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her dreams, she becomes aware that the wellspring of her life's song within has
begun emerging into her waking life and that she is now "living
the forms of a mandala." Through these years of emergence,
Kathleen experiences, by way of her dreams, allusions to
reincarnation, guidance to physical well-being, and other
dream elements commonly dealt with in the writings of Carl
Jung, Edgar Cayce and others. Yet Kathleen was mostly
untutored in these materials and worked alone. Only gradually
does she seek out the works of Jung and finds, to her delight and
relief, that "Jung gives me names for things."
Her dreams begin presenting her with the need for stillness, quietness—meditation she resists, knowing that, for her, meditation will not yet unfold, but that dreams will. Eventually, she is able to accept the discipline of regular meditation as necessary to the seeing of self beyond the limits of psychic or sexual growth. It is at this point on her path that our Dream Animal, again through her dreams, perceives that choice resides rightly in the conscious mind and not within the dream itself. As she notes, there is danger if one relies on dreams exclusively, for they will very quickly leave one in the lurch. Adhering to this wisdom and the attending disciplines involved, she eventually meets, full face, her purpose in the earth: to be a beggar of the inner way, "to make of my soul a monk's empty begging bowl." She recognizes as her task not to hoard anything, even His presence, but to trust that her small bowl will be filled with manna each morning. As she prevails with her meditations, she wakens, one day, to the joyous awareness that her days are filled with a lightness and a buoyancy heretofore unknown. Kathleen concludes that "Many people come to love God through first loving people; for me, it was the reverse. This costs and it hurts. There are no short cuts. One cannot wrest love out of context and graft it onto the main vine through sheer will power. It will only unfold as part of an honest openness to life experience. But despite the high cost, there is really nothing else worth spending oneself for." Our Dream Animal leaves us with a tapestry depicting her own unfoldment to God, her purpose, her wholeness. Besides enchantment with the sheer beauty of description and imagery, the reader is invited to participate with many significant and sturdy tools to be used along his journey as a dream animal. This is a book which will imprint its magic, its poignant beauty and its rugged, utilitarian sturdiness upon the minds of those who choose to tread their way through the luminous mists of creativity and emergence of wholeness from within. (Faith Howell)
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