Dingle + Anam Cara

I had a dream last night, unlike any other I’ve had. I believe it is a healing dream. There are a handful of dreams I know will stay with me always, and this is one of them.

In my dream, I walked away from something I had been longing for because I knew that it was not what would make me whole. I was faced with accepting it and losing part of myself, or leaving it and trusting the abundance of blessing that was yet unknown to me. I said “no” to what would make me less whole and walked away from it. Suddenly, I was walking down a cobblestone road, with tall, old buildings on either side. An old woman came out of a shop and looked at me with eyes that saw me. She gave me a piece of paper and a pen and said, “where would you say people should go that is best for them?” She turned around and hunched her shoulder so that I could have a place to write. I wrote a word in cursive on the paper (more on that below). Then, when she turned back around, I was filled with incredibly love and gratefulness to her. I had no words to say. There was nothing good enough to hold the feeling of gratefulness. I held out my hand, and grasped hers and said thank you without speaking. She drew me into a hug, and while I was hugging her, she pressed both her hands deeply into the spine between my shoulder blades. It was like trigger point therapy and something suddenly released inside me. My entire heart and core was vibrating and it felt like my soul was soaring through time and space, hot and cold at the same time, and glowing. I wasn't sure if my body could contain this feeling, and wondered if I might fly apart. Then the old woman said to me gently, “this is where your soul starts.” Then I woke up.

I think this old shop woman was part of me. 

Also, the word that I wrote down on the paper in cursive was “Dingle”. When I was 18, I studied abroad in Ireland. I was in heaven, learning Irish History, Literature, and Folklore, and spending every spare minute walking/hiking or traveling to all the forests I could. While there, I traveled to Dingle, Ireland, which is a very magical place. I remember standing on the beach in Dingle, and the color of the sea such a light, icy blue, with the pulsating green hills around me. My bare feet were nestled in the pebbly sand as the waves licked up. I felt grounded and also like I had always been there. In one moment, I felt incredibly small in the vastness of eternity and everything, and at the same time, incredibly connected to everything and everyone. I’ve since learned that Dingle is a “thin space”, or a place of energy, where the veil between this world and the eternal world is thin. The dream also made me think of the old Gaelic word “Anam Cara”, which means “soul friend”. There are people you meet in life who accompany you on the deep soul journey as you encounter your destiny and become closer with God. Sometimes in life, you meet people and when you make eye contact it’s like something claps you in your soul and you are filled with the sense of immense recognition and being truly seen, all the way to your depths, and your heart cries out, “THERE you are!!” Maybe these people are cut from the same heart cloth, I don’t know, but it is a rare and special gift.