This morning, just before I woke up, a dream came to me:
I went to a neighbor’s house to collect some honey from her beehive. She welcomed me in, and we began preparing for the collection. But I felt tired—my movements sluggish, my attention scattered.
Then I was outside the house and saw a dog playfully chasing a porcupine. The porcupine clearly did not want to play with the dog and was running away. But the dog kept chasing, unaware of the danger.
Realizing the situation, I instinctively looked around for any kind of protection in case the porcupine shed her quills.
Then I saw the dog return, covered in enormous quills—long and sharp as arrows. He sat down and began licking his body, but not the wounds.
Removing the quills would require a skilled veterinarian. Yet the dog seemed just fine.
Time passed, and I noticed the dog growing a bit larger, and that she is actually a mama dog.
I woke up, never having collected the honey I had sought in the first place.
According to online resources:
The porcupine symbolizes boundaries and personal values.
The dog represents loyalty, friendship, and love.
Honey symbolizes reward, sweetness, and abundance.
A couple of days ago, I had lunch with two old high school friends.
Inevitably we touched upon current events, which lead to the sharing of our own value systems. The main discussion topic was the queer community.
One of the friends’ daughter is a lesbian.
I have other close friends whose children are in that community.
A friend of my daughter’s is a transgender.
These are not distant strangers. These are people in my own universe—people I or my family love, laugh with, cry with. Apart from differences in sexual or gender orientation, they are the same as anyone else in our communities, in this country, in this world.
They are human beings.
Life is difficult for most of us as it is. But for them, added layers of working through their own identity within themselves; then their families; then their social circle, their communities; then the society at large, for acceptance, for understanding, for recognition.
To live openly, without fear or shame, without being judged. Just simply to be.
My other friend is deeply religious, believes that God made only man and woman.
So all genders in humanity should conform to these two binary categories, male and female.
Any variation from that is not designed by God, and therefore a “threat” to the society.
I asked my friend:
What risk do they pose to you?
She said, I don’t want my kids to have an environment where there are over 30 boxes to check on gender/ sexual orientation
I asked again,
What risk do they pose to you? What are you so afraid of?
She said I believe in the bible, and the bible said God made Adam and Eve, so there are only two genders. That is nature and is natural. Anything outside of that is un-natural.
No room for evolution
From that perspective, it becomes acceptable to consider them as lesser; to believe their existence somehow stains the “purity” of the human species; that they are a people needing redemption, normalization, saving.
A step further, maybe without full awareness, that they are a people that can be stepped upon, discriminated against.
Therefore, it is ok for us not to recognize their relationships, their marriages, and not allow them the same social or financial benefits heterosexuals are entitled to.
It is acceptable to oppress them simply based on their sexual orientation.
If it’s okay to discriminate based on sexual orientation, then what stops us from oppressing others for any reason we deem justified—by law or by religion?
The questions I would like to ask people bound to that belief system:
Have you ever really looked at nature?
Can you count the types of roses that have evolved and bloomed across time? Or any other species of plants or animals?
Can you count the different kinds of grass blades there are out there? Or pine trees?
Have you ever found two identical snowflakes?
Can you fathom the depth of the ocean and quantify or categorize all the variations of life in your mind?
Do you honestly believe that our mind (based on accumulation of very limited and filtered knowledge through our narrow spectrum of sensing capabilities as opposed to the forever expanding universe) can quantify, define all the variations, dynamics, and dimensions of life?
Yet, we want to put humans in just two categories of gender? And decide that no other variations are permitted?
Have you defined God in your own mind as an image, and use that as a righteous justification to judge? To judge everything under the sun?
What image would you see when you compare that human mind to the infinite universe, its primal energy? All its potential, seen or unseen, tangible or intangible, time or without time? Space or without the concept of space?
Can your mind really wrap around all that?
Yet you give yourself the right to judge others, judge the intricacies of life itself
Judge their right to live on the earth that has provided in abundance for all specie to grow, to evolve, to become, to expand, to be?
So I ask again,
What are you afraid of?
If you cannot name it, maybe it is the bottom part of the iceberg that accounts for 80% of the entire iceberg. That unnamed fear, hiding underneath consciousness, drives rejection, discrimination, and control on things that are different. Whenever possible, it loves to come disguised, wrapped in the name of God.
Three steps forward, two steps back. It is easy and comfortable to fall back in the evolution of humanity.
The porcupine in my dream is my boundary.
The dog is my loyalty—to friends, to family—even when our beliefs diverge.
Loyalty chased that boundary, nipped at it, tested it, until it was wounded by its own persistence.
And then it sat. Back to its regular self.
It wasn’t destroyed.
It still was.
This is where I live: in the tension between love and values.
My values are empathy, openness, abundance, love, existence in peace, respect, and minding one’s own business and life, not trotting onto others and judge based on my own limited knowledge.
When that system is challenged to the degree as it is in the current political environment, I feel angry. Sadness. Confusion.
As an empath, I feel the pain of those whose voices are not loud enough to stand against the hurricane hurled at humanity.
I know that pain. I was under the darkness of oppression in my early childhood. I saw both sides of it
What I hear from my friends in the LGBTQ+ community is a struggle within themselves, sometimes their own bodies, within families, with friends and society, work place.
Rejection, pain, physical suffering.
But being true to their own soul, their being, they forged ahead. Not of rebellion or defiance, but just being true to themselves, living how they are meant to live. This alone requires courage, strength, and energy – a lot of energy.
So what does it mean to kick a dog when it’s already down?
It means targeting those already burdened by the weight of self-discovery, societal rejection, physical suffering—then deciding they are “less than.” As a society, systematically.
Perhaps doing so makes us feel stronger. Superior.
The line is drawn in the sand – beliefs against beliefs.
In my dream, the dog chases the porcupine.
My loyalty chases my boundary.
It doesn’t stop until it is wounded.
And then it sits. It heals. It still exists.
This is my inner landscape.
I think of Jung’s words:
The flowing together of the stream of life is not joy but pain, since it is power against power, guilt, and shatters the sanctified.
If one-half of mankind is at fault, then every man is half at fault. But he does not see the conflict in his own soul, which is however the source of the outer disaster.
When things happen to us, they come to awaken us.
To transform us.
I’m in that process.
I struggle.
Because if I fight for my beliefs with the same rigid righteousness, how am I any different?
So this becomes ideology vs. love.
Rock against water.
Conviction against heart.
And I choose both.
Love is the energy that allows, that accepts, that expands. It accepts that we are all different and each of us is entitled to our own belief systems.
But I also choose to stand in my truth.
To respect others’ time and space as I respect my own.
I may not see that friend much in the coming years.
But I still love her—for who she is beneath the surface, in the depth of her soul.
That’s where the real energy flows.
Deep and calm.
Strong, yet it claims no control.
It simply is.
Maybe this—this understanding—is the honey I never collected in the dream.
