A couple of nights ago, I had a dream of "my" Self. It was very short, but very vivid, with glowing colors that were much more intense than in everyday life.

I was walking along a dirt road, when at my feet I spotted the tip of a peacock feather laying in the dust. I bent to pick it up, and saw that it was not the usual green-and-blue, but that the outer ring of color was made of the purest gold, while the inner spot, or "eye" was a deep, glowing cobalt blue, surrounded by a ring of bright, deep emerald green..

In The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols it says that "In Shamanism, the symbolic function of feathers is linked with the ritual ascent into Heaven and hence with second sight and divination...In fact, feathers are symbols of the power of Air, of freedom from the force of gravity." As for the symbolism of the peacock it says "Although we readily make the peacock an image of vanity, the bird sacred to...Hera is first and foremost a solar symbol...In Christian tradition, too, the peacock symbolises the solar wheel and hence is a sign of immortality. Its tail evokes the starry sky...In esoteric tradition, the peacock is a symbol of wholeness...it exhibits the intrinsic identity and the short-lived nature of all manifestation." And although I cannot remember where I read it, the peacock is also a form of the phoenix, the bird of resurrection and immortality. I realized when I woke up that I had had a dream of "my" Self, with that sense of the numinous that always accompanies dreams of such a nature. In fact, dreams of the Self are, by definition, dreams of wholeness.