union of the opposites

Last night, this beauty flew into my dreams, landed on my daughter's shoulder and told us he was hungry by attempting to peel our grapefruit with his beak.  He then waited patiently while we sliced him a piece of the juicy, pink fruit with a gigantic bread knife.  I was skeptical, sure that "owls don't like grapefruit", but he did and as he ate his feathers slowly turned snowy white and I boldly mediated a tense conversation and the child and the grandmother finally began to communicate.  Just like his feathers, everything was softened.

As soon as we are fully conscious we discover loneliness. -C.S. Lewis 

art by Saya Woolfalk

When the alarm went off, she was in the middle of a vivid dream.  She was at the cusp of non-self, in a state of pure, contentless sensation.  Her soul had been dissolving back into the smallest molecules.  These molecules broke apart, smaller than single cells, smaller than the smallest thing possible and atomized out into the atmosphere.  The atmosphere of non-atmosphere.  Just before the alarm sounded, she heard a voice.  In the dream, the voice no longer had a home in the throat and the thought no longer had a home in the brain.  The voice was also a thought. There was no distinction between a voice and a thought in the non-atmosphere.  She listened, but the listening was also experiencing because listening doesn't happen with non-ears, but experiencing does. This was really not so complicated, but rather quite simple and natural.

The non-voice spoke in non-words to the non-ears across the non-atmosphere and also inside of her: "so, this is what it is like to be no one, nothing.  So, this is what it is like to not exist."

The alarm brought consciousness and her dream was quickly translated into words.  Just to keep up the routine, the most important parts were swept away by the flood of her conscious mind and all she has of it today are these little, unexplicable non-feelings.  But she did remember this much. And she remembered how it felt.  And she remembered that it felt good. And she remembered that good and bad do not exist. And then, there was nothing to be afraid of.

 art by John Malta

symbolism manifest

Our sole purpose is to express ourselves for the sake of being expressed.  We are perceptible surfaces created to represent our esoteric affinities with the primordial archetypes.

Paintings of all that makes one cry within onself by Hugo Simberg

the devil inside

"Regardless of the outcome, you feel so much better about yourself when you do what you think is the right thing. That alone is worth the risk." 

- Bruno Bettelheim

As I was falling asleep I awoke with a violent start, feeling like someone had drop kicked me from the unconscious to the conscious realm. I carried with me an image of a young female prostitute sitting on an old, ratty brown couch.  As I watched from somewhere in the ethers, she crouched away from the fist beating she was receiving from a handsome, professional looking man who stood behind her.  He beat her on her shoulders, back and head. She was beautiful and indifferent, even as she was beaten. She was imbued with a real natural beauty of the most enviable type that she was obviously fighting against.

Some dreams just resonate.  They come from the most unacknowledged areas of existence. They open the door to those hazy, buried bits of experience that didn't suit us and ended up packed away where we forgot we'd had them. And here, right here, was a room, door flung open, waiting to be cleaned, emptied and sorted out!  I'd been searching for this place for months.   I excitedly noted that I should write this down to consider it further in the morning. That thought was interrupted. The interrupter was loud, persuasive, genderless: "it's not important to remember that".

Who was telling me not to remember?  Who thinks they know what's important and what's not? Will there ever come a time when the unconscious is not provocative?
I went back to sleep. I did not write it down.

The hours passed uneventfully. Thirty minutes before my alarm was to go off, I awoke again. I had been dreaming the same dream again.  I had been dreaming the same dream again. Repetition increases importance and draws the attention.

The girl was slightly different, as was the scenery and the appearance of the man, but the theme was still the same: a beautiful, desperate girl being subdued with force by a strong man, shamelessly acceptable even as he acted so vile.  The woman was curling into herself, not fighting back.  She had no fear, no pain.  Without a sense of self-worth, it's not so shocking to be treated as if you are worthless.

And now, the ground is filling with a rumble. The change is reaching the shoreline. Can you feel it coming your direction?  It is palpable if we let it work its way into us.  Love is our right.  No fear.

Branch, Ape and Twig

I had a dream that I had 3 daughters, named Branch, Ape and Twig. Branch was the oldest daughter and I thought her name was so beautiful and strong. I was proud of her. Twig was a baby and I didn't like her name as much, but seem to have felt that there were no other names available. It was as though all the names in the world had run out and I was forced to choose Twig. Strangely, I didn't seem to have an opinion either way on the middle child, Ape.

A few moments later I was standing in a grassy yard. There was a rectangular swimming pool filled with stuffed animals. The stuffed animals were overflowing at one end of the pool, as though to mimic a wave crashing on the beach. I thought it was peculiar that the pool was filled with toys and I thought to myself, "I am having lots of thoughts about childish things". I wasn't sure it was meant to be, but I felt that the pool made for an interesting and strangely beautiful piece of conceptual art. I filed the idea away in my memory, in case there came a time that I might need an idea for a piece of interesting and strange conceptual art.

Then there was a lady in front of me, or perhaps I was the lady and there was a small audience in front of me. It may have been only me in the audience. I am unsure. Maybe both. To one side, there was a series of 3 doors. They were miniature, child-sized and made of a rich, dark, heavy wood. To the other side, there was one other doorway. I cannot remember exactly what it looked like, but my memory says that it was more modern, plasticky and it might have been open, or with no actual door at all. This doorway was arched, whereas the series of 3 were standard rectangles. It was larger than the other 3 and it was white/bright. The woman (or myself?) was saying:

"You can choose the three or the one, but if you choose the one, you cannot choose the three".

She pointed to the doors as she spoke. I had a feeling that I wanted to choose the 3, but that I was expected to choose the 1. I contemplated the solidity of the 3 and thought, "why would I choose one, when I could choose three? " Surely there was three times as much exploration, option and space with the set of 3 doors than there would be with only one. But I knew everyone (who exactly 'everyone' is, I'm unsure) wanted me to choose the one. I felt pressured to choose against what I really wanted.

I don't remember making a choice before I awoke. If I did, I know it was the three.