The months between...

I have often dreamed of rescuing animals. This this is not surprising given the importance animals hold in my world. When I first cut ties with my Alma Mater as they like to call themselves, I lived and travelled in a Van for a couple of months with my cat and dog. I parked on the street in the less savoury flatlands of Cape Town, outside my sister's, flat. While my skittish domestic flirted with the ferrals in the neighbourhood, my hound slept with me in the Van. During that period I dreamed of saving Othello (my dog) from an undulating river of cogs and wheels that crunched anything that was caught in its turning wheels. I pulled Othello out onto the otherside, wounded but sound; however, in rescuing him, I came close to being caught up myself. In other dreams I loaded up the neighbourhood dogs into my Van; we escaped along a road too small for a huge machine that demolished everthing in its wake to follow us. I realised that sometimes I endanger myself trying to rescue others whom I love; on another level, I protect those I love by caring for my domesticated and loyal instincts.
        When I settled instead of drifted, I still dreamed of animals fleeing to the island that held my house amidst floods. Some humans arrived. They were cruel and destructive to the animals, so I sent them away, into the raging water: Get thee gone: you are not welcome here. You can do what you like, but not in my space; I will not tolerate your cruelty. In realized that in dreams I also set boundaries.
        In another dream, the hound who looked out for me in Cape Town, who with a wrench of my heart I put down after 15 faithful years and his going senile, appeared. I saw Othello. No one had brushed him, so I did, comiserating with how uncomfortable it must be to have the hair bunched at his haunches. A child with pigtails and curly hair was watching me. I knew she was observing to learn and would know now how to look after my friend when I left that realm. 
        Eventually, however, I decided that dreams of dogs were speaking about my loyal instincts. Technology has not been kind to human instincts; nor has the New Age with its emphasis on intuition. We live with so much danger now that we have forgotten how to recognize the physical dangers of our world and take appropriate action.
        Then, one Friday night, a whole bunch of dreams constellated after an important dream message: I should practice my spiritual mediation and discipline, Tai Chi, for only 10 minutes every day. That was the only message or image my dream left, an instruction almost. I wondered if the dream was saying I was doing too much spiritual searching and was encouraging me to set a restriction on how much I should practice, or whether I was being called to practice one discipline rather than several.
        So there I was this Friday night having an interesting time in the Chinese sense of the word. My partner was away, and I was left at home with my current ever-faitful hound and the cats. For some weeks I had been rather disturbed by the orange flashing lights going down the road past my house--if it was red, I would know it was an ambulance; if it was blue, a cop van; but orange? What does that mean? Apparently, the Night Patrol. The Night Patrol with their orange flashing light was comforting.
        I am something of a night owl, so when I eventually put the light out, I could not move past a hypnogogic state in which sounds are amplified by virtue of the fact that it is the energy body that feels the sound. I guess I was nervous sleeping in the bed alone, and I spent my time locating noises: a rattle, that is the cat on the stool; a grind, that's the wind moving a plastic chair outside; a choof, that is the cat on the windowsill. Did that sound come from inside or outside myself? In the darkness, our senses distort. I thought about the dream that had suggested I practice my spiritual discipline, harvesting the Chi, for 10 minutes a day. So I collected and cultivated and directed some Chi, and ended off the meditation placing a bubble of light around the perimeter of the postage stamp of land on which my animals and I are located.
    I had almost convinced myself to let go of the world when the gate rattled. My hound growled and shot out a bark. We all got up to investigate. The cats have been instructed to distract intruders. Unfortunately, I did not have my bottoms on, so I was reluctant to go past the front door. My hound shot up the side of the house barking. Silence... a long silence. I whistle him back; he shoots to my car. I see a strange cat shoot past the gate. A false alarm, or so I thought.
I return to my warm bed, and I have almost convinced myself once again to let go, to sleep, to dream, when I hear a commotion that is too big for a cat. If it is the duiker that sometimes rests in the field, she seems to have decided to jump the fence into my garden--is she looking for water? A thud. Too big for a cat and duikers are too nimble to humiliate themselves like that--and one must be nimble as a duiker in semi-suburbia; something is going on!
    My hound is "biting at the bit." Dogs have particular barks after the first undifferentiated bark of surprise or call to be on the alert. This was not a "there's a dog out there who flings insults at me when he passes and pisses on my lamp post" bark; or "this is a strange cat who has come to steal my kitty friends food" bark; this is a "something out there is endangering us" bark. I pick up my syringe of chemicals that will blind an intruder and leave a very strong smell to boot, and don my boots and pants in one fluid movement.
    With torch and syringe in hand, my hound and I go out into the night. It is early Spring and a balmy kind of evening--pleasant. My hound screams up the side of the house that borders on an open field and into the back. We investigate. He sniffs and returns to the fence. I walk down the side of the house, shining my torch across the field because my hound keeps looking across at it and barking: "Danger, danger." I can see nothing. 
    A car crawls past--it's an unmarked Night Patrol. Then it comes down the other way again. My dog is still barking to keep "something" at bay, and I cannot see what that something is. For all I know its a leopard after the duiker. I decide to ask the Night Patrol: "Is something going on in the neighbourhood? My dog is frantic, and I heard noise in the field next to my bedroom window."
To cut a long story short, they stopped, decided to have a look in the field in the direction of where my dog was barking and found two "skollies"--and whatever their race, I would call them that--lying in the bush. In their possession, a great deal of electric wire--tools of the trade, I guess; that' s what they tie their victims up with. 
In exploring the field the next morning, it was clear that one or both of the skollies had tried to climb the fence to enter my property and probably access the open window to my bedroom. My meditation worked--one of them fell of the fence and left a clear dent in the grass; that was the thud I heard. Rather than cower in the dark, I went out to meet it. Rats and entities up to no good hide in the dark. Those who walk in the Light stand up and allow themselves to show, like Lighthouses (to steal a metaphor of the Kryon).
I wonder about the karmic implications when I see how my helpers arrived right when I needed them--the Night Patrol--and sent the skollies off in the back of a police van. I wonder about the dream in which I saved dogs in a flood and sent those who were cruel and destructive off and out, away from them. I dwell on the dream about how to cultivate the Chi so that I would be in the Tao of the moment and make the right choice and take the right action. I remember how my dog was willing to stand against the danger, and I was willing to stand with him. In the end, I realise that when we are in tune with the Universe and walking in the Light, we are reminded in dreams about how to protect ourselves without even really thinking about it. What is needed in the moment constellates in synchronis events and everyone learns what they need to learn.