women

Picnic on the edge of a volcano – a dream

Eve Neuhaus Leave a comment

I’m walking up a high hill with a group of friends, all of us carrying baskets. When the path spirals round to the top, I can see that the hill is a volcano, but it’s an inactive one, its crater a gentle dip soft with grass. More people are coming up the path and joining those already spreading blankets and tablecloths on the ground along the rim of the crater.

It’s my job to feed them all. There is a huge cauldron filled with something warm. I supervise some women friends who are ladling the soup (or stew?) into smaller cauldrons, which we then take around the circle to fill each of the picnickers’ bowls.

The mood is benign, cheerful, almost ebullient, though we’re all aware that it’s a volcano we’re sitting around.

When I wake up, the sky is yellow gray with smoke from the wildfires all over southern Europe, savage wildfires as close as an hour’s drive from our little haven on a hill, Cordes-sur-Ciel. Tom is coughing. We barely glance at the news—it’s too apocalyptic.

The waking world is falling into chaos. It’s fortunate that the fire nearest our place is contained, but the sister of a friend’s family has been evacuated from a much worse fire a four hour drive from here. Climate change is everywhere, we are in our sixth week of relentless heat, the wars in the Middle East and in Ukraine continue, and there are more earthquakes and erupting volcanoes along the Ring of Fire every day. Not to mention the political situation.

Yet Tom and I just returned from a few idyllic days in Amsterdam with family. The skies were blue and temperatures were well below the searing ones we’re enduring here.

We were indeed picnicking on the rim of the volcano.

The geometry of the dream bears further examination. There is the hill, the same one I’ve been climbing in my dreams for as long as I can remember. (I write about the series in another blog Spiral dream: Redemption, written a few years ago). At the top of the hill, there is a round indentation, grassy, but similar in form to the spring at the center of the women in white I saw the vision which I describe in the blog called A Drop of Love, and like the spring, it is surrounded by people. In the vision, the other women and I are meditating while a battle goes on around us. In this dream, both men and women are sitting on the volcano’s rim, and the battle going on around us isn’t evident, though it’s glaring in the waking world.

Symbols of the Feminine abound: the crater, the cauldrons, the bowls. We women are providing nourishment to the community.

If the message of the vision, which I refer to fondly as “my dickhead vision,” is that women need to hold the center during period of chaos by remaining calm and focused on the deeper world, the message of this dream is that we also need to be of service by providing sustenance.

That volcano doesn’t look like it’s about to erupt in my personal dream world, but I’d be a fool to think it’s just a hill.

Get your cauldrons ready, my women friends. There will be work to do.

A drop of love

Eve Neuhaus 4 Comments

Une goutte d’amour

This is a vision that came to me not long ago when I was doing longer than usual meditations in the morning. I’d been sitting for maybe 45 minutes when it floated into my head.

C’est une vision qui m’est venue il n’y a pas longtemps, alors que je faisais une méditation plus longue que d’habitude le matin. J’étais assise depuis environ 45 minutes quand elle m’est venue à l’esprit.

In the vision, I am sitting in front of a spring with low circular wall around it. 

Dans cette vision, je suis assise devant une source entourée d’un muret circulaire. 

From my left comes a figure in a white cape and hood. Without saying anything, she seats herself on the opposite side of the spring. I see that she is a very, very old woman. 

De ma gauche arrive une silhouette vêtue d’une cape blanche à capuche. Sans dire un mot, elle s’assoit à l’autre côté de la source. Je vois qu’il s’agit d’une femme très, très âgée.

 We sit together quietly for a while. I close my eyes.

Nous restons assises ensemble en silence pendant un moment. Je ferme les yeux.

When I open them, I see that many women in white have come.

Quand je les rouvre, je vois que de nombreuses femmes vêtues de blanc sont arrivées.

I’m so pleased to be there,  I feel full of joy. I love these women. I love being part of a circle of women sitting around a spring. I feel so blessed.

Je suis tellement heureuse d’être là,  je me sens remplie de joie. J’aime ces femmes. J’aime faire partie d’un cercle de femmes assises autour d’une source. Je me sens tellement bénie.

Then I remember something I had read the night before.

Puis je me souviens de quelque chose que j’avais lu la veille au soir.

It’s something a friend, Robert Sachs, said in a response on Facebook. His exact words don’t come to me, but what I remember is “One drop of love can overcome all the difficulties going on around you.”

C’était quelque chose qu’un ami, Robert Sachs, avait dit en réponse sur Facebook. Je ne me souvenais pas exactement de ses mots, mais ce dont je me souvenais, c’était : « Une goutte d’amour peut surmonter toutes les difficultés qui vous entourent. »

“One drop of love can overcome all the difficulties going on around you.”

« Une goutte d’amour peut surmonter toutes les difficultés qui vous entourent. »

The idea pleases me. It makes me even happier to have remembered it.

Cette idée me plaît. Je suis encore plus heureux de m’en être souvenu.

.While I’m feeling that ebullient love bubbling up inside me, and that deep, deep comfort that being loved brings, I notice a disturbance off to the right.

Alors que je sentais cet amour bouillonnant monter en moi, et ce profond réconfort que procure le fait d’être aimée, j’ai remarqué une agitation sur ma droite.

A man is coming, a man who, for his head, has the tip of a penis.

Un homme s’approchait, un homme dont la tête était remplacée par le bout d’un pénis.

So I look at him, and while I’m looking at him, lots of other guys join him from all directions. As I watch, all of their penis-heads start growing and getting bigger and bigger, and their necks are stretching longer and longer, until one of them hits another one and then suddenly they’re all bashing each other with their penises, with their long penises.

Je le regarde, et pendant que je le regarde, beaucoup d’autres hommes le rejoignent de tous parts. Alors que je les observe, leurs têtes de pénis commencent à grossir et à devenir de plus en plus grosses, et leurs cous s’allongent de plus en plus, jusqu’à ce que l’un d’eux en frappe un autre et qu’ils se mettent soudainement à se frapper les uns les autres avec leurs pénis, leurs longs pénis.

And we women, we‘re just sitting there, around the source, in meditation, in silence, holding that space.

Et nous, les femmes, nous sommes simplement assises là, autour de la source, en méditation, en silence, gardant cet espace.

And that’s the vision.

Et voilà la vision.