February 13, 2008
The parade of ants….Each of us the Indra of her or his own life, and if we succeed in slaying the dragon that hoards the water of life (society and its demands upon the individual to accept its version of life as the only one), we become all powerful–the creators of our own story. Do not forget those “ants” on the floor, though.

The vision we have for our life (palace) ought to be kept within bounds–not in the way the dragon held the waters of Life, but in the way of modesty and sensible order.

February 14, 2008
This morning, Nanapush in Four Souls (Louise Erdrich) describing our relationship to time as being like a fish in water. Now, at lunch, Heinrich Zimmer says of our relationship to space and time: “we move through and are carried by them, as the fish by water (Myths and Symbols in Indian Art & Civilization, p.12).

I love synchronicity.

November 7, 2018
Found these today. I am struck by the relation of the dragon hoarding the waters of life, and the parallel between the dragon and space/time drawn in these two days of journal. If space/time is the water (life), then what is the dragon that hoards it? If water flows, and we swim in it as fish, then what is it that freezes up this water?

I think that we naturally, as children, allow ourselves to be carried along, to accept what life brings. But we are taught to try to control life–we are taught what is desirable and undesirable by experience and culture, and do our best to corral life into a version that we will find acceptable. This is the dragon.

Indra, by working endlessly on his palace, is in turn carrying out the dragon pattern he once defeated, until he is gently nudged, once again, toward Life–the flow. Acceptance and love of what IS.