Saturday, December 23, 2006

Dreaming that She is You.

I have the most intense dreams. Sometimes they are as real as if I were right there like I am right here. Last night I changed into a young woman; late teens, early twenties... pretty, which I was aware of but not as much as I might have expected; not that I had much of an idea of what to expect. There wasn’t anything sexual about the dream. Inversely I was also attracted to the women in the environment more than the men but, as I said, there wasn’t anything sexual about the dream.

I was living in London in a community where people came and went. Suddenly I/she was in it and Apollonius, the mask layer of Les, the mask layer of the observer was gone. I was briefly touched when people asked about him but I couldn’t tell them anything. The biggest difference was in the way people looked at me. I had an instinctive wariness that was similar to something I have had most of my life. I realized it was this female thing I had either always had or developed as a result of the fighting arts and kundalini experiences.

A woman and her boyfriend came to the door of the restaurant that was a part of the community I lived in and I was talking to them about what we were like. The woman was one of those big horsy English ladies and she wanted to go somewhere else. It was as they were leaving that I noticed that it was because of me. She was threatened by my elfin appearance, even though her boyfriend was just hungry and hadn’t taken any particular exception to my appearance. There were a lot of little nuances of this sort. The most interesting feature was that being female wasn’t exactly the way you picture it if you are a man. There’s a non-sexual aspect to the whole thing that seems to transmit itself in a sexual seeming way that isn’t exactly that. It’s more like the difference between magnetism and electricity.

When I got up this morning I felt this sense of intense well being. I have to say that that is often the case. Still, this morning it was larger than usual and, as usual, was encompassed by this female energy that is a lot like waking up in bed with your mother when you are still in pre-pubescent status; the sensation follows me out of the bedroom and into my study where I sit each morning with my tea and tobacco and have my morning conversation with God. For me God is a mother and ever more so as time passes. It’s an interesting period of time. We talk and she tells me things and sometimes I will make these deep noises in my throat that vibrate in my ribcage and have something to do with harmonizing me with the levels beneath the phenomenal world.

Early in the 20th Century the cosmic clock moved into the sign of Aquarius. There is a lot of complexity in this and it needn’t be addressed here. One of the larger changes that this sign brings is the feminization of the masculine. You see it in the emergence of Goddess worship and the Gaia principle and you see it in the wider proliferation of bi-sexuality and gay lifestyle. It is essentially geared toward the intuitive nature. However, in the material world it can take on all sorts of expressions. On the grosser level, materialism is one of the perversions of the feminine. It’s funny that the impetus for comfort is civilization’s reaction to pain. Well, it isn’t funny. It creates pain aplenty of its own and worse, it creates despair and existential emptiness.

I find religions to be a great curiosity. You learn a lot about people by watching the way they dress the unknown. Most of the time it seems as if they are making a larger version of themselves, complete with all of the fears and prejudices that they possess in the smaller version. They are certain that God will smite their enemies and that God knows who that is and that the heathen are going to Hell. Another curiosity is that God is up in the sky somewhere. That doesn’t make a lot of sense if you are a metaphysician or a mystic but if you’re in the usual dualized (my word) confusion it makes a kind of unfortunate sense to see God as something you are not and never will be; even if both areas of physics tell you that the thing is a whole. Well, the child and the mother appear to be separate things but they’re not. It’s the way things look as opposed to the way things are that screw us up.

People talk about going to Heaven and seeing their loved ones who have passed on. No one is going Heaven who isn’t already there. The time to get to Heaven is while you are still in this body. Of course, depending on how you handle things here, Heaven might come looking for you or it might not. It depends on whether you are looking for it. A lot of people think that Heaven is something like Las Vegas and that is the appeal of Las Vegas. Or it could be L.A. or a lot of other places. Heaven is a land of impersonality. The ticket in is something you leave, not something you bring. The loss of this thing is the automatic keyed entry.

Just about everyone has a domestic argument going on in their head. Their mother and father are having a fight at the dinner table in their mind or in the living room while they lie in bed reaching for sleep. Regardless of what you understand about that limited perversion called psychology, or about anything regarding the seeming dual nature of things, there is only one objective and that is to bring your parents together in your mind and heart and make them one. Indeed, it is about the heart swallowing the mind. It’s called the Alchemical Marriage. It’s the objective of Tantra. It’s what Christ meant about grooms and bridegrooms. It’s union really. It’s more than coincidental that the letters for the words, 'unity', 'love' and 'death' in a certain mystical science all add to 13; but another time for that.

If you go looking for connections (and I suggest that you do) you find that two poles always create a third that postulates another and on and on. Whatever you were disappears by degrees as you follow along, no matter which direction you go in. It all comes back to the same place. Outward toward the light and noise or inward toward the quiet and the light; they touch. The jury is out on which one hurts more. And most of us need for the jury to be out in the hope that going out actually will prove to have been smarter. Well, your mother has to let you go. She knows what’s waiting out there but you don’t. It’s that love that allows for all that you have to suffer that lets you go because she also knows that you can’t miss finding her no matter how lost you get or how long it takes to find her again. It's not like you can't find her at any point along the way.

In materialism, which is very pronounced at this time, she can be turned into a dark goddess with a bloody aspect. We all heard when we were young how certain things were for our own good. It’s a hard irony to learn that the creator and the destroyer are one.

Every Christmas it happens to me. Sometimes it comes late and sometimes it comes early. I never bother with presents or cards. A fine table and the human joy of company does me and mine better than any trifle could. We prefer to give ‘presence’ instead. All year long we can do for one another and hopefully for those who cross our paths as well. But every Christmas the day comes when I wake up feeling too good to define and this joy just starts to wash over everything and I know it is because I feel gratitude and gratitude is the highest form of giving.

Gratitude is recognition of the inexplicable gift and automatically causes you to give yourself away. Nothing more is needed and it is the key to Heaven as well. Opening the door to Heaven is not about walking into anything but about having Heaven flow through the door into you and beyond. Yes... and that just results in more gratitude and more gratitude exponentially... just so.

The shoving desperation in the aisles and the clamoring for attention... the demands and insistence upon service and a speedy exit; the terrible violence of the marketplace rape of the uninformed heart... well... to each their own. You wrap the plastic and shiny things in colored paper and you say, “This is for you. It’s because I didn’t know how to give you myself.”

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

A Wine Maker's Primer to Heaven on Earth.

You don't have to live where everyone else lives, even if you live in the same town. Even everyone else doesn't live in the same place exactly. It's all changed by degrees according to how they see it. But you could live in Heaven on Earth if you wanted to and people could visit you there; if they could recognize the place, if they might be comfortable to be there. Heaven doesn't begin somewhere up in the sky. Heaven begins where your soles meets the pressed dust of the Earth.

We move through this world or seem to move through this world, even though we are moving through our mind's idea of this world inside our minds while projecting it outward; you get the idea, if not the immediate reality of it.

Perhaps you have seen trees shaped by the wind. Surely you have seen rock cliffs shaped by water and wind. You have seen smooth rocks in stream beds and you have walked on paths formed by the impact of human feet. These paths might have been first formed by animals in some places. You have seen the sand shaped by the wind. Certainly you have noticed ocean currents and wind on water. The sun is responsible for many things. It may have a remarkable effect on the wind. What all this tells you is that things can be shaped; even very hard and tough appearing things can be formed into light and elegant shapes. Sound can move through these things and make music.

The mind is very plastic and so are the things that come out of it and everything comes out of it. Everything can be and is shaped over time. We are shaped according to wind and water and the sun. If we think of our spirit as the sun and the wind as our mind and the water as our emotions we can see that these things shape what we appear to be and we can see and hear if music comes out of the thing that we have been shaped into.

There is something about the process of wine making that has a great deal to do with humanity. Our grapes are affected by experience and environment and pressed by them too. The quality of the wine is determined by our reactions to these things. A fine wine is what it is because it is rare by comparison with other wine. Ordinary wine is common and vinegar can be had for pennies. Ironically there are fine vinegars as well. The finest of vinegars rival the finest of wines in cost. They are also rare and take the same amount of attention and care. It's something to think about. Then again, in the human spectrum it may well be something you don't 'think' about. Since masters are involved in the making of fine wines and vinegars it could well be assumed that the same is true of humans.

We become what we aspire to. Plants reach for the sun. Some of us reach for the sun too after a different fashion. Many more people bathe in it for a change in color or pursue it as an environment for easy living. Perhaps they have mistaken the purpose of the sun or perhaps the sun is multi purpose. Probably the reason so many of us are unhappy is due to what we aspire to. Why would we aspire to anything less than our highest possibility? We're afraid we won't get our piece of the action. Well, that's not enough is it? Many of us want more than our piece of action. Often our piece of action only has value by comparison with those who have less.

The same way that the sun can shine forth from a clear blue sky, this same sun can be obscured by clouds. Our minds can be clear or cloudy. The wind clears the air and sometimes the wind spreads dust. These are all simple details of observation but they have profound implications. Sound is transmitted through the air. All sounds are forms of information. In this world there are many forms of information clamoring for attention. They have their reasons, whether they are the result of one individual or a group of individuals. You can figure that out.

Messages appear and are geared to direct our attention to certain things. It could be the announcement of a new car; a war abroad, a religious movement, a cry for help, a shout of joy, someone weeping or someone laughing, a collective indistinguishable chatter of many voices in market places or concert areas. You can well imagine any of this. Some of the messages are designed to influence the way you think about what you see and hear and some of them are directed at the mind or the emotions or the body. Some are personal and some are not.

There are other messages that are not so loud and it is quite possible that they cannot be heard due to the greater noise of the other messages. Let us imagine that there is a single message that comes from the sun and that all of the other messages serve to create the environment that occurs between the sun and yourself. Let us imagine that this sun shines both outside and within you and that the messages create weather both inside and outside of you.

You can imagine that there is weather created for the sole purpose of distracting you from what the sun might be saying. Then there are messages that are designed to interpret what the sun is saying but are not actually what the sun is saying. Sometimes a new car is not just a new car. It might be a new political system, or religious system or something that doesn't seem to be about a new car to begin with but which deposits you in a showroom full of cars by virtue of some strange magic. You could imagine that this could happen. You might have even had it happen to you.

Many messages are designed with the implication that they will bring you close to the sun and the warmth of the sun and yet leave you in another place entirely and you can't figure out how that happened. Many people become discouraged about this sort of an event and blame it on the sun. It could be that this actually is the real purpose of the message.

Have you ever been in a funhouse where there are warped mirrors that change your appearance? Mirrors are very interesting. If you set a mirror outside, after awhile it will become covered with dust so that you cannot see into it. Dust is a naturally occurring thing. Sometimes the spread of dust is greatly assisted by the messages on the wind which are a form of dust and which write themselves upon the mirror in layers over one another so that you cannot see yourself at all. Then you might even forget who you are and there will be messages that will explain this to you for whatever reasons there may be.

There are ways to polish the mirror and there is the consideration that even the sun might have something to do with some of the dust that appears on the mirror. Sometimes the weather that appears between the sun and yourself may be mistaken for the sun and have the effect of making you angry or frightened because it is not the sun, even though the sun is shining behind it.

Sun and rain have a lot to do with making wine and vinegar, even if the rain is only a result of the action of the sun. You would have to decide whether it was worth it to make the wine and how important it might be that the wine was of a particular quality. It depends on what you think of the guests who visit you on the street where you live that is actually here or in Heaven or somewhere. It depends on what you think of yourself and the sun.

Heaven is possible where you touch the pressed dust of the Earth. Many things and places begin there. It really comes down to where you want to live based on what you aspire to. Meanwhile, some kind of wine is being made no matter what.