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Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Seeds Scattered Upon the Earth

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I sit on my meditation pillow and do the sweeping breath; exhaling, emptying of breath while turning my head to the right, breathing in while moving my head to the left, and then holding my breath while I sweep my head back to the right again. I do this over and over again, sweeping back and forth in an effort to recapture the dream I had last night. I have most of it, but there are a few details that I want clarified. The shamanic sweeping breath, the recapitulation breath, works like EMDR to capture experiences, dream and otherwise.

In my dream I am planting a garden. Chuck is with me. We have prepared everything according to what we feel is good for the earth, for the soil, imbuing everything with our intent to do it right so that everything we plant will feel welcomed and loved and provide us with sustenance and nurturance in return. Now it is time to put the seeds into the ground. I am standing with my cupped hands full of seeds. I am looking at them intently, knowing that I have done everything to prepare for this moment, but still I am aware that something is missing.

Ethereal Light

Chuck is standing next to me, also looking at the seeds in my hands, both of us trying to figure out what it is we have forgotten. Suddenly there is a loud crack and the pile of seeds is emblazoned with energy. They glow with a vibrant ethereal light and then I know that this is what is missing, the energy of Mother Nature beyond what we personally could intend. At the same time I am startled awake, because the loud crack was, in reality, a powerful jolt of lightning and thunder that rumbles on and on, Mother Nature, the earth reminding us of her power.

“It sounds like an earthquake shaking the earth apart,” Chuck said, as we lay awake listening to its insistent rumblings, the significance of this statement highlighting the truth of what has been happening lately in Japan and other parts of the world. As we fell back to sleep I thought about writing the dream down so I didn’t lose it, but I chose instead to replay it over and over again in my mind so I could more readily remember it in the morning. Alas there was something missing when I woke up too, just as I knew there was something missing as I stared at the seeds in my hands during the dream experience itself.

Doing the sweeping breath helps clarify the intent of the dream, which I am aware, is teaching me something important. What I remember now is that at the moment of the crack of thunder I was aware that I was as the tiny seeds in my hands, that no matter what I personally did it was the energy of Mother Nature, in all of us, that would determine the outcome of my garden. It is important to prepare for life, for planting, making preparations according to what is in alignment with what is right, but it is hubris on our part to think that we can control anything. It is important to be an active participant in life, but the truth is that the energy of life, of nature, is unstoppable.

This is what I also understood as I lay in the dark listening to the thunder rolling and cracking open the silence of the night. In all that I have been writing about lately—pointing out the decisions that we have all taken and that we are all responsible for, whether we agree with them or not—in the end, the one who will determine our fate will be the Earth itself. Mother Nature holds the real power.

We are but seeds scattered upon the soil, we fall were we fall. We must each one of us find our way with where we have landed in this life. Some of us live in the richest country in the world, in a material sense. Some live in a country with a belief in the richness of Mother Nature, Pachamama, as I mentioned in a note yesterday regarding Brazil’s law of equality, granting nature and all living things equal status with humanity. How is it possible that such diverse and drastically different attitudes exist? On the one hand our own country of America continues making decisions to ravage and destroy the earth in an effort to uphold our standard of living, while another country seeks to return to ancient alignment with the earth. The truth is that Brazil too has ravaged the earth, but now seeks to return to ancient alignment and identity with nature. Something powerful is being expressed in turning to this other truth that lies at the heart of our human presence upon this earth.

As in my dream, something is asking us to pause now and question what we have done. We are at a crucial moment in our time, but synchronistically in the time of all living things. We must all ask what is missing. What is it that we have not done to prepare, what is not right here? What have we forgotten?

Mother Nature has the answers. As we see happening in Japan, in Arizona where fracking for natural gas has unleashed earthquakes deep inside the earth, in the tragic truths of gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, mother nature is responding, even as she did in the night as I dreamed. I take the synchronicity of that loud crack of thunder at the moment I was dreaming very seriously. I also see its synchronicity in all that I have been reading and writing about recently, in the wake of national and international events and discussions regarding how we all treat the earth.

Even as I was wondering in my dream what was missing from my own little effort to do something earth-sustaining, taking personal responsibility for growing some of my own food, nature herself spoke loudly and clearly, reminding me of her powerful presence in my life and in all life as well. She is life and she has something to say. We all need to listen.

I don’t mean to be preachy nor do I wish to impose my personal beliefs. I think we must all come to what feels right for us personally, but at the same time I do strongly feel that it would be amiss to not point out the synchronicities all around us. I truly believe that Pachamama must be treated with respect and awe—not simply granted equality with humankind, though this is a good start—because she is far more powerful than we are. This is the truth I learned in my dream.

I am just one little seed, sending you all love and good wishes.
Jan

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Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Magic & Insight

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A few weeks ago, I began reading a book called Anastasia, the first book in The Ringing Cedars Series, that someone had mentioned to me over a year ago. It is another “magical” book—series of books really—infused with powerful energy. I finished reading Anastasia and one night last week, before bed, I picked up the second book in the series and laid it on top of my dream journal as I prepared for bed, intending to read it next. That was all I needed to do to have a profound dream experience, touch the book with intent. Here is the dream I had that night:

I give birth to a girl child although I am not pregnant. In the dream, I go to the bathroom and, sitting on the toilet, I begin to feel and intuit that I am having a baby. At first it feels like a log, like I have a huge log stuck in my vagina. I try to feel with my hand if the baby is in fact down the birth canal or if the cervix is dilated. I move off the toilet after I see blood and go to look in a mirror. In the mirror I see the head has already emerged and so I know for sure that I am giving birth. I also know, from experience, that once the head is out the hard part is over and that the baby will come fast now. I have a moment of panic that it will get stuck like this, halfway out, and that I will have to walk around with a half-birthed baby protruding from my crotch. But in the next instant the baby pushes out. I catch her easily and bring her up to my breast. We bond immediately. She smiles up at me, looks deeply into my eyes, and snuggles against me. I hold her close, knowing that the warmth of our two bodies is enough to keep us safe, even in the coldest of climates.

I remember the book Anastasia at this point in the dream and the title character who contends that a child can survive in the world, even naked, as long as it is held close. I don’t know if she actually says this in the book, but this is what I get in my dream and she herself had survived in the Siberian Taiga through close nurturance and care by animals.

At this point, I take the baby to my parents who are sitting at a cafe table talking to my brother who died. I tell them I have had a baby and I show her to them, but they do not even look at her or show the least bit of interest. They say nothing and just stare blankly, gazing right through me, as if I don’t even exist. My brother looks at me tenderly and shrugs as if to say: “What did you expect?”

I walk away from them and bump into a few other people I know. I am aware that I have dried blood on my legs and that the baby and I are almost naked. I am wearing a short white shift, similar to what Anastasia is described as wearing, and I have the baby wrapped in a shawl. The people I meet acknowledge her, but only in uneasy glances. She is not well received or given any attention. I accept this, even though at first I am puzzled by the lack of interest, because I am having a most amazing experience, full of insight and intuition and I feel totally calm and at peace with this baby in my arms. I also know that she belongs only to me, that she is my responsibility and that I do not really need acknowledgement from others.

The details of the dream get fuzzy at this point, but the child grows almost immediately into a small thin creature, more doll like than human. I watch her running and skipping around. She can talk from the moment of birth like a well educated, spiritually evolved adult, full of wisdom and insight. I know that I must watch her carefully, not let her stray too far from me, and that I must keep her warm so that she not only survives, but also thrives.

As time goes on, I realize I have been forgetting about her more and more, that I forget to warm her against my body, that I am neglectful of her. When I notice she is looking cold I grab her, hold her against me and apologize for my lack of attention, but then I let her go again. At one point I see her lying in the shawl on the ground, not moving, and when I pick her up I see that she has dried up and that her right arm has cracked and broken off, as if she were made of clay. I feel terrible because I forgot all about her and let her get cold and dehydrated to the point of partially crumbling into dust. I am worried that she is dead. I am aware that I must take better care of her, that I must never forget about her again.

The dog woke me at 5:30 in the morning and I immediately forgot this dream. After I let the dog out I returned to bed, feelings of the significance of the dream staying with me, but still unable to recall it. The only thing I could remember was that I had dreamed of a log. As I lay in bed I felt a heavy feeling, almost a soreness in my pelvic floor. I heard a voice say: “Do a Kegel exercise,” which any woman knows is an exercise to strengthen the pelvic floor muscles, especially recommended after giving birth. As soon as I squeezed the muscles I immediately recalled the dream. I had indeed felt like I had given birth in the night and my body held the memory of it until I recaptured it! From that point on the dream reemerged and as the day went on more details became clearer.

Immediately I noted the significance of having set the intent to read the second in that magical book series. I won’t go into details, but the series is based on the experiences of a Russian man who, in 1995, meets a woman, Anastasia, living in the forests of Siberia. She is energetically alive and evolved. His experiences in her company remind me of Carlos Castaneda’s experiences in the company of don Juan, and of my own experiences with Jeanne. Anastasia tells him things that he cannot imagine ever happening and yet they do, similar to my own experiences with Jeanne. Anastasia is directly connected to and channels energy and insight related to the planet and the environment. Whenever I have asked Jeanne questions about the environment, she has always stated that there are other soul groups working on that and that it is not her expertise. Jeanne is connected to a soul group that is involved with soul advancement. This distinction struck me, as I read the first book and thought that perhaps Anastasia is connected to this environmentally concerned soul group energy.

Anyway, that was my first insight as my dream unfolded, that I had set the intent. The second insight I got was that this dream was about my personal transformation. When I recapitulated my childhood, when my abuser did in fact molest me with wooden objects, I rid them from my body as I relived each memory. In the dream, perhaps I feared that this was just another wooden object, another memory to be removed, but then I see life, a real baby instead of a log. I see this as indicative of the transformational process; having released the trauma I can now allow myself to give birth to new life within myself.

When I attempted to show the child to my parents and other acquaintances neither it nor my transformational process was given any attention. In every attempt to introduce this innocent child to the world, the old world, there was no resonance. My personal experiences did not matter in that world. I received the insight that I must further detach from that old world now and more fully embrace this new world that the child represents. Anastasia’s story influenced my dream experience: I knew that the child must be nurtured to thrive. It was pretty clear and simple. All I had to do is keep her with me at all times. I am enough; I am all she needs.

However, I seemed to still need reminding of something, some piece was missing, because every time I laid the child aside, apart from my physical body, something happened to her. She got cold or brittle, and eventually dried up. When I discovered her all dried up and with a broken arm, I immediately felt deep remorse, regret, sadness and extremely guilty for leaving her to fend for herself. I realized that I had not been doing something right. I was killing her by forgetting about her. In the dream, I instinctively knew that I had to keep her close to me, that we did not need anything else, we were enough; that we were done with the old world, had already left it behind. We had already done the work of transformation. I was reminded, as I picked up the broken child in the end of the dream and held her close once again, that she is my innocent self, and that I must stay connected to her at all times, not just when I feel like it. I must remember that this is what my wholeness feels like, and yes, that I am enough. I also knew that if I stayed connected, bonded with her, that everything else would take care of itself, that life would unfold, as it should.

As the day went on and this dream stayed with me, I received a final insight. Pictures of the Virgin Mary holding the Christ child kept popping into my head, paintings from my art history books that I’d studied a long time ago. Each time one of these paintings came to me, I re-experienced holding that child in my arms in the dream, nestling against my chest, snuggling in, totally trusting me, totally calm, knowing that she was exactly where she belonged. As I re-experienced these feelings throughout the day—utter calmness, contentment, wholeness—I saw the significance of these paintings; virgin and child, maturity and innocence; appropriate symbols of giving birth to the Self and to true spirit innocence, which, in my case, I worked so hard to reunite with and nurture into life during my years of recapitulating my traumatic childhood, a time when I was mostly concerned with simply surviving. With this insight I now clearly understand the symbolism of the Virgin Mary and Christ Child as Whole-Self, complete. I had gotten it right, finally the missing piece was found.

We are all the Virgin and we are all the Christ Child in her arms. No matter if we are male or female, we are all totally capable of giving birth to the total Self. This is not the wounded child self, but Christ as innocence within, Self and God-Self fully merged. I know I must not be afraid to embrace this wholeness. I must not put her aside again or depart from the path. I must stay connected to this magic within. I know she was not damaged throughout the whole childhood journey; she remained whole, waiting for me to reconnect.

I know how hard it is to stay connected to this spirit self at all times. We must all deal with the reality of our lives and remain connected to this world, but I also know that the magic is available to us, reminding us that this is really the biggest challenge, to keep turning toward it. Once we have connected to the magic of our true spirit self, whether through our experiences, dreams, processes of inner work, through our intent to change, or through the books we elect to read, our challenge then becomes to never put it aside again, but to hold our experiences as close as a child in our arms, remembering why we are here and what we are really seeking. The magic is really inside each one of us.

I humbly offer these intent-dream-book-insight-magical experiences as we enter a new phase of winter magic. Happy Holidays! May they be magically meaningful, personally, by intent.

If you wish, feel free to share or comment in the Post Comment section below.

Sending you all love and good wishes,
Jan

Chuck's Blog

#714 Chuck’s Place: Soul/Not Soul, Uh-Oh! Merging Dreams: Recapitulation

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I was in a conversation about the power of romance. It suddenly dawned on me that the topic that had been coagulating in me, that I expected to eventuate in this blog with the title Soul/Not Soul, Uh-Oh!, was exactly what we were discussing. What happens when our projected soul becomes not soul, when our mate or date disappoints us? I shared this synchronicity. That was Wednesday; today is Saturday. I am confronted with the question: is that title still appropriate, is that the topic today? Do I have to struggle to uphold that dream or has that dream ended?

In fact, that dream has deepened and so that dream merges into this dream as I write this blog today; I am still in the same dream. The rest of the title Merging Dreams: Recapitulation reflects my deepened perspective on soul play. Recapitulation, from another perspective is the ability to merge dreams, to achieve a place of continuity of consciousness where dreams, whether they be sleeping or waking, are all part of the same reality. The fragments of the self, whether they be long stored away, forgotten horror stories or challenging truths in a current relationship, are all allowed to be fully known as a united whole within the self.

It’s early morning, 40 degrees outside. We sit quietly in the hot tub. A subtle mist emerges as cold air meets warm water. I gaze through it as the morning sun gently peeks through the trees. The rays are refracted in a dazzling display of energy. I breathe it in and I am back on the gym floor at UCLA at a Tensegrity workshop, 1996. Lying on my mat, staring up at the lights, it’s the same energy I see, and I breathe it in. You see it too, lying next to me. I can fully hold onto that dream. The feelings I encounter having that dream can stay with me now, even though it is not you next to me now. I can live that dream, I can share that dream, I can live this dream, all together. No need to fragment, file it away, or shut it down. I merge the dreams and experience greater wholeness and continuity

We start to talk. I am animated. I am discussing Jung’s thoughts on anima/animus, soul image. You show great interest, I am energized. Suddenly, your attention is drawn way up in the sky. “Look!” you say. I am crushed. What could be more important than my words?! Suddenly, soul becomes not soul. Uh-Oh!

I am quiet. Slowly, begrudgingly, as instructed, I look up and witness two large birds flying overhead in perfect synchrony, an amazing sight in the clear blue sky. Can that experience be allowed into this dream? I am caught between two dreams. There is the dream of my projected soul, my anima, transfixed by my ideas. And then there is the dream where I am cast aside, birds more important than my words. Can I merge these dreams? Must I stay in the dream of rejection, withdrawing, brooding, and distrusting? Or can I allow the dream of an overarching magnificent display of nature to be a good reason to pause my words?

And actually, does there even need to be a good reason not to listen? Can I allow the truth of your separateness to be? Can I face the trap that my inner anima has snarled me in? She, my inner anima, caught me in a dream of self-importance, knowing full well the outcome of that dream. She knew you’d disappoint me. She challenges me to either retreat—brooding in deserved want for the all-giving, satisfying anima/mother who has no other purpose than me—or to wake up from my inflated dream and join reality with my real life partner.

“Aren’t you going to tell me the rest of the story?” she asks. I’m considering it. Am I ready to merge this dream? To fully merge these dreams they must be accepted and communicated to soul and to not soul. With this, dreams are merged, recapitulation completed, for this moment and this dream.

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

#712 Chuck’s Place: Chuck—The Capitalist?

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In a dream, I find myself working diligently on the renovation of a living room. In the center of the room is a round pool, actually the replica of a small 36″ deep pool that Jan and I put in the backyard this year. I am concerned about the cover being firmly in place, sealed, to allow the heat to be retained in the pool. Along one wall of the room I meet a man from India, studiously reading. I am aware that he is brilliant. I ask him a question. His answer goes way over my head, but I stare as if I am following him. He has advice for me: Just focus on inputting things, like into a computer. Next he tells me he appreciates the Capitalists. I am taken a bit aback and ask: “What about Gandhi, wasn’t he a God?”

“Oh yes, he replied, “he too was a God.” And then, affectionately, he puts his arm around me and talks about the history of other Capitalists, whom I’d never heard of.

I awaken, immediately recognizing the mandala in my dream: the circle of the pool in the square of the room. It was Jung who identified the mandala as the archetypal symbol of the SELF. I understood, with the appearance of the mandala, that I was being offered specific guidance about my own individuation process, that is, the completion and fulfillment of my true self in this life. But, what was I being shown?

Become a Capitalist?! I don’t think so!! Improve my computer skills? True, they are not so hot, but is that really what my deepest self wants me to work on?

As I contemplated this dream over breakfast, I appreciated the alchemical symbol of the tightly sealed pool—a container with rising heat. That is exactly the theme I wrote about last week, Bearing the Tension. Then, all of a sudden, I thought about what had preoccupied me the night before. I had opened an old file that Jeanne and I had kept from our early days in Tensegrity, back in the mid-1990s, of experiences and newsletters and publications from that time. I was struck by comments that Carlos and his female cohorts (Carol, Taisha, and Florinda) had made about don Juan’s world. They could not stress enough don Juan’s contention that the seers’ world was full of practicalities geared toward achieving definite results. They disputed any spiritual, intangible dimension to his world.

That night, I recapitulated how both the impact of the shaman’s world and Jeanne’s death had delivered me to a level of detachment that has made it impossible for me to be satisfied with the goals of an ordinary life in this world. I don’t say this from a place of self-importance; it is simply a fact, a major shift in my life. I know that I am a being who is going to die and preparation to enter that mystery is the central focus of my life. Constructs of romance and family, the things that keep us most attached to this world, though once very important have given way to a new reality. Love has deepened and become far more inclusive, appreciative of the shared journey we are all on. I attribute this shift largely to the accrual of energy previously spent on specialized attachments.

As I read through an old interview that Carlos gave to the magazine Uno Mismo, Chile and Argentine, February 1997 by Daniel Trujillo Rivas, my attention was drawn to the following question and answer:

Q: What’s the aim of you not allowing yourself to be photographed, having your voice recorded or making your biographical data known?…

A: With reference to photographs and personal data, the other three disciples of don Juan and myself follow his instructions. For a shaman like don Juan, the main idea behind refraining from giving personal data is very simple. It is imperative to leave aside what he called ” personal history”. To get away from the “me” is something extremely annoying and difficult. What shamans like don Juan seek is a state of fluidity where the personal “me” does not count. He believed that an absence of photographs and biographical data affects whomever enters into this field of action in a positive though subliminal way. We are endlessly accustomed to using photographs, recordings and biographical data, all of which spring from the idea of personal importance….

For the seers of don Juan’s lineage encounters with infinity and preparation to enter it in full awareness was the central goal of their lives. To achieve this they discovered that you needed energy, plain and simple. Those seers determined that the number one waste of energy in human life is self-importance. That is why Carlos remained so anonymous, refusing both photos and recordings. In today’s world we might consider the world wide obsession with facebook as reflecting perhaps the number one drain of energy: obsession with self-importance.

As I continued to look through the old file the other evening I also came across some questions posed to the women seers, one of which drew my attention—from an interview with Florinda, Taisha and Carol by Concha Labarta from an article in Mas Alla, April 1, 1997, Spain:

Q: It seems that the key to expanding our capabilities for perception lies in the amount of energy we have at our disposal, and that the energetic condition of modern man is very meager. What would be the essential premise for storing energy? Is this possible for someone who has to take care of a family, go to work every day, and participate fully in the social world? And what about celibacy as a way of saving energy, one of the most controversial points in your books?

A: Celibacy is recommended, the old nagual told us, for the majority of us. Not for moral reasons, but because we don’t have enough energy. He made us see how the majority of us have been conceived in the midst of marital boredom. As a pragmatic sorcerer, the old nagual maintained that conception is something of final importance. He said that if the mother wasn’t able to have an orgasm at the moment of conception, the result was something he called “a bored conception.” There is no energy under such conditions. The old nagual recommended celibacy for those who have been conceived under such circumstances.

Another thing he recommended as a means of storing energy was the dissolution of patterns of behavior that lead to chaos, such as the incessant preoccupation with romantic courtship; the presentation and defense of the self in everyday life; excessive routines and, above all, the tremendous insistence on the concerns of the self.

If these points are achieved, any one of us can have the necessary energy to use time, space and the social order more intelligently.

I am struck by the thought, how many people would be willing to ask their mothers if they orgasmed when they were conceived?! I think it is fair to say that many of us were conceived outside of orgasm and did not inherit a large storehouse of energy. Tensegrity practitioners always challenge the suggestion of celibacy as a means to store energy. It is a personal choice. But the women seers do suggest other practices to revamp and accrue energy, namely, recapitulation, freeing oneself from incessant patterns i.e. groundhog days, whether they be romantic preoccupations or otherwise, and elimination of self-importance.

Finally, back to my dream. It suddenly dawned on me that my deepest self was urging me to continue to input energy into my pool. That is, to contain it, store it, and let it accrue. My Indian guru guide encouraged me to become a Capitalist—the ultimate symbol of the energy miser: he who amasses vast sums of money (energy) for himself. The practices of the seers’ world are all geared to the very pragmatic goal of retrieving and storing one’s vital energy toward the ultimate goal of taking the definitive journey in infinity as an energetic being in full awareness.

My Indian guru is encouraging me to continue to input, that is, to store my energy. This is the path to my fulfillment, completion, and INTENT to enter the mystery fully prepared. I am simply blown away by the continual juxtaposition of Carl Jung’s and don Juan’s guidance in my life, both in dreams and waking dreams.

P.S.: I walked in the door from work and Jan greeted me with an anxious: “We have a serious issue to address.” A call had just come in from Citibank. Apparently, a suspicious donation to an Indian mission of some 299,000 Rupees had been charged to our credit card. I immediately called a Citibank service representative. I spoke to Rajeesh, I suspect a highly educated Indian of advanced computer skills, working from India for an outsourced division of Citibank. He calmly and warmly reassured me, as if he had his arm around me, that this matter would be straightened out, at no charge… Such is the humor of the synchronistic universe we live in!

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

#693 Chuck’s Place: FATHER

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THE CONCERT

At Carnegie Hall, on a Tuesday night, a full day of work awaits, starting early the next morning. I make the sacrifice, my stepson is singing in Eric Whitacre’s Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings. Paradise Lost is the story of a lost generation of angel children left behind by their dying parents, walled off, without their wings, in a deeply protective structure. Logos is the leader of the now grown up lost children. The Gospel according to John begins: In the beginning was logos (the word), and the word was with God. Logos is the word, the law, the blueprint, the archetype of God, the ultimate father. In Eric Whitacre’s story, Logos frequently imbibes “amber,” some kind of hallucinogen that opens, for him, the channel to his deceased father, who communicates the message that he must protect all the children, at all costs. The decree of the father is to protect, maintain the status quo, keep things unchanging within the highly guarded and protected walled-in structure.

The love of Logos’ life is Exstasis. Exstasis is the Greek root for ecstasy, which literally translates to going outside of the stationary or static walls. Their names, Logos and Exstasis, foreshadow the ultimate conflict between conservative protection and freedom. Exstasis, in her own amber journeys, discovers from her own ethereal mother that her wings are hidden and retrievable, but she must take up the journey and go beyond the walls to visit the Oracle in the sacred temple. The Oracle insists that she face the truth, only the truth, to be guided to her wings. She passes this test and ultimately discovers her wings. However, in her final confrontation with Logos in which he burns her wings, she is killed, as the secure and protective father principle cannot tolerate her flight beyond the known, into potential danger.

A DREAM: The Great Train Robbery

I am at a train station on Long Island, right next to the ocean. In the first half of the dream, dimly recalled, I am part of a well-planned and executed plot to rob a train/railroad station. I recall a knapsack full of bundles of money. The robbery is successful, and involves the use of packs of dynamite, placed in several places around the station, set off just at the moment of getaway.

The consequence of this robbery is the end of this railroad station being included along this train line. A nostalgia sets in, particularly from my father. I join him in a campaign to restore the destroyed station. My father becomes involved in the beautification effort, the landscaping. I, in turn, distinctly recall where the planks and stones from the explosion had landed, which I easily begin to retrieve and restore. The dream ends as a smart detective, who has been tracking my activity, confronts me on the boardwalk about the crime.

I immediately awakened from this dream charged with the energy to record it, as well as contemplate it, with my consciousness still between worlds. I suspended my ego’s judgment about being a criminal and instead asked myself: what was the true nature or meaning of the crime? Not all crimes are criminal. When Prometheus stole fire from the Gods, mankind gained in consciousness. When Adam, at Eve’s urging, bit from the apple of the tree of knowledge, the world advanced in consciousness. In both cases, God’s, the father’s, rules were broken and there were punishments, paradise lost.

To go out alone, without the protection and security of father’s walls is both a reward and a punishment. In my dream, the destruction of the train station was a boon for me, a backpack full of money, a tremendous pick-up of energy. The seers on ancient Mexico devised the practice of recapitulation as a means of freeing oneself of static behaviors, returning that energy to the self for new possibilities. The train line, with its familiar stops and fixed rails, which cannot be deviated from, is the security of known habits and routines in life, the protective walls of the father. After I had committed the crime of breaking the routine, freeing myself from a familiar, well-trodden stop (the train station), I was drawn back to the old familiar place, by father, in the form of nostalgia for the old, known, unchanging stasis; the old way.

Regardless of our formative experiences with our actual fathers, real or imagined, present or absent, supportive or threatening, we are all our own fathers now! Formative experiences with our actual fathers are merely awakenings to this father within, the true father, who will guide and protect us through life. The father within us guards and protects the status quo of our lives: our habits, whether good or bad; our rules for ourselves, however limited or open they may be. The guiding principle of the father is the protection of the family. Inwardly we execute this father function by upholding the familiar safe-place train stops of our daily lives. Familiarity breeds safety and security, a bulwark against the changing sands of time. Zeus’s father, Kronos, Father Time, consumed all his children at birth to ensure the longevity, the unchangingness of his rule, that is, until his clever wife wittingly exchanged a stone for baby Zeus, which ushered in a new era.

Sometimes, of course, the conservativism of the father within us is wise to clip our wings. Daedalus, father of Icarus, constructed for his son wings to fly, made of feathers and wax. He tried desperately to warn his son not to fly too close to the sun. Icarus, so enthralled with his freedom, refused his father’s warning and suffered the inevitable consequence of his inflation, a perilous fall. Obviously there is a need for this protective father function, at times, but more often than not the supportive protective arms of our inner father attitude is just as likely to keep us entombed, limited within the safe walls of our familiar selves, however dysfunctional that might be.

Father is the guardian of the familiar: our inner family of known habits, behaviors and attitudes. The true challenge of my dream was to let go of a tried and true habit, to eliminate it from the repertoire of the self, to take back the energy spent on it and take up my wings, untethered to the tracks leading to an old station in life. But alas, I succumbed to the reconstruction of the walls of Logos, the protective rule of the father, enticed by the safety of the old familiar way, resulting in paradise lost. Thank God I woke up!

P.S.: As I conceived of this blog today, moving through the experiences of this past week, it never dawned on me that tomorrow is Father’s Day. There was no conscious intent to write on this topic, to highlight Father’s Day. I take that to mean that I was moved in this direction by the collective energy that marks the celebration of that day. In keeping with the intent of what I wrote, I wish you all a Happy Father’s Day! Whether we are male or female, our true father is the powerful father within us all, who exerts a tremendous influence upon the blueprint of our lives. To become fully conscious of the operation of this father principle within us is a worthy exercise for Father’s Day.

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck