I had a dream last night.1
It was an unsettling dream. And it was preceded, sometime earlier, by a loud clap of thunder in our reality, as if right outside my door.
As if of Truth, knock knock knocking at our cellar door; and for me to proclaim it.
I will explain.
First: the dream. And before that, an explanation to set the context.
I spent many years living in a spiritual community, in the north of Scotland, where the primary spiritual philosophy - besides 'going within' for one's answers, and (attempted) alignment with Spirit - was that 'Work is Love in Action'. So: an example of 'practical spirituality' - of bringing spirit into one's everyday life, in order to ground it, make it real, and make our lives a reflection of our inner life, and alignment. And I say 'example' as well, because the purpose of what somewhat early on became a nonprofit charitable Trust was to run educational programs of a, roughly, 'religious' nature, and with a strong connection with Nature. That was our primary source of income. And in furtherance of that purpose, the main educational program that we ran was a weeklong hands-on program called the Findhorn Experience Week,2 wherein the guests were exposed to both the daily life and the philosophy of our community. In a mini community sort of way; with the creation of a strong group sense part of the experience. A point which is important to the essence of my dream.
To which I will now get. But a quick clarifying point further: I had been in the Guest Department - the work department for those community members who run the Experience Weeks, and allied others - many years ago, and over the years since had lent a hand many times in running that, and those, programs; so I had a lot of experience at the 'cutting edge' of the community, before I left last year. Therefore, and to the dream: It was pretty natural that I found myself 'parachuted' into one such 'FX' (as we called them, short for 'Findhorn Experience' ) at the last minute, to replace one of the two scheduled leaders of the group (we call them focalisers), who couldn't do it for whatever reason. The group had already started their time together; and walking into the room I walked into a peculiar atmosphere. There was a sense of rebelliousness in the air, and a further sense of resentment. Not directed at me (at that point, at least), for coming in at a late point to be one of their co-focalisers. But somehow, either over the 'leadership' that they had already started with,3 or the nature of the information that my co-focaliser had imparted to them as to what the week (read: the experience; read further, more deeply: the life experience itself)) was going to be, or at least was supposed to be, all about. For example, as I joined the circle, one of the group - a male in my dream - voiced his intention not to take part in the group's Group Project.4
What?!, I thought. What's going on here?? Hasn't the week (read, as I say: the experience; and to be read more deeply), and its purposes, been explained well to the group; and what were they expecting out of it anyway???5
I got my answer as my dream progressed.
It moved next to my being the driver of one of the community's people-mover vans taking part of the group to a house, where my co-focaliser joined us with the other part of the group.6 In we trooped to the living room, and sat around in a (grumpy) rough circle for a talk. And this was beginning to appear to be the Group Project that we were going to have that week. To sort out whatever was going on for them.
Whatever it was, was beginning to make me angry. (What did they think they were here for anyway???) But I held my tongue; and suggested, as gently as I could, that we go around, and each person tell what was going on for them, as to why this bad, or at least strange, atmosphere in the group; and tell how they felt about that as well, besides their own feelings. And that was when the truth - and the larger Truth of the dream itself - started coming out.
What started coming out was that many of them felt that they had not chosen to be there. What?! Yes. For example, one of them said that she had to be there. What?! Why??
Because it was the nature of her position. How so. Because she was on the dole, and part of the quid-pro-quo requirement to remain on it was to engage in various 'self esteem-enhancing' exercises and experiences,
And it was the same for some of the others.
They hadn't know what they had gotten 'themselves' into.
Others had a hand in putting them in the position.
Who were these 'others'??
Ah. At last: the truth. Not just of the unknown 'they' that were running their lives for them in the (illusory) world of the 3D 'reality', because they were dependent on the state for their sustenance.
But, more deeply, of the unknown 'they' - conditioned as they were to think in such terms, of the 'they' outside of themselves running their lives for them, because of their dependency status and, from that, their dependency mentality - running the 'show' of life itself.
And putting them in this position of having a dependency mentality.
Which they, deep down, resented.7
And to deal with their resentment, had turned it into an arrogant sense of - and here comes the key word, and state of being coming up in this little dreamworld exercise:
entitlement.
Because - in the case of black Americans - of past treatment of their forebears.
'I can't make those nasty slaveowner white folks pay for what they done. But someone's gotta pay. Becuz
'it's only fair.'
Like hell.
That attitude is what helped in the rise of Hitler to power: the Versailles Treaty saddling Germany with huge reparations for/after World War I.8 Creating huge resentment in the minds and hearts of the German people, who felt hard put upon for the perceived sins of their fathers and grandfathers, national leaders that they personally never had a hand in bringing to power.
'That'll teach'em.'
Who, exactly?? Anybody who might want to start a war in the future?? And in the meantime, you have created a climate of - what, exactly.
I'll tell you.
Of revenge.
Revenge begets revenge.
Just as violence begets violence.
I know that it's easy to want to blame somebody for past indiscretions. But that's just the trouble.
It's too easy.
And unfair.
Speaking of…
Now, I also know that the Judeo-Christian Bible talks about 'the sins of the fathers being visited on the heads of their children, and their children's children'. But if you subscribe to everything in the Bible as 'the word of God,' you need to know a couple of things. One: We are in a new dispensation, of time, and quality of life to embody. And two: the Bible is full of Man's fingerprints. It's really too difficult to know, in it, what is 'true' and what is false: anachronisms; interpolations, slanted to the scribe's personal proclivities - you name it.
The Bible cannot be looked upon as a source of Truth. It is a flawed document. There is plenty of evidence for this statement, and position. Look it up.9 So we need to restrain ourselves from indiscriminately applying 'lessons' from the Bible as though everything in it were 'the gospel truth'. It may be the gospel truth. But it may well not be the literal truth.
So, to get back: today, in America, we have the same sort of situation as confronted the architects of the Versailles Treaty: a misguided attempt at applying some Justice; and in its misguidedness, it has just compounded matters. I am talking about the essence of my dream. I got a handle on it, by realizing its relationship to an article I read yesterday, in the Main City Library, in a recent issue of National Review, a conservative bi-weekly.10 By John Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, formerly in the Justice Department for a time during George W.' s first term,11 the article talked about - well; what its title said: 'Race and the Constitution'. It dealt specifically with two important Supreme Court cases coming up, relating to the heralded topic; one of which is about the University of Texas having been giving preferential treatment to blacks, long after de jure school segregation had run its course. The nation was now in the realm of legal make-believe. The legalistic rationale, I read, and found out about, in the article, was that society would benefit - be better off - with 'diversity' in its collegiate classrooms - going, now, so far as approximating the percentages of minority groups in the state at large to boot; and not just for the student body as a whole, "but in each classroom".
WHAT??!!
What is this business??? I thought.
For one thing: That may have been good sociology. But it was bad law. In fact, it was not 'law' at all. It was a political ploy, pure and simple. By charlatans.
For another: I realized that I have had the advantage of not having been here when the legalistic rot was setting in, step by stealthy, precedent-setting step. I have been away, in a (relatively) far country, and just didn't know how far adrift the American ship of state had gotten from its true course, which was to be in extolling the rights of the individual to be free from the overweening power of the state in his or her life; in order to secure the Blessings of Liberty for the new nation's children. All of her children; in due course, with the passing of slavery as a way of life in the country, as in the world at large. As part of the general progress of humankind. Towards a certain goal.
And that goal was NOT to be for people, of whatever race, to slip right back into slavery, just of another kind.
Of slavery, that is to say, to the state.12
To being dependent on 'others'.
With black Americans being seduced, by political charlatans with an agenda, to consider 'welfare' as a right.
As an 'entitlement'.
As - in a word: Reparations.
Which some deep part of themselves recognized for what it was, and is:
Sophistry.
And so, resentment - for having lost power over their own lives - turned into the defense mechanism of thinking in terms of 'entitlement', for past treatment of their ancestors…and we have the makings of social collapse.13
Which the Marxists amongst us want. And have wanted, all along. To raise up their utopian socialist society. Of running people's lives to within an inch of those lives. Knowing better than they do what is best for them. Or at least, for the planet as a whole. Which means that if a few billion carbon dioxide emitters, and environmental polluters in general, need to be killed off - so be it.
In that scenario. Which sees a human being as a dispensable item.
Not as a vessel for an immortal soul.
On a journey to Godhead-ness in its own right.
--
We need all to get on the same page, as it were.
It isn't going to be easy.
But it is important.
Because it is the key to our future. On planet Earth. Which is going to ascend.
Is in the process of ascending.
With us.
Or without us.
Our choice.
As individuals.
And believe me:
The choice depends on Love.
Not Force.
Been there.
Done that.
It's time for a Change, alright.
Just make the right one.
---
footnotes:
1 Actually, it was this morning. But part of last night's rhythm of inner/sleep time.
2 the Findhorn Foundation being the name of our community; the name taken from the caravan park - the Findhorn Bay Caravan Park - where the community was (mostly) situated, which in turn - and the name of the bay itself - was taken from the nearby fishing village of Findhorn. And which has caused a bit of a kerfuffle with our neighbors over the years; many? of the locals feeling that our international spiritual community 'stole their name'. But then they (many of them?) are not very strong about 'outlanders' anyway. I remember one day talking to a 'local' who, though having lived there for some 20 years, found that he was still considered by some of the real locals as an outlander. So: a New Age spiritual community in a very conservative corner of a fairly conservative country anyway…but all of that is another story. Just a brief clarification, of name and intent, here.
3 my co-focaliser was a female, who I knew in reality, and with whom I had a bit of a rocky co-community member relationship; but that didn't seem to be germane to anything in the dream at that point
4 Each person in the group 'attunes' to (has a brief meditation on) a certain work department for the week, where they will spend half the day, except on the Wednesday, when they all work together, on some project. It usually entails working in one of the community's gardens. This is not only for a group/'community' building experience; but as well to give those who attuned to other departments to have a taste of the fabled Findhorn gardens - what may have drawn them to come to the community in the first place, and yet they kindly went to another department, 'reading' the interests of others in the group for their FX work department experience. It is all a matter of 'going within', and listening to what one gets 'on the inner'. Practice for life itself, in a spiritual context.
5 In the dream I looked over to my co-focaliser, as though for some explanation. She could only give a sort of helpless shrug and embarrassed smile, with an air of, It's out of my hands and control; they have a mind of their own. Individually. And collectively.
6 in one of the larger buses that we had for a while; for whatever reason that was part of my dream.
To indicate to me that she was, really, 'capable'; and that that was not the reason for the group's sullenness, and resentful attitude??
N.B.: In reality, that gal was, indeed, 'capable'. I never experienced her as a co-focaliser of such a group; but she had been a member of the Guest Department in the past, and thus had had plenty of exposure to such groups; and could handle the big buses of the Foundation quite 'handily'. So, as I say: my dream was telling me that 'the problem' - and the answer - lay elsewhere.
7 Because we each are, within and beneath our present human bodies, sovereign souls, each responsible for our own progress on the spiritual path back to total Unity with our Creator; and have that deep need for self autonomy, in order to exercise ourselves against the anvil of the realm of duality, in a process of 'proving' ourselves. But more on that, later on. This is just to flag the direction this little soliloquy with a deep part of myself is taking.
(Oh - and of course, some souls may be resisting the 'scenario', enamored of the physical plane of existence, and resent having to look at it in a spiritual context. Resentment can be multilayered.)
8 'The War To End All Wars,' it was called. 'Never again,' it was sworn.
Fat chance, with those sorts of self-perpetuating, open-ended attitudes.
9 Some modern sources (besides some older especially German scholars' researches): Tony Bushby; Ralph Ellis; Acharya S.. The list goes on.
10 I used to subscribe to it, over in Scotland, as another way to keep up with the political scene in America; but I canceled my subscription, before I returned to this, my home, country, out of unhappiness with their choice not to call Mr. Obama on his ineligibility for the presidential office. The NR people are an academic lot, and should certainly have known of Obama's not meeting the 'natural born citizen' requirement for that particular office; but they had chosen to ignore the matter. Why? I think it has mostly to do with hubris: they didn't want to be painted with the same Saul Alinsky-inspired ridiculing brush as the 'birthers', wanted to keep their respectability quotient intact. Leave that sort of uncouth, populist thing to the likes of the Birchers. (Who have also been a bit reticent to deal with the matter; but that's all another story.) However, they still come up with important articles, observations told from a scholarly conservative point of view; and I check in with the magazine every once in awhile, when I go to the Library for other matters.
11 And who gave George II some notorious legal advice that gave the War on Terror Prez some backing for being able to engage in water boarding; a position that I disagree with. But that, too, is another matter. He is still a scholar, with valuable perspectives on the law.
12 I like how Star Parker, an 'urban renewal activist', put the title of her book: 'Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor' - and how that title goes on: 'and What We Can About it'. With individual-affirming values. Values that create character.
But to continue. (However: In that vein.)
13 A note right here: I sensed that some of the 'resentment' I was picking up from some of the people in that 'week' - to say, experience, in a spiritual community, and that milieu, and intention - was also due to some souls resenting the 'free will' aspect of our universe. And to say, therefore, that it has meaning, beyond just in and for itself.
These are that 'type' of souls who are reported to have 'fallen' . Who believe in power for power's sake. And don't want to be 'just one of the Group', engaging in the 'group's life'. Who want power.
Power over. Not power with.
And who are being attempted to be redeemed, out of their temptation, by being placed in such a position, of a spiritual community-cum-Mystery School.
There are a lesser type of souls, not in this same boat, but in this same sort of boat; at a particular stage of their development. I'll elaborate on them in a postscript.
---
P.S. A further word on 'resentment'; this time from the point of view of the soul, and aspiring god (not aspiring devil), who 'has it all' - seemingly. It - they; those in the same particular experience boat - experience Resentment because, in their current incarnation, they are nicely positioned with and for wealth and power, and resent having to give it up because it is only a passing piece of a larger picture, part of a larger Plan, which they resent having to defer to, and be reminded of, by being led by 'them' to go to a spiritual community - meaning, in out-of-dream essence, Life, without 'the blinkers on', which allow it to be taken merely in and for itself only, to say, as reality in itself.
And in their Life Review, which they will have to face, on the other side, they will have their noses rubbed in all of this 'Attachment' business.
Unfair. Damn unfair. Why can't I just have this for itself.
King of the mountain.
Of, after all is said and done, an illusory mountain...
'Why did you expose me to this, God? Make me be exposed to all this? It's...'
'Unfair?'
'Yeah.'
'But nobody did it to you. Except yourself.'
'What?'
'You put yourself in this position. Through, this confrontation with your Self.'
'Me??'
'Yes. You. You chose this experience.'
'...I...chose...this......'
'You are the architect of your own constructions. With a little help, of course.'
...... 'I see.'
'Do you? Really??'
Really?
In this one big spiritual community, and Mystery School, that we call Life???
And who are being attempted to be redeemed, out of their temptation, by being placed in such a position, of a spiritual community-cum-Mystery School.
There are a lesser type of souls, not in this same boat, but in this same sort of boat; at a particular stage of their development. I'll elaborate on them in a postscript.
---
P.S. A further word on 'resentment'; this time from the point of view of the soul, and aspiring god (not aspiring devil), who 'has it all' - seemingly. It - they; those in the same particular experience boat - experience Resentment because, in their current incarnation, they are nicely positioned with and for wealth and power, and resent having to give it up because it is only a passing piece of a larger picture, part of a larger Plan, which they resent having to defer to, and be reminded of, by being led by 'them' to go to a spiritual community - meaning, in out-of-dream essence, Life, without 'the blinkers on', which allow it to be taken merely in and for itself only, to say, as reality in itself.
And in their Life Review, which they will have to face, on the other side, they will have their noses rubbed in all of this 'Attachment' business.
Unfair. Damn unfair. Why can't I just have this for itself.
King of the mountain.
Of, after all is said and done, an illusory mountain...
'Why did you expose me to this, God? Make me be exposed to all this? It's...'
'Unfair?'
'Yeah.'
'But nobody did it to you. Except yourself.'
'What?'
'You put yourself in this position. Through, this confrontation with your Self.'
'Me??'
'Yes. You. You chose this experience.'
'...I...chose...this......'
'You are the architect of your own constructions. With a little help, of course.'
...... 'I see.'
'Do you? Really??'
Really?
In this one big spiritual community, and Mystery School, that we call Life???
---
