A Quality of Self

the_bodyThey say that animals are going extinct every day. Yet, perhaps, we too could be losing aspects of ourselves that we don’t utilize, or that we bury, or deny as we carry on in life. And, sometimes, those very things could be the gifts we came here to offer as a service. In this dream image, two aspects of the dreamer are in danger of being imprisoned, and something needs to be done. But, of course, it is up to the dreamer to consciously accept and embrace these inner aspects. (At the end of this post there are instructions and a link to download this recording to your computer.)

Jeane: The other fragment I remember is it’s like there are two supervisors. They’re my supervisors, a woman and a man, and there are a couple of people that I supervise that are on probation. They must be like probation clients or something.

And these two people, two guys actually, young guys, they’ve been called to the supervisor’s office. And I kind of get word that it’s possible that at least one or both of them may have to go back to jail or something. And I’m very perplexed by this. It’s like I want to go talk to the supervisor about it, or see what I can do, because I feel like I must have done something or not done something for this to be happening, because as far as I can tell both of these young men are really innocent.

Well, find out what we can do on their behalf because I feel like they themselves haven’t done anything to warrant going back to jail, so the feeling I have is the only reason this is happening is that maybe because they were doing so well that I was negligent, and did not keep on track with what the authorities wanted, or do something that needed to be done on their behalf or this wouldn’t be happening.

Because I can’t see it happening as a result of anything they’ve done, and I don’t understand why it’s happening. And I feel like maybe the supervisor can help and one won’t go away, but maybe the other’s still going to be put away? And I’m trying to figure it out because I see them as blameless, and so I know that I must have not done something or done something, or this wouldn’t be happening.

John: Well, that’s a good shamanistic adab. In other words, the principle of a shaman, one of the main principles of a shaman, is whenever anything is placed in their path they view it as a learning curve of something, especially if it’s something that they haven’t taken into account, or it tends to tweak them to having to shift or adjust in some capacity. They take that on as a responsibility because they’re supposed to be able to hold the equanimity of the whole.

In other words, that’s the adab you’re coming from. You recognize the something more and that it wouldn’t have happened if there would have been a certain note or balance that could have been recognized. That is a wonderful attitude to have, to recognize, or adab to have, to recognize that what took place was over-the-top, out of twang, in relationship to the situation that existed there, that maybe in a deeper level space would have never happened.

And so if you see yourself as part of the whole and the overall, and you see something like that go on, you feel like you could have made the difference, in some capacity, at some depth. And, you know, that’s true. It’s very, very interesting. In other words, instead of looking and recognizing what took place is something like oh, okay, and the masculine way of looking at it would be you could sit back and you could see that.

Instead, you took the very oriented overallness vibration, and took it to heart, and indicated that this has happened because something got missed. And if something got missed, then this kind of has something to do with you. But in terms of your overallness, the fact that this happens, deep down the dream is saying that the difference is that you, as a quality of yourself, could have swept that situation and it would have been okay. You could have held the space for that situation that could have been okay.

But then taking this dream into the bigger context, it basically means that you can’t cut anything off, you know, you know how to take into account everything, so you don’t go sitting and having a nuance or attitude about this, and a nuance or attitude about that, which causes you to throw things off, which again gets to what we were talking about where it can create a sticky situation, in terms of your own well being, because you could be taking on a spell with yourself, attitudinally, that’s poisonous.

That’s why I mentioned right at the very beginning, you are accentuating what I consider the highest adab that a shaman has, and a shaman has this whenever they come across anything in their path. They recognize that as something that they have to take on. The whole series of books, the Carlos Castaneda things, are based upon the fact that Carlos Castaneda was found by Don Juan near dead in the middle of a road. And the fact that Don Juan came across Carlos Castaneda like that and took him on meant that this thing went on and on and on and on and on.

It all started from something like that. It was a responsibility that he came across, where there was something about what he fell into, or came across, that tweaked something in him, that had to do with the process, that he had fumbled on and he had to, in his overall nature, he had to recognize that this was part of him.

And so those two figures in your dream are part of you, and you can’t take and throw one away and keep the other, nor can you be in a life in which you have this kind of helter-skelterish going on because this is not how a Oneness is. It’s an interesting dream.

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A Full Embrace

life_is_beautifulWe have talked about the need to stop and be caught when in a chase dream, because we are all the characters in our dreams, and that allows a connection to be made – often by overcoming a fear or resistance in the process. Here, the resistances are much finer and much more subtle, yet they’re still present. So the gap is closing in this example, but there is still a bit more letting go required before there is a full embrace of this new connection. (At the end of this post there are instructions and a link to download this recording to your computer.)

Jeane: I just remember some fragments of dreams. In one fragment, it’s like I’ve gone up to this man’s room. We both don’t have our clothes on – and he’s someone I knew from junior high school, actually. It feels like we embrace, and then I leave because I have someone else I’m with.

And when I go down in the elevator, at first I start going down, and that’s how other people do in the elevator, they go down and up, but I seem to find an elevator that also goes sideways. And so I’m trying to figure out how that works and get down.

And then I think at some point I do find my partner again.

John: I would have been confused if that elevator would have went up or down. Sideways makes the dream make sense.

So, what you’re doing is you’re not allowing yourself to be properly soothed. And the reason why you’re not allowing yourself to be properly soothed is you have some mannerism, or attitude, that’s really latent in your nature, that is causing some sort of rejection.

And, as a consequence of this, you find yourself continuously trying to cause something to be a particular way, and because you’re trying to cause something to be a particular way you keep repeating the pattern over and over and over and over again. And the pattern is as if something isn’t happening in your life that you’re entitled to.

In other words, somehow or another you see that everybody else has something such and such and so and so. Once you get off on this motif it never ends, even if it was a little more this way or a little more that way it would always never be quite right. It would always be something that you still are missing, or entitled to. And so you look at that and what you have to do is you have to take that and you have to turn that to where that is really aiming, and where that’s really aiming is to that proper embrace with yourself, that is that note that gives you everything – and that comes from within.

And so the most positive way this dream would have come out, would have been if you would have been able to accept the embrace, because that embrace is the full acceptance of that note, and that quality. But, by going sideways, you’re continuing to repeat the pattern over and over and over again, because there’s something that just isn’t quite coming through together, in terms of what and how it is that you perceive a need to be. And the problem is that the need has to do with a certain kind of perspective that you’re not getting to the depth of.

And so it has this outer twang as opposed to this inner essence. And it’s the inner essence behind this that’s driving it. In other words, the inner essence keeps trying to come through, and then that causes these outward reflections that go on and on and on and on, but behind that the really positive thing behind that is the inner essence.

Can you get to the point where you actually accept the total, complete, and full embrace? Without any preconceptions, or whatever, you accept the full embrace. Because what you’re embracing is yourself. You’re embracing the essence of yourself. And instead, when it is treated as if something is errant in some capacity, when there’s always something that is errant in some capacity, that fact that that’s errant means that you are not accepting something in terms of a wholeness.

You could even take the whole thing that happened in the dream group last night, and you’d say this was your answer to it. It’s a good answer. That’s a healing answer. There was a lack of being able to accept something, and then there was a tangential deal. Your dream had the answer to it.

The answer to it is, to keep from going sideways, you have to accept the embrace, and you have to accept the embrace from a space inside that is a depth that kind of keeps everything fine.

To download this file, Right Click (for PCs) or Control Click (for Macs) and Save: A Full Embrace

Falling Away

free-fallingOne of the most valuable processes in personal development is to update our views or feelings about things. Many of our strongly held ideas or beliefs come from an earlier time in our lives, established when our situation may have been very different. So it is useful, when we gain an awareness of something that nags at our attention, to revisit what it is and the reasons why we feel it is important to our life. Are those reasons still valid? Sometimes they may be, but other times we will realize that we no longer need to hold onto them and can let them go. (At the end of this post there are instructions and a link to download this recording to your computer.)

John: In this dream I have a vague memory that today is a test day, perhaps for a number of classes, I just don’t remember anymore, that I may be taking at this local university campus. I should be remembering that, however I’m not quite remembering it because there’s this bicycle that I have, that I’ve been holding on to, which I keep because it has a value that’s associated with something in terms of the past, with something that involves something in my past.

It was something that I feel that I have a responsibility over and haven’t really looked at it that closely. In other words, this bicycle is associated with my brother. So today is a day in which that is commanding my attention, and so everything else kind of fades away. I have a value. This bicycle that I hadn’t been really looking at or paying attention to until today, I’d been carrying it inside of me as having a value, a particular value, that I have to maintain and support. It’s a conceptual value.

Today I decide to ride it for the first time in a long time. In other words, in making this decision it shifts into any idea of a test I might be needing to take because I forget all about that. And because it’s like that, it’s as if the bike is the test.

So I ride it to begin with in a direction away from the campus, take a left turn kind of in town where there’s a lot of traffic, and then come back towards the campus along the scenic route instead of the usual route to and fro the campus.

When I come back the scenic route it takes me to the back of the campus is what it does but in doing this whole riding with this bike and going about with this bike, I have to contend with it more directly. In other words, it’s like it’s waking me up from a trance. And it’s not what I had imagined, or seen, or been maintaining for all these years. For example, the key breaks. I’m not sure quite how I needed the key, but I have to keep the key for this bike. The key breaks and I’m having a hard time holding onto it as a result because it’s not in its usual way. It’s sitting separate and I have to hold onto it carefully. And something else even pops loose from the bike and I kind of flinch over that not knowing, okay, what’s that all about?

I slowly realize this bike is not what I have been imagining all these years so, like I say, I arrive at the back campus. I go through the back doors which I close carefully because I don’t want to disturb others who are in the main campus. These are double doors that I’m closing and they just have a little thing that clicks or hits, but if the wind’s blowing it won’t hold them. So there’s a woman that’s standing there holding them shut so that this back area doesn’t disturb the front area, and in the back area is where the testing is going on.

But before I can get my bearings again in this back area, in other words, where the testing’s going on, I need to do something about the bike. And so I need to take the bike that I’ve now crumpled up as if it’s junk, and throw it away in a corridor bathroom. It sounds bizarre doesn’t it?

The meaning is, holding on to that which does nothing for me is fraught with misconceptions in terms of myself and others. This causes me to be blind to what is unfolding in life. Placing value where it is inappropriate causes confusion to predominate. To do this is to lose one’s way in life and the thread I am meant to follow to arrive in an intended realization.

I have spent so much time tangentially reflecting upon the outer that when I look at what is going on more closely those images crumple up. The access key is broken. This means I am not confronting that which is meaningful or real, or maybe I am because they crumple up and I throw them away and I go, which means that something more real is coming into an awareness.

What is happening is that, like it or not, things are falling away. They’re being replaced by something else that’s a center of awareness, that is real and touches the heart. The other affects the heart, leaves one kind of twisted and misaligned.

So as I look around, I notice that I am having more and more trouble holding the outer orientation, that had been important for me, together. My attention is being drawn to inner dynamics that affect the outer. I am not able to dependently dwell upon the outer reflections like I used to. It is like losing one’s mind and memory when the attachments and the mental gymnastics that hold onto the attachments fall away.

To download this file, Right Click (for PCs) or Control Click (for Macs) and Save: Falling Away