It’s all a dream, a collective dream, already dreamed a long time ago and now being unfolded in real time. Dream on, knowing that you’ve already dreamed it, that you’ve already decided the outcome, already solved the issues, already experienced the nuances and details of this collective world dream you are currently dreaming. There’s no stopping it, for it is already done, planned a long time ago. Dream on with awareness now, making right decisions based on the knowledge of the loving heart behind it all, knowing that you are one, the dream and the dreamer too. One is all and all is one.
Here is an excerpt from the next book in The Recapitulation Diaries. I am a few months away from finishing the recapitulation. If you’ve been following my experiences and reading my books you might remember it was a three-year-long journey of intense inner work. As the third year was nearing its end, the recapitulation intensified, my old self and my old world attachments not willing to give up so easily. As they say, it’s always darkest before dawn. Here is the excerpt:
February 4, 2004
I wake in a panic at six a.m., mind and body vibrating so hard I fear that I’m shattering, breaking apart into a million tiny pieces, turning to dust between the covers of my bed. Why now, when I’ve worked so hard to bring myself together? I breathe and breathe and breathe, willing myself back together with every breath I take. Pushing the panic away, I remind myself of why I’m doing this recapitulation: for life, for wholeness, for oneness, for the joining of my two souls. And then I remember that I woke in the night in fiery pain! I cried, calling out, “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” whimpering as the pain tore through me. Gradually the pain stopped and I fell back to sleep. It was like a bad dream, but it was no dream at all; it was an old memory searing through me.
Why am I still suffering such pain? What is the point of it? And why did I feel I had to apologize? I was the one in pain and yet I felt I had to apologize, and for some crazy reason it worked, it made the pain go away. Now I lie still, just breathing, turning myself over to the safe hands of my guides, knowing that they won’t let me die. It’s not my time. It’s time now to finish this healing journey.
Eventually, I’m able to move my body and get out of bed. If I can just get through the next few days and months, I’ll be fine, I tell myself. I make coffee and set my sights on the day ahead. I have a meeting with an outdoor art committee, an article to write, an illustration to do, and a decorative painting job to start, so all of that will keep me busy. The key is to remain busy.
To whom was I apologizing last night? To the abuser? It felt as if I were apologizing to him for killing him off, for having to commit this act of war against him, for we are at war as I seek to take back my energy. Or perhaps I was apologizing to my inner girls because we are leaving those old familiar places of pain and comfort, of fear and depression, where everything is so known and predictable, and so strangely safe. It’s striking how pain and comfort are so terribly linked. But the apology worked, the pain eased, and I fell easily back to sleep.
“Something wants you to go back,” Chuck said to me yesterday. “Do the movements [Magical Passes] to counter it. Every time you go through a major shift something wants to pull you back. Fight it.”
Everything is shifting and changing now and I’m feeling the full brunt of it, a head-on collision of the old and the new.
Still the mind. Still the heart. Turn inward, away from the world for moments of peace and calm, for moments of solitude and connection with the great truth that only the heart knows, that no matter what happens all will be well, for all will be as expected. During times of great change, during evolutionary times, expect the unexpected. One mind and one heart centered on goodness, kindness, and compassion can meet the unexpected in a most unexpected way, with the power of love, an unexpectedly powerful ally in the grand scheme of things, expected or not. Go with love, stay loving, be love. It might just be the most unexpected thing you can do.
Shining the light upon Trickster’s stupendous web… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Holding space means being with someone without judgment. Holding space means being fully present without seeking anything in return. Holding space means bearing the tension of opposition. Holding space means unconditional acceptance of all that is.
Trickster is the child in all of us who simply refuses to conform to civilized expectations. That child will undermine our ego’s best intentions, as we find ourselves breaking our deeply fought for resolutions at trickster’s instigation. In a heartbeat, trickster will concoct a reason to open the refrigerator or peek at Facebook. Later, defeated and guilty, ego contritely starts anew on its road to self-improvement.
Before we completely demonize trickster, let us ponder a koan from Jesus. In Matthew 18: 2-4, Jesus is quoted as stating, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Clearly, the suggestion, on some level, is that, holding space for trickster is fundamental to spiritual evolution.
Trickster is a character that appears in the mythology of all cultures. Phil Jackson, of immortal basketball coaching acclaim, bestowed upon one of his star Chicago Bulls, Dennis Rodman, so called “best friend” of Kim Jong-un, the role of a Heyoka, a Lakota Indian trickster spirit, who both crossdresses and does things backwards to challenge the prevailing order of the tribe.
Phil Jackson recognized the necessity of holding space for this most unruly of characters, who would at times cost his team games and at other times help teammates to get over their self-importance and just have fun playing basketball. Like noted physicist David Bohm, Jackson knew the value of bearing the tension of full wholeness, over merely expecting goodness, in elevating a team to a higher level of play.
Jackson stressed the practice of patience in allowing another person to be who they were going to be, and while not protecting them from the natural consequences of their actions, not excluding them from the team either. In fact, he stressed the critical necessity of all-inclusiveness, including even the most vile trickster, in the building of a whole team.
David Bohm insisted that the way to advance civilization’s survival was to bring together all disparate characters at a roundtable of dialogue. All would commit to suspend judgment and merely express themselves and get to know their neighbors. The objective is not to advance one’s view over another’s, but simply to be part of this living wholeness.
Bohm predicted that this full presence alone, devoid of any attempt at convincing, would in itself give rise to the necessary resolution of difference. Perhaps his vision is similar to a Quaker service where, in the presence of the wholeness of the group, guidance spontaneously emerges in a channeled message. This was his social equation for human resolution, as he realized that at the most quantum subatomic level, only through the removal of subjective prejudice could science arrive at the fullest truth of energetic reality.
The trickster in all of us is our inner hero in the rough. Trickster is the ultimate Freudian slip, where the truth is most uncomfortably revealed. Perhaps that truth has laid bare one’s pretentious host at a party, or exposed one’s own most sensitive sore spots.
Trickster is daring, indignant, irreverent, ruthless, charming, hilarious, playful, spontaneous, sensitive, insensitive, attention-seeking, and highly self-centered. Trickster disdains reason and is far more driven by impulsive opportunity to shock and disrupt. Don’t expect trickster to be good at the party. Trickster is already eyeing the desert when you first walk through the door.
Don’t shut out trickster’s truth. Be patient and suspend judgment upon the full truth of the self. See what might emerge as you bear this tension. If trickster appears outside the self, in the person of another, recognize its value as petty tyrant. In Carlos Castaneda’s shamanic lineage, trickster as petty tyrant is the person who most deeply offends us.
Typically, these are the characters one would prefer most to not have in one’s life. But, from a spiritual advancement opportunity, petty tyrants require one to completely relinquish the ego’s self-importance by not engaging in a defeatist argument in a futile attempt to defend oneself. Trickster also lays bare any proclivity to self pity, which in itself depresses the ego into immobilization.
Alternatively, if one can contain one’s anger and hurt within the cauldron of self, and travel down the rabbit hole of holding space beyond one’s hurt ego, one may be led on a journey of enlightenment to hidden memories and attitudes, which reveal previously veiled truths about the self.
Trickster may never mature, but trickster will challenge one to get beyond the limitation of self-importance that burdens all egos. It may very well be that trickster’s irreverence persists only until ego truly grows up to the truth of right action, and assumes appropriate leadership. From that accomplishment trickster moves on, in its own mercurial way, to force attention upon another of ego’s many blindspots.
Most importantly, trickster offers us the opportunity to recover our lost innocence, the awe that leads to spiritual advancement.
Sometimes change that is abrupt is more effective than slow and steady change, bringing much needed issues to the surface, forcing that which is most important to be faced. Mass change means facing personal needed change as well, for when something effects the many it also effects the individual. Acceptance of the power of change is part of the process, for to fight against something so determined is futile. How can one hold back the rising oceans or the phases of the moon or the heat of the sun? Sometimes acquiescence is the only answer. At other times, adaptability is the only means of survival. No matter the course to be taken the human heart will survive, so too will love, its staying power within and without. Adapt to that; acquiesce to love and all will be well.
