Ok, this will be a more personal story.
For a long time, I considered myself a pretty balanced person. I have been meditating daily for seventeen years and basically pictured myself as having one foot in enlightenment and the other one in life, while keeping a smiling distance to it all.
At the same time, I was constantly fighting against the Dragons. Normally, it would happen somewhere in the back of my consciousness. Yet sometimes the fighting would become quite present.
In these cases, the Dragons would often take the shape of loneliness, or impatience, or disappointed ambition. But in some moments, they seemed to show their true face:
A deep anger against myself.
In such moments, I would withdraw from all social interactions. But even in other moments, when I was in my usual state of balance, I would always keep a general inner safety distance from other people to make sure no-one would get hurt by the Dragons.
This is how things were until, at the beginning of last summer, a shaking incident made it impossible to ignore the inconsistency in all this.
I decided to face the Dragons. And I decided to do this with someone’s help. That was quite a big thing for me, as I had never before accepted help with the deeper stuff inside me. But luckily, I had just met someone who I thought might be a person capable of getting a little closer to the Dragons, without fearing for him to get burned:
Just two days before the incident, I had participated in a ‘communicative meditation’ workshop. I attended out of curiosity to see something different from my usual practice, but didn't have high expectations. As it turned out, my first partner for the exercise was the facilitator. Here, I call him Jojunando.
At first, a cold reservedness arose in me that I usually felt coming up when I sensed alpha male energy in people — expecting a competitive attitude and an aggressive defense of their fears. But then, sitting in front of him and looking into his eyes, I saw a combination of acceptance and vulnerability that seemed strong enough for letting him come a little closer to the Dragons in me.
So when that incident shook me a few days later, I decided to reach out to him. He met me the same day that I reached out, and three days later I was lying on a massage board to try one of his trauma therapy sessions. It involved entering a kind of hypnotic state while diving into a method that I would call ‘imaginative somatic exploration’:
Equipped with a magic shield, I entered the cave of the Dragons. The cave was of enormous size. It’s dark, rocky walls sealed off any light except for the glow of the Dragon fire.
I saw that the cave was situated right under a tree and that this tree was the tree of my strength. I realized that the roots of the tree encircled the cave, thereby keeping the Dragons inside.
The Dragons were absurdly huge, towering above me like skyscrapers, hundreds of meters tall. But most of all, they were angry. I can still feel the vibration of this unleashed anger resonating through my body in that imagined moment.
Standing far below on the dusty floor of the cave, I saw that the Dragons were constantly attacking the roots of the tree. The violent rage of their fire made me grateful for the magic shield. Their roaring was so loud that I wondered how I could hear it without immediately turning deaf.
My guide asked me what the source of the Dragons’ strength was. I replied that I was giving it to them. “How about you take it back from them for a while?” he asked. I did and never before I felt so much strength in me.
“How do the Dragons look like now?” he asked. I replied that they had become much smaller, looking rather like statures of Dragons in a museum. But still, they seemed full of anger. “Then how about you take the anger out of them and put it into a corner of the cave? How do they look like now?” They looked, I replied with a smile, like St. Bernhard dogs.
I was a little surprised by this observation, since I never had a special relationship with dogs. Except, I remembered, as a child St. Bernhards had been my favorite animals. This is getting a bit cheesy now, I thought.
But then, who cares? I told myself, still feeling the Dragonstrength pulsating through my body. I started forming it between my hands into balls of shining energy. These balls I sent out into the sky to let them spread around the planet. Wherever they were shining on people, they gave them strength and put smiles in their faces.
Looking at the planet from a distance, I saw that I was not the only one sending out these shining balls. There were many other people, who sent out their own balls, filled with their own energy. And I saw that whenever two balls met, they would merge into new, much bigger balls, shining with multiplied warmth and strength.
A deeply satisfied calm started filling up my body. The brightness of many smiles and shared joy was floating gently through my veins. I felt how more and more people surrendered gratefully into the hugs of my strong arms. And gratefully I returned their hugs, feeling how we were getting stronger with every breath we took.
We are not alone. We are not fighting lonely fights. We are here to give together.
In this moment I understood that I could direct my Dragonstrength. I could receive it through the roots of my tree and spread it out through its leafs. I understood that no fighting was necessary, that all could flow with ease through the tree’s widening branches. I realized that my purpose is just this: To give people strength. And it became clear that the more I follow this purpose with gratefulness and joy, the more I will connect with others and together we will multiply our strength.
This was in summer, but then came fall. In this fall, I got hit by another round of the incident that had confronted me with my inconsistencies. Almost without noticing, I fell back into my lonely Dragonfights. Sadness fell heavy on my shoulders, restlessness troubled me day and night.
Did I not let down someone whom I had liked more than I had been ready to admit? Was this not more relevant and real than any dreams about Dragonstrength?
In this time, when I was stumbling again, I had the luck to meet another person who offered me a hand. She asked me questions that sounded different from those that I had heard. Once more I decided to accept a guide. I call her Vasinanda.
Through months of regular sessions, Vasinanda helped me untangle the inconsistencies that were holding me in chains. With her mirror I discovered ever more untrue stories that I kept telling myself over and over again. Step by step, she helped me learn the language of the Dragons.
For the first time, with her guidance, I consciously opened up to my feminine energy. Then, three other wise women appeared, giving me further hints that led me back on the path towards my Dragonstrength. I call them Gabinanda, Milenanda, and Raminanda.
Gabinanda helped me see the love in the Dragonfire.
Milenanda helped me sense that the Dragons can coexist with deep connections.
Raminanda helped me understand that we can turn weakness into strength.
What came out of this is the art of becoming friends with the Dragons, which will be the topic of my next story.
This is the first of my Dragontexts. Read the second one about Dragonfriends.