What You Seek is Seeking You
About a year ago I had a vivid dream, though much of it has faded in memory now, but some key points still remain. In the dream my husband and I had just purchased a cabin in the mountains (a real life dream of ours) and some people had come to see the house when we were touring it before buying. These particular people are some who I have complicated relationships with in real life. They were walking into my dream cabin taking up A LOT of space. I went outside where there was a white wolf in the yard, fenced in, as a pet, but clearly not wanting to be either fenced in or a pet. And that’s about all I remember. Except that it felt VERY real, and there was something very sacred about the white wolf, and I felt very connected to the white wolf.
I did some reading about white wolves and their meaning. You can find information on them as sacred symbols in a variety of cultures and in each culture they carry slightly different meanings- wisdom, luck, protection, healing, guidance, strength, transformation, and so on. Regardless of the meaning, they are always highly revered and considered sacred. You can imagine with me being someone who leans toward the sacred that some of this resonated with me. I wish I could tell you that I decoded it all and I have a clear interpretation of the dream. I don’t. But I carry it with me, and recall it often. It has become a passenger in my life. I don’t know a lot things about life, or where my own life is headed, but I know that there was a deep sense of connection with that wolf. And I know that a wolf is not meant to be fenced in where it can see the world stretched out before it, only to remain closed in and unable to step out into the wilderness.
This quote by Rumi, “What you seek is seeking you,” is one that I have held very close to my heart for many years now. I consider myself a life-long seeker, always looking for new ways of knowing and being, and longing to hear how others are experiencing life and the sacred. It is an incredible privilege that I get to sit at the feet of people day in and day out and hear about the beauty and the heartaches of life, and where the Divine might be in the midst of it all. The concept that as I seek I am also being sought is something that guides me over these years of my own searching and uncertainty. I hold it in front of me, trusting that as things come along I need only take the next step, and trust that the right people/opportunities/etc, are making their way toward me as well. When nothing is certain and there is no clarity these words carry hope and serve as a sort of beacon.
I come from a specific religious background, but my seeking has taken me far beyond the walls of those institutions and out into the wilds where anything and everything can be deemed sacred.
I think sometimes about people who have found their home in religious spaces that provide black and white thinking, and concrete answers. I’m sure there is something that feels comforting and safe in that sort of space. But I know it’s not for me.
In all my seeking I have seen the heights and depths of humanity, I’ve heard unbelievable and enchanting encounters with the Divine, I’ve questioned everything I ever knew and become really uncomfortable, and what I’m most certain of today is that I’ve still hardly seen anything. The wilderness is so big and so vast, the questions just keep going deeper, and holding it all together is something so sacred, it is all I can do to keep seeking.
I’m going to keep mulling this dream over for years to come. But I can tell you this, I can still feel the ache of something sacred being locked behind a wall when there is so much more waiting and wanting to be explored.