The Littlest Sailboat: A Journey Of The Soul

In the latest podcast episode of Women's Dream Enlightenment, I interviewed Theresa Contaxis, who shared her views on enlightenment and her journey of writing her book, "The Littlest Sailboat." We took a deep dive into the metaphorical wonders of the ocean and life as a sailboat.

The symbolism behind these powerful images is truly fascinating. We skillfully unraveled the intricate connection between life's journey and the evolution of the soul. The parallels drawn between the vastness of the ocean and the boundless possibilities of personal growth were eye-opening. It's incredible how the ebb and flow of the waves mirror the highs and lows of our own experiences, and the sailboat becomes a symbolic vessel navigating through the challenges and triumphs of life.

Transcript

You re listening to Women s Dream Enlightenment.

Dream decoding,

Deep discussions,

And spiritual stories of self-discovery to inspire your personal enlightened journey.

I m your host,

Megan Mary,

Founder of Women s Dream Analysis.

Let s bring in the light.

Today we have Teresa Contaxes,

Author of The Littlest Sailboat,

A Journey of the Soul.

A mother of three,

Contaxes studied under a nun,

Multiple energy workers,

James Twyman,

And two shamans for two years before becoming a Reverend of All Faith Seminary International.

She has studied mysticism from various spiritual leaders,

And her writings reflect her spiritual evolution.

Welcome,

Teresa.

Hi.

I m so happy to be here with you.

Awesome.

Well,

The first question that I ask everyone is,

What does enlightenment mean to you?

You know,

When you told me that was a question you were going to ask,

It really made me think because it s like,

Okay,

So what does it mean to me?

I know I ve awakened,

But I can also say I m not necessarily totally enlightened,

Which is very hard to get to.

I found a poem that I think explains it the best.

In the market,

In the cloister,

Only God I saw.

In the valley,

On the mountain,

Only God I saw.

Spirit,

Change the word to whatever you want.

In favor and in fortune,

Only spirit I saw.

In prayer and in fasting,

In praise and contemplation,

Only spirit I saw.

Like a candle,

I was melting in his fire.

Amidst the flames,

Only spirit I saw.

My own eyes I saw most clearly,

But when I looked with spirit s eyes,

Only spirit I saw.

I passed away in nothingness.

I vanished.

Only spirit I saw.

That sense,

Enlightenment is when you understand you re not separate.

You re part of everything.

You re part of all.

A rock,

A tree.

We re energy.

That s what we are.

And everything has energy,

A rock,

A little speck of sand.

It s all the same.

It s all part of one.

Yes.

That s very profound.

Thank you for sharing that.

I agree.

It s awakening to understanding that we re all connected and that we are all spirit.

The spirit isn t something out there or up there or down there.

It s in us and around us all the time and in everything.

And I think all of us has moments where we feel that.

It could be something as simple of I think I m going to call somebody.

And you place the call and then go,

Oh my God,

I really need to hear your voice today.

It s like at that moment you knew that connection.

But enlightenment is when you know it at every moment and every second.

Yeah.

And there s no rollercoaster of the up and down of the I think I get it now.

I feel like I ve overcome everything.

And then you re completely low and down in the dumps and depressed and lonely.

And then you re back up and then you re back down.

And so enlightenment is kind of I think surpassing that up and down.

I don t know if you ever totally surpass it.

But the moment it starts happening,

There s that realization that that s not true.

Like that is just your emotions.

And you can immediately bypass it in no truth.

And I think it s just total training.

I know I ve been going through that right now in my life of the I went so into my emotions recently.

And it was like,

OK,

OK,

Find something.

And it was funny what I was given.

It was a motto.

And it was so simple.

And it came from a movie that I saw.

And it was just a simple line about I believe.

Oh,

It was from Miracle on 34th Street with a little child is going in like now she s trying to believe in Santa Claus because she s trying and all she s doing is going,

I believe,

I believe,

I believe.

And she s just holds to it.

And so I went,

OK,

It s more than believe.

I know,

I know,

I know in trying to hold to it and not let the record.

Yes.

Right.

Yes.

Spiritual intelligence and over emotional,

Not emotional intelligence,

But just yeah,

Recognizing the emotions is really important in terms of whether you let your intuition rule your perspective on a situation or your emotional egoic reaction.

Yeah.

Your ego.

Lovely thing.

I call screaming Mimi.

Right.

Yes.

So tell the audience a little bit about your background,

How you came to write the book,

The Littlest Sailboat.

And then I m going to have you read a portion of it for everyone.

Well,

The way this sailboat actually got born was over probably 10 years.

I was I m dyslexic and my vocabulary is quite small.

You know,

I like little words.

My older daughter talks to me with these big words and I almost need a translator.

I always say English is my second language and I don't have a first.

But what happened is I was working with the shaman the first time when I was like,

Let's see what this is about.

And I had a session with this shaman.

And at the end of the session,

She said to me,

Spirit has never given this to me before,

But I'll tell you what I hear.

Stop reading and start writing.

And I sort of threw it aside because this was my first experience outside a Christian area.

But I decided it was time to start exploring.

All sorts of things,

Because I spirit,

God,

Divine source universe shows itself up to you any way it can,

And it will talk in the language that you can understand.

And I wanted to understand more languages,

So to speak.

So then time goes by and I'm with,

At that time,

It was James Wainless.

He's a tarot card reader.

He made his own deck.

And he had,

I had a session with him and he said to me,

You're to start writing.

And I went,

Well,

I've been told that before,

But yeah,

No.

And he said,

No,

Just do something.

You need to start writing.

And I thought,

Okay,

Put it in the banks,

But I'm still sort of poo pooing.

Yeah,

Not me.

I can't do that.

And who am I,

You know,

Who am I to write something like that ego going.

So then I started the all faith seminary and I found out what our final paper,

What our final thing had to be on and what would our mission or what would our ministry look like if we had any amount of money in the world to do what we wanted to do.

And I thought,

Okay,

This is bad because I'm not in this for that reason.

I wanted to study.

I really just,

All I wanted to do was grow.

You know,

I'm a sponge,

Just want more,

More,

More.

So I called the head of the school and I said,

I can't do this.

I,

There's no ministry that I'm looking at.

And she said,

No.

And that was the day the book was born.

I went,

Well,

I'm just like a little sailboat that just sails in and out of lives as I'm needed.

And that's how the book was born.

And once it,

So in some ways the book only took two months to write.

In other ways,

The book took 10 years.

Yes.

Oh,

I know how that is.

Yes.

I started writing my novel 10 years ago and just,

Just finishing it now.

So yes,

I think,

I think everybody has a book inside them and it just takes the right recipe of circumstances for it to come into the tangible physical world.

So what I love about the book,

The Little Sailboat is the metaphor,

Because as you know when I work with dreams,

One of the major parts of my method is metaphor.

And that is because I believe that our dreams are stories and that there's so much power in metaphor.

So I really like how the book uses the ocean and the sailboat as metaphors for spirituality.

So talk a little bit about that.

Well,

You know,

When I,

This is changing the subject,

But really not,

I have built three house.

We've built three houses and each time when it was done,

People would say,

Oh,

I love how this works together and how you chose that.

And I go,

Oh,

I didn't even notice I did that.

And so it came from deep within that even not,

I didn't from outside of myself,

I didn't recognize it was more of an internal thing.

And the sailboat is sort of the same thing.

I knew for me,

God,

Abba,

But source divine,

Spirit.

I knew the ocean to me was more of it than anything else I could relate to.

And now here I already said,

I was like a little sailboat sailing in and out of people's lives.

The ocean is so vast.

And so we have,

You know,

As much knowledge as we have,

We have no knowledge of the ocean and the depth,

Depth,

Depths of the ocean.

And it just seemed to be to me,

And I love the ocean.

I love being on the ocean.

I love being by the water.

It is to me the most peaceful place to be.

Even when the storms are rough,

It's somehow still,

To me,

Provides peace.

So to me,

That'd be it.

Yes,

I agree with you.

But I think it's the energy of the water.

And some of us are very drawn to that.

I mean,

We are all water,

Right?

But some more than others are very drawn to that energy and feel very connected when they're near it.

And so I really like also the other themes that are intertwined in that the discussion around just the universal struggle that everyone goes through.

And also the power of letting go,

Which is a very common theme in a lot of metaphorical books that I've read,

That is always,

Always very poignant,

Especially at this time of year when we have when it's fall,

And we're going through that transition in nature where we're watching the harvest and the death,

And then waiting for that kind of dormancy period and the rebirthing.

And it also is part of our season,

Right?

And how we kind of go through a rebirthing every year,

We have that opportunity with the seasons.

So I really enjoy that aspect.

The perfect word you just said,

Opportunity.

We can choose it or we can ignore it.

Yes,

Absolutely.

And that goes for all spiritual awakening,

Right?

Because it's around everyone,

But a lot of people just want to ignore it.

And that goes the same for dreams.

Because so many people say,

Well,

I don't dream.

I don't know what you're talking about.

I don't have dreams.

And they do.

They're just subconsciously ignoring them.

Somehow,

Somewhere along the way,

Decided subconsciously they didn't want to hear what was coming from that part of themselves.

So it does involve a willingness to listen and tune into that.

So talk a little bit about your experience when you wrote this book.

Yeah.

And I also would like you to read a little excerpt if you would.

Yeah,

Maybe we'll do that first and then we'll talk about it.

I thought I'd read a little bit from the beginning of a page or two from the middle,

And I would love to share the end.

Okay.

Okay.

So as I sail out of the harbor,

I look forward to where I will be heading next.

No longer afraid of what is in store for me.

Where is the wind taking me now?

Don't know.

Don't care.

Wherever the wind takes me is perfect.

Oh,

I'm sorry.

I didn't realize you haven't heard of me.

I thought you knew my story.

Let me introduce myself.

I'm the littlest sailboat.

I was created approximately six decades ago in earth years,

But was told I had been around much longer.

I was told I had come out of the depths of the ocean with the perfect visual representation of myself.

When I first came into this vessel,

I had a beautiful white sail and a purple hull.

I was always around older boats who tried to help me grow until I was ready to go out on my own.

I had no idea what that meant or what I was to do.

I became fearful because I thought I had to do this journey all alone.

I was told to work hard so they would be better than other boats.

That was truly frightening because I saw so many boats that looked bigger and better than me.

I didn't even have a motor.

I became jealous of many boats.

I would look at them and I would always think they were more special than me.

I saw steamboats,

Tugboats,

And other boats.

My favorite was cruise liners.

I go on to how I was jealous of all the other boats and how other boats scared me,

Like destroyers and all the different boats.

Over the years,

I completely lost sight of who I was.

Did I ever really know?

Perhaps not.

Since I was searching everywhere else but in the right place to find myself,

I decided to go for a sail to think about everything.

I did not want to be in pain anymore.

There must be a better way,

I told myself.

The wind was blowing strong,

But I did not want to go the way it was blowing.

I tried to go against the wind,

But all that fighting was just making me tired,

Frustrated,

And eventually so weak that I could not fight anymore.

I was so weak that I did not have the strength to move.

Suddenly,

A big wave came and turned me over.

I began to fill with water and was being swallowed up by the ocean,

But I was too exhausted to care.

To my surprise,

A huge blast of wind came and picked me up.

I was so tired I just slept.

I was not even sure for how long.

When I awoke,

The water was calm and the wind was blowing ever so gently.

Within my hole,

There was some of the ocean.

I thought,

How interesting having the ocean water within me.

I had been told before that I came from the depths of the ocean,

Though that never seemed to make any sense to me.

Yet here I was floating in the ocean with some of the ocean inside me.

That had to mean something important,

But I wasn't sure what.

So I headed back to shore knowing something had changed.

My life seemed to be the same on the outside.

I still had all the barnacles on me and the dirty sail,

But something was different.

I desired to learn to understand the ocean.

And towards the end,

I was awestruck that the great ocean trusted me to do my part.

I became excited every day wondering where I was going and what I was going to do.

As I said in the beginning,

I did not know where the wind was taking me.

Didn't know,

Didn't care.

There's so much I went through and there's so much ahead.

I love to share because we all have difficult times and beautiful times.

We all go through the journey differently but end up in the same place.

We all come out of the depths of the ocean and return to the ocean.

As all of us are part of the ocean,

We are not alone.

We not only have each other,

We are part of each other.

We are part of everything.

I came into this life and experienced loneliness and I have learned I'm not alone but part of the all,

Just as you are.

I have so many stories to share about the ocean and the love that is shared with me.

I know the ocean and the wind will keep teaching me.

This is not the end of my story,

It's just the beginning and there's so much more to discover along the way.

Thank you for reading that and sharing that.

I think it's so just really powerful and such a powerful metaphor for all of our struggles in life,

How we many times do feel like the little sailboat with no motor and get that imposter syndrome from the larger boats and don't really understand what direction we're going in and don't really fight against the elements really instead of letting them guide us and understanding our own inner guidance that we don't even need that superficial motor.

Yes.

Yeah,

So I really like that.

Thank you for sharing.

We had discussed before also your experience with dreams and I know a lot of writers,

Myself included,

Get inspiration from their dreams and you had mentioned that you recently started keeping a dream journal.

Tell the audience a little bit about your experience when you started doing that.

Well,

I first started taking a lot of journals down because I was dreaming a lot when my kids were young.

I think it was because whatever wind or spirit could not get my attention during the day because I was too busy,

So it came through at night.

So my higher self,

My authentic self talked to me a lot at night.

So at that time I wrote down a lot.

Then when I had the time where I was doing a lot of it during the day,

I stopped journaling.

And then all of a sudden one day I realized I was missing my dreams.

I knew I was having them and when I was having them,

They were great.

But I stopped journaling it.

So if you don't journal,

They go away too fast.

You'll wake up and go,

Wait a minute,

Wait a minute.

It was great.

What was it?

And I would forget.

So you gave the great idea of having a phone by the bed because part of my problem was I'd get up and write it down in complete detail and then I couldn't go back to sleep.

Yep.

So you gave the suggestion of having the phone by your bed and you know,

If you're,

If you're with somebody,

My husband,

I could get up and just in the bathroom and just say a couple of things about the dream that'll trigger the dream to come back when you're awake and then write it down in detail.

So that is where I've been going lately.

And,

Um,

It's really helpful.

And one of the things I find very interesting about dreams for me is that dreams talk to you from your authentic self,

The way you can understand it.

And the way I know that's really true is I've listened to different mystics from different religions,

Different belief systems.

And I'd always go,

But wait a minute,

How can somebody have seen this when it doesn't match with that?

Cause it doesn't have to match.

You're getting a message that you'll understand that you will understand.

I mean,

If I got a dream in,

In Russian,

I would have no clue what happened,

But I get a dream in English.

I understand what's happening.

Just like if I got a dream from,

Um,

Uh,

Certain standpoint spiritually,

I might not have any clue what,

Like in some traditions,

Snakes are good from the traditions I had come from snakes are not good.

So if I dreamt about a snake and that it was supposedly this really good dream,

Like from a different tradition,

I would be like going,

Oh my God,

No.

You know?

So it,

You get talked to the way you see it.

Yeah.

That's a really good example.

And I use snakes quite often when people ask,

I always talk about discarding your dream dictionary for that reason,

Because most people,

When they're trying to figure out their dreams,

They go to a dream dictionary.

They do the A to Z thing.

They look up one thing and another thing based on the first letter and snakes is a great example.

So they'll look up snakes and they'll say,

Oh,

It's a bad omen or,

Oh,

It's this or that.

And I really don't subscribe to that at all.

I believe that it's coming from your higher self.

It's coming from your subconscious.

So it's representation is completely dictated by your experience,

Your associations,

Your subconscious.

Because in Buddhism,

It's not an evil thing that the snake thing is evil from a Christian tradition,

But that doesn't mean it is.

So you have to look into it further.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it really is whatever you've compiled in your database from your life experience as well as possibly past lives or where,

Wherever your spirit came from.

Well,

In shamanism,

You know,

The snake,

The serpent is,

Is something to be honored because it's about peeling off the old layer of skin.

Yes.

So a snake can represent that you're peeling off a layer transformation or regeneration.

Right.

So many things.

Yeah.

And I think people get caught up in the archetypal traditional description of certain dream themes and don't allow the possibility of their own personal dream language to come through.

Yeah.

And that's a process of learning.

And I think the only way you could do that is by what you said,

Write them down,

Speak them into your phone,

Whatever you have to do,

But you have to find the common thread of what,

What,

What you're being told.

And also I think there's two parts to a dream appreciation.

So appreciating your dreams,

Realizing that they do hold information for you and that they are worth spending time with and trying to capture.

And then also dream sharing,

Because when you start to discuss it with someone else,

It takes on a whole other aspect.

And many times that can evolve into encouragement for them to then start to talk about theirs.

And it creates a space for people to share.

And when you share,

You start to have even more ahas as you have to verbalize.

I had a dream many years ago.

I can't remember it now,

But I told somebody,

A minister about the dream and because I thought it was just for me.

And he had his aha moment that the dream was for him.

And then he went to a minister above him and told that minister the dream because of how it affected him.

And that minister also had an aha moment and felt the dream was for him.

That's what the sharing does.

Right.

And I mean,

The fact that you felt compelled to tell him is obviously was information that was from that universal self that had that significance.

Many times when I do live events and I do Oracle card readings and there's 80 or 100 people in the room,

Multiple people will say,

Well,

Wait a minute,

I think that one was for me.

And it's like,

Well,

It is.

It's not just for the one person that requested it because you're here,

You're listening and all of your energy is being shared and you're all sending a message.

It all goes back to we are one.

Right.

Very much so,

Which is a beautiful sentiment.

And I think if we can all start to integrate that into the way we approach life,

It can really change our perspective on life.

My first mystic teacher was a nun,

As you know,

And I don't necessarily and I've had other teachers where I'm not I don't necessarily subscribe to how they said something,

But there's so much truth in it,

Just like,

You know,

We talked about different languages.

So what she had said one time was I just lost my train of thought absolutely completely.

But she she she was so incredible at the way she taught it.

And she had so much to say.

And it was very Catholic the way she spoke,

Of course.

But she she had expressions and I'm changing the way I'm going because I forgot what I was going to say.

But she had a saying that I loved.

Read it all,

Eat the meat and throw out the fat.

OK.

And I think that's beautiful.

It's like don't shut other things out because you say you don't believe in it.

It's sort of isn't that what we do now,

Whether it's on the Internet,

Whether whatever we read what we already believe in and we subscribe to that,

Whether it's politics or no matter what it is on this.

So you read everything to support that view instead of challenging yourself.

Read it,

Eat the meat,

Just swallow that meat and get rid of the fat.

You don't have to agree with everything,

But you're going to find truth in everything.

So to get truth,

Which is love,

That's truth is love.

That's the one thing it's either love or fear.

I pick love,

Though I operate out of fear.

It's.

Quite often right now at times,

But it is love and and to shut off other possibilities,

I mean,

If God universe,

I mean,

Think about the universe,

Think about expansive it is.

How can you just go?

It's this.

When it's this.

Mm hmm.

Right.

And I feel like growing up that was told to me to be well rounded is what is what it used to how I was raised to consider all aspects.

Right.

So don't don't assume that you can hold that,

You know,

Everything that there is because nobody can.

And so just consider everything when you're considering something.

Of course,

That was the birthing of my over analytical mind,

But it was still a good idea.

It's got a good,

You know,

Baseline to then you make sure that you're always considering all perspectives when whenever you.

Yeah,

I think that's a good sign of the beginning of awakening is when you could sit down and talk to somebody with totally different opinions and be totally OK with it.

It doesn't matter.

And and what is the bottom line of it?

Is it hate?

Is it fear,

Fear,

Hate,

Fear,

Fear is hate is born from fear.

Or is it love?

Mm hmm.

Love that they're speaking.

Well,

That's in truth.

Yeah,

Because it's who we are.

Right.

OK,

I shouldn't preach anymore.

I don't mean to.

I just love I just love talking about it.

Yeah.

So so if you had three takeaways for the listeners from this from this discussion,

What would they be?

Choose love.

Trust your dreams to bring you to your authentic self,

Because that's what dreams do.

They help you get to where you need to go.

And they'll also warn you when you need warnings.

They're wonderful.

And the third one,

Just know that you are loved.

Absolutely,

Completely imperfect and.

Not to look,

It's so hard not to judge ourselves.

We could be so hard on ourselves.

We're hard on.

Hey,

We're harder on ourselves than anybody else could ever be.

And just know that's not how you're seen by spirit.

You are loved.

There's those beautiful messages.

I love all three.

Well,

Thank you so much for being here,

Teresa.

I really appreciate it.

I can't thank you enough for having me.

And thank you for sharing your book as well.