Month: May 2012

A Deeper Faith

~ d2k ~ Leave a comment

John: The thing we have to look at in life is a need to realize that we’re playing with a level of magic. And to reach that magic we need to learn how to let go of things without causing too great an indulgence.

An indulgence can come in many ways. It can be nothing more than a tone, or a mannerism, that we take on, as if we’re entitled to take it on. Or it can involve the rising up, in our nature, of anything other than the qualities of attentiveness and compassion. And an indulgence can involve our automated reactions to our life experiences.

My dream is set in medieval times – there are castles and everything. I find myself, and the group I’m with, being overrun by invading forces who have swept through the land and taken over.

Instead of running or retreating, however, our teacher keeps us pressing on into the territory that’s just been taken from us. It’s like we’re ignoring what’s happened and we’re heading right into the enemy’s reinforcements.

The enemy has decimated our position and left us powerless. We don’t even have weapons to defend ourselves. Still, rather than give up, or retreat, or regroup, the teacher has us proceeding along, as if he knows something the invaders don’t.

I can sense that the enemy closely monitors every move we make. They see us out in the open, instead of being wise and pulling back. The teacher seems fully aware of what he’s doing – he even says that we’re getting very close to where we may be subject to an ambush.

I complain about not having any weapons to defend an attack, which seems imminent. The teacher agrees. Our movements are like a display of deep inner faith, because nothing about our circumstances indicates that these are the actions we should take.

Then the dream shifts, and I notice that there’s a veil that separates us from the invading forces. A moment earlier it felt like we were surrounded and our every move was observed. Now it feels like we’re not as helpless as I thought. With this shift, I can see a barrier separating us from the enemy.

I also had an earlier image where I saw a dog lunge forward to take food right out of my hand.

The meaning of these dreams is that there’s a place deep inside in which trust defies the limitations of the outer. They show that, first and foremost, I must trust and abide in my inner connections. If I get too enamored at what I have externally, or I think that I’m holding a particular space (symbolized by territory or food) that’s important, something can come at any moment and take it away from me.

In other words, if my attachments are too heavily based in the physical realms rather than the spiritual realms, then the “invaders” can swoop in and take it. Even the dog, which is a symbol of friendship, will snatch what I hold onto right out of my hand.

However, if I can follow my inner guidance and ignore outer appearances, I can thread myself through any obstacle. It’s when I react to what outer appearances imply or suggest, and let them guide my actions – like retreating in fear – I throw away my inner connection and my trust. Then I can only live in constant fear of losing myself or, I live in a fear in which I do lose myself.

The forces in outer life will always be bigger than I am, because what is hidden actually yields to them, or stays dormant in the presence of them. It is only by me trusting in what is hidden, trusting that I’m in good hands, can I help bring what is hidden out into the open – into life.

Next I have an image that adds information to these dreams. I mean, I could say that something’s missing from the first image because the kind of trust that’s being asked for, few people in their right mind would be able to muster, unless they had “heard” some guidance.

It’s like the story in the Quran where Moses meets the “Servant of God,” later identified as Khidr. Moses asks to accompany him in order to learn, and is told that he has to abide by whatever Khidr does and not question him. Moses agrees, yet each time Khidr takes an action, Moses, shocked by what he sees, always questions what has been done.

It’s not until Moses has broken his promise for the last time and the two must part that Khidr reveals the true compassion behind his actions, a compassion that was hidden from Moses because of his limited viewpoint.

So, in this dream I’m shown a force that has four levels to it. I’m told that the last person to approach this force inadvertently awoke a lion ferocity that had been asleep therein.

As fearful as I feel, I can’t help but notice that the roaring ferocity of the lion is only active on the first level, but that there are three other levels that are still dormant. My sense is that these three levels can only come into being (be awakened) when one has stilled the first level.

In other words, what’s required to pass the first level is to not react to the ferocity of the lion. The law of the lion who is rudely awakened is that he controls the appearance of the present.

In other words, as in the prior image where the invaders seemed to have every visible advantage, there’s still more to consider than what’s immediately discernible. If we react to the most obvious – our external reality, the invaders, a ferocious lion – it becomes the only level we see and experience. In a sense, the strength of our reaction (the ferocity of the lion) confirms it as our reality. Yet that’s a very limited viewpoint that cuts us off from deeper levels of knowing and inner guidance.

A World of Shadows

~ d2k ~ Leave a comment

Jeane: I lost some of my dream, but it feels mostly like I was wandering around the markets and alleyways (in Egypt), looking for how something flowed. I was looking for which streets had a little more space so that goods could move down them more freely.

Then I see this scene where there’s a turnstile to exit an area, and the teacher we are traveling with comes up on the outside of the turnstile. You’re standing in front of me heading through the turnstile to leave the area, and the teacher comes up, facing you, with a grin on his face. He takes all of his American money out of his pockets and puts it in a box that’s at the turnstile, and he grins.

John: This dream is about a missing link, in terms of how something opens up. Things don’t open up just because we put our attention on a particular perspective. It can sometimes appear that things work that way, but because we’re playing in a world of shadows, it’s not a real manifestation. There’s an energetic behind it which is real, but what occurs in the outer is only reflective of that, so in some regard we’re still deceived.

Your dream portrays this situation as a question: How is it that something opens up and flows more freely? That’s the space you’re feeling. Within you, you’re able to see that something in the outer doesn’t flow when it’s caught up. For example, when you’re trying to force an outcome, then things can’t flow.

The role of a teacher is to hand things off so more and more can keep flowing. There was a woman in Germany who took people on spiritual-based journeys involving our Teacher. Later, our Teacher basically indicated that he couldn’t participate anymore, so it was handed off to her.

Well, she got caught up in the doingness of that, which really showed in her personal condition when we saw her next, so the Teacher just said she should stop doing it altogether. In other words, it can really be asking for trouble to start playing in a zone in which there’s a hiddenness piled on top of a hiddenness.

So, what’s the hiddenness in this dream? The idea that something more can happen, which is not obvious or apparent, as a result of something being released. Who releases these things? Well the Teacher would say that he’s not responsible for anything; if you find yourself in a position where you have a responsibility toward something, then something has been compromised.

So what you’re doing is you’re looking at something, but what you’re not quite seeing are the levels underneath that become possible when something has been taken on or absorbed. So it’s like you’re at a turning point, which showed as the turnstile opening up something so much more.

The changes that happen in life are the consequence of a human being being able to facilitate the things that are meant to be in Creation, i.e., to catch that drift so that something more can happen. Not the “doingness” of it, but just catching the drift. The doingness just keeps things blocked.

There are three levels beneath what your dream is showing you. You’re dealing with the first level, where something is released so that something more can open up. You’re starting to look at how magic works. That’s one of the techniques and tools of magic: for something to suddenly change and come into a different way of being, there has to be a release of something.

So what is it that’s meant, and able, to come into being? Well, if you’re really quiet with yourself you can feel it in your bones, so to speak. You don’t know the timing – it’s ancient. You just feel it in your bones. You sense it, in the present, in this slowed down space of Creation (physical life).

That doesn’t mean that it manifests here. What manifests here is the stuff that’s louder, that we put our attention upon, that we don’t know how to be calm about. That’s what manifests here. And all that tends to gobble up the moment-to-moment reality so that the other three levels can’t peek through.

You’re having a dream about something. You’re looking at a general scenario and the only hint you get of there being so much more is when you see the teacher, smiling at the turnstile, freeing himself up of burden. It’s interesting, isn’t it?

The Feeling of Nothing

~ d2k ~ Leave a comment

John: To continue the discussion from our last post, The Price of Involvement, in that dream the image conveyed the realms of Nothingness, yet with a consciousness in relationship to it. It’s an image that seemingly depicts what it might be like when we pass away, or when we’re no longer in our physical existence.

How do you take and process, or even let go of, something that you feel isn’t in an overallness, but that’s intertwined into everything that exists and yet isn’t in a state of total peace and rest?

In physical life, we all have some fractured aspect of ourselves that’s askew and scrambling, and it’s askew and scrambling because we’re not in the pure light. We’ve incarnated into some quality or characteristic and, as a consequence, that quality or characteristic is compelled to something, or toward something, for a reason that’s unbeknownst to its nature, yet that ultimately would be back toward Nothingness. In our incompleteness we have this feeling, or a need to confront this characteristic as being some peculiar, strange state or condition.

This peculiar, strange condition carries a vibration that coincides with creating images and mannerisms upon which we give outplay into the world. But, if we’re not in a physical body and all there is is the Nothingness, how do we ever come to grips with that?

So, when I woke up from this dream I noticed that inside me there was a part that was still astir as a mood, or a tone, or some quality that couldn’t completely let go, i.e., it still reached out. I felt that as a type of suffering.

About nine years ago I woke up in a state where I couldn’t feel anything. Usually when we wake up we don’t have the unconscious depths anymore, but this experience was about something else. On a higher level, it would be a place of Nothingness. On the level in which I experienced it, I was no longer carrying the usual human nature characteristics that return when we open our eyes and wake up; it’s the part of us that starts processing what we are going to do in the day.

Whether that process is good or bad is not the point, it’s just the fact that we still carry this quality in our nature that is compelled forward. Well, when I woke up I didn’t have that part of me, and I was confused because we have to have something. So I knew that when I didn’t have anything, that I was dying on some level, and that’s when I started searching to see what was killing me. It was like somebody had just turned off all of the action in my nature, and that meant that I was dying.

It had to mean that because there was no probing out towards an idea of the future or of something that I had yet to do, or be, or feel. That compelled me to find and know something within that normally wasn’t possible because we’re always biased by how we see ourselves needing to be, or how we feel compelled to be.

This state or condition is described in one of the Upanishads, but from the opposite direction. It describes that when you pass away, the part of you that’s in a Nothingness, and an emptiness, is in a place or a state that has a freedom, at least initially, so you don’t carry any heaviness and your soul is able to be in that place and appreciate it and enjoy it.

Then, something comes up as a heaviness – like a mood or a tone – or something that can’t let go, which has a weight to it, or gravity to it. So you start to fall with this weight and this gravity. The Nothingness is a state where you might have existed for 1000 years, based on your good works or the higher energies you have taken on.

So you’re in an emptiness and then, at some point, you can no longer sustain that and you start to fall. As you fall, you forget, and as you forget you come more and more into this heaviness that’s part of having to manifest (physically), and this carries you all the way back into Creation again.

So that’s how it’s described, going in the direction from Nothingness into Creation or into existence, in the Upanishads, which are the oldest scriptures in the world. What I dreamed was kind of the other way around from Creation into Nothingness.

You dreamed it, too (see Free as a Bird), where you perceived all the heavy symbolism and you had to be in the state of Nothingness. Your imagery showed the symbols of death and the symbols of life, and in between you had the emptiness and Nothingness and the question was, could you be in that Nothingness and maintain it?

What I dreamed was the total conundrum of being in a state of Nothingness and still feeling something. Because there was no way to live it, I woke up with a heavy heart. How can we move about in the outer, in the lower self of our being, yet reach toward fully appreciating and going at the speed and depth of the higher self? It’s in that territory. It’s a very strange subject.