Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Wings of dream healing


Jeff Guidry is a rock guitarist who has volunteered for many years at the Sarvey Wildlife Center in Arlington, Washington. In 1998, he took care of a baby bald eagle who had broken both wings in a fall. The vet said she would never fly again; for two months the question was whether she’d be able to walk. She lay belly-down on shredded newspaper until one day she stood up, craning her head to look at Jeff when he entered the space. He named her Freedom and started taking her around schools, perched on his thick falconer’s glove.

When Freedom was three years old and still entirely brown (the bald spot on bald eagles comes later) Jeff was diagnosed with a life-threatening cancer (stage 3 non-Hodgkins lymphoma) and agree to chemotherapy. After multiple treatments, it wasn’t clear that the chemo was working, and Jeff was close despair every time he looked at his bald head in the mirror. Then, as he writes in a luminous new book, "a pair of merciful talons cut through my prison."

Jeff dreamed that Freedom was flying, on perfect wings. She first appeared as a speck in the distance, then seemed to grow as big as a thunderbird. She swooped down, banking hard, and set to work ripping out his cancer cells with her beak and talons. When he woke, Jeff reports, "I felt on top of the world and I knew I had a secret weapon - my winged friend, Freedom."

This dream intervention was repeated. He made it the focus for conscious visualizations, picturing the eagle tearing out the cancer cells. He felt much stronger, but was bitterly disappointed when told by his doctors that the cancer had not entirely gone away. In treatment of his type of cancer, a maximum of eight courses of chemotherapy are allowed. One the eve of undergoing the eighth series, perhaps his last shot, Jeff envsioned Freedom flying again, full-grown, with the white head, as she had appeared in his dreams. And he told himself, “I can’t die now because Freedom doesn’t yet have her white patch.” After the final chemo treatments, the doctors told him his cancer was gone. Now, when he walks the slopes with Freedom, he holds out his arm to give both of them the sense of flight.

Jeff Guidry’s book An Eagle Named Freedom , dedicated to "Dream Flyer", is now available from Morrow.

10 comments:

Mike B said...

Thank You so much for sharing this Robert. It brings forward how much we really do have helpers in dreamtime and sometimes in the physical realms too, ready to help with healing if we but look for and call to them. Along with the marvelous story you've documented about Shark helping a cancer victim, I know of Bear helping a close friend and Snake helping my son to battle back against this dis-ease and invite the soul to stay and play little longer.

Robert Moss said...

Mike - Yes, the gift of the animal spirits can be tremendous, and our encounters with them can unfold in both worlds. I know of no better ways to boost someone's vitality - and help them to find the natural and healing paths of their energy - than to encourage them to connect or re-connect with the animal powers, and to honor and feed those connections in the body, in everyday life.

Lynne said...

Synchronicity strikes again...you post this story...and last night at a Seattle Aquarium presentation I sat next to a woman who was reading, totally engrossed, during a short break we had. I leaned over and said, "Must be a good book you have there." She smiled and showed me the title--it was Guidry's book. I was then able to let her know that Jeff and Freedom will be presenting at a wonderful venue, Adopt A Stream Foundation (www.streamkeeper.org) in Everett, WA on 9/11. Out of 200 people there, what are the odds I would sit next to her? Guidry's dream healing story is one that more people should hear.

Robert Moss said...

Lynne - I love these secret handshakes from the universe (or in this case, the secret brush of a wingtip...)

Don said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Don said...

This story strikes me as an excellent example of receiving what you give. Jeff helped the eagle all that he could. And the spirit of the eagle helped him. If only everyone realized that we receive what we give! What a changes it would make.

Thank you for posting this.

Don

Robert Moss said...

Yes, Don - It's a moving example of the return of gifts in the circle of life, and that old rule that what goes around, comes around.

Esther said...

Beautiful story about the eagle.
This week my 16 year old son got a healing, I saw it in my dreams.
It's the week of his examination and although he's never ill, he felt bad and he had to fetch up last Tuesday. We worried about his exam next day, it was a very bad time to get ill.
In my dream that night a man came to him and he spitted with force a herb between my sons' eyes. When I woke up, I knew that my son was better again. And that was true, he could do his exam and made it well!
Esther (from the Netherlands)

Robert Moss said...

Welkom Esther - What a wonderful dream healing. An excellent gift for your son at exactly the right time. Synchronistically, I was just reading about the healing power attributed to "spittle" in many shamanic and spiritual traditions. In the Bible, Jesus spits on three separate occasions, to heal a daaf man and two blind men. Jung was very interested in this phenomenon, and how it features in dreams, and wrote about it in his last significant work.

And congratulations on your son's successful exam!

Barbara Butler McCoy said...

Such a stunning example of the interconnectedness of all forms of life. thank you for sharing this.