What a Way to Go: Network

Lua Says:
December 14th, 2007

I haven’t had dreams about this time for a long time. I used to have them regularly - all the way through the 70s and 80s, but then those “prophetic” kinds of dreams stopped. I wonder why.

In one of those dreams, there was a large group of people. I was “supervising” those playing in the lake. My mother was supervising those working at the cabin. I looked up and saw a mushroom cloud off to the west. Then I looked to the east and saw another one. I looked over at my mother. She was watching both mushroom clouds. But none of the people playing in the water or those working at the cabin had noticed the mushroom clouds. I ran over to my mother and we started dancing for joy in a circle, crowing to each other, “isn’t it wonderful that we’re all here, we’re all safe!” I woke up from the dream wondering why no one else had noticed the mushroom clouds.

Every time my anxiety begins to overwhelm me, I think about this dream among others. I think to myself, I have been given the assurance that we will all be here. When I think of my daughters and grandchildren living in the city, I ask inner voice, or the voice in the mountain, or Snowflower, my guide - will they be here? And every time I am told, yes, relax, prepare, they will come when it is time. In my more anxiety filled moments, I worry that it is my strong desire and imagination, nothing more, speaking to me. But then I ask again, in sweat lodge, and I’m always told the same thing - relax, be happy, prepare, they will be here when it is time.

Lua

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True Says:
December 15th, 2007

Hi Sally,
A few weeks ago I watched Carl Jung’s video series on good video “Wisdom of the Dream.” My middle name, Carl, is named after Carl Jung and Carl Sandburg. To Jung, the dream is special because it is the time where ego meets the shadow at a place called the “self.”

I had a dreamed about a month ago that is similar to your second one. I was climbing this very high ancient tower from some past civilization. Perhaps is was Mayan, because their was a rainforest that seemed to be taking over around the tower. I climbed this ruined tower with three other people. When we reached the peak, I looked down at the wilderness that was far down below. I got scared, thinking that this old tower might collapse at any moment. I asked one of the people that climbed with me, “Wouldn’t it suck if this old tower collapsed?” He was indifferent, as if it was a stupid question.

“Someday it will,” he replied. I was still scared and panicky, and didn’t know how I would get down. He then said something of much wisdom, and I paid attention because I felt the significance of the moment.

“When you climb down, if you have any fear and anciety in your stomach you may fall. But you see there is really nothing to be afraid of at all, because joy, beauty, and love always exists in any circumstance. If you realize that, then you realize that there is no real reason to be afraid.”

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Sally Says:
December 15th, 2007 at 10:13 am e

It moves something in me that these dreams you share all have a comforting message that seems profound and beyond the operation of ego. As True quotes Jung, they seem to come from the Self.

Another dream that relates is one that someone shared at a circle that convened last summer of people who were all up to speed, 13 of us. That dream has been a guiding one for me. What I recall of the dream is that it was of fish who were swimming at the depths of a river while at torrential flood of water from a huge storm rushed at the surface. The message I got from that was to swim at the depths while the storms rage overhead.

Thanks for sharing your dreams.

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Vivienne Grace Says:
December 15th, 2007

I just connected in to “the experiment”
I love how you got the ball rolling Sally and how Tim jumped in with his support and how so many good folks have opened up and shared. You asked Sally about the best way to go as far as setting up a forum. I feel like it’s already working.
You have shifted the set up of the blog from one where we respond to your wisdom and Tim’s to one where we all contribute. It already feels to me like a big conversation that I can have with many others who share the same longings I do. It feels like a big book which we can all write in and connect through our words.
Just last night Nic and I found ourselves balancing our dinner knives just for fun, it felt silly and yet it was fun and maybe a good metaphor for how we both feel, as if we are balanced on a razor’s edge.

This morning I lost myself in cutting out images to make a birthday card for our one year old niece. Then I found myself thinking about a mosaic I’ve been collecting pieces for for many years. It felt dangerously subversive to be considering play when Rome is burning then I went onto the blog and read Sally’s thread and chuckled to myself. Oh indeed we are all connected, they may be in the Carolinas, you may be in Kansas or Hawaii or I may be in British Columbia but we are creating a new vision wherever and whenever we take our consciousness out of the realm of Empire and productivity and what our culture expects. What if this is the true work?

On the Full Moon I hold Circles. The theme for the next full moon on December 23rd is the wisdom and guidance of our dreams so I’ve been thinking a lot about mine since I sent out that invitation. The first one I received after the invite was sent out was this one:
I was supporting young men on the banks of a muddy brown torrent of a river. I was encouraging them to jump in and go to the other side. I coached tthem to say “strength & honour” loudly and then jump in. I told them to just jump and trust they would survive the rushing muddy torrent. Secretly I watched to make sure. I watched as the first one clambered out on the bank on the other side.
This dream as I recalled it spoke to me of the Hopi prophecy and it’s call to stop haning onto the shore for safety and instead to jump into the river and celebrate with the others who are in there with you. .
I’m grateful to be swimming with all of you.
Vivienne Ladner, B.C. Canada

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Tom Ness Says:
December 15th, 2007

When I was a small child I had a long period of recurring dreams in which I was struggling to cover ground through an endless sea of bombed-out urban ruins, feeling terrified and hunted. There was never any resolution, just the same struggle. Perhaps this imagery was put in my head by WWII documentary footage, but it felt very real and personal.

In 1961 Theodora Kroeber published _Ishi in Two Worlds_, about the last pre-contact “wild” Indian in North America who came out of a long hiding in 1911 when the last of his relatives were dead. Ishi’s story had a profound effect on me because my bedroom window at the time looked up into the mouth of Deer Creek Canyon where Ishi’s tribe had lived for thousands of years. The knowledge of how the Yahi tribe had lived sustainably in that beautiful canyon (now a designated wilderness area) was probably my dreamwriter’s source material for the single most powerful dream of my life when I was sixteen.

In this dream I was at the county fairgrounds when a lovely teenage girl approached me and introduced herself to me as Tourmaline. She took my hand and asked me to follow her. We walked for miles, finally heading up into Deer Creek Canyon. There, farther up the canyon than I had ever been, was a hidden village no one in the outside world knew about. It was filled with happy people living off the land the way Ishi’s tribe had for so long. Tourmaline told me that she was allowed out of the canyon just once in her life, to choose a mate, and she had chosen me. Secrecy was essential to keep the larger world from discovering the village. I was delighted to accept this honor and woke up feeling that if only the dream had gone on I would have lived happily ever after with these people, with a wife, children, and community just as my species was intended to live. That dream has stayed with me the rest of my life as a wistful vision of how I really wanted to live as this civilization forced its hollowness and exploitation on me.

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Lua Says:
December 16th, 2007

Tom, of all the letters so far, yours is the first to make me cry! How I wish you could have remained in your dream! I sincerely hope that you find the actual reality of your dream within your life.
Lua

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Jen Says:
December 17th, 2007

WOW. I am blown away by the depth of feeling and expression going on here since Sally started this forum/experiment. I got excited when I saw Sally’s first post about it, and there were a few comments, but I got chicken about posting right away, so I waited a few days and now there are all these amazing comments. Feeling less chicken now.

Juan, I so heard you about wanting to live in a multicultural tribe but feeling very fearful about scapegoating and targeting. I fear that too, so much. One thing I have learned from living in cohousing is that everyone brings all their baggage right along and we are still immersed in this larger culture of Empire that seeks to turn us against each other. I think my neighbors want, in their deepest hearts, to change this, but they are so stressed out from working all the time and driving all over the place and essentially still living “the American way” that it is too daunting for them to face it. Or am I just buying into that excuse? I don’t know, I just desperately want to believe that they do have similar values to my own, even when they get sucked into the vortex of “regular” life.

Sally, how I loved your comments about work, and others’ comments about what “real” life consists of. Work sucks. As a child I remember thinking, okay, most people seem to think The Economy is what reality is, but I know it isn’t true, I know it! And I will have to remind myself when I’m an adult and forgetting the truth! I am listening as hard as I can to the child I once was, because she was so very smart. Also sad and lonely, but so insightful and profound.

I find myself worrying a lot about tenuous employment (my own and my husband’s) while simultaneously wishing we could all be unemployed together so we could do fun and important things.

I miss playing. Life has felt like a hell of a lot of work lately. My baby daughter is 8 months old and just barely learning to crawl, and I want to spend the whole day rolling on the floor with her and tickling her, and I can’t much because of all the Work that needs to get done, both paid and unpaid. I wish there was a tribe around me so we could hang out AND play with and nurture the babies AND get the cooking and cleaning done AND give me a chance to focus on paid work so I can earn money (focus is hard because the baby comes with me to work…) You would think that I would have a tribe since I moved into cohousing two years ago, but it’s not so, everyone is entangled in their own frantic lives.

Still, I have visions of things being radically different here, with people gardening their hearts out, playing, eating, building, and just plain being around more, rather than on the hamster wheel that is The Economy. I don’t blame the others for their getting caught on the hamster wheel, I’m stuck there myself a lot. If I felt I could support my family without The Economy, I’d be outta there in a heartbeat. Still so much to learn about food, permaculture, water catchment and purification, herbal medicine…

Sally, you asked if it was better to have an online forum or to encourage people to see each other face to face… I think there is a huge need for both. I know I need both. Does anyone know how to do those Google Maps mash-ups, I think they’re called? where people can indicate where on the map they are? I’ll try to look into that and see if I can figure it out. But I’m sure there are folks for whom the internet is their lifeline in terms of finding folks who are on the same page and they need this badly. At the same time we need real, live social connections.

Ok, I’ll wrap up for now but I just wanted to express my profound desire to connect with each one of you, take your hands in mine, look into your eyes, and say, “I hear you, I will be your witness, you are amazing and resilient, and I care about you tremendously.”

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Vivienne Grace Says:
December 17th,

Thanks Jen,
for finding the courage to post
Vivienne