Good luck to my skin doctor and retirement of a ferryman

My skin doctor is retiring. That is bad news. A great doctor, and a good man. It is not bad news for him of course, but for me. I have been seeing him for at least 15 years. Over that period he has biopsied precancerous and cancerous spots that might have caused serious health issues if they had not been detected and dealt with. Now, with him out of the picture, unless he finds someone to take over his practice, I am going to feel more vulnerable. Rather, I am going to be more vulnerable. If you have been seeing a doctor or a specialist for years, you know how that is a rare thing these days, to be cared for by a professional who knows you well, knows some of your story and history, whom you can trust. I'll miss him.

He was always outspoken about using sunscreen, not just any sunscreen but sunscreen that protects from ultraviolet radiation, but isn't full of chemicals that can be almost as bad for you as sun exposure. And he didn't own stock in any of the brands he promoted. He was really invested in people not getting cancer, especially melanoma, which is not exactly a skin cancer but often starts out as a mole-like growth on the skin and then metastasizes to other pa]rts of the body.

I am a dream worker and I probably know as much about dreams as my skin doctor knows about skin health. I am also essentially retired, but unlike my skin doctor who may find someone to replace him yet, if you will indulge my comparing myself to a ferryman, like the one in Siddhartha, there is no one for me to hand off my pole to. When I fully retire, there will be no ferry at this spot on the river. There is a popular bridge a few miles down, but maybe you catch my drift.

In many ways, the work I do is a lot like my skin doctor. He recognizes when a spot on the skin is benign or precancerous or malignant. It is the same with dreams. I have been a dream worker long enough to recognize when a dream is trying to tell us something important, that needs our attention, not next week but now. You see. We live in a world where you can go online and have access to a list of literally thousands of therapists. How do you know who is good, who has the experience, who you can trust with a disturbing dream. It is easier to let the river of time, the river of Lethe, carry the dream away. If you work with someone like me, you climb into the ferryboat and I pole you across the river.

I'm also a shamanic practitioner which is much more than a profession but a path. I have written about my practice, but there is no one studying under me, so what I offer ends with me. The ancient "science" behind dream work is not covered in any program or book and it isn't taught in a workshop. Even Jung realized that he couldn't teach anyone how to be a Jungian.Your dreams let you know when you can put up your shingle. There is a lot of healing in dreams. Some of it is automatic. Dreams compensate for our conscious standpoint and they play out the emotional dramas (complexes) that, without dreaming, tend to continue to tie up our energy on a daily basis. So-called complexes swallow enormous amounts of psychic energy that we need to carry on in life effectively and creatively. So, when you work with your dreams, after a while, you can expect to be able to focus better, you can expect to navigate problematic relationships better, you can expect to feel centered more of the time and to experience more synchronicities.

This is not the place for me to explain how dream work "works", or why it works.Or why and how shamanism works.

Some people are flaming successes in life without paying any attention to their dreams! True enough, but, by the same token, some people will never see a skin doctor and they will do fine. For some people, a demographic I know very well, and love and admire, life can feel like an unending series of challenges and frustrations, because their orientation is inward. (Jung called these people introverts.) They (we) make up about one third of the human race! If you are introverted you are in great company!

So, wish me luck in my retirement and good luck to my skin doctor. I am tired of being a ferryman. One great perk about being a ferryman is they can get themselves across the river. As for what happens after that, I trust in the journey.