Life is holy, but some people out of either ignorance of that fact or as a self-serving and malevolent expression choose to not treat it as such.
We can either enhance life or diminish it, extol it or denigrate it. What enhances life is love, given freely without strings or attachments. Everything else is just a barrier to achieving and experiencing wholeness everything else is just survival, though of course one needs to maintain the latter to express the former.
But when the survival mode dominates we can only limit ourselves i.e. we take and hoard, hold onto, close up and restrict. In love we give ourselves away and in so doing save ourselves. Survival mode comes from a personal context of insufficiency (there’s not enough) and vulnerability (life is fragile). Survival with no other purpose than to continue life is a form of death. The soul is not about survival but the full expression of who and what you are_ it is about wholeness.
This is what wholeness looks like: No limits, open, truly free i.e. to be unbound by your beliefs, your prejudices, judgments and self-protections.
When we are free of the barriers we put up in order to feel secure, when we can give of our life freely we are then said to be in “possession” of it i.e. it belongs to us and not to someone else’s ideal or belief or dictate or expectation for us. When dominated by our survival mode, or even to the degree by which we have allowed ourselves to be dominated by this mode of living, everything else possesses our life and we are not free to be what we are.
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
–Rumi
But to be what we are takes immense courage, “The courage to be” as Paul Tillich called it– it’s not about what you do or don’t do, it’s about who you are and expressing that regardless of the evaluation of others.
Your life is holy, everyone’s life is holy and the clannishness we’ve created in order to protect ourselves from seen and unseen dangers is killing us, it selfishly treats only a select few as being holy and only if those few adhere to the clan belief system. There will never be true freedom to “be” with this kind of limit on the expression of wholeness i.e. ‘holiness’.
“I am neither of the East nor of the West, no boundaries exist within my breast.”
–Rumi
Beliefs that teach that only certain humans behaving in certain prescribed ways are looked upon favorably by God attempt to build fences around the real God. But God cannot be fenced in and fences don’t enhance, they diminish. To denigrate the differences between us does not enhance the human spirit it is a barrier to it.
If you were to strip away the stories, the interpretive overlay, and dogma of every religion you will notice that virtually every spiritual leader, credited with starting a new way of thinking, a new way of being in relationship with each other and with the spirit that created us has done so out of knowing that the purpose of being human is to become whole and to express that wholeness freely and honestly. All have known that what we are is love and that we need to learn to express it more freely. Anything else is not love and it is not an expression of wholeness or the sacredness of each of us.
Water in dreams is an incredibly important symbolic look into the very depths of our being. Found on Deviant Art
“Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
The very deep did rot – Oh Christ!
That ever this should be.
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs,
Upon the slimy sea.”
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner–Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Most of the Earth’s water (96.5%) can be found in its oceans and seas. Our lakes, icecaps, glaciers, groundwater and rivers only make up 3.44% of the total. Seventy percent of the Earth’ surface is covered by water. That’s roughly 326 million trillion gallons of the stuff in all its forms i.e. liquid, solid and gaseous with only 2 percent of that being drinkable. Our bodies are mostly water as well (65%).
Water in dreams comes to visit us through floods, rising tides, relentless rain, storms and stormy seas, tidal waves and tsunamis, rivers, lakes, oceans, puddles and pools.
We sink into it, are drowned or are drowning or crawl upon barren lands where not a drop can be found. It comes to us as a becalmed sea, a busy port, or as a trickle formed into a raging river.
Being at the beach can be about standing between two ways of being, or two worlds. It is also a metaphor for intuition and the opening to ones emotions. Longing to get to the other side of a great body of water can be about our barriers, limits, ambitions and goals while tides can be about the ups and downs, ins and outs of our life.
Water gives us both life and death as in the biblical story of Moses parting the Red Sea so as to save the Hebrew slaves while drowning the Pharos army. It both refreshes and renews but can just as easily overwhelm and drown.
As with the Ancient Mariner one can find themselves far out to sea with water all around but none to drink and feeling parched and unnourished.
It comes to us as a message of emotional overwhelm or a release of tension and sadness. It cleanses us of our past and that which has made us dirty. It washes away guilt or drowns us in it. We can find ourselves in hot water where difficult situations reign and in too deep and over our head.
We wade through it, muddy it, watch it course by under the bridge and we always seem to be struggling to keep our head above it and though trying to navigate as best we can we try to not be swept away by it.
Water in dreams is our primary metaphor for our moods, emotions and the flow of our feeling energies. How we deal with the water gives insight to how we are dealing with our emotional selves. We can find ourselves hanging on to the edge of a rushing river resisting its onward rush to some unknown future or letting go and going with the flow. We can also find ourselves moving along the surface as though we were a leaf being taken wherever the river thinks important without any volition or participation on our part.
Dreaming of floods, tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes and great storms? You may be overwhelmed with emotional situations, fears and anxieties whereas calm seas and placid pools would symbolize the opposite.
In deep oceans, lakes, or seas it speaks from our deeper selves, the source of our being. We can be seen swimming down into its depths and bringing up things from below as a metaphor for active developing consciousness of something kept hidden in the depths, something unconscious and coming into the light.
How we swim can reflect how we are meeting our needs. Water often is a symbol for the state of our being– emotional, psychological, spiritual, sexual, relational.
Often there are monsters from the deep that can be found here and speak to the shadowy denizens of our own unconscious mind i.e. our unmet needs or unrecognized aspects, but so too fish swim from below and bring wisdom to a troubled mind.
Water has been used metaphorically as a means of cleansing the soul so that the spirit of God may enter or as a symbol of death and resurrection aka a rebirth into something new, of washing away one state of being to make room for another.
Well that’s it! Or is it? No, there is a hidden fifth element that binds them all together. It’s the most mysterious of them all and not really an element at all. I’ll share this final aspect of our dream selves in the next Blog.
He drew a circle that shut me out, heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win, we drew a circle that took him in.”“Outwitted” by.– Edwin Markham
The Circle it’s arguably the most powerful of all the geometric symbols in both the waking and dreaming worlds. There’s “a circle that drew him in”, an inner circle, crop circles, expand the circle, circle of life, concentric circles, magical circles, circular thinking, a containment, circular file, geomancy, Ouroboros, circle the wagons, coming full circle, secret circles, pie charts, Arctic Circle, going in circles, square the circle, circle of friends,, circling the drain and on and on and on…
Circles in dreams, mandalas, magical incantations, and intuitive awareness’s are used to exclude and include, highlight or delete, expand or restrict awareness. Without the circle virtually nothing would move or exist for that matter e.g. there are gears, wheels, cells, atoms, planets, planetary orbits and galaxies that all come in circle-like forms.
Interpreting dreams can be like peeling an onion that symbolizes the concentric layers of the dream’s symbolism that can lead one to the inner self or God Him/Herself.
This process of digging down into the self is often represented by a circle that is in itself a representation of the self called a mandala. There are also bisected circles to represent the need for balance (yin/yang) or a circle with a cross to represent the Earth our birth mother or with a central dot to represent the life giving mate of the Earth, the Sun.
Astronomical symbol for the Sun
Buddhists draw the circle to represent completeness and wholeness while Christians, Hindus, Muslims, and Jews use it to symbolize the divine.
Carl Jung the famous Analytical Psychologist and dream guru suggested that anything circular in a dream from a bicycle wheel to a ball symbolized a mandala that in itself represented a divine map to the soul.
What? You thought that because Valentines is over that I wasn’t going to talk about love anymore?
We spend our lives in small things, separated from our bigger essence.
Love is like the ocean. The ocean is but one wave until it is touched by the wind and transformed into many. Between two people it is like two waves traversing the world and finally meeting, the two becoming the one.
Have you noticed that when experiencing love, when you are submerged within it, you see it everywhere you look? Is it actually out there, or is it in the person that experiences it? And why does it seem to come and go so easily?
It seems to me that if you imagine love to be something outside yourself that something or someone puts into you, then you are separated from your true nature. You and I spend a lot of our lives in a shallow sleep of small things where we have imagined ourselves separated from our bigger essence. It’s because we think that who we are stops at the end of our skin. And we spend a lot of time and energy protecting that skin from the so-called outside world. But in this world where as a lone creature we seek safety, we fail to see that safety, true safety, can only exist when we are not separate.
In order to feel love we need to feel safe and in order to feel safe we need to surrender this notion that we are separate. Love cannot truly visit our being with barriers and boundaries surrounding us. Including others by including them in the attentiveness of our hearts awakens us to not only their humanity but our own as well.
A consciousness of the real self meditation:
In a quiet room imagine yourself expanding your consciousness so that it takes in everything in the room. Now expand that awareness to include the house, and the neighborhood with all its people, animals, trees and insects. Expanding this consciousness even further, imagine that you have become within the limits of your skin the whole city, state and nation. Expanding out into space look down at the world that is now a part of you and push ever outward to include the Moon, the planets, the Sun.
Now, ever so quickly, expand to include the galaxy and then to all the stars and galaxies that make up the universe until you are at the very edge of time and space and the emptiness that it is expanding into. Then include the emptiness– the nothing.
Look closely now into the darkness of your mind. Is there and end to it, can you actually see the walls where your mind ends? No, you cannot, for what you are doesn’t have an end. If you are an expression of everything then there is no real threat against you. It is only when you are a tiny, quivering little thing, alone and drifting in the hugeness of existence that you have to protect yourself.
A Rumi Meditation
The Dervish
The Sufi Dervish. Their focus is on the universal values of love and service to the world. In their practice they try to let go of the illusions of ego in order to open to God.
Try using this poem by the 13th century Sufi poet, Rumi as a meditation for expanding your awareness.
“You have heard of the ocean of nonexistence.
Try continually to give yourself to that ocean.
Every workshop has its foundations
Set on that emptiness.
The master of all masters works with nothing.
The more such nothing comes into your work,
The more the presence will be there.
Dervishes gamble everything.
They lose and win the other,
The emptiness which animates this.
We have talked so much.
Remember what we have not said.
And keep working. Laziness and disdain
are not devotions. Your effort will bring a result.
As dawn lightens, blow out the candle.
Dawn is in your eyes now.”
Imagine your life up to now as but a dream limited only by your imagination. Imagine waking up within the dream to discover how really big you actually are. When awake in your life, love becomes the foundation of that life. When lucid in your dream you expand rapidly into your bigger self. Love is what you actually are.
By.– James M. Jacques: Fire, air, water, earth dragons found on Deviant Art
Dragons turn up in dreams from time to time but what is he or she trying to tell us?
They have a long history in both Europe and in the far-east. In Europe they often lay waste to villages, turn brave knights into ash and steal fair maidens for feasting.
In the English story of St. George and the Dragon the knight does battle with the Dragon that has stolen the King’s daughter. He eventually slays him but is that all there is to it? Is it all just a fairy story, probably not because every story is symbolic of the psyche of humankind? And the story of Saint George is no different. Psychologists suggest that the story may be archetypal in that it represents the battle between good and evil I all of us. This shows the selfless courage of the hero and is an attempt by the psyche to integrate the opposites and that Saint George’s conquest represents when someone has successfully done so. But all dragons are not always demonic aspects of the self.
St George and the Dragon by Tintoretto. This rendering has the body of Christ laying prostrate and thus St George is symbolically redeeming his death to bring balance.
The Dragon is actually the major symbol of good fortune in Chinese Astrology. The Dragon constellation, for example, is accorded the honor of being the guardian of the Eastern sky. Traditionally the Dragon brings in the Four Blessings of the East: wealth, virtue, harmony and longevity.
Of the 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac the Dragon is the most special, as it is a mystical being rather than an earthly animal. According to Chinese astrology it’s a karmic sign and we can expect grand things from this year.
Chinese mythology sees the dragon as a symbol of wisdom.
Interestingly enough the root word for Dragon in ancient Greek was Drakon that means “to see clearly” or “that which sees.” This might be interpreted as wisdom.
Confucious (a famous Chinese philosopher) compared Lao Tzu (the writer of the Tao Te Ching) to a Dragon.
A good luck and wisdom symbol. Many pictures show the dragon handing the “Pearl of Wisdom”, or the “Pearl of Potentiality”to a shaman. Good, life-giving energy (chi) is channeled along “Dragon-lines” that in China were said to follow underground water or magnetic fields.To dream of a dragon is considered by some Chinese to be very auspicious.
The Lung dragon was the most powerful of the three species of Chinese Dragon and was considered a divine animal. The Cha-yü dragon only showed up when a ruling sovereign showed a lack of virtue. This dragon was known for eating men (symbolic of an leader who consumed the virtue and life force of others).
In Chinese mythology the Dragon of Hidden Treasures is a symbol of vigilance and the guardian of their fortune.
The Chinese New Years Dragon represents benevolence, but also power, representing the forces of nature. It is a rain bringer and dragon of fertility that brings only benefit to the people.
The Chinese frequently paired the dragon with the image of a phoenix bird (Fenghuang, or the August Rooster). Since Neolithic China these two were considered two of the four Supernatural Spirits symbolizing both the four directions and the four seasons (which seem to have been added to over the millennia e.g. The dragon, phoenix (or the Feng bird for short), unicorn (or deer), tortoise and tiger). They were often thought of as the “Gentleman and the Sage” and given that the Emperors of China often thought of themselves as descended from the Dragon, the Phoenix was often seen as his mate. Thus this pairing has been likened to the union of the Yin and Yang. An old saying in China goes, “When the Dragon soars and the Phoenix dances, the people will enjoy happiness for years…”
For the ancient Chinese culture dragon were primarily symbolic, but the idea of the actual existence of Dragons surfaced Millennia ago as the philosopher Chang Qu found gigantic bones of a dinosaur and mistook them for that of a dragon.
In Chinese myth, dragons originated as rain deities. Folk legends say that the dragon lives under water half of the year, rising into the sky during the spring when the constellation of Draco, the dragon, is at its highest. In China, dragons are symbols of authority, fertility, goodness and strength, and the benevolent giver of wealth and good fortune.
They were generally portrayed as protectors, guarding treasure, temples, or even Heaven itself, keeping watch over sky and waterways. This image of beneficent power was appreciated by China’s rulers, who used the dragon as an imperial symbol. The emperor occupied the Dragon Throne, wore dragon robes and even slept in the dragon bed. Chinese people sometimes referred to themselves as children of the dragon.
In Chinese culture, the season of the Dragon is mid-spring, its direction is east by southeast, and its fixed element is wood.
Symbolic meaning of the Dragon in dreams:
The dragon and the snake have a rich symbolic history in the mythology of mankind. In general, animals were seen to have certain attributes that were often observed in their natural behaviors. It was these attributes that people wanted to take on for themselves and it was thought that aligning ones self, or by extension, ones nation, or tribe with the animal it would assist in this process. This practice still exist to some extent in military banners and national emblems, note the Eagle in the Marine Corps banner as well as that of the national emblem, or the double headed eagle of Greece or the eagle in the Egyptian flag, or the dragon in the flag of Wales.
The Dragon is often the protector of treasure with the TREASURE representing YOU. (which was the point of the book The Dragon’s Treasure. It can represent fears that have to be overcome before recognizing the true self. Often it can be the guardian of the spirit. For some it is their ‘Spirit Guide.’
The fearsomeness of the Dragon could represent the fear felt regarding the unconscious.
Dragons and snakes are interchangeable in many cultures. Giant snakes like the Naga can be found in many cultures, Hindu, Buddhist to name two of the most well known. They often represent rebirth and death. The Minoan Snake Goddess of early Greece represented wisdom and the snake of the Asclepion was a healing snake that we still see emblazoned within modern medicine. All can be considered symbols for meaning in the dream world.
• Dragon totems in some Native American traditions represent messengers of balance. They are also seen as the masters of all the elements: earth, wind, fire, and water. They are seen as powerful guardians and guides and embody the primordial power.
“A Dragon totem is one of the most powerful totems, representing a huge range of qualities, emotions, and traits. When Dragons come to us, it could mean many things.
The most common message a Dragon totem [may] carry to us is a need for strength, courage, and fortitude. Dragons are also messengers of balance, and magic – encouraging us to tap into our psychic nature and see the world through the eyes of mystery and wonder.
More specifically, Dragons are the embodiment of primordial power – the ultimate ruler of all the elements. This is because the Dragon is the master of all the elements: Fire, Water, Earth, and Wind.
As a totem, the Dragon serves as a powerful guardian and guide. Encourage communication with your Dragon, and acknowledge your Dragon’s presence as often as possible.”*
With the Native Americans of the North and Southwest there were a number of Dragon and serpent legends. Most of these Dragons and serpents stole children and were associated with water. Some stories may have been used to scare children away from water and thus the serpent became a type of bogey.
Examples: Amhuluk (Oregon); Ancient Serpent (Piute); Angont (Huron); Kolowisi (Zuni); Msi-Kinepeikwa (Shawnee); Palulukon (Hopi weather Dragon-similar to Chinese version); Stvkwvnaya (Seminole Dragon with a magic horn on its head).
The Australian Aborigine speaks of the Dreaming where two Serpents Yingara and Ngalyod (mother and father deities) are revered as the Rainbow Serpent creators of the world.
From the Wiccan perspective it represents a person of power and if in the dream you are riding on it, then it may be about spiritual insight.
A winged Dragon may also mean some kind of transcendence, a passing from a “lower” to “higher” level of maturity.
A Hydra is a many-headed dragon. Legend has it that Hercules kept cutting off the heads, but they grew back. To dream of a hydra might suggest that you are having a recurring issue in your life i.e. something that keeps coming back and never seems to get handled. Some sources (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap-dragon_%28game%29) suggest that after Hercules killed the dragon he made of it a flaming meat and named it “Snapdragon.” A game of this name was played by children in some English speaking countries from the 16th through the late 19th centuries on both Christmas eve and All Hallows eve. In a bowl of blue flaming brandy were placed raisins that the children would try to pluck out without getting burned and then eat, all the while chanting,
“With his blue and lapping tongue,
many of you will be stung
Snip, snap, dragon.”
The symbolism of conquering danger in both the legend of Hercules and the dragon and in the playing of the game, “Snapdragon” is inescapable. We humans are always telling the story of conquering evil, of being the heroes of our own personal myth. Thus continues the ongoing reconciliation between the opposites good and evil.
As with some other animal symbols the Dragon and/or snake may also represent your sexuality, especially if your sexuality scares you. Does it threaten to rule your life?
Given that this time of year has several of the world’s religions celebrating the spirit I thought I’d do a quick and dirty review on the Gods they believe in.
Atheism presents a case against the existence of God, but wouldn’t it need an image of God to present a case against it? Why the need to refute the existence of something you know doesn’t exist? These might be considered antireligionists. In fact they seem to make a religion out of antireligion. Originally this word “atheist” was given to those who didn’t believe in the gods of the larger society. Today it represents the belief that there are no gods. They base their beliefs on the fact that there is no “empirical evidence”. Never mind that there may not exist the means for gathering or detecting empirical evidence re: the spiritual.
Life after death: In atheism there is the belief that there is no life beyond death. There is of course no “empirical evidence” to support this belief.
Deism suggests that there is a God but that it is not involved in our every day life. It teaches that God is knowable through creation itself.
Life after death: Regarding any after death phenomenon the deist claims that there’s no evidence either way i.e. of its existence or non-existence.
Theism makes a case for God’s continued intervention in the lives of its creation. Theism teaches that God is not knowable. Types of theism 1) traditional Abrahamic religions known as monotheisms and 2) polytheism such as Hinduism comprised of many gods and demi gods with one primary god and with each representing a different aspect of reality. Note that Paganism may be considered a branch of polytheism. In truth this term was used by Christians to demonize polytheistic religions so as to establish their inferiority. Modern Paganists incorporate nature worship into their belief systems. There are Pantheistic (the belief that all reality is identical with divinity), Polytheistic, animistic and even monotheistic pagans. There are even Henotheists who believe in their one god but not to the denial that there may be other gods e.g. Yaweh or Allah. The Muslims believe that Allah and Yaweh is the same God. Pantheists believe that though there may be many gods such as with polytheism there is an underlying unity e.g. in Hinduism, the Brahman.
The Brahman
Life after death: Theists believe in a life after death though there is no evidence to support it.
Animism: Totemic Spirit beings formed the creation. For example, in the Australian Aboriginal cosmology Rainbow Snake created the world. Totemic beings continue to create the world as the ancestor spirits. The Inuit of the Pacific Northwest Americas have stories of Raven who created the Earth, the father of all life who was created out of the darkness. As with some of the old Hellenistic religion Raven could come to earth as a human (remind you of anyone?) or an animal (e.g. lion, sheep, dove)
Raven– creator god
Life after death: The Australian Aboriginal, for example, believes that every person essentially exists eternally in the Dreaming. This eternal part existed before the life of the individual begins, and continues to exist when the life of the individual ends. Both before and after life, it is believed that this spirit-child exists in the Dreaming and is only initiated into life by being born through a mother. The spirit of the child is culturally understood to enter the developing fetus during the fifth month of pregnancy.
Secular Humanism: Secular humanism posits that human beings are capable of being ethical and moral without religion or a god. This may be somewhat like Atheism but a little less cynical. An essential part of secular humanism is a continually adapting search for truth, primarily through science and philosophy without the imposition of any belief.
Life after death: A concern for this life (as opposed to an afterlife) and a commitment to making it meaningful through better understanding of ourselves, our history, our intellectual and artistic achievements, and the outlooks of those who differ from us.
Nearly all the isms require either belief or experience.
Belief of any kind requires trust and confidence that something is true or the validity of something often backed by evidence but also through something called faith.
Experience is a direct observation or personal encounter not requiring trust or confidence, faith or evidence. It’s a knowing separate from knowledge. Knowing is the experience of something first hand while knowledge is gained through other people’s experience. It’s like the difference between book learning and on-the-job practical experience.
Belief seems to lock up ones thinking because if you think you know the truth there’s no room for the truth in your knowing. Belief tends to be static but experience is in the moment-by-moment living. Experience is of the “be here now” while Belief may be of the “be here then”.
For example, at one time I could never believe in God for I had no experience of it. Once I had an experience of it I no longer needed a belief in it. Now that doesn’t mean that I haven’t locked-in my experience and turned it into a belief e.g. “I believe in God because I’ve had an experience of it”. I’m only human and that’s what we do. When I notice I’ve done this I try to think of the experience as a fond memory of a past moment that I’m not experiencing at the present moment and let it go. When I’ve truly let it go the moment often returns reminding anew.
This isn’t easy this not holding onto a favorite memory and allowing whatever experience I’m having in the moment to just be what it is. But somehow there’s a knowing that transcends the memory and the desire to lock it up in a precious little silver box, a knowing that floats freely wherever I go as long as I don’t hold onto it. It’s that free-floating knowing that keeps God bidden or unbidden always by my side.
I’d like to reintroduce my spirit guide again who first showed up a few years ago in a dream. She’s visited in earlier dreams as a female cartoon character and as a she-wolf named Onoma, but I didn’t recognize her for what she was back then.
She? It is said by some depth psychologists that the soul of a woman is masculine and the soul of a man is feminine. Each represent the less dominant aspect of the dreamer, that which they tend to reject into their personal unconscious, but during the night when the persona and the conscious ego-self sleep, the souls come out to play.
I’ve referred to this dream before having labeled it The Blue Fresco*.
This is a variation of that dream:
I’m at a party of old friends, talking, laughing, and enjoying each other’s company. As we leave, hugging and saying our goodbyes, I look down the street that is dimly lit with tall street lights casting their yellow glow into the night when a brighter glow takes over the darkness and I see plastered across the sky a bright blue fresco. A tall, thin figure, neither male nor female stands huge in the sky with its hands held invitingly out toward me. On closer inspection a tall, slender women wearing light blue gossamer robes comes down from the sky, landing briefly upon the ground and then leaping back into the night.
My wife runs back toward the house to fetch the grandchildren so as to share with them the sight. I worry that she’ll miss this if gone too long. Three other children run excitedly up the hill to get a better look at this painting upon the sky. I yell at them to turn around, but they don’t respond and keep on running. I turn around and walk alone toward the light. Everywhere is music, in the sky and in my head the music pervades. All fear disappears and I follow the invitation.
Interpretation:
Had I lived a few centuries earlier this would have been seen as a powerful spiritual message. For me this is hardly the kind of message I’m used to. Hell, I don’t even believe in this kind of symbolism! Nevertheless, it communicates.
The blue apparition is intuition–the spiritual–with the “angels” representing wisdom and the messengers of the awareness of a wider truth and the receptive, creative aspect of the self. They are heralding the potential for great achievement, the spirit, and the spiritual power within me. The children are the exuberant, growing self, uncontrolled by the external world. The music enhances the numinous, representing the play of forces within, and providing difficult realizations.
I walk on alone–this is how I imagine death, or the end, or transformation of an old way of being. The Christ-like, or holy, figure of the fresco represents the power of the inner influences of the powerful cosmic mystery of life unfolding. The figure is an archetype for the mystery that is my true self (all our true self) and quite likely the connection I have with all others–the roots of my being.
Often religion serves the purpose of gaining some sense of control over the uncontrollable. I’m being invited to release that attempt to control and embrace walking into the unknown alone– to walk this personal road in vulnerability. For me, this dream requires that I give up my knowing and transcend my personal beliefs about what is real and surrender to something bigger than that.
“The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach.”
–C.G. Jung
Some say that a dream figure such as the Blue Fresco is an archetypal figure (a type of symbolic image that shows up across all cultures) of the Great Mother.
The Great Mother figure may visit in many forms, such as the Virgin Mary, a Greek goddess, Sophia, the Earth, or even the dreamer’s mother**. Often these holy people inform and even direct our decisions in life.
Sometimes the Great Mother may come to us to suggest that we cut the dependency between she and us. A man needs to do this in order to become an equal with the feminine power. If he does not do this successfully he may then be into resistance of the feminine and try to dominate it psychologically and in his waking life. Both males and females need to accept the mother as being human in nature. By doing so they then are more able to accept themselves.
When I shared this dream with others one of my colleagues exclaimed that the figure was the Sophia, a Wisdom Goddess figure. From that point on the blue fresco became Sophia. Since then she has visited me in her darker forms and in her animal forms. I’ll share those visits in future posts.
I’ve started to notice again how when I’m feeling really down, when I’m worried about whether I’ve made a difference or been foolish, whether I’m doing something right, some kind of encouragement comes my way usually in the form of an acknowledgement, “You really made me think” but sometimes it comes as simply as a vanity license plate, “U R OK”. I’ve always marveled at the timing and spot-on qualities of these synchronistic boosts, but have also not fully acknowledged their magical quality.
What do I mean by synchronicity? It’s what Carl Jung called “meaningful coincidences” or an “acausal connecting principle”. When causal connections seems to be impossible one might infer an acausal connection.
When my life seems a little too random in nature or when I start to feel as though it’s all meaningless chance these little encouragements seem to pop up. When I look back across my life I see that they’ve always been there though not recognized as such when experienced at the time. I don’t know where they come from though some have posited that they are expressions of the collective unconscious, a deeper psychic order or proof of a connection with everything, some have also thought them as sent by God.
Those who believe in only the rational and the concrete label these occurrences as delusional and merely as intellectual intuition with no meaningful connections and have applied several negative labels to explain away the phenomenon of synchronicity e.g. apophenia, patternicity, angenticity (many intellectuals love to use esoteric words to express what they don’t understand. It then makes it look like they have a handle on it). Some researchers such as Klaus Conrad suggested that the pattern emphasis of synchronicity was actually part of the early stages of schizophrenia (though this observation may have some merit not every synchronistic pattern emphasis leads to psychopathy. Psychopathy is often a matter of degree, intensity, and frequency so don’t worry.)
Crazy or not, for me they feel like the intervention of grace that nearly always comes when I most need them. I treat them as messages from the universe (God?) that are telling me something important about reality that I may be missing or am not currently in touch with. Over time I’ve learned to not discount them as merely meaningless and incidental coincidence and to treat them as a gift to my life.
The universe seems to talk to us in many ways if we could just slow down and listen. It’s subtle and so hard to hear through all the noise of our plans, arrogance, anxiety, judgments, fears, outrage, pain, self-criticisms, and worries. But learning to quiet ourselves so as to have a conversation with this phenomenal mystery might be the best thing we can do for ourselves and for each other.
Me, me, me, what I want, what I feel, what I think, how things effect me, my judgments, my expectations, what I see, my point-of-view, my body, my money, my, my, my.
This is all of the ego, that part of us that’s convinced that that’s all that we are, that if there is anything else it’s just fantasy or imagination i.e. not real, or the ghost in the machine.
I usually think that what I am is this person called Bob, with a body that looks a certain way, can do certain things, and has memories and feelings, urges, desires, values, judgments, and rigid points-of-view (one of them being that I have no rigid points-of-view). I wear a mask of the “Good guy” out in public but have an inner voice that reminds me of why that isn’t always true.
Everything that I see or think is tainted with what this “ego-me” believes is true i.e. what “I” think is true. Oh, I know that it’s just a projection of my unexplored and poorly understood psyche and that I have no idea if the world I see is true, in part if at all. But typically I ignore that piece of knowledge because ego-me wants to be right. Actually ego-me “needs” to be right because being right means that it gets to survive just the way it is and as everyone knows deep in their tiny ego-me hearts being wrong is a horrible, bad, unsavory thing to be avoided at all costs– that is if admitting to being wrong doesn’t actually make you right about being wrong, then you’ll admit to be wrong!
It’s true, when we say “I” we are referring to this image of self that we created both inside and out and if any part becomes threatened we will defend its integrity at any cost i.e. by rejecting the offender by banishing it, demeaning it, bedeviling it, ignoring it, or if particularly immature, we’ll even kill it.
But what is this that we are defending, is it real or just something we made up and what do I mean by “we”? When I use the word “we” I’m not necessarily referring to a collective but to what it is inside of us that made this ego up in the first place.
Now this might come as a surprise to most people who believe that there may be more than one “me” inside us, that there is a me that created the ego-me, that there’s a me listening to all the talking and thinking and feeling and believing of the ego-me. I mean, who’s listening to all that continuous chatter going on inside our minds?
Who was it that was there before and just after we were born– before we started adding meaning and memories and feelings and judgments to everything? It’s still there because who else are we talking to inside our head?
Am I suggesting that we are not our ego-selves, that we are something else entirely?
Yes and no. I say this because the ego-self is actually part of the whole called the “self”, there’s also a much, much bigger motivating and animating self that energizes the whole and both are needed to maintain the continuance of our being. Mostly they act somewhat in unison though I admit that the ego-self frequently goes off on ventures that are often self-defeating. But the core-self i.e. for the lack of any other word, the “soul” can often bring it back before too much damage is done.
But existence is a constant dance of polarization that often causes our being to struggle to remain upright and sometimes even causing us to stumble. When in harmony life often looks like two steps forward and one step backward as the dance progresses but when one side of the dance tries to control too much of the flow, then disharmony ensues and the dancers become awkward and stumble. This is what happens in relationships between individuals, between philosophies, religions, and nations. This is what is happening in the world today i.e. the ego-self has (once again) become too dominant and is causing us all to trip.
We are not just our egos (as I’ve defined them), we are much more than that and we need to understand that our small and limited, selves can’t always lead the dance, sometimes we need to listen to our partner and allow them to help us back on course.
And by “partner” I’m not just referring to the “two in one” of our self because the truth is that we are each other’s partner, every one of us, and if we want to keep this dance going, then perhaps we better start treating each other that way.
I woke up not so long ago with this silly little idea running through my brain and thought I’d share it if for no other reason than I’m obsessing and need to get rid of it.
So the thought started out innocently enough, “Why are we here?” But then it got more complicated (of course, because that’s what my brain does, complicate– nothing ever gets to be simple). Perhaps the answer is that it’s an experiment in species survival, or to learn lessons, or how about as entertainment for the Great and Infinite?
If human beings are only an evolutionary experiment designed to test the parameters of species survival, what would be the point? God already created the ant that for tens of millions of years* has survived quite well, thank you, and without the encumbrance of self-awareness (unless of course you believe the Aesop fable of the ant and the grasshopper).
But, but… some would say that we increase the likelihood of survival by being a species that can function beyond its instinctual software and no one would argue that the ant is predominantly an instinctual being.
But instinct can actually become a downfall. Take for example the “death spiral”, or “ant circle” phenomenon of an endangered colony of ants where everyone follows the ant in front of them as a means of self-protection but at the possible consequence of just continuing on and on until they all drop dead.
But humans too have instinctual responses that their so-called self-awareness won’t pull them out of, witness also the fear response that the American Republican party taps into to get the masses to vote for people and things that are not in their best interest i.e. walking around with guns on their hips because they’re convinced that this will handle their fear and make them safer. Or how about societies that demean and make all their women second-class out of some fear that to do otherwise will upset the spiritual order of things? In a very real way these are human equivalents to the ant colonies’ death spiral.
Okay, perhaps we’re here to learn lessons?
That would work if the lessons were either for us individually so that we could then take them to the next dimension of existence, or to the next inhabited being, or to use the lessons to increase our chances of survival as a species (see paragraph one). Certainly they’re not for God in that an omniscient being has already learned all the lessons, heck, it created them in the first place including the answer sheet. But an awareness extended beyond the physical being into non-physicality i.e. life beyond death, would fit with the idea of the Great Infinite we imagine God to be so why not expand the lessons infinitely as well? Maybe we can actually take it with us!
Lastly, maybe we’re here as a means for God to see itself, thus we’re imbued with infinite ideas and personalities (something I’ll bet all those ants don’t have). When you’re the only one, that is if you’re everywhere, the only thing in a universe, there’s really nowhere to stand and observe yourself. Seems to me you would need to create something “not you” through which you could look back and say, “Damn I’m good looking!” And you would have to create infinite permutations of the “not you’s” because after all you’re, well, infinite.
I guess we’ll find out when the body dies i.e. we continue to be conscious, though bodiless or we won’t and won’t know that we won’t– pretty much a win-win I think.
My head’s starting to hurt again so I think I’ll stop. But now you’ve got my silly idea running in your head, sorry!
AndI’m transported into a world where everything is possible, where I’m connected to everything and everyone else, where I no longer have to defend myself or my positions, where survival is not my main purpose, where I am just fine the way I am, and where I’m no longer alone and asking this question of why am I here.
Have a great day and peace be with you!
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* Some researchers suggest it’s been as much as 110 – 130 million years. That’s about as long as dinosaurs, though the ant lived through what it was that killed all the dinosaurs, so take that you big bullies! Currently they are Earth’s most successful species, though certainly I’ve tried to make it otherwise when they keep crawling into my food pantry.
What? You thought that because Valentines is over that I wasn’t going to talk about love anymore?
The Brahman
Lastly, maybe we’re here as a means for God to see itself, thus we’re imbued with infinite ideas and personalities (something I’ll bet all those ants don’t have). When you’re the only one, that is if you’re everywhere, the only thing in a universe, there’s really nowhere to stand and observe yourself. Seems to me you would need to create something “not you” through which you could look back and say, “Damn I’m good looking!” And you would have to create infinite permutations of the “not you’s” because after all you’re, well, infinite.
