Consumed By The Dragon – Awakening

I dreamed.  I dreamed I was eaten by a dragon.

In the dream, I felt no fear – no trepidation of jagged teeth or painful death.  Only curiosity.  The dragon was HUGE, her head the size of a small house, her body could have been an apartment complex.  When she lowered her snout to the ground and opened her maw wide, I felt the heat and smelled the sulphur exuding with her breath.

It was a dream, though, and I was only more curious.  I stepped tentatively into the cavern that was her mouth.  I felt the soft give of her tongue under my feet… and watched myself dissolve — body vaporized into billions of tiny fragments.  Still conscious, yet nowhere could I find me.

Dreaming.  Dreaming in a deep, dark landscape filled with sparkling lights, I felt the beating heart of the dragon pulsing me through her body.  I sensed an immense mind – like a sky with no end – and touched it, joining in the dream with a vast intelligence that stretched my awareness to new perspectives I would never have considered within the mind of my own species.  Perspectives I could barely comprehend. Perspectives that turned me inside out of the nowhere I could find me.

Timeless in a dream that may have been a brief moment or eternal forever, consciousness released the “I” as all the particles of what was “me” flowed into ‘we-ness’ with her…

Until she pooped me out.  She pooped me out.  I was dreaming, right?  And there “I” stood again.  No longer the “me” who had been consumed – I was newly configured; somehow reshaped and blended anew with traces of Dragon vibrating through my being.  Transformed into dragon poop.

I dreamed.

And now, I wonder… what is dreaming?  And…when am I awake?  Is this Awakening?

That first step – would anyone take it knowingly?  Would anyone, seeing the jaws of dragon opened wide, step inside and welcome the mystery of transformation that occurs when consumed by the dragon?  I say mystery because there is no way to forecast – no means to measure and calculate – the magic that occurs once the dragon closes her mouth and the process begins.  There is also no way to step back and decide to wait for a better time.  Once inside the maw of the dragon, transformation is inevitable and life-changing.

So I ask: Who takes that step knowing that life as we knew it will cease to exist and life as it is becoming is unknowable?

Transformation is a relative term.  Sometimes, it is as simple as a new haircut that “transforms” appearance and outlook.  Sometimes, it is as complicated as heart transplant that takes a person from the brink of death to a long and healthy life… with all of the ramifications that embodies.  Sometimes transformation is an internal event that no one else perceives but that rocks the perceptual world of the individual beyond recognition.  Sometimes, transformation occurs slowly, and almost imperceptibly, through incremental stages – like the caterpillar that weaves itself into a cocoon and emerges a butterfly many months later.  And, sometimes, the process of transforming is swift and all-encompassing – like being consumed by a dragon.

It seems everyone transforms at some point – all indicators point to transformation as an integral component of evolution.  But, do we do it willingly? Even as my own life experience has been one transformational episode after another – from running away from home to live on the street as a teenager to multiple “death” experiences and more – I ponder the relative consciousness of my decisions that led down these paths into the maw of the dragon.  And I surmise that – on some level – I did, indeed, step knowingly into the dragon’s mouth.  Perhaps not with my personality’s awareness, in fact probably not, but on some level of consciousness I knew and chose transformation.

And I extrapolate this is the truth for all of us in our evolution.  We can deny it.  We can pretend that Life happens to us, and any resulting changes in our inner or outer worlds are by happenstance, but I’ve come to understand that the more we can accept responsibility for that first step that took us on the path of dis-orienting and transformative change, the better able we are to integrate into who we are becoming.  Let us step lightly then and go forth in trust and faith and hope that the dragon knows what we do not know that serves our greater will to good.

Thank you.  I love you.