[A beautiful story that Aryae shared last at our Awakin Circle last week.]

I like the imagery of this old king ego, taking over the castle and it's all in chaos and the wild beasts are running around. Wow, what an image. I'm part of the beast crowd, with shadows archetype.

It brings me back to the 1970's when I was in graduate school, studying psychology. It was a very interesting time in the US, in the Bay Area, where wisdom from different indigenous traditions was coming in and was becoming part of the psychology mainstream.

One such piece of wisdom was from the Sanoy people, an indigenous group in Malaysia. They worked with dreams, with a remarkable discipline. And they had a process when you a beast comes into your dream. They would have a circle of elders every morning and people would come and talk about what they did when they met beasts in their dreams.

So what do you do when you encounter a beast in your dream? Run. No!

Here was their wisdom -- when you meet the beast inside your own darkness, you gotta stand your ground and face the beast and say to the beast, "What gift are you bringing to me?"

What gift?!? If you ask the beast for the gift, the Sanyo people's experience was that the beast would transform into something else and you would receive the gift.