tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9255496642142564612024-03-19T04:48:06.259-04:00The Robert Moss BLOGmossdreams.comMarcia Mosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04530003059608361331noreply@blogger.comBlogger1918125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-925549664214256461.post-57816480268956216672024-03-16T13:07:00.000-04:002024-03-16T13:07:48.250-04:00The Golden Times between Sleep and Awake<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFedxUzFg57KIDn2yCaNKoUSGNLm6kF8LPSlzW8L0DcG_tvYN7hiUHVlrt38BJ8O2E1ODrt8OrGYT1ehu65wXWOl0LgU3WJWqwiI7rBOQIoIE5q1wm13QQUUZSZshXtfBNbiHfa30WJql79j1lL1Elil5vlxmVCDhMo1YbuOPmMc_2v6S9fdpUij5is1Nx/s720/emesa%20helmet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="639" data-original-width="720" height="284" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFedxUzFg57KIDn2yCaNKoUSGNLm6kF8LPSlzW8L0DcG_tvYN7hiUHVlrt38BJ8O2E1ODrt8OrGYT1ehu65wXWOl0LgU3WJWqwiI7rBOQIoIE5q1wm13QQUUZSZshXtfBNbiHfa30WJql79j1lL1Elil5vlxmVCDhMo1YbuOPmMc_2v6S9fdpUij5is1Nx/s320/emesa%20helmet.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white; color: #050505;">Iamblichus (c.250-325 CE), the famous philosopher and
theurgist descended from the priest-kings of Emesa (in modern Syria) was very
clear that the liminal space between sleep and awake is prime time for contact
with spiritual guides, such as gods: </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white; color: #050505;">"Either when sleep departs, just as we are awakening,
it is possible to hear a sudden voice guiding us about things to be done, or
the voices are heard between waking and going to sleep, or even when wholly
awake. And sometimes an intangible and incorporeal spirit encircles those lying
down, so that there is no visual perception of it, but some other awareness and
self-consciousness. When entering, it makes a whooshing sound, and
diffuses itself in all directions without any contact, and it does wondrous works
by way of freeing both soul and body from their sufferings. </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white; color: #050505;">"At other times, however, when a light shines
brightly and peacefully, not only is the sight of the eye possessed, but
closed up after previously being quite open. And the other senses are awake and
consciously aware of how the gods shine forth in the light, and with a clear
understanding they both hear what they say and know what they do."[1]</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white; color: #050505;">Iamblichus wrote his book </span>under the pseudonym of an
Egyptian priest, Abrammon, maintaining that “the gods are pleased when
invoked according to the custom of the Egyptians”. [2] Though he wrote and taught
in Greek, he is distinctly less Hellenic that other Neoplatonists. He kept
his Semitic name, which is derived from the Syriac or Aramaic <i>ya-mliku</i>,
meaning “El is King”. He was descended from the priest-kings of Emesa, some of
whom bore his name. Iamblichus I sent troops to support Octavian in the Roman
civil war. [3] Iamblichus the theurgist professes great reverence for
Egyptian and Chaldean tradition, as opposed to the faddism of the
"flight" Hellenes. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Theurgy means "divine
working" and for Iamblichus it was a matter of ritual activity and practice
in shifting consciousness, not abstract speculation. The aim was to “rediscover
life-giving water hidden in our desert”, to return the soul to knowledge of its
greater identity and purpose and lift the individual to the level of a greater
self. This extended to “taking the shapes of the gods” while human,
in the body."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> Iamblichus
taught that theurgy did not act through the intellect but through one’s entire
character “to allow the soul to exchange one life for another, to exchange the
mortal life for the life of a god”. [4] In <i>Theurgy and the Soul</i>, Gregory Shaw
observes that Iamblichus was “the first leader of a Platonic school
to function simultaneously as hierophant of a sacred cult”.[5] We do not have
texts describing the specific ritual practices of that cult, though we know it
involved sound and light and <span style="background: white; color: #202122;"><i>telestiké</i></span>, statue magic, which involved calling the energy of a god
or daimon into an image to ensoul it. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Good to know that this
celebrated ancient magician-philosopher also recognized that nightly or morning
magic awaits us in that liminal space of “god-sent dreams” between sleep and
awake. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><b><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">References </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">1. Iamblichus<i>, De mysteriis</i> trans. Emma C. Clarke
John M. Dillon and Jackson P. Hershbell (Atlanta: Society of Biblical
Literature, 2003) III.2<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">2. Marsilio Ficino came up with the title On the Mysteries of
the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians [<i>De mysteriis</i> for short in most references].
Since it was framed as an epistle from an Egyptian priest in response to criticisms
from Porphyry, another leading Neoplatonist, its real title would be: “The
Reply of the Master Abammon to the Letter of Porphyry”. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">3. John Dillon, “Iamblichus of Chalcis” In
Wolfgang Haase (ed.), <i>Philosophie, Wissenschaften, Technik</i>, (New
York: De Gruyter, 1987) pp. 863-5<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">4. Gregory Shaw, <i>Theurgy and the Soul: The
Neoplatonism of Iamblichus</i> (Kettering OH: Angelico Press/Sophia
Perennis, 2014) p.6<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">5. ibid., pp. 76-7<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Photo: The Emesa Helmet. A Roman cavalry helmet with iron face guard covered by a sheet of silver, from the 1st century; found at Homs (ancient Edesa) in 1936.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></span></p>Robert Mosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09231870716685877709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-925549664214256461.post-72565748240606902982024-03-16T10:55:00.004-04:002024-03-16T13:11:31.309-04:00Gods in disguise <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUMs3qsxYLMA4WpTRqrHeAj0orVUlk4Vg0HOB6fxFMFBZcmG3UmxKpEJgSgNl0zHcI6kbIi6dp83NovvktWtVcUElU2GeMW4wfvpB5AcMZh5QoK6Vb2_bdnTVwf6Nm3yGHn0SE8sDNPVpg4ruHUp4lOJQd4oZ-QoJRybUHz0nAHXahq5AqcoHuGp2dFzrV/s700/Anubis%20mask%20dynasty%20XIX%20Louvre.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="526" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUMs3qsxYLMA4WpTRqrHeAj0orVUlk4Vg0HOB6fxFMFBZcmG3UmxKpEJgSgNl0zHcI6kbIi6dp83NovvktWtVcUElU2GeMW4wfvpB5AcMZh5QoK6Vb2_bdnTVwf6Nm3yGHn0SE8sDNPVpg4ruHUp4lOJQd4oZ-QoJRybUHz0nAHXahq5AqcoHuGp2dFzrV/s320/Anubis%20mask%20dynasty%20XIX%20Louvre.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">When it comes to gods, human kind cannot bear very much
reality. Jung, the son of a disaffected Protestant minister, observed that
organized religion exists to protect humans against a direct experience of the
sacred. The Hebrews appeal to Moses to speak to Yahweh on their behalf and play
middleman, because he terrifies them. God counsels Joshua “I am near you, but
you must hide your head or you will be destroyed." The closest Joshua can
come to seeing the deity is to get a glimpse of his back as he withdraws. In
the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna begs to see Krishna’s cosmic form, but can't bear it
when it is revealed.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">In C.S.Lewis’ <i>Cosmic Trilogy</i> (published in the
United States as the <i>Space Trilogy</i>), the Oyarsa, planetary deities, are
dizzying when they first appear to humans, seeming to rush in all directions,
more directions than Earth physics allows. They must slow and gentle their
manifesting forms to interact with humans.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">We read in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, “I saw Him in the
manner that I was able to perceive him.” So gods come in disguises and they use
camouflage that is meant to be seen through by those who are ready. For a
costume shop of disguises, check out Athena’s apparitions in the Odyssey.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">As for camouflage, it’s been said that coincidence is God’s way
of remaining anonymous. We might add: while tempting us to try to identify the
author. When we realize that in special moments of synchronicity greater powers
are in play, and seek their identity we start to construct the greater stories
of our lives. Then we can riff on the old saying like this<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i><span style="color: black;">Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous, while
tempting us to try to identify the author.</span></i><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Photo: XIX dynasty mask of Anubis in the Louvre</span><p></p>Robert Mosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09231870716685877709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-925549664214256461.post-42319014312834343592024-03-10T16:00:00.001-04:002024-03-10T16:38:01.960-04:00The lion who fell from the moon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicAMGWrjR-7_tifXXjp08-8ifBR1O94XaGu9I1DXkespU9eiV3TtSGM241IRbnQks11jbZgfsHQba_EEeRHNa0ho-iTmoHBLbDSgOlE-e1FdCYdCPvjYTqLH9hBJF2GdOTzzr46ynENVM3/s1600/Rousseau+Sleeping+Gypsy.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicAMGWrjR-7_tifXXjp08-8ifBR1O94XaGu9I1DXkespU9eiV3TtSGM241IRbnQks11jbZgfsHQba_EEeRHNa0ho-iTmoHBLbDSgOlE-e1FdCYdCPvjYTqLH9hBJF2GdOTzzr46ynENVM3/s320/Rousseau+Sleeping+Gypsy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Impressions, momentary
and vivid, would wash over him: a potter’s vermilion glaze; the sky-vault
filled with stars that were also gods; the moon, from which a lion had fallen….<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span>My chills of recognition make me pause, just three lines
into a story by Jorge Luis Borges, one of the essential writers, opening worlds of wonder and doorways into the Universal Library in a few pages. Borges named this one after himself: “The Maker”, <i>El Hacedor</i>. <br /> Previous translators
squirmed at the title “The Maker”. They thought people might confuse it with
Our Maker; they feared leaving sulphurous traces of a heresiarch. So they
considered and sometimes used “The Poet”, “The Artificer”, “Il Fabbro”. But
Borges chose the English himself. And yes, he meant maker of worlds.<br />
The maker wrote this as he was
nearing blindness in the vast library in Buenos Aires with whose flying books he had
made love and married and danced the tango and fought with knives inside his
mind. I can think of no one, not even Jung, who has housed so many books in his
head and incited so much action between them. Borges was now engaged in
constructing a total library in the imaginal realm, his version of paradise.
Never a tame library, but one where wild things are.</span><br />
<span><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i><span>the moon, from which a
lion had fallen….<o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<i><span><br /></span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> I am seized again
with wild familiarity, the hot breath at my neck, claws at my kidneys.<br />
Borges’ line has a rhyming cousin,
short, stocky and flat-faced, wearing a robe of skins hung with bronze mirrors.
I know where find it. I keep it locked
behind glass doors, along with the Red Book, the Golden Bough and other books
that are restive and like to flap about and
prowl in the night. <br />
Sometimes the doors rattle and the
key turns itself but today, things are quiet and I must fetch the book myself.
It was published in Oxford five years after Borges died, so he could not have
known it but might have known some of its sources. Its words are spun from
conversations with shamans and elders of the Daur Mongols, lovers of horses,
fermented mare’s milk, and drums that they ride to other worlds.<br />
Like Borges, these shamans are
forever talking about tigers and lions. While Borges tried to make dreamtigers
and was never quite satisfied, around Hailar or the Nomin River it’s not hard.
Lie by the water watching butterflies and a tiger twice as long as you may come
for you, as it would come for a tethered goat.<br />
Out here the lion may demand a
deeper seeing, since you won’t see lions in Daur country with your ordinary
eyes.<br />
The Oxford anthropologist asks a
Daur shaman, Urgunge Onon, about this. He speaks from the<i> tellings</i>, which is how his people describe their traditional
knowledge. Anthropologists may know about shamanism but the people who practice
it in the old ways don’t have any “isms” in their vocabulary.<br />
Urgunge says, “Wild animals of the
forest have two kings [<i>khan</i>], the
tiger [<i>tasaga</i>] and the lion [<i>arsalang</i>].<br />
“Lion?” The anthropologist is
amazed. “But you don’t have lions in Manchuria.”<br />
“They will be thinking of …er..what
is it in English? Leopard. Leopard is just like lion, is that right?”<br />
“But you don’t have leopards
either.”<br />
“No, that is true. So the
conclusion is: in reality the khan of animals is the tiger; in imagination the
khan is also the lion, even if we do not have lions in Mongolia. Everybody
knows the story of the lion who jumped to catch the moon, then it died, you
see. This is definitely the lion. The tiger never did that.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span><br />I don't trust the end of this story. I am pretty sure the lion who fell from the moon did
not really die. Some nights, coming in or out of
sleep, I feel him lying with me on the bed, back to back.</span><br />
<span><br />The night after I wrote th</span><span><span>is, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129;">I dreamed of lions in a place of soul recovery. In a huge cavern, divided by an underground river, a wise elder is preparing people to make the crossing and meet the lions who are waiting for them, one for each. From this side the lions look no bigger than kittens. They may look different close up. I know that those who find the courage to meet their lions will be transformed. The courage of the lion and its power to make itself heard will live in them.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Books referenced </span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"The Maker" in Jorge Luis Borges, <i>Collected
Fictions</i>, translated by Andrew Hurley (New York: Penguin Books, 1998).292<br /><i>
Shamans and Elders: Experience, Knowledge and Power among the Daur
Mongols </i>by Caroline Humphrey with Urgunge Onon (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1996).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>Art:</i> Douanier Rousseau, "Sleeping Gypsy".</span></div>
Robert Mosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09231870716685877709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-925549664214256461.post-40329105058528335582024-03-08T13:36:00.005-05:002024-03-08T13:36:58.100-05:00Mutual dreaming and remote healing in The Temple of Asklepios<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieB5FF0FRWWwLCv7xr_6I1cxANYCFh0UoRNrDh4RQlnxFgEMxZZKHTkvldlsFrRF4DD8Je3mzzEpewzhZcR5OAgmXboHg1wS7lUeCrfm_LgjdAAkvncBX7Vzils4RrmO9VgMVYm13AJU8wf1WJ2uN-OeUTlKknlYeZGtof7xYSTllnDXzasVWij4MWz3Aa/s880/Asklepios%20healing%20god%20bas%20relief.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="502" data-original-width="880" height="183" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieB5FF0FRWWwLCv7xr_6I1cxANYCFh0UoRNrDh4RQlnxFgEMxZZKHTkvldlsFrRF4DD8Je3mzzEpewzhZcR5OAgmXboHg1wS7lUeCrfm_LgjdAAkvncBX7Vzils4RrmO9VgMVYm13AJU8wf1WJ2uN-OeUTlKknlYeZGtof7xYSTllnDXzasVWij4MWz3Aa/s320/Asklepios%20healing%20god%20bas%20relief.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />Of all the testimonies that survive from the temples of dream healing consecrated to the god Asklepios and his divine family, the most fascinating, for me, is the case of the mother of a young Spartan woman named Arata. The mother made the <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"> long and often dangerous journey to the great Asklepian temple of
Epidaurus to seek healing for her daughter.</span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Arata, we are told, was υδρωπ, "dropsical". Today, we
might say that she had an edema, a serious swelling due to the build-up of
fluids in the cavities of the body. When ordinary medicine could do nothing for
her, the mother embarked on her journey. She must have undergone the customary
cleansing and ritual purification, and made simple offerings to the sacred
powers of the sanctuary, including honey cakes for the serpents of Asklepios.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #333333; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">She would have been assisted by the<i> therapeuts</i> -
the helpers of the healing god - to incubate a dream of invitation and to
clarify her request to the god, for the benefit of her beloved daughter. She
would have been shown testimonies of those who had been healed before, and
images of the gods, building a mental climate of positive expectation.
Eventually she was ushered into the <i>abaton</i>, the inner precinct of
the temple, where she would have been encouraged to lie down on an animal skin
and await the coming of the healing god in the sacred night.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="background: white;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">In the night, "She slept in
the temple and saw the following dream: it seemed to her that the god cut
off her daughter’s head and hung up her body in such a way that her neck
hung down." We can picture how a butcher might hang an animal carcass on a
meat hook. Out of the neck came a huge quantity of fluid matter. Then the
mother took down her daughter’s body and fitted the head back on the
neck. </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="background: white;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">After she had seen this dream, she
went home and found her daughter fully recovered, in good health and excellent
spirits. <i>Her daughter reported she had the same dream</i>.</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="background: white;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">In this wild and primal experience, glimpsed through a few
lines of an inscription chiseled on stone, we see the lineaments of a healing
practice that reaches beyond ordinary medicine and beyond time and place. A
sacred power appears to the dreamer, in response to a heart-felt prayer. Let us
notice that the experience unfolding is possibly best understood as a lucid
dream playing in the liminal space between sleep and awake.</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="background: white;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The god of this dream is a ruthless surgeon, but his cutting is
true and precise. Something that was wrong in the body of a person at a
distance is drained and healed during this operation., Not only is the effect
transferred to Arata, hundreds of miles away, but Arata sees the whole thing,
as if she were with her mother and the god in the sacred space.</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white;">We have here remarkable evidence of the reality and efficacy of
remote healing and shared dreaming. We have confirmation that direct engagement
with the sacred is the ultimate healing resource. We have a reminder that even
the most terrifying image - if it is authentic and truly belongs to us - can
open a way to healing and transformation, if we are willing to stay with it and
work with it.</span><br />
<span style="background: white;"><br /><i>
Source</i>: the testimony of Arata's mother is printed in Emma J. Edelstein and
Ludwig Edelstein, <i>Asclepius: Collection and Interpretation of the
Testimonies</i> (second edition, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins
Press, 1998) as #423.21.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #333333; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span>Photo: Marble v</span></o:p></span><span style="background-color: white; color: inherit; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">otive relief depicting Asklepios healing a patient in the sacred night, with Hygieia standing behind. From the Asklepeion at Piraeus, c.400 bce. Now in the Archaeological Museum of Piraeus:.</span></span></p>Robert Mosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09231870716685877709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-925549664214256461.post-4089253085977654012024-02-28T10:26:00.001-05:002024-02-28T10:26:20.522-05:00The Angel of the Rushing Waters<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju2OUAKcG6RTVqJXGj8T26l0B0q2POOSoL-80ZPobYE6RDZ6i7fZx_ILsDa3cGP0c1-iU98kE9_Z8hfgxzbeN4q0oYJA4diQ5dTDyQIbdXVK8X7hWYrxZWiuG79MSmEZlnsd-N9YZJWVR3WEa80y4XX9gPt0XuyuI2F_pKHTLaJBlZuY3DK8FpBwB96iVi/s600/RM%20Swan%20on%20a%20Black%20Sea.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="508" data-original-width="600" height="271" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju2OUAKcG6RTVqJXGj8T26l0B0q2POOSoL-80ZPobYE6RDZ6i7fZx_ILsDa3cGP0c1-iU98kE9_Z8hfgxzbeN4q0oYJA4diQ5dTDyQIbdXVK8X7hWYrxZWiuG79MSmEZlnsd-N9YZJWVR3WEa80y4XX9gPt0XuyuI2F_pKHTLaJBlZuY3DK8FpBwB96iVi/s320/RM%20Swan%20on%20a%20Black%20Sea.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">I have seen you as a purple bruise
in a yellow sky,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">as a Scottish soldier with drawn
sword<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">at the edge of the tame land and
the wild wood,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">as a snowy owl with fierce talons
and fiercer eyes<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">as an Indian death-lord traveling
abroad<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">in a Johnny Cash outfit, swinging a
lasso.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I have felt you enter as a gentle
breeze<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">stirring the curtains of a window
in a hospital room,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">and in the raw, thrusting
horse-power<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">of the dark lord bursting into the
sunlit maiden meadow.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">You are a sexy devil.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I love you better than your brother
Sleep.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Through aching nights of absence<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I have longed for your embrace.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I have run your errands,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">speaking in your voice to the old
golfer on the plane,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">negotiating with your razor-sharp
precision<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">the terms for a possible life
extension.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I have taken ailing humans by the
hand<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">to your deep pools, to find you –
if they dare –<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">in the troubling of the waters.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Few can look into your black sun<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">but those who do are different.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">To know you, to walk with you,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">to feel you always at the left
shoulder<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">brings courage and October light.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">You love to dress for occasions.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I have encountered you as a dandy
in evening dress,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">as a red Irish big-bellied god, and
an Indian flame,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">and a white lady whose footsteps
are frost.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Your image is rarely in public
places<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">though the medieval mind, like the
mind of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Mexico</st1:country-region></st1:place>,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">puts skeletal reminders of you at
every turning,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">mocking the vanities of the world.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">On our wedding day <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I want you to reach down in your robe of stars <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">and catch me in your voluptuous
embrace<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">as we leave my old garment in the
blanket of earth.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But if you choose not to come in
your goddess form<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I want you to be wearing my face.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAlfEbSv0bvYN4CML0y3NRydVxuA1QUO7uqci3zIVBQuWuqvxPHb5JVYXbU7iu0TLOQdIlWC0D2HAkOQl0Am5CruTK499az2DdB5bRKh5PH6G1O1YHgBFNTjLHO5HBFaAMlbrqHvgjtbyImu3JsLQ7GUKunUu2bvWPQkUWTNy1vOX5amjJaGiAn5efJp8G/s814/Here%20Everything%20is%20Dreaming.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="814" data-original-width="526" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAlfEbSv0bvYN4CML0y3NRydVxuA1QUO7uqci3zIVBQuWuqvxPHb5JVYXbU7iu0TLOQdIlWC0D2HAkOQl0Am5CruTK499az2DdB5bRKh5PH6G1O1YHgBFNTjLHO5HBFaAMlbrqHvgjtbyImu3JsLQ7GUKunUu2bvWPQkUWTNy1vOX5amjJaGiAn5efJp8G/w129-h200/Here%20Everything%20is%20Dreaming.jpg" width="129" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />This poem is published in my collection <i><a href="https://amzn.to/3By3zUo">Here, Everything Is Dreaming: Poems and Stories </a></i>by Robert Moss (Excelsior Editions). </span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Art: "Swan on a Black Sea" by Robert Moss</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>Robert Mosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09231870716685877709noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-925549664214256461.post-21530964756221785652024-02-16T12:40:00.002-05:002024-02-17T12:22:59.125-05:00Location, location, location - and other keys to dream reentry<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu9IB9A9VAC20JWlxrPbxZtqsTvJ7j9F6XnrvS8j2vpibHxpU-W9OC2fVvQgKtCbwY2w1tzdduR0IthoW3LE2rE6xgJ0proM-7Lu_2jc9MFVOUl7NJe1HjZeJ-vY_VjA4nYIR_p0kV9AsYskuHoTAjcslevCA63CuZunbWp_YxIB0MzB_qq7DAuIjTFt0r/s509/white%20cottage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="504" data-original-width="509" height="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu9IB9A9VAC20JWlxrPbxZtqsTvJ7j9F6XnrvS8j2vpibHxpU-W9OC2fVvQgKtCbwY2w1tzdduR0IthoW3LE2rE6xgJ0proM-7Lu_2jc9MFVOUl7NJe1HjZeJ-vY_VjA4nYIR_p0kV9AsYskuHoTAjcslevCA63CuZunbWp_YxIB0MzB_qq7DAuIjTFt0r/s320/white%20cottage.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">The realtor's familiar slogan applies to the technique of dream re-entry as well as the property game. The easiest way for you to back inside a dream is to hold your focus on the dream location. Your initial memories may be fuzzy, but a single landmark - even a single shape or color - may be sufficient to enable you to shift your consciousness into a vivid and complex scene.</span><p></p><br style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">Be open to possibility! The geography of the dream world is not that of the </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">Times</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;"> atlas or the Mobil guides. In dreams you may find yourself in familiar locales, including places from your past – Grandpa’s place, or your childhood home – that may or may not have changed. You may also visit unfamiliar but realistic locations, often clues that your dream contains precognitive or other “psychic” material. You may find yourself in scenes from a different historical epoch (past or future), in a different galaxy, in otherworldly locales, or in free-flowing situations where nothing conforms to the supposed laws of the physical world. One of the purposes of dream reentry is to establish </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">where in the worlds you are.</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;"> The typical dreamer, after waking, has no more idea where he spent the night than an amnesiac drunk.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">The best time to try to reenter a dream is often immediately after you have come out of it. By snuggling down in bed and rehearsing the postures of sleep, you may be able to slide back into the dream in a gentle and natural way. But your work schedule may not allow you leisure to do this. And if your dream contains deeply disturbing material, you may need to wait until you are ready to deal with it. You may also feel you need the support of a partner or a drumming session.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">But here is a simple technique for dream reentry you can use in the privacy of your bedroom or easy chair:</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">1. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">Find your question.</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;"> What is your main question about the dream you wish to explore? Try to formulate that question as clearly and successfully as possible. Write it down. This will help to establish your focus. During your exploration, you will use this question like a flashlight or a miner’s lamp. It might be quite specific, or as general as, “What is this dream telling me?”</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">2. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">Focus on your target.</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;"> Summon back as many details of your dream location as you can. This is the scene you are going to reenter. Maybe you have multisensory impressions of it. How does the air feel? What can you hear? Are there any distinctive smells?</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">3. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">Ask yourself who or what inside the dream can best answer your question.</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;"> When you reenter the dream, you may be able to communicate directly with one of your dream figures.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">4. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">Relax.</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;"> Get into a comfortable position, sitting or lying down. Take some deep breaths. Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth. As you exhale, try to release any pain or tension you are holding in your body and wish it outside your space. You may find it helps to count yourself down – from twenty to one – as you let your consciousness slide toward your selected locale. Or you may wish to put on meditation music or a drumming tape.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">5. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">Move into your dream locale. </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">Look around carefully to identify exactly where you are. You may notice many details you forgot or overlooked before. Do you know this place? Do you feel you are inside a scene from another time, or another order of reality?</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">6. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">Let the action unfold. </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">Don’t interfere with the spontaneous flow of images. You have full power to choose how you will interact with your dream characters and respond to any challenges that are presented to you. Your dream reentry may take you beyond the point at which the original dream ended; if the first dream was unresolved or aborted, this is part of your design. Your new dream may also introduce characters and events that were not in the original dream. This is fine; your underlying purpose is not to reproduce the earlier version, but to move closer to the source from which dream images flow.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">7. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">Dialogue with dream characters. </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">You may find a dream character who can answer all your questions. Your selection is not confined to humans. Dreams are full of “persons other than human” (to borrow an Ojibwa phrase). There is no such thing as an inanimate object in dreams.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">8. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">Expect the unexpected. </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">Because the dream source is wiser than the ego, it may be telling you something more important than the question you decided to ask.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">9. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 0px;">Map your journey. </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #242f33; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">Pay attention to how you return from the dreamscape, as well as the paths you took through it.<br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVwPfaHPDXTYfWnpf50pzbKV_VRW1yBFBccJwq4rurCdhhbkEdniMvqZCrCA0_npmHbz2hNG8ZDcL7EdKGWzYRrkmk0q22JWKyJh6D8NtHqIOAPHTqcDeH_OzLmZmN5Ot0qbAoB7rgoE4f9XUauInGqEHTZQSOyz_hUrIKIXbt8Jv6jHjDo4geGC5kyIE0/s1600/Conscious%20Dreaming.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1039" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVwPfaHPDXTYfWnpf50pzbKV_VRW1yBFBccJwq4rurCdhhbkEdniMvqZCrCA0_npmHbz2hNG8ZDcL7EdKGWzYRrkmk0q22JWKyJh6D8NtHqIOAPHTqcDeH_OzLmZmN5Ot0qbAoB7rgoE4f9XUauInGqEHTZQSOyz_hUrIKIXbt8Jv6jHjDo4geGC5kyIE0/w130-h200/Conscious%20Dreaming.jpg" width="130" /></a></div><br />Text adapted from <i><a href="https://a.co/d/hUK8VaK">Conscious Dreaming: A Spiritual Path for Everyday Life </a>by </i>Robert Moss. Published by Three Rivers Press.</span>Robert Mosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09231870716685877709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-925549664214256461.post-58949386915524928132024-02-10T09:00:00.000-05:002024-02-10T09:01:09.705-05:00The Cinema of Lost Dreams<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWZxZ_M7IrQSiimcDzsBYzduvxq0VgBLjVFLrGwj66_k8Qk89uOFkY4IN3Yf2uDkWElxsCj5sEspi41wfm12bEYpqtutlrWoWUQ2SJRVX27Uy4usdg6JEjyUEX96Lq9CNvR0ngwGeogxqA/s1600/-+cinema+Victoria.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWZxZ_M7IrQSiimcDzsBYzduvxq0VgBLjVFLrGwj66_k8Qk89uOFkY4IN3Yf2uDkWElxsCj5sEspi41wfm12bEYpqtutlrWoWUQ2SJRVX27Uy4usdg6JEjyUEX96Lq9CNvR0ngwGeogxqA/s1600/-+cinema+Victoria.jpg" height="239" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">What happens to the dreams we don't remember?</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /><span class="apple-style-span"> I've asked myself that question on several
mornings, when I've awoken with little or no dream recall, while feeling that
the night had been active.</span><br /><span class="apple-style-span"> On one such morning, I decided to linger in bed
and see whether I could find a place where I could recover lost dreams. I found
myself approaching an old-time cinema, that reminded me of a movie theater
where I used to go, as a boy, to watch Saturday matinees. I was amazed and
delighted to find that, this time, the movie titles on the marquee and the
images on the posters in the lobby all throbbed with significance in my present
life.</span><br />
<span class="apple-style-span"> </span><span class="apple-style-span"><i>Waking the Sleeping King</i></span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="apple-style-span">was
blazoned in lights.</span><br /><span class="apple-style-span"> One of the posters showed a boy riding a monster
of the deep through a stormy ocean. Another depicted a steamy romance.</span><br /><span class="apple-style-span"> The girl at the ticket kiosk smiled and gestured
for me to go through. Soon I was settled in a comfy padded velvet seat in a
private screening room. As dream images filled the screen, I realized I had a
choice. I could remain a comfortable observer, or I could enter the fray.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="apple-style-span">On another morning, after coffee, I decided to try
the same method again. This time, instead of going back to the movie house, I
found myself drawn to the kind of video store that is almost defunct, thanks to
our new instant delivery systems. This video store was vast, with its products
arranged on many levels, On the first floor, dreams were arranged like DVDs on
shelves, according to familiar categories - Drama, Comedy, Family, and so on,
There was a large Adult section most of whose content was quite unfamiliar to
me. I realized that a block had been placed on some of this material, so that
it did not reach my conscious mind, or - in cases where the film had been rated
I (for Intrusion) was not allowed through during the night.</span><br /><span class="apple-style-span"> I discovered sections devoted to my dreams of
individual people. I had only to focus on a name or title, and the movie began
to play all around me, so I could enter it at will.</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br /><span class="apple-style-span"> On a lower level of the dream video store, I
discovered that I could explore dream adventures I may have shared with other
people, but had not remembered. I found an immense archive of shared dreams
involving each of these people. One was as large as a Gothic cathedral, with
shelves rising to the high roof many stories above. I watched several dream
movies in each location. They took me deeply and vividly into scenes of other
lives and other times - of leopard people in Africa, of Celtic voyagers in a
coracle on a cold northern sea, of a turning castle in a high desert landscape
where everything is the color of sand except for the pretty star-shaped
flowers, blue and purple, on a terrace. The dream movies revealed a hidden
order of connection in all these relationships, transcending our present lives.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="apple-style-span">On yet another day, when I felt impelled to go
searching for lost dreams, I was drawn to a building like an old-fashioned post
office. It resembled the post office in the rust-belt city of Troy, New York,
where I once lived. When I arrived in front of it, in my conscious dream, the
sky turned dark. I mounted the high steps, and walked past the mail boxes
towards the counters. Most of the steel shutters were down and locked for the
night, but one was still half-open. Behind it, I saw letters spilling from
pigeon holes and heaps of giant mail bags and packages. A little black women
in a blue uniform hurried to the desk and handed me a letter. I was moved
to tears when I opened it and found a message from a beloved family member,
long deceased.</span><br /><span class="apple-style-span"> When I turned to thank the postal clerk, I
realized that I knew her. I had glimpsed her, in half-forgotten dreams,
slipping mail through a letter drop in the door of my house, a letter drop that
is not in the physical door. She strongly resembles a figure from history I was
called to study by dreams I</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="apple-style-span"><i>did</i></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><i> </i></span><span class="apple-style-span">remember - Harriet Tubman, a world-class dreamer who
used her visions as maps to guide escaping slaves to freedom on the Underground
Railroad before the American Civil War.</span><br /><span class="apple-style-span"> I suspect there are back rooms in my dream post
office where there is more to discover. Maybe one of them is like the Cabinet
Noir in the old French post offices, where mail judged suspect by the
authorities was held for inspection, and often never delivered to the
addressee.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="apple-style-span">All of which leads to this suggestion: if you are
missing your dreams (and your dreams are missing you) try taking a little quiet
time, when you won't be disturbed, and announce this as your intention:</span><br />
<br />
<span class="apple-style-span"><i>I would like to go to a place where I can find
my lost dreams</i></span><br />
<br />
<span class="apple-style-span">Maybe this will take you to a movie theater, a
video store, or a post office, or another place entirely, constructed from your
own life memories and suited to your imagination. In whatever form it appears,
you will be entering the Office of Lost and Found Dreams.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For more on recovering lost dreams, please see my book <i>A<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Active-Dreaming-Journeying-Self-Limitation-Freedom/dp/1577319648/ref=la_B000AQW534_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395857599&sr=1-6" target="_blank">ctive Dreaming: Journeying Beyond Self-Limitation to a Place of Wild Freedom. </a></i>Published by New World Library.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Graphic: 1933 photo of the Victoria Station News Theatre, London.<br />
</span>
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--></span>Robert Mosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09231870716685877709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-925549664214256461.post-56923438608742362592024-02-10T07:00:00.001-05:002024-02-10T08:06:09.686-05:00Dreaming with the People of Amber<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcLLNywgHaUvDc_VBCBkirX_ye6Mj6Km4nghOJrEDYKkBZzEbTPS1wdxGWIDJwATRpeTuOaSqCQ-Y4PbqEEA0yjT64tz-pHJ_cSi-V0O-skmnSEilRkc6uvILfhMZV8vykW5z8FPvBh_HB/s1600/amber+spyglass.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1151" data-original-width="874" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcLLNywgHaUvDc_VBCBkirX_ye6Mj6Km4nghOJrEDYKkBZzEbTPS1wdxGWIDJwATRpeTuOaSqCQ-Y4PbqEEA0yjT64tz-pHJ_cSi-V0O-skmnSEilRkc6uvILfhMZV8vykW5z8FPvBh_HB/s320/amber+spyglass.jpg" width="242" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><em style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #333333;">Suvalkija district, Lithuania</span></em><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" />
</span><i style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #333333;"><br />
</span></i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span></span><span style="float: none; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">I am out in the woods, in the
rural part of western Lithuania where I am staying. I come to some wide,
shallow steps, just packed earth with wood at the edges. I notice two
snakeskins, tied in knots that resemble figures of 8, then a larger one, tied
in a slightly more complex knot, on a higher step, and know these were left as
signs and also that the snakes were not venomous.</span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" />
</span><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"> Now I see vivid,
brightly colored scenes of ancient battles - of Teutonic Knights who invaded
these lands, and Lithuanian Grand Dukes with their knights and men at arms,
struggling against great odds to force them back. This living history unfolds
into times where local people took to the forests and the mud to carry on their
resistance against invaders. I see people who lived with wolves and bears and
tried to call on their energies in the fight. I see huge mystery beasts in the
woods that look like elephants and wonder whether these are the shades of
extinct prehistoric creatures, or entities created by the country''s defenders
in an effort to equalize a conflict through psychic means of attack.</span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" />
</span><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"> I wander deeper
into the woods. I am conscious that sticky mud is everywhere, and getting
deeper, just as I found it roaming fields and ancient hill forts the previous
day. I come to the house of a <i>ragana </i>- a witch - on one of the
sloppy forest trails. It is just a hut among the roots of a crooked tree. I see
the face of the witch before she scuttles away into hiding. She has painted the
upper part of her face, from the hairline to the cheekbones, chalk-white so it
looks like part of a death's head, or perhaps a venomous spider. While she
avoids me, nasty slithering things rise from the mud.</span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" />
</span><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"> I'm willing to
fight her allies, if need be, and am glad to see that an enormous Bear is with
me, as a bodyguard. Yet I'm thinking that the witch is merely defending
herself; I have wandered into her territory, and she has reason to fear
intruders. Instead of starting a fight, I call down Light, and a bright shaft
of amber light immediately descends.</span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" />
</span><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"> I am happily
surprised to find that it serves as a traction beam. It pulls me straight up
into the air, far above the mud and the dark woods. I find myself inside what
seems to be an egg-shaped amber the size of a spaceship, with female presences who remind me of ancient
priestesses of this land I have met in previous dreams and journeys. <br /> The leader
tells me, "You must understand that there are the Mud People and the Amber
People, and here you belong to the People of Amber. Your duty - and that of
those you train here - is to build bridges and wooden pathways so people can
get across the mud safely. You must avoid allowing yourself to be sucked down
into the mud. You must remember to call on the power of Light Amber to heal and
to guide, and on the power of Dark Amber to remove the darkness."</span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" />
</span><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">As I surface from this mostly
lucid dream, the moon shines bright in my face for a moment, like a spotlight.
Then a cloud blows above the apple trees and mountain ash outside my window, and
I lie back in the gentle dark, savoring my latest encounter with the
"understory" of the Baltic country where I am traveling.</span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" />
</span><span style="background: white; color: #333333;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> I am staying at the country place of a "good witch" in the Suvalkija
district in Lithuania. She invited me to learn
practices of healing and divination handed down in her family from mother to
daughter and never written down (until I took notes, with her permission). She made the invitation after she heard me speak words of ancient Lithuanian after a shamanic journey I led at a workshop she attended in Vilnius. During that journey, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I met a</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"> priestess of </span><span style="background-color: white;">Žemyna, the Earth goddess of Lithuania, who</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"> brought
me inside a chamber like the inside of an egg-shaped amber, a smaller version of the space I was in last night. It glowed with golden
light. The priestess instructed me that I could use a pocket size version of the amber egg as a </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">place
to see</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><br /> The wood witch bu</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">rned amber in a ritual in her house the night before my new dream of the Amber People. In the morning, after hearing my dream, she continues my instruction. She demonstrates how to move light
amber over the body in a spiraling motion to heal. Then she shows me how she
uses a dark amber (also called "vampire amber" here when used in this
way) in a different pattern to extract disease and "strangers" in the
body.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background: white; color: #333333;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"> Over a
breakfast of dark, nutty "grandmother's bread", homemade cheese and
butter and coffee chewy with grounds, we talk about the significance of
"Mud People" in the literal history of Lithuania, whose name means
"Rain Country". Lithuania has no real natural borders. Its main
defense against invaders and occupiers, across the centuries, has been the mud.
When the cities fell to enemies, people "went into the mud".</span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-size: large; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-size: large; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-size: large; word-spacing: 0px;"><i>From the Journal of a Dream Archaeologist 2009</i></span></span></span></div>
<br />Robert Mosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09231870716685877709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-925549664214256461.post-85812632397508854772024-02-09T10:03:00.000-05:002024-02-09T10:03:24.239-05:00Using dream symbols to interpret the world<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVl3snU0FxU8UKW3A60PlwbqsLh_fMRKjnj6nEqatV2CQTwfhsWClcGkr0ZE6Z7OUd01Nsm5arSr_QDY6On1tiKwi4FNmMxuFcUOkxF8Ro7u8XPfqbMVfvia7OcRML1AcU33zTaVMp1pZKGeVd4aRbPPUAZsUtlOM1o54DGT6L395bhOSrkcz6JBmQCAxf/s899/Schubert%20Atlas%20of%20Natural%20History.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="687" data-original-width="899" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVl3snU0FxU8UKW3A60PlwbqsLh_fMRKjnj6nEqatV2CQTwfhsWClcGkr0ZE6Z7OUd01Nsm5arSr_QDY6On1tiKwi4FNmMxuFcUOkxF8Ro7u8XPfqbMVfvia7OcRML1AcU33zTaVMp1pZKGeVd4aRbPPUAZsUtlOM1o54DGT6L395bhOSrkcz6JBmQCAxf/s320/Schubert%20Atlas%20of%20Natural%20History.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">In 1814, Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert (1780-1860), a German physician and naturalist, published a most
interesting book on <i>The Symbolism of
Dreams</i> at a time when Napoleon was still campaigning across <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place>.
Schubert suggested that in dreams </span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">the soul seems to speak an
altogether different language than it usually does</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">”</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"> a language resembling poetry than that he also sometimes characterized
as </span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">hieroglyphic</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">”.</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"> If we can only remain
conscious of what happens inside the dreamspace, we don</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">t have to learn the language of dreams, because it is the soul</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">s own language.</span><p></p><p><span style="text-indent: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">He speculated that dreaming may
be “the true state of waking”, when we are in contact with our eternal
nature". His propositions do not translate readily into English, but here
is one worth puzzling over:</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The events in our lives seem to be joined like the pictures in the
dream; in other words, the series of events that have occurred and are
occurring inside and outside of us, the inner principle of which we remain
unaware, speaks the same language as our soul in a dream. Therefore, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as soon as our mind speaks in dream
language, it is able to make combinations that would not occur to us when awake</i>;
it cleverly combines the today with the yesterday, the fate of distant years in
the future with the past; and when the future occurs we see that it was
frequently accurately predicted. Dreams are a way of reckoning and combining
that you and I do not understand; a higher kind of algebra, briefer and easier
than ours, which only the hidden poet knows how to manipulate in his mind.[my
italics][1]<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Schubert is telling us (as I read him) that instead of trying to interpret
dream symbols according to everyday assumptions, we should use the symbolic
language of dreams to interpret the events and circumstances of everyday life.
It’s a reasoned version of something I have long expressed like this: We need
to take dreams more literally and waking life more symbolically.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Contemporaries remarked or mocked his childlike air of wonder and innocence.
The acerbic Clemens Brentano said he had the manner of a chick that has just
come out of its shell and is gaping dumbfounded at the light of day. At 18, when he
became a medical student, he announced, “I see everywhere a great force that
operates everywhere in things great and small.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">He published <i>Die Symbolik des Traumes</i> after a six year gap in his published
work, the longest gap in a life in which he was often regarded as a writing
machine. His many other works included a vast atlas of natural history, painstakingly illustrated by himself, and a 1,700 page autobiography. The catalyst for the dream book was a wine merchant from Bamberg, C.F.Kunz, who joined
E.T.A. Hoffmann in drinking binges at the Hotel Wilde Rose and
became his self-invented publisher.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Over a few bottles, Kunz proposed to Schubert that he should be his publisher. On what subject? Schubert, who had never read a book on dreams, surprised himself by proposing “a key to dreams”. A dream key it will be, said Kunz. Schubert assumed this conversation was just party banter but the wine merchant held him to his announcement and next winter he wrote the book. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Schubert was fast and sloppy in writing about dreams, with brusque transitions, and he could not overcome his desire to show off his encyclopedic knowledge of medicine, physiology, botany and philology – and something of his esoteric studies (Saint-Martin, Boehme, Swedenborg) conducted under the mentorship of the mystical baker Mathias Burger.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Nonetheless, a leading scholar of the German Romantics declared that Schubert's book is “the most original of all the theoretical works devoted to the Romantic myth of the dream” [2]</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>The Symbolism of Dreams</i> starts briskly: </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">In dreams and already in the state of delirium that precedes sleep, the soul seems to speak a quite different language than the ordinary one. Certain objects from nature, certain properties of things suddenly represent people and, inversely, a certain quality or action presents itself in the guise of a person. [3] </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Ideas follow a different logic in dreams, not an inferior one, but “a more direct way of the spirit” An image may say in moments what it would take hours to try to express in words. <o:p>D</o:p>reams speak a different language, the language of symbols.
We have access to a universal hieroglyphic picture book.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Soul speaks a different language in dreams, one better
suited to its nature.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Dreams stem from “the poet hidden in us” and their language
is poetic and metaphorical. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The seeds of the future, dormant in ordinary life, reveal
themselves in relaxed states “through presentiment, through dreams, the
phenomena of sympathy and animal magnetism.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The language of dreams is “infinitely faster, more
expressive and expansive, less subject to progression through time” and it is
“innate”. It does not have to be learned: the soul speaks it as soon as it
escapes the limits of the body. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">1. Quoted in Albert Béguin, <i>L’Ame Romantique</i><i> et le </i><i><span lang="EN">Rêve</span></i><i>: Essai sur le Romantisme Allemand et la Poésie Française. (</i><st1:place w:st="on">Paris</st1:place>: Librairie José
Corti, 1960) p.106.<br />2. ibid p.107<br />3. ibid p.108<br />4. ibid.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Illustration of tulips, lilies and fritillaria from Schubert's <i>Naturgeschichte des Pflanzenreichs </i>(Natural History of the Plant Kingdom). </span></p>
<p><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>Robert Mosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09231870716685877709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-925549664214256461.post-41695933476299058572024-02-07T11:00:00.002-05:002024-02-07T11:21:22.135-05:00The Midnight Library and the Café Jet-Lag<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHIG6Ppn_iJtGZTmF_CmYy3tue4-5KZnuAqNsMA2MGshvozZGcDCcHFCfw5mrkllODrJl-ji4s-3ltWDWZ0V8FnkU8cuAg1UknP2uzNEb-m_GtbCVAu7UbQ5yMlXu8vZEr-unyIOyvDJL7n0GYxYebozswmShsWn7VobQ3SAjcq6-iL0YUEpC10iv5gnVA/s931/RM%20library%20of%20then%20house%20of%20time%20colorized.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="931" data-original-width="860" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHIG6Ppn_iJtGZTmF_CmYy3tue4-5KZnuAqNsMA2MGshvozZGcDCcHFCfw5mrkllODrJl-ji4s-3ltWDWZ0V8FnkU8cuAg1UknP2uzNEb-m_GtbCVAu7UbQ5yMlXu8vZEr-unyIOyvDJL7n0GYxYebozswmShsWn7VobQ3SAjcq6-iL0YUEpC10iv5gnVA/s320/RM%20library%20of%20then%20house%20of%20time%20colorized.jpg" width="296" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Sometimes
just to say your own truth out loud is enough to find others like you."</span></span></div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">It's a great moment in Matt Haig's great novel
<i>The Midnight Library</i>, when Nora, who is sliding between parallel lives,
discovers there are others like her. This is what Hugo, the first to reveal
himself, tells her.</span></span><span style="color: #050505; font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"We are sliders. We have a root life in
which we lying somewhere, unconscious, suspended between life and death, and
then we arrive in a place...A library, a video store, an art gallery, a casino,
a restaurant..."</span></span><span style="color: #050505; font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">And this place becomes the portal to a
parallel world where you find yourself in the body and situation of your
parallel self as they are in this same moment. You'll be challenged to catch up
with their divergent biography, with a lover you never knew, a job you never held,
songs you never learned, muscles you didn't know you had.</span></span><span style="color: #050505; font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The many worlds interpretation of reality, as
it has evolved, makes sliding acceptable to theoretical physics. The
architecture for transit - the library, the video store - is easier for human
minds than theorems about quantum waves. </span></span></p><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBUCGtUiRpf46e0amlfc0jpLrbz7D4KfzVm3U74u2d_-WCuW6_PryZS0nnj0HgRo91XE3Ch0OWUFMRZNEMb0M0JL4NFGEcYg15TdopzVhoswie9Cem7dXgm1yV89iL-5xiRmO1qQtL9hEM0-a1AXsSUpU1RLMFPMZ6EYn5b2_c3-1zySKswHUresp_Sle1/s488/matt%20haig%20new.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="488" data-original-width="322" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBUCGtUiRpf46e0amlfc0jpLrbz7D4KfzVm3U74u2d_-WCuW6_PryZS0nnj0HgRo91XE3Ch0OWUFMRZNEMb0M0JL4NFGEcYg15TdopzVhoswie9Cem7dXgm1yV89iL-5xiRmO1qQtL9hEM0-a1AXsSUpU1RLMFPMZ6EYn5b2_c3-1zySKswHUresp_Sle1/w132-h200/matt%20haig%20new.jpg" width="132" /></a></div><br />Matt Haig's protagonist, Nora Seed, is exploring this territory while lying between life and death after overdosing. Her surroundings resemble an immense library, in the care of a lady who looks like her beloved librarian from elementary school. All the books in the midnight library are bound in green; to open any one is to enter a different parallel; life in which Nora made different choices. <br /><br />We come to understand that the challenge for her is to find a life in which she wants to stay in a body in the physical world. She must white out volumes of her vast Book of Regrets. She can't take forever to do this. At a certain point the library of this limb will crumble and dematerialize.</span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The librarian tells Nora, "</span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: georgia;">Every time one decision is taken over
another, the outcomes differ. An irresistible variation occurs, which in turn
leads to further variations...Y</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: georgia;">ou have as many lives as you have
possibilities. There are lives where you made different choices. And those
choices lead to different outcomes. If you had done just one thing differently,
you would have a different life story."</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: georgia;">We are then informed that </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: georgia;">"Doing one thing differently is often the
same as doing everything differently. Actions can't be reversed within a
lifetime, however much we try...But you are no longer within a lifetime. You
have popped outside." </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The books in the library are near or far according to how near or far the alternate life is from the current one (in time as well as space since greater divergence seems related to earlier separation).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Nora learns to think of the life in which her body is lying in a coma as her "root" life, with all the others spreading and diverging like branches of a gigantic tree. I think of </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Sylvia Plath picture of existence as a fig tree where you see the juicy fruit of other possible lives but can't get to them and must watch them rot. Here you can get to them but may leave them to rot.</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> So here is the friendly librarian's challenge: </span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: georgia;">Which life would you
like to try on?" </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: georgia;">Choose to stay in another life and it will be
as if it was always there. Your memory of the life you were living before - and
of the midnight library- will fade and disappear. The book of that life will not be
returned to shelves. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> Nora starts by following her regret over not marrying a boyfriend named Dan and </span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: georgia;">living his dream of running a country pub. The author teases us with his name for the </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: georgia;">Oxfordshire
village where the pub is located: Littleworth. Nora lands in her slightly different body without knowing
anything about the scene - she doesn't know where the loo is, or the name of
the whiskery regular. A question not answered is: what happens
to the Nora who was living at the Three Horseshoes pub while the
"original" Nora is in her body and life?</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Things don't work out at the pub, or with the boyfriend, now a surly dipsomaniac husband. Try again, and again. Each time there's the small problem of trying to catch up with all the things your parallel; self was doing before you slid into her body. Nora flunks a speech she is supposed to give, as an Olympic star, to a thousand people, because she can't remember the story of this alternate self.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">When you check out another life, through a book from the midnight library, you start at the same exact
time 00:00. In this other life you made other choices in the past. That
is past history of which you may remember little or much or nothing in the body
you are now in. You cannot touch that past. You can make choices in the present
and future of the alternate life that will become your definitive life, unless
disappointment throws you out of it.</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Among the infinity of parallel lives you may choose from,
according to library rules, there is a category that
is forbidden: lives in which you are already dead. We are told there are no
books for such lives because the library is about possibilities and the dead
don't have any. <br /><br />This seems to me to be a wrongful restriction. The dead have
choices, like the living, and plenty of possible futures. In exploring my own
parallel lives I have entered worlds where I died years ago. Some I find quite
enjoyable, even beautiful. For relaxation I sometimes go the penthouse of a
Robert who died before me. I enjoy swimming in his rooftop pool, and foraging
in his vast library, and watching dreams that play all around me, as if I have
slipped into a virtual reality pod, when I stretch out on his bed.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> Nora's dialogues with the slider Hugo, who seems addicted to quantum jumping for its own sake, are marvelous and an effortless introduction to the Many Worlds hypothesis in physics</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> which suggests that there are an infinite number of divergent
parallel universes. "Every moment of your life you enter a new universe.
With every decision you make." </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Sliders might be popping in and out of parallel worlds all the time. People around them generally don’t notice even when they say, "My mind went blank" or "I am not myself today."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Hugo says, with admirable clarity, that "the human brain can't handle the complexity of an open quantum wave function so it organizes or translates this complexity into something it understands." Like librarian in a library. When Hugo goes sliding, his</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> departure lounge is not a library, but a video store. Other sliders use different launch pads There is always a guide who resembles someone who was helpful in life. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">You don't need to be half-dead to explore this field for yourself, though we all exist somewhere between life and death. I use a very special library, and a cosmic video store, and an art gallery or museum often as portals for lucid dream adventures in parallel worlds and others. I open such spaces to adventurous dream travelers as departure lounges for group journeys powered by shamanic drumming. and play guide for groups that want first-hand experience of these things.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #050505;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> I have made Matt Haig's novel recommended treading for the advanced dreamers who are engaged with me in exploring and mapping the multiverse. His sliders' varying choice of portals makes me reflect that, beyond a library and a video store, I could make more use of restaurants. </span></o:p></span><span style="color: #050505; font-family: georgia;">I often dine well in my dreams and return with the taste in my mouth. I think I will see whether the Café Jet-Lag in Paris, where I would often stop for coffee or vin rouge after overnight flights, is a friendly transit lounge for interdimensional travel. The name matches my condition when I return from world-jumping. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: georgia;">I am told that since my last visit the </span><span style="color: #050505; font-family: georgia;">Café </span><span style="color: #050505; font-family: georgia;">Jet-Lag has closed. This is not a serious obstacle to making a return visit. If in my root life the c</span><span style="color: #050505; font-family: georgia;">afé is no longer there, I am pretty sure I can find it in a parallel continuum, maybe even one in which the old farmer's market is still in business nearby at Les Halles.</span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpB7CNyQCoGqk_wOKa_y6cQWV1qXNw5XDpkDMAoU7WYxR9DJhJxG755C0FLd6hvxbVny9cmAv4juwguBnJMjijDlIVhup_gxyJtyhbkqqoJvTGBltVYhWuCI1iOJrQ1h15E3cAgeHxewOZKQm4AGDO-m_63SczptCLq3O2Mu0rbk3VeA7u5sHPdzRsjE0u/s816/RM%20Cafe%20Jet%20Lag.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="612" data-original-width="816" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpB7CNyQCoGqk_wOKa_y6cQWV1qXNw5XDpkDMAoU7WYxR9DJhJxG755C0FLd6hvxbVny9cmAv4juwguBnJMjijDlIVhup_gxyJtyhbkqqoJvTGBltVYhWuCI1iOJrQ1h15E3cAgeHxewOZKQm4AGDO-m_63SczptCLq3O2Mu0rbk3VeA7u5sHPdzRsjE0u/s320/RM%20Cafe%20Jet%20Lag.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Art: "Dream Library" by Robert Moss</span></div>Robert Mosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09231870716685877709noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-925549664214256461.post-25443499842971901232024-02-01T15:30:00.000-05:002024-02-01T15:33:09.294-05:00May Brigid's blessings be with you<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 11px;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>
<span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYJjG5yRXBfLz-c7cnIPMWKkhfuYGruSHOdSWzzN8-XY8cGXwOLqmyW4DmmIbEoZ96AzZ-Fh8aQzIRXqdb0I5PP82k6eueqpbkWgDBrNpTr8GSrZleArMjakG9uEwt8UO5y4l4xipQTRnk2FTrjf19TdiLmeu9LysUt6gGCIjTwNWlu3c9w2wpzPMDaQ/s904/Brigid%20cross%202%20AI.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="904" data-original-width="885" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYJjG5yRXBfLz-c7cnIPMWKkhfuYGruSHOdSWzzN8-XY8cGXwOLqmyW4DmmIbEoZ96AzZ-Fh8aQzIRXqdb0I5PP82k6eueqpbkWgDBrNpTr8GSrZleArMjakG9uEwt8UO5y4l4xipQTRnk2FTrjf19TdiLmeu9LysUt6gGCIjTwNWlu3c9w2wpzPMDaQ/s320/Brigid%20cross%202%20AI.jpg" width="313" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Blessings to you on the day of the High One, the Exalted One. That is the meaning of Brig, from which the name Brigid (also Brigit, Brighid, Brigantia of England and Brigindo of eastern Gaul) derives. The church made the goddess a saint, one of the most beloved saints of Ireland, with various biographies, the best of which is recollected in Kildare, where the flame of Brigid burned constantly until Henry VIII, and burns again today. She is a power of the land, and of the deeper world, that the church and the people can agree on. In Ireland and in Scotland, you feel her presence in stones and trees, in high places and in deep wells.</span></span></div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 11px;">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">In the stories told at Kildare, the woman Brigid is born at sunrise, as her mother stands straddling a threshold, one foot out and one foot in. When Brigid’s head comes out, the sun’s rays crown her with flame. We can see why she is the patron of people who open doors between the worlds – of shamans, seers and poets – and of all who work with fire, in the peat, in the forge, in the cauldron of <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">imbas</em>, the fire of inspiration.</span></div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 11px;">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Marija Gimbutas wrote of her (in <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Living Goddesses</em>): “Brigid is an Old European goddess consigned to the guise of a Christian saint. Remove the guise and you will see the mistress of nature, an incarnation of cosmic life-giving energy, the owner of life water in wells and springs, the bestower of human, animal and plant life.” She is “Mary of the Gael”, and she is the Triple Goddess and Robert Graves’ Three-fold Muse. She is patron of poetry, healing and smithcraft. In Scotland she is Bride, and the White Swan and the Bride of the White Hills. In the Hebrides she is the protector of childbirth.</span></div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 11px;">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Lady Augusta Gregory, Yeats’s friend, described Brigid in <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Gods and Fighting Men</em> as “a woman of poetry, and poets worshiped her, for her sway was very great and very noble. And she was a woman of healing along with that, and a woman of smith’s work, and it was she first made the whistle for calling one to another through the night.” We are now entering the prime time of this High One, when nature awakens around February 1.</span></div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 11px;">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">She may appear as a snake from beneath the earth, even in Ireland, the country without snakes:</span></div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 11px;">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">This is the day of Bride</em> <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">the Queen will come from the mound</em></span></div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 11px;">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">This is the time of Brigid’s feast of Imbolc which coincides with the lactation of the ewes and the first signs of spring. You know the lambs are coming soon. You see snowdrops pressing up from the hard earth, perhaps through its white mantle. You offer the gifts of the goddess to the goddess: you pour milk on the ground, you bake and leave out special cakes. To she who spins and weaves life itself, you offer woven fabrics or offer a cloth – a handkerchief, a scarf, a pillowcase – to be blessed as it rests on the earth overnight. To this bringer of fire, you light a candle and offer your heart’s flame.</span></div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 11px;">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">In the old country, in the old way, young girls carry her images – straw dolls or brideogs – in procession from house to house, and the goddess is welcomed and decked with finery. The dolls are laid on in “bride beds”, with a staff or wand of power resting beside them. At Imbolc, as on other days, you may raise the High One’s energy with poetic speech. Best to do this by a stream or a spring, or (if you know one) a sacred well. She does have a fine love of poets and those who bring fresh words into the world.</span></div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 11px;">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">There is a legend that, in one of her womanly forms, Brigid married the great poet Senchan Torpeist, foremost among the learned <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">fili</em> (bards) of Ireland. It was this same Senchan, it is said, who recovered the great poem known as the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Táin Bó Cúailnge </em>(The Cattle Raid of Cooley) when it was feared lost forever, by raising the shade of the druid poet Fergus to recite all of the verses.</span></div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 11px;">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Among the bevy of Celtic blessings in the great repository know as the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Carmina Gadelica</em>, collected by Alexander Carmichael in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland around 1900, some of the sweetest call on Brigid. In “Womanhood of Brigit” (#263 in the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Carmina Gadelica</em>)</span></div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 11px;">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Brigit of the mantles<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Brigit of the peat-heap<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Brigit of the twining hair<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Brigit of the augury.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Brigit of the white feet<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Brigit of calmness<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Brigit of the white hands<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Brigit of the kine.</span></div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 11px;">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Many kinds of protection are then asked of Brigid – safety from death or injury or mishap in many forms. Next comes a verse that makes it plain that Brigid is regarded, among all else, as a guardian of sleep and dreams:</span></div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 11px;">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Nightmare shall not lie on me<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Black-sleep shall not lie on me<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Spell-sleep shall not lie on me<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Luaths-luis</em> shall not lie on me.</span></div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 11px;">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I need someone more learned in Scots Gaelic than myself to translate <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Luaths-luis</em>. Its literal meaning seems to be something like “fast-moving lice” for which our modern phrase might be “creepy-crawlies.” In the “Blessing of Brigit” (numbered #264 in the Carmina Gadelica) we have words that might please the Lady on her feast day, or any day:</span></div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 11px;">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I am under the shielding<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Of good Brigit each day;<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />I am under the shielding<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Of good Brigit each night.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Brigit is my comrade woman,<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Brigit is my maker of song,<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Brigit is my helping woman<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />My choicest of women, my guide</span></div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 11px;">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Brigid’s Day is also a fine time for courting, and a time to dream, and seek guidance from dreams.</span></div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 11px;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 11px;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>Brigid's Flame</b></span></div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 11px;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 11px;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>I dreamed this poem at Imbolc in 2020</i></span></div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 11px;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 11px;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrEFKJs42IaHSUpLehA4z5y7cZpoS4ekm7206a7oUq1Om8zoSysGKZMCqm3XU45K2ejsrbkibzdNrQxKtqrS1hbD9nETFM9KKnhav7tA5RTMHx8Zi6ndj49Wwfuy2xqdMl5qnR5JrOeEFzFS0EVubk23iUEcpucn0pGD4QijsqzpmQhlx9WknLunY6GA/s512/Brigid%20icon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="360" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrEFKJs42IaHSUpLehA4z5y7cZpoS4ekm7206a7oUq1Om8zoSysGKZMCqm3XU45K2ejsrbkibzdNrQxKtqrS1hbD9nETFM9KKnhav7tA5RTMHx8Zi6ndj49Wwfuy2xqdMl5qnR5JrOeEFzFS0EVubk23iUEcpucn0pGD4QijsqzpmQhlx9WknLunY6GA/s320/Brigid%20icon.jpg" width="225" /></a></div><br /><div style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.61px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;"><br /></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.61px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.61px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">May the radiance of her blue mantle<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;"><br />surround you and protect you<br />May you burn with her fires:<br />fire of seership,<br />fire of craft,<br />fire of inspiration,<br />fire of healing,<br />fire of transformation<br />fire of heart.<br />May you always stand ready<br />to wrest the killing irons<br />from evildoers and oppressors<br />and to take up the Sword of Light<br />in defense of the weak and the just<br />May you always be a lover of poets<br />and commit poetry every day.</span></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.61px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.61px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;"><br /></div></span></div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 11px;">
<span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br /></span></div>
Robert Mosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09231870716685877709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-925549664214256461.post-58994174682272032492024-01-30T08:16:00.003-05:002024-01-30T08:18:27.284-05:00When Your Dead Friend Brings You a Song That Sniffs You<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX-0-WmnpH4uEUBgqOyvqQvfz9TJ7XRf3NVtt2Hcx5vOxwYnbCOcnNomQWfthyQp0VAjYys3LjZH9_HWKBg3Imyq4nQoaB4Wn4zTdWCxtWYDLR18Pyvg9YumxOLOUk6DnXVf7KA3dDQGJfck0hfiP8bC-BqMjEYkGPS3l4AYmvuLobYAWOdRy3KXRzMx9v/s500/Old-English-Sheepdog-standing-in-the-grass.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX-0-WmnpH4uEUBgqOyvqQvfz9TJ7XRf3NVtt2Hcx5vOxwYnbCOcnNomQWfthyQp0VAjYys3LjZH9_HWKBg3Imyq4nQoaB4Wn4zTdWCxtWYDLR18Pyvg9YumxOLOUk6DnXVf7KA3dDQGJfck0hfiP8bC-BqMjEYkGPS3l4AYmvuLobYAWOdRy3KXRzMx9v/s320/Old-English-Sheepdog-standing-in-the-grass.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />Bob Weir, Grateful Dead singer and rhythm guitarist, told the <i>Los Angeles Times </i>that his long-time bandmate, Jerry Garcia, visited him in a dream 27 years after his death. </span><p></p><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">“He wanted to introduce me to a song,” Weir reported. “He invited the song into the room and it had the look and feel of an English sheepdog. It was about the size of the room. It was enormous, but you could see through it.</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">“The song came up and sniffed me. We got to know each other and be friends. Then, <a style="color: #385898; cursor: pointer;" tabindex="-1"></a>as it turns out, it was a jazz ballad that Jerry and I were going to sing, and it was a duet.”</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The ballad, however, was incomplete, lacking a melody and chords. Weir said, "I’m going to have another installment on that dream, I think.” Time to learn the practice of dream reentry!</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The form the song took in the dream is interesting. Many indigenous peoples believe that the best gift of a dream is the right song or story and that these have their own lives, whether or not they come introduced by a dead fiend. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="color: #050505; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The Aborigines of my native Australia say that the big stories are hunting the right people to tell them, like predators in the bush or a shark in the water. In South America, shamanic dreaming traditions speak of "word souls", special words of power - sung more than spoken - that have their own life and can be transferred by a dream practitioner to someone in need of an energy boost. </span></div><div dir="auto" style="color: #050505; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; white-space-collapse: preserve;">It's not only Jerry Garcia who can work this dream magic but he sets a great example.</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />Source for Bob Weir dream: interview with Joe Hagan in The <i>Los Angeles Times</i>, February 10, 2022.</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Photo: American Kennel Club</span></div></div>Robert Mosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09231870716685877709noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-925549664214256461.post-53590563623132542512024-01-24T12:00:00.001-05:002024-01-24T12:14:39.513-05:00Into Manannan's Realm<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHvsZTm8JpSO_eF0rvbw5eFmC0DvsR-kcc-mNofmeK2l9v3nmJEEifivOsFZIs65tU9IGAUUhA5pr-5A9FP-lLA7-J3ECzIsjzksMLNtKGRQZdYOyRU86t3NEPZ7PZVR_HfhQv4buSqPjw/s1600/CelticSea.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHvsZTm8JpSO_eF0rvbw5eFmC0DvsR-kcc-mNofmeK2l9v3nmJEEifivOsFZIs65tU9IGAUUhA5pr-5A9FP-lLA7-J3ECzIsjzksMLNtKGRQZdYOyRU86t3NEPZ7PZVR_HfhQv4buSqPjw/s320/CelticSea.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I sing of a voyage, and a voyager, sails furled in the dusk,
yet ready to spread before a favoring wind.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> The black goose
sails before, into the fire below the sunset rim of the world. The way leads to
the sunken lands, and to the earth beneath the sea that land-bound men will
never touch.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Watch how the waters turn and swirl,
opening a tunnel between the elements. Let yourself flow through the passage.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">You are entering the realm of
Manannan mac Lir, most unknowable of the Old Ones, one who escapes definite and
conventional forms. Your kinsman. You are at home here. You breathe where
others drown. Sea-born, sea-girt, salt blood in your veins, coral sprouts from
your marrow. You surge with the horses of the sea, into a rare kingdom</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 12pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Away, away come away my love<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 12pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">To fields of coral and pearl<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 12pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Away, away come to me my love<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 12pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">To she who one was your girl<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I heard the siren song, though I had long since turned my
back on the sea and lived in a tamed country, in a gentle valley.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> She found me there,
as surely as a kelpie finds a lone fisherman in a curragh on a lonely night
with the whisky in him, or the fire of the stars.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> Something out of
memory. But whose?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> The memory of the
cell? A current in the blood? Something held in the mirror of dreams without
bodily substance, yet alive in the silvered deep of the glass, in suspension
between the middle world and the worlds that escape form?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Do all such visitations come from
the past, from those beneath the earth or sea? Or do they come from the same
time, but a parallel realm of being? Why not from the future?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Questions, questions, while her
lilting song echoes in my inner ear.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 12pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Away, away, come away my love.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> ~</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Put this down. Etch it on stone, mark it for memory:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span>There is <i>one </i>time, one art
that encompasses all. Look through the hole in the stone. The Holy Man knows.
See through his single eye the oneness of things. All created things, all that
is past, or present, or to come, will and can be seen in this glass without a lens.</span><br />
<span><br /></span>
<span><br /></span>
<span><i>Note of Origins</i></span><br />
<span><br /></span>
<span>These words came streaming through me on a night when I was writing some reflections on how more is available in dreaming than is understood by the daily trivial mind. I wrote these lines: </span><br />
<span><br /></span>
<span><i>Dreams are the doorway between the worlds. In modern Western
society, we have a diminished understanding of the word “dream”, reflected in
the common expression, “it’s only a dream”. Let us push
deeper, beneath the surface clutter of day residue and “inferior thinking” and
the smorgasbord of broken memories, to what Sri Aurobindo calls “the sleep of
experiences</i>".</span><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I paused from writing these notes, because I felt a deep shift in the atmosphere, blowing like the wind off an unseen sea. I felt the power of a deeper source, moving with me and through me as wind and waves. I adjusted my inner senses and let braver words come, both fresh and ancient.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Photo: </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #4d5156;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Bow Fiddle Rock near Portknockie on the north-eastern coast of Scotland. The natural quarttzite arch is thought to resemble the tip of a fiddle bow. </span></span></div>
Robert Mosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09231870716685877709noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-925549664214256461.post-87173478516599687462024-01-23T08:37:00.000-05:002024-01-23T10:24:52.976-05:00The Stronger the Imagination, the Less Imaginary the Results <p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGxMyDAaiEWZWdvVREfP4SqEjpwM65TxrhrQlfGnPMR0ovNYQVOepmvkRzf2uBVm474FL5AgeHbJyfSXJAL5BLoopUgS4_Q0UwBqiGaGVg7CAoX3DH1msSArftm63tD0ulFfAeDtlTSNF8oZ29CCJA-nsnxrIs88kqa7mo88oPNWtvchGGg_RVmQxWPw/s2048/Chandelier%20in%20the%20rain%20RM%20photo.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1925" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGxMyDAaiEWZWdvVREfP4SqEjpwM65TxrhrQlfGnPMR0ovNYQVOepmvkRzf2uBVm474FL5AgeHbJyfSXJAL5BLoopUgS4_Q0UwBqiGaGVg7CAoX3DH1msSArftm63tD0ulFfAeDtlTSNF8oZ29CCJA-nsnxrIs88kqa7mo88oPNWtvchGGg_RVmQxWPw/s320/Chandelier%20in%20the%20rain%20RM%20photo.jpg" width="301" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The
greatest crisis of our lives is a crisis of imagination. We come to a dead stop
because there is a barrier in front of us and we can’t imagine a way to get
around or over it. Our work space feels like it is walled with cement blocks
that are closing in tighter every day, but we can’t imagine where we would go
if we quit. We can’t breathe in an airless relationship but can’t imagine how
to take off. We look in the mirror, when
we dare, and see the age lines, the skin blemishes, maybe the thinning hair, not
the beauty that we may carry inside. </span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">We go on repeating to ourselves the
tired old stories, strapped on to us by family or past histories of defeat and
disappointment. Or we cling to past memories of brighter days, or that win on
the high school sports field, or that sweet summer romance, or that medal for
valor or that early success that was never repeated. Either way, by nursing
grief or guilt or nostalgia, we manage to go through life looking in the rear
vision mirror, stuck in the past, never fully available to the present moment.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Or we miss the moment by carrying
anxiety about the future, playing scenarios for what could go wrong. We give
ourselves a hundred reasons not to take the risk of doing something new,
something that would take us beyond the gated communities of the mind into the
wilds of creative adventure.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Conscious of it or not, we go around
playing our negative mantras. <i>I’m too old. I’m not pretty enough. I don’t
have the money. People always let you down. People don’t change.</i> <i>I’m so
tired</i>. You don’t think you do this? Pause for a moment. Take off the
headphones. Listen to what’s playing on your inner soundtrack. It may be a
song. <i>Am I blue?</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I confess there are days,
especially between snowstorms in a Northeastern winter, when my mood can slump
and go the color of the dirty grey ramparts of ice on the curb in my small
gritty city. And more days like these in the shut-up times of pandemic I don’t
want to get out of bed even to walk the dog, who is waiting for me patiently. I
may be stirred back to life by a dream or a cheering message from a loved one
or a plan for an ocean beach vacation or a foreign adventure. But when I find
it is still hard to rise above a low, lethargic mood and dump those negative
mantras – <i>My legs hurt, I’m played out, I can’t walk on the ice</i> – I call
in one of the greatest life coaches I know.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I know him from his most famous
book. Maybe you do too. His book is titled <i>Man’s Search for Meaning. </i>His
name is Viktor Frankl. He was an Existentialist – which is to say, someone who
believes that we must be authors of meaning for our own lives – and a
successful psychiatrist in Vienna before Nazi Germany swallowed Austria in
1938. He was a Jew and a free-thinking intellectual, two reasons for the Nazis
to send him to a concentration camp. For several years he was in Auschwitz, the
most notorious of the Nazi death camps.<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the camp, every vestige of
humanity was taken from him, except what he could sustain in his mind and his
heart. He was in constant pain, reduced to a near-skeleton with a tattooed
number on his arm, liable to be beaten or killed at any moment on the whim of a
guard. He was there to be worked to death. He watched those around him shot or
beaten or carted off to the gas chambers every day.<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He made an astonishing choice. He
decided that, utterly deprived of freedom in the nightmare world around him, he
would tend one precious candle of light within. He would exercise the freedom
to choose his <i>attitude</i>. It sounds preposterous, if you don’t know the
story of what unfolded. When people tell us we have a bad attitude in ordinary
circumstances, we are usually not grateful. The suggestion that we can choose
our attitude when the world around us seems cold and bleak, or we have suffered
a major setback, even heartbreak, sounds cruel, and maybe preposterous. But
let’s stay with Viktor Frankl.<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the light went out in his
world, he managed to light that inner candle of vision. Despite the pain in his
body and the screams and groans around him, he made an inner movie, a film of a
possible life in a world where the Nazis had been defeated and Hitler was a
memory. It was an impossible vision of course, an escapist fantasy. There was
no way he was going to survive Auschwitz.<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he kept working on his inner
movie, night after night, as director, scriptwriter, and star. He produced a
scene in which he was giving a lecture in a well-filled auditorium.. His body
had filled out, and he was wearing a good suit. The people in the audience were
intelligent and enthusiastic. The theme of his lecture was “The Psychology of
the Concentration Camps.” In his movie, not only were the death camps a thing
of the past; he had retained the sanity and academic objectivity to speak about
what went on during the Holocaust from a professional psychiatric perspective.<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This exercise in inner vision,
conducted under almost unimaginably difficult circumstances, got Viktor Frankl
through. One year after the war, in a good suit, he gave that lecture as he had
seen himself doing in his inner movies.<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What do we take away from this?<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First, that however tough our
situation may seem to be, we always have the freedom to <i>choose our attitude</i>,
and this can change everything. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let’s
allow William James to chime in: “The greatest weapon against stress is our
ability to choose one thought over another.”<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Second, that our problems, however
bad, are unlikely to be quite as bad as the situation of someone who has been
sent to a Nazi death camp. That thought may help us to gain perspective, and to
stand back from a welter of grief and self-pity and rise to a place where we
can start to dream up something better.<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Third, <i>we can make inner movies</i>,
and if they are good enough it is possible that they will play in the theater
of the world.<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Would you like to make your own life
movies, in which you enjoy the satisfaction of your deepest desires? Are you
willing to grow a vision of bright possibility so rich and alive that it <i>wants
</i>to take root in the world?<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here are some secrets of the imagination that
will get you on your way.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Dreams Show You the Secret
Wishes of Your Soul<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Every night, if you make the effort
to catch some of what is going on, you will find that your dreams take you
beyond what you already know. You already have a personal film production
company, behind the curtain of the world, that is making dreams exclusively for
you. That comedy or horror flick, that romance or action adventure, may be
screened in the night to help you see where you are and how you are, or to give
you a glimpse of other life possibilities. In other dreams, you get out and
about, you socialize, you make visits and receive visitations. <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dreaming, you travel without
leaving home and can be as social as you like. You are also a time traveler.
You travel to past times, parallel times and into the possible future. You
scout out challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. Beyond seeing the
future, it is possible that, dreaming, the observer effect noted in physics
comes into play and you take part in the selection of events that will manifest
from a quantum soup of possibilities.<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is even more going on in your
nights. Indigenous wisdom teaches that through dreams we learn the secret
wishes of the soul.. There is even a word for this in the Huron/Iroquois language: <i>ondinnonk</i>. We are called to follow our heart’s desires, as opposed to
the calculations of the ego and other people’s agendas and expectations. We are
recalled to our deeper life purpose, and given sources and resources in a
deeper reality that will help us to follow our path with heart.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>Your Great Imagineer Is Your
Magical Child</i><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Don’t doubt for a moment that you
have the imagination required to grow a vision of manifesting your heart’s
desires that can carry you beyond the stuck places and the dark dreary times.
Your inner child is a master of dreams and imagination. She knows the magic of
making things up. She engages effortlessly in the deep play that generates
creative ideas without regard for consequences. Maybe you lost contact with her
as you started to grow up and the adult world trod on her dreams. Maybe there
was a time when her world seemed so cold and cruel that she wanted to run away,
and may actually have succeeded in running away, so a safe space in Granma’s
house or a garden behind the Moon. Maybe this is why you have been in a dream
drought for so long; when she went away, you lost the beautiful bright dreamer
in you. In chapter 2, you are going to learn how to reclaim that Magical Child,
how to convince her that you are safe and you are fun so that you can bring her
energy and joy and imagination into your current life.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />
<i>What Is in Your Way May Be Your Way<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The philosopher emperor Marcus
Aurelius came to accept, as a rule for his own life, that the obstacle may be
the way. When you find yourself blocked or challenged on your life road, that
may be a prompt for you to look for a better way, or develop needed skill or
the pluck and perseverance to see something through. you’ll want to look again
at what you feel is blocking or opposing you on your life road. Sometimes a
block is a pause button, indicating, <i>Not right now. Try later. </i>You may
discover that a block has been placed in your way to induce you to find a
better way. For every door that won’t open or slams shut in your face, look for
one that maybe opening. For every setback, search for opportunity. Look for a
gift in every wound or challenge though this can be hard and may require
hindsight from some distance away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Your Big story is hunting you<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Australian Aborigines say that the
Big stories are hunting the right people to tell them, like predators stalking
in the bush. The trick is to put ourselves in a place where the Big stories can
find us. We do that when we attend to our dreams and the dreamlike play of
symbols and synchronicity in the world around us. We want to learn to step out
of the tired old stories we have inherited from family, from other people
telling us who we are, from personal histories of failure and defeat. When we
are seized by the Big story, we step beyond limiting definitions and beliefs.
Great healing becomes available because we can now draw on the immense energy
that is generated by the sense of serving a larger purpose and living a mythic
life. The muse, or creative genius, and the intelligences of the
world-behind-the-world come to support our life projects, because we are
following a deeper call.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Your world is as rich or poor, as alluring
or dull, as you can imagine. Listen to your dreams, let your inner child out to
play, put yourself in a place where you bigger story can grab you. </span>When
you move in the energy field of a big dream of life, the world responds to
you, because you are magnetic. You generate events and encounters that open new
doors, and your days sparkle with a champagne fizz of magic. Your dreams speak
louder and brighter and the extraordinary comes to meet you on any street
corner. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">On days when you feel down and defeated,
remember Viktor Frankl, dreaming his way out of the nightmare of the death
camps. On any day, you have the freedom to choose your attitude, and this is an
exercise in creative imagination that can change everything.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFVZALOxeY2T-UsXf8AMjMVxKUzhOTRbfs6vZ_DRiOcFz2FYWCbpRgJmfETy8jNKNhfDDpY9HgCnHWTBqpc4vZfXP3vjZS1m3W4ozAsPPSlNyvLgTVKr3UPX69qp8vF87ojipOxsziH0KfQd-QbdSHkeSqDkS-ratwppwZz9IImCoQCX8PTzgk1pQXWA/s770/GROWING%20BIG%20DREAMS.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="770" data-original-width="504" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFVZALOxeY2T-UsXf8AMjMVxKUzhOTRbfs6vZ_DRiOcFz2FYWCbpRgJmfETy8jNKNhfDDpY9HgCnHWTBqpc4vZfXP3vjZS1m3W4ozAsPPSlNyvLgTVKr3UPX69qp8vF87ojipOxsziH0KfQd-QbdSHkeSqDkS-ratwppwZz9IImCoQCX8PTzgk1pQXWA/w131-h200/GROWING%20BIG%20DREAMS.jpg" width="131" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />Adapted from <a href="https://amzn.to/3i08OVO"><i>Growing Big Dreams: Manifesting Your Heart’s
Desires through Twelve Secrets of the Imagination</i> </a>by Robert Moss. Published
by New World Library.<o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Photo (c) Robert Moss</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p>Robert Mosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09231870716685877709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-925549664214256461.post-63427480038634033362024-01-22T10:12:00.001-05:002024-01-22T10:12:07.447-05:00Walking a Dream<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiR-WhyphenhyphenJfgZd2AhI-m0u3Wpe4TDzzXKwQLtW5I2TROJDTqRJ8YpXI4I_yWwL1ckkPqiTBkTOfjKyh8v4Q6FD3_-_wuDXVu-wGWoHUugbaMcevnAtd-35AYX8Gql2YkjJcwLnWuwWEQDOP0ebuXNW5AclcrMgXmmU9tCDJ_OdK75FUUbfdLDDLgHsjllc-E/s1296/PATH%20tree%20shadow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1296" data-original-width="968" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiR-WhyphenhyphenJfgZd2AhI-m0u3Wpe4TDzzXKwQLtW5I2TROJDTqRJ8YpXI4I_yWwL1ckkPqiTBkTOfjKyh8v4Q6FD3_-_wuDXVu-wGWoHUugbaMcevnAtd-35AYX8Gql2YkjJcwLnWuwWEQDOP0ebuXNW5AclcrMgXmmU9tCDJ_OdK75FUUbfdLDDLgHsjllc-E/s320/PATH%20tree%20shadow.jpg" width="239" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />Jung said that one of the things he liked to do with a dream
was to “circumambulate” it, wander around it, considering it from many angles.
He liked to do this while in physical motion, wandering around his house on the
lake, through the garden, into the woods.<br />
<br />
This is a grand way to get greater perspective on a dream. Walking with a dream
for a while, you may find that more of the dream narrative returns to you. You
are almost sure to get commentary of some kind from what you notice playing
around you, wherever you happen to be going.<br />
<br />
You may find that both inner and outer perceptions accomplish what a dreaming
people of central Africa say we must do with a dream. Like other cultures that
value dreaming, the Yansi of Zaire have special words for dreamwork practice.
According to anthropologist Mubuy Mpier, the Yansi share dreams every morning,
and the core of their approach to dream exploration is embodied in the term
a <i>bumi ndoey</i>, which means to “turn a dream.” The teaching is that we need
to turn a dream carefully, as we might lift a great rock, to see what is
underneath, on the side that is not initially visible.<br />
<br />
It’s not only a matter of letting the world illuminate the dream; it’s a case
of letting the dream illumine the world. “We do not always have only to sit
with closed eyes, moving around in our heads, to draw closer to an image. We
can put it in our pocket and carry it with us throughout days and nights,” as
Mary Watkins wrote in <i>Waking Dreams</i>, her passionate appeal for us to let images speak to us
and through us. “You not only see different things, you see things differently”
when you are seized by poetic imagery, poet and scholar Kathleen Raine
observed.<br />
<br />
One of the things we want to do when we are walking a dream is to notice when
it starts to play out in the world around us. There might be a considerable
time gap between the dream and its unfolding in the world, so patience and a
decent memory — assisted by your journal! — may be required. When a dream does
begin to manifest in external reality, let an alert flash on your inner control
panel. In my mind, the default version is: Dream Playing Out Now.<br />
<br />
When the dream starts playing out, you have several options. They are not
mutually exclusive. If there is no sense of danger and the original dream left
you feeling happy and confident, you may be content to let the dream play again
and enjoy it with all of your senses. Maybe you’ll find that a sense of
“rightness” comes with this: that you have made the right choice, that you are
in the right place, that at last you have found the right friend or lover or
teacher. If you had a darker sense of the dream — if it involved risk or danger
— you will want to be poised to change the script, solve a problem, avoid that
accident or that drama at the office.<br />
<br />
As a dream plays out in exterior reality, you may notice that its symbolism is
now alive in your world. This can become a whole education on how to refresh
and renew our perspectives on what is a dream and what is real. We need to
take dreams more literally and waking life symbolically.<br />
<br />
A dream may be fairly literal in the sense that it reveals something that is
happening or will happen in the future in the ordinary world. Yet when the
dream is enacted, we see that there is symbolism in the physical event. So a
literalistic dream can point to a symbolic play in the outer world. Let’s
consider an example.<br />
<br />
A man I will call Yves dreamed that his ring finger was cut off in an accident.
There was blood and pain, and he saw the splintered bone, and woke with
feelings of dread and fear. When he brought the dream to me, I asked very
early, as is my practice, whether it was possible that he could lose a finger
in a literal accident, maybe cutting or slicing something. Did his work involve
such risks? Well, yes, it did. He worked part-time pruning vines on a hillside
in southern France, where he lived. He agreed that he would need to be more
watchful about how he handled the secateurs.<br />
<br />
We proceeded to discuss the symbolic levels of the dream. Hard to miss the
significance of losing the ring finger in terms of a relationship. He was not
married, but he had a live-in partner and felt her interest had begun to stray.
This brought in the Freudian bit. Did the loss of “tall man” — the middle
finger — speak of a decline in sexual performance?<br />
<br />
Yves walked with his dream. Within the week, it began to play out when he made
a false move while working in the vineyard. He only narrowly managed to avoid
cutting off his own finger with the pruning shears. It was the ring finger, as
in the dream. The partial fulfillment of his terrible dream led him to confront
the symbolic issues. He sat down with his partner. She told him, with the
sexual candor for which the French can be notable, that she was dissatisfied
with his sexual performance and had already taken another lover. They agreed to
separate.<o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7ThtiMhz2PyEZSZZ9Jd8rjOu3umaEXJY1vRdi4UhMX6g7uZBTjeTtA2d8JAs6uLLJeUU4C0-5hbLQzOdNCaGHaoVXkB79MLcTuY-xk1d6zGfUw2l31K18ERRHBQrIn2AuNm7XxSh94rxRr02xKdQjxQIBYmtQvYKCeeYAk5VUEVmpM9OXfvBF9_VgCJDZ/s1162/Sidewalk%20Oracles.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1162" data-original-width="750" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7ThtiMhz2PyEZSZZ9Jd8rjOu3umaEXJY1vRdi4UhMX6g7uZBTjeTtA2d8JAs6uLLJeUU4C0-5hbLQzOdNCaGHaoVXkB79MLcTuY-xk1d6zGfUw2l31K18ERRHBQrIn2AuNm7XxSh94rxRr02xKdQjxQIBYmtQvYKCeeYAk5VUEVmpM9OXfvBF9_VgCJDZ/w129-h200/Sidewalk%20Oracles.jpg" width="129" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />Text adapted from <i><a href="https://amzn.to/3emzv4H">Sidewalk Oracles: Playing with Signs, Symbols and Synchronicity in Everyday Life</a></i> by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library. </span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> Photo by RM</span></o:p></span></p>Robert Mosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09231870716685877709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-925549664214256461.post-47827656744889677252024-01-22T09:37:00.003-05:002024-01-22T09:37:39.299-05:00Pressfield’s War of Art, and the Muse<p> <i><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-b9xvIO9ct5B4GqWLjxObMjTAaVZAgmKs6s9N5na4bO3vAHM8J9jicmpMfBZfIZAezQfPDdTE09GRkPjUjbVdWzGPEpoQgCGFpKUAdO54WQWiXGtiAh9-Ua7PdQjC5RG3hgBhGv3jccHZYjIvNSCCosVoo4EpPUFtbH3jQ6vKQ04yvUiVQVTzpAFxlcuJ/s1013/Hesiod%20and%20the%20Muse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="637" data-original-width="1013" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-b9xvIO9ct5B4GqWLjxObMjTAaVZAgmKs6s9N5na4bO3vAHM8J9jicmpMfBZfIZAezQfPDdTE09GRkPjUjbVdWzGPEpoQgCGFpKUAdO54WQWiXGtiAh9-Ua7PdQjC5RG3hgBhGv3jccHZYjIvNSCCosVoo4EpPUFtbH3jQ6vKQ04yvUiVQVTzpAFxlcuJ/s320/Hesiod%20and%20the%20Muse.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />I was sent a copy of a little book on creativity by Steven
Pressfield, the author of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Legend of
Bagger Vance, </i>and found it so delicious I devoured it in a single sitting.
Some readers may have trouble with the military metaphor suggested by the
title, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The War of Art </i>but no writer
will fail to recognize those days when the forces resisting the creative
process seem to have laid minefields and blown up bridges.<o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Pressfield divides his little
book into three even smaller books.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Book One is devoted to what
blocks and derails the creative process. Pressfield itemizes many ways of
self-sabotage, from booze to procrastination, from giving in to family needs to
confusing the urgent with the important (for which the remedy is always to do
the important stuff first). These are all activities of what he calls
Resistance. I rather wish he had picked a different name (Sabotage could work)
since, with the great big capital R, the word Resistance brings up thoughts of
the French Resistance and we surely do not want to go to war with anything like
that. But let’s soldier on.. Pressfield offers a provocative list of the
ambitions and endeavors that stir up the strongest Resistance from the little
everyday self. These include any creative undertaking in any field, any action that
requires moral courage, any entrepreneurial venture, and any effort to embark
on new learning or clean out old habits and addictions. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Pressfield is absolutely correct
when he says that for writers the problem is not writing but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sitting down to write.</i> He insists that
the project we most resist is the one we most need to do. I suspect he is right
about this too. Our deepest fears (to paraphrase Rilke) are the dragons
guarding our deepest treasures.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">If it’s really helpful to see the
War of Art as a military campaign (Pressfield insists on this to the point of
urging us to become Marines, with a calling to “miserable” conditions) let’s
observe that frontal assault, as in war, can be self-defeating or suicidal.
Flank attacks and diversionary tactics may work better, if there is indeed an
enemy on the field of battle. Get around him, divide his forces, distract him,
and then press your attack. In tackling a book project, I find I often do best
by appearing to ride off in a completely different direction – for example, by
devoting hours to seemingly unrelated research or posting at my online forums -
only to change course and take the enemy from behind.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Book Two is devoted to becoming a
pro, and contains much good stuff. Amateurs play for the game, pros play for
keeps. Pressfield gives very practical counsel on bringing to the creative
project some of the same habits that are required in workaday life: you turn
up, you spend the necessary hours at the workplace, you don’t call in sick or
depressed or with a family emergency or a need to bar crawl every day. You make
a date with your muse and you keep it. He has a lovely quote from Somerset
Maugham, who was asked whether he waited until he was inspired before he wrote,
or wrote according to schedule. Maugham replied that he was fortunate to be
inspired at precisely <st1:time hour="9" minute="0" w:st="on">nine o’clock</st1:time>
every morning. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Book Three is about how bringing
through a creative project involves engaging the muse, the daimon, the genius.
Pressfield describes how he borrowed from a friend the practice of saying aloud
the opening words of Homer’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Odyssey. </i>It’s
a great idea, but there are better versions than the old T.E.Lawrence (yes,
Lawrence of Arabia) translation that Pressfield quotes. I’m going to borrow his
idea, but recast it with the aid of the 1961 Robert Fitzgerald translation (you
may wish to compare the fine 1996 translation by Robert Fagles).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The poet begins the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Odyssey </i>by invoking the creative spirit:</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large; text-indent: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Sing in me, Muse, and through me
tell the story</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large; text-indent: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It is the story of a wanderer, a “man
of many ways” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">polytropos</i>) who was
“harried for years on end” after he plundered the sacred places of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Troy</st1:city></st1:place>. His homecoming was
delayed, within sight of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Ithaca</st1:city></st1:place>,
when his men killed and feasted on the sacred cattle of the sun. We read in
this that we must do the work for a higher purpose than filling our bellies.The
key thing is to engage a larger power.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Borrowing from the Fitzgerald
version, Homer’s invocation of the Muse could be simplified as follows:</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large; text-indent: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 24.0pt; text-indent: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Sing in me,
Muse, and through me tell the story.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 24.0pt; text-indent: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Tell us in our
time, lift the great song again.</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large; text-indent: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Note that the Muse here (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mousa</i>) is not yet job-specific; the
early Greeks did not divide up musing functions between the nine nymphs
familiar to the Renaissance. At the oldest level of the Muse cult, there appear
to have been three, not nine, Muses and their names (as preserved in Pausanias)
mean <span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Voice, Practice, and Memory.
Who would not want those allies in pursuit of a creative project? They are
irresistible.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Art: Edmond Aman-Jean, "Hesiod Listening to the Muse", c.1890</span></span></p>Robert Mosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09231870716685877709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-925549664214256461.post-24672987679907541642024-01-18T09:58:00.003-05:002024-01-18T11:23:29.597-05:00Dreams as Sunshine in the Night<p> </p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDnCEVvTmub7BUR8eZJHXGO_tyWmlAtvJOsODtjBYI7k7Clne04-TBphcZ9LGXvgyoG8jhAChMXYGKqMOG4oQvOmp8-7OTBu99Y6ohfDfdQVX8W8PRtJD6Vfe1zG2xRmt5-R8WV0afX2CBCD1IRGGzlGyGrmezwMEa6bPie6Ak2hZ7cx2zdIqxJ18Q1Ryo/s900/sun%20symbol%20mesopotamia.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="888" data-original-width="900" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDnCEVvTmub7BUR8eZJHXGO_tyWmlAtvJOsODtjBYI7k7Clne04-TBphcZ9LGXvgyoG8jhAChMXYGKqMOG4oQvOmp8-7OTBu99Y6ohfDfdQVX8W8PRtJD6Vfe1zG2xRmt5-R8WV0afX2CBCD1IRGGzlGyGrmezwMEa6bPie6Ak2hZ7cx2zdIqxJ18Q1Ryo/s320/sun%20symbol%20mesopotamia.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">The word dMamud, which signifies “Dream (deity)”, is listed in the divine genealogies as the daughter of the Sun God. Since dreams usually occur at night, the close genealogical connection between the god of dreams and the Sun God may seem puzzling. The riddle may be solved, however, by considering that dreamers see a world which is just as bright as the day. [1]<o:p></o:p></p>
I am a wild cross-reader, forever with my nose in a dozen books in as many genres at the same time. One of the pleasures is to notice things that resemble each other over great distances. A recent example. I have long been strongly drawn to ancient Mesopotamia, so when a Sumerian goddess (Mamu) associated with dreams popped up in a scholarly essay by a German Assyriologist online I paid attention. Mamu [2] is depicted as the daughter of the sun god Utu. The author noted that the family connection between a dream goddess and a sun god may seem puzzling and suggested a plausible and rather charming explanation, that dreamers enter a world as bright as day. </span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">I am often reading and dreaming into the world of the Victorian ghost hunters and psychic researchers. The question from Sumer jogged my memory of a passage I read in a wonderful little book by the Victorian radical reformer and Theosophist Anna Bonus Kingsford:</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">"The priceless insights and illuminations I have acquired by means of my dreams have gone far to elucidate for me many difficulties and enigmas of life which might have otherwise remained </span><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">dark to me, and to throw upon the events and vicissitudes of a career filled with bewildering situations, a light which, like sunshine, has penetrated to the very causes and springs of circumstance." [3]</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">A solution from Victorian England to a Sumerian mystery: <i>Dreams are sunshine in the night.</i></span></span><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">[1] Annette Zgoll, “Dreams as Gods and Gods in Dreams.
Dream-Realities in Ancient Mesopotamia from the 3rd to the 1st Millennium B.C.” Leonhard Sassmannshausen (ed) <i>He Has Opened Nisaba’s
House of Learning Studies in Honor of Åke Waldemar Sjöberg </i>(Leiden and
Boston: Brill, 2014) p.305</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">[2] Mamu for short. Ancient Mesopotamia has many dream gods and goddesses. The Sumerian lady mentioned here is called dMamud by the scholarly translators. This means, “Dream (deity)”. Sumerian has two words for “dream”: <i>ma-mu.d</i>
and <i>maš-ĝi6.k</i>. Only the first term, transcribed as <i>ma-mu.d </i>can be written with the
divine determinative <i>diĝir </i>(d). A word tagged with this sign is the name of a deity. The word <i>ma-mu.d </i>also denotes a meaningful dream which has the power to
influence the future. By contrast,<i> maš-ĝi6.k</i>, refers to all types
of dreams, including confused and deceptive ones. Thanks to all the spadework of cuneiformists in decoding the ancient texts, we see that a connection between dreams and the gods is built into what may be the earliest of all written languages. See</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia; line-height: 107%;"> S.A.L.
Butler, <i>Mesopotamian Conceptions of Dreams and Dream Rituals</i> (</span><span style="background: white; color: #212529; font-family: georgia; line-height: 107%;">Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 1998) </span><span style="font-family: georgia; line-height: 107%;"> pp.73-77</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglORNSiSaixbvXrT547oE24Y04611UeCQtfwWlRoqOCXjX9MK0bREXLhf8jR4rAil3Py1CitNEGtKlAkNmnEXKCv4lMT0GeugBhNC_ugEb6VAbTQ197bf8uXgcTlmwYYMRkR9xS-n5ygZDPjMiWh8swteXBBjWnRYp4Y6-8IWLmCEbwQhGuDP8hAYC-6GN/s1200/Nabu%20on%20my%20desk.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="526" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglORNSiSaixbvXrT547oE24Y04611UeCQtfwWlRoqOCXjX9MK0bREXLhf8jR4rAil3Py1CitNEGtKlAkNmnEXKCv4lMT0GeugBhNC_ugEb6VAbTQ197bf8uXgcTlmwYYMRkR9xS-n5ygZDPjMiWh8swteXBBjWnRYp4Y6-8IWLmCEbwQhGuDP8hAYC-6GN/s320/Nabu%20on%20my%20desk.jpg" width="140" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[3] </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Anna Bonus Kingsford, Preface to </span><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;"><i style="font-family: georgia;">Dreams and Dream-Stories</i><span style="font-family: georgia;"> (New York: </span></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Scribner & Welford ,1889). <span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;"> Interesting that a reprint has been published by Nabu Press. Nabu was an ancient Mesopotamian god of writing and flow. I have a figurine of Nabu, a copy of a statue in the Oriental Institute (as it used to be called) in Chicago on my desk. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;"><i></i></span></span></div><div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL0reOb1jq9iWWZnbTg4xpW-WUVfAuG7zbxPSQAHrTf531mKKNhsHHV-XFFhKovMoqteg9R5tQeYd2x3jLQLb6Ap5qIx2nEu3WsiqsWP6WAVuV9pIcToz7snr12U9Frq7Om_57GlhiTymWXlgLFjZ2fRMsumVjdnzqHMDJwx4dDp5-9w_daVkHLaQgqLU1/s252/Anna%20Kingsford.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></span></a></div><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></span></div></div>Robert Mosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09231870716685877709noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-925549664214256461.post-12317486293775332202024-01-16T08:00:00.002-05:002024-01-16T08:26:10.522-05:00How you know you're not in Kansas any more<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.1875px;"><br /></i></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6bIVSxpMCMs5rTXFPQL8FPBMTNjoI802UuOFCST3EYB1k8vQ96oAgXuA96K7Z63UKAAXKn-I5YFZ2FAE6U-x7Oa48pNIW6_xL50ZVuO8f8a0ysugmI1m_giF7r10DAyRm80bToLIFQFBAu7wNxL0X769tI3pNsuAVvA2tqHsFJRgKmS35vcu8s_ni_ooI/s2048/RM%20fish%20head%20woman.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1470" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6bIVSxpMCMs5rTXFPQL8FPBMTNjoI802UuOFCST3EYB1k8vQ96oAgXuA96K7Z63UKAAXKn-I5YFZ2FAE6U-x7Oa48pNIW6_xL50ZVuO8f8a0ysugmI1m_giF7r10DAyRm80bToLIFQFBAu7wNxL0X769tI3pNsuAVvA2tqHsFJRgKmS35vcu8s_ni_ooI/s320/RM%20fish%20head%20woman.jpg" width="230" /></a></div><br />"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore. We must be over the rainbow."</span></span></span><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">- Dorothy, in the movie version of <i>The Wizard of Oz</i></span></span></span><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">I am thinking about the moments, in the midst of a dream adventure, when we wake up to the fact that we are not in ordinary reality.<br /> You look in a bathroom mirror and you see a very different face.<br /> You are with people and suddenly remember that in the regular world they are dead.<br /> Fish start flying through the air.<br /> A horse jumps out of a painting on the wall and thunders across the room.<br /> Such moments are prompts to dream lucidity. You say to yourself, <i>I'm dreaming</i>. Sometimes this startles you into leaving the scene and dropping back into your body in the bed. With practice, you may learn to use these awakenings, inside the dream state, to carry on with the adventure, now fully aware that you have the power to navigate, making conscious choices - and powers you don't have when you are in physical reality.<br /> The prompt may not only help you to become a lucid dreamer; it may awaken you to the fact that you are in a different world. In one of the great Celtic voyage tales (<i>immrama</i>), known as the Voyage of Maeldun, the travelers in their skin boat awaken to the fact that they are no longer on the Irish Sea when they reach an island where the ants are as big as horses. A radical change in the apparent scale of things is a well-recognized indicator that we have gone beyond the bounds of the familiar everyday world.</span></span><br />
<span><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;"> I found the following experience thrilling and instructive:</span></span><br />
<span><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;"><br /></span></span>
<span><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">I am bouncing along in a yellow cab in a part of New York City I don't know well. It's run down. The road is potholed. Some of the stores are shuttered, some of the buildings look abandoned. The street seems very wide because there is little traffic.<br /> The driver is tearing along, much too fast, veering all over the road. I ask him to slow down. He either does not hear me, or has decided to ignore me. I lean forward to speak to him through the gap in the security screen. I notice for the first time that the taxi driver is a dead man. He is yoked to the steering column by a rope tied round his neck like a noose.<br /> I realize that I am not in any regular city. I must be dreaming. So now I am lucid, yes?<br /> Yes and no. As this thought rises, the driver slams on the brakes and the taxi stops so violently that I am bounced off the broken springs in the back seat towards the ceiling. I grab the door handle. As I move to get out, the kind of voice you hear in recordings in New York City cabs says, very distinctly,<br /> "This is not a dream. You <i>are </i>in the afterlife."<br /> This opens out into a grand adventure in which I entered several different afterlife locales, none of them especially elevated, and learned a good deal about lifestyle choices and dramas on the Other Side.<br /> At a certain point, I became concerned that I had gone so far and deep that I was uncertain how to get back. Since I was lucid, I was aware that I could simply will myself to go back to my body. Yet I was troubled by the thought that if I tried a quick exit - <i>Back to the body!</i> - I might leave some vital part of myself behind in the Underworld I had discovered.<br /> <i>I could use a little help</i>, I signaled.<br /> This inner cry produced an immediate response. An elegant figure, dressed in black and red as if for a costume ball, appeared, with a yellow car that was not a yellow cab, something more like a Mini Cooper. With a dashing gesture, he invited me to hop in and drove me back at amazing speed, up through many levels of the realm I had been in.<br /> What do I have to say about this? <i>Thank you</i> - for the experience, and the roadside assistance.</span></span></span><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Art: "Fish Woman on the Paris Bridge" by Robert Moss. From a dream.<br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.1875px;"><br /></span></span><br /></div></div></div>Robert Mosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09231870716685877709noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-925549664214256461.post-49666012730423204812024-01-15T08:51:00.001-05:002024-01-15T08:53:08.336-05:00The Threat of the Mortar<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRh4NzPAOOBAcSibcC_CbwrMruAmjwmOH8IWhyphenhyphen4wyKwE2KNwZ416xVPXHxXdJ6gt_GU6-GG9iRVoU9V5slWVozEz66tn3QUPUW61CBcH-F5WW7vKdrNspP-wPx16ZdcJ6cjZRyQDGfiqie8JRTInjl5yRa1P_FzikLQyqs4_TohO-sNKPRHf9Z1o94FCFJ/s400/antique-tuscan-medieval-mortar-in-nembro-marble-italy-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRh4NzPAOOBAcSibcC_CbwrMruAmjwmOH8IWhyphenhyphen4wyKwE2KNwZ416xVPXHxXdJ6gt_GU6-GG9iRVoU9V5slWVozEz66tn3QUPUW61CBcH-F5WW7vKdrNspP-wPx16ZdcJ6cjZRyQDGfiqie8JRTInjl5yRa1P_FzikLQyqs4_TohO-sNKPRHf9Z1o94FCFJ/s320/antique-tuscan-medieval-mortar-in-nembro-marble-italy-1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Gervase of Tilbury preserved an account of a medieval knight
who forbade his wife to remarry after his death. When she decided it was safe
to forget her promise years later, a crowd of people, including local nobility,
watched as a heavy kitchen mortar was raised in the air and brought down to
crush her skull. Before she died, she told the horrified onlookers that she
(but only she) could see her attacker - the angry ghost of her dead husband.
The fact that the murderer wielding the mortar was invisible to all but his
victim was not mysterious to the mind of the times. The dead (as the chronicler
noted matter-of factly) appear </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">confinibus
et amicis – </i><span style="font-family: georgia;">“to relatives and friends.” [1]</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The threat of the
mortar”, as French scholar Jean-Claude Schmitt comments, was a major factor in
the minds of survivors in those times. Widows (and to a lesser extent widowers – since
men usually died sooner and tended to be the controllers) were very conscious
of the psychic presence of their dead spouses, and this greatly influenced
their behavior, for better or worse. [2]<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It’s worth pausing
to consider whether such an "unseen hand" - working perhaps in less
spectacular but no less effective ways – may be at work in some of our family
dramas today, no less than in the thirteenth century.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">1. Jean-Claude Schmitt. <i>Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society.</i> Trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998) 186.</span><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">2. </span><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">ibid, 188</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>Robert Mosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09231870716685877709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-925549664214256461.post-35624467192112066512024-01-13T21:29:00.000-05:002024-01-13T21:29:08.536-05:00Slipping through the Hourglass<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghms7JlDP2zeSE4OeaDbDhsRU0t9lcEaTF6ufp7srcRDNyp2EfY1K8MAGiMDjMmzZrsIeRu9n_EKhLtPQT20u_BIG8S1VDpedJuC_jfzFQMmuWUKEXBEBboe72Zm5Ee7qqzZ5T_6RmajQX9pE_BMeDF1HrcQxieN1cuMzTT_ba-woz1ohnb7al_1oQtgrD/s960/RM%20through%20the%20hourglass.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="526" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghms7JlDP2zeSE4OeaDbDhsRU0t9lcEaTF6ufp7srcRDNyp2EfY1K8MAGiMDjMmzZrsIeRu9n_EKhLtPQT20u_BIG8S1VDpedJuC_jfzFQMmuWUKEXBEBboe72Zm5Ee7qqzZ5T_6RmajQX9pE_BMeDF1HrcQxieN1cuMzTT_ba-woz1ohnb7al_1oQtgrD/s320/RM%20through%20the%20hourglass.jpg" width="175" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">One of my favorite novels is <i>The Leopard</i> by Giuseppe
di Lampedusa, so elegant and profoundly moving. I reread it every few years. Here the Prince of Salina,
having suffered a stroke, is in an armchair on the balcony of a grand hotel in
Palermo, is dying:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #050505;">"For
a dozen years or so he had been feeling as if the vital fluid, the faculty of
existing, life itself in fact and perhaps even the will to go on living, were
ebbing out of him slowly but steadily, as grains of sand cluster and then line
up one by one, unhurried, unceasing, before the narrow neck of an
hour-glass...With the slightest effort of attention he used to notice at all
other times' too, the rustling of the grains of sand as they slid lightly away,
the instants of time escaping from his mind and leaving him for ever. But this
sensation was not, at first, linked to any physical discomfort. On the contrary
this imperceptible loss of vitality was itself the proof, the condition so to
say, of a sense of living...Those tiny grains of sand were not lost; they were
vanishing, but accumulating elsewhere...like the tiny particles of watery vapor
exhaled from a narrow pond, mounting then into the sky to great clouds, light
and free." (</span><span style="color: #050505;">trans. Archibald Colquhoun)</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #050505;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="color: #050505;">The scholarly, aristocratic author, eleventh Prince of
Lampedusa and twelfth Duke of Palma. wrote from self-knowledge and family
history. He died of cancer before this, his first novel, found a publisher;
Feltrinelli published it the year after his death and it has been in
publication in many languages ever since.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">During my last reading, seized visually and kinesthetically by Lampedusa's image, I was inspired to make a drawing of a gentleman slipping through an hourglass. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Drawing "Through the Hourglass" by Robert Moss</span></p>Robert Mosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09231870716685877709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-925549664214256461.post-7767027051337719202024-01-11T11:29:00.001-05:002024-01-11T11:50:32.315-05:00Open Secrets of the Dreamtime<p> </p><p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiehM3cLppB8K8dhwnh7E-zPrqjJLvfjDsFQcQqxGi6Y9sROUNTwqrT9gHJMB9Pm4XuIoLTDNXJC-AizXejkldqz63enZfVMg5uQzHH8tNJvlScY5rYxKWOQwLx3HzdQ51GqHXEUNihcs9731UiZpVkRK2fe5fcXuqNSOt5mza-jqcFg22-DU70VRxBTj6Z/s2048/RM%20houses%20of%20death.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1276" data-original-width="2048" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiehM3cLppB8K8dhwnh7E-zPrqjJLvfjDsFQcQqxGi6Y9sROUNTwqrT9gHJMB9Pm4XuIoLTDNXJC-AizXejkldqz63enZfVMg5uQzHH8tNJvlScY5rYxKWOQwLx3HzdQ51GqHXEUNihcs9731UiZpVkRK2fe5fcXuqNSOt5mza-jqcFg22-DU70VRxBTj6Z/s320/RM%20houses%20of%20death.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />Here are the open secrets of the Dreamtime, insights shared by
many dreaming traditions and indigenous peoples that challenge the ruling
paradigms of a culture that confuses the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">real</i>
with the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">physical</i>. </span><p></p>
<p class="leftitalhead"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>1. Dreams are real experiences.</b><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">There are big dreams and little dreams. “Bottom-line
it for me,” bulled a radio host over the
phone from North Dakota. “Aren’t dreamed caused by spicy pizza?” Well, yes, some dreams are. But we will not expend
much space here on the surface bubbles of the dozing brain and belly.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">In big dreams - in what Sri Aurobindo
called “the sleep of experiences" - we are dealing with events, encounters, and challenges that are entirely real
on their own level of reality. Our dream memories may be garbled or muddy, but
the dream is a real experience whose meaning lies within the dreamscape itself.
The dream experience, fully remembered, is its own interpretation. But we must
do more than interpret dreams; we must manifest their energy and insight in our
waking lives.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Shamanic dreamers tend to be quite literal-minded about dreams.
If you dreamed you fell off a rock-face, you’d
better remember to check your safety harness if there is any chance you might
go rock climbing. If you flew with the eagle, you discovered a powerful
spiritual ally — and your own ability
to transcend the limitations of your physical body. If you dreamed of your dead
uncle, before you start asking yourself what part of you he might represent,
you should consider the possibility that you had a visit with him. Is he
bothering you — maybe trying to cadge
a drink or a smoke — or offering you help?
If you dreamed you received instruction at a mountain shrine, you should be
open to twin possibilities: that you may go there someday, in physical reality;
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and</i> that you may have been called in
your dreams to one of the many “invisible
schools” where training and initiation
on the higher planes are conducted.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Body"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="leftitalhead"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>2. Dreams are flights of the soul.</b><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">During one of the final presentations at a hectic conference in
Berkeley, I regretted that I had not taken that Saturday morning off to explore
the Bay area. I closed my eyes, slipped free from my physical focus, and felt
myself gliding over the Bay on the wings of an eagle. It was a wholly tactile
sensation. I was drawn to a wild, lightly wooded area with intriguing stone
formations that looked from the air like volcanic rock. As I dipped into a fold
in the hills to examine the area more closely, I saw another interesting
formation, shaped by human hands: a circular labyrinth, or spiral, at the edge
of a pond.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">At lunch, I casually described the scene I had explored. “It could be the Sibley Volcanic Preserve,” one of the local conferees piped up. “I can take you out there this afternoon if you have
time.” She did not know about the
spiral path, but we found it fairly easily, at the edge of a swampy pond.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">From a shamanic perspective, there was nothing extraordinary
about my experience. It was just a routine scout —
a Middle World journey — in which I moved
beyond the range of my physical senses to check out my environment. I was
traveling beyond my body, but I kept a firm connection with it, maintaining
awareness of the activity in the lecture room even as I flew across the Bay.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Shamanic dreamers say that in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">real</i>
dreams (waking or sleeping) one of two things is happening. Either you are
journeying beyond your body, released from the limits of space-time and the
physical senses; or you receive a visitation from a being — god, spirit, or fellow dreamer — who does not suffer from these limitations. In the
language of the Makiritare, a dreaming people of Venezuela, the word for dream,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">adekato</i>, means literally a “flight of the soul.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The open secret is that consciousness if <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">never</i> confined to the body and brain. We discover this in
spontaneous night dreams and intuitive flashes, when our left-brain inhibitions
are down. As we become active dreamers, we can hone the ability to make
intentional journeys beyond the body at any time of day or night.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="leftitalhead"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>3. You have a dreambody as well as a physical body.</b><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I am leading one of my Active Dreaming circles. We are squatting
around a centerspread with a white candle. Someone asks whether there is any
way to prove that we are not dreaming. I pick up the candle and pour hot wax
onto my hand. I feel a sting of pain as the wax sears the web of skin between
my thumb and forefinger, and I tell the group, “I
guess that proves <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I</i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">’m</i>
not dreaming.” Then I wake up.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">What is this dream telling me? That I am a nitwit because I can’t tell whether I’m
dreaming? If so, I will take solace from the fact that in most sleep dreams,
most people are completely unaware that they are dreaming. Actually, I think
this dream has a more interesting and specific message, related to the theme
that dreams are real experiences. In my dreambody, I can know pleasure and pain
just as vividly as in my physical body. I have more than one body, or vehicle
of consciousness, and when I go into the dreamworld and other worlds, I go
embodied. And so do you.</span></p>
<p class="Body"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="leftitalhead"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>4. Dreams may be memories of the future.</b><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I dreamed of a silly little dog decked out with fake antlers for
some kind of Christmas pageant. The dog ran out on the road and was killed, but
was magically revived by a dubious, utterly amoral character who seemed remote
from the normal range of human emotions.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The dream had a movielike quality. I had no idea what was going
on here, but because I had no particular feelings about it, I was content to
record it in my journal before rushing off to the airport to catch a plane to
Denver.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I missed my connection and later found myself on a different
flight form the one schedules. Whenever my travel planes come unstuck, I am
alert for the play of the Trickster. On the “wrong” plane, I found myself seated next to a woman who
turned out to be best friends with a person in publishing to whom I had been
introduced only the day before, and I was able to glean some useful insights.
Our conversation was interrupted by the screening of the in-flight movie. I
looked up to see a silly little dog decked out in fake antlers for a Christmas
pageant. Later in the movie, the dog is killed on the road and magically
revived — by a low-flying angel
portrayed by John Travolta. The title of the movie is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Michael</i>, and I highly recommend it. What interested me most was
that I seemed to have attended an advance screening in my dream the night
before.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">We dream things before they happen in waking life. If you work
with your dreams and scan them for precognitive content, you can develop a
superb personal radar system that will help you to navigate in waking life. You
can also learn to fold time and travel into the possible future by the methods
explained in this book. For even the most active dreamers, however, the meaning
of many dreams of the future may be veiled until waking events catch up with
the dream.</span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">If dreams are memories of the future, is much of waking like the
experiencing in the physical body what we have already lived in the dreambody?
What would we become if we participated more consciously in this process? There
is an Iroquois story of a great hunter who always scouted ahead, in conscious
dream journeys, to locate the game and rehearse the kill. In one of his dream
scouts, he located an elk and sought its permission to take its life to feed
his extended family. He killed the elk in his dream and noted the red mark on
its chest where the arrow had gone in. The following day, he walked to the
place he had visited in dreaming and identified <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">his</i> elk by the red mark on its chest. He then replayed an event
that had already taken place, by killing the elk again with a physical
arrow.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Body"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="leftitalhead"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>5. Dreaming, we choose the events that will be manifested
in our waking lives.</b><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The fact that we dream things before they happen does not mean
everything is predetermined. People who are not active dreamers can get quite
confused about what is going on when they wake up to the fact that we are
dreaming future events, both large and small, all the time. I think it’s like this. If you do not remember your dreams, you
are condemned to live them. (If you don’t
know where you’re going, you will
likely end up where you are headed.) If you remember some of your dreams and
screen them for messages about the future, you will find yourself able to make
wiser choices. You will discover that by taking appropriate action you can
often avoid the enactment of a “bad” dream or bring about the fulfillment of a happy
one. As you become a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">conscious</i>
dreamer, you will find yourself increasingly able to choose <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">inside the dreaming</i> the events that will
be manifested in your waking life.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It’s not about
predestination. It’s about the spiritual
secrets of manifestation — and your ability to
become cocreator of your life.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Meister Eckhart tells us how it is the razor-sharp clarity of the
practical mystic who has seen and experienced for himself: “When the soul wishes to experience something, she
throws an image of the experience out before her and enters her own image.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Indigenous peoples tell a recurring story of how the material
world is spun from the dream of a deity. For the Guajiro, the
physical universe is the product of conscious dreaming. The Guajiro say that
the Creator-god made this world after the divine Dreamgiver, Apusanai, made him
aware that he was dreaming and he began to experiment with molding and
solidifying the fluid forms he perceived endlessly aborning and transforming on
another plane of reality.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It is not merely that we dream things (maybe everything) before
they happen; dreams <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">make</i> them happen.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Body"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="leftitalhead"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>6. The path of the soul after death is the path of the
soul in dreams.</b><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Your dreambody does not die when your physical body loses it
vital signs. You will live on in your dreambody for a shorter or greater time,
according to your ruling passions and personal evolution. You will find
yourself, as you do each night in dreams, in a realm where thoughts are things,
and imagination, the great faculty of soul, can create whole worlds.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">You come from the Dreaming, and you are released into the
Dreaming when you drop your sack of meat and bones.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; line-height: 107%;">In a dream, I found myself walking in a pleasant
cemetery. A voice said, "You must prepare your Houses of Death". I looked
and saw brightly painted cabins. I chose one - blue with yellow trim - and
stepped through the door that opened for me. There was no wall on the far side.
The view was of a lovely cove with a white sand beach, A beautiful dark-skinned
woman in a sarong was in the water beckoning to me. <br />
<br />
I waded out to join her. She handed me a conch shell. When I held it to my ear,
I received instructions for making a crossing an island that now appeared shimmering
on the horizon. I understood that I had been given a departure point for a
voyage to the Other Side. I have returned to that scene often, in lucid dreaming.
I would not be surprised to find myself there again when it is time to leave
the body behind.</span></span></p><p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Dreaming with growing consciousness is excellent preparation, not only for the
challenges that lie before you on the roads in this life, but for the
challenges of the journey you will make after physical death. How do you know
for sure? By doing it.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrAd04DDTnDZISVmxIELO8TZguIp-lLvXSTJ4j_jBFJcEzwHCDGtJbdNoYIu-OWMV-Bip954UgmJMSEWOromLm_P4_c85DImKvmm2zZJUmxkPmkrAASKOHcllTFh5CCvdVdXALXrO4xwgHavhAQj05SGV_qJsWdLKiiTt58Erkyvrf66XAflVwro8dFyuk/s500/Dreamgates%20am.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="323" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrAd04DDTnDZISVmxIELO8TZguIp-lLvXSTJ4j_jBFJcEzwHCDGtJbdNoYIu-OWMV-Bip954UgmJMSEWOromLm_P4_c85DImKvmm2zZJUmxkPmkrAASKOHcllTFh5CCvdVdXALXrO4xwgHavhAQj05SGV_qJsWdLKiiTt58Erkyvrf66XAflVwro8dFyuk/w129-h200/Dreamgates%20am.jpg" width="129" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />Text adapted from <i><a href=" https://www.amazon.com/Dreamgates-Exploring-Worlds-Imagination-Beyond/dp/1577318919">Dreamgates: Exploring the Worlds of Soul, Imagination and Life Beyond Death</a></i> by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library</span><p></p><p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="Body"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Art by Robert Moss: "You Must Prepare Your Houses of Death"</span></p>Robert Mosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09231870716685877709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-925549664214256461.post-53201630464054676052024-01-09T02:05:00.005-05:002024-01-09T02:06:34.288-05:00Dream Review One Year On: I'll Keep the Golden Robe<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbrGwmsB_6LU_qiNkvm6DNEUHwUcFNZ_yXJDtUpOhd_VkXmtKW356q-naRCK72BEXVvIN9QwIm1J-J-V5-L1vzhMBppWctv4FjxnJib-pMiztJE0RyChyphenhyphentsBXTVgt141YMm2zocODjRqdev3lE3dUB6xzgtxhXhnJkYEhM8GEpUtrJMT3SbBsybQ98LJXh/s1072/RM%20golden%20robe%20color.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1072" data-original-width="746" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbrGwmsB_6LU_qiNkvm6DNEUHwUcFNZ_yXJDtUpOhd_VkXmtKW356q-naRCK72BEXVvIN9QwIm1J-J-V5-L1vzhMBppWctv4FjxnJib-pMiztJE0RyChyphenhyphentsBXTVgt141YMm2zocODjRqdev3lE3dUB6xzgtxhXhnJkYEhM8GEpUtrJMT3SbBsybQ98LJXh/s320/RM%20golden%20robe%20color.jpg" width="223" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Quiet days with snow on the ground are perfect for one of my favorite pastimes: going back through old journals to see what I was dreaming and doing around this date in past years, what recurring themes pop up and what cold case files might be worth opening up again. I found three reports from one year ago that immediately seized my attention.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">January 9, 2023 </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">dream<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="line-height: 107%;">People Trees</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505;"> </span></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #050505;">Through
the window of the train, I look out at the landscape as a wild pink wind picks
up, sculpting the trees into different forms. There is a wood wizard in a hood,
of course, and a female figure wagging a finger. I decide to call her The
Schoolteacher. As I watch it seems that I am not merely indulging my fancy.
These are People Trees, capable of communicating and showing themselves in more
ways than I knew.</span><span style="color: #050505;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #050505;">I
would normally call them tree people. </span><span style="color: black;">There
is something different going on here that made me call them People Trees. I
feel that a scene from Ovid's <i>Metamorphoses </i>has come alive and is playing in
reverse: as if people who were turned into trees, like Philemon and Baucis, are
showing themselves as people again.</span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Shall
I get off the train and speak with them? Not right now; the train is moving
fast and there are other adventures ahead. Perhaps I'll be able to meet them or
their kind in a future journey.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>Comment 1/9/24</i></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #050505;">Trains often feature in my dreams, though I rarely take
them in ordinary life these days. I frequently make an association with training.
Now, a year later, I am about to launch two new dream teacher trainings. We
almost always start such programs by helping people connect or reconnect with a
personal tree of vision that can become their ladder between worlds. I have
learned a great deal from trees and have often found them to be wiser than
humans. I have encountered and lived close to trees that also harbored human
spirits, including that of a great Native American shaman. I do want to draw those trees, and that pink wind.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #050505;"><br /></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #050505;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> January 9, 2023</span></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #050505;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">lucid dream starting in hypnopompic state</span></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #050505;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>My Dream Double Is in Danger in Russia</b></span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #050505;">I am
at the mouth of a tunnel. There are rails on the ground. I decide to go
through. The walls of the tunnel are dirty and spattered with graffiti.
When I come out it is at a train station somewhere deep in eastern Europe.
There are crowds of men in fatigues or work clothes by a gunmetal train.
Soldiers or convicts. Two big, brutal men look at me. I have given no thought
to the form I am in. I am surprised they can see me.</span><span style="color: #050505;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I feel
this won’t end well if I remain visible, and ponder how to get out. I don’t
think it’s safe to simply leave the scene. Some part of me is in that scene. Now observer as well as actor, I am amused by the idea of needing to arrange an extraction for one of my
doubles or projections, while recognizing that this is actually a serious
matter. I could try to go back through the tunnel but they might follow.
Instead, I focus on lifting myself up so fast and so high I won’t be visible le
any more and the men at the station will soon disbelieve what they saw. I’m out
of there. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>Comment 1/9/24</i></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #050505;">Here the
train is a literal one, apparently a troop train for conscripts - many of them convicts
- being sent by the Russians to the meat grinder at the front. Maybe in a
parallel life, I am still engaged as a journalist in trying to monitor and report on such things. Or maybe I am simply being reminded of the state of the
world we are in. I am also reminded that when we get around in our dreams, we
are generally not just disembodied thought forms. We travel in a subtle body that
can get into trouble.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">January 10, 2023</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #050505;">Dream</span><span style="color: #050505;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #050505;">The Golden Robe</span><span style="color: #050505;"> </span></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">When the bagpipe starts playing I know
it's time for the team to get out fast. I encourage them to climb through a
back window. I am in no great hurry. It's as if I have stepped into a movie -
in this case an exciting spy thriller with scenes in Cyprus and Turkey - and
can leave or switch roles as I please. I stay in the room when the other team
come in and pull it apart, searching for something. They make a great heap of
clothing and bedding in the middle of the space. I want to be sure to retrieve
my beautiful gold brocade robe. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Waking, the simple image of the robe
is what I want to keep from my streaming dream movies. I will picture myself
putting it on and see what swathing myself in golden silky energy does for my
creative output. Simple is good.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>Comment 1/9/24</i></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white; color: #050505; line-height: 107%;">I am in all kinds of adventures
in my spontaneous sleep dreams, and the lucid dreams I simply allow to unfold
from scenes and images that arise in liminal states between sleep and awake. Come
morning, I can be quite travel worn! My dreams often give me wonderful research
assignments involving scholarship or detective work, and glorious material for
performance and storymaking and creative art. Sometimes, however, as I noted in
my original journal report it is enough to bring back just one thing, and wrap
myself in its energy. </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>Robert Mosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09231870716685877709noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-925549664214256461.post-13896445271641981092024-01-08T13:42:00.004-05:002024-01-08T15:54:33.595-05:00Borges, Broken Elevators and Spine Licking<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguurGJXVdwx7bQU8zHUjweMTqD3aK9tr-bEcSijHP5IZZPUg_2mBz6m14kFg9n2DQAhNzZ8w0riF6zgTkQ4vCAGJECDECJtTCHStwWIRcJtfGQqUSClIDLw7OvrzNUnojFZ6e1gxWM6XmLmkk8DftnkOxnHQym7MGSZMaSGY-7bXzi9L7sP32NfMzs-gya/s960/Lucy%20literary.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="710" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguurGJXVdwx7bQU8zHUjweMTqD3aK9tr-bEcSijHP5IZZPUg_2mBz6m14kFg9n2DQAhNzZ8w0riF6zgTkQ4vCAGJECDECJtTCHStwWIRcJtfGQqUSClIDLw7OvrzNUnojFZ6e1gxWM6XmLmkk8DftnkOxnHQym7MGSZMaSGY-7bXzi9L7sP32NfMzs-gya/s320/Lucy%20literary.jpg" width="237" /></a></div><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>in the category of</i>: There Are Things That Like to Happen Together</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">This morning I read an article by an American journalist about a visit she made to Jorge Luis Borges at his Buenos Aires apartment two years before his death. The building elevator was broken, so she had to walk up six flights of stairs to his apartment.</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">Six floors is better than nine, I thought, as I left my ninth-floor apartment headed for the gym (which consists of one stationary bike I set up in the basement of the building). I got in the elevator and pushed the button marked B. The elevator's only response was to rock a little. None of the buttons worked. I thought I was trapped until I pushed 9 (my floor) and the door opened, letting me return to where I started. I could take another - working - elevator down to my gym.</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">I have noticed the play of coincidence around my literary encounters with Borges on numerous occasions. The most amazing example was facilitated by Lucy, my literary cat. I was reading <i>Borges and Me</i>, a delightful memoir by Jay Parini of his travels in Scotland as a minder for the blind Argentine writer. When I put the book down on the ottoman for a moment Lucy jumped up, sniffed it, and then licked the spine, which I took as a sign of approval. I have never seen her do that before or since. . </span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">I returned to my reading. A few pages on in the book, Parini describes his visit with Borges to the rare book room of the Carnegie Library in Dumferline. Borges took a first edition of a novel by Sir Walter Scott off the shelves, sniffed it and - to the horror of the librarian - licked the spine. </span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">Life rhymes. In experiences of lit sync, sometimes what is first seen on paper spills into the world. Sometimes it's the other way round. </span></span><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">Perhaps life is even more likely to rhyme when we are dealing with poets. I spent half an hour earlier in the day translating and reflecting on the oneiric delivery of a poem by Borges.
</span><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto"><i>Where Did the White Doe Come From?</i></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto">It's the question with which Jorge Luis Borges opens his poem "La Cierva Blanca" ("The White Doe"). He explained elsewhere that the poem came to him. fully formed, in a dream: </div><div dir="auto"><br /></div><div dir="auto">“I don’t feel that I wrote that poem...The poem was given to me, in a dream, some minutes before dawn. At times dreams are painful and tedious, and I object to their outrage and say, enough, this is only a dream, stop. But this time it was an oral picture that I saw and <a style="color: #385898; cursor: pointer;" tabindex="-1"></a>heard. I simply copied it, exactly as it was given to me.” [*]</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto">from <i>La Cierva Blanca</i></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto"><i>tal vez en un recodo del porvenir profundo</i></div><div dir="auto"><i>te encontraré de nuevo, cierva blanca de un sueño.</i></div><div dir="auto"><i>Yo también soy un sueño fugitivo que dura</i></div><div dir="auto"><i>unos días más que el sueño del prado y la blancura.</i></div><div dir="auto"><br /></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto">Perhaps in a corner of the far future</div><div dir="auto">I will meet you again, white doe of my dream.</div><div dir="auto">I, too, am a dream that will not last much longer</div><div dir="auto">than the dream of whiteness in the meadow.</div><div dir="auto"><br /></div><div dir="auto">[*] Willis Barnstone, <i>With Borges on an Ordinary Evening in Buenos Aires</i> (Champaign IL: University of Illinois Press, 1992) p. 30.</div></div></span><br /></div>Robert Mosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09231870716685877709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-925549664214256461.post-34597667873311849202024-01-06T05:00:00.005-05:002024-01-06T05:12:18.267-05:00Dreaming Is a Contact Sport <span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-_Fy0Em-76B2icrmbsyegMHBFi0iAE7EnFPaWJggxXzxAz2whGxiGkF4iSd97N4OW3N9uCr5-afheCjCV4DAsoPkTZAHuEErwWhUSRGF7UdF4J7K73g9RMSxhzOOBMVF_8beVBM2NR0MLZyntV6fziltDqBHe-OoW_L-eNCrC5b_aTDjEN30sCXOl5xDM/s1040/ancient-china-street-scene.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="520" data-original-width="1040" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-_Fy0Em-76B2icrmbsyegMHBFi0iAE7EnFPaWJggxXzxAz2whGxiGkF4iSd97N4OW3N9uCr5-afheCjCV4DAsoPkTZAHuEErwWhUSRGF7UdF4J7K73g9RMSxhzOOBMVF_8beVBM2NR0MLZyntV6fziltDqBHe-OoW_L-eNCrC5b_aTDjEN30sCXOl5xDM/s320/ancient-china-street-scene.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />Many of my dreams are workaday in the sense that I am doing quotidian things: reading. writing and editing, giving lectures and workshops. Just now, in a sleep dream, that became lucid, I was selecting and posting excerpts from Chinese texts that described social interaction by dreamers traveling in their astral bodies, with distinctive terminology. I pictured bustling scenes of many soul travelers coming and going, meeting and parting in astral realities.</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">My first action, on getting out of bed, was to reopen relevant books from the current piles on my desk, At the top of the heap, <i>Dreaming and Self-Cultivation in China 300 BCE-800 CE</i> by Robert Campany, a professor of Asian and Religious Studies at Vanderbilt. The book fell open at a page I had marked up heavily in pencil in a previous reading. The passage was on my oneiric theme: how people meet up and </span></span><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">make trouble in dreams.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1uW9zOcZ-j1vozgyRdF_e3Z5zRNFA7ZqQNs5bwBhlPkLQcZ4R-OIUhfc5Zmwy3GQEXcQQHIG9ag8iSBp_ibwxS5dP1EGjXM2YSXBmUnPuqAxMo_92JTSUUzW21uHXb5YKm1istiCD59bk9VDJn1oLjsyWZsa8nHtB9oIm8d2-bqgIU2fITBXkOg9YIANb/s945/Campany.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="945" data-original-width="630" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1uW9zOcZ-j1vozgyRdF_e3Z5zRNFA7ZqQNs5bwBhlPkLQcZ4R-OIUhfc5Zmwy3GQEXcQQHIG9ag8iSBp_ibwxS5dP1EGjXM2YSXBmUnPuqAxMo_92JTSUUzW21uHXb5YKm1istiCD59bk9VDJn1oLjsyWZsa8nHtB9oIm8d2-bqgIU2fITBXkOg9YIANb/w133-h200/Campany.jpg" width="133" /></a></div></span><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">"To dream is to contact or be contacted...This notion, often implicit, occasionally emerges into clear view, as in a passage in the <i>Qiwu lun</i> chapter of the <i>Zhuangzi </i>(ca. 300-150 bce):</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">"While it [the heart-mind, <i>xin</i> 心] sleeps, the cloudsouls contact [things]</span><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">When it wakes, the bodily form opens up [to sensory contact]</span><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">Whatever we come in contact with entangles it</span><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">Each day we use that heart-mind of ours for strife.</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">"The view of dreaming implied here is that dreaming occurs when one of our multiple souls - cloudsouls (<i>hun</i> 魂 ) whitesouls (<i>po</i> 魄 ) or simply the dreamer's spirit (<i>shen</i> 神 ) - wanders outside the body during sleep. But it is specifically the souls' contacts with other beings that constitute dreaming and therein lies the risk."</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">Campany notes that <i>jiao</i>, one of the verbs used for oneiric contact, means more: it implies touching with the senses of the dreambody; it may suggest "intertwine" or "intercourse". There is a note of caution here: watch who you are with when your body is sleeping. Those multiple souls get around. In the Later Han period, Daoist sages fixed the number of <i>hun</i> souls at three and the number of <i>po</i> souls at seven. We are many, and we can be in two or more places at once. </span></span></div>Robert Mosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09231870716685877709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-925549664214256461.post-90017006614873491282024-01-05T11:38:00.011-05:002024-01-06T18:20:13.154-05:00To Find the Face We Had Before the World Was Made<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmgI89loU7xfkltHXwEWj8woV5YI-wbAQpLaYp9zCzutpVoXQKvrkfK9_GhmuBt8H0kWYCDNpj9zlb8CTAl4fQctq-3FYRLbrz1CAW0er-FRTlLcuF4Ns74U18EjPVe4jcpfOo0VxFGSyaGQLqam0_esVhBolLC6dMT-Ph0WHuP9xvRp09kuwfxUm2kSiG/s330/YesheTsogyal-266x330.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="330" data-original-width="266" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmgI89loU7xfkltHXwEWj8woV5YI-wbAQpLaYp9zCzutpVoXQKvrkfK9_GhmuBt8H0kWYCDNpj9zlb8CTAl4fQctq-3FYRLbrz1CAW0er-FRTlLcuF4Ns74U18EjPVe4jcpfOo0VxFGSyaGQLqam0_esVhBolLC6dMT-Ph0WHuP9xvRp09kuwfxUm2kSiG/s320/YesheTsogyal-266x330.jpg" width="258" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I'm looking for the face I had<br />
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Before the world was made.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">So W.B. Yeats declared, in his poem, "Before the World Was Made". What could he mean?</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">The couplet is with me as I read about the life of Yeshe Tsogyel, the Guru Dakini sometimes described as the Mother of Tibetan Buddhism. The first pages of her biography, channeled by an ecstatic 18th century <i>yogin</i> named </span><span style="color: #222222;">Taksham Nuden Dorje, put us right there: looking at a face that existed before the world. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span>
When we first meet Tsogyel she is in the form of the goddess Sarasvati, revered by Hindus and Buddhists alike for her learning, her devotion to <i>sadhana</i> or religious practice, and her lovely singing voice. As Sarasvati, she says to Padmasambhava, known as </span><span>Guru Rinpoche,</span><span> and celebrated in Tibet as the Second Buddha, "It is time to project an emanation
into the savage world." This confirms the Guru's desire to bring a female partner to Tibet to complete his mission of converting that wild and warring country - a militaristic empire at the time - to the </span><i>dharma</i><span> teachings. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">"Let the fire burn!" exclaims the Guru.</span><br />
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">"We are burning together! “says the Dakini.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">We are told that “the Guru's vajra and the Dakini's lotus are
joined" and they enter the trance of union. They are surrounded and protected
by the goddesses of the five Buddha families, and legions of fierce deities and
dakinis. Beams of light blaze from where their bodies are joined and rush
towards Tibet like shooting stars, to enter a royal couple who are joined in
lovemaking. <br /><br />The name of the mother-to-be is Getso. <span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">In the arms of the prince, Getso sees a swarm of golden bees, Making the sound of lute music, they enter the prince through the fontanel. In the same moment he sees a vision of the princess with three eyes holding a beautiful young girl. The visions multiply and spill into the world. Lightning flares, thunder rolls, a spring near the castle becomes a lake. And dreams flower into majesty.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">In the night the prince dreams of an eight-petalled lotus that casts light across the multiverse. A coral <i>stupa </i>rises from the crown of his head - where his wife saw the bees fly in - and multitudes come from all over the world to pay homage or try to steal it. He dreams that he plays a lute, and the music reverberates through countless universes. In her dreams, the princess - now pregnant - is given a rosary of coral and conch shell beads from which red and white ambrosia streams in a never-ending fountain.. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Nine months later, Getso gives birth without pain to a baby girl who already has waist length hair. When she is offered the traditional knob of yak butter, Tsogyel sits up in a half-lotus posture and explains herself:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">I am an apparitional being, a <i>yogini</i>.</span><br />
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">After eating immaterial essences for so long</span><br />
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">The memory of coarse food has vanished
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">But I will eat to complete my mother's happiness.</span><br />
</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">The
Dakini proceeds to swallow the whole knob of butter with one gulp, and with it
"the whole of <i>samsa</i></span><i>ra</i>”. She is now fully in the world.<br /><br />This can all
be read as a magnificent tale of the descent of spirit from Light through
Imaginal realms, in changing vehicles of consciousness - though here I am at
risk of forsaking Buddhist terminology - to settle in a vehicle in the realm of
Illusion known as the physical world. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>It is time to project an emanation into the savage world. </i>Now <i>that's</i> a way to embark on a journey towards incarnation. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">If we can presume to make some part of
the story our own, it may give us clues to how we can pursue Yeats' intent: to
find the face we had before the world was made.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">
<br />
</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoMP8t4h9IEHBDaYJJtuvQEOoJCEzJbYnLm5F1HmkuFutENtSL-Nmf_UPlOdFlnoBIOwAD8DusWfcdEInG2VC4CRvhg4ta_hjqHMlf2nUAvAguGnavlAnYjWqQqGFhjZZkQAP-ePnk6KB_l78EEsgtjD8amzslrHlOlYyXZOi0UqhFFH2TKKaLjLvytKZd/s850/Sky%20Dancer.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="850" data-original-width="564" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoMP8t4h9IEHBDaYJJtuvQEOoJCEzJbYnLm5F1HmkuFutENtSL-Nmf_UPlOdFlnoBIOwAD8DusWfcdEInG2VC4CRvhg4ta_hjqHMlf2nUAvAguGnavlAnYjWqQqGFhjZZkQAP-ePnk6KB_l78EEsgtjD8amzslrHlOlYyXZOi0UqhFFH2TKKaLjLvytKZd/w133-h200/Sky%20Dancer.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />I have drawn here from a remarkable work by Keith Dowman, <i><span style="color: #222222;">Sky Dancer: The Secret Life and Teachings of
the Lady Yeshe Tsogyel</span></i><span style="color: #222222;"> (Ithaca NY: Snow Lion, 1996). In a lively and creative translation,
Dowman gives us the life of Yeshe Tsogyel delivered as a "mind-treasure"
to a <i>yogin</i> on "black days in a forest hermitage". Tsogyel is credited with seeding many <i>termas</i> (“treasures”) on behalf of Padmansambhava, and some of her
own as well. These hidden treasures might be concealed in a landscape, in the
clouds, in a dream or in a mind, to be revealed at the right times across generations. Taksham
claimed to have received no less than Tsogyel's autobiography, and this is how
it reads in Dowman’s version. As Dowman tells us, he </span>“took poetic license to use the first person throughout” and to
“convey the precise meaning and feeling-tone of the original in fluent English,
rather than to reproduce the peculiarities of the Tibetan style and diction.”<span style="color: #222222; line-height: 107%;"> In my opinion, he
has succeeded brilliantly.<o:p></o:p></span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #222222; line-height: 107%;">Far
beyond the Buddhist community, the story of Yeshe Tsogyel will be of
compelling interest to those of us who want to reclaim the suppressed history
of women and contribute to the restoration of the Divine Feminine. If you are
drawn to the Dakini, you may want to compare
the oral telling dictated by Tarthang Tulku in </span><i><span style="line-height: 107%;">Mother of Knowledge, The Enlightenment of Yeshe
Tsogyel</span></i><span style="line-height: 107%;"> (Berkeley:
Dharma Publishing. 1983) and the classic early text by Namkahi Nyingpo and
Gyalwa</span> Changchub, <i>Lady of the Lotus Born. The Life and Enlightenment of Yeshe
Tsogyal, </i>translated by the Padmakara Translation Group (Boston:
Shambala, 1999)<br /><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>“The Dakini Yeshe Tsogyal is the mother of all Buddhas– the
Wisdom Consort of Guru Padmasambhava. Yeshe Tsogyal possesses inconceivable
primordial wisdom, compassion, and the power of protection and manifestation of
the enlightened activities…From a historical point of view, it is due to Dakini
Yeshe Tsogyal’s compassion, wisdom and power of total recall that we have the
entire teachings of Guru Rinpoche intact."</i> - </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Lama Chödak Gyatso Nubpa (1951-2009)</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span><p></p>Robert Mosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09231870716685877709noreply@blogger.com0