Sit.
Settle.
Breathe in.
Let it go.
Welcome to a hit of hope.
And if there are any of you out there who do not like snakes,
You might not want to listen to this one.
Inhale.
Exhale.
I offer that trigger warning because I know some people are torn apart by terror when it comes to snakes.
My mother is one such individual.
When we were growing up,
We weren't even allowed to say the word snake in my house.
Instead,
We had to refer to them as SNKs,
And any time an SNK happened to wander into our yard,
My father or brothers were quickly dispatched outside with a hoe or shovel while my mom literally trembled in a chair.
Inhale.
Exhale.
For a while,
I didn't really like snakes,
But I never had the terror surrounding them that my mother did.
Now,
Perhaps because of all the yoga I teach,
I find them quite beautiful.
The way they move,
The articulation of their spine.
And yet,
When I woke up recently in the middle of the night,
Because of a dream I'd had,
It was hard not to imagine that something horrible was about to happen.
Again,
I warn you,
If you are not a fan of snakes,
You might not want to continue listening.
Inhale.
Exhale.
In my dream,
I suddenly found I had a whole passel of green baby snakes in my mouth.
I was not terrified.
In fact,
I was more curious,
Like,
Huh,
This is odd.
And the snakes kind of sort of just made their way out of my mouth,
Not because of anything I was doing.
I just slowly wandered off into the world.
Next,
I found myself standing in a beautiful,
Slow-moving river,
Just like the one back home where I grew up.
The water had a gentle copper hue to it,
And it glowed with light.
As I stood in the water,
A long green snake with a yellow stripe down its back floated beside me.
Again,
There was no fear,
More a sense of,
Well,
You don't see that every day.
Inhale.
Exhale.
As soon as I woke up,
Though,
I began to put a different interpretation on the dream.
Snakes are bad.
The Bible says so.
Well,
Actually,
The Bible in Genesis says serpent,
But it is most often considered a snake and a green one at that.
And snakes in my mouth?
As I lay awake in the dark,
It didn't take long for me to leap to the conclusion that I had to quit talking.
Stat.
Which is what I had done for many years.
I was sure that when I spoke,
Something would come slithering out that I would regret for the rest of my life.
Inhale.
Exhale.
I was so disturbed by that dream that I didn't tell anyone about it for a few days.
I finally told two people,
And they had completely different interpretations.
The first person agreed with me.
This was bad,
Evil.
There was temptation or envy swimming about me.
The second person kept coming back to the fact that the snakes were green.
But that's new life,
He said.
That's spring.
That's hope.
What did I do after that?
Of course,
I googled,
What do green snakes mean?
I was correct that people insisted the Bible declared green snakes bad.
But other places said that while this could mean that something was unripe in my life,
In general,
This was to be seen as a beautiful sign of new life,
Abundance,
Riches.
I am not sure any of these websites were what you could call credible.
But something that stuck with me was many of them asked what the feelings were when I saw the snakes,
And did I do violence to them?
I was not afraid,
And unlike my mom,
I didn't go and find a hoe.
I was curious.
Inhale.
Exhale.
I still don't know what these snakes mean for sure,
But for me,
This was a lesson in how we can look at the very same thing and have completely different interpretations.
Is something good?
Is something bad?
It almost always depends on whom you are and how you see.
But more than that,
It struck me that different interpretations can provide different lessons.
Should I be careful with my words?
Indeed.
Should I be terrified to speak and silence myself?
No.
Should I believe myself wicked?
Evil?
Nope.
Human,
Sure,
But not evil.
I refuse to listen to those voices.
Should I believe in hope?
New life?
Abundance?
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Should I be curious when I am faced with something out of the ordinary?
You betcha.
Life offers us all kinds of mysteries.
What happens if we meet them from a sense of wonder and openness,
A willingness to move through this world with kindness and bravery?
Well,
This might just be my interpretation,
But for me,
Wonder and willingness,
Kindness and bravery,
Why,
That's the stuff that dreams are made of.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Namaste.
