Suzanne Askham

Teachings from a faun on inner vision

Last night, I was in a simply furnished, rustic room with a faun. The faun was reclining on a couch. Despite the restful pose, he looked alert and full of pure, woodland-fresh energy. He was smaller than me, and lean.

I was sitting in a chair a little way across the room, learning a new skill. The faun was directing me to go to a faraway place. Immediately, I found myself there. I could see landscape, people, and events. Just as quickly, I found myself back in the room with the faun. I understood, to my surprise, that I had never left the room. I also couldn’t remember any details of the place I had seen, but the faun said I would once I’d done the exercise a few more times. The faun was teaching me far-seeing. This process was repeated again and again. Each time, I saw a different place as though I was actually there. Each time, when my consciousness returned to the faun’s room I couldn’t remember what I’d seen. However, I was beginning to get fragments of images.

My visit with the faun was a dream, albeit a vivid and interesting one.

What preceded the dream? What might have helped to create it?

Visions with a message

Yesterday, a friend who works with elderly people came to the house. She told me about a conference she’d attended recently, about visual impairment. “Did you know,” she said, “people who lose their vision may hallucinate?”

She told me about one woman who regularly ‘saw’ a child in her kitchen. And she told me about another woman who ‘saw’ jungle all around her.

These hallucinations were described by the conference speaker as frightening. However, reading between the lines, it sounded to me as though the first woman, at least, positively enjoyed the company of the child in her kitchen.

I wonder, now, if the visions experienced by these two visually impaired people were being ‘medicalised’ and thus automatically viewed as something negative? It may be that their visions, like my dream of the faun, were a form of far-seeing – or at the least a vivid imagining. And this is not a bad thing per se. It’s just a thing.

The images that those women saw with their inner eyes may have carried insights for them, just as dream images can bring insights. During an important time of change in my life,  I dreamt a lot about jungles. For me, the message was clear: I was re-connnecting with my own true, wild self. That was a good thing. Maybe the lady who hallucinates a jungle is doing something similar. Maybe if someone said to her, “How interesting, what a beautiful thing for you to see”, she would start to enjoy and value her inner vision more.

The world is a lot more expansive, beautiful and interesting than we generally allow ourselves to see. It’s okay to be a little wild. As long as we harm no-one, including ourselves, it’s okay to see fauns and jungles with our mind’s eye. We might even learn something from them.