Daydreaming: How do you do it? (Seriously, I need help)

Part 1 - The Background - If you're short on time, you can skip to Part 2 - Give Mabel Advice

Alright, I told you awhile back that I bought my first oracle deck. I guess I should expand a bit.

Okay I did tell you about my Inner Butterick Pattern Fairy who turns complex scented oils into talcum powder (which I liked as a child, and I think Butterick Pattern Fairy is my inner child). I felt she needed an oracle deck or tarot or something. My Betty friend Urthalun posts a card a day on her blog and my Fairy said "I want! I want!"

Butterick Fairy and I agreed on the Animal Dreaming Oracle Cards by Scott Alexander King since we love animals, and my adult self doesn't find it culturally-appropriating-ish like some animal-oriented decks. It's based on Australian animals, so sometimes the author talks about consulting elders, or going on walkabout, but he mostly he takes one quality about the animal and embroiders on the theme.

I was sure this was the right deck for me when I got it, because King explains in the little booklet that all his cards have positive meanings. Well I'm a positive sort of gal. I also got it because the texts are usually broad enough that you can get something interesting out of them on any day, rather than: Today you shouldn't make any money deals.

I tried out the two larger "spreads" in the book, where you're supposed to learn which animal represents your inner self, and your self as a teen, and this sort of thing. I'm not sure how useful it was, or whether I was really able to *believe.* I mean... the last one, the animal that's supposed to represent me when I'm myself an elder, when I leave this life, is the card that represents... Elders. The meaning of the card is: Talk to elders and learn from them. ... This seemed a bit unhelpful. Who is going to be older than me when I'm 80? Or maybe I'm going to be a really immature and unwise old lady who needs to seek out wisdom from other 80 year olds.

Part 2 -  Mabel Seeks Oracle Advice Using the 3 Card Spread

The three-card spread, which you can turn to when something is troubling you, seemed a little more helpful. Because something is indeed troubling me (I'm not going to go into it, but it's not new, and it's not going to go away anytime soon, and please don't email me and ask me what it is. :-o ) The first card is supposed to represent lessons from the past that you should integrate into your present. The second represents the talents, loves and gifts currently surrounding you, that can help you (and anchor the lesson from card 1.) And the third represents the energies to realize your prospective abundant future.

So here's what I got.

1. Lessons from the past that you should integrate into your present: The raven here represents prayer, which should make my dad happy. This made sense. Prayer isn't in the past for me, since I do pray daily, but it's a big part of my history. And my praying's been a bit all over the map since the new year. So I'm going to take this card advice as: Refocus my praying on my issue, which the card says will strengthen my self-perception.

2. The talents, loves and gifts currently surrounding you: The platypus card, called: women's wisdom. Well this made me laugh of course, because I thought of the Betties, and also the other women who comment here, and all the girlfriends in my life who I reconnected with these past months. The card is actually about trusting your own judgment by drawing on your innate masculine and feminine qualities. I'll admit my judgment's totally blown in this area at the moment. So I may just take the card at face value for now and be glad that I have a lot of wonderful friends and family, male and female, offline and online, in my life right now.

3. Now this is the funny one. I was excited for this one cause it's like "The actual advice part!"  This is the card to show you the energies to realize your prospective abundant future, the wisdom and strength needed to break through familiar/limiting behavior: The lizard = daydreaming.

The lizard wants me to take note of my daydreams, even journal them, because they are future possibilities that I'm dreaming up, and if I don't take note of them they might arrive but I won't recognize them when they do. The explanation was hard to understand. Upon second reading, I think he's just talking about creative visualization maybe. Except not purposeful--not sitting down and purposely thinking through a situation you want to happen. He's saying that when you daydream, it's your soul flying off and identifying its desires, I guess. And you should pay attention. It's a bit woo for me.

Friend maewitch and I once discussed taking walks, cause I said I find them really boring. She said, don't you just daydream on them? I said no. I don't really daydream.

If do get lost in thought. But I'm just thinking about stuff. Maybe imagining a conversation with someone. But I don't think that's "dreaming."  I also put myself to sleep, or amuse myself if I'm somewhere bored with no book, by thinking up stories, or redoing movie endings. That's definitely daydreaming, but I'm in control of the scenario, and it's not my life.

I never imagine I'm walking around in London having an adventure, or something. Do people do that? What on earth is daydreaming? And I don't scour the internet looking for my dream mansion to live in, because I don't want to feel unhappy with the life I have here and now. I don't think about what I would do if I won the lottery. Is that daydreaming? Is my desire to protect my appreciation of my real life, hindering my dreaming life? In which case, I should be listening to the lizard?

I'm curious to know what you guys think, and how you day dream. Help a girl out.
   

Your Journey is Always in Draft Form

[This posting talks about Betties. See the Betties tab to understand the reference if needed.]

The Original Betty who started the Bettying--that is to say Lucy March who decided to blog for 500+ days until her 40th birthday--describes what she went through, her last marriage, as being towered. The term comes from the tarot...

I love the added insult of God's hand reaching out with a mallet to give the tower a thwack and the "not again" look on the Fool's face.

"There’s a card in the tarot called The Tower. Although tarot decks vary, The Tower is one of the illustrations that offers the least variation. Almost always, you have a tower, the top of which has suffered some horrible calamity, causing it to break off, and as the Tower tumbles, you see people jumping off, trying desperately to get to safety. Typically… it doesn’t look good for them."

 "...Despite the apparent tragedy of the card – and let’s make no mistake, there’s loads of tragedy in a good Towering – I have to say that, in hindsight, I look at all the times I’ve been Towered in my life and I think, “Thank God.”... every Tower that has fallen has taught me something about how they are built."   [To read her full post go here.]

Now she's found some peace and the blog is being turned into a community, but it's leaving in mourning many of the blog readers whose lives didn't undergo the same transformation that hers' did over the last 500 days. There's a reasonable sense of abandonment, that was poignantly addressed in a recent entry.

But still... a new journey can begin any day, for anyone. Many journeys have already begun, it's just that they're still at the scary-bottom-of-the-hill-looking-up-at-the-steep-incline stage. Or the brave-explorer-lost-in-the-frozen-ice-fields stage. Brr.

As I walked home from the library today Natasha Bedingfield's "Unwritten" came on my mp3 player, and instead of thinking of Pantene, I thought of Betty Angel.


I am unwritten, can't read my mind, I'm undefined
I'm just beginning, the pen's in my hand, ending unplanned