dream ja vu

Ever have a dream only to realize you've had the very same dream at least once before?  Yeah, I had one of those last night.  Forewarning, there be vampires here.  I have a lot of dreams indicative of being an outsider, don't I?  For the record, I don't like vampires and really don't think I'd like to be one.

So I'm a vampire, dawg.  Yet I've forgotten pretty much everything about my previous life.  I used to have a brother?  Well he's trying to kill me now and I don't know why.  I used to be in choir?  Well I don't know any of our songs and find the whole thing scientifically fascinating to think about instead of simply a joy to sing and listen.  This girl from the choir is holding my hand?  I don't know who she is or why she's touching me, but what an interesting passing fancy!  We're playing a game that I don't understand and some older guy cheats to help me win?  I ... sort of remember that.  There's a castle set on stage... THIS I remember for sure somehow.  Very fanciful and extravagant.  I DO remember this.  But from where?  Is it from my waking life or is it from a dream?

The side panel of the set opens up to reveal a pool.  This is the secret lair of all those who wish to kill me.  I guess I could have realized it was a dream there, but whatevs.  I wait in the shadows.  People show up.  Things get awkward quickly.  I leave.  I'm noticed by a latecomer in a black hooded trenchcoat who brandishes a pitchfork set-prop and comes to stab me.  She grazes me on the forehead, but I throw her into a wall (ok it was more like she jabbed the pitchfork at me and I tried to roll backwards and kick her over me, but I ended up falling to the ground almost impaling myself with the pitchfork and THEN throwing her, but I wanted to sound cool).  More approach.

Time passes and I have all of them tied up to chairs and I'm forcing awkward conversation with them.  It's begrudging conversation, but at least they aren't trying to kill me anymore.  I'm no closer to figuring out why everyone wants me dead than I was when I started the dream.

I go home and on the way, I get stopped by choir folk who pull me in line to sing.  We are singing with a band.  We are in the background.  Our chords are every bit as intense and accurate as I feel they need to be, but the focus is all on the lead singer and his guitarist.  I ponder this for a while as I mimic the boy whose energy is leading his peers.

My hand becomes warm.  Someone is grabbing it.  I don't know why.  I assume she likes me, but ... I don't know her.  I don't know of a girl who would open up like that if she knew I didn't know.  I sing along for a bit and things descend into chaos.  I leave.

But I can't, everyone is gathering in a game.  I'm winning because someone is cheating to help me.  He cheats for me even when I'm up against his children.  I don't know how to think.  I leave without claiming a prize.

I'm at home and the lead singer of the band (in this dream played by Juaquin Phoenix) is chasing after me.  His intent is to kill me with his bare hands.  Does he know I'm already dead?  He tries to drown me.  I fake a little and come gasping up for breath (lol) and tell him that he KNOWS me, how could he do this.  Assassination attempt after assassination attempt, I keep calling to his conscience and not fighting.  I don't know him.  But I know I know him.

My whole life seemed a forgotten deja vu in this dream.  But then I woke up and I remembered again.  Yay.

dream ufos

I had a dream I was homeless with my cat.  We were roaming the streets looking for a place to sleep.  Restless, a strange occurrence fell on me.  I felt like I KNEW I was going to get picked up by aliens so at some point in my endless travels, I collapsed down to a knee, then down to my hands and knees, then the mere inches to the Earth's warm embrace.  I knew it was all going to be ok somehow.

Lo and behold, I was abducted by aliens. I cannot quite explain the feeling associated with this experience, but it is somewhere between fear and wonderment.  It is somewhere beyond real, yet it pulls you closer to the truth.  It is somewhere utterly awful, yet all superhero stories start out that way.  I've spoken with others in my waking life about that feeling and while I know that words will never reach what my heart feels, I look into their eyes, open the door between our hearts, and I know this feeling is identical.  Which is utterly unique in all my experience.  It seems most everything has slightly different emotional meaning based on the past of an individual... but not this.

Placed back on Earth, I had a new network of friends in the same circumstance.  Much time passed and we were able to communicate directly through thought-pictures over distance to each other.  This connection brought me off the streets and into the light.  I was doing ok.  Until one fated day.

We were on the ... somewhere between floor 6 and floor 20 ... of a building in a city.  Myself, another female abductee, and a few other bystanders were in a conference room.  I was presenting.  Suddenly, all of us abductees were together in the realm of color.  The realm of color is like this... vast infinite room with nothing in it ala the matrix in white-room mode except instead of white it looks something like THIS.  We all stood there for a moment looking at each other in confusion and possibly panic.  Suddenly, direct emotional transference occurred from some unknown source.  We were shown a vision.  Malice like the desire to watch a man starve to death while eating.  Hatred, like an immortal living thousands of years without love because of one stupid asshat.  Fear, like being born.  Despair, deep as Hell and cold as Heaven.  But then Hope, like a small candle bringing mother and daughter together in a storm that brought the lights out.  It was too much, the other abductees were on the floor.  I alone remained standing, I alone had made it to the end of the message.  I alone knew what it meant.

We were back in the conference room as if nothing had changed.  My colleague was on the verge of collapsing.  I stopped my presentation.  She kept thoughting me questions about what just happened and I couldn't explain.  I didn't know how.  I didn't know what to do.  After a few breathless moments, I stopped my presentation and said that we all have to evacuate now.

Her face appeared in my head.  She was worried, out of the loop, and needed an answer...  I realize now that we do not need words to express these thoughts, the truth is in the eyes, and even deeper in the doorways opened between our hearts...  I responded in the only way I knew how.  The whole room's eyes were on me.  I took a deep breath and spoke to everyone on the planet I could with a single image ingrained in me as a child.  I pointed out the window.

After a moment that lasted forever, a nuclear bomb exploded out over the water.

<Lots of shit happened>

TLDR, this race of connected individuals was able to reforge the world in a way barely conceived by man today.  Once the current system died (thank god), rebuilding occurred.  With such communication and emotional understanding, ideas were exchanged seamlessly, new thoughts were conceived, new ways were formed and spread, trades were made, needs were met, trusts were formed, and slowly these individuals became spiritual leaders.  Connected on a plane far above realizing that the only truth is just below us.

--

More on this later?  I have to work.

..
hey, this is my blog now so I'm gonna swear: fuck.  Yeeeeah.

simple post

Good People bring out the Good in People.

Tools

So my skyrim character is a tool.  Willing to help with any problem.  This can be dangerous, for the tasks of men are scarcely without harm to others.  I ran across a camp in the woods.  The men had lost their keep to bandits.  The leader, an older man known as the father, told me his family was being held captive inside.  I decided to help.

No family being held in the keep.  A bandit cooking.  Many more merrily making jokes over the first fine meal they'd had in months.  A leader fierce in study at his desk (good book, I swiped it and read it while he was investigating a strange noise in the hallway).

I reach the roof and open the front gate.

The keep is flooded with militiamen.  The merriment becomes mayhem.  The father is now wearing a bloody mask and his vengeance is wrought on all in sight without remorse.

The fires clear and I cautiously approach the father.  He rewards me with a book and some gold.  The book is the same book the bandit leader was reading.

In my tool-ish and blind quest to help, I unleashed carnage on this day.  Did I make the right choice?  I don't really think I did.

Skyrim deaths 1

Without killing people, finding enough money to get by is interesting.  Especially with the mod I got which makes eating, drinking, and sleeping necessary and also makes the lighting much more realistic.  With eating and lodging as well as shiny new robes and needing to bribe bandits to make them stop harming townsfolk, I had to find some form of income.  Picking pockets is great.  Just a few gold here and there as I can't sell stolen goods, but I have no weapons to buy, no armor to repair, very few spells to keep up on, just sustenance and enough money to make the world a better place.  Picking pockets in town is bad.  I found that out pretty quickly but served my time in jail.

I was rescuing a young girl.  She was guarded by some occult worshipers of some kind or another.  I'm not quite sure of their origins and history yet, but I did find something very interesting...  One of them was called a "briarheart shaman."  An intense name for sure.  I was picking his pocket as I passed through.  He had some gold, a mace, and an herb called a briarheart.

I swipe the gold, swipe the herb, I'm getting good at this!

The shaman's chest explodes in a bloody mess and he falls to the ground, eyes rolled back into his skull.

I don't even know what to think.

I look down at the corpse of the briarheart shaman.  I look to the briarheart in my hand.  Briar.  HEART.

... I have to say it:

KA---LIII---MAAAAAAAAAHHH!

...

<ahem>

The girl is shocked.  I doubt she caught the movie reference.  We sneak out to the roof.  I take her into my arms and cast "feather fall."  The sheer face of the tower I climbed alone shines in the moonlight as we descend gracefully together, the wind whipping our faces.  The nameless guards of the tower continue their rounds as I claim my reward many miles away.  Perhaps one of them has found their shaman heartless on the floor by now.  I buy myself some clothes that aren't covered in blood.

SKYRIM

So it's the weekend and I'm playing video games.  I got turned onto Skyrim recently, an elderscrolls game where you just get to ... roam.  It's a vast, open world filled with beauty and magic.  You can do whatever you want however you want to do it.  My roomie is going around like fucking she-conan with a bastard sword messing up everyone.  There are various schools of combat, magic, stealthy arts, arts of the craft, persuasion, you name it.  I decided to take a completely different approach.

I made my kitty-person and started off in the forest.  A wandering monk spreading the word of Dibella peacefully.  Yes, peacefully.  I decided I would do no harm.

I woke in the night to terrifying sounds and found a nearby town attacked by a dragon.  I rescued a poor soldier from the rubble and helped him to the nearest town.  There, I roamed.  I began settling disputes, doing odd-jobs, and becoming a messenger and bard across Tamriel.  Speaking of bards, I even learned a spell that summons an illusory lute-wielding bear.

As my skills developed, I began doing some more interesting tasks.  A band of mercenaries were held up in a cave and had stolen a man's family heirloom sword.  Where the game wants you to storm in and kill them all, I flowed in and out silently.  A few pockets were picked (dirty bandits having only like 5 gold in their pockets), a single chest was empty (the sword), and all the wine was missing from the shelves.  What kind of monk would I be if I wasn't a drunkard like Rumi?

And getting into all kinds of trouble.  I got in a drinking competition with a man from the South.  I woke up in a chapel of Dibella (OF ALL PLACES) and had crashed the joint.  Not remembering anything, I returned to the roads of Tamriel a legendary partysmith.  I had apparently married a goat?  Awesome.

The pacifism thing was working out swimmingly.  There were a few things that I couldn't do though.  I knew I would never be able to become the dragonborn.  In order to learn to shout, I had to find a stone tablet.  The stone tablet is carried by an undead nord... and you cannot retrieve it unless you kill him.  I tried pickpocketing it.  I tried searching for an alternate means, but it's one of those things set in stone.  No worries.  There was more than enough to do in this vast world than shout so loud you earn powers such as teleportation and the ability to send tables and men alike across the room.

Like being a ghostbuster!  The innkeep spoke of a house haunted by ghosts.  Eff yeah, let's roll.  I went in with a local militiaman, Tyranus, as the quest set us up to do.  The doors locked behind us and the warm setting became unsettling as all manner of objects began flying across the room.  A daedra spoke.  Kill or be killed, there are no alternatives.  The militiaman said he had no hard feelings, but I had to die.  I used my illusion magic to scare him into a corner.  I hid.  I searched every barrel.  I poked around every pocket of his pants.  I scouted every corner of that godforsaken house.  That demon had completely locked us in here and after about 20 minutes I was finally found out and the militiaman shocked my energy away.  I could no longer fear him away.  I could no longer hide.  I did what anyone would have done in that situation.  I took arms.  I tore at his flesh and set him to rest on the bed.

I stood there for minutes over his corpse going... fuck.  I tried so hard to be a pacifist and now my combat log will forever show one murder on my hands.

I stopped playing for a while.

Then I realized a fun activity.  Play through the game.  Live the life of the young Dibella monk.  Bring peace where you can, but realize that sometimes you just can't avoid it-- after all, it is a silly video game.  I decided to honor each being I kill with a drawing and/or a blog post.  That way, the weight of death will still lay heavily upon my hands enough to dissuade me from killing a whole family of bandits, yet I won't be so easy to turn away from a quest because I fear there might be some bloodshed involved.

Til next time, yo.

Rumi 6

"
Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others.  Unfold your own myth, without complicated explanation, so everyone will understand the passage, we have opened you.
Start walking towards Shams.  Your legs will get heavy and tired.  Then comes a moment of feeling the wings you've grown, lifting.
"
Shams is the silence, the darkness, the emptiness, the end of life.  Walk towards it with the determination of Fire.  Be as the Earth-- take what comes and give birth to what will be without reservation.  Nurture it and listen to the music of the world like Water.  Then, like the Wind, fly away.  I totally didn't mean to do that, but fuck yeah, Avatar.

"
You are not a drop in the ocean.
You are the entire ocean in a drop.
"
Again, Shams rears her head and says, 'yay, what is separation but an illusion?  What is death but the undoing of all separation?  It's far too late for me to be talking about all of this.  Instead, I'll respond with a video.

Rumi 5

"
There is a place between voice and presence where information flows.
In disciplined silence it opens.  With wandering talk it closes.
We have fallen into the place where everything is music.
It derives from a slow and powerful root that we can't see.
Stop the words NOW.
Open the window in the center of your chest, and let the spirits fly in and out.
"
Fuck.  There is a place beyond what we sense where information flows.  There, the true music of the world can be heard.  I studied music and learned a few things.  First, darkness creates light.  Dissonance is the shadow, but resolving it (bringing it back to the light) creates beauty somehow.  Second, no one knows why and no one cares.  What matters is communicating beauty, not the why or the how.  Such is as it is with the universal music.  It just IS.  It derives from a slow and powerful place, but we can feel it if we just open our hearts and listen.

"
I feel like the ground, astonished at what the atmosphere has brought to me.  What I know is growing inside me. Rain makes every molecule pregnant with a mystery.
"
The ground doesn't choose what comes to it, but what it gets transforms it and it feeds the environment which grows differently depending on what is provided.  Like a child, what wonderment.  Like a mother, what protection.  Like a father, what responsibility.  Like a youth, what potential.  The infinite cycle fueled by rain.  What is the rain?  Tears.

Rumi 4

"
When you are with everyone but me, you are with no one.
When you are with no one but me, you are everyone.
Instead of being so bound up WITH everyone, BE everyone.
When you become that many, you become nothing; empty
"
Replace "with" with "have" and "one" with "thing".  Give it a shot, seriously.  Empty... I've been saying I am empty for years now.  Maybe it's time I reclaim that word.

"
Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, sufi, or zen.  Not any religion or cultural system.  I am not from the East or the West, not out of the ocean or up from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not composed of elements at all.  I do not exist, am not an entity in this world or the next, did not descend from Adam and Eve or any origin story.  My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless.  Neither body or soul.  I belong to the beloved, have seen the two worlds as one and that one call to and know.
"
Go home, Rumi, you're drunk.

Rumi 3

"
What hurts you, blesses you.
Darkness is your candle.
Your boundaries are your quest.

I can explain this, but it would break the glass cover on your heart, and there is no fixing that.
"
Your boundaries are your quest.  Anyone who has played an RPG before knows that the stronger the darkness, the stronger the light must become to vanquish it.  As the light fades, so another cycle begins.  Waxing and waning like the moon, the tides, a good song, a beautiful life...  What would I be without the struggles that have humbled me?  I would not be a hero.  No darkness, no light.  To awaken to that truth-- there is no going back, is there?

"
A builder looks for the rotten hole where the roof caved in.  A water carrier picks the empty pot.  A carpenter stops at the house with no door.
Workers rush towards some hint of emptiness, which they then start to fill.  Their hope, though, is for emptiness, so don't think you must avoid it.  It contains everything you need!
God has allowed some magical reversal to occur, so that you see the scorpion pit as an object of desire.
So strange your fear of death and emptiness is, and perverse the attachment to what you want.  One day your name shall be erased from the roaring volume of speech.
"
First off, fuck.  The emptiness is always what we seek.  It fills us up.  Death and emptiness are synonyms here.  Don't avoid emptiness, it contains everything you need?  So strange is your fear of emptiness, you see the scorpion pit as an object of your desire.  He's telling us to reach out to the emptiness and fill it up instead of trying to shine our lights bright enough to blast it away-- that'll never work, it'll just make darker shadows. He's also telling us to not fear death, for it is not the end of our lives it is the joining of our lives with the collective.  It will go to the place that words cannot describe.

Rumi 2

"
I have five things to say, five fingers to give to your grace.
First, when I was apart from you, this world did not exist, nor did any other.
Second, whatever I was looking for was always you.
Third, why did I ever learn to count to three.
Fourth, my cornfield is burning.
Fifth, this finger stands for Rabia, and this is for someone else, but is there a difference?
Are these words or tears, is weeping but speech?
What shall I do, my love?
"
'Beloved' and 'Grace' are the universe.  So this is not a love poem for a fancy lad or lass (although it works well as one doesn't it?  Perhaps the two are the same), this is a man weeping for his life-- in joy and pain and all the wonderous phenomena of life.  Who is he apart from?  What are the two simultaneous worlds of which he speaks and is convinced are one?  The secret lies in the second finger-- so long as we remember what 'you' is.  Three is a poet's realization that the words he has spent a lifetime crafting will never be enough to speak his heart.  Four then immediately becomes a metaphor for his life.  Five commends his return to the source-- and the realization that he is connected to all others and is thus an immortally burning cornfield.  He weeps.  And he knows his weeps are the closest he will get to explaining his world.

"
How does a part of the world leave the world?  How can wetness leave the water?
Don't try to put out a fire by throwing on more fire-- don't wash a wound with blood.
No matter how fast you run, your shadow more than keeps up.  Sometimes it is in front!
Only full, overhead sun diminishes your shadow.
A great silence overcomes me, and I wonder why I ever thought to use language.
"
How, indeed, my friend?  I am wetness leaving the water.  I am a lost soul trying to escape the eternal battle of good and evil.  Both fighting for self preservation-- fire with fire, blood for blood.  Only full overhead sunlight diminishes your shadow?  I hate to say this, but Rumi agrees with me: pacifism, motherfucker.  Aaaand there's Rumi ending his poem like he does-- by speaking to Shams, the eternal silence.

Rumi 1

Been reading Rumi again.  Ohhh shiiiiiiiit.  Time for some philosophizing!  I get drunk of Rumi's poems like he gets drunk off wine.  And like Rumi, we both start talking about the ocean when we are drunk.  Let's go.

Format: 

"

Quote

"

Thoughts

GO!

"

Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?

"
I'll never get that shit

"
Drink the wine that moves you;
Notice how each particle moves.  Notice how everyone has just arrived here from a journey.  Notice how each wants a different food.  Notice how the stars vanish as the sun comes up, and how all the streams stream towards the ocean.  Look at the chefs preparing special plates for everyone, according to what they need.  Look at the cup that can hold the ocean.  Look at those who see the face.  Look through Shams' eyes into the water that is entirely jewels.
"
Who are the chefs?  Also, I'll tell you a secret.  Shams is the infinite darkness and silence in Rumi's heart.  Is that weird?  I have a friend named Shams.  This person is the fire to my water.  How odd that I should think of this now.

2012 tldr

What is 2012/12/21?

Our star, Sol, and her sister, Serius, orbit each other in an elaborate and extremely long cosmic dance.  For the past age, Sol and Serius have been moving away from each other.  On the 21st of December (lol it's fucking February), they will begin their elliptical journey back towards one another.  Much like the seasons of the year, we have been in the dead of winter for so long, yet the solstice is passing us and we will once again begin our path towards the light of summer.  It is widely believed that humans consciousness follows this larger cycle-- much like many people get SAD in the winter months of our small Earthly cycle.  According to this metaphor of seasons, we are in our darkest days, yet we will now begin to awaken and grow as we cycle through this new cosmic season.  Many past cultures recognized the impact of these cosmic seasons.  The Maya even made a calendar of it.

How does this affect you?

I do not believe the world will transform overnight (NAILED IT).  Each and every person's transformation is different.  Each one will take time.  I believe that I have slowly been waking up to something inside of me for some time now.  I am slowly beginning to see how I wish the world to be and I  am even more slowly moving towards that vision by living the change I wish to see (lol that's an understatement at this point).  I do not believe I have the power to change the world, but I know I have the power to change myself and I hope only that this example will be enough to spur even one heart towards the path of peace.  This enlightenment and shift of consciousness is, in my mind, a domino effect.  Just as I woke up in part due to those awakened before me, I hope I will be able to wake others near me.  Like a kitty waking from kitty hibernation and causing all the other kitties to wake up (what the fuck did I just write).  As each of us wakes, an exponential awakening will begin and take us towards peace just as our sun begins to awaken and speed up as it approaches Serius.

I won't lie, there is some serious shit going on in this world.

Step one is simply to notice that it is there.  I feel society shifting under my feet as more and more people begin to simply see that our system is rigged against them.  Everyone knows it now.  Step two is to pinpoint the cause.  Thousands of voices are speaking out and the truth is out there, more accessible than ever before thanks to the internet and social networking.  Step three is to visualize the world as we dream it ought to be.  Every dream is different, but I believe that things such as peace, inalienable rights, and love are among most of them.  Step four is to enact that dream.  If every person's actions resonated with harmony, harmony would exist throughout the world.  That is what Democracy means: One Person, One Vote -- One Life, One Example.

I won't tell you how to live, but I will stand up and walk out of the cage in which we both live.

The rest is up to you, but I trust you.  I love you, because you are me.

Dreams and Reality: a study of metaphors

It's kinda crazy that I'm posting THIS post now right after my last post, but it is the first one in my journal ... so yeah, here we go:

-----

Often in fiction and in dreams, action and occurrence are nothing but metaphors which act as a window into the true words of the situation.  For instance, one might dream of driving through an oppressive fog whilst in the waking world struggling mentally over something and not knowing or being completely sure of how to proceed   The oppressive fog embodies this concept of not being able to see which direction to take.  When the fog dissipates, one goes through the 'fog' and has reached a clarity of thought where the future turns and decision are clear.

I've been running into this crazy phenomenon recently.  I'm running into this exact fiction-like quality in every aspect of my life.  For instance, I was completely in a funk about leaving my job and students etc and wondering where I was going tomorrow, much less how to continue on my life path.  I was driving home and there was this oppressive fog all around me.  Going slowly and feeling out each turn as I came to it, I eventually had enough time to think and even connect my life to the road before me and I came up with a set of key truths to follow and hold in my heart no matter what.  Within minutes, the fog cleared and I was home free.  The following day, I held strong to that list of truths the foggy road had taught me and began to rise from my funk and ended up being very productive and happy on that uncharacteristically beautiful afternoon.

Basically, my life and the rode I drove were a foggy mess and in learning lessons about driving on foggy roads, I also learned how to clear the metaphoric fog of the twists and turns of my life.  ... I am losing track of what is event and what is metaphor.  I'm seeing beyond the veil of my existence and the existence of other supposedly separate beings and instead am seeing the subtle yet overt interconnectedness and interplay between all things.  It is ... Fascinating-- and I like it.

--------------

Ok, I wrote that like a month ago.  After last night... I'm kinda weirded out.