In ancient times, mountain dwellers regularly went down to the sea to get food from the nutrient-rich oceans. The body naturally knew what it needed, and instinct—along with knowledge accumulated over time—led them there. Likewise, during the cold season many ancient peoples migrated to warmer climates—they had summer settlements and winter settlements—also led by the true needs of the body. Tradition, habit and physical needs all worked in accord with nature’s imperative to survive and thrive.

We humans have come so far from such innate wisdom that we have totally lost touch with what we really need. Without the need to struggle to survive, as our ancient ancestors did, we have become complacent and greedy. Our needs must be met! With our natural selves turned off we’ve become addicted to things of this world, thinking we need something to reward, stimulate, calm or provide any number of physical placations to the demands and imperatives of life. We have forgotten how to survive and thrive.

Last week I had a profound dream. I walked into a beautiful and serenely calm blue room. The room was familiar. I had been in it before in many dreams. It was always a room in my “house,” another living area that I was, for the most part, unaware of. One side of this big room was comprised of a huge curved bay window. Looking out over a beautiful ocean, this room was empty except for a couple of boxes that were packed and ready to go. To the left and two steps down was an adjacent blue room. This room was a little smaller. It contained no windows and was crowded with ghosts.

As soon as I entered this second blue room the ghosts came up to me, clamoring for my attention. “Oh, please make that delicious dish again,” said a round-faced man, smacking his lips. “That is my favorite meal!” They fought to get my attention. They crowded around me pawing at me, saying things they knew I would like to hear, buttering me up so to speak. There was a big party going on in this room. Every entertainment, every tasty food and drink was in this room, lavishly presented and greedily being consumed by all the inhabitants. Sexual innuendoes abounded.

At one point I noted, “Heck, I’m talking to ghosts!” Finally extricating myself from the ghosts I walked to the end of the room and, noticing that it did not have an exterior wall, stepped down another two steps out into a beautiful primeval forest. Here all was quiet and calm. I could be alone here.

As I walked in the forest, I noticed how enticing those blue rooms were, how comfortable and comforting, how strongly I was drawn to them, as well as to the serenity of the forest. As I stood in the lush forest, however, something didn’t feel right. “Am I in an old place?” I wondered. “I’ve been here so many times before!” With that thought I was immediately back in the first big blue room. I saw the packed boxes and realized it was time to leave. My son was there. I turned to him and declared that we were going to the mountaintop now.

The next thing I knew we were climbing up a steep mountain trail. Everything was pink now. The trail underfoot was dusty pink. It was lined with pointy pink spiraling boulders. There was no vegetation; the sun was beating down and barely a shady spot existed except every now and then in the overhang from a tall pointy boulder. It was a hot, dry hike, not an easy route, but I knew it was the only trail to take if we were to get to the mountaintop.

As we hiked up the steep switchbacks that were carved into the mountain, I talked to my son about trusting the psychic self, to not dismiss the magical things that occur in the course of everyday life but to remain open, that all would eventually make sense.

The dream ended as we reached the sunny top of the mountain and a beautiful pink quartz crystal monastery. It was then that I looked back down the trail we had just come up and noticed that the mountain itself was made of the same pink quartz crystal. All that had appeared as dry and hot was now beautiful, gleaming and glistening in the brilliant sunlight.

Although the monastery building was imposing, I was aware that it contained the accumulation of a life’s work in accessing, trusting, and utilizing the awareness of the innate psychic and spiritual powers inherent in all human beings. Its doors and windows were closed, but I knew it was only a matter of time before I would find my way into the cool inner rooms of this castle on the mountain and discover all I needed to know. Like a giant library containing all the answers, it awaits us all.

My dream points out how far we have come from our own ancient roots, the innate wisdom and knowledge that could guide us out of the blue rooms, away from the ghosts—the entities that keep us captive in our addictions and mundane realities—to find our way to the mountaintop where all will become clear. How far we have come from the knowledge inside us all that is there to guide us to what we truly need!

The blue rooms and the primeval forest represent the three lower chakras. The first big room is the ego, the third charka. The second room is the chakra of sex and the desires of this world. The forest is the root chakra, nature from which we all come. I was so drawn to those rooms of my dream, as we are all drawn to stay in the lower chakra system, attached to the things of this world, as familiar and enticing as they are. We must all live in them as we come into life in this world, as they offer us the rites of passage, but eventually we are ready to move on.

After a while there is something else we want. And that will only be found by climbing the mountain, going higher up in the chakra system. We all have our own mountaintop to climb. Everyone’s trail will be their own, everyone’s journey their own, but we all have within us what the ancient ones had, the innate knowledge of what we really need to survive and thrive.

In my dream I was with my son. I am usually accompanied by my daughter in my dreams. If you’ve read my books, you know she represented my spiritual innocence and she has been my dreaming companion for years. This time I am with my son. He represents my rational self, my doubting self who struggles to balance life in two realities, that of spirit and that of this world. And so, it’s significant that I take him with me when I go to the mountaintop but not unusual, for at this point in my life I have already done the work of assimilating my innocence, my spirit. The part of myself that my daughter has always represented in my dreams is fully integrated.

It’s time now for all of us to leave the lower chakras and really make the journey upward into the higher chakras. As long as we are human, however, we will have to revisit the lower chakras, but once we begin the trek upward those visits will be in accord with what is right and naturally appropriate. As our ancient ancestors knew, there were times to go down to the sea to get what was necessary and there were times when it was necessary to move to a new settlement, but such needs were always in accordance with nature, within and without.

I know that if I am dreaming of this work that others are as well, because I know we are all dreaming the same dream. It is reflected in the world around us. Why else is there so much turmoil in the world? Why else does it seem that addictions are rampant? All of the turmoil and all of the addictions, the excesses, are entities of the lower chakras, enticing us to stay with them, to become slaves to them and to our comforts.

In actuality, we are less and less attuned to nature, to the nature of how our physical body speaks to us, and the natural world around us and how it speaks to us too. We are so busy serving the entities what they want that we have forgotten our true mission. The mountaintop calls to us, now more than ever.

Time to go to the mountaintop,
Jan

Refer also to Chuck’s blog, posted earlier this week, along similar lines: Attachments Anonymous