This 17th dream painting image came from a Journey Oracle card question: Are you keeping track of all the parts?
As I ponder this peculiar picture and its question, more questions occur to me. What does it mean to “keep track”? Parts of what? Keeping track does not necessarily mean “saving.” I think it is instead about paying attention. We cannot keep track of something we are not attending to.
The four objects assembled on the edge of the precipice feel like representations of the parts of our lives we mostly pay attention to: how do we want to live, how we prefer to move, what physical stuff do we collect and store for remembering the past or anticipating the future. And perhaps most significantly, the ways we keep track of our sense of self: our identity through work, social and economic status, physical appearance.
The dream image would appear to suggest that none of these are very secure or stable. So what other parts are recommended to our attention?
We seem to be paying attention to deep space; maybe living there when we use up this planet. Or at least some folks riding rockets to space hotels in the realizable future.
We are doing a better job of keeping track of the damaged bits of this earth home. Well, maybe. Often sounds like lots of attention but minimal repair.
Still, we are beginning to pay attention to how plants communicate with each other.
We are beginning to acknowledge that birds experience air as a dimensional landscape of smells and colours, of patterns of moisture and temperature.
We are beginning to allow that
there is thinking and feeling in all creatures;
insight as well as instinct.
But what of the hand, and why tinfoil? In the journey that directed the painting of this dream, the tinfoil was named specifically. Perhaps we are beginning to reach through what is unsustainable, to pay attention to something besides our relief from inconvenience.
So much is hidden from our rational minds. Let us retain a sense of mystery and not be narrow and materialistic….This is not just a ‘beautiful idea’ but also practical–the world is in dire need of goodness and positive energy. Thoughts have power. Prayers and aspirations have force.
Jetsumma Tenzin Palmo
