Thar she loves!!

As 2025 winds down, Whale has been showing up in dreams like never before, reminding us that only Love is real.

Photo by Swanson Chan on Unsplash

Once upon a time when I was still trying to make it in television I had consistent dreams about great, big whales.

Looking back, I see a pattern to when those dreams showed up, a connection between what I was going through and what Whale came to offer.

The first time I dreamed of Whale I was in a dream group and I was able to tend the dream very thoroughly in a dream-theatre experience with my fellow group members. The message Whale brought forth in that tending would become life changing for me.

The morning after the dream group, I went up onto the roof of the high-rise I lived in (where tenants weren’t allowed) to enjoy a cup of tea with panoramic views of the ocean. And out there, towards the horizon, I saw Whale breaching. I will never forget it. The sense of wordless communication I felt between us in that moment, reinforcing all the insights I’d had the night before. And later that day, just to make sure I wasn’t going to go back to sleep (metaphorically speaking) my friend who had a boat docked in Marina Del Rey called me and said: “There is a whale. She has swum all the way into the Marina, and now she won’t leave.”

So I went and spent some more time in wordless communication with this whale, maybe the same I had seen earlier on, just to really make sure I would’t go back to sleep.

So what was the message from Whale? What was the wordless communication that happened between us? Well. It was wordless. Explaining it is hard, even now, more than 15 years later. But in a nutshell, it was something along the lines of: “You think you know things. You think you know what to want. But until you become the kind of love that is strong enough to move the Universe, until you become ruthless, fearless and unapologetic in your love for the world, ask yourself this: Do you really know anything at all?”

Yeah. That was about it. Nothin’ much, really…

Joking aside, Whale was right. I thought I knew things. About myself. About what to want. And at the time I was definitely deluded. I was ambitious. I wanted to prove myself and I wanted the world to notice me. All that nonsense. And it got me into some compromising situations. I was easy to take advantage of. Where there is passion and ambition, there is exploitation.

But those were exactly the times when Whale would come: When my ambition made me willfully blind to the truth of what was going on. When I was more consumed by what to get, rather than what to give. And no matter what question I posed to Whale, her answer would always be the same: “Love.”

“But they hurt me so much….”

“Love.”

“But it’s so unfair!”

“Love.”

“But they stole my idea, my lifeblood, and now they’re turning it into really mediocre content.”

“Just love. Love fiercely, massively, without question or apology. A love like that sets you free, and turns you into a creature as big as I. A love like that can change the cosmos. So love, as if your little life depended on it.”

There was no negotiating this point with Whale. So I did my best to follow her call. And my life probably did depend on it. If I had held on to all the grudges, if I hadn’t found a way to turn my disappointment in people into love for the world, it would likely have destroyed my soul, definitely my body. The impersonal Love that Whale was talking about did set me free, and emboldened me to create the life my soul yearned for.

At the end of the day, it helped me discover that the greater life, the one that was mine to live was not necessarily big in the eyes of the world. But it was certainly bigger when viewed from the eyes of the soul.

I still journey through the world with Whale. She shows up in dreams occasionally, but mostly she is just there, within and around me, swimming through the cosmos of my heart, providing the solid ground I stand on.

I am always honored when Whale shows up in the dreams I tend for others. The minute someone mentions Whale, something quickens inside. I know Universal Love will visit for that hour. I know an ancient piece of wisdom will break through the surface of our consciousness. I know that the dreamer and I will be swimming in Holy Waters. And maybe all waters are holy.

Whale, and Whale’s ancestors have been inhabiting Earth for approximately 5 million years, compared to humans who have only been around for some 300,000. They are more at home here than we have ever been, and considering Earth is made up of 70% water, it really is their planet, not ours. They live in Matriarchal communities, pods led by elder females. Their intricate and advanced ‘whale song’ can be heard underwater for thousands of miles. We know, whales listen to each other across oceans, because they will pick up a unique ‘tune’ sung by another whale thousands of miles away. Their song always changes, leading scientists to believe they are expressing a complex, ever changing variety of emotion and thought. They have the largest brains of any animal on earth, and their brains contain a unique paralimbic lobe reserved for cognitive-emotional processing, social interaction, empathy and compassion. All that means is: Whales are wired for love.

This is the result of 5 million years of brain development: More capacity to love.

Whales use echolocation to transmit images and emotions directly into the brains of other whales, which really isn’t all that different from telepathy. They transmit messages through the waves for thousands of miles, which calls to mind Indigenous Australians, and how they communicated through the song lines of the land. Their song is like the sounds we heard in the womb, like the resonance of the Universe.

The dreamers who are being visited by Whale right now are often at a crossroads, or they just recently decided to walk the path of the Heart. And at this juncture Whale comes to say: Only Love is real. Only love can move the needle on this horrific mess you humans have put yourself in. Whale shows the dreamer how to be big, through Love, how to flow, give and receive freely. How to have compassion, even for those that caused us pain. How, when we communicate with Love, we can reach and change the hearts of others, even if they are thousands of miles away. Even if we have never met them, what we think of them, how we picture them, has power.

The Gods know we humans caused pain to whales in the past. We almost made them go extinct, which of course would ultimately have led to our own demise, because without them the oceans would die. And yet, just within the past 3 or 4 decades, Whale has been actively trying to make a connection with us. In dreams, where they show up more consistently than any other figure. And in the waking world, where they seem to seek out divers and boaters like never before, as if they want us to understand something vital. And when you look into the eye of Whale, like I did in the Marina, you are changed forever. There is a universe in that tiny little eye. A wisdom drawing on 5 million years of experience.

How would we think, if we had 5 million years of ancestral wisdom available to us? Would we still chase personal recognition or retribution? What would we know about the planet and her depths? About ourselves, and our hidden capacities? Would we know something about how thoughts and actions reverberate throughout the universe? Would we know more about Love’s power to create a world? And if we knew all that… What might we choose to do?

Gray whale calf investigating a small boat in a lagoon, Baja, Mexico. Derek Simpson