Shamanic Healing, Shamanism

Returning to My Passion After a Long Hiatus: A New Chapter

After seven years away, I’m so pleased to be returning to Dreamwork — a practice that has always held a special place in my heart and soul. While life called me in other directions for a time, the world of dreams, symbolism, and inner landscapes remained a constant, reassuring presence that helped me navigate those years.

During this time, I obtained my Social Work degree, cared for a loved one, and reconnected with my previous career in the legal world. Each of these experiences has continued to shape me, broadened my understanding of human experience, and further deepened my appreciation for the quiet, profound wisdom our dreams offer.

Dreamwork has long been a source of insight, healing, and creative exploration for me and those I’ve worked with. It’s a space where our unconscious speaks in rich images, emotions, and metaphor — and where we can gently unravel meaning, find clarity, and reconnect with parts of ourselves we may have forgotten.

Returning to this practice and sharing dream wisdom feels like coming home. With new skills, fresh perspectives, and a deepened sense of empathy, I am excited to be offering Dreamwork sessions once again, both for those new to exploring their dreams and for those looking to pick up where they may have left off. I am once again available to work with individuals through online consultations via email, phone or Microsoft Teams. Whether you’re looking to explore recurring dreams, uncover deeper meanings, or simply gain clarity from your inner landscape, I would be honoured to assist you in your transformative process.

Thank you for your support, your encouragement, and your presence. I look forward to seeing what this next chapter of Dreamwork holds for all of us.

#Dreamwork #SocialWork #ProfessionalGrowth #Healing #PersonalDevelopment #DreamExploration

Is the Governments’ response to homelessness in Australia effective?

According to the United Nations, every person has a basic right to adequate, safe, secure, and affordable housing. However, the volume of homeless citizens in Australia has been steadily increasing over the past two decades. Rising rates of homelessness continues to occur due to successive governments justifying the use of neoliberal ideology to lay the foundation of previous and present housing policies implemented by the Welfare State, which is making housing a market commodity and reducing people to consumers. Successive Federal Governments are seen to be addressing homelessness with various initiatives and strategies, yet the measures applied are counterproductive because with every change of government housing policies and funding changes. The majority of which have been creating financial incentives for investors and new or existing homeowners. Realistically these policies do not assist housing affordability for those unable to procure their own home. Further, increased median property values and house prices have occurred, pushing private market rental costs up exponentially, beyond the reach of many low and middle range income earners. As a consequence, a widening class gap between the homed and the homeless has been occurring due to people being treated by the Welfare State as consumers, not citizens. It is, after all, the hegemonic neoliberal principle to minimise the expenditure offered by the Welfare State to areas of society where the Welfare State previously played a significant role in the provision of services.

As a co-signatory to The United Nations (UN) Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Australia has a duty and obligation to ensure adequate housing exists for all citizens (United Nations 1948; Marston, McDonald & Bryson 2014; Australian Legal Information Institute 1976; Australian Human Rights Commission 1976; Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission 1996). According to the UN, citizens have the right ‘to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including … housing’ (United Nations 1948, Article 25). This fundamental right forms part of international law yet governing neo-liberal ideology and globalization is proving to be a major detriment to alleviating homelessness rates in Australia (Bullen 2015; Hartman & Darab 2017; McRae & Nicholson 2017; Nicholls 2014; Hall 1993; Morris 2010; Francis-Brophy & Donoghue 2013).

Market-based policies enable easier ownership and housing investment for those on higher incomes, whereas, low to middle range income earners reliance on the private rental market has increased, rather than the Welfare State providing them with homeownership opportunities (Nicholls 2014; Francis-Brophy, E & Donoghue, J 2013).  Overall, a situation has been created whereby low and middle-income renters are struggling to afford adequate, safe, and secure housing, and due to neoliberal governance infiltrating social housing policy, depleting stocks of public housing are occurring (Nicholls 2014; Francis-Brophy & Donoghue 2013). As cited in Nicholls (2014) the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) (2007) indicated that public housing stocks in 1996 stood at approximately 372,00, decreasing to 340,00 by 2007.

Neoliberal ideology consists of economic policies which delivers limited involvement by the government to provide services, prioritising the deregulation of markets (Allan, Briskman & Pease 2009). Such ideology is concerned with growing the economy and serves to aid rather than challenge or address the circumstances which create a lack of housing security (Willse 2010).  Further, Neoliberal ideology consists of a framework of policies which emphasises movement away from the Welfare State to create competitiveness within the international market (Allan, Briskman & Pease 2009). Neoliberal ideology backs global capitalism and creates a societal environment of individual responsibility, competition and consumerism (Allan, Briskman & Pease 2009).

As a consequence, there is a reduction of expenditure in social welfare, whilst tax exemptions and tax incentives are offered to homeowners and investors (Marston, McDonald & Bryson 2014). Neoliberal governing, as revealed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics Census, indicates that in 2016 116,427 Australians were homeless compared to 95,314 enumerated as homeless in 2011 (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2017). That is a 14% increase of homeless Australian persons in five years (Pawson & Purcell 2018). These figures included the marginally housed or those who were living in overcrowded or temporary accommodation (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2017). Neoliberal governing does not reduce the rising numbers of homeless Australians, despite Australia’s obligations as a co-signatory to the aforementioned United Nations Human Rights documents.

Multiple policies and factors have created rising homelessness in Australia which can be understood via Marx’s conflict theory in relation to capitalism. Marxist conflict theory reveals an ideology which explains exploitation and oppression are created by the bourgeoisie or capitalist class as the owners of ‘productive property’, who strive to create and procure capital profit by reducing wages paid to the working class or proletariat (Coakley 2009; Yuill & Gibson 2011). The proletariat on the other hand ‘possesses no productive wealth or property’ (Yuill & Gibson 2011, p.30). As Marx’s theory claimed, a capitalist society which sets out on a quest to increase profits by relying on paying low wages for labour, industrialisation and free trade markets creates two opposing classes (Dominelli & Campling 1997). Marx saw that via exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie, the Westernised capitalism system creates conflict and inequality between the two classes (Seidman 2017).

This view of opposing classes, inequality and inequity can be seen within the Australian housing situation. Some neo-liberal policies that assist existing and new homeowners have included lucrative tax subsidies for owner-occupiers and investors such as the changes made by the Howard government in 1999 to Capital Gains Tax legislation which had been established by the Hawke Keating government in 1985 (Reinhardt & Steel 2006). Negative gearing, which began being widely used by housing investors in the 1980s offsets all housing-related expenditure against personal income for those who are renting their properties (Thompson & McDonald 2018; Australian Government 2020a, n.p.). The Australian Government (2020a, n.p.) states that in the financial year of 2012 to 2013 ‘over 1.9 million people earned rental income in Australia’, 1.3 million of those investors also claimed a loss on their rental investments. These policies, combined with the implementation of the First Homeowners Grant, which is a joint initiative between Federal and State governments, funded and run by State governments according to their respective legislation, and the deregulation of the finance sector in the 1970s have all contributed to soaring property values and rents (Australian Government, 2000; Battellino 2007: Marston; Marston, McDonald & Bryson 2014). This has led to the present-day increase in Australian citizens who cannot secure affordable housing (Battellino 2007: Marston, McDonald & Bryson 2014).

More recently, to assist with the economic recovery of the residential building market due to COVID shutdowns and restrictions, the Federal government has provided funding for building a new home or for renovating existing homes for those singles who earnt $125,000.00 or couples who earnt $200,000.00 in the financial year 2018 to 2019 (Australian Government 2020b). From the perspective of Marx’s conflict theory, capitalist class structures and domination by those holding power in the ruling class comes into play as high-income earners receive the incentives and funding from the Welfare State to procure more resources than those who are on low or middle-range incomes (Frances 2018; Van Krieken et al. 2014). Thus, Neoliberal capitalism is creating an ever-widening class gap in Australia between those who can afford secure, safe adequate housing and those who cannot procure basic housing security. 

The Welfare State has implemented various policies and funding to provide for homeless services and public housing over the past three decades. Three of these policies are the Commonwealth Rent Assistance (CRA), the National Housing and Homeless Agreement (NAHA), and The National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS) (Australian Government 2019a; Marston, McDonald & Bryson 2014). The CRA scheme was introduced for those receiving social security benefits from the Welfare State as part of the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement (CSHA) during the mid-80s. Bob Hawke sought to address the housing affordability issue which had arisen since the 1950s when it was seen by the Welfare State that providing public housing was more expensive than supporting homeownership and reliance by citizens on the private rental market (Morris 2010). Hawke acknowledged rising inflation and unemployment was creating a situation where an ever-increasing percentage of Australians were experiencing housing stress and were unable to become homeowners.

From 1984-85 to 1994-95 under the Hawke/Keating Government ‘one-quarter of CSHA expenditure’ towards CRA increased by ‘approximately one and half times’ (McIntosh & Phillips 2001). When the Howard Government came into power between 1996 and 2007, funding for public housing was slashed and as cited in Morris (2010) the AIHW (2005) stated that public housing stock plunged from 388,000 in 1995 to 335,00 in 2005. This decline was also due to the Howard Government demolishing public housing or selling stock to developers and tenants (Arthurson 2004). These changes to public housing stock were offset by increased CRA expenditure and also by community housing; however, those measures only achieved minimal impact in alleviating homelessness (Morris 2010). CRA calculations encompass no variation geographically, so a person receiving maximum benefit in an area of high rental costs will acquire the same CRA as a person entitled to maximum benefit in a low rental cost area (Morris 2010). As of September 2020, CRA is calculated at .75c given per $1 paid in rent with criteria regarding cost of rent in various circumstances and the highest rate of support being $185.36 per fortnight (Australian Government 2020c). According to the Queensland Government (2020), the current median rent per week for a 3-bedroom house on the Sunshine Coast is $450. The fortnightly maximum jobseeker payment, excluding the recently implemented Coronavirus supplement as per Australian Government (2020d) is $612.00. Combined with CRA the maximum an unemployed person usually receives is $797.36 per fortnight to cover rent and other living expenditure and with increasing unemployment rates, there becomes an increase in homelessness rates.

In addition to CRA, NRAS was also introduced to address homelessness. In 2008, the Council of Australian Governments recognised housing affordability and homelessness was ‘an issue of community concern’ (Australian Government 2011, p.3). NRAS was established to address those concerns by providing private rental assistance to low and middle range income earners (Australian Government 2020e, n.p.). A commitment was given by the Federal and State Governments under NRAS to ‘provide financial incentives’ which would ‘increase the supply of affordable rental housing’, ‘reduce the rental costs for low to moderate income households’ and ‘encourage the large-scale investment and innovative delivery of affordable rental housing’ within the private rental market (Australian Government, 2020e, n.p.).  Property developers, not for profit organisations and community housing providers were targeted with those financial incentives and with a change of Government came another change of policy when the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd Government lost the election in 2013 and the Abbott Government was formed (Australian Government, 2020e, n.p.). It was announced in the 2014-15 budget that NRAS would cease to operate in 2026 (Australian Government, 2020e, n.p.).  

In 2009, the Rudd Government replaced the CSHA with the NAHA to ‘improve Australians’ access to secure and affordable housing across the housing spectrum’ (Thomas 2017; Australian Government 2019b). As cited in Marston, McDonald and Bryson (2014, p.115) according to the Council of Australian Governments (2012, p.3) the NAHA was implemented to ensure that supported housing also contributed to ‘social and economic participation’. Placing prominence in the area of ‘social and economic participation’ is seen by Marston, McDonald and Bryson (2014, p.115) to be a reflection of the Welfare State attempting to align ‘housing and employment policy’ which weakens the fundamental right of all to acquire adequate housing. During the period 2009-10 to 2012-13 the Welfare State, via the NAHA, committed $800 million towards services for the homeless (Marston, McDonald & Bryson 2014, p.115). In 2009, the Rudd/Gillard Government also established the ‘Prime Minister’s Council on Homelessness’ who reported to the Prime Minister regarding the progress being made to ‘end homelessness’ (Parsell & Jones 2014, p.431). This Council was ‘disbanded in 2013’ when the Abbott Government came into power (Parsell & Jones 2014, p.431). Despite a 14% increase in the number of homeless persons between 2011 and 2016, in 2019-20 the Morrison Government only allocated $125 million towards services for the homeless (Pawson & Purcell 2018; Australian Government, 2019b). Notwithstanding that the Welfare State has implemented various policies and funding to improve housing affordability and alleviate homelessness in Australia over the past three decades, whenever there is a change of Government previous housing policies, funding and schemes are disregarded and new ones implemented.

The housing affordability and homelessness experience in Australian has been developed on Neoliberal based policies. These policies do nothing to alleviate the homelessness situation which continues to rise as unemployment figures and housing affordability costs rise. Neoliberal ideology has changed housing from being a fundamental basic human right to a market commodity with the Welfare State treating people as consumers, not citizens. As per Marx’s conflict theory, with capitalism and globalisation has come an ever-widening class gap between high, middle and low range income earners, and the homed and homeless. Despite attempts by various Australian Governments to respond effectively in decreasing the rising rates of homelessness, they have failed.

Copyright C. O’Connor November 2020.

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The Silencing of Women

I’ve recently found myself reflecting more deeply on this topic — not only through personal experience but also within the broader context of history.

If we look back through time, the silencing of women has taken many forms. From the persecution of female healers, midwives, and wise women branded as witches — hunted and executed for their knowledge and power — to being treated as property in arranged marriages made for wealth and status. The suppression of women’s voices and autonomy has been woven through centuries of child abuse, domestic violence, workplace bullying, and societal exclusion.

After the Second World War, many women who had stepped into essential roles during the conflict were pushed back into narrowly defined domestic lives. When some resisted, spoke out, or struggled with the restrictions placed upon them, they were pathologised — labelled as suffering from “hysteria,” institutionalised, medicated, and dismissed. Education, politics, medicine, and leadership positions were, for generations, gatekept from women, reinforcing a pattern of silencing.

This is not a history confined to the past.

Recently, in my own life, I was on the receiving end of a demand from a man to remain silent. I was told my feelings and experiences were “shit and crap,” and casually asked if I was “having a mental breakdown.” The echo of that old, patriarchal diagnosis — hysteria — felt unmistakable.

It left me wondering: was this an isolated individual’s discomfort with hearing my truth, or a reflection of a much deeper, longstanding pattern embedded within our culture?

Either way, I don’t respond well to demands, and no — I did not remain silent.

It made me reflect on why, when women make up half the population — the very half without which these men, or indeed any of us, would not exist — there remains a need in some quarters to silence women’s voices.
Is it the fear of discomfort? The loss of control? The challenge to long-standing narratives?

I don’t claim to have answers. In my case, I was ignored, dismissed, and left unheard. But what I do know is that the silencing of women must end. It has cost us too much, for too long.

And perhaps, in refusing to be quiet, we begin to unravel the very systems that rely on our silence.

📌 Food for Thought:

When have you felt the demand to stay silent?
What might have changed if you’d spoken your truth?

“Our silence will not protect us.”
— Audre Lorde

Cheers, C 💜

When All Is Not As It Seems

All life is cyclical and during our lives we walk with death and destruction as a constant companion and counterpart to creation and renewal. We simply do not appear to be able to have one without the other. Just like the positive and negative charge of a battery there are times when we attract or repel certain energies or even events.

Inner deaths occur when we “let go” of fears, anger etc. by feeling the grief of past trauma, pain, habits or even beliefs we have long held on to. External deaths occur with the passing of loved ones, or when long standing friendships or even occupations, fall by the wayside, all of which have an internal resonance. Our environment is also constantly changing and undergoing this natural cyclic occurrence of destruction and death, so the new can emerge.

So what does this all have to do with dreams? Plenty!

I was recently undergoing such a cycle whereby I finally was able to put a longstanding situation to rest which had been creating feelings of sadness and a certain lack of peace for well over three decades. The Universe conspired to bring me precisely what I needed about three or four years ago to help me heal and move on from this deep wound and over a period of time the realisations and healing which occurred fully enabled me to move on with my life.

When the final realisation hit and the last fragment of emotional energy that had been holding me back, which presented itself as an excruciating pain in my left foot, released itself, around the same time another situation arose which was linked in with that healing and moving forward process. The result was the pain released itself from my foot in a very timely fashion as the death of a couple of longstanding friendships occurred, simply because there was nothing in me that was resonating with those people any longer. It happens, as our energy shifts and changes, that which was familiar is no more, in order to make space for new to come into our lives. If we hang onto the old there simply is no space for anything else.

Whilst this inner death/release was occurring, along came a dream in which I was standing on some type of platform overlooking the ocean towards the East. (East for me is the direction of new beginnings.) Quite suddenly there were navy vessels, rescue boats and planes, along with helicopters moving from the north to the south. I felt quite safe where I was even though I could clearly see a very dark energy, like a massive storm cloud, black as ink, moving from south to north. It wasn’t what I would call a nice or even pleasant energy. For want of a better word, it felt rather “evil”. I became aware in the dreaming experience that all these rescue vessels and aircraft were heading south on a mission to help people because “Sydney had been decimated” by some type of apocalyptic event. I emerged from the experience thinking that it was all somehow linked in with my longstanding ties to the Southlands and the ending of friendships from childhood which was occurring. It all made perfect sense to me, confirmation if you like that I was out of harms way and about to start a new life cycle. That I had finally released the toxicity of a deeply wounding past experience.

Fast forward a wee while and the fires which were of an apocalyptic nature this Summer here in Australia erupted in northern NSW, the Blue Mountains, the South Coast of NSW, then Victoria. There were also fires in Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia but NSW appears to have borne the brunt of them, with air quality in Sydney, which at one point was surrounded by fires, falling to a dangerous level.

What was meant to be a time when I was to have my first decent holiday in years in the Southlands was stopped in it’s tracks by a state of emergency being declared in NSW. Roads and rail were cut and so my “holiday” became a non-event.

I took solace in participating in some very full on voluntary work to assist our native wildlife and also visited some friends up the coast. There was little I could do about any of it and clearly I wasn’t meant to be anywhere near where I had planned to visit. I was safe and yes I felt protected both in the dreaming experience and this reality, as if I had of left a couple of days earlier than I had planned to, I would have been in the midst of the fires and chaos.

One morning, whilst up the coast I was standing on a wooden platform/lookout overlooking the ocean when two F1 11s went screaming past, heading from North to South. The dream came back in a flash! Excuse the pun. Life was indeed moving in and out of my “dream”. Then an interesting realisation came when I was reading something Xavier Rudd had shared on Instagram. He’d laid the fire sites map over the recorded massacre sites map of First Nations People here in Australia and they matched. I instantly remembered encountering an extremely black as ink, insidious, vile, menacing and malicious energy when visiting an old museum in the town of 1770. It was so intense I could not even walk through the door of the museum. Inside were shackles, chains, whips and other horrors the invaders of Australia had used to torture and capture our First Nations people with. I’d asked my son at the time, “How on earth do you cleanse energy that horrific” his instant reply was that it could only be done with fire.

Next there came on the news that a Navy vessel had been commanded to rescue people stranded on the South Coast of NSW and immediately the Navy vessels from my dream came to mind.

As you can see from this story dreams have so many layers and they are never as they first appear to be. Sometimes it can take days, weeks or even months before the ahh haa moment hits in relation to what a dreaming scenario was really telling you. I have found time and time again it pays to not only write about our dreams and work with them, but to also have the patience to wait and see what life brings our way which connects our dreaming realities to this physical reality. Was nature cleansing millions of acres of Australian land of the past, so we can all move together into a better future where Indigenous knowledge is valued when it comes to managing Country, particularly concerning fire management? Only time will tell.

RECONNECTING WITH OUR INNER CHILD

Within the confines of being told we have to “grow up,” we lose ever so much. Our conditioning is such that as children we begin to learn to fear the world and just about everything and everyone in it, hearing more often “don’t,” than “do.”

The inner child begins to shut down and off to a world that was once magical, full of adventure, imagination, play, fun, beauty, excitement and sheer delight. Just watch any child as they start to explore the world – all is new and exciting. The feel of grass underfoot, the raindrops dripping, the love of singing, dance, water play, mud, creativity and laughter just because they are happy and want to have fun.

When expressing anger or frustration they are often told don’t behave like that and are these days sent to the naughty corner. When parents fear they will fall from the tree they are climbing or fear whatever else they do, or tell them what they experience is not “real,” when they are taught to seek approval from others at such a young age, are told things about themselves and the world by adults they fully believe because the adults said so, are yelled at, hit, abused and so it goes on, all that joy, excitement and sheer delight with just the pure magic of being alive seems to disappear. Lost and seemingly gone forever as life becomes nothing more than a “job” full of adult responsibilities, concerns, worries, anxiety, conformity and fear which then leads to illness, addiction, depression, reckless behaviour, more abuse and sadly in some situations the taking of one’s own life.

I was once told as a child, only children can enter “The Kingdom of Heaven.” This terrified me at that time because I figured once I became an adult – straight to “Hell” I would go, forever. In many ways, we do go to Hell though because due to the adult behaviour around us and the beliefs and projections which shape us we lose conscious awareness of all that is childlike.  Yet we are also told we need to be childlike to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

The ability to make friends easily, to trust, to have fun unless we are drunk, stoned or participating in other activities that bring momentary pleasure from outside ourselves all goes. If we were feeling joyous and broke out in song on the morning train commute, for example, we would be given strange looks like something was “wrong” with us. So we conform, we play the game the adults around us play and we do indeed lose a huge part of ourselves along the way.  Many become miserable and bitter, negative, resentful, spiteful, manipulative, greedy, needy, liars and haters who try to desperately control others around them. Each day becomes a chore to drag oneself through and many literally start looking like robotic walking dead.

For myself I had to “grow up” very quickly, leaving home at only 14, and life for me became a matter of survival for many decades. Survive I did, ever so much, but it was just that – surviving, not thriving.

We speak of “The Journey Home” and how we are all on the same journey back to conscious awareness of all we once knew before it was shut down because of fear and conformity.  For myself, it took decades of Self work and inner child work to reach where I am at within myself now, which feels like “home” to me

Some of the tools I used along the way which can help are:

  • Pay attention to what your dreams and daily synchronicity are telling you.   If you don’t know – learn.
  • Spend time alone in nature.
  • Use your dominant writing hand to ask your inner child a question, swap hands and wait for the answer to be written.  Go with the very first thing that comes, do NOT think oooh that’s just nonsense.
  • Do not doubt what others told you was “just your imagination” – whatever you experience is real for you because it is YOUR experience.
  • Try to remember things you used to LOVE to do as a child and MAKE time to do them on a regular basis.
  • Run with your gut feelings about anything and everything – don’t pay attention to your logical doubts and fears which have been instilled in you by others.
  • Pay attention to any memories or feelings that come – especially those which create an emotional reaction and ask yourself “Where is this TRULY coming from?”  Wait patiently for the answer to come to you.
  • Parent your own inner child.  Most of our inner children are scared, lost, angry, hurt and confused and often feel like they have been abandoned, which they have been. Mine was SO angry and hurt it took months of solid work for her to even feel safe enough again to just start dialoguing with me.
  • Don’t blame, hate or punish your parents for the damage done – they did the best they could with the awareness they had, they still are and at some stage we all have to actually accept responsibility for ourselves and start to parent our own inner child.

As a child, I wanted desperately to live “Somewhere over the Rainbow.” It was however quite literally a journey into,  through and out the other side of Hell to follow my own yellow brick road, but it was worth every single step to reach “home” and the “Kingdom of Heaven.” That isn’t some place in the sky as so many of us were told it was, but is within each of us and fully accessible to all of us by reconnecting with our own inner child.

Cheers, Cheryl.

© Cheryl O’Connor 2014.

•*´☾☆☽`*•

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CHANGE OF PLAN

I received news last night that the Inspired Living Fair happening this Sunday in Kallangur at the Memorial Hall has been moved to Kruger Hall in Ann Street, Kallangur due to Council double booking the venue.

I have no recall of what the Memorial Hall looks like but have to say I am loving the look of Kruger Hall which is set in parkland.

Further change of plan for me in relation to this event – I won’t have the Dolls and Toys with me. If you would like to see those, I will be at the Railway Station in Old Petrie Town, Dayboro Road, Kurwongbah, next week Monday through to Wednesday from 9am to 3pm.

I will however be taking a great selection of beautiful artwork created by the lovely Mr Terry Saleh of Terry Saleh Art with me to the Inspired Living Fair. You can check out his work at www.salehart.com

Cheers, C.

Cheoco News

Hi all,

I have a rather busy period coming up – if you are local I invite you to attend the first of many events I will be participating in this year – The Health & Harmony Expo being held this coming weekend in Caboolture.

See link for details.  http://www.healthandharmonyexpo.com.au/

At this event I will be presenting two free seminars, one on each day at 10am, The Benefits of Dreamwork/Shamanic Journeying in relation to Self Awareness, Self Healing and Self Empowerment.  I will also have Steiner based Dolls and Toys available for purchasing/ordering both days.  If you would like to have a look at some of the dolls and toys you will find them here http://bit.ly/Dollstoysalbum as they are also available for online purchasing/ordering.

For those who aren’t aware of it I also send out a Newsletter once a month during the last week of the month and each month new subscribers who sign up prior to the 20th of each month go into a draw to win various things I can offer.  This month it’s a your choice draw of either a Dream Analysis Session, a Distance Healing Session or a copy of The Promise.  Link to the Newsletter subscription is http://bit.ly/CheocoNews  All subscribers also receive a 10% discount on their first consultation with me and in the Newsletter you will find a link to 33 tips and tricks designed to assist you to get the most out of your dreams.

Cheers and I hope you have a wonder full week – C.

LIZARD – KEEPER OF DREAMS

‪ It is said that Lizard dwells in the Dreamtime. Lizard sees very clearly in The Dreaming that which lays ahead as can we and well … to be forewarned is to be forearmed.

Lizard lives in the Shadow where our dreams occur prior to them manifesting. Our Shadow is part of us and can include our hopes, our fears, our limitations, our past and our future all of which essentially follow us around, just as our own physical shadows do.

Whenever Lizard appears it is prudent to have a look at what may be following you around within you and it most certainly is, for me, always a sign to pay closer attention to any dreams I experience or any symbols that come my way in what we call dreaming or when I am not in that conscious space and am instead in what we call being awake in this logical, rational, physical space.

I cannot EVER over emphasise the importance of paying attention to our dreams, they are crucial to our growth and understanding not only of ourselves but of life itself. When we work with our dreams, with symbols that appear to us in either state of consciousness, which life provides freely to all, an enormous wealth of wisdom, truth, peace, love and simplicity opens up to us.

Lizard can also be sending us a message that we may need to sleep, dream, imagine more than we have been. If you are experiencing nightmares either in the physical or non-physical states of awareness these are usually signs of inner conflict.

Another message from Lizard is that we could be lacking “dreams” for our future. It speaks of finding and embracing new experiences and can also be a warning that we are dreaming too much and not acting on the internal guidance we are all freely given by manifesting our “dreams” for our lives in the physical reality.

So Lizard very generally speaking, whenever it appears, is for me, all about our internal state and is a warning sign to pay close attention to what is going on inside us by way of our dreams, waking scenarios, thoughts, feelings and creations we would like to manifest in our lives.

As with ALL symbols what something means to each is based on their own experiences and gut feelings.
 Copyright – C. O’Connor 2014.

•*´☾☆☽`*•

#Cheryl O’Connor.
#Holistic #Counsellor, Author & Writer.

* Cognitive & Body Based Counselling.
* Creative & Artistic Therapies.
* Specialising in #Dream #Analysis/#Conscious #Dreaming & #Shamanic Journeying.
* #Reiki/#Seichim Treatments & Attunements.
* #Isis #Meditation.

* Proud member of The Wellness Universe – www.TheWellnessUniverse.com
#‎WUVIP

Newsletter Subscription @ bit.ly/CheocoNews – All subscribers will receive a 10% discount on their first initial consultation for any of my services along with 33 awesome tips and tricks to help you start deciphering the language of your Soul, your dreams, as well as the symbolism of what appears to you daily.Website @ www.cheocoenterprises.com
My book The Promise, Skype & Email Consultations Available – bit.ly/Cheocoshop