For God's Sake

 

Remember when we were all horrified at how the Iranian "Morality" police treated women?  Mahsa Amini was killed last September in Tehran for not wearing the proper attire the proper way.  Well, how about the white supremacist Christian police we're dealing with in the USA?  They are fucking bent on putting American women in equal position to the Iranian women. controlled, body and soul.  First, a stupid misogynist Mississippi law with God quoted as the source and authority, topples the hard-won protection of Roe v Wade. Now, an oral medication, mifepristone, that has been safely used by countless women for twenty years, FDA approved, with a better safety track record than Viagra, is being challenged inTexas, to be tried before a self-declared patriarchal judge. The ruling is a slam dunk, then it will be sent to the Supreme Court.  The morality police super judgies will again do what they were hired to do; subjugate women to patriarchal rule.

How dare these contemptuous men and the proverbial token woman of patriarchy  put American women in chains again?  Based on what?  What they say God the Father wants of us, to protect fetuses and treat women like cattle?  Breeding cows who have no moral or legal agency if they get pregnant and don't want to breed?  We need the calves, so the cows are expendable.  As long as we have enough calves, the cows outgrow their usefulness and can be fed on.  

 

Where do we see this?  In every religious autocracy around the globe.  Women have no agency under law, are considered spiritually inferior and culpable and some men get to decide, usually ugly, mean old ones masquerading as authority with not a spiritual bone in their bodies.

 

We need to stop this!  My dream of Mary Howling at the corruption of religion comes to me front and center.  This is stuff to howl about.  People and pundits are discussing a threat to our democracy.  Let's be clear, whether you call it white supremacy, which it is, or the ugliest misogyny, woman hating, which it is, it is totalitarian patriarchy.  It isn't the way it's always been, but it's been this way for far too long.  We, men, women and self-identifying persons, have the opportunity to change things up for good.

 

We can stand up to the brainwashing forces of these religious patriarchs who are trying to turn back women's freedom and fight for every American person's right, regardless of class or culture, to govern her/their own body.  It is corrupt beyond belief to use people's vulnerable need for a faith in what lies beyond death as a weapon of control and oppression over women.

 

Patriarchy is a corrupt nightmare; it has built male power over women around the world for about 6,000 years.  It has justified a hierarchical power system of class and privilege that destroys community; it breeds misogyny, racism and cruelty.  Do we realize what a brief respite women attained in the US from the moral and legal restrictions of patriarchal religions? Roe v Wade liberated us in 1973 from male intervention in choices we make about our bodies. Women have been legally independent of American state and church intervention in their reproductive lives for FIFTY YEARS!  And now, we're back; Christian patriarchal men and their women allies are gloating.  Eve is back under Adam's thumb, so God, who was pissed at both of them, is mollified.  

Thank goddess for Jesus, he's the strongest ancient Feminist I know; remember do as my momma says?  The macho code, then or now, doesn't allow for the obvious respect women so deserve and Jesus gave them.

 

Please don't think getting to where we got (which now we're not) was a matter of committees and meetings.  It was a tooth and nail struggle against the smug bastards who think God is swinging their dicks for them.    And guess who we're dealing with still?  Patriarchal men and women using religion to bind and burn women, once again.  

 

Yet, I am so grateful for the amazing women all over the world and in the US  today, leading the Feminist clarion call to get off our asses and refuse to let religion enslave us again.  

The incredible miracle of birth is all on women; we were asked to do this  humanitarian service through our physical bodies by Love, and apparently, we said yes.  There came a time that some men filled with jealousy and greed decided to topple women's power and subject them through cruelty and religion to their own wills and advantages.   That's when the shit began to go seriously downhill. Patriarchy was and is a failed experiment from the get go because of the utter imbalance in the natural order of things that it defies.  

 

Patriarchy is a cracking antique social paradigm that always polarizes and then raises one opposite against the other, male/female, white/colored, rich/poor.  Patriarchy is always a pyramid and He's on top, in the hereafter and in the here and now.  As much as patriarchy has succeeded in ruling the globe, it is desperately failing millions and millions of earthlings everywhere.  Wars and insatiable greed for material gains that will evaporate the minute death knocks, what absurdity; yet, here we are doing this insanity again and again. These war-god, woman-hating and slave making religions have brought us six thousand years of  unnecessary human misery, yet we want to cling to beliefs that don't serve us. The definition of insanity, don't we all know, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

 

Why don't we change god up a little?  Does divinity really have to be your daddy? Why not let divinity be bigger than that?  Why don't we examine our own being; are we our bodies?  Or do we exist, after death and in our dreams in spirit form?  Render unto the physical what belongs in the physical; divinity is an open book which we each get to read about in our own hearts, minds and dreams; and in Love.  Love is god; there's no room for all this ugliness.  It's purely patriarchal and we can change that because patriarchy is a system that abuses the majority of us, using young men as cannon fodder for insane wars or dehumanizing young women as sex toys and baby machines 24/7.  But it's about the way we think, which rules the way that we behave.

 

You don't have to leave anything good about your religion behind; just don't commit hate, misogyny and racism in the name of your god.  I am positive that divinity doesn't want women to suffer because of the gift they have; a woman is a whole autonomous spirit, just like a man, just like any person, regardless of how they identify in the physical.  Reproductive justice is for everyone.  It's easy to tell true Christians, Jesus lovers, from the bullshit ones.  Jesus loved, trusted and respected women and would never deny a woman her own authority.  He probably died for standing up for them in the bleak patriarchy in which he lived.  It's not about detaching from the core of your beliefs; it is about detaching from the money-making false prophets of patriarchy who want to control women and peoples of color or gender difference.  Men can be feminists, the way white people can not be racists, by continuously realizing what we've inherited from so much institutionalized indoctrination over the years and figuring out together how we fix this.

 

For one, we can change our own hearts, look within ourselves for what we truly know, from our own waking and dreaming lives, Love Is The Answer.  We are the channel for this universal truth to manifest.  We are all spiritual beings having a physical existence, which is temporary and material.  We are eternal, anyone who has experienced a lucid dream, an Out of Body Experience or a Near Death Experience knows what it is to be out of the physical and conscious of our existence still.  

 

Divinity does not demand that women suffer or allow man to "lord" it over her.  That was clearly some assholes' idea of how to have power over women. We don't need to return to any external worship of our own human projections; we can turn within to the divinity that dwells in our hearts and speaks to us in dreams.  

 

 

 

Let Your Dreams Guide You

One of the best things I've learned from following my dreams for over 30 years is that I'm my own authority when it comes to me. 

There is no need to give my soul into another's care; she's my responsibility. Contemporary patriarchal religions claim they will save my soul. She doesn't need saving, save from them.

I'm a spiritual being having a physical existence; dreaming is the bridge between the realm of my spiritual being and the physical realms "I" dwell in now.

Why would I give anyone authority over my soul?  So much of what these religions espouse denigrates woman, that's what's damaging to my soul, my psyche. It's damaging to the male psyche, as well. Myths we've imbibed since childhood, especially when we're parked in "church" and religious studies early on, endure at an unconscious level. 

One example is the psychically imbedded patriarchal myth that woman is the patsy of all evil, "woman born of the rib of man" (go figure), Eve; she who crossed an arbitrary line and wham, all Hell literally breaks lose.  There's also the patriarchal Greek version of this  dumb, trespassing woman, Pandora.  Those myths are a heavy burden on womankind.  

Religions like Catholicism, Orthodox Judaism and most Islamic sects from what I can tell, see women as threats to man's ultimate spiritual sanctity.  His Holiness the Man can be sullied by her unholiness, the woman, therefore justifying her pitiful place in the pecking order of His patriarchal society.

The Good News is I don't need religion because dreams teach me the most profound and the most practical lessons, in a custom tailored narrative. 

I follow my dreams in the most literal sense. In this way, I live twice as long, in both the spiritual and physical worlds at once. This allows me to replace belief with experience.  I don't believe in life after death, I know life after death is the next stage of my own and all physical adventures. I trust my own spiritual experiences in dreams to assure me and sustain me in waking life.

Dreams guide me through my experiences in waking life, too.  As I say in my bio on this blog, they've helped me, comforted me, disabused me of illusions, scared the pajamas off me and lent me strength.  They teach in amusing, often kind ways, though sometimes, they're heart thunderingly scary.

Along with dreams, there's synchronicity, dubbed that by Jung to describe the psychic phenomenon of "acausal connections." Castaneda's Shaman teacher, Don Juan, calls it "Agreement. It's that wonderful thrill of recognition we experience when life's physical events echo our inner worlds, especially the dream worlds. I see it as another bridge between waking and spiritual life. It's that deja vu feeling; or as Robert Moss has pointed out, it's probably really Deja Reve. 

When something from the dream worlds manifests in waking, it's also an affirmation that there is guidance and support available from other dimensions. I live in more than just this physical reality; I walk a path in waking life and I walk a path in dream realities.  I pay attention to both.  From my dream path, I know I'm not alone.   I know I am loved, connected and assisted; dreams allow me to explore the mystery of existence for myself, which is how I take responsibility for my own soul. My soul is an eternal reality, so it's my soul  that seeks connection to me.  It's my Soul who is saving me.  My Soul or as some teachers refer to it, my Higher Self.  I connect to my soul most strongly through my dream experiences.

Dreams bring healing with them when we pay attention and respect them. Listening to our own dreams, seeking our inner guides first hand is a great adventure.  If it seems like scary terrain, it might be worth getting a dream coach; otherwise, it should be as easy as riding a bike when we were kids.  We all dream; pay attention, why not? It's an organic avenue to self awareness and self-love

Here's a story that illustrates the dream/synchrocity connection.  I often have post dream teaching life synchros; they're like a huge hug from another world.  

I recently taught a workshop at a local university; a young woman shared a dream about seeing a dear sweet Huskie pup in desperate need of rescue and yearning to do something to save it. At the end of our Lighting Dreamwork process, she announced that she was definitely going to volunteer at her local animal shelter, as she had been wanting to do.  The next day I'm at Petco for cat supplies and see that they're running a special adoption clinic event for dogs from some awful puppy mill, mostly pit bulls or similar breeds.  The sight of those dogs in cages and numerous people there to adopt put me in mind of yesterday's dreamwork.  The synchronicity really hit, though, when, standing in the check out line, I turn to see that the man behind me has a young, beautiful blue-eyed Huskie on a leash. Immediately the dog jumps, places his paws on my shoulders and stares into my eyes.  Whoa!  Deja Reve!  I felt animal love so profound that, if that man hadn't already adopted him, that little boy would have come home with me.  I did leave the store with those physical shivers of recognition that synchronicity induces; a kind of spiritual high-five.

When I taught high school theology, I tried to apply the learning model that derives from Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, (physical, security, belonging, self-esteem, self-actualization): we learn best by experience, second best by example and least best by being told.  I still find that's true.  

Dreams are experiences, just like waking events are, experiences in my life.  I don't need to be told what to believe. As Jung once cryptically said, I know.  I know what I know, what I don't know, I've yet to find out.  What you know is part of your story.  We can share our stories, we can use our imaginations to place ourselves in another's dream scenario, but we cannot live a dream or a life for another. We each have our own path to follow; our own actions to live out in lessons and consequences.  The best way to teach another how to understand dreaming is to point to the door available in their souls and show them how it opens. The worst way is to presume to tell someone else what their dream means.

By way of convincing us to pay attention, pre-cognitive dreams are one of the most compelling dream experiences we can have. When a dream weaves itself into the fabric of my lived experiences, the next day, the next month or the next decade, I realize there's more to me than meets the I.  I'm not alone; guidance is available to me through dreams.  Something beyond this physical world makes sense, help is available, if I pay attention.

So, I invite you to let your dreams guide you. All it takes is paying attention to your dreaming experiences.  Even when dreams don't manifest in waking life literally, their symbols and scenarios are often vibrant  metaphors for our waking experiences.  Giving dreams space to exist in my life, as real as any other real I can experience, broadens my perspective on existence considerably.  Most dreamers find this to be true; why not you?

Dream Spirituality: the Divine in the 21st Century

"Full Moon In Taurus" by Katrin Haiba   2017

I don't know if you've noticed, but the world is in a shit load of trouble.  My best friend and partner, Jim, has taught me to distinguish between the world's situation and the people in it.  The trouble is incontrovertibly, the people.  The world, as Jim insists, is a beautiful place.

Why are people causing so much trouble, so much suffering for themselves and every living thing around them? Could it be that the people are acting out of misguided beliefs?

For all of  recorded history, not to be confused with actual history,  history is the story as told by the conqueror.  The conqueror's rule, the conqueror's dictums, the story as the conqueror sees it.  In a patriarchal paradigm, might makes right, strength is power and daddy knows best.  Patriarchy conquered about 6 millennia ago; Homo Sapiens, our clan, have been around for about 200,000 years.  Do the math; do you really think we came into our own only 6,000 years ago and sat around twiddling our thumbs before that? Archeological records suggest periods of human history resplendent with remarkable human works, and whats more, with respect for the Feminine Divine, God as Mother.

Today, can we recognize a failed paradigm when we're living it?

On this beautiful planet, patriarchal religions constructed the paradigm of violence and domination.  For the six millennia of father rule, patriarchies have been one blood bath after another.  The more rigid the tenets of the patriarchal belief structures, the worse women in that culture fare.  Restrictions on everything female are a hall mark of these paradigms.  "And he shall lord it over her" because she is at existential fault for all things evil.  You can call her Eve, make sure she stays in her place or she will deceive and subdue you.

But there was a time when we emerged, wide-eyed from our caves and proclaimed the Divine Mother.  It was a simple deduction.  Who gives birth?  Who bleeds and does not die?  The Great Mother is not Barbie dressed as the Virgin Mary; the Great Mother is the primal creative force of the Universe.

The problem with problem paradigms is, as you think, so shall you do.  If society can get us to accept absurdity as the norm, even the goal, through the crap they teach you is true, when it isn't, then that particular consensus reality can rule.  Patriarchy is a physical earth consensus reality that I think is way past its use by date.

Men don't have to feel threatened; they just have to open their hearts to the Feminine Divine, think with their hearts more and join the revolution.  The opposite of patriarchy isn't matriarchy; the patriarchal paradigm rules by hierarchies and force.  The opposite of patriarchy is balance - harmony, dance, and chill living.  Anyone want to sign up for a new paradigm?

Thinking is dangerously arbitrary; a paradigm that dictates inane, insane beliefs, especially about women for the benefit of men, also justifies the subjugation of one race to another.  It all begins with the hubris to make rules that handicap to any degree the natural potential of a person, whatever gender, whatever race.

Isn't it time we took stock of the wineskins into which we pour the truest elixirs of our soul?  God is not male or father.  God/Goddess is All.  Light. Energy.  Way too big for those tiny, stiff foreskins, I mean wineskins.

Haven't you met the divine in your dreams?  It doesn't always take the same form. Sometimes it's surprising or humbling to recognize our initial blindness to the shape the divine does take in our dreams, but when we become aware, we know it by the awe it inspires in us.  Your divine and my divine will not manifest the same.

Yet, from the time we're born, we're told god is Father, mighty, to be feared and to be catered to, regardless of how callous, cold and petty vengeful his actions often prove to be.  Take the principal sacrifice at the heart of patriarchal Christianity, that of the only, the good, loving son who must die to settle a debt.

How can a religion that claims god is love also insist that something so unnatural, horrible and cruel as demanding your own son's gory death to satisfy a sour tempered grudge is ultimately an act of selfless love for humanity?  But then again, how many sons have been sacrificed in any of those bloodbaths that are just the way patriarchy rolls.

Why has the Divine Mother been forgotten or relegated to the handmaid who'll do whatever the Father says?  It is no accident, as I've written, but the question for today, for the 21st century is, how much longer is an untenable spirituality going to rule us?  How much longer will people listen to religious babble and consider it the word of the one, almighty, all male, god?  Isn't the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?

If, as I've mentioned, our spirituality is as natural and individual to us as our bellybuttons, why not tune in to the channel you frequent every night and find out more about who you really are from your own direct connection?  Does that mean that we share nothing?  No, as it turns out, we soon learn that we share everything.  We are One.

Try seeing the divine in Mother as well as Father, equally; the yin and the yang is the great balance that makes life flow.  Try keeping an ear to your own best counsel of your dreams so that you come to realize you live in more than one place at once; the dream world and the physical world are equally, if differently, real.

Our differences are based not on physiology but on beliefs.  It's our belief that separates one from another, sometimes breeding real hatred.  Look at the racial hatred in vogue now; how stupid are these beliefs?  Many people can concur that they are; then how stupid is the belief in one supreme, male deity who wants anyone who doesn't agree to die a horrible, long painful death and forever burn in putrid fires for eternity.  Nice.

Dreaming is just one avenue to the spirituality that can liberate us of old, mean and dangerous beliefs. I heard Neal Degrasse Tyson call his version, cosmic spirituality.  We all don't have to arrive at the same conclusions nor follow the same paths; but we all have to find true balance so that we don't continue to rock the boat so violently ( the planet) on which our survival depends

There is no mistaking Love.  It doesn't restrict, punish nor demand.  It flows with what is needed most for the wellbeing of the soul. Love is ineffable and best experienced directly, so why not tune in to your own connections and open your heart to greater possibilities?

I didn't need to give up Jesus to give up patriarchal christianity; Jesus is the best feminist role model for men in patriarchal history.  The divine feminine is equally important to our psychic health as the divine masculine.  A divine masculine out of control is bad for you, a fact that history bears out repeatedly.  For spiritual balance the divine feminine must exert equal influence in the human psyche and the cultures we create.  Divine Love is a Dance.  We're here to dance, or at least let our hearts do it for us.

Waking Life/Dream Life

A participant in one of my workshops wrote down a question about whether we repeat our daily experience in the dreaming.

Yes, I think so from my dream experiences, but there always seems to be a twist. Even though the characters of my waking life, in person and from TV, may show up in a dream because they figured in my day; there's always more to it, and it's personal.

My dreams will throw me a bone sometimes in the way of wisdom for my waking life; but they aren't that interested in the physical life I'm living; they are partial to the life of the soul.

What's sad to me is that most people automatically think, oh religion.  Christian, Muslim, Judaism or Buddhism, that's where one goes to plug into the life of the soul.  No, wrong.    That's where you go to get told what to believe and how to save something that doesn't need saving.  The Soul saves, it doesn't need saving.  Dreams are the Soul's messengers.

Some people think "spirituality" is all OM and Amen.  Spirituality is whatever you do with an open heart and selflessness.  Like dreams, that come big and small, so does spirituality.  And I don't think you can enter into true spirituality without a sense of humor, which leaves most religions out.

So, our dreams are focused on spiritual growth over winning the lottery, which often means we get even more lost than we already are into the physical.  Dreams bring us the messages that help us let go of rigid, silly or unloving ways, not just towards others, but towards ourselves.

Let's face it; if you get told from day one by your culture that some Nobadaddy was pisssed with you from the minute you hit the physical because your ancestors disobeyed, therefore, you must spend a lifetime making it up to Him.  What?  This dude even insists His one and only son die for the cause.  Jesus.  Who needs a god like that?

Dreams remind us that the Divine has many faces, and sometimes it has no face at all; just Light, just Being.  Many of you dreamers know just what I mean.  After one experience I wrote about here, I came back saying, "I'll never be able to explain this to anyone, not even myself."

Isn't it better to experience spirituality than to be told what to believe?  There is no language for the Truth that Is, you've got to experience it yourself.  Luckily, not only are we born with belly buttons, we're born with the power to dream.

So, back to how dreams mirror an experience in waking life to us, day life; yes, it can seem mundane repetition, but play with it a bit anyway.  Write it down, ponder it from time to time.  Let yourself say, huh; yes, that thing happened yesterday and that person I saw or spoke to, that was the movie I watched, the fight I had, etc. but there are some very interesting other things in the dream; it's not an instant replay.  Sometimes I have to wade through the repetition of a dream before it clicks, but life's lessons are best learned both in sleep and wake.  If both sides agree; I'm in good shape, at least spiritually.

My spirituality is like my bellybutton, mine.  It doesn't need a credo, or ask allegiance of me.  It never harms my wholeness.

Look at women's situations because of patriarchal religious dogma and tell me those misogynous edicts don't harm women, sometimes body and soul.  Eve; really?  Check out my Howling Mary dream and my posts about the Great Mother.  There was a time when these crazy religions didn't rule and we, as a human race, were just not that crazy.

Dreams are still our lifeline, though many hold that line with lots of slack.  When people ask me why they don't remember their dreams, my first question is; do you want to?  Do you set an intention to dream before you go to sleep.  Do you take the time in the morning to gather whatever you can from the dreaming?

Yes, we see lots of parallels to waking life in dreaming; it's up to us to notice the differences, the new elements our dream has added, the challenge our dream is presenting.  We don't learn from being told; we learn from experience.  There's great wisdom in how dreams handle us; it's up to us to recognize it.

Each of us is going to die.  There are few things we'll carry across that transition with us, but they are the best things we can have on either side of the divide.  Who and what we truly, selflessly love, what we do for others, and how much we learn to truly, madly, deeply love ourselves.

There are huge obstacles to self love; it's ironic that we have such supreme ultimate narcissists right now on the global stage, keeping us cowering every second possible with war threats and closed hearts. I lay that obstacle square at the feet of the patriarchal paradigm of the last 6,000 years; and I propose that once we discover who we truly are as spiritual beings having a physical existence, those mind-forged manacles will fall.

Dreams matter whether they're mundane or mind-blowing, whether we know we left our body and are in the dreaming or we don't.  Wether we have one dream a year, or a dozen a day.  They matter to each dreamer.  That's the bridge, the cord, the secret door to our souls, as Jung insisted.

So dream strong and pay attention.

Ashé!

Compassion, As Taught to Me in Dreams

Compassion, what does it feel like to you?

To me, it's not pity or "feeling sorry for", because that's like looking over the railing at someone's demise, sad for them, glad it's not me.  Compassion acts and takes risks on behalf of the other person; compassion finds some life line to throw.

We're more compassionate of others when we know ourselves well enough to need compassion from our own harsh self-judgements.

Jesus, with his usual astuteness, put it this way; don't judge the mote in someone's eye until you remove  the plank in your own.  It's easy to see the bits of personal rubbish in others; rare, it seems, for folks to see their own garbage.

It's much harder to be judgmental of others if you're aware and responsible for your own shadow. The more compassionate we are in the face of our shadows, the better we see others with compassion.  

Finding compassion in ourselves involves hatching out of the hard shell that is Ego and living in the physical, but connected to spirit.   Once I became aware, through dreaming, that my physical body and dreaming body are separate aspects of the consciousness I call me, I opened the magic doors to living in two realms, in one lifetime.  Dreams matter as much as things that happen during waking matters; it's me in both places.

Dreams are the most compassionate teachers I've known.  I like to use the phrase, they've scared the pajamas off me, but even my greatest nightmares have turned into my sturdiest allies.  Dreams will shock you out of complacency, but when you have the courage to pay attention to dreams, despite hearing growing up, it's "just" a dream, you find your wisest and most trustworthy life teachers.

Who can afford to be compassionate?  The wise person who's found she or he has nothing to lose by loving.  The person who knows, this solid ground is only one side of the story. How do we know? Dream explorers are leading the way, as are the growing community of near death experiencers, between them, our age-old questions about death and the after life are being openly and compassionately addressed.

We're living in a time of great spiritual advances in inner exploration and we're also living in a time of great physical crisis.  Feels like some kind of divine irony.

Life is joy; without joy, we're dead inside.  There are many paths to joy through dreaming that can ease our suffering and give us the courage to ease the suffering around us.

The mindfulness movement is an exciting spiritual movement, as well; it's Buddhist thought harmonized with the best of current psychotherapies.  We're moving away from the sin driven, punishment/reward paradigms we've endured for centuries towards greater awareness of the complexity of spirit or consciousness.  Despite the external atmosphere of hate, separatism, violence. religiosity and fear, growing numbers of us are keying in to love and compassion as the engines of action.

Following dreams helps us see that all is not always what it seems.  This is one reason I call dreaming "organic" spirituality; we're born plugged in.  We may have unplugged that connection based on believing things we were told or on the lack of guidance available to help us navigate those sometimes choppy waters.  Helping children with nightmare fears can be an opportunity to show them how to address their fears creatively.

Independent spirituality through dreaming isn't something religious enterprises endorse because it could cost them memberships; memberships pay for their existence, often in the luxury to which they've become accustomed. The scientific establishment, for its part, has confined itself to materiality,  with the wonderful exception of Physics. Yet, more and more, people are finding themselves pondering the possibilities of new spiritual paradigms for themselves.  I thank Oprah for sparking pioneering spiritual thinking in mainstream culture.

The time is ripe for all of us to turn inward; drop-in, tune-in and pay attention.  There's a great deal to be gained.  One of those things is greater compassion for ourselves, others and the pickle we're collectively in on this earth dimension.

Fly Free; You Are Forever

In the aftermath of the waking dream that has many of us stunned, saddened and fearful, it's hard to find that silver lining.  Many of us in the consciousness/spirituality movement feel it's very important to stay positive, because despair leads to emotional catatonia, which literally gets us nowhere.

In my last post, I mentioned how one of the things that seems apparent is that we won't have a leader to turn to, so we'll need to do it ourselves, for each other and with each other.  Do what?  Make sure Love trumps hate.

Obviously that won't be easy, but the hard things seldom are.  For myself, I'm choosing the areas I most want to champion and commit my energy there, while supporting others in their endeavors to move human consciousness beyond the stagnant mental swamp of this dying patriarchal system and its death generating values.

For me, the women's movement has received a huge wake up call; too many women, white women it seems, voted for a misogynist and put their own civil liberties, their daughters' and their grand daughters in jeopardy.  Why?  Brainwashed, that's why.

That's the title song by George Harrison on his posthumously released album:

Brainwashed in our childhood
Brainwashed by the school
Brainwashed by our teachers
And brainwashed by all their rules
Brainwashed by our leaders
By our Kings and Queens
Brainwashed in the open
And brainwashed behind the scenes

God God God
A voice cries in the wilderness
God God God
It was on the longest night
God God God
An eternity of darkness
God God God
Someone turned out the spiritual light

Patriarchy is a 5-6 thousand year old paradigm that has forced humanity into this perilous period of self-destruction.  It takes many forms on the planet, physically, monarchies that are inherited or hierarchical legislative structures that are to various degrees elected, but psychologically it takes one common form.  God is male, so the male is the only suitable representative of his rule in the physical. This belief is manifest to varying degrees of severity, depending on where in the world we find ourselves.  But very few societies extant give equal voice to the Feminine Divine.  This denial of half of who we are, within and without, has created the dark paradigm, the collective dream, we're living on this physical plane.  I spoke about this in my Mother's Day Homily a few years ago in more detail.

The good news, as I've mentioned before, is that we humans have been here much longer than the patriarchal age and have experienced peaceful coexistence and egalitarian organization of societies. The myth of it's always been like this is part of the patriarchal, apocalyptic narrative.  Are the myths of Eden hinted at in this bleak story echoes of the paradise we indeed lost when god was not the war tyrant father and all that was life was the Mother? 

The challenge of the times we're in is doable; it depends on one person at a time learning to free herself/himself from the mind-forged manacles that make us conform to values that are religious rather than spiritual, exclusive rather than holistic.  The choice isn't religion or atheism; it's dogma versus experience. The realm of God/goddess is within and the path is always open to us, especially through our dreaming.  Paying attention to our dreams, our organic spirituality, can free us from the religious strictures and lies that cloud our judgments and harden our hearts with fear.

We are forever because we're spiritual beings in this present physical existence.  We've been here before and we've been elsewhere in the multi-universe, as well.  We don't have to earn our way into heaven because heaven is inside us - as is hell, if we choose it.

The question for each of us is, why am I here now?  What do I need to learn and what am I here to contribute?

A world out of whack is a world of imbalance; many teachers in the consciousness/spirituality movements of today believe that the Feminine Divine must be returned to equal status with the Male Deity that's been Ramboing us to perdition these past several millennia. The influence of the Feminine is key to achieving balance; the goddesses that all our earth centered ancestors revered informed our moral codes very differently.  Goddess respecting cultures embodied a very different paradigm, a very different consensus reality. 

We need to melt down this hateful paradigm that's imprisoned the human imagination for so long and fly free.  Patriarchal religions control through fear and coercion, just like patriarchal governments or patriarchal family structures.  But no one can control our inner freedom.

The spiritual movement of this dark patriarchal age is brighter than it has ever been, thanks to so much passionate research and writing in the last century.  Material science and metaphysical science are partners in the current conversation on what constitutes "reality."  We can take heart in that.

There is no doubt in my mind that as Jesus put it, you can't put new wine into old skins; the new skin we need to grow, to rebirth, regenerate and renew our existence on this planet is a psychic one.  We need to act as if our spiritual being is just as important as the ego being of our waking reality. It's not either/or, it's both/and, especially when the shit hits the fan.  We need to examine our beliefs, where and how we got them and whether they serve our deepest values.  We need to tune into our dream lives because that's where we find the help we need, custom tailored to our own soul, not mass produced, mass distributed and controlled by patriarchs for their own profit.

As Robert Moss teaches; "We are born to fly, and in dreams we discover that the soul has wings."

To Be or Not To Be...or to Always Be

“To be…or not to be”, those infamous words spoken by the befuddled prince of plays, weigh the pros and cons of living vs. dying;.  Here’s a translation of Hamlet's famed soliloquy from the Shakespeare:-) to remind you.

 
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“The question is: is it better to be alive or dead? Is it nobler to put up with all the nasty things that luck throws your way, or to fight against all those troubles by simply putting an end to them once and for all? Dying, sleeping—that’s all dying is—a sleep that ends all the heartache and shocks that life on earth gives us—that’s an achievement to wish for. To die, to sleep—to sleep, maybe to dream. Ah, but there’s the catch: in death’s sleep who knows what kind of dreams might come, after we’ve put the noise and commotion of life behind us. That’s certainly something to worry about. That’s the consideration that makes us stretch out our sufferings so long.”

Shakespeare’s insight into death and dreaming in these famous lines is uncanny. Hamlet is caught up in the dualism that plagues patriarchal paradigms, you’re either this or that, dead or alive. Today, the doors of consciousness and inner space are blown wide open by gifted pioneers in every science and spirituality; the paradigms that bound our patriarchal ancestors don’t bind us now, unless we choose to be bound.  Belief in our time doesn't require "blind faith." Once when Carl Jung, that great pioneer of psyche, was asked about his belief in God, he replied,  "Believe? I don't believe.  I know."

How did he know? Through direct experience of his own consciousness outside the body, through dreaming, visions and his signature contribution, synchronicity.  He was raised a minister’s son and became a doctor in the pioneer field of psychology, as ruled then by Sigmund Freud.  He rebelled against SF’s materialistic dogma about the human psyche and spoke of the soul. Robert Moss dubs him a shaman of the west, or as Jung himself jested, he was a witch doctor for Europeans. 

Since Jung, many have continued to explore the inner realms, and many have come full circle, to acknowledge that much of what we’re discovering, we’re re-discovering.  History is the story as told by the conqueror and the conquerors were very, very wrong.  Many ancient and indigenous cultures were treated as primitive, savage, tribal, uncivilized, heathen and ungodly by white, patriarchal, western European "civilizations" who believed bloody conquest was their God given right, as they fought for Him.

Think of the bloodshed and cruelties in the name of righteous religions that still rain on the faithful and unfaithful alike.   Religious laws, strictures and competing divinities are responsible for such an unnatural percentage of the world’s pain that we ought to stop and think more about what we really want from our religions.  If it’s love and peace, religion might not be your best bet.  The us vs. them mentality that won’t back down and needs to win at all costs makes the human experience into a football match.  Ancient earth religions offered a much deeper spirituality, All is One. The divine which we call by different names can be experienced personally in dreams, visions, meditation and in nature.  Consciousness or soul or whatever we end up calling it, doesn’t die and may visit this earth plane many times, by choice, perhaps with some passion to fulfill.

The consciousness revolution of our time points to a new awareness of reality that is completely organic.  It’s like having a belly button to the inside where the cord is never cut.  There is no free fall forever. Gruesome as death can be in the physical, (birth is also an immense physical challenge), across the bridge of death, the gates of Love are open and we’re greeted and seen as we most need to be. 

This isn’t faith, this is the story told by innumerable women and men, in all walks of life, around the world, who’ve crossed the boundaries in some way.  The growing literature being produced by respected professionals in the fields of psychology and medicine, as well as by first-hand "experiencers" of near death, out of body travels, dreaming and after death communication leaves doubt of after death survival to only the most entrenched.

The implication for Hamlet, for instance, might then be that suicide or not, he will still have to deal with the circumstances and choices that are hanging him up, in the physical or in any dimension that follows the physical.  He might just want to be a regular guy, party with Horatio and marry Ophelia, but no, here’s his father’s ghost demanding revenge and telling him way more than he really wants to know.  So, he’s stuck thinking only he can solve this problem and that his only choice is to give up all his joy and fulfill what’s expected of him.

Let’s take Hamlet out of his torment and put him in a parallel universe, perhaps in the present, where his choice is much broader.  We live forever, Hamlet; your father and his brother will eventually face each other, so help your father find his way on the other side and ask yourself: what have I come to do in this life? Where is my joy? If my joy is in justice, then I will fight for it openly and call to account whom I choose. Joy isn’t always a belly laugh, it’s however it feels to be completely centered in your own being and purpose, sure of the great beyond without the wagging fingers of “god-betweens”. 

To be, to really, really be…as much as I can, as loving as I can, with gentleness and kindness for all, is the quest that brought my soul to this plane of existence.  To each, his or her own quest, but all quests lead to Home and dreaming is a sure road back and forth, a gift to explore.  Religion asks you to follow blindly.  Your dreams offer you experience of “spiritual” realities before you cross into them again at death.  If you fear your dreams, a common experience in our toxic psychic and physical environments, there are many ways to find your way back in them. 

The question of our times is not to be or not to be.  It’s what should I do while I’m still here? What made me want to come here in the first place?  What do I want to take with me?  What can I do better? What will make me happiest as I look back on my life? What do I want to happen in the thought responsive realms I will be living in next? What do I want to happen here? What matters most to me?

The Dream Connection and the Pope

This may be a bit David and Goliath of me, but I'd like to challenge the need for institu-tionalized religion. I'd like to propose that modern day "religions" do much more harm than good; they divide us from one another and fail to deliver on all the Good they claim for themselves.  I'd like to suggest that we each enter this world connected to our Spiritual Source and will exit this world to reunite with the same Loving Source; even as we reside in the physical body, in a physical world, we are spiritual beings living our unique purpose.  The burgeoning exploration of near death experiences, NDE's, out of body experiences, OBE's, and dreaming in general is opening the gates to direct spiritual experience for everyone, not just the chosen prophets of the status quo.

The organic spirituality dreaming offers is like having a spiritual compass through life helping to connect us on a regular basis with inner resources, as it provides us with personalized guides, teachers and angels, messengers of the wisdom beyond embodied reality that delivers us from the trials of waking life, big and small.  We can also gain freedom from judging ourselves by the standards of the physical world only, because we have other experiences to cultivate in other realities that often more than compensate for lack on this plane.  We’ve been brainwashed to believe the physical is the only solid, real reality. Despite a century of exciting developments in the fields of Physics, Consciousness Studies and Dream Studies, a great number of people ignore the dream portals to other worlds that are being offered them on a regular basis.

We've been taught, conventionally, to rely for spiritual nourishment on external reality based religions that give prescribed outlines of dimensions beyond the physical and demand consensus on the grounds of an elite, usually male, group of authorities who alone can decipher what even older all male authorities wrote about the Divine. I'm mostly talking about the big three, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  Perhaps some accept constricting religions as our only spiritual option for lack of alternative. These limiting religions, especially as absorbed through the mind of a child, which is when most of us get brainwashed into them, operate on a deeply suggestive psychic level to imprint on us the dire consequences of disbelieving their dogma.  They utilize a simplistic and dualistic punishment and reward system, commonly known as hell and heaven to instill fear and obedience to their projection of the Divine. Yes, they profess that at the core of their teachings is the ultimate reality of Love, but by their deeds, as Jesus put it, you shall know them.  These patriarchal religions have a track record of deeds that belie their preaching of Love, from present warring zealotry in the Middle East to horrendous historical events like the Roman Catholic Inquisition, when claiming any direct revelation from dreams could get you barbecued.

The myths that these for-profit organizations perpetuate can be truly detrimental to the human spirit, especially if you're a woman.  The myths begin by saying that once we were loved and provided for in a wonderful place, but something happened, so we got kicked out.  Humans DISOBEYED and worse, it was HER fault, the woman’s.  The serpent, EVIL, outsmarted her cute little self and she used her wiles to get the smart one, THE MAN, to do what he otherwise would surely not have done.  The rest, most believe, is HIS-STORY.  SHE must be constricted, especially sexually, so she doesn’t again undo all HIS progress,  SHE, whether in human body or as EARTH can also be abused and used, because SHE is but MAN’S servant.  HE AND GOD are on the same level; they are the PATRIARCHS.  The GODDESS is no longer anywhere to be seen, at least not in the CIVILIZED world; yet, since the beginning of human history, archeologists have discovered, the Divine was worshipped as the GREAT MOTHER.

Surely most people can see that religion, at least as much as money, is the root of our accelerating self-destruction.  The great mystic poet, William Blake described our mental chains, our unexamined, constricting paradigms as "mind forged manacles." These patriarchal myths, with different players, are in dangerous and violent competition for supremacy around the world.  If people adhere to these limiting myths for lack of a real alternative, one that satisfies, informs and inspires beyond that old time religion, then the world is ready for the alternative - individual, direct experience of the divine.

There are many roads to these direct experiences being explored by a growing number of people, all over the world, through the contemporary Consciousness Movement   My portal of choice is dreaming because it's effortless, natural and organic.  It doesn’t require much of me; all I need is to want to dream, want to remember and to pay attention.  Sharing and playing with dreaming in family groups and community groups can nourish our need for human connection and help us build a better future together.  Through individual and group dream explorations, we arrive at our own certainty, we gain our own authority over our spiritual lives.  For me, dreaming provides access to my spiritual home long before I finally go there; death does lose its sting.  It’s taught me that in thought responsive, non-physical worlds of dreaming, it’s all up to me.  I create my inner world with my intention, desire and imagination, yet in these worlds, I meet others who share similar visions and we create together.

Dreaming has also taught me that “as there, so here.”  The mirror lessons from the dreaming that apply to physical reality are the gifts we receive to carry into our waking lives.  If I can create my dream realities, how much of my waking reality can I create?  If I can conquer my fears in the dreamworlds, can I conquer them in waking? 

Rather than disconnecting us from what’s important and turning us into “dreamers” as is sometimes said with disdain, connecting through our dreaming to our eternal, non-physical self and exploring the resources available to us in those dimensions can anchor us in our authentic lives, despite the “peer pressure” of social consensus.  In waking life, connecting through meditation, mindfulness, open-hearted living are ways to keep spiritual portals open; when we sleep, it can be effortless.

In the frilly aftermath of Saint, I mean, Pope Francis’s whirlwind visit to our land, I heard the fluttering comments about his awesome Presence here. I have nothing against him personally; he seems like a truly sincere and nice guy, but as a Pope, he’s doing the RC Church a great service by gaining so much popularity. Talk is cheap and the fact that he rides by papal Fiat is not the point, or perhaps, on a PR level, it is.  The Vatican alone is a vast empire of wealth and power with deep corruption issues; does he really wield any influence there?  Could he be, perhaps quite unwittingly, the misogynist and power hungry RC church’s best media foot forward?  This is the church of the outrageous child sexual abuse scandals that are still current in the courts and the just as outrageous cover-ups by Church authorities.  This is the church that continues, the only one out of just about all others in “Christendom,” to deny women equal access with men to clerical office, and it’s proud of it!  So, how about that papal fiat to reform all this; will he do it?  Can he do it?  I don't know; but the fact that he just canonized J. Serra, despite all the impassioned pleas for him to consider the man's brutal acts towards the indigenous peoples he savagely forced to build his missions is not a good sign. 

Here’s a wonderful article on papa’s visit by Maureen Dowd in the NYTimes; well worth reading!  In it, I learned that a San Francisco priest was just officially forbidden to say mass, for attending a women's conference on ordination.  This outrageous censure of true pastoral outreach happened under Francis's watch, NOW.  What's changed? For those who might think that women's ordination is a marginal issue, here's a view to consider.


Without the Feminine Divine to balance the Male Deity, the psyche of humanity is completely out of balance.  As Carl Jung famously put it, the fate of humanity hangs on a single thread and that thread is the Human Psyche, the soul of humanity, which is dangerously out of balance.  Restoring that inner-world balance of Feminine/Masculine Divine is the only way to restore outer balance; an internal mythic world where God is Male alone means an external world that reflects this.  But, the Feminine Divine is an energy source just as powerful; to deny Her is to bring on our own destruction.

A dream connection is more important than a pope or a religion.  Organized religions need people to close their minds to other possibilities; dreaming perpetually opens new frontiers with first-hand adventures. One time, when my husband and I attended a friend's religious themed Halloween party as Death (me) and the Devil (he), someone in clerical garb asked us about the religious connection of our costumes,   My mate promptly replied, "Without us, you'd be out of business."  It's much easier to move beyond fear in the actual practice of dreaming than it is in the tomes and regulations of sects, cults and religions.  Organized religion feeds on fear of death and projects evil outward. Our own dream encounters over a lifetime with all aspects of Spirit, helps us weave the personal connections with divinity that makes us strong and helps us not to be afraid.

Religions give us a prefab God with lots of restrictions; one of my favorite jokes is that religions are all guilt with different holidays.  Relying on my own innate ability to connect with Spirit gives me the confidence to know that whatever my strengths or frailties, my successes or failures, I'm essentially a spiritual, whole being, experiencing this physical existence willingly for a purpose.  As long as I stay connected to my own experience in waking and dreaming, I'm free of the fears which make me vulnerable to psychic manipulation.

I'll end with one of my favorite quotes from a great dream explorer, Carl G. Jung:

“The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach.”