So You Wanna Get a Hold of Human Evil? – Synchronicities With The Wasp

On October 3, 2015July 23, 2019 By Douglas M.In SynchronicityLeave a comment

Recently I wrote a post on how my dreams used the symbol of the wasp to draw attention to my anger. Interestingly, the day after posting that article, the wasp entered my life again, but not in a dream. Rather, these were synchronic encounters in waking life that happened in conjunction with strong movements of anger that day. Events in the waking world can also be our teacher just like a dream can and this example really illustrates that point. Let me tell you what happened.

The daily operations of the chamber of commerce where I work are mainly handled by my co-worker Rhonda and I, and this necessarily involves a lot of collaboration and hashing things out. In general, Rhonda and I get along very well, and I find her very easy to work with overall. Sometimes though, as in any close relationship, vital reactions come up in both of us that aren’t voiced or shown on the surface. Most of the time I can just drop these reactions, but at other times they’re played out inside in thoughts and emotions that either run their course until they die out or I successfully reject them.

On this particular day Rhonda wanted me to add our business expo to a dropdown list on the chamber’s website. I didn’t say no; I just responded that normally we only have the really big events on there. Then, rather uncharacteristically, she said in a rather snippy way, “It’s becoming a big event and it needs to be up there!” Well my vital didn’t like basically being given an order, and a smoldering resentment opened up like a black hole inside me. I was able to detach from it, but it got in a bit, so it didn’t subside immediately. My vital wanted to lash back and thoughts on how to do so were coming up. I just tried to ignore them while at the same time acknowledging to myself that she was right. We are trying to grow that event so it made sense to add it to the drop down list.

Shortly after this I had to leave the office to go and tidy up our mobile welcome center, which had been out of commission for a while. As soon as I got there I encountered a wasp flying around the door of the trailer. I remembered how the anger had risen earlier, but I was more concerned with avoiding getting stung. I got out the can of wasp spray we keep inside, but it flew off and didn’t return. When I got back to the office I noticed a little of the anger reaction still lingered from earlier, but it wasn’t really a problem.

I would, however, encounter a wasp again later that evening when I was taking our dog Rosie for a walk. During the walk, I saw a plastic grocery bag lying on a neighbor’s lawn, so I picked it up. As I was examining the bag, I suddenly spotted a wasp clinging to it and quickly dropped the bag and crushed the wasp under my shoe. Encountering the wasp again like that struck me as quite synchronic. I wondered how it might apply to my situation at that moment, and I thought about how I often get annoyed and impatient with the way Rosie takes her takes her good sweet time sniffing and investigating things instead of taking going to the bathroom like I want her too. So I tried to be conscious of that and resist that impulse to get irritated with her.

Then when I got home, I noticed some outside lights we have set up on an outdoor timer were switched on almost two hours early.¹ I know there’s a button on the timer you can hit to turn it off or on manually and override the programming, and I figured that somehow the timer had been manually switched on. So I hit the button to switch it off, but when I did so the screen flickered erratically back and forth for a second or two between On and Off before it finally turned off. That didn’t seem right to me and made me wonder if something was wrong with the timer.

I went out back to our lanai as my mom and dad were coming up from sitting on the dock. I mentioned what had happened and told mom I thought the timer might be faulty. Without warning my dad exploded into a short rant about how stupid the timers were, and how nobody sees the lights, etc. He was obviously testy so I tread carefully around him until he’d seemed to settle down later. I figured the second synchronic encounter with the wasp had been foreshadowing dad’s outburst, and I think it was indeed doing so, but there was one more thing that was going to push my button before the night was over.

Later that evening mom asked me to vacuum and wash her car the next day before she left in the afternoon. Dad almost always handles washing our cars, but for some reason she really wanted it done the next day. Like Rhonda earlier, she was basically giving me an order and also did it in a snippy way. That got my goat, but I still tried to tell her in a nice way that was fine, but I’d just like to use the pressure washer and would need dad’s help to start it. Then she made a comment that all I’d need is a bucket and soap and that ticked me off even more. I have lower back problems, and anyone who does knows how difficult that can make just about anything. The kind of bending over I’d need to do to wash the car with a bucket and soap wouldn’t be easy for me, and she knows that. The thing is though, in general I just stoically endure the back pain and don’t complain about it. Because of that, sometimes mom forgets my limitations and has even said that she sometimes forgets because I don’t complain. My mind understands that, but my vital was not happy with her for forgetting.

I went in my room for a few minutes and thought things over. Then I went back out to the kitchen, and though the anger was still kicking around underneath, I was able to calmly explain again that I’d be happy to wash the car, but I wasn’t going to do it without the pressure washer and needed dad’s help to start it.²Then I explained to her how it’s not easy for me to do it with just a bucket of water and soap, because in order to keep from bending over I have to constantly keep going down on my knees (I’m not flexible enough to squat) and getting back up again. I explained to her I could do it with just the bucket and soap but I’d need a cushion or something to put under my knees. At that point she just said forget it, but I reiterated that I could do it with the pressure washer if not the next day then definitely on Friday. I never did end up washing the car either the next day or Friday, since dad thought it was a waste of time with all the rain in the forecast. I did however vacuum the car the next day.

As I stated at the beginning of this post, this example is interesting because it shows how symbols can meet us through synchronicity in the waking world as well as in dreams. Going farther we can see that these kinds of synchronicities give a glimpse into the intricate interconnectedness and interpenetration of all things. They help us see that there’s a hidden meaning and intelligence in the cosmos, one that informs and presides over its unfolding behind the mask of apparent unconsciousness in the universe’s outward appearance.

Another thing worth drawing attention to is the way that, in the evening, the anger first manifested in my dad and then later in me. This shows how things like anger are a vibration that’s ‘in the air’, and can invade more than one person or even be passed from person to person. That may have happened also with Rhonda and I earlier, but it’s less obvious.

In closing, I’ll say that I believe these little synchronic glimpses are just the tip of a massive iceberg of interconnectedness that we can only truly appreciate from a higher or cosmic state of consciousness. It’s too stupendous to fit in the littleness of the ego. What would such a consciousness be like? I don’t know, but this passage from Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri casts some light on that, and seems like an appropriate way to end this post:

Interpreting the universe by soul signs
He read from within the text of the without:
The riddle grew plain and lost its catch obscure.
A larger lustre lit the mighty page.
A purpose mingled with the whims of Time,
A meaning met the stumbling pace of Chance
And Fate revealed a chain of seeing Will;
A conscious wideness filled the old dumb Space.
In the Void he saw throned the Omniscience supreme.³

Notes and References

Interestingly this was one of the two timers that were mentioned in my previous post on the wasp.
My back also prevents me from pulling the starter cord, so I need my dad to start the pressure washer for me.
Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo Volume 34 Savitri, pg 76

And I Suppose a Rose

On October 2, 2015October 10, 2015 By Donny Lee DukeIn hypnagogic state, Inner Voice and Vision, Poetry, spirituality, yogic tranceLeave a comment

Full Moon Meditation by H. Kopp-Delaney (CC BY-ND 2.0)

As a young teen, I would often hear, right at the stage of falling asleep, what I called ‘reading the book’, someone speaking spiritual philosophy deep inside my head. I never could remember a word the next morning.

After getting a rather poetic education, majoring in English and learning to translate Classical Greek verse into English verse, and a period of travel after college, mostly as a vagabond, in one instance posting my poems on holy sites in the old city of Jerusalem and other places East, a woman who had a writer’s cabin in the hills around Ashland, Oregon gave me the cabin for a whole winter, 5 months, so I’d have a place to live because I was homeless (normally it was a 6 week stay, given as a fellowship).

After 3 months of relative isolation, snowed in some, in twilight, that place of falling asleep, only here I think it was waking up, I heard these lines:

And I suppose a rose knows well
All the glory a man might.

I took those beginning lines and made a poem out of them, thinking that’s what many poets do and just don’t say anything. I had no idea your muse, what I call it, not hearing things, could give you a whole poem and edit it while you’re ‘listening’ it and after. It took another few years before I heard more lines, which was in Cuzco, Peru, about 15 years ago, but the flood started in Brazil a few months later, and it’s continued to this day.

There’ll come a day when floods.

Almost anytime I sit or lie back inside myself, if it’s long enough to get behind the waking mind and into ‘twilight’, I just automatically start hearing and seeing muse, and only sometimes it’s a poem; most of the time it’s a host of things: personal guidance, remote viewing, subconscious stuff, the imitation vision, the outright hostile vision, and I can continue some, only with me whatever I hear is always in poetic form, though only rarely is that at or near poetic quality.

Another time I might show the visual aspect of the muse. Now I’ll end this post introducing my voices with a recent short poem completely from the muse (it’s on one of our blogs at: The Chipmunk Press Vol. 3 Issue 5

Original Sin

In a sunny corner of remote earth
The bite of it all
Challenged orthodoxy.
This was in Nature’s plan.
Green-gold it moved.
This conducted harmony
Operating on discords –
Not a packaged plan,
Neither from the stars.
It brought in cities beyond the universe.
We bask in its revelry –
A riot of God
On lone isles of trust.
Wonderful it wore shoes.
Naked impulse did not light its lamp.
A renegade
It brought all to bear on noontide.
Light held its room.
“Yes,” we sing in darkness’ lair.
“We deliver anthems
Without knowing on which we rest.
It came to us unclothed,
And we saw nought but sin.”
What distance orthodoxy
From all that abounds in this place.

Lucid Quest for the Light, a video

On September 29, 2015September 29, 2015 By Donny Lee DukeIn Dreams, Inner Voice and Vision, Poetry, Reviews, Synchronicity, video artLeave a comment

I saw this on a Lucid Dreaming closed group page I follow, and over 12,000 people are in it, and so it’s a fast feed. Coming at me are ideas, images, and videos that run the gambit if something’s worth my time or not, and so I have to be very choosy or I waste my time, which I have to add isn’t so bad because it’s good to see all the degrees of quality, from bad to worse. While there is a lot of ‘good stuff’, and things I just need to see, else I wouldn’t follow the group, much of the material and media coming down the page is either ads (disguised as a person; I do it too) or rough drafts to say it kindly.

A difficulty in detecting things of quality is that things are coming down the pike very quickly, and you only have a second or so to recognize quality work, and that kind of work by its very nature takes more than a second or two to appraise. In fact a lot of the time it’s even jarring and disjointed, or too obtuse, the first couple of three times you see it.

You have to give it more than a chance, and so, it’s not possible to always or even often actually spend you time on what’s worth your time, since something worth it also taxes you at the same time, taxes you with your focused attention, and you don’t give that freely. It’s the dilemma of art in a digital medium, a dilemma of us all.

This video by Paul W. Coca is art, maybe not Michael Angelo or immortal, but it crosses that indefinable line that makes a work art. I didn’t see it the first time, only saw a good video, but after living with it some, and especially after Douglas liked it (I admit it I’m herd sour), I see what I’d like to share with others because it will enrich them.

Donny

A Small Opening of the Crown Chakra

On September 25, 2015July 23, 2019 By Douglas M.In SynchronicityLeave a comment

I drew this card from The Eternity Game a few days ago and the word that was upright was ‘Reality’. An interesting thing happened that day. At work as things were going wrong, or obstacles came up or when my boss set me to a task that I though was a waste of time, I was able to detach myself from my reactions by remembering that behind all things is the guiding hand of the One and that I’m in no position to judge the rightness or wrongness of how things unfold. Usually though that’s something that takes a mental effort if I can do it at all, but on that day it was easy, spontaneous.

This card ‘Truth” stands for the crown chakra in the game and I think I must have had an opening there that day, one that enabled me to remember easily the truth, the ‘Reality’ of how things really are albeit only in a mental way. The next day I was back to mental effort, but that’s the way these little openings are. The same way the scarab beetle on the card crawls out of the dung and emerges into the light, one day I hope to occupy the consciousness that constantly lives the Truth.

For those interested in learning more about The Eternity Game please visit http://www.medhananda.com/eternity_game.htm

Mad as a Hornet! – The Wasp in Dreams

On September 21, 2015July 23, 2019 By Douglas M.In Dream Interpretation, Dreams1 Comment

by L@uReNCiO

Like a lot of people I can be irritable, and while I have a tighter grip on it in public, it comes out at people close to me like my mother. Even there though I have a pretty good level of control most of the time, but I find I have spans of days or weeks sometimes where I’m more agitated, and the irritation is more difficult to restrain. I had been going through a period like that recently, and the movement was shown in my dreams using the symbol of the wasp. This makes perfect sense as there are few things as hostile as a wasp, and we’ve all heard the phrase “mad as a hornet.” Here are the two dreams I’ve had during this recent upsurge of irritation which feature the wasp and took place within a week of each other.

Monday Sept 7, 2015

In this dream I’m in Briarcliff Circle in front of Todd Brim’s house. There’s a house being constructed across the street, and at the top of it there’s a huge wasp’s nest with big six inch wasps crawling around on it. I’m talking to RJ Snyder, and he says he’s going to pay $5000 to have it removed. And I say, “Why don’t you just call pest control and have them do it for free?” The street the house is on goes up a hill and RJ and I walk up to the top. I tell him I’ve seen other strange things in this neighborhood, and he tells me that Dhina is running around with my voice recorder and he finds that unnerving.

Sunday Sept 13, 2015

I’m in the garage and someone there wants me to video him with the GoPro camera. I really can’t though because the piece of plastic that frames the lens is out of place. I look under the workbench and see a wasp’s nest. I go into the house to get away from the danger and then out to the pool. As I’m walking around the pool I encounter a mirror and can see my face in it. I can see it’s really sunburned from the bottom of my eyelids on down, red as a lobster. There are a few small patches of unburnt skin though.

Like many older people my mother struggles with technology, and this is the main thing that pushes my irritation button as far as she goes. This annoyed part of me feels these things really aren’t that hard and she ought to be able to figure them out, or at least be able to remember how to do something after I’ve shown it to her a couple of times, etc. etc. Over the recent Labor Day weekend her questions and requests were coming up more than usual, and as the irritation got worse it started to come up when she would ask me about virtually anything and not just tech questions. It was just like the way some kids or teenagers will get riled when you ask them to do something, acting like you’re really imposing on them. Dhina, who is mentioned in the dream, is an Indian boy I know and is a perfect example of this kind of indignant teenager. The fact that he has my voice recorder I believe represents my speech, since my irritation manifests both as a vibe of annoyance and also comes out of my mouth. So the dream is showing me I’m acting like Dhina. The part about calling pest control I think has to do with calling on the divine for help with the irritation and not just my own resources, which the dream portrays as spending $5000. The house is something under construction in me, though I’m not sure what. That I make it up to the top of the hill is good as it shows an overcoming of the irritation on that day at least.

Though I fought back well on Labor Day, the problem continued during the week and through the next weekend. The morning after the second dream I once again gathered up my will to try and cast off the irritation’s grip on me. We had recently gotten an Amazon Firestick for our TV, and I had agreed to show mom how to use it, so I knew a test was coming in advance. I think the dream foreshadows this with the filming with the GoPro, but in the way dreams most often do it, which is analogously and not exactly.

Perhaps though it’s more accurate to say that an event in the inner world (shown or translated by the dream) gives rise to an event in the outer world, and the relationship between those two events is analogous and not exact. Regardless I think we can see the connection here. That I flee the wasp’s nest is a good sign and reflects my effort to get away from the irritation. I’m not sure what going from the garage to the pool might signify though the garage seems to represent dreams according to the experience of my collaborator Donny and it makes sense to me. I think the sunburn is again showing the problem with the irritation manifesting as speech since it’s mainly on the lower part of my face. And we all know how a person’s face will turn red when they’re really angry. The location of the sunburn also shows that while the irritation had gotten into the speech and action center of the mind (the throat chakra), it hadn’t reached the seat of the intellect and higher reason (the third eye chakra).

While it doesn’t feature the wasp there is one more dream I had in between the other two that also drew my attention to my irritation and merits being shared:

Thursday Sept 10, 2015

I’m sitting on the front porch with Dad and this girl I’ve known for about a year. She’s blond, has a lot of tattoos and is dressed in a crop top and a short skirt. She has a punk look to her. I have a computer and am looking at her Facebook page. Her cover photo is showing her left forearm (I’m pretty sure it was the left) and it has the words “black mamba” tattooed on it. I’m telling her how it doesn’t feel like a year has passed since we’ve met, that it only feels like a couple of months.

The day before this dream I had set up some outdoor timers on the front porch for some decorative lights we have outside. Then on the day following the dream my dad went out and added a needed extension cord but thought he’d messed up the settings on one of the timers in the process. Mom told me this and muttering something indignant I went out to the porch to see what was wrong. As I was examining the timer (which turned out to be fine) the fact that I was on the porch made me remember my dream and I saw how the irritation strikes like a snake. A snake in my dreams represents some kind of hostile force or lower vital movement, and I think that’s pretty universal, though I believe a snake can represent a positive energy or movement in some cases too. My vital itself is represented in the dream by the girl, and that too seems to be fairly universal symbolism though a woman figure could certainly represent many other things. For example if you dream about a woman you know it might represent some hallmark characteristic of hers that you’re currently exhibiting. My dad in this dream is this kind of character and represents my irritation since like many men he’s irritable with his spouse.

So what’s the lesson here? I guess for me it’s that things like irritation are hard to get rid of, and uprisings like this are part of the process until the defect is fully integrated or simply disappears by the process of spiritual transformation. There’s a fine line though between recognizing that and giving a vital movement permission to continue. The fact that my dreams stepped in like this tells me it’s no small matter and I have to continue to be vigilant in rejecting it. I do want to be rid of it though (as well as a great many other things) and that’s an important step.

It also never hurts to look at things through the eyes of understanding as Donny reminded me when I related the dreams and the irritation to him. He reminded me to look at my mom with the eyes of the soul, see her as innocent, like a child. The fact is it’s just hard for her to figure technology out. And when you also consider the fact that she and my dad let me live with them for free and feed me to boot, a little patience and understanding while serving as house tech support isn’t much to ask.

Notes and References

The reader will probably notice I don’t mention anything about the character of RJ or the significance of Todd Brim’s house while discussing the dream. Both RJ and Todd Brim are what you’d call “a ladies man.” The day following the dream I had an uprising of sexual desire, and the dream seems to have woven the two vital movements, the anger and the sex desire, together into one dream. Maybe that speaks to some connection between anger and sexual desire?

Have You Seen the World?

On September 16, 2015October 1, 2015 By Donny Lee DukeIn Poetry, video artLeave a comment

This is a video poem, a poem whose lines are set to clips from other videos and from film. It’s about seeing ourselves more as a world than a nation or people, an idea that is right on the horizon of humanity, close enough to be what we talk about. Here, it’s spoken if I might call it that, meaning it’s put in poetry, not the kind you grew up with I’m sure, but the kind that something as multidimensional as the web makes possible, and you just have to see the poem to hear it.

I should mention this is an abridged form of the much longer poem, and you can read and listen to it at:

Have You Seen the World? (The Chipmunk Press) Our other blog.

Donny

A Review of ‘Joan of Arc: A History’

On September 12, 2015July 23, 2019 By Douglas M.In Inner Voice and Vision, ReviewsLeave a comment

by sofi01

This new biography of Joan of Arc by author Helen Castor recently caught my eye on the new release rack at my local library. At the time, I honestly knew precious little about Joan of Arc other than she fought against the English, was burned at the stake and heard what she claimed were divine voices, so I was curious to know more about this historical spiritual figure and checked out the book.

I don’t know how other biographies of Joan have handled things, but this one rightly takes its time in setting the scene, starting with the British invasion and then navigating all the different twists and turns of the war until Joan arrives on the stage fifteen years and eighty-six pages later. In doing so, the book really gave me a stimulating glimpse into the mind of the times I previously didn’t have. The middle ages weren’t something I knew a whole lot about either other than what stuck with me from high school history i.e. there were kings and knights, the pope and the Inquisition, the bubonic plague, a lot of wars, and your average person was basically miserable and oppressed. The book shows a lot about what a powerful force religion was back then. It’s not really clear from the book how your basic peasant looked at things, but the nobles and the clergy looked for evidence of God’s favor or disfavor or even whose side God was on in events like the outcome of battles. And if you lost a battle in a particularly ugly manner, like the French did at Agincourt, the clergy would debate amongst themselves as to which sin it was and committed by whom that brought the misfortune upon them. They also used signs and portents to determine what actions to take and when to take them. It was also not uncommon for people to claim to hear divine voices, and thus the means of discerning who was hearing the divine and who was hearing the demonic was a topic of no little import amongst the clergy of the time.

With the groundwork patiently and properly laid by the author, our firebrand Joan then enters the picture as the strategic river city of Orleans is under siege by the English. We quickly see that Joan is remarkable for more than just hearing voices. The book makes very apparent the incredible force of personality of this simple God-loving peasant girl who balked convention by wearing men’s clothes and who rose to a position of military leadership at a time when that was unthinkable. France was desperate to be sure because if Orleans fell that may have spelled the end for the French and they knew it, but Castor clearly shows that what was equally if not more important was Joan’s intense will and conviction in her God given mission to drive the English from France and to give her King his official coronation. That conviction revives the reeling French morale and inspires Joan’s men to achieve a series of stunning military victories.

But even after her fortune turns and Joan is captured by the English, her incredible will and resolve persist as she endures seven months in captivity followed by a grueling trial for heresy. I couldn’t help but marvel at the way a nineteen year old girl with no education to speak of stubbornly and courageously stands up to some of the greatest legal and theological minds of the day, confounding their attempts to manipulate her and refusing to repent her heresy even after they get what they need to convict her. And I equally couldn’t help but understand her moments of weakness and despair, such as when she attempts to jump to her death from her prison and later, when faced with being burned at the stake, her decision to sign a statement of abjuration. I mean who wouldn’t have such moments under such circumstances? In the end though, Joan chooses the fire and recants, though history isn’t totally clear on that. As the book points out, the English may have taken away her woman’s dress and left her with nothing to wear but her men’s clothing which was a breech of her abjuration. Regardless, this time Joan goes through with it, calling the name of Jesus as the fire takes her life.

Even in death though Joan’s promise was fulfilled, and the English were driven from France twenty years later. Five years after that Joan was vindicated and her conviction of heresy overturned in a trial as equally biased as the first. Then, nearly 500 years after her death, she was canonized as St. Joan. Thus today it’s generally assumed that St. Joan was hearing divine and not demonic voices. I too held the belief that Joan was divinely inspired, but reading this book gave me the chance to take a more in-depth look at things. I must admit that after taking that look I find myself of the same opinion, though I don’t discount the possibility that there was some undivine admixture in her voices. Regardless of that, however, the way she came on the scene at such a critical moment and the fact that France’s salvation was in such an unusual package, speaks to me of divine intervention. In addition, her stupendous and unwavering conviction and the effect it had on both her troops and her country, though short lived, suggests to me that a power much greater than hers was at work through her, and that for whatever reason the English conquering France would have somehow gotten in the way of the divine plan. It seems to me that Joan may have been what in Hinduism is known as a Vibhuti. For those not familiar with the term Sri Aurobindo defines it by saying that “A Vibhuti is supposed to embody some power of the Divine and is enabled by it to act with great force in the world.”¹

But regardless of whether I’m right or wrong about Joan, I would encourage anyone intrigued by this review to take a look at what I found to be a riveting and engaging look at this fascinating historical figure and her times. And if I am right perhaps like me you’ll catch a window looking in on the workings of divine intervention.

References
1. Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo Vol 22, pg 406.

An Example of Prevision in a Dream

On August 27, 2015July 23, 2019 By Douglas M.In Dream Interpretation, DreamsLeave a comment

by Cowgirl111

Over the years I’ve had the experience a number of times of dreaming about someone I’ve known and then the next day or so I meet someone who either looks like them or resembles them in terms of character, or sometimes both. It’s a sort of foreshadowing, but one I at least can’t see until after the fact. So having said that let me share one of these experiences.

I was sitting in large classroom auditorium, maybe about half-way up the rows. Seated in the same row as me were my boss Bud, my coworker Pete, and my former coworker Cindi. Bud had apparently brought Cindi back as our director of sales.

Cindi was the director of sales for nearly two years at the chamber of commerce where I work. During those two years in addition to working at the chamber Cindi was also always going from one side job to the next, things like pyramid schemes, selling supplements etc. She was just that sort of person and I think a lot of us have know someone like that.

Now I’d basically forgotten about this dream until about three days later when a woman, Alberta, walked into the chamber saying she wanted to join for two types of products she was selling. The first was a type of make-up and the other was a type of essential oils that Cindi used to peddle. Alberta seemed to be cut from the same cloth as Cindi since it seemed this was just the latest thing she’d undertaken to make money and she had probably tried many other little schemes before. There was also some similarities in personality between Alberta and Cindi, but no physical resemblance.

Alberta came into the chamber frequently for maybe six weeks or so for various things related to her business ventures. Both my co-worker Rhonda and I were very involved in her process and tried to help her. I don’t recall at what moment I made the connection with the dream, but at some point I realized that “Cindi”, in the form of Alberta, who had a similar character, had indeed returned to the chamber but as a member and not as our director of sales. Then one day Alberta just up and vanished.

In closing I’ll say that there doesn’t seem to be much practical use for a dream like this other that to remind us that things are taking shape in the inner reality before they manifest out here. That I think though is a valuable thing of which to be reminded. I also think its very possible this dream was showing something psychological in me represented by the return of Cindi. If I have other dreams about her I’ll try to pay attention and see if I can connect it with some movement in me.

And I had Two Lightning Bolts

On August 26, 2015July 23, 2019 By Donny Lee DukeIn Dream Interpretation, Dreams2 Comments

And I Had Two Lightning Bolts
It Swerved and Missed

Donny Duke

By increasing my sadhana concentration, I’m coming lucid in my dreams more. Sadhana is Sanskrit for spiritual practice, and a full sadhana means maintaining a continual unwavering focus on the divine, or ‘the in front of you’ as though it were the divine, though this side of realization a 24/7 concentration can only be a goal always out of reach: losing it, picking it up again, losing it, and on and on. Whatever the case, this naturally has you paying more attention to what you’re doing, a focused attention, and that aids best I’ve found than any other method in awakening within your in dreams, without even specifically trying to, because you’re working directly on the focus and force of your consciousness, becoming conscious of any periods of unconsciousness, sleep and dream being the biggest ones.

Of course it does also help to be working daily on remembering of a good part of the experience you have during sleep, which includes things other than dreams, or at least be in remembrance of the first and last part of sleep, but that should be understood. With awakened dreams it becomes possible to not only remember that experience but to explore it using your awakened will, that in a lucid dream that enables you to transcend not only the laws of the Nature in the dream but also the dreaming mechanism itself, or creative reflex I call it, since the weaving of a dream is an automatic knee-jerk response to your immediate conditions intuitively created under the dim arches of all your infinity.

It is to jump over the universe to go from that mere discovering and exploring what you can do in a lucid dream to using awakened dreams to go into the inner regions overhead, places like Overmind and Supermind (towards them is more like it, since those heights you get to maybe once in a lifetime, maybe) or dive deep down into the well of soul, something almost as rare but more natural for us to do first, find our soul, since it is us.

Doing this kind of inner discovery – going to your innermost, going to your tops – as opposed to the thousand and one things you can do in lucid dreams, you’re using awakened dreams for what they’re really for. Don’t worry. Very seldom will you actually arrive. The attempt, though, does deepen or raise the consciousness, however deep or high you go, and if you’re jumping universes so to speak, you do need that. In other words it’s not the destination but the journey that gets the goal-mileage, as usual. You do, however, keep at that getting there.

I was in an involved dream where I had messed up and was becoming slowly accepted again by the society around me, and I walked outside of a building I had been running around in, looking on my left at a huge inner city lake, the farther shores shifting as I looked at them in the now you see it now you don’t way dreams spin a scene, and that weirdness woke me up, but I just kept walking looking at the scene so as to not lose the dream. After about 10 seconds or so I cleared my mind and heart and asked where my psychic being, the personality of the soul in our yoga (what evolves through our long line of lives), and the Mother, my teacher, wanted me to go and what they wanted me to do. After so many formulas on ‘who you gonna call?’ in such circumstances, my soul and the teacher it has chosen are the referees for me.

A force took me up but not high, and I began to slowly turn and view the whole shore of the lake, which was still shifting, but patches were stabilizing, the first being the sun shining on part of the shore near me. I look up at it, and the light seemed to come into me, or I into it, but for some reason I turned my attention to the very far shore that had turned into something similar to Yosemite. Now, in my yoga the sun is tops; it’s a symbol of Supermind, the direction I want to go. What turned me from there towards what looked like a heavenly Yosemite, complete with glistening waterfalls, was my attention. That subtle-physical beauty caught my eye as I was beginning to focus on the sun, and in inner travel, where you point your attention, there you will go, just like where you point your feet in the outer world.

I went both up and towards that distant shore, and then the dream-field went white, not blank as usual when you’re in travel, which is normally just an open your eyes away from waking up in bed or wherever you’re dreaming. I was in a strain maintaining the flow of force pulling me up, and then it seemed I was no longer going up, and I opened my eyes awake in bed, foiled again.

The next morning I was dreaming I was walking into a building this time, and I just awakened, probably because the life-force and will are gathering, and I again asked my psychic being and the Mother for aid in going where I needed to, seeing what I needed to see, and a force took me down this time, into the floor, and as I went into it, it sort of enveloped me, and on it were little indications, like icons, representing my dad, and I knew that I was to go and stay with him and finish the song I’m working on, or rearrange it really, and the near impossibility of visiting my dad in my present life circumstances did not trigger in my attention. It was as though I were a young man seeing him regularly as I did then.

That meant I wasn’t fully awakened to the dream, was only partially lucid, a common feature of awakened dreams. I didn’t know myself as my present self dreaming, but as my past self dreaming, an inner element weaving into my identity. It was that I took back with me upon opening my eyes awake in bed, which I did very soon after going through the floor and looking at the symbols it had left on me. In other words, there’s an interpretation there.

What had happened was I went into the physical consciousness, represented by the floor, and went down slowly parallel to the floor until I went through it, going through it and into a swimming pool-like region below. It was as though I were underwater but without water, the space inside being a substance unto itself. Floating, I went up into a standing position, looking on my shoulders and arms at the symbols of dad on the floor that had become the suit I wore, and it was soon after recognizing the meaning of it, that I needed to go and stay with my father and complete the aforementioned song, give it leadership, that I awoke in my bed, not feeling as cheated as in the last one, because this dream was more help on the journey than getting to a destination, though your creativity helps get you there too, if you see art as more than something to merely appreciate, see it as the quickening and catharsis it is. That’s another common feather of awakened dreams, your art instrument or creative passion will inevitably show up in them, and the sky’s the limit on just how detailed and personal that aid to your art can be.

Realizing that about completing the song, where to do so, which had some ‘how’ in it, even though I was ‘fooled’ by the dream into identifying myself as years younger, was more than a mere mental grokking. A slight deepening of my consciousness had occurred, connected like a pathway of electricity to the song I’m working on, which literally my soul wrote, and I was both given more creative force to complete it and a clue about from where I should gather that force – the dad and all the discipline and authority the father stands for, what will give me the rhythm to keep it going.

I would interpret that to mean that the song takes the leadership position in my life at the moment. I should mention that the entire song came bit by bit from experience during sleep, played and sung to me line by line no less, though not in the same voice or instrumentation, but in the whole range of what musicians I like or have made an impression on me, they singing the line or lines, which I record on a voice recorder I sleep with and then try to reproduce with my voice and guitar, never able to get but a shadow of what I originally hear. Now I’m in the final stage of the song, and all the lines repeating inside me are in my voice and with my guitar, and so it seems the song’s come home, and I’m given the force and go ahead to complete it, if I don’t spill it as usual, another common feature of awakened dreams, spilling what force – be that a deepening, widening, or heightening – that came with one.

But there’s my infinity going on here too, and the dream isn’t some isolated experience like I’ve interpreted it (no dream is) but a continual working out of all of me. All my life I’ve had a character reappear in my dreams, a Black man that has some genius about him. When I was a child he was a child, and when I became a man he did too. Once he was a scientist working on what would change the world for the better, another time a professor teaching students to do that, another an artist capturing world-fate. Always he was man with some greatness about him, and always he was relatively unknown but just on the cusp of fame.

Sometime after going down into the well of soul, 4 or 5 years maybe, via lucid dreams (which only gets you to the chute; the soul is beyond dreaming), I had one of those dreams that index your life. You’ll find several life-defining dreams do that. I was that man, only I was also lucid and knew myself as me the dreamer, and I knew he was me in a past life. It’s happened a couple of times with me and dreaming: I’m inside someone with all my thoughts and feelings but able to feel and think all ‘they’ are feeling and thinking, like an inner observer. So many things clicked in that dream, but it was the guitar that rode the crest of the wave.

It was just before the turn of the century, of last century that is, 1890 or so, and he was a guitar picker in the Old South. He could play the guitar like it was his soul, but because he was Black, and because of the Jed Crow laws, he had been warned by the KKK that if he continued to play in White beer joints, he would be killed. He ignored the threat, thinking that because of his ability and rising community fame, he had nothing to fear. It happened that they came at night and burned his house down, burning him and his wife and kids alive. When the fire reached him, as he was trying to save his family, hearing their screams, a dream shift occurred, and I was no longer ‘inside’ him but observing from the outside. Though it’s not vital to my narrative here, the firemen who came to put out the fire were the same men who started it.

It didn’t dawn on me until years later, but the guitar is the instrument of my soul, and my soul wanted me to learn to play it, and I did more or less, even writing and recording songs, but they were by no means good, just barely tolerable to listen to, because I was by no means a natural, and you’d think I would be. The problem was it wasn’t in my hands in this life; it was from a past life and was housed in my soul and had to be surfaced, which has occurred as I’ve slowly worked on surfacing my psychic being.

The aforementioned song, “The Freedom”, I’d written and recorded, thinking I was done with it, and, not happy with my inability, I put the guitar down for some months, but when I picked it up again, guitar picking had moved into my hands, was dancing on my fingertips, something that has coincided with more ease of psychic contact, naturally. So I went back to the song, one worth working with, and it was obvious something had happened with my ability, as though a great leap had occurred, the guitar becoming an extension of my body, my rough singing voice confidant enough in my hands to sing with conviction, with my soul.

So in a deeper interpretation the dream signifies the guitar moving not only into my physical consciousness, into my hands, but into that part of it that has authority and keeps things moving, the father. Wouldn’t you know it though, right after the dream it seemed I lost that soul conviction in my hands and voice, but that’s probably because I’ve had some days with a buried psychic, buried under the 100 things that bog down discombobulated days. That seems to be a common feature of dreams that bring some movement to a completion; there’s a small gap between that happening in dream and in waking life.

Now I’d imagine that when it is in my hands and voice again you might not hear my soul all that clearly when I play and sing, might not even hear a good song, but I will, and to the degree I do hear one has I would imagine a lot to do with determining if you do. That’s a secret that guitar picking soul singer told me I hope I can tell you.

Every once in awhile, the soul takes control, and I’m capital. I listen to the music, and I sing a song. So the Spirit’s informing matter, and the Spirit stays. Beauty’s not the uncompromising question. There is in there a spirit. That’s the only business. Well, as it hits the trade room –

God only knows what I’d be without you. [sung into my inner ear in the voice and instrumentation of The Beach Boys]

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Original Sin

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And I Had Two Lightning Bolts It Swerved and Missed

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And I Had Two Lightning Bolts
It Swerved and Missed