rest your head...
I was recently with a hospice patient in the final hours of his life. He was a religious man but like many of us, finding some difficulty here in his approaching death.
We had spent days exploring his dreams…speaking of the images in them…images that revealed his fear…his sadness…his regrets…and his slow movement towards the final threshold.
The spaces of quiet over these days were lengthening…often just the sound of our breathing together…being together. As he was deepening into his experience he would move through moments where his eyes seemed glazed and unfocused…and the next moment turn to me with clarity and awareness…and then…such a scared moment for me to share with him…a strong focus on something or someone standing just behind me and a look of surprise…
His voice got softer in these hours…almost inaudible…and then he turned to me and mouthed…’soft pillow.’
In this meditative shared place of quiet I felt into the soft pillow as I would a dream image…as I do each night with my own pillow…slowly and quietly I invited this dear man more deeply into the healing image.
Soft pillow…
Feel your head touching this softness…resting in this softness…
how it holds you…how it supports you…
Now take a breath…and slowly image this soft embracing pillow as a lap…
your head resting in this soft lap…
Let your pillow become the lap of the One who loves you…
who knows all of what’s happening for you right now…
and who is here with you…the one who holds you.
I don’t know if it’s the divine father or the divine mother or someone else…
I don’t know whose lap it is but you do…
let your head rest that lap…
Rest your head in the lap of the One who loves you…
His face had the contented look of a child…and we rested together in the silence…in the lap of the Beloved
Mary Jo Heyen is a Natural Dreamwork Practitioner working with clients throughout the country and abroad in person, phone or Skype. Learn more about her work with dreams at www.maryjoheyen.com or www.thenaturaldream.com