Being Too Forward

October 10, 2014October 10, 2014 ~ d2k ~ Leave a comment

Because of the way we learn and are educated in the cultural system, it is common for us to believe that we are in charge of things, or that we control and guide our lives. And, of course, in many practical ways, we do. But not in the greater scheme of things. Figuring out how to surrender ourselves to what “it” wants from us is one of the most subtle aspects of a spiritual journey, but an issue that we must, eventually, sort out. (At the end of this post there are instructions and a link to download this recording to your computer.)

John: In the meditation dream I’m kind of like bantering, from a distance, at what the real issue is because I am aware that there’s a stable energy within, but the images that I’m confronted with kind of keep it at bay.

So I see myself as simply a person who is around others that do practices that tend to keep the average person from flipping out. Which means I have my indulgences that, in a roundabout way, slow things down.

And because I see myself as taking a feeling that is thrust upon me, that creates a concern, whether I like it or not, that I just have to surrender to the fact that if there is the stable energy that I sense, that I will catch up with it in the end.

The concern is whether or not I am affected by outer conditions such that there is an image of myself unable to let go because of the way of the physical senses. What I am describing is a format in which I am able to use an inner access to go within and access an energetic I can essentially immerse myself in, or bathe in. for inner strength; a strength that lies dormant behind all that exists. I have learned to not underestimate it because this is an energetic that may seem predictable and readily understandable, but I can’t be making that as an assumption or I will get stigmatized from reaching within to something more meaningful.

So that’s the first part of it. And in the second part of the meditation dream – which isn’t that esoteric in the way of describing it – I have an image of being up front in a hall where there is kind of a program going on.

In other words, by upfront means that you have people that have come and are sitting in seats, and I have been up front in the front of this hall, not sitting in the seat but just sitting up in front in between where the seats start and go back and where the stage is at.

And now, as time has progressed, people have come, they filled in the seats, and suddenly I realize that where I’m at isn’t comfortable. I don’t have a proper chair, just maybe a cushion that I can find, and that I’m rather forward and perhaps even presumptuous to just think I can stay there.

And it’s at that moment that I realize that there’s no seat around. When I went there, there were plenty of seats but now, all of a sudden, there’s no seat around. And so I wake up with the trepidation-feeling, acting like I don’t know what to do.

Do I go to the back or something? I can’t stand the feeling of suddenly finding myself in such an unnatural condition. Suddenly it’s become unnatural. I mean, to start off with there was nothing going on.

So the meaning of the dream is, the way I’m trying to position myself, whether naturally or otherwise, is the subject of this dream image. And, of course, the prior you could say had a little of this effect upon it, too, because I couldn’t seem to find that which I knew was latent and latently solid.

I seem to be seeing myself as trying to cope with a particular energetic condition which is: I am up front and in a forwardness which is awkward and unnatural. Because it’s not my place, my skin even kind of crawls – vibrationally speaking.

How do I let go without flipping out or experiencing a letdown? I am at a loss because I do not know what is missing. All I know is what isn’t present, just like in the first dream I knew that that energetic that’s important isn’t present. I know that it’s to be found, it’s there, but it’s not present – and that’s the case here.

To download this file, Right Click (for PCs) or Control Click (for Macs) and Save: Being Too Forward

A Transitional State

August 22, 2014August 22, 2014 ~ d2k ~ Leave a comment

What is not always talked about in spiritual development is the way a person can begin to feel like a stranger in the world around them. It’s a natural part of the process of deepening our inner connections, yet it’s also a challenge for us to continue to let go of those external attachments – to ultimately make the transition complete. In this way, development is a continuous action of choosing the deeper path rather than the shallower path of external life. (At the end of this post there are instructions and a link to download this recording to your computer.)

John: In my dream, I kind of have to report on what it’s like to have to be strained with kind of a focus and attention upon an innerness that one knows is important and that, until it comes through, it’s almost as if that is at the expense of an outward understanding.

Because it’s as if I’ve gotten the inkling that that is what is real so, as a result, the outer things that one would normally do and think nothing of it is no longer possible because I have come to know that it goes nowhere.

It’s not that I judge it. In fact, I find it kind of interesting as a flow, and find it interesting how the collective seems to be quite fine with all of that, but it doesn’t reach into the beyond of the beyond and, as a result, I’m somewhat estranged from it.

In my dream, I have gone back to a gathering of high school friends, and these are all guys that I’ve gone back to see, and they’re all grown up and accomplished in whatever it is that they do in the world.

And it’s as if we are getting together in a place which has a setting that’s able to be casual enough so that we can all just go about being who we are, and portraying our individual interests to each other. And what is amazing is, each of these interests, because they’re all outer interests, there’s a cohesion or a collective flow that comes together.

I’m impressed and pleased to see how easy going these guys are able to be in relationship to each other, because what they have in common is this outer linkage or, in other words, a linkage to the reflective. But I don’t have that, and so I’m feeling off, or out of place, not able to fit in.

But they don’t see life like that, that there’s something else going on in me that’s different. They see everything in an outer context, so they just accept me. They don’t see my problem. And I like what I see in terms of them and how they seem to flow nicely with each other. But I can tell, at least in terms of looking at myself – because I’m looking at something of the innerness instead of just the outerness – I can tell that I stand out because I am identifying with this innerness. Or at least am trying to.

And my identification with that has me listening within and, therefore, I am estranged energetically from them. I have lost a freedom in the outer that they still have. I am stiffer in that regard. I look and carry myself as if I have a responsibility that they do not have to relate to. I cannot help but notice that there are many things they each can casually do individually and collectively that I seem to struggle with.

The separation I carry is because I find what they are doing naturally to be awkward for me, and it’s become awkward for me because of the indulgence of my attention is somewhere else.

So the meaning is that at first glance these others, who represent the collective outer, I look at them as the way to be, or something, that there appears to be something wrong with me. And that gets accentuated as possibly so because I can’t help but note that I come across, at least in my own eyes, I mean they accept me because they don’t see this other part, but I come across in my own eyes as being too serious by comparison and not able to free flow, or casually relate, to the outer aspects in life like they do.

They collectively fit in with the physical world. This is what they know so there is no confusion for them. Each is putting forth, in a casual way, the appearance in the outer that best portrays who they are, and what they do, and that then all fits in a collective way.

It’s kind of like how it is when you go back to a class reunion or a reunion of some sort. Each person, they don’t go around complaining about how bad life has been to them, they all try to put their best foot forward. They give each other permission to all put their best foot forward; they don’t complain a lot.

It’s kind of like an ego thing a little bit but, in relationship to that, I stand out because I don’t have a best foot to put forward. I do not identify with life in this manner. I see myself as being separate from them in a way they aren’t able to perceive, and so I can’t even explain that to them. Although they know that I’m somehow in the outer so they accept me as I am, but only to a degree of how they see things in the outer on an appearance with myself; I’m trying to relate to something else.

They’re each going about doing what they do best and integrating in a collective lull. And I am touched. I’m impressed, even, by the fact that there is something sweet about that free flow. It just isn’t for me. I can’t help myself not being like that.

Even though they look at me and are ready to accept me in an outer way, I am not able to reciprocate because my attention seems to hearken to something that is another kind of pressure, or inner responsibility. They can’t see that, and where they are at collectively I must leave alone because that is for them.

In other words, I can’t tell them, I can’t explain the gap, I’m just at a point where my focus is upon an inner attention that has caused me to see myself as estranged in a world that relates only to outer appearances and mannerisms.

I’m no longer able to be temporal. I therefore lack the outer understanding which, for them, is meaningful. In that regard, I’m a bit helpless. I am distinguished from them in that I carry an inner responsibility, which affects me from within, and invokes a responsibility I am still seeking to reach.

It’s not like I’ve reached it and so, in that regard, part of the awkwardness is my bewilderment. In other words, for as long as this remains more than I’m able to access I remain a bit tense and stiff.

If I were able to live the inner aliveness, as a oneness, I would be able to fit in with the collective reflections as well of my high school cronies. I haven’t gotten there yet because I’m still trying to get there, still trying to attune to it, so I’m bewildered between this and that.

So I haven’t gotten there yet, in terms of being at home with the inner aliveness, so there is an imbalance that causes me to see myself as being out of touch in terms of everyone and everything in the outer.

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

Everything Intertwined

February 20, 2013 ~ d2k ~ Leave a comment

In this second dream, Ann describes a scene where she is working with others, yet she takes a short foray off by herself. In dream analysis, this can be viewed as being in the Wholeness of things, or being separate. But her separation doesn’t last long, and she rejoins the whole. This points to the idea that she isn’t letting her ego identity – her separateness – steer her away from the way things really are. (For the prior dream, see Pulling From the Depths.) (At the end of this post there are instructions and a link to download this recording to your computer.)

Ann: I’m in this big, big, mansion of some kind, and there are different woods. I notice all these different woods, and they’re very ornate, nicely decorated. And there are several of us, and we have come together to work on some kind of a project.

And there are some different people kind of milling around, and we’re kind of wandering through this, you know great big place, and I decide I need to go back to my room. So I go back into this room and this great big beautiful room, and I think, oh, I have to go use the toilet.

And then I realize, oh, the toilet wasn’t there, and that it had been moved someplace. And I thought, oh well, and so I go back to this big part of this house and I’m wandering around, and all of us then know we’re working on this project together, so we all go downstairs into this huge, huge room, and we all sit down in a circle at this very large round table.

Each person had something to contribute. They had all brought something they had to contribute to this big whole project that we were working on, almost like there was this puzzle and we had to figure things out. And one of the people there, he had a big glass vial that was full of all of this liquid, and so we all kind of took that and we passed it around and looked at that.

And then I had a huge big sheet of paper that had all of this writing on it, so we had to pass that around, and there were all of these little kind of things that people had. And then somebody else at the table had these pieces of an alphabet, and so we had to pass these alphabetical figures around and look at it, and we were passing them all in a clockwise direction.

Then this teacher walked into the room, and she kind of stood in front of us, and she looked around and she complemented a couple of the ladies that were there on their dresses that they were wearing, and how nice they looked.

And then she started to tell us what the project was, and she said, everything that everybody brought in, it all fits together, and she said, but the key of everything fitting together is the big vial of liquid.

And then that’s all I kind of remember.

John: So the key to understanding the dream is to look at the little slight deviation that’s the opposite, and in the opposite, even though you’re in this big mansion with all of these people, you go to your own room, to try to go to your own toilet, and you can’t find it.

That’s your personal prerogative. You can’t find your personal prerogative, but you can find the intertwining.

Ann: Oh isn’t that interesting.

John: I saw that right away, but then you almost used that word at the end – that it all comes together, and it’s all a part, and the teacher is explaining all of that. But I saw all of that just by all of the different pieces: you were passing them around, you’re all looking at them, everyone was looking at these things, and they were all seeing something in relationship to something, in other words, an aspect of themselves.

It was all an intertwining, a Wholeness. You were drawn back to that. You couldn’t go to your room, you couldn’t find your own toilet. No, you were drawn back to the action of the Whole.

Ann: Oh gosh, that was a good dream, too.

John: Oh yeah, it was a great dream. You notice again no shadow or anything like that in there.

I mean you would have had a shadow in there if you would have had to try to make it work in your own room somehow, you know, and if you would have had to fight for the toilet or something, or you would have had to retreat because something was haunting you. And so you were back in there hiding in your own room where your toilet was.

It was effortless. I thought it was great that the toilet couldn’t be found. I mean, how black-and-white can you get?

Ann: Yes because normally you would be going, oh my goodness, I have to find it.

John: Oh yeah, you would have had some sort of war zone going on there, having to find this toilet.

I almost was going to comment on your telling this dream that it would be nice if I could do more of this, because I have a habit of having to try to kind of figure things out, so I’m apt to get caught in the mystery of, there’s some deep imbedded meaning of something trying to come through that has to happen as a consequence of this toilet, which is still raw energy a little bit in the muckety-muck of things.

So that would be my tendency. Instead of just wump, right straight into the overall, maintain the overall, maintain the Whole, recognize how everything is connected – which you did effortlessly.

In other words, I would have been still trying to bring something through, as if there was a validity behind this toilet.

Ann: Trying to search around for it, look under the bed, and see if it… yeah.

John: I wouldn’t have been doing that so much, as I would have had to contemplate the toilet as having some sort of significance in terms of the Whole. For me it would be bringing in some element of importance, and that would be a raw energy that would have to be tamed and codified and normalized in the overall. That would be the masculine way of doing it.

The feminine way is she maintains the overall, she’s in charge of everything in creation, she’s intertwined with everything in creation, she doesn’t have the role of having to bring in the nuances.

So if I were to flip your dream a little bit to give it a masculine slant it would go something like that. In other words, if you were to tell your husband, he’d say, something is wrong here, you lost your toilet. In other words, this toilet is important for something or other. He wouldn’t know why it’s important, but to him it’s important.

You have got to have a toilet. Or he would be inclined to say, sounds like it’s pretty confusing out there with all of this, that, and the other. I would have stayed in the room. I think you were beating yourself up to go out there in all of that commotion, this, that and the other. It sounds pretty strange to me.

Or he might have said I would not have worried about the toilet, I would have been looking for my own TV in the room.

In other words, you can see how you slide that to the masculine. Now there’s a certain obtuseness to it. But on a higher note, that is the way a seed thought is brought through, too. The thing gets incorporated into the overall.

You’re just working with the overall there, the essence of everything in manifestation, and recognizing how it’s intertwined.

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