What Will It Take?

 A dear friend, in the midst of a political discussion recently, opined that he thought civil war might be a reality in the not distant future.  This chilled me to the bone for it’s potential to materialize. Unless?

Of course we were numb at the news of yet another flipped out male youth with the power of guns way bigger than any bit of consciousness he possesses, murdering little children in cold blood, like it was a video game.

 

Now comes the avalanche of opining by our “men” in charge about whether or not we should at last take responsibility as a society for our attitudes towards guns and the perpetual harm they do to us as a collective, a society.  In patriarchy, a gun is a symbol of manhood, no?  What would Freud say?

 

I have many times here tried to put in perspective an understanding of patriarchy that underscores its basic structure as a thinking model, not a gender model. Not all men are patriarchal and not all women aren’t patriarchal.  We live in a 6 thousand year old repressive and abusive paradigm that is psychically fueled by religion.  Six thousand years may sound like a long time; it’s a small fraction of the time civilizations have existed on this planet.

 

When you believe in a male god, you call Him/He all the time, it gels an image in your mind that will guide your beliefs,  perceptions and your choices as a person. The patriarchal god is extremely controlling of his “children” the human race; his superiority warrants all sorts of cruelty and misogyny.  The stories told about this sky god in the patriarchal religious texts spin myriad tales of inflicting pain and suffering on humanity in the name of this god.  In the OT, Abraham barely misses having to slice his son’s throat to prove to this insane god his loyalty; in the NT, this insane god does it himself, sacrifices his only son to justify and meliorate his own petty peeve with humanity.

 

These are beliefs; there are ways to know that God/Goddess/Spirit is Love in your own daily/nightly experience.  Our world is desperate for a paradigm that isn’t greedy and unkind, like the patriarchal paradigms that are always demanding blood and sacrifice and elevating one gender and race above all others.  Because they are beliefs, however ingrained in us since baptism, they are not real.  When our hearts crack open and we love, not Hollywood or gender specific love, but the Love that is the real deity in our universe, the Love we can touch in each other and in our dreams, the Love that when we open to it, is our ultimate destiny, our ultimate bliss.  You don’t have to believe me or anyone else about this; it’s in you and you can experience it yourself, especially if you pay attention to your dreams.

 

I look to dreaming as a possible avenue to reshaping our paradigm enough for us to act, to save, our home, this beautiful planet, and ourselves here in the physical.  We have a sacred responsibility to pass on the most love and the most beauty we can to our children.  Instead, our patriarchal paradigms flay our souls from our bodies and demand we place the most precious aspect of our human existence in the hands of greedy, misogynist men who enforce what we shalt and shalt not do.

 

We need to be having a different human experience on the planet.  One that indigenous American teachers, like Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, the author of Braiding Sweetgrass, speak of today.  Spirit is one energy we all experience, including animals and all that is life on this planet.  Patriarchal authoritarian pyramid models of “governance” are classic all over the world.  At the bottom of those global patriarchal pyramids are children, women and non-dominant patriarchal races.  At the moment, white males seem to be in charge, followed closely by other despotic male autocrats around the globe.

 

I have also many times described these rules as enforced by a frame of mind and a blind allegiance to shit that doesn’t make sense.  The most toxic enforcer of this patriarchal thinking is our so-called “religions” that propose to all and sundry that the supreme ultimate invisible deity is some old fart with a beard.  To him all men bow and in return, this super daddy bestows on men the right to do whatever they want to women, like deny them full personhood or health care under the law, the same as men.

 

I have many times said that this shit isn’t as old as you might think, given the scale of time that humanity has managed amazing civilizations on this planet that weren’t patriarchal.  We have been taught a very skewed history; we can’t see before the 6 thousand years of this patriarchal paradigm.  Our written history is not the whole story of humanity on this beautiful planet. Things are not, as many think, “always was and always will be”.

 

I have many times pointed to the facts taught to us by modern physics and metaphysics that reality isn’t matter, it’s energy, and that the “observer” (any conscious person) can influence the outcome of how this energy takes shape.  I think of “The Secret” and manifesting your ego driven needs as the McDonalds’ version of this universal law.  The version that counts, that you take with you beyond your physical death, is the evolution of your awareness.  Our divinity is part of who we are; we are not born defective and in need of patriarchal daddy intervention in order to qualify for social acceptability.  

 

Under the patriarchal paradigms we are asked to uphold, there is no room for trust in our own spiritual awareness.  It's simple.  We are spiritual beings having a physical existence.  We don’t need to believe in anything in particular, we need to be who we came here to be.  We have a spiritual connection to soul, self or however you name your connection to your eternal existence.  We live in two realities at once, the temporal physical and the eternal spiritual. We know this when we track our dreams frequently with respect and curiosity. Dreams are a bridge between our waking and spiritual selves.

 

Our “after” life depends on our choices now. Christianity, Islam and Judaism espouse choices that warp our organic spirituality into twisted shame, penitence and servitude and can be especially lethal for women. By the way, as I’ve said so many times, Jesus, did not put up with patriarchal bullshit and it got him killed.  The fact that patriarchs decided to take his story and run with the Messiah angle is a continuing source of irritation to him, I’ll bet.

 

A paradigm like the toxic one we are seeing disintegrate before us is not invincible; at least not in the ways that matter.  Each person that calls bullshit and starts to educate themselves in ways to be more loving to others and to themselves tears a thread from this malicious web that has frozen us in such discord.

 

No one person, of any gender, will turn this tide of destruction, but each person that refuses to participate in it, each person who opens to new, unimagined possibilities for our survival, each person who learns how to love, each person who participates in any way towards a collective solution, is saving not only themselves, but others, too.

 

On a time line of human reality, “you are here”.  The expansion of our experience can draw on what was before this disaster of a paradigm, but it is up to each of us, however we identify sexually, to help create a paradigm that is fueled by the energy of the universe, Love, which, to materialize, we ourselves must embody.

 

This means daring to embody the energy of divinity, of Love, in any way you can.  Sing, dance, play music, laugh a lot, be kind, patient, giving; all those great things and do them in a way that brings joy to your life.

 

I don’t know what will happen.  What will it take to turn this tide of hate and division that so many patriarchal zombies are manifesting around the world, including, in the USA.  I do know that however grisly it gets, we still survive this consciousness beyond the physical body, as proven by dream research, to name one avenue you can explore.

 

Taking this into consideration, it’s important for each of us to ask ourselves what we are here to learn and what we are here to do.  Anything each of the 7 billion of us does in Love for others and for ourselves will help tip these crazy scales.  Also, if we are to give up the psychic poison of patriarchal religions, we need an alternative.  Any time we make a connection to spirit dreaming or meditating or walking in nature with heart open, we are experiencing our soul selves. There are so many ways to experience the reality of Love. We can let go of the fear-based paradigm and embrace the one that is with us always, our organic spiritual connection so evident in life.  We have nothing to prove and plenty to do.  Each person’s contribution is important.  

 

May it be so.

 

 

King Kong and Soul Recovery

I recently wrote here about my encounter with King Kong in my dreaming. I was talking about how amazing dream symbols are, how they morph and dance in our dreams, sometimes thrilling, sometimes terrorizing us into attention.

When we trust our dreams to be out for our own good, we know that even the most unwelcome dreams might hold healing for our battered souls.  Why are our souls battered; soul's run on pure love energy and in our might-makes-right patriarchal world, some souls find love energy too scarce for their survival.  Psychiatry calls it dissociation, when overwhelming trauma causes some aspect of ourselves to split from our awareness; many ancient and indigenous cultures call it soul loss.  As we are often unconscious of this happening, perhaps because it was in our childhood, we don't realize that actions we take from the habit of protecting ourselves the only way we could in the trauma moment, are now not so effective in serving us well.

When my partner was hit by a car many years ago, in the moments before impact, he saw it coming and told me he heard a voice in his head say, "I don't want to be here for this"; that caused him to rise up on the balls of his feet, as if to jump. That movement probably saved his life; he was thrown and battered instead of crushed under the heavy car.  He's worse for wear, but mostly fine now.  That story illustrates for me what is common in crisis and trauma, we seek any escape we can, if not in a physical realm, then in a psychic one.

Dreams have the power to give us healing symbols.  A friend of mine asked me after my last King Kong post what this symbol teaches me?  I told her I'd let her know when I found out.  Using a dream symbol begins with recording the dream so you can return to it to refresh the story in your mind.  Dream Re-entry, as Robert Moss teaches it or Active Imagination, as Jung conceived it, are valuable ways to fathom a dream.

Dreams are the right brain's domain; imagination is the engine of our creativity.  When we approach dreams with creativity and imagination instead of logic and analysis, ("what does it mean?) we get results that benefit our healing.  

Re-entry is often incredibly healing; it's also greatly entertaining. (I like to re-enter a dream I choose before I go to sleep or when I wake up in the middle of the night; for me it's a great way to fall asleep already dreaming.) I let my imagination spin the story my dream began into one where I am able to feel safe and capable of using the myriad options dreams allow to save myself in the dream story and gain the gifts this dream offers.  I can fly to safety, talk to any character or object and bring into the story whomever, whatever I choose to assist me, to help me feel safe or keep me good company.

My quest to understand Kong's part in my dreams begins with me re-entering the dream with the help of new characters I create to support me. My plan is to get Kong to a huge wild life sanctuary and the freedom he deserves and to begin developing our friendship. Over many re-entries over many days, I befriend Kong and find him a willing guardian and protector of not just me, but of the little kid me who suffered trauma and could now use some love and understanding from her big sister, me.

In dreams time is literally immaterial so I can readily get back to that little sad, confused girl and help her gain a sense of safety, support and guidance that my sincerely loving parents didn't know how to provide.  How?  By creating a story with her in it where she feels safe and she gets to do things that make her wildly happy, which in turn reminds me of what makes me happy now.  It's a win-win.  Whatever confidence and self-love she gains in the process is a transfusion of soul for me now.

Robert Moss developed the practice of soul recovery in Active Dreaming; it differs from the shamanic tradition of soul retrieval in that it doesn't necessitate a shaman's help; the dreamer has the power of being both the healer and the healed, as Robert puts it, to be their own shaman. It also doesn't presume a cultural cosmology; it uses a dream as a gateway to where, when and what must be done for the good of the dreamer. 

I've found this practice to work at a profound level, not just for my soul healing, but for many dreamers with whom I've shared these wonderfully creative ways of doing dream play.  I suggest that a person who has suffered severe trauma and is experiencing terrifying nightmares not attempt to go it alone; I hope they can find a compassionate professional  counselor to hold the physical space with them and guide them while they bravely work to heal. Many others of us have been knocked around in ways that damage but don't cripple us.  Unfortunately, we sometimes push the wounds out of consciousness and don't face the pain in our day to day, busy waking ego lives. Dreams seem to know when we need a particular aspect of our personal unconscious to heal if we're to live our best lives.  They are not above using monsters to get our attention, but if we pay attention, they can become gentler and often, extremely funny. If we take the time to get to know our dreams through the stories and symbols they offer us, we develop ways to heal spiritually, at our soul level.  

My initial way of honoring this dream was to look up the story of the making of King Kong with all its subsequent cinematic iterations.  The original story is so obviously a white male's fantasy, where women exist with a defined sexualized role in the margins of the action, usually as victims to be saved, and people of different race and culture can be caricatured and equally marginalized.  Of course, Nature can also be conquered by man, and Kong must die to prove the white male hero's power. The height of irony is delivered at the end: Kong has been catapulted off the Empire State Building by military planes and lies dead in the street.  The big shot producer whose hubris is responsible for the mayhem, destruction and unnecessary death of Kong, intones sadly,  "Beauty killed the Beast."

Yeah, and Eve ate the apple.

So it behooves Beauty, the archetypal feminine, to also free herself from whatever chains this bullshit patriarchal paradigm has inflicted on her psyche and rescue Beast from the insanity that motivates patriarchal thinkers and leads them to bring us all to the brink of physical extinction.  We will all continue existence in other forms, of course, but I sure hope the misogynist racist folk in the world don't get any more beautiful planets to fuck up.

As for me, I see great promise for us in embracing our dream experiences and wisdom.  Once we discover that some things can be addressed on the inside, in our inner worlds, and that our inner worlds that we travel in dreams are as real as are our waking physical worlds, perhaps we'll gain the resource, the magic key, that tips the scales back into balance. If we must die trying, then at least we can live somewhere, after this physical life, away from ignorant racist misogynists. We get to choose. 

The more of us can use our dreams to heal ourselves and help others to heal, the more the scales tip on the side of hope.  When we know that spirituality doesn't have to be earned because it's organic to us and that we are connected to soul/spirit through dreaming, we are free to explore both waking and dreaming realities with more awareness, compassion and courage. 

May it be so.

Photo 4887362 / King © Han Cheng Tan | Dreamstime.com

Spiritual Empowerment Through Dreaming

“It’s ok not to be ok” popped up in a meme on my FB page.  It made me think of all the times I’ve heard health professionals teach about self-acceptance. Why should I need anyone’s permission to be who I am? To feel OK?   Who set the standards for okayness?

Society? The norms that bring us so much gun violence and so much divisiveness are in painfully obvious need of reinvention.  American citizens are dealing with a hot mess, politically at home, as well as around the world; the hot mess male leaders insist on making perpetually. Boys with very dangerous toys! 

Or morally?  That which is right?  And who gets to decide that; the boys in black dresses with their ‘oh so special’ inside track to Nobodaddy? Who is your God?  Patriarchy’s bloviating dictators who demand total allegiance on the pain of death and perdition, or Love, the greatest mystery we can know, the champion of our self-acceptance.

I believe, as a spiritual being having a physical experience, each of us has her or his own inside track to morality. Our hearts teach us what is wrong and what is right throughout our lives, and that still inner voice Jesus pointed to, assures us we’re never alone.  The Queen/Kingdom of God is within.

Morality is my social conduct based on my spiritual understanding, which is based on my own experience, not some external law.  My experience has brought me to the conclusion that Love is the Answer (LITA).  Love is a force that very few people have never experienced, but plenty of people deny.  Love is so much more than private ownership of a physical chunk of earth or another person. Love transcends the physical appearances of waking life, whispering in our ears at night.  I AM Here with you; you are SAFE with Me.  Look within.

My spiritual evolution comes from dialogue with my dreams.  Watching my dream life taught me to observe waking life in a similar way. I often experience how the magic of sychronicity and dream correlations meld my waking and dream experiences into a complete sense of Self.  

I have faith in my dreams because they’ve helped me immensely in my waking life, whether by giving me a head’s up that what seemed improbable in a dream is now happening so take charge of the situation, or by consoling my heart when it’s aching, or by making me see the very funny side of life and not take me and other’s pecadillos so seriously.

Because of dreams and dreaming, I have faith that however distressing life gets, collectively and personally, help is always available from the spirit, from those who love me on the other side, from Home.  I have faith that goes from my heart to the Heart Divine.  I’ve found grace, forgiveness and courage so many times in my dreams, and I know it’s a universal reality.  Dreams are our bridge to spirit.  Our breadcrumbs to home. 

If I feel not okay, it’s because I’m suffering from the expectations of me that come from outside myself.  Rules, regulations, codes and enforcers are the hallmark of patriarchies. Our modern psyche is full of dread from too many years of brutal patriarchal rule.  Granted, 6,000 years of warring father religions and rulers is nothing compared to where archeology puts us homo sapiens, 200,000 years of human cultures around the globe.  It's time to admit that patriarchy is bad for the soul, the spirit.  Angry Father Gods have got to go. 

Our earliest archeological records are of the veneration of the Mother Goddess and her Body, the Earth. 

The Venus of Willendorf, circa 29,000 BCE,  is one of the few ancient  Goddess images extant in the modern patriarchal era; goddess worshiping traditions were largely destroyed by centuries of patriarchal religious inquisitions.  Goddess worshiping cultures weren’t necessarily matriarchal, they were, as Riane Eisler brilliantly presents in The Chalice and the Blade, cooperative societies. 

The Goddess spoke to me first in a dream, Howling Mary. Honoring the Feminine Divine doesn’t involve putting our old patriarchal paradigm on a female projection; it means accessing what’s been demeaned.  Chief of all things to access is Love.  Self-love, love of others and love for all things; love as a spiritual practice.    There’s no doctrine for that; it’s a practice, just like dreaming is a practice with guidelines, but no rule book. 

The pay off is spiritual empowerment.  

May all your best dreams come true.  May Love help you find your way.