“Emboldened by so many battles won, again the demons charge,
Battering me with obscenities and curses they’ve handcrafted,
From the rhythms of my beating heart and the crimson of my blood,
In peace and with one breath of God I blow out all their flames,
And in the stillness bind them to each nightmare they inspire,
They’ll not have me, this time at last, for I am not of them.”

A verse from the poem “The Battle” by Barefoot Justine
(For complete poem: https://barefootjustine.com/2016/03/21/the-battle/)

My room consists of a lot of windows, the front of my room is nothing but one huge wall to wall floor to floor window overlooking the swamp and a lake, and the side wall offers me an unspoiled panoramic view into the forest. While I love the view and my windows… I don’t have much room for art or posters on what little wall space I do have, so instead of looking at art… I look out through my windows into the ever-changing forest, where I have seen young fawns lying at the feet of their mothers, predatory birds on the hunt, and about everything but other people. The view out the side window caught my attention as the sun coming in shone more golden and brilliantly than usual. There was more sky than I remembered. I was drawn to get up, and was astonished to find that the landscape was not the same. When I look out the window, now as I am writing, I see forest, but in that reality it wasn’t that way. What I saw was a meadow, and to the right, running parallel to the back wall of my room was the forest, a perfect line of trees and undergrowth. The sun had lit up the meadow in rich rolling golden greens, and rich deep greens.

Suddenly there was a stir coming from the forest, something deep among the trees, something massive, a dinosaur, a cyclone, Paul Bunyan, something, was ripping its way through the leaves out into the meadow. Leaves, twigs, Spanish moss, birds and dragonflies flew and blew out over the meadow from ground to treetop. The trees were bending and blowing outward towards the meadow like tall shafts of midsummer sweetgrass.

Then came a rustling, almost as if a furious and starving prehistoric predator were charging through the forest and towards the meadow. The chaos was thunderous and tumultuous. A beast, the size of a dinosaur, broke through the tree line and out onto the meadow, stopping, dust and leaves settling around its mighty legs. It was The Great White Wild Horse! White or no, the body of The Horse was scarred and haggard like the walls of an ancient embattled fortress. She was earthy, as if she had emerged from the ground itself, and stood with the presence of an ash covered ascetic. Yes, though it was weathered like an old stone mountain, it was luminously beautiful. I was awe struck as I stood staring at this The Great White Wild Horse. It towered over many of the trees, and its mane blew and whipped the leaves from the over-reaching branches. Its breath rumbled like alligator bellies to the ground, like thunder.

Yet The Horse was saddled. And the saddle belonged on The Horse, was as much a part of The Horse as its mane. Then, from around the side of the house came my friend, we’ll call him Jay. Now, Jay, being Jay, he put his rational mind to work and decided to free the poor horse from its saddle. As he stood under it, working the buckles, I was horrified! Couldn’t he see? This is a mythic beast! You don’t just amble up to it and start messing with its stuff! To my further horror, The Horse bucked up on its hind legs, its front right hoof poised to crush my dear friend Jay! Down it came, like a falling brick tower, it’s hoof down on him. The last thing I wanted to see was my dear friend, atheist or no, crushed under The Great White Wild Horse. But The Horse stopped short, gently but firmly pinning Jay to the ground, applying no more pressure than what it took to hold him to the ground. It’s head, nearly big as a bus, turned to me. It’s black eyes were the size of bowling balls. Her stare burrowed through my many sad delusions and unconscious illusions, as if to tell me who I truly was.

And I woke up.

I hadn’t even figured out The Panther, and now I had to work out who or what this Horse was. Now I had to work out what it was telling me. I knew the dream was big, but what I didn’t know was that it was so big it was part of a trilogy of dreams that had not yet been completed. It seemed I was dreaming my own personal “Lord Of The Rings.” In waking from the dream of The Great White Wild Horse, The Panther dream, I suddenly realized, took on even greater significance.

Though these dreams happened about a year ago, thanks to Brother Shankara, I have just recently found answers, as he had suggested I meditate on them. As it turns out, the very day I meditated on The Panther, answers came to me about all three dreams, The Panther, The Horse and The Lamb. Meditation is a powerful thing, and while it took DMT to destroy the walls my ego had put between myself and these larger truths, this deeper knowledge of self and the nature of maya, now it seemed I was so open to the larger truths and realities that Panthers were speaking to me and Horses were staring God-like gazes into my deepest corners.

Since the forest here has become my Guru, let’s first consider the forest itself. Of course The Horse came from, and was probably born of, the forest, of the wild, just as I have gone wild out here in the forest of my Guru. I live in the middle of Newnan’s Lake State Forest, and so much has this forest become my Guru that upon returning from a week long trip, when I got home the first thing I did upon my return was head straight for its paths. As I walked the dirt road to its end, as I got ever nearer the paths and trees, I felt the same elation any Devotee must feel as she returns to her human Guru. This Horse was not only emerging from the forest, but was inviting me deeper into it, deeper into its truths, deeper into my self, further from maya. This Horse was not merely emerging from a forest, but The Forest that was my Guru! Right now, at this stage in my spiritual development, the answers are in meditation (which I do in my room, from where I saw The Horse), and in the shade, rain, sun and mud of the forest (which was from where The Horse came).

“Man, the imperfect, the bound, the sorrowful, has a thousand enemies within. He is riddled with negative thoughts, fears, yearning. These are selfishness, jealousy, meanness, prejudice and hatred–just to mention but a few. The Sadhak must get rid of these lawless villains within. With Mother Kali’s Kripa, these destructive masters are to be annihilated. No amount of soft persuasions can avail. The forces of Sri Rudra must be applied. There must be a deep, determined, adamantine resolve, and a fight royal within, as sanguine as Kali’s ferocious sword dripping with blood; and unless the Sadhak is ready to wear about his neck the Skull-mala of these murdered false values there can be no peace or order within.”

Swami Chinmayananda from “Symbolism In Hinduism”

So… who was this Horse? Was she Ma Durga. “Mother?” Why was it so wild, so raw, so uncivilized… and yet wore a saddle? I am a person with wild, raw, sometimes uncivilized emotions, that at times to me feel like raw unprocessed feminine power, a power of emotion that can help me proceed when others would pull back, but a power that has not only a deconstructing power, but a destructive power as well. The Horse is Shakti! The Horse is the other half of Shiva, the feminine. But The Horse is also everything I need to carry me through not only life, but the coming challenges of a life that is slowly growing more spiritual, a life that may well take me away from all my material attachments. I need that power, but I need to reign it in, I need to master it, just as I have needed to learn to master my mind and my emotions (both of which I have only begun to do). The Horse, perhaps more clearly than anything, is my courage, my strength and my energy. My feminine power indeed, my Shakti! These powers need not only focused, steered, and guided, they need to be integrated. In the dream The Horse was outside of me, staring not only through my eyes, but through my windows! The Horse started off outside of me, in the depths of my forest Guru, and turned and, with its black eyes, bore its depths right into mine. The Horse was outside, in my forest, outside my room, outside my body… but through our eyes, we were one.

Just last week, which was about a week after the metaphors and symbols of these dreams were decoded through meditation, I was hiking with my friend Melissa on Payne’s Prairie. As we hiked out onto the prairie, we noted at first a little rabbit, then hundreds of dragonflies all buzzing around our knees, and just ahead, five wild horses, one a young colt! Honest to God wild horses were just ahead on the path! As we approached them, several deer came charging out from the underbrush across the path to splash into the swampy marsh on the other side. This was, quite simply, the most unbelievable series of wildlife encounters I have ever had on land. We chose a safe distance from the horses (a very close safe distance as these horses are used to people being about) and we sat in the grass of the path and meditated. The wild horses went about their grazing, and we went about our meditating. As I had been contemplating this dream of The Horse and all the truths my meditation had revealed about The Horse, having the opportunity to meditate in the presence of five wild horses was intensely holy to say the very least. I was on holy ground.

Unlike the five wild horses on the prairie, The Great White Wild Horse of my dream was saddled. The saddle, I have only just understood, as it had been one of the big mysteries up to now, meant that I was to ride that horse, to guide that horse, to reign in and master that Horse… my own power, powers that at times seem to throw their energy like a spray of sparks. That Horse and saddle represented fiery hot virtues that are mine to realize, integrate and harness to propel me forward. Too often, now, I am afraid, those energies and powers still tend to run rampant.

Yes, though The Horse meant to be ridden, its powers harnessed, it is nonetheless meant to remain forever wild! I am to focus that energy, but not tame the wild intensity out of it. Both the tamed and saddled powers and the wild forest of emotional power are part of me, part of The Horse, and part of Lord Shiva. Just as Shiva, who came to his wedding party wild as an Aghori, so the wildness of The Horse is among my aspects. But just as Shiva reigned in his wildness and put on a civilized form, so was The Horse saddled, so am I to learn to ride my own power and forms with more grace. Just as Shiva had to tame his Aghoric aspects for his wedding to Parvati, so am I to tame the wildness of my Shakti… but like Shiva, only when needed. I am not to conquer or sublimate my wildness, only to harness it and keep my hands on the reigns, until I learn to ride that wind bareback.

I am The Panther Woman, and I am The Wild White Horse.

Om Shivoham!

“The materialists — those who describe themselves as being ‘down to earth’ — are the ones who are living in an unreal world, because they limit themselves to the level of gross sense perception. But the perception of the illumined saint ranges over the whole scale, from gross to subtle and from subtle to absolute; and it is only he who knows what the nature of this universe actually is.”

From Swami Prabhavananda’s commentary on Patanjali’s “How To Know God.”

So who is Jay and why did he try and unsaddle The Great White Wild Horse? Jay is a materialist through and through, a political atheist, one of those guys who reads the “Humanist” magazine. You know the magazine, the one that always has a picture of some smug bearded middle-aged guy accompanied by a quote about how he believes only in his precious intellect (his over-developed ego), in what he has decided is “reason.” Those guys are a little like Daksha from the story of Shiva’s wedding to Sati. Daksha, Sati’s father, who was very offended by Lord Shiva’s ascetic wildness and disregard for social convention, but that is a simplistic reading. Daksha represented ego, a life centered around society, and cultural rules, which includes subcultural rules, and in subcultures the rules and codes of conduct demand far more conformity than those of mainstream society. Though Jay is an atheist and progressive, he lives a life that involves a lot more committee meetings (society, rules of engagement, etc.) than I could tolerate. When I do go to committee meetings (be they with city officials or museum officials or whoever), I do so barefoot in bangles, bindi and bare legs, as if to say, “I’ll do the work, I’ll do it well… but I am not one of you, I am not part of this committee, and I will remain The Panther Woman!” I relate to Shiva’s Ganas, outsiders who are not accepted by mainstream society but who are accepted by Shiva. I lead an internal introverted life. Jay leads an extroverted life, a life dependent upon outward pursuits. Now, I love Jay, but needless to say, we couldn’t be much more different. Now, I would like to say that in every other way Jay is not much like Daksha in that, for example, he, too is pretty uncivilized (like me), and he is in NO WAY interested in conservative rituals and points of view, but in the context of the dream, those Daksha-like qualities of Jay were of paramount symbolic and metaphoric importance.

So, why did The Horse rear up and pin Jay to the ground? Why did She do so without harming him? Because Jay is a really good man doing really good things, and The Horse and I (rather… The Horse IS I) love him… and love him just they way he is. But in the dream Jay was not Jay, Jay was a symbol for godless atheism and materialism (and NOT in the “materialistic” sense, Jay has, like me, practically taken a vow of poverty out here, but in the sense that he believes in non-spiritual intellectual/scientific solutions to life’s problems). The Horse wanted to keep Jay, and that aspect of me who is like him, under Her hoof. I am not to give into Godlessness or materialism. I am to face such concerns with courage and in steadfast power, just as The Horse silenced him under Her hoof. My spirituality is not to be trifled with externally or internally. In other words, I know the whole atheist and materialist song and dance, I know it well and inside and out, but I do not need to continue to let it infect me and it will take all the courage and power of The Horse for me to rise above such doubts and concerns. I am, like The Horse, to dominate such thoughts, I am to face courageously, yet say NO to thinking that binds me to maya. I am not to run away from the hard questions, challenges to my faith or doubts, no, I am to harness all of my power and face them… and THAT takes courage.

In a sense, The Panther was Atman, but also, in a sense, Purusha, and The Horse was raw earthy power, my courage and strength, but also, as she was a manifestation of the Goddess and her power, Prakriti. One is to be attained and realized (The Panther, Purusha); the other is energy to be ridden for spiritual purposes (The Horse, Prakriti). Yes, The Horse IS my power, my courage, but is also Shiva, is also fearlessness, or at the very least, by calling upon The Horse, by realizing or attaining The Horse within, I am to be fearless yet in control. I will need full access to my power, my Shakti, if I am to realize my spiritual potential, if I am to realize Shiva!

Om Shivoham!

I am Shiva!

NEXT: The Three Dreams (Dream 3, The White Lamb)