some cases, they just go along to get along, as the old saying goes," my friend added. "I guess we all have to make up our minds about whether the aspects we agree with outweigh the things we disagree with."

"That's exactly right!" I said. "And that's something all of us have to decide for ourselves."

My friend nodded, and we went on to discuss how some people get all upset about this take-what-you-need idea. They call it "moral relativism" and they say it leads to amoral behavior and a warped world view. But neither my friend nor I see it that way. We think there are certain basic moral and ethical principles and behaviors that exist independently of religions or other belief systems.

"And I think that when it comes to our beliefs and even our world views," I mused, "we all cherry-pick to a certain extent."

"True," my friend replied. "If we don't, we become dogmatists or fanatics, and there seem to be plenty of those in the world. But I do my best to avoid them."

"Me too!" I agreed.

We both smiled. I was amazed and grateful all over again that I have friends in my life with whom I can have friendly disagreements about even deeply significant things, and yet we can always find common ground.

It's all about gratitude
Still, my friend wanted to rib me a little bit. "You really do sound sensible when we're sitting here talking about this, Kalea," she teased. "But if I look in your closet am I going to find a shrine to Joe Vitale or Bob Proctor or Louise Hay? Or maybe at least some autographed posters of 'hunks' like John Assaraf or James Arthur Ray?"

"Look all you want," I laughed. "Like I've said, I'm really not into hero worship. But I don't mind giving credit, as well as a lot of positive reinforcement, to the people who have helped turn my thinking around and have given me the strength to make my life better."

So call me giddy, call me a hero worshiper or even a brown-noser, call me what you will. It doesn't bother me. My "hero worship," such as it is, is all part of my amazing apprenticeship. I don't think there is anything wrong with expressing my gratitude to some of the people who have helped open my eyes to the Absolute Abundance that is all around us, all the time. My deepest wish is to also be one who can help open people's eyes, hearts and minds. And if I make a whole bundle of money in the process, who am I to argue with the Universe?

Yours in Absolute Abundance, utter gratitude, and boundless joy,
Kalea Makana
The Abundance Chick

Amazing apprenticeship, Part 1

I didn't intend to stay away from my blog for so long, but it has been another busy week...busy in a good way, that is!

I've been thinking a lot about the name I've given myself, "The Abundance Chick," and the Absolute Abundance program that I am developing. It has occurred to me more than once that some people might wonder who the heck I am and exactly what it is I am trying to accomplish.

I can see how some would easily dismiss me as either just another copycat or wannabe. After all, there are thousands of people on the Internet writing about "abundance." Like prosperity and success, abundance is something everyone wants. (Now, I personally think that abundance is something most of us already have; we have only to open our eyes and our hearts to it. But that's a topic for another blog post.)

Some people might see me as a star-struck self-help groupie, particularly if they are basing their opinion on what I wrote in my very first post on this blog. (I'll go into that some more in my next blog post.) Or maybe they think I'm just kissing up to successful people to help myself get ahead. To which I would say, "And your point is?" Okay, I'm (mostly) kidding about that.

There might even be those who think I have a lot of gall calling myself "The Abundance Chick," or claiming to have a "program" called Absolute Abundance. "Who does this chick think she is, anyway? So she can write a blog. Big deal. Is she successful? Has she helped other people reach success?"

Those are all legitimate questions. I mean, here I've been going on and on about birds and bees and some weird dreams I’ve had, which is all well and good if you happen to be interested in those sorts of things, but beyond that…what exactly do I have to offer?

Well, that’s the big question, isn't it? And it is the one to which I am still discovering the answer. I do know that the answer will change as time goes by, as it changes for all of us many times throughout our respective journeys. What I can say for certain right now is that I have a strong sense of purpose that is growing stronger all the time.

"Uh, yeah, you and everyone else on the Internet," I hear the skeptics muttering in reply, or maybe those are merely my own doubts I am hearing. I've learned to make friends with my doubts without letting them rule me, and I've found that the more I embrace those doubts, the stronger I become, and the clearer my vision becomes. When I am not "working" at my day job and tending to the other details of my life, I am very busy developing my vision by reading, studying, planning, developing…and, yes, dreaming – both "asleep" and "awake." (And believe me, I am learning a lot from those "sleeping" dreams. I will probably end up sharing more of them in future blog posts. I'm just warning you now!)

Am I successful? Well, that depends upon what you mean by "successful." No, I'm not a millionaire (yet). But I am on my way! Meanwhile, I am enjoying the journey and consciously remembering to be thankful for what I already have. To me, gratitude is one of the most precious and powerful forces in the Universe, right up there with love and hope. I'm certainly a lot better off than I was just a couple of years ago. When it comes to helping others achieve success, I do what I can now, and am utterly determined to do more as I become more successful.

The truth is that I still consider myself to be at the learning stage – the apprenticeship stage, if you will. For now, I am mostly keeping my mouth shut and my eyes and ears – not to mention my mind and heart – open.

As for my Absolute Abundance work, I hope that cynics and doubters will not be too quick to dismiss me. I didn't just fall off of the turnip truck yesterday. (Come to think of it, I've never even been on a turnip truck.) I am well aware that there is a big difference between dreams and delusions, between drawing on intuition and merely being "into wishin.’" That is why I am proceeding slowly and carefully at this point, while leaving myself as open as possible to divine inspiration.

I am still spending a lot of time studying the works of the masters, knowing that I am far from being a master of any kind at this point. But I am something almost as amazing: a very eager apprentice. That isn’t always an easy role, but then, I don’t think it was meant to be. I suspect the real work is yet to come.

And I expect I will be ready!

What about you? Where are you on your journey? Are you still in your own apprenticeship stage, or have you gone way beyond that? Have you learned to embrace your doubts without letting them rule you? Do you make a conscious effort to find something for which to be grateful every day...or (even better), has gratitude become a gloriously effortless part of your life?

Wherever you are, and whatever you are doing, I wish you Absolute Abundance, utter gratitude and boundless joy.

Kalea Makana
"The Abundance Chick"

PS: I'll have more about this apprenticeship thing in my next post.

The angels of abundance, Part 2

In my previous post I wrote about a strange out-of-body experience I had one winter night when I "saw" an old oak tree growing large golden fruit, and then picking, eating and scattering its own fruit. I was given a powerful message about abundance that night, but even though I drew comfort from the experience (I really can’t quite call it a dream), I didn’t fully absorb that message for many years. And although the experience has stayed with me in the years since, I have been through many difficult times, and the vision of the tree was pushed to the back burner. It became something that I scarcely thought about at all.

And then about five years ago, I had a strange and powerful dream. I knew this one was a dream even as it was occurring; it didn’t have that "half-awake-half-asleep" feel about it that the tree experience had. In the dream I was standing in a large and magnificently appointed room, like a room in a palace – I’m not sure where it was, but it had an oddly familiar feel to it. I don’t remember ever having been in any room like this in real life, but since our dreams are often composed of random images, it could have been something I’d seen in a book or movie at some point in my life. That's what the rational part of me says, anyway.

There was, however, nothing random about the imagery of the beings who materialized before me; I had seen them before. And they didn’t just pop up suddenly; I had the feeling they had been there in the room with me all along, patiently waiting for me to become aware of them.

Ice-blue eyes
They were a small group of five or maybe seven; to tell the truth I was too captivated by their appearance to do something so mundane as count them. I remember saying to myself within the dream, These are the people who used to visit me at night! They seemed to be the very ones I had sometimes "seen" floating at the foot of my bed when I was small. Only now, in this radiant room, I had a much clearer view of them. And this time they seemed to be standing, not floating. They were really quite beautiful: generally human in appearance, but unusually tall and slender, with smooth alabaster skin and reddish-gold hair. Their hands were slender and graceful looking, with long fingers.

Most notable, however, were their eyes, which I saw clearly for the first time. I will never forget them; they were such a striking pale blue. Ice blue, I remember thinking to myself within the dream.

Those ice-blue eyes stared at me and right through me, and even though the beings were not smiling, they were far from hostile. More than anything, they seemed incredibly patient. I suddenly realized I was communicating with them, and they with me, without speaking.

Who are you? I "asked" them.

We are angels, they "answered," and they added, Now is the time to ask us your questions.

Angels? How could that be? Where were their wings? They communicated that they didn’t have wings, and they seemed to be chastising me a little for wasting my time with unimportant questions.

I remember feeling overwhelmed then, for I had so many questions that I scarcely knew where to begin. I should have had more time to prepare for this! I was tongue-tied, or perhaps more accurately, "mind-tied." And yet it seemed that on one level we were having a genuine exchange of sorts; I was "asking," and they were "answering." I couldn’t begin to tell you what all we "talked" about, though. I just remember that I felt so amazed and blessed to be in their presence. But there was one message that I do clearly recall, and when I thought about it later on, it blew me away.

Just before the dream faded the angels "said" to me, The tree is real.

Now, that is the kind of dream that makes you want to write it down so you’ll remember all of the details, and that’s exactly what I did upon awakening. Again and again I replayed it in my mind, wondering why the only thing that I distinctly remembered the angels "saying" was, The tree is real. At first I was puzzled by this rather cryptic message, feeling almost the way Steve Martin's character does in the 1991 movie LA Story. Towards the end of the movie, he and Victoria Tennant are looking up at a magical billboard that has been flashing messages to them throughout the film, and when they finally unscramble what is supposed to be the most important message of all, it turns out to be a few nonsense lyrics from an old pop song. Steve is astounded. "That's it?!" he says. "THAT'S the wisdom of the ages?"

However, since he has finally found love and happiness, Steve "forgives" the billboard for messing up. But in truth it didn't mess up at all, for the message it flashed did in fact have significance for his lady love. And you could tell by the expression on her face that she was amazed at the billboard's "wisdom."

Well, after thinking about it a while, it came to me that the angels' message to me in my dream was as significant to me as that billboard message had been to the lady in LA Story. I decided that if my angel dream truly had some meaning for my life and wasn’t just some random brain activity (and I’m always open to the latter possibility, though I much prefer the former), my best conclusion was that the tree to which the angels were referring was the magical oak tree from many years back.

I can't believe it took me so long to figure that one out.

I very much wanted to have another dream of those angels – perhaps a more lucid one in which I could actually remember what, if anything, they were telling me during our "conversation." For many nights after that I went to sleep concentrating on them, but they didn’t return. I went on about my life and eventually forgot about trying to have the dream again. But two things stayed with me and wouldn't leave: the memory of the angels’ ice-blue eyes; and the message they had conveyed just before the dream faded: The tree is real.

Then one night about a year and half after my angel dream, I had, much to my surprise and delight, another very similar dream: same room, same angels, same wordless method of communication. It felt as if something profound was passing between us, although once again I can’t really tell you what we "talked" about. This time around I didn’t clearly remember any words that were said, at least not in the dream. I awoke, however, to what sounded like whispering, much like the whispering I had heard during my tree experience many years before. This time I heard two words, over and over: Absolute abundance. Absolute abundance. Absolute abundance.

Since I was going through some very trying financial challenges at the time, I wasn’t seeing much evidence of "abundance," to say nothing of "absolute abundance." But I felt oddly comforted and energized by the dream and by those words, wherever they came from.

The next step...
Later that very same week a friend told me about an upcoming movie called The Secret. It sounded interesting, and I was probably one of the first people to watch it when it became available. Although a part of me was a little skeptical, even after I watched it, I also felt a strange excitement, and a surge of hope more powerful than I had experienced in a long time. Despite the film’s shortcomings, it touched me on a level I had rarely been touched before. I couldn’t quite explain it, but its message seemed to fit in perfectly with my dreams about the angels with ice-blue eyes, as well as my long-ago experience with that strange and magical tree.

Well, to keep a long story from being even longer, I began reading and studying the other works of the teachers in The Secret. I expanded my horizons quite a bit over the next couple of years. (And imagine my amazement when I learned about the Hawaiian healing system, Ho’oponopono, and discovered the incredible magic of the words "ice blue!")

As I studied and learned more and more, I was able to open myself up to more opportunities, and my financial challenges as well as other problems have continued to improve dramatically. My life has been a steady unfoldment of magic and miracles. I still have a ways to go, but the point is that I am on my way.

More than once in the past year and a half or so, I have awakened to the sound of that same whispery voice that says, Absolute abundance. I finally got the message that maybe I need to do something with that. And so I am.

How real is real?
Oh, and in case you are wondering, I have had still more dreams about the blue-eyed angels. The dreams are coming more frequently now. More than anything else, the angels seem to be very intent on convincing me that what I saw on that long-ago night – an old oak tree in the dead of winter, suddenly sprouting beautiful golden fruits and then picking its own fruits and scattering them all about – was very real indeed.

With all due respect to the angels, this message doesn't do me or anyone else much good if taken only at face value. I am reasonably certain that the old oak tree, which in the physical world still stands guard outside the window of my childhood bedroom, is not literally going to start bearing fruit any time soon, to say nothing of picking its own fruit and so on.

As a metaphor for creation and abundance, however, I find that it works beautifully. I have come to believe that we are all infinitely creative beings, and we all have gifts that sometimes spring forth from us in unexpected ways – gifts that perhaps we never knew we had. Once the creative process begins in earnest, there is no stopping it, and the gifts keep coming forth – even as the fruits continued to pop up, one after the other, on the winter-bare branches of that tree. I think that the most fortunate people are those who discover they have the ability to create more than enough for themselves, for it is this discovery that frees them to enjoy the profound privilege of creating something of value to share with the world...much like the tree that consumed some of its fruits and scattered the rest all around.

I am working toward being one of those fortunate ones. So, regarding that oak tree, I will accept that I saw what I saw, and it was real enough for me.

Besides, who am I to argue with angels?

Yours in Absolute Abundance, utter gratitude and boundless joy,
Kalea Makana
"The Abundance Chick"

The angels of abundance, Part 1

It occurs to me that I have not yet explained what Absolute Abundance ™ is. That’s because I am still working out the details of the program I’m developing and am not yet ready to share it with the world. But that doesn’t mean I can’t share a little bit about the inspiration behind it.

You might say it all started with a group of red-haired, blue-eyed angels. And when I say “angels,” I’m not referring to sweet and generous humans (although there are many of those in my life too). I mean real angels.

And then there was the tree that grew and picked its own fruit, right before my eyes…

First I have to tell you that I am not one of those people who sees angels or hears the voices of disembodied spirits – at least not in my “waking” life. It’s not that I doubt the existence of angels and spirits; it’s just that I am not tuned into them on a conscious level the way some people apparently are. In order to tap into what I can only describe as other dimensions of existence, I usually have to be in a dream state, or at least suspended in that uniquely receptive state of mind between sleep and wakefulness.

When I was a small child I used to “see things” at night fairly frequently. Or, rather, I would see people; at least they looked like people to me. I would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night – or it seemed I was awake, although it also felt somehow as if I was still asleep – and I would see strange, tall people with pale skin and reddish-gold hair at the foot of my bed. They were oddly suspended in the air, as if they were floating somehow. They seemed friendly enough and I was never scared, but I always thought it was very, very odd. I would try to describe them to my mom but she would say it was just a dream.

Secretly I thought of those “night visitors” as my friends, even after I grew up and the “visitations” (some would call them hallucinations) stopped. I came to accept, at least on an intellectual level, that these were indeed dreams, or they were simply tricks of my mind. I still had unusual dreams, and plenty of them, but I had very few of those “half-awake-half-asleep” experiences. As for those strange tall people, they seemed to have gone the way of my childhood.

The magical tree
I did, however, have one very memorable half-asleep-half-awake experience as a young adult. It might be more accurately described as an out-of-body experience. It was more than an ordinary dream, and it seemed very real. (And even though there are no angels in this part of the story, it’s still relevant, so bear with me. I’ll get to the angels, I promise!)

This experience happened one midwinter night when I was spending the night at my mom’s house. Outside the window of the second-story bedroom in which I slept – my childhood room – there was an enormous old oak tree. It was so close to the window that its branches sometimes scratched the pane when the wind was high, sounding for all the world like the fingers of a giant creature scratching to be let in. But I was never spooked by that sound; I always found it somewhat comforting. To tell the truth, I was quite fond of that tree.

On the night in question I had gone to bed early after a long day of helping my mom with chores around the house and yard. It had been a good day and I was tired. I had been asleep several hours when I “woke up”…but I somehow knew I wasn’t really awake; I was just in that weird space between asleep and awake. I had the distinct feeling that something was calling me to the window, so I rose from the bed.

Looking out into the moonless night, I saw little, but there was enough illumination for me to see my favorite tree quite clearly. It looked stark and black and a little sad without its leaves; in fact, when gazing at it earlier that day while I was still “awake,” I had almost felt sorry for it. But as I watched it now I saw, to my amazement, that large round fruits were springing out on the branches of this old bare tree. They popped out one after the other, almost the size of grapefruits but a golden-saffron color, with a smooth surface. Soon the tree was weighted down with the fruits. How odd, I thought, that an oak tree would be growing fruits like this – especially in the middle of winter!

I couldn’t turn away from the spectacle, and as I watched, something even more astounding began to happen. The tree’s branches became like gnarled black arms with hands, and they began moving and swaying, like one of those multi-armed Indian deities. And as I watched, the tree began picking its own fruit. Even stranger, it began "eating" some of the fruits through a hole in its trunk that had become like a mouth, and it scattered the rest gently on the ground around it. Still more fruits kept popping out of the tree, and it picked them, consumed a few for itself and scattered the rest. Before long the lawn all around the tree was covered in the luminous golden fruits, and they were spilling out into the street, bathing the night world in a gentle golden light. And still more fruits kept emerging.

At one point I became aware of a sort of whispering sound. It wasn’t quite what you would call a voice, and I didn’t know where it came from, but I distinctly heard one word several times: Abundance. Shortly after I became aware of the whispering voice, the image of the tree and its golden fruits faded, and I drifted back to bed and to a dreamless sleep. When I awoke the next morning, of course, the tree was back to its normal bare midwinter self, with not one luminous globe in sight. But I will admit that I double-checked, because the events of the night before had all seemed so real. I will also admit I was a bit disappointed.

The experience has stayed with me for many years, and I have told very few people about it. For a long time I simply referred to it as a dream, even though in my mind it was more than a dream, if less than “reality.” I went through many hard times in the years to follow, but in some of my worst moments, remembering that experience somehow sustained me and gave me hope with its striking imagery and its message of Abundance.

I had this “dream” years before The Secret and before I read Abraham-Hicks' works on abundance and the law of attraction. In fact, it happened years before I got into most of the things I’m interested in now. At the time I had the experience I was somewhat familiar with the concept of abundance from a more or less Christian perspective, but I wasn’t a practicing Christian and hadn’t been to church in years. Put it this way: I was more “rational” and critical in those days. And yet on one level I had been deeply moved by my “dream.” But I still did not realize the full power of its message.

And then those tall strange people returned.

I’ll tell you about them in Part 2.

Yours in Absolute Abundance, utter gratitude and boundless joy,
Kalea Makana
"The Abundance Chick"

Lessons from the birds and the bees, Part 2

(Click here to go to Part 1 of "Lessons from the birds and the bees")

Don’t be fooled by the title of this post. It isn’t about sex, but it is about the facts of life.

As I noted in my previous post, my friend Ken lives way out in the country. And even though I’m a city girl, I love visiting his place, which is a rich source of life lessons that sometimes show up in the most unexpected ways.

In my previous post, I shared a lesson I learned from the birds. Now it's time to take a lesson from...

…the bees!
This story, I’m afraid, doesn’t have such a happy ending as my hummingbird tale. But nature isn't all about happy endings, although I like to believe that in the larger scheme of things, it is about the message that "All is well."

On an exquisite sunny day not long ago, I was visiting Ken, and I went out to his garage to look through his toolbox for something. Ken’s garage, like his house, is large and sunny. There are two big windows so it’s always full of natural light, and on most days Ken keeps the exterior garage door open so he can enjoy the sights and sounds of the horses in the pasture just across the driveway from his house.

As I stepped out into my friend’s light-filled garage, I heard a loud and rather frantic-sounding buzzing. Imagine my surprise when I saw a dozen or so honeybees buzzing around the sill of one of the garage windows. They appeared to be seriously engaged in trying to knock themselves silly against the window, though it was obvious that in fact they were desperately trying to get out into the glorious sunny world beyond the glass. It was, after all, their world: the wildflowers were in bloom all around, and there was much work to be done.

But they just couldn’t get through that glass, though they tried again and again.

What they did not seem to realize was that the way out was just a few feet to the left of the window. The garage door stood wide open, a gateway into the bees’ brilliant world. So close, and yet so far away, as the saying goes…

I should add right now that it is not at all unusual to see honeybees, and a lot of them, around Ken's place. I think there are a couple of hives in the area, and fairly frequently we'll see a few bees in his garage. But they usually buzz right in and out of there. They've never been a problem, and they've never been aggressive; there do not seem to be any of those "Africanized" bees in the area, thank goodness. (Don't get me started on the red wasps that also occasionally show up...those are scary!) I have to admit, though, that it was a little unusual to see that many bees in the garage at once. I had a passing thought that maybe it was part of the overall pattern of weird things going on with bees and other creatures worldwide.

But I felt moved to do something about this situation, and Ken was on the phone with a client so I didn't want to disturb him. While I wasn’t any too certain about the wisdom of trying to herd honeybees, I just couldn’t stand by and let them bash themselves into oblivion. There was no way to open the window; literally, the only way out was through the door, which, as I said, was only a few feet away. I found a small broom and gingerly tried to nudge a couple of the frantic little buzzers towards that open door, but they seemed quite insistent on staying right there at the window and continuing their campaign to get through the glass.

What to do? I sensed that if I could just get one or two bees to exit through the door, the others would soon follow suit. On the other hand, I wasn’t too crazy about the possibility of getting stung, especially since (knock on wood) I never have been stung and don’t know how allergic I might be. In fact, several of the bees came towards me after I began my nudging campaign, and they sounded pretty angry about my intrusion. More than once I had to back off a bit, and I narrowly missed getting stung.

I must have been out there twenty minutes or more, trying without success to liberate the little prisoners, when my cell phone rang. It was a cousin whose call I had been expecting, so I abandoned my mission of mercy, intending to come back to it later should it be necessary. There was always the chance that the bees would find their own way out, after all.

I went back into the house and finished my phone conversation with my cousin, and when I got off the phone, Ken reminded me that we were supposed to meet another friend of ours at a cafe in a nearby town for lunch. So off I went with him, the bees quite forgotten as my friends and I got caught up in our day.

It was only much later that I remembered the honeybees. Ken and I had returned to his place and had finished supper, and the daylight was waning. I ran out to the garage and saw, to my dismay, nine (yes, I counted) little striped bodies in the windowsill of the garage. Sadly, most of the bees never did discover that freedom was so near – not through the windowpane against which they were beating so frantically, but out the door just a few feet away.

But I like to think that at least a couple of them did figure it out. To the ones that didn’t, all I can offer is a whispered thank you for the lesson. It was a timely reminder that (1) sometimes the path to freedom isn’t the most obvious one; and (2) more often than not, help really is available, if we will only stop fighting it.

Yours in Absolute Abundance, utter gratitude and boundless joy,
Kalea Makana
"The Abundance Chick"

* * * * * *

Here are some fun facts about honeybees.

Click here to go to Part 1 of "Lessons from the birds and the bees"

Lessons from the birds and the bees, Part 1

(Click here to go to Part 2 of "Lessons from the birds and the bees")

Don’t be fooled by the title of this post. It isn’t about sex, but it is about the facts of life.

My friend Ken lives way out in the sticks. I’m not sure if I could ever deal with rural living myself, but Ken absolutely loves it. And I have to say that even though I’m a city girl, I love visiting him out there. I’ve spent many a pleasant hour lazing about on his big front porch or wandering the endless meadows around his property, reveling in the sights and sounds and smells of the country.

Not to mention the life lessons, which sometimes show up in the most unexpected ways.

The birds…
Late last summer Ken put up a hummingbird feeder for the first time, hanging it on a hook just off his porch so we could sit back and enjoy the spectacle of ruby-throated hummers. It wasn’t long before the first tiny little jewels began buzzing around, and they were amazing to watch. Unbelievably small they were, and yet each one so perfect…

But we noticed something that we found a bit disturbing. Although the hummingbird feeder had six separate feeding stations, it seemed that all of the tiny birds were fighting over one station. One hummingbird would show up and start to feed, and almost immediately another one would come zooming in out of nowhere to chase the first one away and take over the station. And then a third bird would approach and chase the second one away, or the first bird would come back, seemingly bent on revenge…and on and on.

We didn’t understand it. There were five other perfectly good feeding holes, but that didn’t seem to matter. The birds were spending more time and energy fighting than they were feeding. Hummingbirds, we learned, can be fiercely territorial!

After a couple of days of this, Ken decided that maybe the solution would be to buy a second feeder. At the very least, more than one bird could feed at a time. So we went to a local feed store – they have a lot of those out in the country – and we picked up another feeder just like the first one. Ken hung the second feeder a couple of yards from the first one, and once again we sat back to enjoy the show.

But we found to our dismay that the new feeder made no difference. The little rascals were still fighting over that one station on the first feeder.

I shook my head in amazement. Here was an entire world of abundance, with not one but two full feeders – more than enough for all of the hummingbirds in the area. But instead of taking advantage of that cornucopia, the birds were squabbling over one little hole in one feeder. It just didn’t make sense – well, not to Ken and me, anyway. To the birds, I’m sure it made perfect sense.

The truth is that hummingbirds, like most birds, are territorial. They may be adorable to us, but they take their little lives very seriously. They get especially territorial about their feeding areas in the late summer, when their prime directive is to fatten themselves up for their long trip south for the winter. Ruby-throated hummingbirds are known to fly nonstop across the Gulf of Mexico – a distance of least 500 miles. So they need all the energy they can get. But it's not just a late-summer thing; no matter when or where you put up a feeder, once the hummingbirds start showing up they'll fight over it in the beginning. Ken and I weren't prepared for that.

I was worried that because of the feeder fights, some of them might not be getting enough. As I did more research on hummingbirds, I learned that nectar in those feeders (or from flowers) isn’t their only source of sustenance; they also eat bugs for protein. Nectar, however, is a vital pick-me-up – kind of like a hummingbird Starbucks – providing them with the necessary energy to go about their busy lives.

To me it seemed absurd that there was so much fighting going on when there was obviously so much food available (I know, I know, "Stop anthropomorphizing, Kalea!"). By now, though, Ken and I had figured out that buying yet another hummingbird feeder wasn’t going to make things any better. So we decided to just sit back and let nature take its course. What else could we do?

And then, after a few more days, we noticed that things were calming down a bit. At one point – I can’t say exactly when, but I honestly think it was some time on the seventh day (hmm) – we realized that the birds had discovered there were other stations in that first feeder. Before long, we noticed that two, three, four or more hummingbirds were feeding at a time. They were still ignoring the second feeder, but at least there wasn’t nearly so much fighting. Oh, there would still be the occasional dive-bombing from nowhere, the frantic midair pursuit, almost too quick for our eyes to see…but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been at the beginning.

Then there came the day when one bird discovered the second feeder. Although there were a couple of minor scuffles, it wasn’t long at all before the little jewels were busily and happily drawing from all of the stations in both feeders. After that, Ken and I found ourselves refilling both feeders far more frequently – a task we were only too glad to perform, for in return we got to watch the most astonishing, beautifully choreographed dance of iridescent light and color.

And the hummingbirds, now in full preparation mode for their long journey across the waters, were finally taking full advantage of the abundance that had, in fact, been around them all along. There truly was enough for all.

It is frequently difficult for us with our limited human perspective to see the abundance all around us, even as it was difficult for the hummingbirds to see it when they were so blinded by their own territorial imperative. Eventually they "got" it, but, from my perspective as an observer, it seemed that they were wasting an enormous amount of time and energy fighting over the bounty that had been provided for them – when in truth there was no need to fight. Watching this experience unfold gifted me with a powerful and eloquent reminder that abundance – absolute abundance – is everywhere in the Universe... and there truly is enough for all.

Yours in Absolute Abundance, utter gratitude and boundless joy,
Kalea Makana
"The Abundance Chick"

*****

Here are some fun facts about hummingbirds.

Click here to go to Part 2 of "Lessons from the birds and the bees"