Hungry for a Persephone Burger? Mmm Yum!

I don’t get mad that often…but when I do…it’s not cute. I was furious—bordering on out of control Tasmanian Devil from the Bugs Bunny cartoons kind of furious (on the inside)—right before Christmas. I’d fallen prey to a family dynamic that I swore I’d mastered and become immune to—but, as it turns out, I hadn’t and I wasn’t (yet). As I was tossing and turning, grumbling, and cussing like a sailor in the middle of the night, I (thank God) had the sense to get out of bed, grab my journal, and turn to the work of Byron Katie. If you’re not familiar with her “Work” then this next part may at first blush seem strange…but you’ll figure it out. “They should apologize!” was what my ego was tantrum journaling about, but it soon turned around into, “They shouldn’t apologize.” There…that did it. I could begin to breath as I heard the faint sounds of angelic harps wafting in the distance.Why did this turn-of-phrase slap the stop button faster than a kid playing Wack-a-Mole? First of all, “they” weren’t going to apologize…so there was that. Secondly, if I zoom back…all the way to the beginning…back to before I was born, when all of us angels were setting our intentions for what we wanted to learn in Earth School, I seem to remember (not exactly remember, more like imagine) saying, “I want to come to planet earth and learn to be as enlightened as humanly possible… I want the light to shine though me, even in dark moments.” Ahhhh yes, that sounded like a fine intention…and with that…whoosh down the shoot I went. How would it be possible to be the light in dark places if I wasn’t challenged in ways I couldn’t outrun? Like, family members being the bearers of those said challenges? What a perfect set up! Thank you, universe/God/Goddess/The Powers That Be! This is the motherlode of Christmas gifts! Ahhhh…now I really don’t want them to apologize…I want them to be exactly as they are…how else will I ever grow into my intention for incarnating in this dimension?Ok, that may not have been exactly how it went before I was born…but, according to Victor Frankl, we humans are storytellers, and we can either tell ourselves a story that makes or breaks us…our choice. So, this is the story I tell, and I’m stickin’ to it, and it’s what helped me fall back to sleep and prompted the following dream:I’m in an underground cave, burger joint, with my family for a meal…and I realize there’s not enough food for everyone, so I hunt down the waitress and order us more Persephone Burgers. As I said the words to the waitress, I stopped in my tracks and laughed…in the dream…realizing I was in the realm of Persephone…the Greek Goddess of transformation, alchemy, who always shows us the value of the shadow side, and how the rules of the upper world are very different from the realm of the underworld. In fact, it’s because of her that we have our seasons. Were it not for her and her yearly sojourn to the underworld, according to myth, we would live in perpetual Springtime and would miss out on Winter, Fall, or Summer. We need Persephone (burgers), like we need a shadow, like we need challenges to grow…like we need certain family members to provide those challenges.I woke up that next morning with the Tasmanian devil far behind…not because I pushed him away, but because I got my healing/revealing via the dream and (for more about Persephone and how to work with Shadow Characters—check out this Romancing the Shadow video I just made with Jo-e Sutton:https://www.facebook.com/kellysullivanwalden/videos/10156061020090439/I was so grateful, like someone who received their Christmas Miracle (via a delicious Persephone burger) just in time.Why am I sharing this with you now?Well, it’s a shiny, bright, new year, and we’re all in intention setting mode…and it occurred to me to invite you to consider including dreams into your intention setting. Since you’re in my world, you probably already know the vast benefits of dream recording on a daily basis as one of the best things we can do for our psychological and spiritual well-being, that ultimately affects our physical well-being, relationships, health, and wealth. Not only can our dreams be healing, but they are constantly revealing our next best steps…so that our shiny new intentions can have rocket fuel to back them up. (Here’s a video Nancy Telzerow and I made to help you create a New Year’s Resolution Revolution!:https://www.facebook.com/SpiritualGirlsInAMaterialWorld/videos/2045810228987539/With that in mind, I’ve decided to open my February 11-16th Dream Retreat in Costa Rica to a few more dreamy people. This will be an opportunity to carve time out of your busy life so you can drop deep into your dreaming self and pump up the volume of your dream wisdom so by the time you leave, your still, small voice will be as loud as a bullhorn...which might be too loud, come to think of it…so what if I say you’ll get your hands on the volume knob and will be able to turn up your inner wisdom as loud as you’d like it to be?!?If this calls to you, follow the 5 Second Rule and click here.****Speaking of dreams…I must pay tribute to one of God’s greatest gifts to dreams…Jeremy Taylor. He was one of my best dream mentors. His beloved wife, Kathryn, made her transition on New Year’s Day, and many of us believe Jeremy died of a broken heart just two days later, on January 3rd. Jeremy Taylor did not hide his light under a bushel. No. He shined his light in the living years and is an inspiration to us all to do the same! He was a Unitarian Universalist minister, who led dream workshops all over the world for many decades. He was an IASD past-President and co-Founder, winning the IASD Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012.  He was also co-founder and director of the Marin Institute for Projective Dream Work, and the author of four books on dreams, including the 1992 classic, Where People Fly and Water Runs Uphill.He is an inspiration and to all of us to take the gifts we’ve been given and share them to the furthest extent that we can. He makes me think of one of my favorite quotes:This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no “brief candle” for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

~George Bernard Shaw

***On a separate, yet related note, this will inspire you to be the splendid torch you came here to be! Enjoy this short video—a promo video my genius hubby made about a PBS program he is co-producing, entitled, “Ageless Living”…enjoy:Sweet dreams, happy new year, may this be your best year yet!