Ideas, Musings, & Conversations

Quiet the Night, Soft is the breeze, and Dim is the light of the faraway Moon

Quiet enters through my ears first.

Light tries to become internal.

I close my eyes and witness my awareness.

Everything is working against the furthest perimeter of my horizon.

My senses have lost their individuality; they operate as a community.

My parts become more accessible to find with repetition.

The Self is not the Ego. 

The Ego is a part that develops alongside the growth of the Self. 

It wants very badly to be the Agency of Identity but, alas, poor Ego; 

you only play a developmental role, 

then you are pruned, 

sculptured in a matrix of inner and outer connections. 

You hated being pruned; but,

such are the laws of neuronal evolution.

Happiness and healing occur in the state of awareness of consciousness. 

It is not an object obtained, though it can briefly seem that way. 

It is a paradigm shift in perception, a sudden knowing, not forced, 

There is more than meets the mind’s eye.

We are the psyche/soma oneness we have stood by for the last half-century. 

Thomas writes we are “weaving a double helix between ancient wisdom and contemporary understanding.” 

Manifesting and shape-shifting are internal processes.

They mix with the eternal echoes of a coherent universe.

Meditation, sacred plants, medicine, and holy awareness are the only magic here.

Nonetheless, it is a wholly mysterious journey through light and darkness.

Darkness and Light are the necessary extremities for journeywork. Fear of either will burden your search with ancient pillars of unknown thought or its parallel, the unthought knowns.

Healing takes place over time in the body, the mind, and the self, all wrapped in an oversoul of cosmic interconnection.

Evolution moves us forward

I land at a location in my landscape that I frequent often. I am familiar with the long stone stairs that circles downward like in Dante’s Divine Comedia. At the base of the descent, I see the lake and the shore at the end of the pond closest to me. It is overcast with deep grey storm cloud. It is various shades of brown and dark tan, maybe small streaks of purple.

The last time I was here there was color, the lake shimmered with sunlight the trees were a lush summer green and there was a strong Native Indian figure gazing over the pond. He has long black hair and a raw-hide band holds two eagle feathers pointing downward. He does not look at me. 

It is murky and muddy and very damp.

A globe of phosphorescence nodes connected an invisible web, 

locking the entire landscape beneath it. 

There is only me and the lioness, and we have a respectful stranger-distance between us. We are comfortable that the distance is safe. But I back up to the grid of nodes and as I attempt to lean my back against it, I become disjointed and confused and I begin to panic, feeling as if I need a way out. I do find a place, and I remove two pegs out of hundreds of them holding down the canopy over the vision. I can crawl under the dome and back into the forest. But I don't want to do that. I don't want to abandon the lioness. I feel that she knows this and her tail swishes and whips side to side like a cat resting on a window sill watching a chipmunk in the shrubs.

At one point I notice that within the dome it is much brighter. There seems to be a white-yellowish sheen to everything, yet it is still muddy and damp like when I first entered this space after passing through temple-like portals—old, ancient temple walls crawling 

with vines and plants that grow against this massive stone structure. I see these as plant medicine vines, hairy and clinging to the trees. 

The Indian who is often in this location in my shamanic landscape is not here. But his absence is present, like the lack of fiame in the stone fire pit.

(The tone of the sound journey transitions from rhythmic drumming to a gentle pulsing pan drum, crystal bowls, and a variety of singing bowls.) 

The vision disappears. The crystal sound clears away all memory of the vision.

I want the vision back. But the sound has its way with me and I wrap up in a blanket making myself into a quiet solo tee-pee. I wait, my body folds into a yogic forward bend. Various singing bowls take turns softening or hardening the sound and soon I forget I am listening, and I am hearing from my body, feeling the vibrations before hearing the sound. 

I am back in the arena with the lioness. This time she is pacing as if caged. I no longer feel safe. I find the area where I had removed the pegs but again I can not abandon the lioness.

Now, once again, the vision is stronger than the sound, and I want to walk with the lion, but I do not have her permission to approach. I hear her roaring, but I don't move, and she stops and lies down in tall, soft golden grass.

I sit by the opening I have created in the web-of-nodes and I fall into a restful trance where I am floating on a very crude raft in a pond. I am in a poetic, vivid archetype of my life. I seem to be a combination of a scribe and a prince. 

The drum beat 

begins to merge

with the pan drum 

and the gong. 

The pitch is higher, 

the color strikes a deep, 

vivid red, it glows like a summer sunset. 

Awaken into the valley with the pond, 

find my way to the circular stairway, 

the palm of your hand 

against the moist stones 

as you ascend or descend

into my everyday realm.

I love this meditation. It is a scripted narrative co-created by the listener and the reader. It is an elementary but fundamental developmental sequence and introduction to working with dreams.

In analytic training, dreams were considered a gift to the analyst and also as a royal road to the unconscious and non-ordinary consciousness.