Do you ever wonder how you got to be the person you are, believing the things you believe and acting on them as if they were real... because, for you they are? Something happens to us at different points when we pass from one state to another; childhood to adolescence, adolescence into a halfway house of wild yearning and cautious uncertainty and then some level of maturity which goes from freedom to restraint, from impulse into habit, from habit to ever increasing chronic repetition until death do you depart.
At each stage you are another person and things got added that didn’t have anything to do with the things you went through. It is as if someone emerged who had been here before and did things a certain way even though you can’t remember who that was or where it happened. There’s something in life that makes it seem that even when we make choices we aren’t making them. There’s some kind of a flow to everything. Hardly anyone is ever strong enough to step outside of it and watch it go by for long enough to see that it is almost like some kind of pre-ordained terrain over which we move through a series of events being scripted off camera.
It’s eerie and scary and it can be comforting and reassuring too; depending on how you take it. Many people chalk it up to something they found in religion or to things their parents told them or some inner awareness of something that stays indefinable no matter how hard you look at it. For the most part, people shrug it off and make sure that no one gets the idea that they might be a little strange. In a uniform marching world, strange can be a negative... unless strange is your gig.
I’m talking about how so many of the people you meet are familiar when you’ve never met them before; how things work out a certain way and, in most cases, you’re not surprised to find yourself wherever you find yourself, how Deja-vu shows up and Presque vu shows up and dreams intrude into life the same way that life intrudes into dreams.
I’ve been upbeat so far... more or less- but now I want to mention that what I’ve been talking about can also very possibly mean that you are being railroaded from one end of existence to the other without ever having gotten a grasp on what was taking place.
No matter what you think about the idea of God and the Devil, right and wrong... all the interplay of opposites that make up the appearance of your manifest world; no matter what you call them, some version of it is there... right there... right where you are right now. Within the next ten minutes, whether you go on reading here or not, your emotions will shift some distance between two poles and then back again as the mind sends forth images that impact on the way you feel. You’ll feel things that you can identify because they are on the surface and, if you could focus for a moment, you would see that there are other things you are feeling that are below the surface and have a lot more to do with the long term you. These are deeper and more pervasive waters.
If any one of you could step out of your life and come and visit me, or anyone, and we decided that we would build a platform in a tree and that we would sleep there- in a friendly manner- for some nights and talk and possibly sing- climb down at night and dance in the dark under the olive trees- man and woman, man and man- independent of the usual games that people play... that we would walk across landscapes and feel the presence of a more expansive nature than the artificial constructs of ordinary life... that we would eat simple life giving foods and eschew television and other media... that we might meditate and practice simple reflection on where we are and where you were... it is beyond doubt that certain changes would occur and that the experience would leave a deeper imprint on your mind than the usual imprints that the usual life leaves as it walks in the footprints it left the day before.
Everyone, every day, spends money on things they don’t need and time on things that habit commands of them and could well put that time and money aside for just what I suggest. You fill a jar with coins and bills. You fill time with what needs to be done until there is time to burn. It’s all a matter of management. You don’t have to come here. You could go anywhere but... you could do it. Deepen... Widen... Come alive.
People don’t realize they are on loops that make ruts which eventually swallow the cart. There are immediate excuses not to do what you really want to do the moment you think about doing them. This is where the struggle and pain come in when you have to ‘turn over’ the ground of the familiar. Sometimes pain is only effort. Sometimes pain is going against the grain of what you’ve allowed yourself to get used to. Part of you actually argues with yourself about every adventure you can take into the greater unknown of your repeating imaginary self as if it were better just to go on as you have been going.
You can feel gravity. Gravity is a certain force that is much more than it appears to be and the weight of it changes according to mysterious laws. It can change because you got little sleep or because you are depressed. It can change because your association with, or attachment to the things that gravity affects has changed.
People daydream or imagine things all through their day. They know what daydreaming is. Yet most people can’t accept that the world they live in is composed of dream stuff that is affected and altered by the way they think just as the dreams they have at night are affected by the same process taking place in the subconscious.
People don’t realize that their subconscious is like a child or a dog and that it has magical powers which it uses without thinking about it and that you get the same results from it that you get when you speak to a child or a dog in a certain tone of voice. Your super-conscious mind can also be easily accessed if the conscious mind assumes the posture of a child or Knipper the RCA dog. Both the subconscious and the super-conscious mind are listening to and watching you all the time. We could talk about these things here if you could get here and you could take it with you when you go.
You can use the dreaming power to dream yourself anywhere; change yourself, change your circumstances, whatever. Or you can let the dream river carry you wherever it wants to according to your urges, known and unknown, which is what it is doing right now. The big dream river changes all the time according to the way the archetypal forces- you can call them planets- arrange themselves among themselves and according to the houses they are passing through. You don’t have to believe in astrology to make it possible for you to realize that planets are moving in the sky above and I think we can all agree that the moon affects the tides and other things; animals and human emotion- you see it graphically demonstrated in mental institutions. So... the moon affects us but the other planets don’t? It is true that understanding the planets or anything is only as good as the understanding of the person applying it. That doesn’t mean it’s bogus just because some of the people are. I love listening to scoffers who do not realize that the only person they limit with their denial is themselves. You don’t want the benefit of higher understandings and more subtle worlds? That’s up to you. And... that accounts for so much that goes on and which people attribute to circumstance and accident and coincidence. Metaphysics is just as real as Physics.
The world is a perfect choreography of something acting out non-stop and right there to study and grow from or... you can just go on being the ball in the pinball machine bouncing off of the bumpers... cart trapped in the ruts... dream enslaved rather than a dream rider.
It may be that the world seeks to limit you and to maintain advantage over you. That is evident... no? But you give it that power when you believe what it tells you without looking deeper into the matter which... some of the things I’ve been talking about would make possible for you. There’ll never be a time like the moment you are in because there will never be a time that is not now.
'Multicultural Cowboys' is track no. 1 of 12 on Visible and The Critical List's 1992 album
'Not Politically Correct'
About this song (pops up)
11 comments:
Les - I just tried to post a fairly lengthy comment but I think something went wrong...I don't want to post the same comment twice. Let me know if this is the first one you see from me.
Unfortunately it appears to be so. Since this isn't the first time you may want to write it in Notepad first from now on and then cut and paste.
I do the notepad thing when I remember to but unfortunately this wasn't one of those times...
Anyway...I'm on to another train of thought now but this was another one of those supernaturally good essays of yours.
I was thinking last night how we seem to have a little community here. I've never met you or any of the other readers in person but at least a few of us have been coming here for close to four years now. It's been a journey! I sincerely consider you (all) good friends and it is an honor to be here discussing these matters like we do, or just listening and enjoying from the background as is the case sometimes.
In a way it would be a small tragedy if we never meet up somewhere along the way.
The dream would be changed Ben.
Personally I enjoy things as they are.
Your message does it for me Les, I am very grateful for what you pass on to me. Take this article for instance; beautiful thoughts, great insight, an enlightening text.
Thank you
Tony
Does anyone know if AnneMarie is OK
Tony
I'll let you in on a little secret, I read these posts only a short while before you do. They just appear and that is as much as I have to do with them so I get the benefit of being able to read and enjoy them too; odd as that might sound.
I've been wondering about Anne Marie myself and asked after her at the other blog. It's human to wonder if I said something that upset her. Why do we always do that? Well, she could be on a trip somewhere too. Our thinking about her as we do can only be helpful.
last i saw of annemarie.. was over on nobody's site... coupla' wks ago.. just after he'd emailed in frm china, where he was visiting..
all seemed well then.. no portent of any future absence mentioned....
i usta see her over on ICH, in the coments.. but i don't go there much now........
i sincerely hope she's just tending to life..or on a jaunt..
wonderful essay les.. as usual.... :)
has me mentally revisiting aunti annie besant's 7 heavens/reincarnation... wherein the soul/spirt relives it's past earthly life, then is relieved (if successful...over time) of all attachments to matter and its realm, either returning to this one, or continuing on to other realms.
p.s. it seems that everytime i try to post.. i have go thru the word verication/password que twice.. then i know it takes.. when i see the yellow bar at the top, stating that my comments have been "saved" for moderator approval. or somesuch.
Hallo Tony, Les, kikz, ever'one :)
It's Sunday, Apr 6 and I'm baaack.
Have been away, on vacation ...
This is the first site I stopped to view, to see how much and what I'd missed, and it was mighty surprising to see that I'd been missed.
btw Kikz, what is ICH, I don't know what site that is. More importantly, who is posing as me there? Geeze louise, you leave the country for a week and people start impersonating you? What's up with that!
Anyhow, have much catching up to do here (and elsewhere) in the next coupla'days, and will be back to comment again as the spirit moves me. Meantime, thanks for thinking and asking about me y'all. Next time I go away, I promise to leave a note. :)
And I've noticed that there's a lot of new commenters around. Looks good on ya Senor V ;)
Take care ever'one, too tired to write or even think right now. Wonder what my excuse is the rest of the time? heheheh
Ok for now, hugs all around. Hasta pronto :)
sorry anneM, guess i had you confuZed w/somebody else over on ICH. infoclearinghouse....
ah well.. glad yer bak :)
now les, tony, noby and i can stop chewing our thumbnails wonderin where ya'd toddled off to :)
Hola Anne Marie and welcome back.
Thats funny,i've often thought about asking you for a reading list and as often seems to be the case these things appear without me asking. Good luck with the writing on Just Get There and as always i will be reading and thinking.
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