An Open Letter to an Availability Problem

On By Donny Lee DukeIn collective consciousness, Out of Body Experience, precognitive dreams, scientific materialism, seer poetryLeave a comment
Bigelow Aerospace President Robert Bigelow talks during a press conference shortly after he and NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver toured the Bigelow Aerospace facilities on Friday, Feb. 4, 2011, in Las Vegas. NASA has been discussing potential partnership opportunities with Bigelow for its inflatable habitat technologies as part of NASA’s goal to develop innovative technologies to ensure that the U.S. remains competitive in future space endeavors. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Mr. Bigelow,

I’m writing in regards to your essay contest, advertised in the New York Times and other headline media outlets, where you hope to find someone that can prove by an evidenced based argument that there is life after death. If I understand it correctly, it’s not exactly to prove, at least not in terms of the scientific method, but present the case in such a way that, at the end of the essay, the thesis will be proved ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’, meaning most sane and reasonable people would be swayed by the presentation, assuming the person isn’t lying or exaggerating, why, I’d imagine, you require those submitting to be approved beforehand and want them to have some years affiliated with a credible research organization or institution, preferably scientists, according to the NY Times article. You’re vetting your submitters. Someone from the general public without such affiliation, someone coming from the grassroots I might say, need not apply.

I am someone from the latter category, a grassroots person, but I have an essay that would not only prove beyond a reasonable doubt that death is, at the very least, a journey to somewhere, but also that time travel is possible, only here not in a machine, in consciousness. The essay ends with an example of inner body time travel, where, in a journey out of the body, I found myself inside my grandfather’s body as he died two weeks before he did, and the cause of death and location of death, everything he was doing when he died, matched what I’d experienced inside him two weeks before, and I’d told no one of it until after I’d heard he died.

The essay details the inner experiences with lucid dream that led up to the inner body time travel, years of conscious inner exploration, including a near-death experience, what opened me to the possibility of experiencing someone else’s death: I had died myself. I’d experienced what’s called being twice born in the ancient literature that concerns itself with initiation into the Mysteries, that is, I was born from my mother’s womb and born again after dying and returning to the land of the living, a death induced by an event in the inner consciousness and not by outer means, but a death nonetheless. It’s a characteristic of NDE: you return full of life and knowing death is not the end, know there is a hereafter, not believing, knowing. I should mention, though, in regards to the ancient Mysteries, that is only the initiation, the very beginning of your long journey to know the hidden and unseen, the behind, below, and above. As it was for initiates, so it is for the dead. You would imagine that such knowledge helps enable the dead to begin their quest after death, now that they know there is more.

If you haven’t experienced a NDE, then you’d be skeptical if you don’t believe in life after death to begin with, understandably. What you’re looking for you won’t find, someone to give that knowing and not just provide credible evidence to base belief on, which few today would weave into their worldview and accept as fact. It’s like people who’d been to America before Columbus, or before enough people had been there to establish beyond a doubt it was there (to the known world at the time from and a European perspective). Only a few would’ve believed them. We are in the time before Columbus in regards to not only the existence of life after death, but of the whole field of consciousness beyond the present person that we are, of a great deal of things consciousness-wise.

Will be spotted as wizards in the evolution,
a few climate changers.
You’re a pariah?
I don’t think you’ve done the business ends,
cross-examined your own consciousness.
Pay someone else to do your business,
and consciousness runs on the business model
in your end.
You hit the jackpot
you did not.

Where are we going with this?
All the dead ask this.
It’s death not revelation.
Are you sure you know where you’re going?
It isn’t to the supermarket.
Bigelow Industries,
can we consciousness the skies?
I’m not a kingpin.
I’m a ramrod.

Are you sure you know what’s at stake?
Will you evolve or not?
Bigwell Industries,
can we say he’s climbin’?
He’s got a business model,
so dead system made it.
I’m not barkin’ at your guitar.
I have direction to travel.
An evolutionary curve
calls us all in from the cold.
Open the inner consciousness Mr. Bigweld.
What brought him here?
Robots your own inner crowd,
and fought cold all evening.

A play protected by a play yard,
I’m a playwright.
Can I startle you with truth?
Mirror all the mind of God,
no dust, no mirror;
mirror all the mind of God,
nothing in-between—
the 5th Patriarch
seeing beyond himself.
Now I give you “The Epic of Man”.

A Gripping Device on the Future

On By Donny Lee DukeIn collective consciousness, ego activism, human unityLeave a comment
Unsplash: Alex Hockett

(Note: I’ve made a blog post from a comment I posted after a story on Medium called “Why Arguments Against Abolition Inevitably Fail” by Angela Y. Davis, abolition in this case the abolition of police and prisons.)

Dr. Davis, you are still talking about reform, not a fundamental change of society. You’re addressing only one aspect of society, albeit a central one, police and prisons, crime and punishment, or however we label the way we deal with people who harm or are suspected of harming others, how we make communities safe from harming individuals or groups, give people justice that have been harmed, and prevent said individuals and groups from harming more, not to mention healing them, something seldom discussed. Furthermore, you’re context is racial, as if it’s the determining factor of society itself, however significant it is in being a determining factor, much like Marxism makes social class the basis of understanding and organizing society. And you’re only looking at the history of America in terms of policing and prison, as if it’s occurred in isolation and isn’t a part of the evolution of ‘crime and punishment’ in the development of human society. There is a long history of it before America came into being, and just like the Marxist saying the bottom line of history is class struggle, you can make the case that policing and punishment evolved solely in terms of the effort to control minorities, but, while you’d identify a major player in the evolution, you’d narrow your understanding that would make it unable to grasp the whole of the matter.

A fundamental change in society would involve an essential change in human identity, or, put in practical terms, a fundamental change in the ways and means of ego transcription and the subsequent socialization and education of individuals growing up. From birth we’d have to give children a more inclusive identity, where they identify first and foremost with being a human being over being a Last-Name (family), an American, a male, a Christian, a White person, or whatever grouping human beings identify with, which wouldn’t mean we stop identifying with groups. It’d mean we identify first with humanity, and it’s beyond the discussion here, but such a holistic identity would naturally include the whole earth, as the step to the whole of humanity would be a giant leap to holism.

A holistic identity holds in the very ground of its consciousness an identity with all it sees, what the ideal “love your neighbor as yourself” is realized, and it’s also beyond the scope of a single comment to discuss the allowance and celebration even of difference as the foundation of the unity, the delight of the holistic identity, or the fact that each creature and species have different needs and places in the scheme of things, and that a clam would not claim the rights of a human being, and that each human being would have the inalienable right, regardless of any intrinsic characteristic such as race, gender, or sexuality, to self-fulfillment and self-determination, but it does good to mention these things here to understand what holism is and is not. There is no other way to stop racism in society, to change the formula of crime and punishment, no other way to end violence, no other way to stop climate change, in short, no other way to fundamentally change society. Spend some months and years doing the math.

It’s not impossible. It’s just going to take a lot more than this current racial crisis, not undermining its importance, to get us to make such a radical change. It’ll take us facing extinction, not as something afar that will come if we don’t do such and such, but something directly in our face: things like cataclysmic destruction or an environmental disaster. But we can still start now. Although such an ego transcription could not fully come about only in a progressive family environment, since society at large plays such an enormous role in giving us our identities, parents can go a long ways in giving their children a humanity identity. And pilot communities could be started to work towards that human unity to circumvent the problems an individual family faces in giving its kids such an identity. Of course we’d have to become a whole lot more conscious of the process of ego transcription, something we are as yet largely ignorant of, but there’s no doubt that it takes place. You like art, seem to always include it in your lists, and I have a lot of art (poetry) that reveals the ways of means of how we become the people that we are and what it means to be human. You’d find a lot of it on Twitter but not only there, and it’s also on my Medium account.

Of course it will take generations to make such a fundamental change in human identity, even when we begin to give it lead in raising children on a large scale. I don’t think even our brightest and best thinkers are mature enough yet in thought to grasp the possibility of such a change, much less begin to work towards it. People like you will hit on the particulars and the immediate, but even here, it’ll take a long time to work change. I see you’re a student of consciousness, and I don’t think it out of line to make the assumption that you operate from the scientific paradigm, have studied it as science studies it, something made by the brain, have not done a lifetime of self-study of consciousness itself, and I mean by that an exploration of your own consciousness.

Since childhood, via lucid dream, out of body experience, and spiritual experience, I’ve explored mine. One thing of significance here that I’ve focused on is if my consciousness connects to yours, you being other people, and if it does how and what that would mean to being human. For 25 years I’ve had a partner doing the same exploration, and we traveled both together and separately to many different countries and discussed dreams and inner experience with most all whom we were around for any length of time, and we often stayed with the people of the country we were traveling in. (I myself was a penniless vagabond for a number of years.) I can say that I do not believe that we share a common field of consciousness but that I know we do. But it’s taken a lifetime of study every bit as thorough and time-consuming as what we normally mean by school.

It’s here, in the knowledge of our shared field of consciousness and its implications, that we will find the missing pieces to the puzzle of human evil, racism a part of that picture, pieces we yet do not even know are missing. How many hidden wills are involved in a person harming another? What is the effect of ill will that people feel inside on the whole of society? Is the ill will to punish someone who harms, or who holds a racist attitude, the same ill will they feel harming or holding that attitude?

The biggest objection to your thesis of abolishing the police and prisons is how to protect communities from harm and administer justice, it no longer being a forced restitution. And how are you going to stop people from causing harm? You won’t get a handle on it until you become more fully conscious of yourself and our shared field of consciousness, indeed, of our shared identity, or I should say, that until enough of us are thusly conscious (can I say ‘woke’?) to outnumber those that aren’t, because you don’t have all the facts yet, those underwater ones so to speak, the more powerful ones that move us towards causing harm to one another. You aren’t even looking in that direction. Towards that end I post my comment.

A Twitter photopoem

Look at the Outcast

On By Donny Lee DukeIn ego activism, Inner Voice and Vision, overhead poetry, seer poetry2 Comments

Adolf Hitler 1933

Infant Orgasm,
Infant Orgasm You See

(Note: from July 2016 to December 2016, I posted seer poems on Facebook written specifically for our educational page Harm’s End. I know FB was aware of the posting at the time, because some poems were boosted and had to go through Facebook’s review process, with one being rejected, one about the prophet Mohammad, although FB did not take it down or flag it in any way. On August 4, 2020, I copied all the poems, along with their images, to my computer, and a day later a poem from 2016 was taken down for violating their community standards, showing me my activity was being closely monitored by FB. I then deleted any image I thought FB might object to, unaware that an image of Hitler is now flagged by FB as a matter of course. That it is now but wasn’t in 2016 reflects a growing trend of censorship on the net. It won’t be long before anything that seriously questions the generally accepted reality construct or tires to introduce things that construct isn’t seeing and doesn’t want to will be banned from the major social media platforms and taken as far as possible out of the public eye. In other words, the net will become like TV.

This poem along with this image was posted on FB September 10, 2016. It was flagged August 15, 2020, but not taken down, citing it violated their community standards, and I edited it the following day, adding material in brackets within the poem that explain the poetry, to make it clear I wasn’t violating their community standards. Within 10 minutes after editing it, our page Harm’s End was unpublished. Although this poem fits into a poetic conversation on my FB feed and is out of context to post here by itself, I’m posting it here to protest the censorship of art and poetry on Facebook and on the net in general, in this case, poetry whose purpose it is to heal, not harm, however controversial it may be.)

Executive order.
Anyway she just surprised me.
Hitler, the 1st letters of incest,
rape.
It started World War II.
Half the money
the gate come open.
What come out?
I know it,
the material,
the material of war,
the material of concrete war.

Incest gun,
check it out.
That’s not a gift.
It’s an orgasm
your mom gives ya,
or your dad,
an adult in the family.
The house owner
outside of somethin’.
It’s American.
We know it’s German.
It’s also England,
all countries,
just a story on it
broken.
You wouldn’t hit everybaby,
enough to organize
the required material.
Is that war?
You said it baby.

It’s German
under the feet.
That means it’s right there:
kill ‘em,
thousands gas.
Bring them on the table
but be careful.
Daddy was good wasn’t he
or mommy special?
We do this in an orderly fashion.
Got that right.
Just line ‘em up
and shoot ‘em,
terrible.
I’m gonna
keep comin’.
What’s this?
An orderly compound,
an orderly room.
Procedure, procedure?
And we built the gas chambers,
and we built
orgasm.

Give that kid
trouble,
not between his legs,
not
now,
not now.
Look out the window.
Go to the door.
It needs an umbrella:
the night of the generals.
They have a very detailed IQ.

THEY.
People are bad.
Not everybody.
He doesn’t like,
he has a very knowledgeable
presence with Jews.
Art school,
they wouldn’t let ‘im in.
Art college,
they wouldn’t let him in now.
Okay make them unworthy,
lump them with all the undesirables,
society’s degenerates,
but blame them for everything.
They are the masterminds
of all that’s wrong with the world,
of all that’s wrong with our country.

[understand the poetry: those are Hitler’s views, not the poet’s.]

Fell down –
see a war,
a war,
a world war:
give to me
my mountain.

You have to understand
orgasm.
It changes war.
It’s a blitzkrieg
of physical pleasure
on an I unformed.
One second.
There’s an I.
Is there
more like the animal I.
Is that me?
That building centerfold
the earth
is removed from the scene.
I’m a baked chump,
burn in a holocaust of pleasure.

Understand
repeated action,
all this mess over time.
It has a tendency
to rob you of pleasure,
organize your role
an antenna
to try and get things in order,
down
if you know what I mean,
not up in the sky.
Look at
the nice uniforms,
the insignia,
the roll of tanks.

You’ve been robbed you see,
and that damage,
and you in ego formation,
and God did it,
your parent.
Any questions Paramount?
That’s it.

(There is, it should be understood, a personal interpretation to this poem throughout, since, in truly inspired art, in seer poetry especially, it’s at bottom, however remotely, also about the artist. In this light, the verse about Hitler being rejected from art college and subsequently scapegoating all Jews because of that can also be interpreted to be about the refusal of my entire society, Jews, non-Jews, everybody, to let me into the art of the day, but the personal interpretation isn’t tit for tat with the poem, as it just lights upon it here and there. If you want to know how the personal interpretation applies to the main subject of the poem, infant orgasm, read this comment I posted on Medium before my Medium account is also suspended, because I color outside the lines.

If you want to know the occult truth behind Hitler, read the book The Light That Shone Into the Dark Abyss by Maggi Lidchi-Grassi, 1994, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press (not available to read online). Facebook, which almost a third of the world’s population uses, has such an unwarranted and inequitable influence over the knowledge that we pass around, and it (like not only the other online mega-businesses, but also the major news outlets and the great majority of the entertainment industry I might add) is in its core beliefs reductionist materialist, however many employees it has that doesn’t hold those beliefs. If that’s not enough, it’s in it for profit, and if Facebook encounters material that makes people feel uncomfortable, a loss of profit steps in and makes the decision, and even if it doesn’t violate its policies, FB will simply ban it. Now, the truth of us, the good, the bad, and the ugly, it might hurt to hear it, you know?

Is the human matter finished? I mean, is there anything more to discover about us other than the fundamental beliefs that we’ve built human society upon, and those are that we are individual human islands expendable to the sea of humanity and inconsequential compared to it, islands possessing an absolute freewill and a consciousness that doesn’t extend beyond the island that we each are, and, in the intrinsic ground of who we are, we are nothing more than that island? Here we are at the cutting edge of humanity. This is the denied knowledge trying to gain entry: there is more to discover about us, and we are more than that.

I’ll end with an analogy to put the subject matter of this poem into a context that will make what I’m attempting here more apparent:

“This thing no one ever talks about before, and when we are the first ones to talk about it, there are a lot of people that think this thing shouldn’t be touched, this thing is you know, sacred, and the people that think you are going too far, and all of these people are going to undermine our movement, for sure.” Quote from a Thai protester in Bangkok speaking to a BBC reporting about protesters questioning the power of the Thai monarchy. Source: BBC video “Thai protests: Thousands join rally in Bangkok”, 17 Aug 2020.)

 

Art Stone

On By Donny Lee DukeIn overhead musicLeave a comment

“Come and touch me, with your art stone, rubbin’ down the terrace of my mind.” You ever hear music? I think I’m hearing you, all past your barriers, you know, lookin’ at art, in the danger of a Twitter feed: @donnyduke7

 

You’re Close to One of Those People

On By Donny Lee DukeIn ego activismLeave a comment

You’re Close to One of Those People

A social monstrosity,
that’s our reel time,
like movies are out of town.
Everywhere glows,
like one view will change your life,
and only a kick you get,
as if you’ve seen enough.
Can we see about society please?

Some exceptions,
We the Animals would make the list,
not the good guy got his gun,
and the bad guy is really mean,
or a social drama steeped in tears,
or poverty’s whereabouts,
grim, bleak landscapes
that show nothing underneath,
just that they’re poor,
and your pity’s all aglow.

Violence anyone?
What the root of it?
See what you’ve done please.
I think you’ve humanized the machine,
put a face on the Joker
that makes him real to us.
We understand his plight.
Clearly we can see the program.
He’s human,
profoundly insane,
and it’s not his fault.
Yeah this is social reality.

I don’t think it’s the crimes we blame Hitler.
He’ll represent evil to us,
and we can get away with it,
like our dream show host
so self-righteously mean.
Are we in Hollywood?
It’s certainly on the streets.
I’m socially unacceptable.

That’s all that adult material.
And you think it’s the aftermath?
Let’s look at the underpinnings of society.
Who rules the show?
You’d have to be rich to get in office.
Exactly.
Are they concerned with money?
I can’t tell you I’m counting votes –
and that’s the social democrat.

An explosive movie,
Joker,
a gut level reaction:
you sympathize with the tiger.
That’s the role of this movie.
You feel him don’t you?
A proxy car,
so dangerously done.
Its casts a giant shadow
on newsweek.
Who’s the hero now?
A brilliantly executed
all-starring quarterback…

Come on word shut.
He pretended to be asleep.
She’s puttin’ on the rain jacket.
Can you give me a second?
Did you want another stand in for a comedian?
I’m not your seein’ program.
Make this seer.
Creates the joy in you
by its creation,
other paragraph.

I wanted to see,
and Gods like him right now,
a twisted human creature
of wrath and intelligence,
with a hate as his minister and cruelty as his guide.
This is where we need to be
to save humanity,
identify with the most foul,
and I’m not talkin’ guns.
We feel them as we feel ourselves,
a human being still.
How else can we reach them,
tell me, tell me Bill?

You wouldn’t know.
It’s open season,
and no one has a grasp what’s going on,
and here comes this movie to show us.
It’s human filth?
#richlivesmatter would run the hashtag.
Hombre,
they’d come up with something.

It’s not a commie it would lead us.
We would in special places go.
Can you gauge humanity
by who runs it?
A white man’s army.
A white man’s world.
I’m talkin’ politics.

Rich or white here’s the token:
and they rule a population blind.
I need you to see this
next time we go to the polls,
putting those bubbles down
and getting your ticket.
My name is Tool:
no hate people or rich people.
Got it?

Just one problem,
the video:
we make each group
a land unto themselves.
Look holistic.
Understand the earth is round.
May I have your autograph?
Whoever it is.
Trinity of God with nature,
that’s the origin book.
Put it on harm’s end.
It was the Divine Mother.

Seriously did it rock?
It’s in this halfway house.
Look,
if you don’t go sin then why did you check on it?
You think a rule said that?
Text clearly written.
This is all wrapped up in poetry.
I’m green knew about group –
Oliver Steven.
How many shrooms did you get?
One and half kilo.
You have to get involved with matter.
Celebrate, celebrate, dance to the music.
One polished,
it’s a one of a kind.

Mr. Topple,
alpha as well.
Now Jews are made in our image too,
the right toys.
Don’t arm yourself.
We’re expecting
everybody
on the streets in your hometown
singin’ We Are the World.
You’d have to understand silence,
the power of a peaceful demonstration
everybody gets together
and tries to love one another right now.

You see the ways?
Just don’t punish sin,
point the finger at this group or that,
not even the corporations and the state.
We’re talkin’ humanity.
You’re taking responsibility for yourself.
You see the wildcard?

What’s the incriminating evidence?
You sin too see that.
How heavy the world is
when it sees its mistake.
There’s just different ways of doing things.
It’s not all the same people.
Let’s get on with bein’ better people
with one another.

Now I’m Orange County,
and you’ve got a railroad map.
The streets show its strength.
A National World Day I let you out of the room.
I’ve got lookin’ glass.
Life’s here.
We’re all here.
Let’s get proactive.

Beauty’s Reign

On By Donny Lee DukeIn black and white photography, ego activism, Inner Voice and Vision, supermind, the integral yoga, the psychic being, video artLeave a comment


Beauty’s Reign

Verse 1

d               a         g
It’s been a long time,
a
long, long, long time,
g                              a                    d     g
everything that’s sung and in one line.
d                            a               g
Work up slowly your way to it.
d                                   g                   a
And the folk song’s driftin’ on a better day.
d                          a                  g
The folk song’s liftin’ on a inner ray:
d                g        a           g              d
the many splendors of beauty’s reign.
g                a        d              g
Here the heart wants to share
g                        a                       d
snow covered music for my kind,
g                                        a                                      d
on the wings of the time, on the wings of a dove, on the wings of love.
a                           g
So many changes for my kind,
a                    d
everything to do with the divine,
a                              g
everything that’s true,
d                      a                       g
beauty’s ray, beauty’s role, beauty’s reign,
d              a                      g                       d
beauty’s ray, beauty’s role, beauty’s reign.

Verse 2

d a  g
Let go,
a
let, let, let go.
g a      d       g
Land wide release.
d             a                   g
You are llamada up above. (Spanish, pronounced ‘yamada’)
d                                   g                   a
And the folk song’s driftin’ on a better day.
d                          a                  g
The folk song’s liftin’ on a inner ray:
d                g        a           g              d
the many splendors of beauty’s reign.
g                a        d              g
Here the heart wants to share
g                        a                       d
snow covered music for my kind,
g                                        a                                      d
on the wings of the time, on the wings of a dove, on the wings of love.
a                           g
So many changes for my kind,
a                    d
everything to do with the divine,
a                              g
everything that’s true,
d                      a                       g
beauty’s ray, beauty’s role, beauty’s reign,
d              a                      g                       d
beauty’s ray, beauty’s role, beauty’s reign.

Verse 3

d            a  g
A time of change,
a
change, change, change, change,
g                a                               d              g
when the world pipe knows only one thing.
d                    a                      g
You have to know it very well.
d                                   g                         a
And the folk song is tempted by an adverse fate.
d                            a                                     g
The folk song is driftin’ wrong on the Titan’s urge.
d                   g  a   g                  d
He saw my sun, moon, and stars.
g      a   d            g
Put all change back.
g                          a                             d
But in the play there’s a process aware of,
d                g        a                           d
Look out of the psychic being’s urge.
a                         g
And that weakness was no longer,
a                             d
and that weakness was no longer.
a                     g
It shattered not
d                      a                       g
beauty’s ray, beauty’s role, beauty’s reign,
d              a                      g                       d
beauty’s ray, beauty’s role, beauty’s reign.

Ending

D          A              G
This is from the sun (3xs):
g              a                      d                       g
beauty’s ray, beauty’s role, beauty’s reign,
d              a                      g                       d
beauty’s ray, beauty’s role, beauty’s reign.

My Vampire Takes A Bow And Other Tales Of Dream Theater

On By Douglas M.In Dream InterpretationLeave a comment

Bat Transforms to Dracula.2019-02-28 17_39_18

This article will hopefully be an interesting follow-up to my last one, ‘There’s Color In My Keyboard,’ since it shows how a dream prompted me to finish that article and get it posted. Let’s start with the dream:

This was a multi-part dream, but it was all related to my starring in a play as a vampire. There was a part where I’m looking at myself in a mirror checking out my phony fangs. Then there was another part where I don’t have fangs, and know I need to go to the costume store to buy some so I’ll have them for the performance. In the last part of the dream, I’m actually in the audience during the curtain call, and I know I have been sitting here as an audience member watching myself give the performance as the vampire. Other actors are on stage, and I can’t remember for sure how ‘I’ came out on the stage, but I seem to recall it was by flying down from the rafters as a bat and transforming into the vampire before taking a bow.  I do remember though, once ‘I’ join the other actors, five more actors, who are tall shadowy shapes, drop down from the rafters and land behind us, joining us for the curtain call. One of them falls over and stays down once he hits the stage. Afterwards there’s a shift, and I’m in the vampire costume down in the audience area talking to people who are congratulating me on my performance. One was a gay guy, and there were also two attractive young women. Someone, I think it was the gay guy, compliments me on my eyes and the women agree. I admit that I know I have beautiful eyes.

Performing in live theater was a big part of my life during my childhood and teenage years, so it’s no surprise being involved in the theater is a common dream theme for me. For a long time, I wondered what some of those dreams might mean. Within the last year or so, it came clear that, at least in some cases, theater dreams represent my creative endeavors, which are mainly writing, but video work also. That makes sense because theater was my main creative outlet growing up. I also put most of what I create on the web, so one could see how the idea of ‘performing’ would apply to putting yourself out before the public online, even though only a handful of people read this blog.

As I thought about the dream afterwards, it seemed to me this theater dream was related to the nearly completed and aforementioned article I was working on because in it I’m basically putting the vampire part of myself on public display. Now in this particular article, I was trying to show how I was allowing sexual/romantic feelings to color my email exchanges with a business associate, A.. At the time of the dream, the article had been lying idle for a week or so, since I wanted to have Donny take a look at a few small changes I’d made to it. But as he was quite busy with other things, I didn’t push the issue. So I took the dream as a message from my inner to get Donny to have one last proofread, and to then post the article.  So I dusted off the article, and actually ended up reworking some of it a bit more extensively, as well as putting the finishing touches on a GIF I created to accompany it. I asked Donny if he would take a final look at it, which he did, and then I posted it.

So if I’m on target here with the meaning of this dream, then the beginning of the dream, where I’m looking at my fangs, and thinking about how I need to buy fangs, would seem to be indicative of the last minute re-working of the article. And if that’s the case, the curtain call and the end of the dream must have to do with the process of the article after it was posted, and the way readers felt about it. Dreams often exaggerate things however, as I often point out. So the actual reaction of the readers might not have been as glowing as the praise I received after the curtain call in the dream. The post got three likes though, so perhaps at least one of those readers felt like they got something valuable out of the article. It also seems possible to me that the praise after the curtain call may just be an acknowledgement by my inner for a job well done.

Regarding the other characters that were part of the curtain call, I’m not sure what they represent, though it seems to me the shadowy figures probably symbolize obscure or hostile forces that are having their play or influence during the sort of sexual/romantic indulgences that I describe in the article. I never mentioned the possible involvement of these kinds of forces in the article, and I only briefly brought out the idea that allowing these movements to have their play could possibly be harmful to A., that they might still have an effect on her even though she’s on the other side of the globe. But the dream I think tells it like it is, showing not only that it’s a vampiric thing to do, but also by revealing the presence of these shadowy hostile elements that are involved.

Perhaps the example I’ve shared above might not be enough to get the reader on the same wavelength as me regarding this idea that some of my theater dreams represent my creative work, and the placing of it on the internet. So I would like to share one more clear example. This one happened back in July 2018 on the night following the posting of my article ‘You Have To Read Between The Letters.’

I’m in a production of Peter Pan starring as Peter Pan. It’s towards the end of the performance, and I remember giving a short monologue, and then going outside and flying up to the top of a building, and then flying back to the stage for the curtain call. The theater is only about 15% full. We don’t get a standing ovation, but the people are giving a lot of applause. I tell the people in the audience to bring their friends to the performances we are having over the next few days.

As I said before, not many people read this blog, so that would fit with having a small audience in the dream for my ‘performance’. And perhaps the few people who read this article liked it, and that’s reflected in the dream by the hearty applause. Or, as I postulated about the vampire dream, maybe this dream is also or even primarily just giving an acknowledgement of a job well done on my part by my inner being. Here again I can’t say for sure.

I’m also unsure as to why Peter Pan was chosen to represent this article, which was about a dream that was an example of very specific and blatant guidance about a book I should read. Peter Pan is an adventurer though, and his world is one of dreams and fantasy, so I’m guessing it has something to do with that. Perhaps he represents my ongoing dream exploration, which, in its own way, is an adventure with new discoveries happening all the time. I don’t think it has anything to do with being mischievous or shirking responsibility in some area of my life, though I can see how Peter Pan couldrepresent those things in a dream.

Regardless of whether or not my speculation is on the money as far as the symbolism of Peter Pan goes, I hope the reader can follow my logic here and see how the symbolism of performing and theater could represent one’s creative work and putting oneself out in the public eye creatively and artistically. As for myself, as you can see, I’m convinced enough that I was able to take the first dream as guidance and finish an article.

In the future I hope to have more insight into other things a theater dream could represent. It hasn’t come up recently, but I’ve had a recurring theme in theater dreams over the years that a performance is imminent, but I’ve missed most or all of the rehearsals, and I’m not sure what that relates to. Perhaps dreams like that are related to my creative work also, and indicate times where I haven’t given something I was working on enough attention, and then finished it up in a hurry. I don’t know, but I will be paying more attention the next time I have one of these dreams. There is definitely more to uncover here.

There’s Color In My Keyboard

On By Douglas M.In Dream Interpretation1 Comment

 

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I recently had a dream that was clearly prevision and is worth sharing just from that standpoint. What’s perhaps more interesting though is the way the dream portrayed what was going to happen, because, even though there was a correlation, the events in the dream were much more dramatic and momentous than what happened waking life. Because of this, it’s a good example of the way dreams do things.

Here is the dream:

I’m working at the Mermaid Grill as a server. A. also works there. We find ourselves out in the entryway to the restaurant and start kissing and fooling around. S. is sitting there at a desk and tells us in so many words to get a room. There was more in between I don’t recall clearly, but then later on (or in a different dream of that night following the same scenario) it’s six months later, and A. and I have broken up after being in a relationship during that time. She has shown up with her new boyfriend at the Mermaid Grill to have dinner while I am working in order to rub my nose in it.

The two women in the dream, A. and S., both work for an advertising company that has been a long time partner with my employer as the publisher of our visitors guide. The first thing I should mention is that I find A. very attractive. She wasn’t someone I saw or interacted with very often however, so the attraction wasn’t something that came up much. You could definitely say though that I fancied her a little bit. Then, almost a year after I relocated to India, my employer expanded our partnership with her company, and they designed a new website for us and also took over handling all advertising sales for the site. I was instructed to pass any referrals for advertising on to A.. So about once a month or so I needed to email her about something related to website advertising or the visitors guide.

The day following the dream I got an email from A. In it she told me that her coworker K. would be handling all the advertising from here on out, and to refer everything to her. Looking at A.’s signature I saw that her title had changed from Account Executive to General Manager, and I realized that was the reason. Then I noticed that the vital was a little bit deflated by this news. It realized I wouldn’t be emailing with A. anymore, or at least not nearly as often, and experienced some disappointment because of that. Seeing this, I realized how the vital had taken pleasure in corresponding with her simply because of my attraction. And even though our emails were all business, it was still a little pop for the vital to get an email from her or to send her one. There was a thrill in that little contact.

This is the first time I can ever remember dreaming of A., and I think the prevision is obvious, though as I’ve found with prevision in my dreams at least, there isn’t an exact correlation. According to Sri Aurobindo, in this regard I’m the rule and not the exception. Aurobindo states in his Letters on Yoga that the power to have dreams with exact physical prevision “is comparatively rare, for ordinarily such previsions come in inner vision but not in sleep. In dreams vital or mental formations often take shape which sometimes fulfill themselves in essence, but not with this accuracy of detail.”1

I think we can see how this applies here, because this wasn’t anything like a romantic split in waking life. Nor was A.’s email anything but congenial, and there’s no reason why it wouldn’t be. I’m pretty sure she likes me as a person, and it was, after all, just business. And the truth is my vital wasn’t really that upset about the whole thing, just a little disappointed. The disappointment though was because of the attraction, and that seems to me to be why the dream portrayed what happened as a romance and a breakup. While writing this article I read something the Mother said which supports this idea as a reasonable explanation. She was talking about visions in the subtle physical plane, but I think the same mechanism would apply to dreams. In her words:

If you have a power of vision that is objective and sincere, you see the thing accurately; if you add your own feelings and impressions to it, it is coloured by them. So accuracy in the subtle physical depends exclusively on the instrument, that is to say, on the one who sees.2

To conclude the analysis of the dream, I’d like to take a look at the fact that this dream took place at the Mermaid Grill. As Donny once pointed out, a restaurant is a logical symbol for somewhere people are exchanging life force. That would fit in this case since I feel that actually occurs when you’re corresponding with someone or, as I pointed out in a recent post, during things like social media interactions. I honestly hadn’t ever given much thought to what a mermaid might symbolize. Nor can I remember ever having a dream of an actual mermaid, though that may have happened. I wasn’t sure what to make of it so I ran it by Donny, who said that to him, in the case of this dream, it suggested a desire that was still somewhat subconscious and unformed, still ‘under the water’ to some extent. That idea makes sense since my attraction to A. has been more of a fancy, and not something that has really taken a hold of my mind or my vital the way an actual infatuation with someone would. It could perhaps be compared with having a celebrity crush. Unless you’re deluded or it’s an obsession, you don’t really take it that seriously, though it’s fun to think about, and you might go see every movie that person is in in order to bask in their on screen presence. In the same way, I’ve been basking in these kinds of feelings in my emailing with A. And like my celebrity crush example here, I’ve also had some fun along the way thinking about what it would be like to be the center of her universe.

Now compared to the way people living a normal life indulge these kinds of fancies, I’m not indulging them all that much. As a sadhak, however, I have to keep setting the bar higher and higher, and the goal of the yoga I follow is not to indulge these things at all. That’s been my goal for a long time, but I haven’t reached it yet due I think to a combination of excusing it, but also by being carried away in the groove of a habit I indulged for many years. One thing I’ve noticed is that sometimes you can catch these things when they enter the mind and in that moment you can make the choice to push them away, while there are other times where they get in and start having their play for a while before you wake up and objectively realize what’s happening. So I think the best thing I can do is to take the writing and posting of this article as a call to make the most definitive push I can to stop entertaining these things whether it’s right at the moment they enter the mind or once I become aware they’re having their play due to the groove of habit. As far as A. goes, this isn’t just for me and my attempts at purification, but for her too, because if I’m basking in my attraction while emailing with her, that vibe still colors the exchange and has an adverse effect on her, however small, even if I never drop the slightest hint in my emails that I have these feelings.

So in conclusion, my main point here was to draw attention to the larger than life element of dreams and also to the possibility of distortion by the dreamer. There’s certainly more to be said though on this subject of prevision in dreams, and I have another recent occurrence of dream prevision I want to share in an upcoming post that involved myself, and our dog, Lucy. This example takes things a bit farther, however, because there were prevision dreams both before the occurrence, as well as dreams afterwards that shed more light on what happened.

References

  1. Sri Aurobindo, Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo Volume 31: Letters On Yoga IV, page 457
  2. The Mother, Collected Works of The Mother Volume 10: On Thoughts and Aphorisms, page 124

The Settling Stone a Carve

On By Donny Lee DukeIn black and white photography, film photography, Inner Voice and Vision, spoken word poetry, the Mother and Sri AurobindoLeave a comment

The Settling Stone a Carve

Made images out of light.
Feed them to this world.
Beat me.
I’m a meeting of soul wings.
It doesn’t bother me.
Use your head.
Reflected on the walls of the mirror.
In any event,
where I sit and represent God.
That’s the power lines.
What compassionate consideration.
It’s like he loves himself.
He’s the photographer you see,
the photograph,
all these images,
the poem,
pure,
not an ounce of color.
Do you see the address?
It’s in the face of everything.

Image Pondicherry

On By Donny Lee DukeIn black and white photography, Inner Voice and Vision, overhead poetry, the integral yoga, the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, the soul, video poetryLeave a comment

 

Image Pondicherry

Poetry
I need you.
He fell into the bricks.
Thank God let him through.
He’s an image in a photograph.
What visibility.
All citywide wears one face.
It gathers in the gloom.
Was to fight
till the front soul noon.
Let’s give soft yoga shoes
a copy of The Letters
and give those bored little crazies the cubbyholes.
Came out peaceful Pondicherry.