I like to meditate. I'm a bit of a cliche really, because I do the whole palaver, you know whale music or Native Americans chanting, or Tibetan singing bowls on a CD. You know, the type of stuff they play in Shared Earth. I light my joss sticks, put on my CD, take off my shoes, close my eyes and go where my mind takes me. I try to do this every day. It's good for the cyclothmic racing brain thing I sometimes get. It helps me to focus and slow down and relax. I'm also into Jung, and find meaning in symbolism. I find that the dream like state I go into in meditation kind of makes me think in pictures, and go into a kind of Alpha or deeper state. In those states, my subconscious is given free reign, and I often wake up with an insight or knowledge about myself or my situation that hadn't occurred to me before. This happened today, and it was a wow moment.
Since I was small I've been terrified of talking parrots. It's a real phobia. It just seems wrong that they can talk. It freaks me out. It began when I was in a pet shop with my dad, who was insisting that it would be a good idea to buy a parrot, just because his friend had one. We looked at one, and it suddenly began to talk, and it really freaked me out. I ran out of the shop and refused to go back in. I remember us going home, and my dad repeating over and over again how disappointed he was. He told me he'd spent a lot of money on a state of the art cage, and how I was such a silly baby for reacting in that way, that it was to have been my birthday present and he had no more money to buy anything else at the last minute. I was about four or five at the time. I went to bed and cried, and don't remember anyone coming up to see if I was okay. I also didn't get my main birthday present. If I visit a house with a parrot I have to run out of the room, break into a cold sweat and start shaking. I'm not usually like this. I've never been the type of HPD to get all hysterical or dramatic or over react. It's not histrionic. It's a real fear. A member of the family once thought it was funny to hack into my Facebook account and post pictures and videos of parrots everywhere, and I had hysterics. It sounds funny but it's not. Other people think it's strange and they can't take it seriously.
Anyway, I was meditating today, in a lovely semi dream like state. The dreams I have during meditation are really vivid, and in colour. In my dream I could see a lovely blue sky, and I was somewhere hot and tropical, with palm trees and a beach. I looked into the tree and there were lots of wild parrots, and yet I wasn't scared of them. They were colourful, and very beautiful.
One of them was tame and came and perched near to me. I could see his feathers, and the beautiful patterns. I woke up feeling calm. Usually if I have nightmares about parrots I wake up feeling terrified, but now I felt calm.
I always have a bite to eat and a coffee after a meditiation. They say you should do this to bring yourself back into reality, to kind of ground yourself. As I was eating, I began to think about parrots and had this kind of wow moment. I believe that the phobia didn't just begin because of the bad experience in the pet shop. I thought about what pet parrots usually represent. They're a beautiful bird who is held captive in a cage, taught to mimic people but not actually speak, taught to entertain and amuse, being almost seen as a kind of a caricature. They're not so different from the HPD. I began to cry as I realised just what the meditation dream meant. The parrot in my dream was free, as he should be, not as a colourful trapped bird in a cage, there for the entertainment and amusement of its owners. I felt free too, and sad to realise that my parents didn't really treat me any differently to a parrot in a cage.
Maybe I can look at parrots now, and feel sad for them, happy if they're free, and no longer be afraid?