I noticed the cat pulling the rug around in a room of the house and went to investigate. A dog might do this, but a cat? Not likely. Looking into the room I saw Coyote, my 46 year-old nephew, looking back at me. He acknowledged me but didn’t move to greet me. My home was shared with others. I shut the door, because another, older man, was sitting in an adjoining room listening to us. As I turned back around, a younger friend of my nephew, who had dark circles around his eyes, very tall and blond, said, “I haven’t gotten my omelette yet”. I was about to respond when yet another younger man, about 30 years old, appeared and said, “no one’s made me a cup of coffee; I’ve been waiting a long time.” Then a woman appeared, the age of Coyote’s mom, but blonde like the tall friend, came up behind my handsome Coyote nephew, put her arm around him and said, “if you take the pan home with you, you can make coffee in it.” I said I would fix the food they needed, thinking my nephew had been taken home from the bar by my neighbor. The question which entered my mind was, “Is he fucking her or her daughter?” I guess a Coyote might be doing both.
That was the dream.
Taking a look at the cast of characters sheds some light on my inner world since I am the dreamer. We see and feel the story-line from his perspective. Coyote and I have a long line of shared experiences. 
I met him in a peyote ceremony 12 years ago. He was studying shamanism with my brother Black Horse. He brought his mom to an Inipi (Sweat Lodge) shortly after that and introduced her to me. (She thought I looked and acted like her gay astrologer friend, who had just died of AIDS). Coyote also shared one of his dreams with me, one he remembered from 3 years before, obviously very powerful. In that Dream Space he met his mentor but could not see the mentor’s face. He heard his voice and saw his physical stature, and agreed to work with the man. After sharing the dream, he said, “so what I want to know is. . . . what took you so long to show up?” I was stunned and flattered. He meant to make me his mentor. I left the Inipi and stopped at a peyote ceremony on my way home. Another of my nephews greeted me with, “We have been waiting for you. Where’s your cedar box and blankets, I’ll carry them for you.” I protested that I had just left another Chief’s Inipi Ceremony and was headed home. “No you’re not. You came because the Spirit called you. Open the back of your car.” And so I did, went in the Tipi, sat down, ate medicine, and saw visions.
One of the most interesting visions was seeing Coyote, whom I had just met, dressed in a beautiful sarong. His tattoos and bulging muscles showed under the make shift dress. He wore no shirt. He was flirting with several people, men and women alike, and dancing seductively to Middle Eastern music. We were in a tent, perhaps a Sufi Chieftain’s, with rich carpets, the smell of incense and hashish, and klinking cymbals on the dancers’ fingers. He was a male prostitute and eventually paired up with another man his age. The next morning I called him and told him I was watching him in the Dream World. He said, “I know. You came and sat on my bed in the middle of the night. I felt the bed sink down with your weight. You were there a long time. Then you got up and the bed returned to normal.” The times were synchronous. This was a very surprising turn of events to say the least. I didn’t know exactly how to explain the dream/vision when he asked about what I had seen, so I said, “well, you were sort of prostituting yourself.” He laughed and said, “yah, I have been doing that a lot lately.”
I accepted my role as his mentor. For about seven years I took him to Native American Church (peyote) ceremonies, got him involved in my brother and sister’s fireplace (the tribal form of the peyote ceremony which they practice), and introduced him as my nephew. He became a fireman in different tribal traditions as he branched out in the Native American Church community. When Coyote sponsored his 40th birthday ceremony, he confided in me just before finishing the all night meeting, that none of my brother’s prayers and peyote medicine balls had worked; his inner critical voice would not stop bashing him, just like his violent alcoholic Cherokee/Irish father had done all his life. I talked this over with the Owl, another therapist friend whom I had taken under my wing, and he suggested following the Buddhist Tibetan example. “Since there’s no one here who can exorcise or shred the demon/critic, why not give him a job upgrade?” When it was an appropriate time to speak in the ceremony, I told my nephew and all those assembled, that our inner critics can be given a new job description, saying something like this.
Thank you for keeping me safe during my childhood. You protected me by alerting me to be a perfect child and avoid the beatings of my parents. Thank you for that. Now you have a new job to do. Help me to be vulnerable, transparent, authentic, and walk my life with integrity, to show and receive love and affection when it is safe to do so, until I love myself enough to act that way in the world.
Several people came up to me after the ceremony and thanked me for my words, which applied to them as well.
One of the more curious things which happened in the morning of the ceremony was a confrontation between Coyote (the sponsor) and his tall, thin Cherokee “brother” (also a coyote), who said he was saddened because he had tried to call several times and the sponsor never returns his calls. This was especially troubling since they had been such good friends and now that he, the speaker, was getting sober and attending AA (his sponsor/mentor had serious objections to his attending a peyote ceremony, thinking he was just taking a different kind of drug). My nephew’s Coyote response? “Yah, I’m like that,” was all he said. He wasn’t willing to change a thing, and so far as I know, he’s never pursued the relationship. We all heard the rejecting critic speaking through Coyote’s mouth, right there in front of us all! Had he heard what I said ? Or was it impossible for him to hear about job upgrades? Was his critic that fearful of losing control? So it seemed at the time.
In order to unpack this dream one would have to ask the dreamer several questions to elicit his relationship with the images in the dream.
Since I am the dreamer, several things come immediately to mind. First is the dream image of the tall, blond friend. The man he rejected in the Tipi ceremony was tall and thin, very sexy and seductive, an adopted son of Dutch people. His adoptive mother was very abusive, physically and emotionally. His very loving “angelic” pacifist father was just the opposite. The boy grew up in an urban area and was sexually molested by his older step brother (also adopted). The boys were drinkers and fighters, martial artists and musicians. The tall, thin brother was bisexual. Most of his female lovers were prostitutes. He later discovered his birth-mother was Creole, Afro-American and Cherokee. His dad was a sailor, Greek and English, according to his birth-mother. She never told him she was pregnant and gave the baby up for adoption shortly after his birth. The family were heavy alcohol drinkers, fighters, sexually and emotionally abusive. When in his early twenties this man visited Amsterdam and found himself drugged with LSD and Ecstacy in a bar. His supposed friend intended to turn him into a male prostitute and keep him on drugs. When he realized what was happening, he freaked out, started yelling at the top of his voice, and perched on a nearby boat’s prow until the police arrived. When they discovered he was an American citizen with a famous Dutch name, they put him on board an airplane bound for New York City. When he landed he was himself again.
The Coyote, my nephew, had the inverse relationship. His dad was abusive, violent and alcoholic. He beat him consistently as a child. The parents divorced when he was five; his dad got custody (that makes one wonder doesn’t it?). Coyote showed me pictures of himself throughout that period. He looked like a frightened, sad little boy, until his mother got custody of him and sent him to art school as a teenager. Then he blossomed into a smiling, happy youth. His mother, the daughter of a Mafia boss, who had incested her as a child, was attracted to powerful, rich and abusive men. She was extremely seductive (she was, after all, her father’s mistress) and an expert at looking much younger than her age.
Eros and Aphrodite
In fact the picture of mother and son sitting on the couch together, which was pinned up on my wall, invariably evoked the question “Is that Coyote’s girlfriend?” “No,” I would respond, “that is his mom.” People were shocked. The chemistry between them was obviously romantic if not sexual. The first time I visited her home she said to me, “the energy is so intense between me and Coyote! Either he wants to fuck me, or he wants to kill me.” I assumed at the time she was speaking metaphorically about the bi-polar nature of their relationship, but now that I have gotten to know their family history, I’m not so sure.
Coyote did to me what he did to his tall, thin Cherokee “brother”. He stopped communicating with me. Why? He never said, but I think it was about my bringing all of the young, abused, and sexually confused men into our peyote community. The Coyote was a body builder, a strong member of his men’s group, and mentor to other young men like himself. He’s a Don Juan kind of guy, very popular with the ladies, of whom he’s gone through several but never able to find a mate. He’s a musician, and fine artist who still likes to play football with the guys. 
He looks very attractive, younger than his age and probably spends time in tanning salons. Coyote always has younger men at his side (along with his very beautiful female companions). Actually he’s a good double of me at his age.
At forty I was identified as a deer, a shaman, by my wife. Stags have lots of family with them, does (wives and daughters) and young male sons (or several males hang out together if there are no does available). That’s the way I was, Very affectionate with the family. I too had an incestuous relationship with my mother (and father for that matter). I was always annoyed because older men called me “son” even into my forties (Ringo Starr had the same problem). So if we assume the tall, thin Cherokee and I mirror aspects of the Coyote’s repressed Shadow side and his inner critic is still working on the old program, it would make sense why he has rejected us. We represent parts of himself he cannot integrate, parts he has projected onto us and does not like, parts he wants to exorcise from his personality. How does all of this apply to me, to the dreamer?
Just as I represent the Coyote’s shadow side, he represents mine. To the extent that I cut off communication with people whom I perceive to have rejected and hurt me, he’s a perfect mirror. My family system has more emotional cut offs than most. When I discovered this in my study of psychotherapy, I constructed a huge blueprint showing the cut offs, emotional and geographic, over-involvement of mother and son, sexual molestation and homosexuality, incest of both kinds (homosexual and heterosexual, (grand)parents, children, and siblings involved), as well as divorces and “psychosomatic” and other illnesses. Both the Greek and Scotch/Irish/English/Jewish/Native American sides of the family tree have the same patterns, so I shared this psychic map with my sons before the emotional and geographic cut-offs began. Ten years into the process, only my youngest son has maintained continual communication with me. All of the patterns have replicated, generation after generation. I warned everyone when I realized these were unconscious patterns which have a life of their own. If you have read all of my blog posts, you will have an idea of what I am talking about.
This dream shows each aspect of the dreamer’s personality and their relationships with/to him. The Dream Scape shows this; it is symbolized by all the characters being in the same house with me, which is very open. Even the ancestral masculine is there listening in from the other room. Since the house is usually symbolic of the body, it is easy to recognize those parts of me. In the dream I accept them, even the Coyote, who hasn’t talked to me in several years. I love him, the inner man and the outer one. And I love those neglected and abused younger parts of myself, who are symbolized in the dream. The blond, Dutch boy, is just the grown up, living version of a picture which was hanging in my room during the time my parents molested me. He 
(the picture of the Dutch boy and his skates) watched and said nothing. Now he wants nourishment and speaks, “where’s my omelette?” he says. He’s got a voice and is able to ask for what he needs. So does the younger companion, who wants coffee. The way I am like my mother is the feminine mother/seductress who offers a way to get what the youngest man wants, who, by the way, looks like the man I picked up in a bar in Idaho when I was my visiting mom and dad during my college years. I was with my younger brother, who wasn’t surprised that I left with the tall, thin man. He and I were the same age; he graduated with my high school class and was also visiting his family. All he wanted was to make love to the class Salutatorian and get some of the glamour to rub off on him. The dreamer acknowledges all these dream image people and begins to act as the dream comes to its conclusion.
The new information for the dreamer is that he is finally in a more active, conscious relationship with these inner parts of his psyche. This isn’t really surprising for a man of seventy, who has committed most of his life to interpreting his dreams. Of course the outer world is another matter. The dreamer’s family of origin are all dead or have cut off communication and relationship long ago. This is largely because of walking my talk and trying to be as honest with my shadow side as possible. Not everyone who has been hurt by my actions over the years has been willing or able to hear or receive my apologies. There are some things I have done, for which I am not sorry, even though my friends and family have experienced them as hurtful. And there are several who have hurt me, who are unaware of their actions, or perhaps don’t care.
After all, Michael is a Coyote, a Trickster, and one of Hermes’ sons, one of those people who will break all the social conventions in the blink of an eye and level the playing field immediately. Speaking the truth as I see and feel it has gotten me into various dog houses, where I have met the most interesting scoundrels, revolutionaries, and libertines. The path of spiritual evolution has been fun and filled with suffering. What can I say? Life is amazing. We need to acknowledge our humanity in order to embrace our divinity.
Divinity Candy with nuts
Oh, by the way, would you please pass the candy?
Merlin and the White Eagle 