I recently had a dream that showed me how shabby my own love is. It dates from October 21, 1974. I no longer keep dream records with any great regularity. But I have been at a crossroads in my personal life since the spring of 1974. Since dreams keep me in touch with the pulse of my unconscious, I am again keeping daily records. To save time, I use a cassette tape recorder and record each dream directly upon awakening; often I am only half-awake and the tape comes as a great surprise when I play it back later. Days or weeks later, I then winnow through the chaff at my typewriter.

This particular dream took place, as my dreams so frequently do, at the home of my grandparents in Michigan. In real life, I knew great happiness there as a child and for many years thereafter. But both my grandparents are gone now. My grandfather died the spring of 1974 at the age of ninety-one and my grandmother followed him at the end of the summer. So when I dream of their house now, I am in a place of powerful, almost cosmic emotions, both of grief and of love.

It seems I had been telling someone about elephants in this dream--about how they have a beautiful love thing going: they mate for life; they go on honeymoons with their mates and get deliciously intoxicated on fermented fruits; they protect their sick in a very touching manner. Humans could learn much from elephants.

Then I found myself in the kitchen of my grandparents' house. With me was an enormous elephant. I was nervous because he was so huge and the kitchen seemed so small and I did not wish to be crushed.

The elephant is talking to me. Male voice--a deep voice. This is an ancient, ancient sage elephant.

The elephant tells me he is going to lift me up onto his back. It all happens so quickly that I scarcely know what is going on. I am told to stand on his left side, facing in the direction of his rear. Then suddenly--

this trunk came, swooping around like a swing, and scooped me up.

The elephant explains that there is a special spot on his right shoulder where circus dancers can find their balance. Even when he rears up on one foot, he informs me, and his back seems to be all sliding and humped and with no foothold, there is still this one spot where a dancer can find her balance. If she is young, she will wear toe shoes and stand on point; an older dancer will be wise enough not to take such a risk.

In the dream I was very conscious of my own limitations. I had no desire to imitate a young, giddy ingenue and put the elephant's words to the test. Nor did I consider myself a more mature "performer." I had, in fact, no desire to perform at all. I was quite content merely to be myself, somewhat precariously seated on the elephant's rough back. Had he reared up on one foot to test me, I would have clung unceremoniously to his back with all my clumsy strength. But he did not put me to such a test.

We started moving through the kitchen then. Some of my bewildered relatives stared through the dining room door but the wise old elephant paid no attention. All my nervousness had disappeared by now. I loved riding him.

The movement of the elephant was very, very familiar, and I thought to myself: I betcha I've ridden elephants--maybe in ancient Egypt or someplace--in a past life. It just seems perfectly natural for me to be on top of that elephant and I'm enjoying it.

He reached up with his trunk and put it around my waist, and I just trusted him although I could not remember how I was supposed to get down. Then he swung me back down through the planes of air until I was standing on my feet by the garage door.

The elephant, through some sort of telepathy, was aware of my fear and was amused by it. He teased me then, but in a gentle way.

He was so ancient--he just knew exactly what he was doing. He said, "Wouldn't you like to kiss me?"

The opening within the trunk was as huge as my head. Inside the grayness, I saw a very sensitive pink area where the mouth was. But I had no intention of putting my head inside that moist chamber to kiss the animal. The very thought made me want to squirm. Germs, you know.

Then the elephant backed me up against the garage door. The trunk was flared now in such a way that it could easily engulf my whole body. Through telepathy, the elephant gave me to know that although I was incapable of kissing him, he was going to kiss me. Something serious was afoot. For my sake, not his, it was necessary for him to infuse me with his love energies.

That flaring trunk now took on cosmic dimensions. I was terrified. I had been thinking of him as a kindly grandpa spirit but I now realized that I was encountering head-on a very pure cosmic Force. I felt totally inadequate to deal with such a love.

Everything is all dark all around me and I'm in the midst of this moistness--and I was scared. But I knew that the elephant was not going to release me until its purposes were achieved. I knew that. And I knew I could either struggle or I could accept it. At one point, if I had known exactly where that mouth was inside the trunk, I might have very gently kissed it--almost as if in recognition. But I didn't know where it was. I was just overwhelmed with this Force.

I realized that's what that elephant was trying to transmit to me: this enormous feeling of cosmic love all around me. So I just relaxed at that point and tried to go more and more deeply into it. The feeling was very, very potent and profound in the dream. It was extremely powerful. It had not reached the point where it was a oneness with the universe, but certainly that was the direction it was going in. I stood there in this yawning, black, dark, moist presence. It was very chthonic. I just simply allowed this presence of love, just overwhelming, to flow over me. I just totally let down my defenses and just let myself be bathed in that sense of being loved. But it wasn't easy.

I felt a terrible sense of inadequacy because I had no way to return such love. All the love I could summon up within me would not even cover a square inch of that huge, cosmically loving creature. The only love I could offer was pitiful, puny, impoverished.

I just didn't feel capable of loving so enormously. All my soul had strength to do at that point was to--not to give, but to simply be willing to accept, which in itself was difficult for me--to be willing to accept that love just flowing all around me. Presence--I keep wanting to say that word: Presence. That Presence of love.

Such a humiliating insight might have crushed me a decade ago, but not anymore. Instead, it gives me a sense of hope. Dreams do not expose an area of illness until the means are at hand for its cure, even though that may take a lifetime of healing.

SOURCE: Journey of a Dream Animal by Kathleen Jenks (1975), pp. 226-31. Original passage untitled.