When the universe attempts to catch your attention it can do so in some unmissable ways. On Friday the wife dropped me off at a new private hospital for my hip operation and returned home to wait. I was due in for ~10:30 AM. It was slightly icy on the outward journey
When she got back to our house there was a big to do and someone had flipped their car over into our drive.
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The downward slope is our drive. This kind of thing is hard to miss. It stands out.
A car is the dreaming symbol for state of awareness (vehicle) . Someone unknown to us had flipped their state of awareness over into our drive. House is the dreaming symbol for view of the world. So just outside or very close to our view of the world someone had rolled over and otherwise flipped their view of the world, turned it on its head, completely.
No one was badly hurt but it made me wonder if other people, perhaps in a plural sense, had had their state of awareness with respect to us {me} flipped on the head.
We may never know…
A dream had while I was coming round from anaesthetic follows.
The dream starts in a very urban setting, next to a large river which is brackish and tidal. There is a very large pub on multiple levels which backs onto the river. It has a feel of a Dickensian smugglers’ pub on the banks of a foggy Thames. The wife and I meet Pierro there on the land side off a normal road. We go inside.
The scene changes and I am now entering the lower levels of the pub from the sea side through a rarely used entrance off the “beach”. I work my way up through the pub looking for Pierro and the wife. Some of the rooms are busy some are not. The pub is very big with many rooms and many bars. In one the barman hands me a half-pewter tankard filled with porter a type of dark beer. Carrying this I continue searching through the pub. I walk through an office drinks party in one bar and a pre-wedding piss up in another. I find them in a wooden bar with benched wooden seating.
I again greet Pierro. He says that he has someone he wants me to meet. They are his cousins from America. He introduces four men who are a bit like the “Deliverance” hill-billies. They are roughly dressed and with poor teeth. They are unwashed and smelly. One of them has fingernails like dog claws. Another has a lazy eye and is wearing a lopsided straw hat. They are all tall, well over six feet and on the skinny side. They look out of place in the urban setting.
I start to speak with them in English, but they respond in French with a very strong creole or patois accent, that is very thick and difficult to understand. It could be Canadian American Indian French or from the deep south of the USA. It is very hard to understand. I speak with them in my attempts at French. It is clear to see that we are having massive, huge, trouble communicating. Communication is very poor between us.
The scene changes to a different urban setting. There are tall dark red brick buildings a bit like those near Kensington High Street and a bit reminiscent of Manchester. There are thin several storey tall, terraced houses and office like accommodation. I am there for a rock concert. Perhaps by Oasis. There is on street car parking with old style parking meters. I pick up my key from reception and go to find the house which I have been allocated, which I am renting. I go inside and dump my bags. I then leave and lock up putting the keys in my pocket. I look at the number on the door so that I can find it amidst all the very similar looking buildings. I can see the number 1347 in large white screw-on numbering. In the dream I think it odd that the house has such a high number.
I then set off to look for my car having forgotten exactly where I parked it. I know that I parked it near here because I used intuition to find then ticket office. I am looking for my old navy-blue Ford Fiesta. I look up and down the streets, down back alleys, in car parks above and below ground. I cannot find the car but am not concerned because it is my old car which I sold many years ago.
The dream ends.
As I am coming to, I note that the dream is about 15 both because of the house number and Pierro. It is about light through or from darkness. I note that this dream is a dreaming symbol dream.
15 is the jewel of awareness light thorugh darkness.
Cultural references rarely cross well between cultures. Similarly some are age group specific. I am sure that many of mine would lead balloon with the youth. This morning the GP suggested to the wife {during her appointment} that my upcoming appointment on Friday was not necessary and that there were people who were more needful. Probably true. So we cancelled the appointment to free it up for others. The stiff upper lip, not making a fuss, just a flesh wound mentality may not have crossed her mind. It is not rational to think like that. Couple that with my introversion seeking to avoid unnecessary social contact and…I am not important.
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What is a disaster and end of the world to some is just a flesh wound to others. I am not keen on arguing. I am already assuming that we will drop a number of lines of inquiry in the health saga. They are frills rather than life threatening. The cardiologist has said that there is an inexplicable part of my ECG that warrants further investigation, which will in due course be done. From the write up he has gotten the wrong end of the stick about our conversation. This miscommunication happens a lot here. My non-expert clinical judgment is that it is not a big deal. I am making that judgement call.
This morning’s dream had a wounded dog in it. Dogs are the dreaming symbol for friendship and loyalty. The dog gets killed by a pine marten. Because of my itinerant childhood, I have no strong sense of spatial belonging, I do not belong to a place. When people ask where I am from, I can say my birth city, Cardiff. I have a sense of home in the village of my ancestors at Beddgelert though I never lived there and a sense of childhood in Mount Isa, Queensland. That is my last stable child-memory.
The longest time I have ever spent anywhere was when I worked at Imperial College, 13 years. I have no fond memories (smoking excluded) of my time there which was largely a struggle and I have no loyalty to that institution. When we watch University Challenge, I do not egg the Imperial team on.
I have one personal loyalty and friendship only. I certainly don’t feel British, Welsh yes. I feel more Southern Hemisphere in outlook.
I know that I am a migrant here. It does not feel ex-pat, it feels migrant. I am not socially integrated here and nobody has done anything to secure my loyalty. The sense of being partially tolerated is what I feel / experience.
As things are customarily measured, I have no friends outside of this house. I owe nobody allegiance or loyalty and nor do I demand it of anyone, nor do I feel owed any loyalty by anyone.
We have invested a lot of sweat into the house and land here, but I don’t “belong” here though it is home. The other day whilst awaiting my colonoscopy I looked out the hospital window at the hillside there. It did not draw me, pull me and say belong. I suspect our time here draws to a close. If I am honest, I am marginally disappointed with my fellow Celts. There have been exceptions like the mole catcher.
I do feel more European than British, but in a pan-national sense.
Loyalty is a weird word. I do not know what it means and rarely have I experienced it towards me.
The second instalment of the Old Guard series has recently hit Netflix. It has a shared plotline of sorts with the Highlander movies of ere. In this Old Guard dramatization physical plane immortals exist adjoint humanity and interact to either good or bad effect depending on mood and predilection. In Highlander in the end there can be only one in the battle between good and evil. In the Old Guard series “Andy” the main protagonist has fought to help, aid and otherwise nudge humanity in a “better” direction. Instead of reincarnating she has one contiguous and very long life in which she preserves her super model looks despite getting slashed and shot. A magical and miraculous healing occurs. She loses her regeneration powers and then regains them.
In each the burden of endless longevity / immortality is touched upon. They do not dwell overmuch on the boredom aspect rather the action and power angle. The omnipotence may appeal to the burdened and downtrodden. It may titillate the sociopath and the narcissist.
For dramatic impact pivotal points in global {human} history are referenced. An allied them is to be found in the “Assassins Creed” franchise though in this case reincarnation is invoked and a DNA bloodline is the bearer and propagator of ongoing conflicts.
It has been suggested to me that the so-called Toltecs were incarnated around pivotal times and played a role behind the scenes in the evolution of human and planetary history. Given that the technique of erasing personal history is part and parcel of the training, it is not surprising that little historical refence can be found. In the Old Guard Andy tries to avoid publicity. However in this day and age and thanks to internet monitoring and various intelligence services it is impossible to leave no trace. The times have changed.
In the Toltec tradition there is such a thing as a nagal being. The word Nagual in Spanish American is similar. The word Naga in the Indian tradition does not differ in root. In the hagiography of Buddhism Siddartha is protected by king cobra, a naga-raja, from the rain. These nagas live in the place or world of the nagas, naga-loka. Wisdom can be elicited from nagas and naga-loka. Serpents are the dreaming symbol for wisdom.
This suggests via speculation and extrapolation that a nagal being was a contemporary and perhaps companion of Shakyamuni Buddha.
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“There is unanimous agreement that Nāgārjuna (ca 150–250 CE) is the most important Buddhist philosopher after the historical Buddha himself and one of the most original and influential thinkers in the history of Indian philosophy. His philosophy of the “middle way” (madhyamaka) based around the central notion of “emptiness” (śūnyatā) influenced the Indian philosophical debate for a thousand years after his death; with the spread of Buddhism to Tibet, China, Japan and other Asian countries the writings of Nāgārjuna became an indispensable point of reference for their own philosophical inquiries. A specific reading of Nāgārjuna’s thought, called Prāsaṅgika-Madhyamaka, became the official philosophical position of Tibetan Buddhism which regards it as the pinnacle of philosophical sophistication up to the present day.”
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Nāgārjuna (नागार्जुन). – Name of an ancient Buddhist teacher of the rank of बोधिसत्त्व (bodhisattva).
Wisdom Library
The name also appears in the wider Hindu sources predating Shakyamuni Buddha
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Typically a three pronged nagal is said to distribute knowledge widely. Like a stone thrown into a pond. If Nāgārjuna is a wider term for a nagal teacher in the Indian sub-continent then this suggests that the core Toltec and Vedic / Buddhist teachings are similarly sourced and may differ only in method of expression and verbalisation. The term is a generic and not a specific and personal name.
I personally have not found any huge glaring clashes between these philosophies. There is a marked difference in emphasis and the cultural refence points and metaphors employed.
The entertainment mentioned above is not completely inconsistent with a hierarchy of spiritual “masters” on overwatch of humanity. However in order to make it dramatically appealing they must have meaty bits and interpersonal relations such as love with hints of corporeal hanky-panky.
Too abstract and the film would not sell. The immortals have to be beautiful people if good and have ugliness if bad. One is not allowed a minger of an immortal. They must be L’Oréal advert fresh out of the shower from time to time.
Having a “hot” teacher can badly detract from learning.
It is not difficult to see that the course of human history did indeed pivot around relatively small and local acts. The execution of Jesus ended up being a game changer. The invention of antibiotics added number density to humanity. An assassination was used as a pretext for the first world war. If there is tension a simple fuse is all that is needed to ignite. A miscalculation in a Bay of Pigs might cause a nuclear winter. The simple protection of a Buddha from the rain enabled the propagation of the teachings for mind.
Humanity is prone to flying off the handle in rage and “self-righteous” indignation. Humanity has a “cob” on and is very prone to fits of angry pique which kill hundreds of thousands.
In the absence of overwatch might the history of humanity have been even more bloody and brutal?
We are heading into unknown territories with AI and Drone-robotics. What are the two biggest markets? War and sex. Thus humanity will expend effort into developing these for profit applications. Since the theoretical abolition of slavery humanity seeks a replacement. I read yesterday that progress toward in vitro spermatogenesis is advancing, if the same continues for human eggs it may be possible to make a human-like foetus. A synthetic human is unlikely to have an indwelling Soul. This biological dabbling and getting a blind boner for technology represents a Pandora’s box the lid of which humanity will find difficult to resist. What is unleashed now and later in this century may cease to be readily controllable. The temptation of cash and the arrogant appeal of God-like potential may lead humanity down a very dark path indeed. It may regret…
How might Andy and the Highlander come to the rescue?
22 is the dark jewel egotism and it can create many catch 22 situations. People do not as a rule, in the common socio-political construct, like to lose face. This notion of “face” can be very expensive indeed.
One can cut off one’s nose to spite one’s face.
Face is the dreaming symbol for social self-image which belongs to the class of mayas and illusions. Despite what your social media tries to push, you are not the image imagined and advertised thereupon. That is just some stuff you made up.
People like to “win” arguments or battles in order to save “face”.
I have been in numerous situations where people have expected me to act in accordance with what they imagine face saving behaviour might be. They were fighting a “battle” on the assumption that the normal rules of society and “face” applied.
“He will come round, he will break. He will say sorry because of the guilt trip I laid upon him.”
When this does not happen a kind of catch 22 situation results. The protagonist does not want to lose face but starts to understand that holding breath and crossing fingers is not the answer. What to do? If one gives in, one loses faces. So, one cuts off one’s nose to spite one’s face and leaves a totally unnecessary bloody mess. Because the “he” here did not succumb to the manipulation a loss, perhaps profound has resulted. It was about something not real – face.
Face can be very expensive indeed.
Tens of thousands have people have died because people do not want to lose face.
Deterrence as it is often used / bandied about relies on this notion of face.
“They killed a few thousand in October. How dare they!!”
“We will destroy their country, kill fifty thousand, maim a hundred thousand more so as to save face because we were caught napping! Are we not heroes? That’ll show them!”
People can try to justify so many things with this emotive notion of face. It is cyclical and silly.
He offended me, I must offend him back or get him cancelled as punishment. My face got upset that he called me fat even though my BMI is 40. I must make him pay for offending my face. I’ll send the message on my way going to the pharmacy for my Ozempic.
Face it seems requires punishment as deterrence for questions or contradictory versions of reality. Face does not like to be challenged because it is the outer expression of egotism, self-importance and victim martyr tendency…
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Has face and the attempt at preserving thereof ever worked out very expensive for you?
I am in our garden at the corner of the pond closest to the bridge over the river. Stood on the bank of the pond looking into the pond is a heron. Our regular visitor often stands here. This however is no ordinary heron. It is a vibrant electric iridescent deep blue. Its plumage is long so that it has a bushy look. I can discern individual feathers which sparkle in the light. I walk toward the heron and it turns to look at me. It does not fly off.
I walk towards the heron and it stays still. I sit down on the bank of the pond. The heron then walks slowly towards me and sits down in my lap as it might a nest. It nuzzles up to me and we start to merge. I incorporate the heron into my being. The blue heron.
I am writing on a clear white postcard with no image on to my brother in law. As I write to tell him about the blue heron the ink vanishes into the paper. I put his name and address in the appropriate place. That ink disappears. I go outside into a UK street and post it in a traditional red round post box knowing that despite the invisibility of the ink it will get there.
I am now at an airport terminal. The woman at the ticket desk reminds me of a New Zealand past colleague of mine P. The ticket desk is very much like an old style railway ticket desk with a movable device for putting money one side and the tickets the other. She ask me what meal I would like on the plane. I say that I would like sandwiches. She asks what filling I say chicken. She says that because of the price of chicken I might have to pay in flight.
She places the ticket in the device and rotates it. The ticket is made out in the name of blue heron and is old style with multiple layers of carbon paper. I board the plane.
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I sit on one side of the aisle. I have a window seat as there is only one seat. To my left are two people sat in modern airplane seats with TV displays. They have their trays down and their lap top computers out. There is a sense they are scientists and techie.
The dream ends.
Heron is a bird of prey, therefore a dreaming symbol of power.
The electric blue is perhaps blue a symbol of humility and understanding.
The Heron is a patience hunter as totem it is about individuality.
Air travel is awareness with respect to rational ideas and concepts.
The incorporation of the heron feels magical / shamanic – power {the will of the universe} a form of transformation.
There is a sense of old and new butting up against each other.
Schredl et al. have published a questionnaire to measure lucid dreaming skills, IJODR vol 11, Page 54 in 2018.
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There are some differences in approach.
In every single case when I am having a dream which I am able to recall I am fully aware that I am dreaming. I don’t have to decide, I know. This makes many of the questions superfluous for me. If one logically knows that one is dreaming it follows that the objects in dreams are not real as measured by physical plane notions of reality. You know you are dreaming there is no doubt or confusion.
I also often know that a dreaming symbol is a dreaming symbol while I am dreaming it. I can interpret it live.
I personally am very wary about setting intentions in a dream.
Logically If you have a dream and you recall it, it has already affected your waking life. By writing it down your life has changed. You can’t un-have a dream. Some of them can have profound impact.
For a while I had prescient dreams.
I have made life changing decisions because of dreams including ones with very significant financial impact.
When I first started, I did play with flying and jumping. I no longer do this.
In most dreams I let the dream play out, I am both observer and participant. I do martial arts in some dreams, but I don’t consciously think “I will throw this dude”. I do it. I am not sure where the idea of a dream “body” comes from. I have a BMI of 33, does that count? I experience a sensation of “me” not it/body/meat. The vehicle can do things I can no longer do. I do have sensations, smoking in dreams being an example.
I don’t have to decide to observe. When I have “finished” a dream, I can recall and replay it on many occasions which I do to assist recall. I can go back into dreams which I have noted down. I have been doing this this afternoon. I can recall quite a few past dreams to waking consciousness even without the aide memoire of a journal entry.
I have no sense of how long time is in dreams. You can pack a hell of a lot into 15 planet earth minutes.
I can if needed wake up. Sometimes the dream fades, but I can often re-enter a dream where it left off.
Note of caution – if you go to take a piss in a dream you had better wake up first.
I’ll comment that for something to be bizarre for me it will be off the scale bizarre and weird for “normal” people. If you don’t believe me sit down and read a swath of my dreams.
The principle idea I subscribe to is that my dreams help me to evolve my fate in this life and advise on any karmic steps which need to be taken, this is my dreaming philosophy. Part of the notion of this is to let go of control and to let the dream of life evolve. One gives the steering wheel over to the dreamer.,
I don’t recognise emotions in dreams. Even in very “scary” dream situations I have no fear. The exceptions to this were way back when I had unable to move nightmares. These have passed.
I do magic in dreams.
The problem with intention setting in dreams is that it can get a bit like witchdoctor / voodoo. Best not mess with that stuff, especially when one is not fully compos mentis.
Some dreams are so very intense, others not, I generally dream in technicolour.
Many of the characters in my dreams are real world people who pop up in my dreams.
Although fully lucid and aware whilst dreaming there is no checking or other technical things. There is some overlap but there are technical differences.
I guess the biggest difference is that I sometimes interpret “real” world day-to-day happenstance as dreaming symbols. If you have problems with your physical plane car you have problems with your vehicle your state of awareness!!
We are in a mountain village – a sort of base camp. We have just been up Everest and look back at its snow covered peak. We walk around the village and go to see the Tibetan. He welcomes us and we spend some time with him. He has five golden circles in a row interlinked with him. He gives us these five golden rings.
We wander back in the village to our flat which is there. We comment that it has gotten a bit touristy. We show others the mountain.
Someone is coming to see us. We go down onto the river and are in a modern pedalo style boat with a motor. The authorities know that this person is coming. I must ensure that the Tibetan has his head set so that he can communicate with whoever is coming.
Dream ends
Gold is the dreaming symbol for the spirit or Nagal
Ring is the symbol for power or circle the symbol for inclusiveness and unity
Five is the freedom and change {need for}
Mountain is the dreaming symbol for hope
“Djwal Khul (variously spelled ‘Djwhal Khul’, ‘Djwal Kul’, the ‘Master D.K.’, ‘D.K.’, or simply ‘DK’), is believed by some Theosophists and others to be a Tibetan disciple in “The Ageless Wisdom” esoteric tradition. The texts describe him as a member of the ‘Spiritual Hierarchy’, or ‘Brotherhood’, of Mahatmas, one of the Masters of the Ancient Wisdom, defined as the spiritual guides of mankind and teachers of ancient cosmological, metaphysical, and esoteric principles that form the origin of all the world’s great philosophies, mythologies and spiritual traditions. According to Theosophical writings, Djwal Khul is said to work on furthering the spiritual evolution of our planet through the teachings offered in the 24 books by Alice Bailey of Esoteric Teachings published by The Lucis Trust (then named the Lucifer Publishing Company); he is said to have telepathically transmitted the teachings to Bailey and is thus regarded by her followers as the communications director of the Masters of the Ancient Wisdom.”
Dreamyoga 