Place of Leaping

The dead tree quickens. Its leaves unfold

And become a pillar of gentle fire

That bursts into butterfly wings

And blood oranges over the tide pool

Where fresh and falling water joins the main.

Here, at the Place of Leaping,

Things turn into their opposites and turn again

Faster than the Monarch’s metamorphoses –

Larva into caterpillar, shell into winged soul –

Death into life, this side into the Other Side.

You listen to the Speaker in the tree

Who dares you to come to the edge

Telling you, “Leap now, or forever regret.”

You take off everything except your body

On the high cliff, and plunge like a diver.

The rocks call you and claim your flesh.

You are light as a white crane over the waves

But lose your direction until your old friends,

The dolphins, come to guide and carry you.

You stand on their backs like Aphrodite in the foam.

Your soul’s compass brings you across the churning sea

To welcoming faces, and places of rest and recollection

And the scholar-city, and the path of the Blue Star

Until you are called to dream your way back to us

With blue fire in your heart, singing a mermaid song.

Where sweet water meets salt, at Esalen. Photo by R.M.

Sun in a bowl

Crowning the forest
the sun in a bowl,
a river drunk with love.

Welled in hard earth,
a bubbling spring.

Tall fire from water;
it claims the sky.
Red as pipestone,
yellow as healing,
radiant as the King.

Lick the sky and rule China: dreams and shamans in imperial Chinese history

The imperial future of a dowager empress of ancient China was foreshadowed by a dream in which she rose to the sky and drank from it. The crucial role of dreams and shamanic experience in imperial China is another chapter in the history we weren't taught in school, the.Secret History of Dreaming. 
   Deng Sui(81-121) who ruled China as dowager empress in the Later Han Dynasty. As a young girl, she dreams that she rises up to the sky. It is beautiful, flawlessly blue. She touches it, moving her hand lightly across the smooth, rounded surface. Her exploring fingers find something shaped like “the nipple on a bronze bell”. She puts this in her mouth and sucks on it like a baby, feeling herself fed and nourished. 

    When she tells the dream to her parents, her father, a high official and royal tutor, calls in a dream interpreter. The professional draws on precedents. He recalls that two of the legendary “sage kings” of ancient China dreamed of rising to the sky before they rose to take the throne. Yao dreamed that he climbed up to the sky. Tang dreamed he rose to the sky and licked it. Both dreamers became emperors, ranked among the “sage kings” because of their wisdom and innovation. The dream interpreter declared that Deng Sui’s dream was “unspeakably auspicious.”
    For a second opinion, a face reader was called. He studied Deng Sui’s physiognomy and pronounced that her features closely resembled those of the sage king Cheng Tang. Therefore her destiny would be tremendous, as the dream seemed to promise.
    Still in her teens, Deng Sui was selected as a consort of the young Emperor He. A slightly older consort, Yin, was raised to the status of empress. Jealous and scheming, Yin hired sorcerers to attack Deng Sui with black magic. When this was discovered, Yin was deposed and Deng Sui took her place on the throne. When the emperor died, she became the regent for his child successor, and ruled China as dowager empress for several years, fulfilling the dream prophecy.

My source for Deng Sui's dream is an excellent new scholarly study of shamanism, religion and poetry in early China: Gopal Sukhu, The Shaman and the Heresiarch: A New Interpretation of the Li sao. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012). This is the first book-length study in English of the Chinese poetic classic, the Li sao, attributed to Qu Yuan, a high official of the kingdom of Chu in the 3rd century BCE who lost his position thanks to the jealous intrigues of rivals.
    The title is translated here as “Encountering Sorrow”. It might also be rendered as "Departing from Sorrow". In his sorrow, the poet contemplates suicide; according to tradition Qu Yuan drowned himself in a river in 278BCE, an event memorialized by the Duanwu or Dragon Boat festival. Yet the force of the poet's violent emotions is also the departure lobby for vividly described shamanic journeys between the worlds. He rides on dragons and phoenix-like birds, summons elemental powers, talks with gatekeepers of heaven worlds. 

I sent Wangshu, the moon's charioteer, ahead as my herald,
And Feilian, the wind god, to the back as rear guard.
Male huan birds were my fore-runners,
And the Lord of Thunder would warn me of the unforeseen.

    The long poem is full of challenges for modern readers, especially in its elaborate floral codes (have as many flowers and herbs ever been named in another poem?) and in the gender-twisting narrative voice; Gopal Sukhu deftly traces the rival paths of interpretation and contributes a new translation with detailed notes.

Back to Seth

There is one God, but within that God are many. There is one self, but within that self are many. There is one body, in one time, but the self has other bodies in other times. All “times” exist at once.

The voice is that of Seth, the "energy personality essence" channeled by Jane Roberts. We are near the beginning of the third of the Seth books, titled The "Unknown" Reality. I see from my note on the flyleaf that I purchased this book on 8.8.88.
    I came to the Seth materials reluctantly, even after I moved to upstate New York, not so far from where Jane Roberts had lived and practiced (in the Saratoga area and later in Elmira). I was wary around psychic mediums, perhaps because my great-aunt, the opera singer, had foreseen my death in the tea leaves when I was three years old. She was entirely accurate, by the way; in the words of a doctor in a hospital in the winter that followed, I was a boy who died and came back.
    Then, too, I winced at the slovenly or overly portentous verbiage of much of the channeled material that had come to my attention. Much of it seemed quite lacking in humor or wordcraft.
    It took an intervention to get me to start reading the Seth books. The intervention came embodied by a lively, intelligent woman from Caracas named Romelia. I had met her the previous year in Brazil, where we had investigated the mixology of caipirinhas. On a visit to New York, she called me at the farm to which I had recently moved. Naturally, I invited her to visit. At the end of the long drive to the farm house, she could not wait to cross my threshold before she shouted, "Robert, you must read Jane Roberts!"
    And I did, and I did. I started with Seth Speaks. I was stunned. Here was the clearest model I had so far found for the nature of the self and the conditions for reality creation in the multiverse. I could have done without all the interruptions to the text (as we are told that Jane paused to smoke a cigarette, for example) but nonetheless the voice came through, bold and clear.
    Before long I was dreaming my own version of Seth. He looked like a knobby Dutch or Scandinavian publican, who might have spent time at sea, and I drew him looking like that. Years later, when I saw a picture of Seth by Jane Roberts’ husband Rob Butts, I was struck by the strong resemblance.
     I became content to respond to the Seth material channeled by Jane Roberts according to its inherent quality, without asking many questions about the source.
     As I listen to Seth again, I am again thrilled by the simplicity and vital importance of his key statements. Re-read the one that opens this post. This goes to the heart of what it means to be a conscious citizen of the multiverse.
     I was interested to find a detailed account by Jane Roberts in a 1976 essay of what it was like to be speaker for The "Unknown" Reality. She described the book as the product of “an inner psychic ‘combustion’ – the spark that is lit in our world, as Seth’s reality strikes mine – or vice versa." She said that in her trance of transmission she entered "a higher state of wakefulness rather than the sleep usually associated with trance – but a different kind of wakefulness, in which the usual world seems to be sleeping.” This type of trance brought "a feeling of inexhaustible energy, emotional wholeness, and subjective freedom.” In a striking attempt to define her relationship with Seth, she added, “I think I’m alive in Seth’s subjective ‘body’ in the same way that one of my cells is alive in my physical body.” 
    

Photo collage; Jane Robert with portrait of Seth by her husband Robert Butts

Time travel with Ben Franklin in France

I spent the night with Ben Franklin during his nine-year mission to France, traveling back and forth from his home in Passy, charming the French ladies and intellos, warding off the jealousies and surviving the tedium of rival American envoys, constantly improvising to seduce a monarchy to support a revolution whose success would inspire its own subjects to rise against it. This is the second night running that my dream self has been with Ben in France, and each night seemed to encompass years of his amazing mission. 

Feelings: Just so, that I traveled in time and was actually there. 
Reality: I read a little about Ben Franklin in France when I was writing my historical novel Fire Along the Sky, which contains a funny scene of Franklin investigating Herr Mesmer and being praised for his "electric wand". And I am now teaching and traveling in Paris. 
Action: read Stacy Schiff's book about Franklin in France, A Great Improvisation, which I bought when it came out but did not read at the time. I have already pulled down from my shelves.

Madame Helvétius

First discoveries: I open Schiff's book at random and find myself reading about Ben Franklin's ardent pursuit of his beautiful and gusting neighbor, Anne-Catherine de Ligniville, Madame Helvétius, nicknamed Minette. The widow of the wealthy and controversial philosopher Helvétius, she kept one of the most renowned salons in France and counted Voltaire among her regulars. At her country villa in Auteuil, down the road from Ben's house in Passy,  visitors contended for space with 18 very spoiled cats, assorted lapdogs, and canaries. Abigail Adams was appalled by Madame Helvétius; she thought she showed too much ankle and flaunted herself like a tart.
     Come 1780, when Franklin was a mere 74 years old, he pressed his suit for Madame Helvétius with even more than his customary ardor, apparently eager to live one of the deceased philosopher's maxims: "It is worth being wise only so long as one can also be foolhardy." Franklin declared to Minette that since he and her dead husband had so much in common, they ought to share her as well. He invited her to become the second Mrs Franklin. Madame Helvétius responded that she intended to remain faithful to her great husband's memories, denying the American envoy more than the customary bisous.   
     Franklin's response was to dash off one of the comic pieces he called his Bagatelles. In this one, titled "The Elysian Fields", he reports to Madame Helvétius that

Saddened by your barbarous resolution, stated so positively last night, to remain single the rest of your life, in honor of your dear husband, I went home, fell on my bed, believing myself dead, and found myself in the Elysian Fields.

In the afterworld of his dream, he seeks out Helvétius. The dead philosopher wants an update on how things were going in the mortal world - the war, the French government, whose books were selling - but at no point mentions his widow.    
     Franklin tells Helvétius he was with Minette "not an hour before". Isn't the philosopher interested in news of her? Not a bit. Helvétius explains that he has a new woman, full of spirit, engaged at that moment in gathering the finest nectar and ambrosia for his table. Ben complains that the widow was more faithful than the dead husband, batting away a long line of suitors. The story becomes very French. The dead philosopher suggests a ruse by which Franklin may turn the head of the widow. Then Helvétius' new wife appears, and she is Ben's dead common-law wife Debbie, who makes it plain - when he tries to claim her - that she has had quite enough of him.

I was entertained by this account of Ben Franklin's variable amours among the ladies of France, and the literary romp inspired by his rejection. The passage to which I had opened the book at random had deeper meaning for me.  There was fine foxy synchronicity at play with a man the French called the American Fox. A  book on which I am currently working describes what happens after we die, so I was delighted to have been conducted right after my dream into Ben Franklin's dream of an afterlife encounter. And to be reminded that some themes are too serious to be tackled without humor.
    

Charles Brothers "The Reception of Benjamin Franklin in France".

Dreaming of the Tiger

This marvelous sculpture, titled "Dreaming of the Tiger", is located at Hupao (Tiger) Spring, in the mountains of Hangzhou, China. The wonderful photograph is from Sh1019 on Wikimedia Commons.
     When a friend sent me the link just now, I recalled how, especially in the early days of my public teaching of dreamwork and shamanism, many people who came to my workshops told me that they had been inspired by dreams of tigers. One woman reported a recurring dream theme, of roaming in a forest of tigers searching for a white tiger. When at last she found the white tiger, it had the face of a man. "Your face, Robert," she insisted when she met me for the first time.
    The tiger is the great ally of shamans in Central and East Asia, and for as far back as I can remember, tiger has stalked through my dreams. I lost the connection once, when I decided to live on a vegetarian diet for a few weeks. I can say with absolute certainty that the tiger is not a vegetarian!
     Some 20 years ago, a Colorado artist started carving a whimsical face of a tiger with cat's eyes and open jaws. He told me, when he met me for the first time at a dream research conference in Santa Fe, that he had not known why he was making this sculpture until he met me. "I know this tiger is for you, but now I must dream how to finish it." He incubated a dream of guidance, and the dream tiger showed him how to place the head (which you can see in the happy snap here) on top of a shaman's rattle staff.
     I placed it at the center of one of my workshops. A man froze in the doorway, staring into the open jaws. "I've come to the right place," he announced. He explained, in introducing himself to the circle, that he had dreamed again and again of a tiger that was trying to force him along a scary forest path. He did not want to go because of all the danger he sensed in the shadows. But in the climactic dream, the tiger tore at his flesh, as well as his clothes, obliging him to stagger, bleeding, all the way along the trail to a clearing.
     When the tiger had driven him to the place where it wanted him to be, it licked his wounds, which were instantly healed. The dreamer discovered that he had been brought to a place of training. He was to be trained as a jet fighter pilot who would know how to use his new skills to defend those in need of protection. In the elastic time of the dreamspace, he completed his training and earned his wings in that single night.
      "I am here now to manifest the dream," he told us. "I have come to earn my wings as a dream pilot." And so he did.
       In that dream story, we see something else about dream tigers. They are fierce, but they are good. 

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright 
In the forests of the night, 
What immortal hand or eye 
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Yes, William Blake said it right. Yet Tiger is also a wonderful ally in healing, especially soul recovery healing. Our lost boys and girls, who may not trust our adult selves to keep them safe and make life fun, readily embrace Tiger, and I have seen it bring many of them home.

On the trail of a Baltic dream shaman

The beautiful old city of Kernave was the medieval capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the last great fortress of the Old religion in Europe, defended by five hill forts overlooking the Neris river. It has been described as the Troy of Lithuania because so much of the past, from prehistoric times, is buried here, and rising again. Kernave was burned by the Teutonic Knights in 1390, and this savage act resulted in the preservation of layer upon layer of archaeological strata under soil and ash that became wet peat.
     Myth and legend swirl around the green conical hills, the deep forest, the burial mounds and river islands. When I came to Kernave for the first time, I was shown the hill that is the reputed birthplace of Lizdeika, a great medieval shaman-priest and dream seer. Legend has it that Lizdeika was born in an eagle's nest on that hill, and could take flight in the form of an eagle.. Under cold rain, I paused to take a photograph of the shaman's hill.

     Lizdeika lived close to wolves, and was reputed to be able to shapeshift into the form of a wolf. He plays a central role in the unfoldment of the most famous dream in Baltic history. Grand Duke Gediminas dreamed of an iron wolf that howled. He consulted Lizdeika - by now the krivu krivaitis, or high priest of the old religion - on the meaning of the dream. Lizdeika told the grand duke he should build a fortified city on the hill where he had been sleeping. That city is Vilnius, where you can see a statue of Gediminas' iron wolf in front of the cathedral. There is a second version of the Iron Wolf statue in Kernave.
     I dreamed two years ago that I discovered a Baltic hero, a dreamer and warrior, and wove a mythic story around him. I don't know whether the dream figure was Lizdeika, but I will soon have the chance to find out. I have been invited to teach in Lithuania again in May 2013. This will be my fifth visit to the land of Marija Gimbutas, the gerat Lithuanian archaeologist of the Goddess, and of Lizdeika, the dream shaman. This time my workshop will take place in and around Kernave, and we will be able to practice dream archaeology and shamanic dreaming, and celebrate sacred rituals, at the ancient sites. 

I have written about practicing dream archaeology in Lithuania in two of my books, The Dreamer's Book of the Dead and Dreaming the Soul Back Home (which will soon be published in Lithuanian).