Transition Times - by Dennis Engleman

Day Two of the Ninth Wave and Universal Cycle (as describe by Carl Johan Calleman) ended May 1 with the beatification of Pope John Paul II.

Night Two of the Ninth Wave and Universal Cycle began May 2 with the demise of Osama Bin Laden.

Both events, obviously, are highly significant historical markers. There is a sense of transition in our times, of resolution for situations that had seemed impossibly intractible - while unprecedented developments also unfold, full of promise and potential.

This transition represents both an opening to the new and a closing of the old, movement beyond limitations of the past into more spacious realms of possibility.

How this process manifests at the collective level could be linked to a subject many know personally: the core wounding of childhood as it manifests in the adult experience.

It common, cliché actually, for those engaged in introspective therapies to arrive at a point where they conclude that most (if not all) their problems have resulted from the failure of their parents to provide what they needed as children. Not only did they not get the unconditional love that they craved, but they may well have received what they did NOT need, namely abuse and mistreatment.

From this analysis emerges a revamped opinion that is highly unflattering to mother and father. Deep hurts are uncovered and anger exposed as the child become adult gets in touch with wounded feelings that were repressed or denied in the formative years.

This is no doubt a healthy step in the process of self-recovery, but it is only a step. Many people get stuck there thinking they have reached the end point. After all, it is a convenient escape from responsibility if one’s inability to relate or behave well can be traced to faulty upbringing.

But beyond the recognition that the world represented by our parents damaged us when young is another and more mature recognition step, namely that they did what they needed to do so we could have what we needed to have. The wounds we got were the ones we were supposed to get, because they illumine the specific areas in ourselves requiring healing and transformation.

Realizing this takes blame away from the parents – more importantly it takes “power” away from the parents as in, “they had the power to make me less than myself.” And it gives power back to the individual through presenting the case that all events, including those that seem debilitating, serve one’s growth in soul maturation - whose ultimate intended end is victory.

As parents wound a child, so the world has wounded mankind as a collective child, thus forming the challenging conditions out of which this “child” must arise and reclaim its true nature. Victory starts to assume tangible form as individuals wake up and stop unconsciously following the script of that early patterning.

We are not called to repeat our parents, either in what they were or what they made us to be, but rather to transcend both them and ourselves.

Nor are we called to continually repeat the world in its ageless cycle of false assumptions about reality, of its “wars and rumors of wars” and every form of self-forgetfulness that has kept the beings we are, having been created in the “image and likeness” of God, opposed to God’s very truth.

There is no doubt that powerful energies are manifesting through the events surrounding one world leader’s beatification and another’s death. Yet it is ours to decide how we will respond to those energies – whether we will continue to feed the patterns of the past or choose a new and far better direction.

Let our decision be to release the parental patterns of the world and reclaim our own power. Let it be to not repeat the limits of childhood, but rather to claim victory over these and manifest the image and likeness of God that we truly are.

Let it be.

For the Love of Bees: A Life of Abstractions

By Maria Louisa

Prologue

As a teenager I had a romance with honeybees.  The promise of their delicate amrita emphasized by the threat of their salient sting.  To me they were summer: sweaty and golden.  Their yellow and black suits zipped tight as they sliced through a topaz dome.  I decided to raise a hive in my backyard and so purchased a colony.  I had the euphemistic notion that bees, like dogs, were acutely aware of fear and would not sting if I were emanating “good vibes.”  So I always performed the necessary tasks of beekeeping without any tranquilizing smoke, or protective gear.  My armor was the trust I had for the bees. 

     Until one day they swarmed me. 

     In the deep center of summer, when their activity was prolific and their defenses spiky, they surrounded my bare flesh with the potential of pain.  My mother was freaking out from the second story deck.  I called up to her as calmly as possible while getting stung in the face, “Mom! Get the hose!”

I recently saw a news clip on facebook declaring that two species of honeybees are now extinct.  These particular species are crucial to the world’s agricultural superstructure.  In light of their dwindling populations, the role of these fierce mini laborers is becoming potently pronounced.  Human’s entire network of nourishment relies on their miniature fluttering and zippy to and fro.  Albert Einstein made the statement “If honey bees become extinct, human society will follow in four years.”  If the bees die, we die.

     Do these bees grok their profound effect on the entire world?  Do they realize that their frantic gathering of fragile flower gold is feeding the silver urban centers that harbor humans like a hive?  We too, like the bees, zip here and there performing our daily gathering and dispersing.  And do we realize that, like the bees, we are affecting the entire earth with our most mundane movements?  Our morning latte in its disposable container, our superfluously blazing interior lights, the barbaric wrappers encapsulating every single object we use or consume, the coal burned with a tedious Google search, and another Google search, and the next, and then back to facebook, then email, then maybe someone messaged me, or maybe now, or now, or now… each frivolous Google scorching coal in some isolated data center in the Midwest.  Isolated until its lethal fumes waft downwind to the nearest toddler pushing his Tonka truck under the mask of innocuous blue sky.

     It is not only these flippant atrocities that accumulate, out of sight.  Diminutive acts of beauty that seem ensnared by small bubbles of space and time actually ripple out infinitely.  The genuine smile, the authentic artistic expression, the truth speaking, the bike ride, the reuse of a container.  Like the bees, our smallest actions are shaping the entire mandala of life that kaleidoscopes in living color on this absurdly spinning planet.  

     The safety gear needed now is not to protect us from the bees, but to protect our world from the loss of the bees. And this safety gear is not heavyweight canvas suits or narcotizing smoke, but daily awareness, and daily choices that nurture life.

     Life is one great interconnected whole, but the absurd thing is that we don’t know it, as Einstein pithily expressed: “We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness.”  We are cognitively disconnected from the actuality of coexistence, interconnectedness, of our influence on the planet, of the planet’s influence on us.  We are living in a fragmented world—a world of abstractions.

     As humans, our intellectual capacity and manifestation is increasing exponentially.  Still, we are wired for survival.  But now there are countless ways to meet our survival needs: the store stocked with alien concoctions, the internet to order our specific brand of adornment, the television to nurture our social hunger, the car to get us to the office, to make calls for a company, that produces machines for a factory, that constructs bulldozers, that make roads, so other people can get to work, for some other corporation, ad infinitum, and somehow this brings the food to the table for the multitudes.     

     It is no longer, chop wood, make fire, get warmth.  No longer, whittle bow, hunt buck, get food.  We are aware to some degree where our food comes from: we can conjecture that most things stem back to soil and sun.  But most of us no longer feel the grime of mineral rich dirt between rough pads of finger skin.  We no longer look in the cow’s eyes before we take her life.  Our fire is a push of an upward arrow on the heat box.  Our social network has become a hologram on a flat screen.  Fundamental information regarding our subsistence now comes to us in abstracted form, as disconnected data.  It has become intellectual, rather than corporeal.  We are largely disconnected from tangible impact and immediacy.    

     For example I got a bit of info about the honeybees—they are going extinct.  I know that this is crucial to my survival, but yet, I am able to compartmentalize that knowledge and forget about it.  If I still cultivated my own hive of bees, and those little workers pollinated my farm that fed my family, and they began to die, I would surely know the severity of the situation.  And I would be forced into action.  It is more disjointed when after I receive this info I can visit the well-stocked grocery store and, like usual, purchase my organic apples and broccoli.

     Bees are a symbol of communication.  They rely on intricate exchanges to relay info that is crucial to their epic daily work.  Like the bees, humanity’s communication is dying, or at least reconfiguring in drastic ways.  This is the crux of the conundrum of abstraction.  We no longer have direct interaction with the resources, life forms, and people who allow for our survival.  We have compressed contact to a rapid firing of the finger digits and we have lost the tactile proximity that breeds awareness and connectivity.

    I am not concretizing this as a negative thing—the fact we live in a fragmented, abstracted world.  But it needs to be addressed if we are able to progress with the rapid rate of technological evolution.  We need to find a way to navigate the shape shifting nature of survival on our modern Earth.

     How do we, like the bees, live in a way that supports the fundamental infrastructure of the earth?  How do we perform our perfect part, rather than, like the immense threat of invading plant species, suck the very life out of the planet that sustains us?  Every little action has an effect, a ramification.   Not that we should live like a Jain, zealously tiptoeing so not to squash a bug.  Death is an inevitable, and beautiful, part of life.  But if we continue in our current trajectory we will soon be on the long list of extinct species we are amassing.  

     It is not about living in fear, but it is about living in awareness, realizing our autonomy, realizing our capacity to choose, to steer away from the swift currents of consensual society’s downward spiral.  If we don’t consider our actions, we will go with the lowest common denominator, which at this point is supporting a mass human suicide.   It is the small actions that add up to big consequences.  Everyday we make choices, or choices make us.

     We can peer lucidly into the habit of the everyday.  What drives us?  What do we live for? It is possible to purport lofty ideals that in actuality never once penetrate the daily humdrum.  The simple turn of awareness onto our selves and our lives is the key that begins to unlock the mystery of living in an abstracted world.  We have too many choices.  And in some regards we are bound by choicelessness.  It is a delicate navigation of these paradoxically coexistent states that helps us to fabricate an authentic existence, an existence that, like the bees, supports the health of the planet and its creatures.

Epilogue

     2 A.M.  MLK day, 2011.  The wind invites me out into its wild whispers.  In an oversized duffle coat and my pajamas, I step into its fervor.  Tree limbs wrinkle against an indigo backdrop.  I am pulled to the river 8 blocks west. 

     The robust wind presses through wires and a crackle of branches.  Chimes ignite fragile melodies.  The neighborhood sleeps and I walk through their dreams.  I am so domesticated that as I walk into the wooded mystery of a neighborhood park, I feel lurking and company.  My heart ablaze, adrenaline a vein shot and concept.  I pass vacant tennis courts, wet with the fate of winter.

     At the river, the surreal scene spreads open before my eyes.  The wind has whipped through this river valley for eons and it wails now with archaic mystery.  This night the wind speaks to me.  As the world rests I am tutored by revelation.  It presses its force into my chest.  It splits me open.  It instructs: “Allow.  Trust.” It cries: “Allow the bigness that is beyond you to move through you, to provoke action, effortless action.”  It begs: “Stay alert, stay awake, though the world may sleep.  Allow the flight of the bees to animate your daily dance.  Be yourself fully, and you support the world.  Heal your inner fractures and you will mend the world.  Open your eyes and the world opens before you.  Live for this awareness, this perpetual opening of your eyes.  Live in commitment to process, to holding a delicate equilibrium of paradoxical forces.  Live for your miniscule thread that perfects the pattern. Live for your perfect part.  Live for the love of bees.”

Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form

From Robert Anton Wilson's preface to his book Cosmic Trigger, volume 1:

Belief in the traditional sense, or certitude, or dogma, amounts to the grandiose delusion, "My current model" -- or grid, or map, or reality-tunnel -- "contains the whole universe and will never need to be revised." In terms of the history of science and knowledge in general, this appears absurd and arrogant to me, and I am perpetually astonished that so many people still manage to live with such a medieval attitude.

Wilson was the first author to turn me on to the concept of Model Agnosticism. I consider the revelation of relativity to be one of the most significant gifts ever received. It allows for play and exploration of heretical worldviews without becoming ensnared by the trappings of Belief.

Just yesterday I received an email from my father, a french man who identifies with leftist intellectual Jewish atheism, but whose early childhood was peppered with Parisian love of apocalyptic prophecy (See: Nostradamus). Despite his denial of Higher Reality, he confesses a private appreciation for the interpretive art of quatrain and psychic navigation of future possibilities.

My father's email came out of left field. I was shocked to discover the contents of the message. He appears to be genuinely concerned that Nostradamus' prophecy about the End Times is beginning to come true, as evidenced by poetic passages seemingly alluding to the nuclear meltdown in Japan and the insane political violence taking place in the middle east. The next location to get hit, according to those who interpret Nostra's quatrains, will be the West Coast of the United States. I currently live in Oregon, and my father's email expressed concern that I might be in danger here on the west coast.

According to my father's sources, the end of the world began just two days ago, on 4/11/11. I wonder whether my father recognizes the encoded numerical implications of this date, where the latter four numbers (11/11) add up to 4, represented by the month of April. Thus 4/11/11 suggests the unfolding of 4 into the division of 11/11.

Considering his atheistic perspective, I can't help but suspect that there is some indwelling human need to arrange seemingly disconnected forms, such as the day of the year and the simultaneous occurrence of disaster somewhere in the world, as both a form of play and a way to confront the imminence of death.

It is not enough to simply speak the words "I am going to die some day." An excerpt from the book Illuminating the Path, by Khenchen Palden Sherab and Khenpo Tsewang Dongyal, speaks to the necessity for human beings to contemplate the nature of death and emptiness:

Just simply sitting there and saying "It is all empty," is like putting a little cup upside down - the little space in the cup becomes a narrow, limited emptiness. It is essential to understand the heart of the matter.

By analogy, it is not enough to simply know that the world is in a phase of transformation. As human beings, we have a deep indwelling desire to track the inevitable disintegration of order, that we may sink into the deeper levels of reality. Yet to track political and natural disasters alone will not satiate this desire. By tracing world events in a non-linear and irrational fashion, such as numerology or poetic quatrains or whatever else, we bypass the small-cup-emptiness of Consensus Reality's doom and gloom. Engaging a non-consensus-reality meta-narrative allows us to experience the world in a way that feels more private, sacred, and personal.

I have chosen to illustrate one method of NCR mapping in the following image.

I begin by selecting a section of the world. In this case, Central America. There are 8 countries in this section of the world. For the sake of simplifying the work, I have chosen to focus on the three six-letter country names. 666 is the number of the beast, an appropriate sequence to invoke for the purposes of radical prophecy and divination.

The three six letter words (Mexico Panama Belize) are divided into two isosceles triangles, one upright and the other inverted. Interestingly, all three of these names divided perfectly into vowels and consonants, respectively. Whether we choose to interpret this as coincidence, conspiracy, divine synchronicity or something else altogether will depend upon a pre-existing map of reality.

I have chosen to identify the alphanumeric correspondences applicable to each letter. This could be described as one branch of the Science of Non-Consensus-Reality. There is a precise method whereby we escape from our minds and into the ephemeral world of empty forms. These empty forms, or letters divorced from their initial significance (names of countries), are being systematically twisted by a series of processes in order to reach an apotheosis of Higher Significance. However, the capacity for enjoyment of this process depends on the practitioner (occultist), and likewise, the final meaning at which he or she arrives typically depends on a pre-existing bias of some sort, be it apocalyptic or otherwise.

The simple arithmetic of this process reveals a higher order of alpha-numeric correspondence. We have now arrived at what the occultist would be inclined to call magickal formulae for deriving further meaning. The numbers 15 and 40 are imbued with divine significance, tying the names of these three six-letter names of countries to an abstract sequence of alphanumeric correspondence.

On and on spins the merry-go-round of my interpretive process. The numbers 40 and 15 may be applied to an infinite number of different world events, from times of the day to quantities of objects to age of significant persons, all with the final result of escaping from the linear modes of relating to the cosmos.

When our data has become so totally abstracted from Consensus Reality that the resulting information can only be said to exist as phantoms of our imagination, we then stand at a critical point. The insane mystic makes the error of trying to drag his imaginal work back into Consensus Reality and prophesize future events. If he suffers from paranoia, his interpretations will be apocalyptic. If his human needs are taken care of (food, shelter, clothing, social life) then he may be inclined to see these synchronistic data points as evidence of the compassion of the Universe.

As quantum physics has demonstrated, we are the observers who affect the experiment. All form is perceived by the mind, and may therefor be dubbed imaginary. In realizing the emptiness of form, and simultaneously, realizing that emptiness can be perceived only through the study of interrelated forms, we are illuminated!

The Divine Mother - by Dennis Engleman

In the silent, hopeful moments before dawn an image sometimes presents itself of a mankind preparing to live angelically in this world rather than as the devil’s henchmen.

I see people for whom truth is the only frame of reference. People whose personal darkness of despairing demons has been reconciled and saved, ending the curse of eternal damnation; people who have chosen consciously to serve the sacred in order to extend compassion into a wounded populace.

As the First Day of the Universal Underworld draws to a close, I lend my prayer to those of many others:

May this planet no longer be called “a man’s world,” but rather honored as the abode and manifestation of the Divine Mother. I pray that this material maternal being which has nurtured every living creature be respected and acknowledged, and her forceful movements seen for what they are.

In this way earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes and erupting volcanoes may be understood not merely as physical seismic events, nor even as irruptions of mankind’s collective unconscious into manifest reality,

But as expressions of a powerful living Presence

Whose voice needs to be heard.

Flight of the Eagle ~ A Dreamer’s Journey through the Heart of Consciousness

Deep asleep, the curtains of the dreamscape opened. There I am walking and talking with my friend Dawn, along a shore-side park by an expansive lake in a mountainous setting. Devyn, Dawn’s teenage daughter, was with us too, playing in her own imaginative wonderland. Her laughter echoed our way, reeling in our awareness. Devyn was now not playing alone, but was accompanied by an enormous Bald Eagle. The Eagle joined Devyn’s playful energy, poking about and hoping up and down around her. Whoa...

The Eagle and Devyn shared an infectious comfort-ability. Engaged in a strange game of tag, they pursued each other. The Eagle would gently peck Devyn and comically flap its wings to create a big breeze, almost blowing her over. This went on for sometime as Dawn and I watched in amazement.

A stillness set in between them and the Eagle approached. The majestic bird bowed its head, and Devyn responded by mounting the back of the Eagle and embracing it in a Loving hug. Then, right before our wide-eyes, they took flight over the lake. Excited cheers cascaded from the sky, raining down the feeling of liberation onto us. The epic Eagle swooped down, skimmed the water’s surface and blasted into the sky, through the clouds and into the rays of the Sun.

As a new set of clouds moved in, the Eagle safely returned with Devyn. Devyn hugged the Eagle once more, dismounting and spinning in circles with glee. The Eagle watched Devyn and immediately peered directly into our hearts, silently assuring us that the path to flight is through the heart of a child. The infinite potential of innocence made manifest as gentle adventurousness, delicate strength and alert appreciation. The dancing balance of masculine and feminine forces, playing with one another in complete honesty. In that moment, I opened my heart to feel this truth, the Single Truth. In this space an earnest child-like thought took form, humbly stating... “Hey, I want to fly on the Eagle.”

In a quantum-leap, the dream shifted and I found myself seated securely on the back of the Eagle, soaring in the sky. I looked down below, taking in a deep breath and letting go of the illusion of limitation. We flew as One into the heights, climbing altitude into wispy levels of atmosphere. In these upper levels, from this perspective, bliss is allowed to express itself. Here, freedom is the domain of the free. Funny, I look back now, how our atmosphere relates to where we are at-most-fear.

Feelings of nervousness and uneasiness at times arose in these heights, but were quickly dissolved by the liberation and confidence I felt. For, I had full confidence in the Eagle, made certain by the Eagle’s confidence in itself. A wave of energy swept over us, now reversing direction into a rapid decent towards the Earth. We dove fast, strong, poised. As we got closer to the Earth, I felt pressure building within myself, but the Eagle, steadfast and determined, flew straight down unflinching. The ground approacheth, closer and closer, and at a single centimeter before impact....whoosh, a perfect size portal opened up for us to comfortably continue our descent.

At first I was surrounded by just rock, dense layers of sediment, but soon, as we continued on, a new vision arose. I began to see an immense landscape, which I could only relate to as the Lower-Self, the realms of the unconscious. Shifty magma, streams of plasma and liquid metal merged, collided and exploded in fractal-archetype soup. The seemingly viscous chaos molded into expression-filled faces, skeletal systems, modern buildings and highways of prayers, fantasies and fears. Collective consciousness in constant flux, awaiting further recognition of itself. A massive mandala made up of a disarray of organically-organized in-genuity, all pulsating around a center point, which was our direct destination. During this descent through the underworld the Eagle’s focus held unwaveringly towards the center, and unlike myself, distracted not by the busy surroundings. Here, we approached another seeming breaking point, now moving further into the darkness of the center ...

Entrenched in utter darkness my faith began to shake, the foundation, though, holding stable by the Eagle’s persistence. And then, without fail, we approached the Light. This time, passing through a veil of shimmery Light Substance, we entered what seemed to be the palaces of inner Earth, the depths of our wildest imagination. Here we were surrounded by grand kingdoms and crystalline cities woven of Light-grid tapestries, inhabited by millions of beings who appeared to be diligently celebrating, working and creating. I saw galactic gardening, synchronicity sharing systems and elemental education exchange. I felt an incredible sensation of Love sweep through me, feeling deeply connected to this place, its inhabitants and its sense of eternal joyous service.

Still, though, we flew ceaselessly to the center of this crystal kingdom. It appeared as though we were approaching the power Source of this miraculous mystery, a conscious-breathing spherical Love-Hub of Limitless Light. The Eagle and I began to journey through this blindingly bright Star-like space into its own central core, a central-point paradoxically dark. It was then, as the Eagle and I began to pierce the membrane of this veil, the event horizon where the Light met the Dark, the very place where Thing holds No-thing in an eternal-kiss of rapture, that I completely surrendered and let go...

And in this moment, I was now alone. The Eagle having completed its mission, disappeared as so too did the memory of it all. I was now pure consciousness floating in endless space. I was it, it was me....and in the very moment I realized I am I, another quantum-leap brought me elsewhere. This time it was all very bright, it was morning time and I was awake lying in bed. A being buffet of inexplicable feelings still fresh, my reflections marinated in the bands of light making their way through the blinds, merging me back with myself for the dawn of a new day.

By Brendan

Psychic Heliocentrism - by Dennis Engleman

Four hundred fifty years ago the typical European believed the Sun and all other planets, indeed the entire universe, revolved around the earth. Copernicus set this false concept on its ear by looking into his telescope and noticing that the facts were otherwise.

And while a corrected reorientation of cosmology ultimately formed in the intellectual framework of general mankind, this shift has yet to occur within his deeper psyche.

If we posit the Sun as symbolic of God and the earth as symbolic of personhood, an emanation of spiritual reality into manifestation, it is clear that mankind as a collective has continued to believe the entire cosmos revolves around himself.

The “me” dominated (and denominated) mentality so prevalent everywhere is behind all expressions of control, manipulation and domination of others. In the scientific, political, economic and even religious realms, the concept of ME trumps all other considerations.

This “me” may be expanded to include a community, a tribe, a business, a state, or a nation – but the principle remains the same. ME must be defended at all costs. ME must succeed, ME must overcome, ME must live and not die!

At this point it must be acknowledged that such an attitude of virulent self-preservation is destructive and reflects psychic immaturity and ignorance – much like the geocentrism of the 1600’s.

Wisdom is recognizing that what one had imagined “special” about oneself is both ordinary and expendable, and only the divine within is precious.

Psychic heliocentrism comes about through a shift of focus to the heart-space, in which the ego is relegated to its proper role as an orbiting functionality around the divine Self, eternally intimate with God.

This transition of consciousness, one must hope, is accelerating throughout the world. But it does not come about through reliance on ideation.

Political parties, for example, are by definition and default separating entities that depend on the egos of their members for cohesion, and whose underlying goal is to subsume all opponents. The same can be said for nation-states. We will not help the world by taking sides on issues, but rather by becoming “side-less” within ourselves.

By reorienting from a perspective in which the center is “me,” to one where the center is the true Source and Foundation of “me,” we begin to live out a new paradigm.

The wisdom that comes from this will reveal how we can most effectively serve the global transformation.

A Celebration of Crisis - By Dennis Engleman

“Consciousness is a continuous process of unfolding,” writes Thom Cavalli, “punctuated by dislocations and reunions.” These dislocations are necessary so that opposite polarities of consciousness, which are incomplete in themselves, can view each other clearly and make the adjustments necessary to come into synthesis and reunion again.

Such dislocations may come in the form of crisis, an abrupt intrusion of imbalanced energy into what had seemed a stable field. Under the influence of this intrusion hitherto hidden psychic factors make their unexpected appearance.

Crisis serves to expose polarities that have been suppressed by the prevailing order. Polarization manifests the Yin/Yang in its more extreme states – a turbulence we interpret as chaos and experience as disorientation and distress. And yet such chaos can be a necessary prelude for those opposing polarities to be reconciled.

In the realm of self-awareness, the Yin/Yang polarities are represented by consciousness and unconsciousness. Within a person's unconscious are repressed patterns (called shadows) that reflect our disenfranchised self – ways we have been, things we have experienced, that we intensely dislike and so push out of awareness. Being unconscious, they can irrupt into waking life without our quite realizing what is happening or the part we are playing in it.

To bring one of these patterns into consciousness requires dreaming it awake – luring it into objective view where it can be witnessed in all its luridness. Such a dreaming awake usually produces an uncomfortable situation thoroughly infused with the wounded qualities of our suppressed psyche, a drama in which antagonist and victim seem indisputably identified.

Once such a psychic polarization has occurred, an opportunity for resolving that irrupted pattern is at hand. The shadow cannot be effectively confronted until it has manifested consciously, therefore bringing it out - through dreaming it awake - is a necessary (though extremely difficult) part of the healing process.

When the urge becomes overpowering to assume some past role, along with the familiar (though usually unpleasant) emotions that role dictates, this is a signal the shadow has emerged from unconsciousness and is parasitically living through us. We, as host of this unintegrated manifestation, assume its unconscious state and therefore offer no resistance to its imbalanced energies.

In fact, the natural propensity is to identify with superficial characterizations (victim, perpetrator, etc.) and fully accept the shame these roles prescribe. Nourished by this, the shadow drinks from the intensity of our involvement in the drama it has unleashed. After filling up at the pump of our darker emotions it can slink back unnoticed into the unconscious until hungry once more.

In that moment when the shadow seems most powerful – in its outward manifestation – it is paradoxically also most vulnerable. Here is the point of intentionally “dreaming it awake,” for in bringing unconscious content into view we have the chance to sooth and balance disturbed and distorted portions of our psyche that are usually beyond reach.

Taking advantage of this weakness is challenging however. To begin with, we must recognize that the conflict is not really between, or about, external parties. Anyone involved in facilitating this process is a friend, provided our overreaching intent is to be healed. Nevertheless it is we ourselves who must do what seems impossible when the shadow is ravenously stalking – namely, not feed it.

“Not feeding it” means not allowing the shadow (which will feel like us) to embody whatever emotions (self-justification, self-vindication, blame, etc.) the situation seems to bring up and entitle us to. Nor can we simply numb out. Rather, we need to be consciously present with the intensity of the uncomfortable feelings that arise - while doing nothing to either express or expiate them.

If we can sit in this nerve-jangling state, giving all those wild and wounded emotions our fullest compassionate attention - while simultaneously denying them their usual destructive discharge routes - we will be performing a microcosmic salvific act. The energy that would have continued to feed our sense of disempowerment, as personified by the shadow, will be retained for consciousness and fuel our own awakening.

By surrendering to what had seemed like death – and not dying – we will experience a resurrection that institutes a new and true awareness of personal empowerment.

And what had seemed a hopeless crisis will transform into joyful celebration.

Knock Knock Jokes - Extra Special Bitter

! ATTNTN ! JUPITER IS PRESENT ! ATTNTN !

Last night I gathered with the Portland Evolver Spore crew at the Borthwick house and hosted a discussion on Musical Tarot. My friend Rachel (female virgo) joined me (male pisces) in a cooperative discussion on the relationship between tarot cards and vocal exercises.

A few days prior to the event, Rachel and I had met together for the first time to talk about what we would be presenting. Many of the ideas that arose during our first brainstorming session became the material for that night's event.

The first pair of cards we looked at were FOOL (Aleph) and THE MAGICIAN (Beth). Rachel and I related these cards to the idea of the fool's element attribution of AIR (breath) and the magician's role as a physical CONDUIT (energy mediums). During the first exercises, Rachel encouraged us to stretch, bending at the hips and taking deep breaths.

After a minute or so, our bodies were loosened up and we did some singing. Breathing deep into the diaphragm really helps to project the voice with more power and direction.

During our presentation, I spontaneously recalled a silly joke we had come up during our brainstorming session around these two cards. So as we were in the middle of group singing exercises, realizing its anecdotal potential, I asked her whether she recalled the joke. She apparently couldn't recall the joke, because when I brought it up, she wondered out loud if it had been a knock knock joke.

After the event, a guy in the field named Luke asked me what the knock knock joke was. I told him that there was no knock knock joke, and that rachel had been mistaken. The joke had only been a pun on Aleph-Beth spelling out "AB" and the fact that many of use were getting an abdominal workout. Noticing a faint trace of disappointment in his eyes, I swiftly corrected myself and posed the question:

knock. knock.
(who's there?)
Nobody


*     *     *     *     *

Later that evening I met up with Lavendar, the female friend who visited me at the goat farm in California and helped pick some Jasmine Flowers. It was late when I got to her house and I ended up staying the night. Early that morning we heard a knock knock at the front door. Lavendar went to see who was there.

NoBody

She came back to the room and we fell asleep again. Around noon, as we were headed out the door to sieze the day, she noticed something resting at her doorstep. One of her friends (named Christopher) had left a small painting: A 14" x 20" portrait of Portland's skyline.

The apparent "Nobody" had become Somebody with no-body .

I am reminded of Dennis's article on UNITY CONSCIOUSNESS as the solution to psychic fragmentation. My joke about soul-loss had been answered within 24 hours (via narrative synchronicity) by the presence of Christ's knock knock joke. An in-visibile spirit had knocked at the door and left an offering, as evidence of his presence. Christ as messenger of the presence of Unity Consciousness in the Field.

Lavendar and I spent the day together playing mandolin and doing some research at the book store. Met a guy who captures cicadas, dries them in the sun, and frames them in ornamental boxes, the way you might see a wedding ring presented. As the night drew closer, La' got on the bus to go home. I decided to give KBOO a visit.



A bunch of friends showed up and we played music all through the night. For the first hour or so we played George Harrison songs, in tribute to his birthday of February 26th.

Tonight (February 26) was my 24th birthday (Jupiter returns!), so there was a definite air of festivity around the studio. Guitars, banjos, flutes, juggling pins, and voices a'plenty.

One guy in particular had a guitar made by a company called Jasmine. It had a good tone, but he couldn't stop breaking strings. I think he broke three in the course of less than two hours. An odd coincidence, from the dreaming perspective.

He remained calm and jovial despite multiple accounts of his instrument malfunctioning. Was this the spirit of Jasmine speaking through him, as an avatar for her will? 

 A nurturing presence in the midst of strings that snap. Jasmine is often associated with the planet Jupiter and with Cancer/The Moon.

Walking our own path - Colin Bondi

As I sit here beginning a week long retreat I embrace the unknown within before I step deeper into the unknown on an outer level. I'm struck by how much there is to let go of in order to truly walk the path of freedom. As human beings we're conditioned to engage life by holding onto or clinging to 'things' (things being anything that can be conceptualized such as relationship, career, money, beliefs, opinions, validation from others, places, community, material things). There is a great cosmic joke in this however since life is a constantly changing flow with nothing to hold onto. Thus you have the suffering of the human condition. Most people who engage some form of spiritual path are familiar with the act of letting go and have probably even put it into practice to some degree. However to walk in freedom requires a complete letting go or the act of letting go in every moment of every concept. Letting go becomes way of directly engaging existence itself and restores life to its natural flow but only when it becomes our primary focus.

The conditioning of clinging runs very deep and can be so subtle that when we think we've let go we are actually just clinging to something more subtle. There is nothing wrong with this, its part of the path, as long as we continue to illuminate the deepening levels of our conditioning. Awakening is referred to as a path that one walks for a reason, it requires constant motion, we must keep moving because as soon as we linger we cling. The primary obstacle to practicing letting go consistently is fear. The more we let go of the closer we are to our true state of being, we are confronted with infinity which is experienced by the mind as terror. Letting go in this context does not mean not having things in our lives, it means not holding onto them, we see them clearly as temporary changing and as reflections of our creative process. This changes the relationship to our world, we see the world as literally being a dream rather than something solid.

Walking the path of freedom means walking our own unique path rather than someone else's path even if that someone else is a great spiritual teacher. The challenge here for many spiritual warriors is letting go of their spiritual beliefs which of course are just concepts no matter how beautiful they may be. They may have been useful for a time but if they are not eventually let go of they become the newest object of attachment and the very thing that traps us instead of freeing us. So what are we left with if we let go of our spiritual beliefs? We're left with our own path and the full responsibility for our own awakening as we realize no one is going to save us or do it for us. We create the space needed to hear the subtle voice of our own hearts and intuition which is all the guidance we will ever need not to mention to the only real source of true guidance. For me this is why the path of freedom is a warriors path because it requires endless courage to face the totality of ourselves, infinity. It requires great discipline to never stop letting go no matter how much fear and terror we may experience in the process.

On one level this path is one of intentional madness because what we normally think of as sanity is also let go of. Sanity means normality and is characterized by thinking, speaking, feeling and behaving within a set spectrum. This set spectrum is that of consensus reality and is also known as the prison or matrix which separates us from freedom. The path of the spiritual warrior is all about dissolving this limited dream we call reality. We still relate to consensus reality but we no longer mistake it for reality which means we can no longer obtain security from it. So there is a very real fear of going mad that everyone on the path of freedom must face. However this type of madness is not what we see in mental hospitals even though it can appear to be on the surface. What differentiates it is intention and personal power. Warriors are doing what they are doing with awareness, intention and power whereas the average person suffering from mental illness does not possess these qualities at least not in a developed form.

As we walk our path we will learn many things and probably have many teachers but it is the degree to which we integrate these teachings and practices that makes the difference followed by letting the conceptual aspect of them go. One of the hardest things to let go of is the need for validation from others, for encouragement and understanding because there comes a time when we must walk the path alone. If we're able to embrace that aloneness we recognize that it is the key to a deep interconnectedness with every facet of the universe. That very aloneness also opens the door to true relationship where we're able to see others clearly without the veil of what we need from them. A true deep heart connection becomes possible.

I breath in receiving the flow of life which I am
I breath out releasing the flow of life which I am
I lack nothing because in being I am everything
Through intent I channel the flow of life with creativity into form
Creating and destroying worlds in every moment
Life and death, one.

awakeninthenow.com

A Vision of Unity Consciousness - by Dennis Engleman

Unity Consciousness infiltrates the planetary field, gently enfolding the globe. The effect is subtle at first, similar to gradually decreasing the density of earth’s atmosphere. All life is affected; every organism throughout the plant and animal kingdom is elevated in awareness to some degree, though local variations occur.

This change in the field of consciousness is experienced as either mild or severe depending on the emotional integrity and mental cohesion of the person affected. Those unprepared for the shift feel discomfort and disorientation, resulting in a broad spectrum of reactions ranging from irritability to intense acting-out of unresolved processes.

On the other hand, people in a state of anticipatory acceptance experience the shift more purposefully and intentionally. Inner attention moves toward the heart region of the central corpus, and mental “noise” begins to clear. Thought ebbs out of the foreground of awareness, becoming less distracting and interruptive.

Such individuals feel a sensation of upward mobility characterized as “letting go.” This is a voluntary relinquishing of attachments to personal identity with their attendant implications - an act that is self-reinforcing since the more whole-heartedly and single-mindedly it is done, the greater the resulting satisfaction and consequent desire to repeat the process.

Some people, due to their prior work with radical self-inquiry and spiritual healing, find themselves comparatively comfortable within the changing field of consciousness. These serve a vital role in helping others navigate the transformational flux, a prospect that is extremely demanding for most – especially those with strong habits of emotional suppression and hardened conceptual viewpoints.

As enlightened beings have always stood out from the crowd, this distinction is likely to be more, rather than less, pervasive at the End of the Age. During previous eras the average person was so far removed from an enlightened state that saints and bodhisattvas were regarded as somewhat distorted replicas of the norm – deformed individuals in whom something called “holiness” resulted from important human components being missing. Such sanctity was often considered not merely impossible for ordinary men, but undesirable.



But in the Last Days unity consciousness will extend beyond a few historical anomalies into the furthest reaches of incarnate awareness. As this gradual but inexorable process unfolds, those able to bear Christ’s divine Light will be detectable through their self-composure, grace and good-humor, being at peace even in the midst of a society in shock. Having become grounded in Truth, they will have nothing to fear – and know it.

This knowledge will effectively make them kings among men in terms of spiritual riches. Yet such royalty will be borne humbly while they busy themselves assisting those struggling to navigate the seas of cosmic awareness. As learning to swim in ordinary water requires overcoming one’s natural fear of drowning through mastering a complex set of non-intuitive skills, so navigating the Deep of unity consciousness will necessitate the development of abilities which - for many people – are at this time still far from functional.

Finding the Self Amongst Mirrors in the Crucible - Ezra Sandzer-Bell

The mythological tale of Narcissus and Echo describes the tragic failure of communication between a man and woman. Echo falls in love with Narcissus but he is too self-absorbed to give her the attention that she desires. Feeling rejected, Echo dies of a broken heart and her flesh returns to the soil. Yet Echo's spirit had been cursed by Hera, Wife of Zeus, to be forever incapable of speaking from the center of her being. When Echo spoke, it could only be a repetition of the words of others. Thus, when her body disappeared, Hera's curse lingered in the air and continues to this day to find expression in the echo of reverberating chambers.

Narcissus and Echo are presented to us as masculine and feminine embodiments of the temporal glitch of reflection. We are reading the mythic enactment of two complementary modes of human perception, hearing and vision, through the mythic lens of romantic tragedy.

Consider how this archetypal drama relates to the typical dynamic of AitD groups.

As a group, we experiment with alchemical reconciliation of waking consciousness and unseen/unconscious influences. To allow energy to move freely through the room, we collectively agree to detach from identification with many of the voices we pick up during group. Perhaps a voice comes through us and has therefore temporarily possessed us, or we have possessed it. That voice is only one of countless fragmented "selves" floating through the container, which in turn behaves as a holographic signature of the non-local, collective human psyche.

There is a risk in practicing this form of group magical practice, which I have not yet witnessed anyone fall prey to, but which would be a rather annoying disturbance. To become totally possessed by the "spirit" of either of these two characters without enough Self-Awareness to snap out of it, could lead to severe neuroses.  We turn to Narcissus and Echo for a map of the problem and its solution.

The masculine figure in this story obsessively studies the mirror reflection of himself. From this reflected image, he creates an identity, which he pours all of his love (source-energy) into. As a result, he fails to appreciate his feminine counterpart.

Mirror Reflection
M.R.
Mr.
Mister
Male Ego
M.E.
Malignant Egophrenia

Our young male protagonist is afflicted with a mental disease not uncommon in 21st century American culture.

The feminine figure has had her voice stolen by the wife (Hera) of the father-god (Zeus). Annoyed by the young nymph's chattering, and resenting Zeus for sleeping with other young nymphs like Echo, Hera punishes Echo by taking away her ability to speak from the heart.

Hera treats Echo as if she were a "representative" for all of the nymphs whom Zeus has been sleeping with. Archetypally, this speaks to the Jealous Wife's hatred of the Husband's secret romance with Young Nymphs.

But if we take this myth and apply it to AitD, we can see how Echo's inability to speak from the heart may represent the necessary counter-imbalance to Narcissian self-obsession.

Participants in group may choose to dwell obsessively on the details of their personal life, losing touch with the receptive, feminine aspects of their being. Alternatively, we sometimes become so wrapped up in what other people think and say that we forget to listen to our hearts and speak from what we know is true. We may even get the sense that we no longer know what is true.


Having named the demon of REFLECTIVE GLITCH and located it during a session, we may resolve it through body awareness. Our masculine self-obsession is invited to redirect its orientation toward the heart. Having resolved the Feminine aspect's empathetic loss-of-self, reconnecting with heart-consciousness, Feminine energy returns to its home in the psychic womb, creative matrix of Life. The heart radiates in the presence of the womb, and like sun impregnating earth, the flower of alchemical resolution begins to bud.

Dispelling Duality in Dreamland - by John Hubbird

Dispelling Duality in Dreamland - by John Hubbird

Human consciousness is now experiencing a quantum evolutionary awakening into newness, wholeness, Oneness, a sacred embracing of our diverse experiences, a transcendental reunion of polar opposites, and so forth. The Path that must be traversed in order to awaken and evolve ourselves, is ironically to delve headlong into incarnating the very self-same duality that we are in the process of transcending,  while at the same time skillfully  navigating these deep unconscious waters in a way that avoids compounding suffering by re-traumatizing ourselves.  The only “way”  forward is to move lucidly and fluidly through shadowy ancestral thickets of murderous dysfunction, abuse, war, rape, pillage, etc. and live to tell about it.   This is where we become the proverbial snake eating it’s own tail.

In order to dispel dualities in a relatively safe manner, ideally such work takes place in what we call a “container” that is strong enough to contain the pressure that must be allowed to build and build, until it reaches sufficient intensity for a major transpersonal psychic shift to occur, at which time the shadow material becomes illumined and liberated.  In the Awakening in the Dream community, weekly groups function as conscious containers for the purpose of invoking, embodying, playing out, transmuting and liberating shadow material.  [For a more detailed explanation of the container and how it works, see http://www.awakeninthedream.com/wordpress/?p=216#hermetic]

During my 10+ years of participating in the Awakening in the Dream groups, I have both witnessed and experienced how most “issues” that get constellated in the groups initially present themselves as seemingly solid dualities, as apparent dilemmas, where there are at least two distinctly “different” voices urgently pleading for supremacy over some seemingly “opposite” voice(s).     Energetically, for those  present in the group, this experience is likely to feel like conflict, both tense and intense, heated, oppositional, etc., and -- depending on ones conditioning -- may even feel unsafe, scary and/or abusive, as in something to be avoided.  This is where we may or may not drop into the Rabbit Hole, where most anything can, and probably will, happen.   

One of the more likely things to happen at the edge of a Rabbit Hole is what we refer to as “Edge Phenomenon” (EP)  [<link to Chelsea’s article], where some seemingly random distraction suddenly pops into the field, such as side-chatter, disjointed eruptions of laughter or giggling, interrupting one another, a cat suddenly walking into the center of the circle, lights flickering weirdly, etc.   Interestingly, EP’s can also function as a dreamlike fractalian side-show that further illumines the very process that is unfolding.  [For more on edge phenomenon, please see article "Tarot Reading for the Field" at: http://expressionsofthedream.blogspot.com/2011/02/tarot-reading-for-field-anonymous.html ]

For example, a person may be “in their stuff” in a somber story-telling process about how poorly their parents dealt with conflict, and then * BOOM * a seemingly unrelated “conflict” will break out between two other people in the circle, which can easily be seen as a rude or “inappropriate” distraction or interruption that sucks energy and attention away from the person who is talking.  Or, if we are awake enough to catch it, the “interruption” filling up the room can be seen more expansively as an energetic real-life portrayal of the story-teller’s own process around conflict.

Regardless of how duality shows up, its trademark is to urgently impose a false choice onto the field, like about whether something is “this or that”, true or false, good or bad, real or imaginary, abusive or standing up for oneself, and so forth.  Often, two (or more) people will pick up differing voices, giving present real-time shape and form to whatever archetypal duality is being touched upon, thus playing it out.   Then other voices, roles, alignments, and realignments typically start getting played out by others in the circle, so as to render the display more vivid, detailed and colorful, and perhaps even more intense.   Still others may remain silent as witnesses to anchor the energy and simply hold space for all the intense energy that is present, and/or pick up more of a facilitator role,  and so forth.

Thus begins the “cooking” phase of the process, where a particular duality has constellated itself in a room full of witnesses, where it is being illumined, reflected upon, psychically digested, and eventually assimilated and dispelled.  This is where having a strong container becomes essential in order to “hold the tension of the opposites”, which is a Jungian term referring to how we can alchemically transform unconscious shadow material into golden stardust of awakening.  There is no telling how long this cooking process may take: it could take 15 minutes, or hours, weeks, months or years, or it could happen in the “twinkling of an eye”. 

But regardless of how long it takes, the point is that cooking “opposites” represents the homestretch in humanity’s journey towards alchemically dissolving and integrating classic archetypal dualities of the collective unconscious shadow that have historically proven so destructive and damning to our species and to the planet -- and that there is a way to do this cooking that is safe, psychically organic and emotionally healthy.

This is, of course, merely a statement of my own experience in the Awakening in the Dream groups, and does not necessarily reflect how others in the Dreaming community may experience how we deal with duality and conflict.  Fortunately, there is a “comment” section below, where others can supplement what I’ve said with their own experience and reflection.  

Tarot Reading for the Field - Anonymous

Tonight I picked three cards for the group. The approach I take to reading tarot is triangular, treating each card with equal significance, rather than imposing a linear "past-present-future" map upon the cards. This eliminates the problem of divination and brings us purely into the scholarly consideration of how our three Keys communicate with each other, on their own terms.

The sun is positioned as a focal point in all three images, emphasized by the appearance of the Sun card. I'm going to zero-in on the relationship between the fool and death cards, in terms of the position and function of the sun in their contrasting imagery. I also want to make note of how these processes potentially take expression during dream group.

Paul has been identifying what he calls edge phenomena, to describe an empathic, collective response taking place when individuals in the dream-container enter a phase of alchemical transmutation.

Held within the container, our shared morphogenetic field begins to "cook", expressing pressure release in physical events. These events take many forms, including but not limited to nervous shiftyness of people's bodies, side-chatter, thoughtless commentary, joking around, and even loud noises or lighting changes occurring suddenly, with apparent synchronistic intensity.

Whether these edge phenomena are counter-productive distractors or necessary elements of the process, they are clearly identifiable to anyone who has witnessed it happen.

The idea of reaching an edge clearly corresponds to the Fool archetype, who is standing at the edge of his cliff. However, there is a second hidden symbolism in the Sun card itself. Note that the children each have one foot inside the inner circle's edge and one foot on the outside. Their youth conveys a state of spiritual innocence in our personal masculine and feminine aspects of Self.

Each one of us in the group has a different relationship with our inner child(ren) and therefore respond in a variety of ways to the Uranian Electricity of the Fool, as we pass from the outer to inner spheres of the Solar Force. Edge phenomena resembles turbulence of passing through the Earth's atmosphere.

To enter Detached Awareness, we must leap into it like a fool, from the "familiar territory" of the cliff into the unknown ways of being on the inside of the circle. We do this in dream group whenever we become vulnerable and allow ourselves to enter certain blind spots that we would not normally feel comfortable entering. The goal of this leap of faith is to land on the central dot of the Innermost, where we are no longer identified with the patterns of our many personas. This Center is both detached from all of these patterns and simultaneously connected to them through an awareness of their existence.

Detached Awareness feeds on observation of old patterns. These old patterns (ways of being) are like plants, being harvested in the Death card, to nourish the Center of Awareness (Inner Circle of the Sun Card). Each of us is a fool, made humble by the power of the Hidden Sun.

Tuesday Night Dream Group - Bijoux and Ezra

Bijoux on ink - Ezra on colors

(Stand on head to view properly)

An Oceanic Cosmology : ChelseaTyler

I find it quite absurd that I am just now discovering Ernest Haeckel's illustrations and contributions to the curious creation which is our world.  My artistic brain is particularly fond of fractals, so I am quite thrilled to have stumbled upon this geniuses work recently.  Being inclined to fantasy, people usually shrug off my wide-eyed exploratory speculations of experiences i’ve had with, for clarity and lack of a better word, extraterrestrials.  With a head-titled back to the stars i’ve been guided in tone and healing with spectacular species coming from a place unquestionably “other.”  It is not a stretch for me to assume that such extraordinary beings, with a knowledge inconceivable to the human brain, are found hidden in the depth of the seas.  I imagine them swimming and sunk into the darkness, resonating throughout the wild waters, and tuning into this beautifully unique world at stake.

Haeckel, with his drive for discovery and an eye for detail, depicted onto the preservable page wonderfully intricate images he witnessed from the life of the ocean.  Flipping through the online collection of Kunstformen der Natur (Art Forms of Nature) is like seeing with someone else’s eyes.  I love imagining this prolific man turning his sights from microscope to etch and back again millions of times to embody the precise calculations of symmetry so often found in his work.  What I like best about these images is that it stimulates a fractal oriented cosmic view of world.  It brings the usually unseen, untouchable, ungraspable secrets up from the very magical soup of our biological beginnings and presents it to us with a flash breath of beauty.  Representing at once our cellular similarities to the artistic wonderment of the cosmic ocean and leaving us just that much more assured that beauty exists even when we are not looking.

By the way, I just learned this man coined the term “ecology.”

Although I haven’t read much on the man himself (besides being aware of his contributions to the field of “scientific racism” in the late nineteenth century) I get quite a transmission of personal alchemy through his artwork.  I am fascinated with the subjects he spent enough time with to master and with the repeated particulars he choose.  While his work ranges from various species both submerged and surfaced, there is one in particular that synchronously struck me, leaving me believing that this man perhaps was far more than a zoologist, naturalist, artist, physician, teacher, son, and philosopher; he is a spirit song humming along with immaculately “art”-iculate attention; Eternity doesn’t ask much more from us.  His collection of hummingbirds: 

I am captivated by this shared fascination of the unseen.  I am drawn to mystery like a hummingbird to nectar, a starfish to stone, and the artist to the eyes of god.  In my few dreams with hummingbirds they are always swimming over the ocean.  It is as though they are taking messages from the sea and whispering them into flowers.   When we take the time to stop, be stunned, and smell the beauty, we can receive miraculous gifts.  In one of my experiences with being energetically near “extra-terrestrials,” while taking time to sit with the magical flower of Darlingtonia californica, aka Cobra Lily*, I asked them how to communicate with them.  In that instant, while sitting under a star-blanketed night sky in the quite stillness of Southern Oregon’s woods, I heard what my brain could only attribute to a hummingbirds** winged vibration fly up right next to my ear and then off again.

Martin Pretchel in his book, The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Son, includes a true story of a man enthralled with South American hummingbird bird songs.  Managing to land a job on a mammal research ship working in the Pacific ocean, he convinced one of the researchers to broadcast his slowed-down hummingbird songs (to replicate sonic sounds) underneath the water.  “For days on end, pods upon pods of whales of every kind came rolling in, breaching and blowing alongside the ship, diving and gathering around the underwater speakers, chattering, hooting, and cooing in courteous, measured replies between the hummingbirds phrases” (137).  Upon speeding up the recorded whale responses the crew discovered that they sounded like, “very ornate hummingbird songs!”  They are listening.  Thankfully.  Are we?

for clickable zoomable images of Hackels illustrations click here


*Dedicated to the stellar teachers held and kept manifest within the endangered colony of cobraesk plant beings.  All my love and gratitude for your healings, initiations, and supreme wisdoms helping me "relax into being" the artful observer of life's hidden wonders.  May we help you as much as you have helped us as we go forth in our inter-galatic hyper-dimensional journey toward wholeness.
**To the vibratory preparation of the hummingbird: My heart beats rapidly in your divine presence.  Thank you.

My Initiation into the spirit of Ayahuasca

by Paul Levy

I was first introduced to the spirit of ayahuasca in the mid-nineties, when a South American shaman who had never been out of the jungle before came to where I was living to give a teaching about his culture’s most sacred medicine. He had a big jug of ayahuasca next to him as he gave his talk, and he would sometimes cradle it as if it was his most holy possession. The bottle seemed like it was simultaneously his infinitely beloved child, and his most treasured consort, as well as his precious mother and supreme guru all at once. We innocently came up to him one by one to get initiated into the spirit of ayahuasca, and he simply touched a little bit of it to our forehead. It was a very simple, but powerful, and very dreamlike, ceremony. Little did I realize that the ayahuasca genie was out of the bottle.

            A little while later I had the following dream: I am drinking ayahuasca and spontaneously singing the icaros, the sacred songs invoking the spirit of ayahuasca. It is as if I am simply a channel for some energy or spirit to sing itself through me, as if I was discovering a new voice within myself. The songs were simultaneously creating themselves through me while at the same time it was as if in singing them I was remembering something I had known long ago. At a certain point, the ayahuasca takes effect, and I start having a full-blown psychedelic experience in the dream. Shamanically journeying on the wings of the creative imagination, I was lucidly dreaming that I had taken ayahuasca, having apparently created that experience for myself. Or, more accurately, it felt like the spirit of ayahuasca was dreaming itself through me.  

            Upon awakening, I found this experience to be simply amazing and mind-blowing, as I had just experienced how my mind had literally created a dream of a turned-on universe. I had just dreamed a dream in which I was using the power of the dream to create reality so as to wake myself up. There was something very important about how my voice was the channel through which the spirit enlivened and inspired itself, singing itself into incarnation.

A few months later I connected with ayahuasca in its full-bodied form, which is an experience that does not easily lend itself to words. I can say that my ayahuasca experience was very much like my dream, as if my dream was a precognition of the actual experience. I ingested nonlocal ayahuasca before I drank the localized version. One thing I remember very vividly is the feeling of my DNA lighting up, as if there was a hidden light encoded in my very cells which had been activated by the medicine. The whole situation was very dreamlike.

Instead of focusing on the particular mind-blowing visions and experiences that happen on ayahuasca, when I get to the bottom of what animated all of my ayahuasca journeys, it always come down to the same thing. As if tailor-suited to my unconscious, ayahuasca has its own unique way of revealing to me that as long as I am trying to “solve my problems,” I have already missed the mark. Thinking I have a problem is a viewpoint that is reinforcing the seeming concrete, existing in stone, reality of the problem, as well as relating to my situation as problematic in nature. Sacred medicine such as ayahuasca always get down to the same thing for me – showing me how in this moment, and this moment, I am the very one who is retrieving, calling forth, investing in, and literally creating the apparent problem that I, with the best of intentions, then go about trying to heal in a diabolically self-reinforcing feedback loop. This dynamic is of the nature of a self-fulfilling prophecy, in which I am using the creative powers of my own mind to influence reality so as to entrance and imprison myself, which is a form of madness. I imagine, deep down, to the extent we are asleep, that this madness is an archetypal situation that is similar for everyone. Ayahuasca was ultimately bringing awareness to how I am actively participating in the creation of my own lack of freedom, so that I could potentially dream it differently.

            The spirit of ayahuasca taught me about itself. One of the many things my experiences with ayahuasca revealed to me is that it is a “nonlocal” spirit, which means it is not constrained by the conventional laws of space and time. Being nonlocal, the spirit of ayahuasca is not bound by matter, which is to say it is not solely contained in nor constrained by its seemingly liquid, physical form. Being nonlocal, the spirit of ayahuasca is multi-dimensional, which is to say that its drinkable form is but one of its various channels of incarnating itself.

We seem to enter into and become acquainted with ayahuasca’s nonlocal field of influence when the time is right. For me, the spirit of ayahuasca was able to shape-shift, first manifesting as the original shaman with his bottle, then incarnating as the dream of drinking what was in the bottle, and finally materializing as the actual event of taking what was in the bottle into myself, as if receiving holy communion in the flesh. Being nonlocal, the spirit of ayahuasca was revealing to me the nonlocality of both the universe and myself, which is to say my own lack of limitations in the realm of the divine, creative imagination.  

            Ayahuasca is a medicine that heals the disease of modern humanity, an atrophied imagination. Ayahuasca stimulates and works through the organ of the creative imagination so as to actualize its very real effects. Ayahuasca introduces us to the reality of the psyche, which is to say it announces itself in the channel where what is imagined has a real effect on what is happening. Ayahuasca helps to collapse the boundary between what is real and what is imagination, as the imagination seems more and more real, and the real, imagination. From the point of view of the divine imagination, which is reality itself, what is primary and most real, if we can speak in such terms, is the imagination itself.    

My encounter with ayahuasca initiated me more deeply into the nonlocal field which underlies our world and connects everything with everything else. The spirit of ayahuasca taught me, just like in that dream where I journeyed with ayahuasca, that we are literally moment to moment creating our experience of ourselves. The spirit of ayahuasca, both in the sleeping dream as well as in the waking dream, was revealing to me that it is our own mind which ultimately and fundamentally creates our experience. My dreamlike experiences with ayahuasca introduced me to the fact that the living spirit which animates ayahuasca is to be found inside each one of us. Just like my dream, I can imagine that I’m drinking the nonlocal, holy sacrament right now, and can’t help but to sing its song.