fly awake

Last night I was designing and drawing images for some cards that I am making about lucid dreaming. The cards have images of different tools people use for lucid dreaming…like…light switches (Waking Life), hands (Teachings of Don Juan by Castaneda). As I was sketching and planning I kept saying “this is a dream” over and over again, which in itself is an excellent technique to achieve lucid dreaming. When my husband got home from work we had a conversation about various lucid dreaming tools and techniques. Well, not surprisingly my night was full of lucid dreams.  When things came up that were slightly suspicious, it immediately clicked that “this is a dream”. I didn’t go on any vision quests I just had fun trying new things and pushing my bounds. On one hand I feel like I could have used my lucid time better, since this was kind of accidental lucid dreaming–not a lot of intent behind it. On the other hand I had a great time exploring and having fun. Actually, I think that it was a great to just have some fun, for fun’s sake, and do things because you can do anything in dreams. So often I am committed to intention and purpose. It was nice to have a wild time being up to no good. It was an excellent reminder to me that our dreams are what we make of them. If we need to kick back and chill, dreams can be a great way to do that. If we want to explore the outer dimensions of space, they are great for that too.  Lucidity is always about having the perspective to break from our reactions and learn to move through the dream without our hindering ourselves.

May the force be with you!

A bit piecemeal, but here goes:

Dream (12/30/09):  I’m sitting in some sparse, wintery woods with a couple other people. We’re hiding. Some people are coming through the woods to get us. I am sewing poetry along the collar of a dress I designed (rusty red thread on a cream collar). It’s the start of a poem I’ve been working on. “Like as…” it begins.  I sense the people are getting closer. One of my comrades and I run away through the woods. We get round to the other side and I jump off the path into the thick just before they shoot him with a rifle. The enemies back off, and I step onto the path to see him. He’s dead, but a wolf with a hunchback comes to me from his body. I say, “Oh, good, you can help lead me to safety.”  The wolf seems uncertain of this. He’s thinking about going back to the place where I was sewing. I don’t think that’s safe. We run back on the path that led us to the shooting.  The poem keeps running though my mind. I keep thinking of it and working on it. Going all the way back doesn’t feel safe. At one point on the edge of the the woods  the path meets up with the back of someone’s dirty gold ranch house with chain link fence and dog. I think we can get through without the dog hearing us and attacking. I look at the wolf and scoot through the fence and make it through the driveway into the town. The town is old. All the architecture is 1800’s. I touch the curvy molding on a shop, it’s freshly painted–red and white. We run through the streets. My running is fast, but on some level I know I am dreaming and could just be gliding through the air. I run and run and run until I cross the train tracks and get to a motel. I go inside my room, still afraid that someone is after me. I crash on the polyester covered bed.  I wake after hours and am surprised to see the door ajar (not very safe of me). I go and close it and turn around to see that David has slipped through the door and is sitting in a chair in the middle of the room. He’s a bit hunched over. He reminds me of the wolf in his expression.

Wake: Here I am hiding in the woods from all the people I think are after me, crafting clothing and writing poetry. In the place I love doing all the things I love, only problem is that there are too many people and not enough woods. The poem reminds me of Shakespeare’s sonnet 118–starts off, “Like as, to make our appetites more keen…”–confession and getting sick off of preventative medicine (cathartic purging that seems downright sick). The wolf comes when my friend dies.  I think of him as a guide, but he doesn’t really guide me; we do go together. The gold house is very like a house in my childhood neighborhood. The kind of house that has been neglected for 20 years, and has a sketchy/dangerous vibe, bull dogs, etc. I associate the era of the old town with simpler times, which is appealing, although in the dream there wasn’t much feeling about it, just relief at so many fewer things to interface with maybe–no cars, computers, no people on the streets, etc. A motel is the logical place to hide. David…well, I just found out that my friend’s husband, David, joined the circus when he was younger. This changed the way I think about him. The circus reminds me of wolf people (loners in a pack). The expression of the wolf and David don’t really remind me of David. The woods remind me of the woods in Iowa that we used to live by. David and Dee are in Iowa. It’s almost like seeing this side of David makes me think twice about going back to Iowa. I am running from people and memories from Iowa in the waking time, though I yearn to be back in Hickory Hill Park. Dee sent me a Hickory Hill Calendar along with this exciting info about David. I look forward to hear the circus story some day.

Dream (1/1/10): I’m in a dark hall, with a bunch of people, we’re in line to see my Guru–Shri Dhyanyogi. When I am in front of the Guru, he tells me to draw an Om on my third eye. I am surprised that I remember how to do it–it’s in reddish orange ink. I go into a very deep meditation. I can hardly will myself to move. Guruji talks to the crowd, while I am sitting in front of him in my state. I am aware enough that I am blocking traffic, even though I really shouldn’t worry, just meditate. I eventually move to the side, which breaks my meditation. I think of poetry. I hear, “just write the Truth“. I also wonder about my meditations being not so great, and I hear, “soon”.

Wake: Poetry again, I think of my the falcon poem that I wrote for my Guru, but also of my Fly Awake installation that was meant to be poem-like in its construction. A poem you could walk into and feel, between the text and imagery I created. The dream seems like a reminder to organize my art in this way, while working aligned to the highest Truth. Also gives reassurance that my meditations, which haven’t been the best, will become infused with light again. A Day or so before these dreams, I smoked some Calea and asked for help with my art. With Calea I am not surprised to find dreams coming up long after the physical interaction.

Situations often arise in waking and in dreamtime where it is unclear whether we are awake or asleep. Often in my dreams I think I am awake, only to find that I am asleep.

In my recent dream, I was thinking of the world as being an illusion, and therefore dreamlike, but did not realize I was actually in a dream. I am sure that just as many times, in the waking dream, I pull the same tricks on myself. Many times we can step back from our myopic view of a situation enough to realize that we are co-creating the drama of the situation. For example: I see myself starting to get angry, rather than getting caught in the drama, I may use distraction if I am by myself, or with the other person if there is someone else involved.

Preventing drama escalation is very helpful, but this is only a little clarity/objectivity. How do we know when we are really lucid? How do we enhance our lucidity?

Sit down and meditate. If it seems like you can’t sit down, or even close you eyes, pull all of your energy inwards, focus your energy to the point between your brows, and breath. Can you let you mind be quiet? Can you act from a quiet place? Then you are lucid.

“Who can wait quietly while the mud
settles?
Who can remain still until the moment
of action?”

-Tao Te Ching, #15, Trans. Gia Fu Feng & Jane English

Here are your friends, the four winds, the directions, the elements…know them, but hold fast to the center.

I thought I had missed it, but I went outside later and found myself witnessing the tail end of the eclipse. How lucky is that–especially in Portland which is rarely cloudless. It was quite monumental in feeling–especially the time preceding the eclipse when the moon looked orange and hazy. We won’t be having another lunar eclipse until 2010.

**********************

Shortly after writing this post, I was informed that the orange haziness was, indeed, the full eclipse. The orange is reflected off the earth’s atmosphere. I had no idea about this obviously, but it makes total sense, as the energy was most potent at that time.

Geese crossing Goosetown,
I hear your honking at night–
My love flies up to meet you.

xoxo
lily

from Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English’s translation:

Do you think you can take over the universe and improve it?
I do not believe it can be done.

The universe is sacred.
You cannot improve it.
If you try to change it, you will ruin it.
If you try to hold it, you will lose it.

So sometimes things are ahead and sometimes they are behind;
Sometimes breathing is hard, sometimes it comes easily;
Sometimes there is strength and sometimes weakness;
Sometimes one is up and sometimes down.

Therefore the sage avoids extremes, excesses, and complacency.

I sailed
in a swing
into sleep

saw Him

–and all
unsung,
me asleep!

I rushed
to appease,
to greet

fell
into a deep
waking,

and lost him.

Those other
than me,
says Meera,

are blessed.
Their dreams
with lovers

begin when they wake.

Daylight
for Meera means
waiting till He

enter her dwelling and
make all things well.

(trans. by Shama Futehally)

I’ve been reading Edward Peter Nolan’s “Cry Out and Write” off and on for a while now. It covers the writings of 3 female Chrisian visionaries: Vibia Perpetua, Hildegard of Bingen and Julian of Norwich. He is interested in the feminine style of revelation. This is non-conclusive, fluid, and experiential rather than descriptive/illustrative. As an artist, I find his investigation of their work as inspirational as their work. Right now I am in the middle of the last section, on Julian. She writes of her shewings/visions–in one of them she finds herself looking at a “lytle thyng the quantity of a hazelnut”. This thing God says is both everything that is created and nothing. Nolan suggests the point of this vision is to “actively stretch the capacity of the mind for new senses of scale and dimensionality”. This passage reminds me of something my AP Chem teacher said in highschool. He was explaining just how little matter there is in each atom, and how much energy. He said that if all the nothing/energy was taken out of every atom in the universe what would be left is an object no larger than a golf ball. It would seem that the hazlenut-sized object could be this matter, which God filled to make such a huge universe. It is both everything (in a material sense) and nothing (in comparison the the Energy/God that makes it what it is).