We have all been trained, from our earliest moments in life, to believe that the answers to everything are found outside of us – in the physical world. But how can we find answers in a world that is constantly shifting and changing? That is why, in our journey, we come to understand that the only hope, and safety, is in aligning ourselves to the things that don’t change. This includes the understanding of how the human is designed to become a part of the greater unfolding, which was here before we were born and will be here long after we are gone. Our purpose inside of the greater unfolding is our gateway to what really matters. (At the end of this post there are instructions and a link to download this recording to your computer.)
John: So, to start off, in the meditation dream, there is a slope that is too steep to walk up, that a person is on. In other words, he’s on this slope. You can’t see the top, and you can’t see the bottom, and this person is steadily sliding backwards down the slope.
And it’s like the slope is comprised of layer after layer; and you can see these layers going across, layer after layer. It’s like a gravel, only the gravel is chocolate, little chocolate pieces. And so he’s sliding down this chocolate, a never-ending chocolate slope.
So an announcer tells me about this guy, and what I hear about this guy’s mannerism and approach, or however he’s been, it doesn’t generate any sympathy in me for his condition. Here he is, going haywire.
From what I am told he’s kind of a bad guy, guilty, and in need of having to face consequences for his actions. Slowly I come to know that he is not as responsible as appearances might suggest, that he was purposefully set up. In other words, this guy who was sliding steadily down a slope of layer after layer of dark chocolate gravel candy, each layer a slightly different color, is a victim of a larger plot.
That causes me to change my assessment. This person is a creature of habit, which was perpetrated upon him by forces outside of his predilection. As I watched this person sliding, down, down, down, and I have no idea what down is because I don’t see the bottom at any point, totally unable to make any headway on this slope, I notice that he is grabbing a piece of candy, or chocolate, from each layer as he is sliding through it – and he’s eating it.
Suddenly I get it. This guy is hoping to catch up with his indulgence, and habituation, by ingesting the perpetrator’s sweet suffering. In other words, somewhere in all of this is the perpetrator’s candy. Because he doesn’t know where this is coming from, and who is the primary perpetrator, he eats a little from each level or layer of sweet affliction, hoping that one of them will cause him to be suddenly removed, or will find some sort of relief, from the victimizer.
Anyway, that’s what he seems to direly seek, as a kind of hope; and it’s a blind hope. I mean it’s not like he’s fearful or anything. It’s like this has got to work for him. And so, as I’m looking at this from on high, I am realizing that from my perspective this is like a false hope in which he is trying to extricate himself somehow from this sweet, perpetual, sliding scale punishment.
For some reason, because I realize that he isn’t quite like the announcer that said he was such a bad guy or whatever, and that I had no sympathy for, suddenly my sympathy goes out to him because I realize he hasn’t got a chance. He’s in a setup. Even if he comes to know the perpetrator, and the crime, from what I am seeing as the setup that isn’t going to stop him sliding backwards. Or it’s not going to change the setup.
The slippery slope is still the slippery slope. He is still in a perpetual slide, with no end in sight. That is when I realize, as I look down first in judgment and then in a merciful way, that a grace is needed to save him. There is nothing he can do to save himself. His condition is but a setup. The setup, per se, goes beyond anything he has done. Yes, he is guilty of an ignorance and, yes, maybe he might even get a glimpse of the crime and the punishmentor who metes out the punishment, but so what? What does that change? Nothing, as far as I can see.
He remains on the slippery slope that goes nowhere for him, except as a continuous sliding, adrift, with the only hope he has being but a false hope. From my perspective it’s a false hope. He doesn’t necessarily recognize it as a false hope. You know, he acts like something can change. So I feel for his plight. I can see that his setup, from where I’m at, can’t go anywhere.
The meaning is, this image is saying that my condition is hopeless, that hope is of no avail, that whatever I do to try to make amends is a waste of time. I’m up on a slippery slope of endless sweet sufferings, I’m unable to change my condition by imbibing from what is placed before me. What I reach to take in is all set against me, based upon a bigger picture equation.
I’m falling and falling, and there’s no hope in sight – no matter what I take from the appearances around me. Nothing is there, or in sight, to rectify the condition I am in. And so, is there a realization? Mercy is the only prayer, or possibility, because I see nothing as a hope on the horizon.
Everything that one could reach to is a foolishness, and a grasping at what looks like a never-ending quality of despair. Pretending that the despair has a maker, and an end result to be at peace, is quite the imagination for this poor guy. From where I am standing, I can’t see how it is possible for that in the full analysis of the situation. In other words, where anything can change.
The guy’s false hope conceptions cause him to grasp at straws, so to speak, because that is all he has got; in other words, eating this candy as he’s going down, as if somehow that’ll put him into an awareness of whatever it is he needs to know.
And from the big picture perspective, what I see is that the scenario is just an absurd, ridiculous, false hope disaster that knows no end. There is nothing to do, or try, which will change the storyline. The suffering that exists is more than I know. I don’t even know the perpetrator, and, even if I did, even that makes no difference.
My imagination keeps my false hope alive because, if this were also taken away, the despair might be unbearable. From the position on high, looking down on such hopelessness, the only thing I can see that pretends to lessen the burden that knows no end is can I, as I slide, obliviously, make a difference for the sake of something else?
As a guess, the only thing I appear to have is my plight. Is there a way of offering this up as a letting go? I guess that’s of one’s doing, then they’re going through all of the states that you go through as you’re going through this, this, this, this as a kind of reconciliation. If I can’t do that, and keep trying this or that, there is nothing that is obvious that is an answer or solution. I am out of chance. I only have fate, and my fate is dire, in an endless lack of capacity way. That’s the wild meditation dream.
To download this file, Right Click (for PCs) or Control Click (for Macs) and Save: The Slippery Slope
