Do you remember the first time you saw a picture of a unicorn?

Maybe it was one of those pre-Raphaelite remakes with a lovely woman cradling a unicorn’s head in her lap (no layered symbolism there!) or a cartoon in which the unicorn shoots rainbow hearts out of it’s horn. While part of you said “not real,” another part of you said, “hmmmm… wonder if they eat apples?”

There are many kinds of belief. There’s the belief of your mind, a form of believing which wants to be rational and absolute (the brain refuses to remember that it can be faulty or manipulated). The mind wants it’s truths clear, precise, known.

Then there are the beliefs of the heart, soul, or body, none of which are tied to the mind’s rationality. Dreams, shamanic journeys, intuitions, and our spiritual beliefs fall into this second category.

This dichotomy is the difference between what I think of as your daylight mind, which logically navigates the complexities of the modern world, and your nighttime self, which knows life is softer and that shadows are multi-layered. Neither form of belief is “right” and both are valid.To live wholly we must find balance between the two in the same way we balance light and dark, inhale and exhale. read more…