The Fox that I am ...

Red Fox Portrait
Originally uploaded by naturenev
Another "beast" dream last night.

My healer shared just this week that these Ox-herding pictures and Great Bear Mother stuff will be working me, rather than me working them. It couldn't be more true.

In my dream, I am in a large spacious field, surrounded by woods. In the distance, I get a glimpse of a large fox with striking features. I am enthralled and petrified. It sees me and begins moving toward me with lightning speed. There is a metal cage, much like the one that people are in when they go deep into the ocean to view sharks, and I quickly crawl in, shaking furiously as I try to bolt it shut, with this feeble latch. As soon as I hook the latch, the fox is above me in the pine tree and then is suddenly right at the opening of the cage, snout to nose with me, looking right into my eyes. My heart is beating rapidly and I blink and it has vanished.

When I wake up from the dream and make notes to myself, the following phrases appear on the journal page, as if they had been channeled, as I certainly was not aware of thinking them up.

"You cannot out-fox the fox."
"I can no longer hide from my true nature."

I can barely go back to sleep after this. I have now experienced the 3rd picture of the series: "Seeing the Ox." As I lay there, restless and exhausted simultaneously, I am flooded with thoughts, images.

The "sly" fox. Part of my true nature is that I am clever and quick-witted. I do things by the seat of my pants, I can improvise. I adjust to some situations very easily and readily. I am charming.

Foxes are cunning. Equally accurate about my true nature is that I have mastered every form of dishonesty and deceit. From exaggeration and manipulation to cheating and stealing and everything in between. In my drinking period, I wielded this tool belt of deception in order to get what I wanted, when I wanted it, all in the name of my addiction. After that, my cunning inner fox had me believe that I was doing "just fine" -- the guise for denial and self-delusion.

I went as far as to go onto the internet early this morning to google search the nature of foxes. On a reputable animal behavior website, this statement was particularly compelling:
"They [foxes] find an escape once there is a scent of danger."
I laughed out loud. My healer has been making this statement about me for years, almost verbatim (substitute the word "whiff" for "scent")    I also read that foxes are not just aggressive by nature but they are also gentle. And can even be domesticated.    I know that both of these qualities exist in me vividly. 

One of the first milestones in my lifetime of allowing my true nature to be revealed to myself and then to others was when I came out as a lesbian. I knew by age 6 that the way I felt about girls was the way girls felt about boys. And then, I wouldn't let myself know much more. My inner fox went into hiding, into stealth mode. Peering out from time to time, like when I would let myself experience brief moments of having a crush on a girl. This was swiftly stuffed back down into the foxhole. To come out of the woods and into the open field and frolic and proclaim: "I dig chicks!" or "I get turned on by breasts and pussy!" was a victory. The claiming of my true nature. Not to mention the freedom I felt to no longer be trapped.

In the dream, I wanted to see the fox and I didn't want to see the fox. That's how it's been about having my own true nature revealed to me. I'm curious and I'm scared. The cage in my dream was flimsy at best, with a latchhook that could have easily been broken. For me, that symbolizes a movement from resistance to readiness. My self-imposed prison is loosening its bars and locks. I don't really want to be protected from knowing who I am any longer. After all, I looked at my true nature face-to-face in the dream. I want to see the beast intimately, so that I can also see her beauty. And that she was.

I want to know the fox that I am ...