“Rio” A Flowing River

Last night I dreamed I was back in the ancient sea salt mine of Kansas called Stracata. It was a lucid dream so I was aware I was in a dream world version of the place. We had only been there two days ago. I had only just begun to consider and process the thoughts, energy and visions that were inspired by the experience.

Those deep musings were violently interrupted the following day.

As I write the sentence above, the electricity to this house blinks off and then on again as if in agreement and solidarity.

In the dream I was walking alone down a long wide corridor of the mine. My feet seemed to know where to go without my mind needing to direct. I veered to the right and found an entrance into a large room. The room was taken up almost entirely by a massive wooden table. That table must have been built on site, was my immediate thought. There is no way it would have fit though the door or into the lift that carried everything, and everyone down 650 feet from the surface. It was a gorgeous heavy warm wood. Oval in shape, an  odd contrast to the cool mineral rich cave of rock, salt and stone. Toward the left end sat a single person. It was Dolores.

I walked closer. I didn’t say a word, but I was, as always, so pleased to see her.

She had her hands folded on top of the table and looked at me with kind eyes. “With heartbreak comes great energy expansion.”

Even in the dream world with my dream body I could feel a lump come to my throat. It was a minute before I responded.

“My physical heart hurts so … so much.”

“I know,” She said. We just kept looking at each other.

As I stood there, knowing I was in a dream, knowing I was in a salt mine and feeling my eyes well up with liquid I felt a salty drop fall from my cheek and looked down to see it hit the salt floor, wondering if my sleeping physical body was also crying into my pillow.

I stood there for a bit more before I said with a small grateful sigh, “I’m really glad I didn’t know it was coming.”

Dolores smiled. “Oh you did know, a part of you did anyway, but your conscious mind was spared.”

I already knew this was true. For a week or longer I had found myself dissolving into tears for reasons I reached for and considered, but none explained the anguish. Why did the sobbing start whenever I was alone? Was I still overworked? Overwhelmed? Disappointed or upset about the day-to-day challenges that happen for us all? Was it the energy of the Human Collective?

No.

It was only the morning after the salt mine visit, as I was laying in the shavings of my stock trailer cradling my horse Rio’s heavy  head that I fully understood the reasons. It was only as he took his last final and shuddering deep breath that I blurted it out loud to my dear friends who were sitting there with me; “Now I know why I have been crying so much. Now I know where those deep shuddering sobs were coming from,” My heart already knew it was coming. It beat erratically at night before sleep. A disturbance in its field. Like a tsunami rushing toward the shore from many miles away. Nothing I did or could do would give me another day with my beautiful kind, willing, amazing heart horse. It was an inevitable crash against the shore.

“You’ve been hearing his whinny in your head, haven’t you?” Dolores asked softly.

I nodded. As sad and filled with grief as I was, and am, even in the dream state, I was very aware of the unusually soft way in which Dolores was talking.

“I can be soft too,” I hear her say just now. I almost grinned at that statement, but not quite.

“That horse,” She went on to say, “Is also a part of your expansion. You hearing his whinny is not just about your emotional connection to him. It is not just you indulging in your grief, although I know you have been wondering if it was. It is also communication. Very specific communication. And think about the timing, and all of the connections. Even in these final days coming up to your Immersion event. He is communicating to you, just as I am. He was communicating to you, even long before you ever brought him home.”

I considered her words. I often told the story of how I dreamed of Rio before he was mine. I posted to YouTube just days ago a video of us swimming. I named him “Rio” for goodness sake. River. Flowing water. And his extraordinarily beautiful light blue eyes. And he was absolutely my heart horse. A term well known in the horse world. He was the horse in my whole life of horses, who vibrationally matched my very soul essence, the one whose heart was so big and matched my own so well. And we had been together for more than 23 years.

I looked back to Dolores, whose eyes, incidentally,  were a very close match to the same light blue color as Rio’s. “Have a seat,” She said. “I have many things to tell you.”