I Had A Dream….
by Bernie Bell - 08:51 on 04 October 2023
I Had A Dream….
In my dream – Ben came back. I was sitting in the Living-room. Mike had gone for a walk and was away longer than I thought he’d be. I heard the door – he came in and said he’d found Ben. I asked ‘Where is he?’ – Mike said ‘In the hall’.
I opened the door, and there he was – Ben-The-Dog. He ran about like a mad thing, we had a big ‘rumple’ together, then he ran about some more. Mike and I stood and watched him, wondering where he’d been – me saying he was in good shape so someone must have looked after him.
Ben didn’t go missing – he became ill and died in 2011.
This dream reminded me of when I guided a group of people through a meditation at the end of which one woman was in tears. She told me that the last she had seen of her dog was when he was ill, and died. A painful memory for her.
During the guided visualisation she met her dog again on the beach and they ran and played together. So her last memory of him changed from one of his illness and passing to one of them running and playing together on a beach. This made her very happy.
And for me & Mike - Ben came back.
The meditation is called Benwiskin, after Ben-The-Dog. Here it is…..
“A Memory & A Meditation
In the year 1998 Mike and I were visiting my sister Bridget who lived near Sligo town in the Republic of Ireland. We decided to go for a drive round the Horseshoe Pass. It’s not so much a pass through the hills as a curving road in a horse-shoe shape in the hills. https://discoverbundoran.com/2020/03/gleniff-horseshoe-a-local-getaway/
We drove into the horse-shoe, stopped the car and would have liked to go up the nearest hill, Truskmore, but there was a big metal gate in the way – a BIG one – high up and wide across, so, philosophically, we decided to just mooch about a bit and enjoy the place for what it is and what we could see around us, including Benwiskin Mountain – like a wave breaking….
Then, a man drove up in a van. He told us it was his mountai, and said he’d take us up it if we liked. He unlocked the gate, we went through and drove up to the top where we saw……..
A vista – looking round, below us we could see the sand of a stretch of coastline, Knocknarae (aka Queen Maeve’s Grave) http://www.megalithicireland.com/Knocknarea.htm , and more hills with vales between. The weather was very – atmospheric – big clouds and rain sweeping through, then the sun shining in shafts into the vales. It was a wonder.
Photographs couldn’t catch it, but my ‘mind’s eye’ could. The scene stayed in my memory.
We went back down the mountain, and Bridget was keen to give the man ‘something for his trouble’ – he said we could buy him a pint if we saw him in the pub. That’s Ireland for you.
Some months later a friend asked me to write a meditation, and then lead a group through that meditation, and so, I wrote the following……….
Later, when Ben-The-Dog joined us, we named him Benwiskin after the mountain - then his name got shortened to match his size.
Memories.
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