Posted on by The Book of Dreams blog

We are each other. What does that really mean?

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One of my dreams of this new year ended with these words, “We are each other”. This seemed profound of course, but then I have a tendency to make everything significant.

Okay, it’s a nice sentiment but physical and observational evidence suggests that I’m me and you’re you, I’m over here and you’re over there. We have individual bodies and personalities and I identify with mine and you identify with yours. When I refer to “me”, “mine” and “Bob” I’m pretty sure whom I’m referencing this body as I’m sure you are with regard to your self. Each of us holds the self as separate from other selves i.e. our reference point is located within ourselves.

And I will defend that reference point, its ideas, beliefs, points-of-view and the body that contains it all from anything and everything that is another reference point. In short, I will do whatever is needed to maintain the integrity of the separation between us.

This defense, both conscious and unconscious, uses up a lot of psychic and even physical energy. I spend a lot of time and energy trying to control the image that I have of myself and my world. There’s also the need for approval and maintaining a sense of importance. Most of the time I’m using up so much of what I call my ‘attentional energy’ on my own illusory grandeur that I have little awareness of the grandeur that resides in others or the rest of the universe that’s ‘not Bob”.

What keeps this in place are my judgments i.e. I either look at people in terms of how they are better or how they are worse than me. I also judge all events, situations and circumstances as either being “good” or “bad”. Instead of just accepting people and circumstances for what they are, for what they are being, I judge them and thus maintain the separation between us or I miss the value of the diversity by projecting my beliefs upon them.

Most of the time I do not see that people and moments are exactly as they should be and then I fret and worry and try to change them into my own vision. In short, I am always struggling against the moment. Actually I’m struggling against all existence i.e. the whole universe.

When I react to my feelings about who you are, I separate myself from you. In order to reconnect I need to take responsibility for the feelings that I project upon you.

When I let go of the projection as though it were reality and just let you be I get a glimpse of who you really are. When I also do that with myself, I get a glimpse of who I am as well and at that moment I get to see that at the level beyond our egos and beyond our bodies, we are each other.

Posted on by The Book of Dreams blog

As Above, So Below

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As above, so below is a maxim in ancient Hermeticism and modern Wicca. For me it is a reminder that I reside between two worlds, the unconscious and the conscious both reflections of the one world. It is also a statement that the spirit is not something separate from myself i.e. something “out there” but something that is within and without and not something that I necessarily need to go looking for because I already have it.

I’ve always been fascinated by images of trees and the mythological images of Trees of Life or what Carl Jung called the “Philosophical Tree” in that they have their heads in heaven and their roots in the Earth thus metaphorically representing the binding of the higher and lower aspects of the human psyche i.e. the spiritual and the mundane or the body and the soul. Many of these trees have visited my dreams over the years.

This image has taught me that there is psychic and spiritual nourishment to be gained from both.

But not all of these “Heaven and Earth” symbols come in the form of trees. I once had a dream where a “Blue Lady” visited me while angels walked up and down stairs from sky to Earth much like the image seen by Jacob in his prophetic dream related in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible.

This staircase represented my own struggle with my polarities– those aspects of myself that I accept and those that I reject.

In the dream that I labeled “The Blue Fresco” the female figure was inviting me to leave the everyday comfort of the known world and to take a road less traveled that lead into the mountains. The invitation was to integrate the lower plains with the lofty mountain tops- a journey that must be taken in order to achieve wholeness.

And it was no accident that it was a feminine image inviting me on this journey because it’s the masculine and feminine traits in all of us that need balance as well. It is the above-ground sky action of the masculine that is energized, no, powered by, the feminine from the below-ground Earth that will move us toward our wholeness.

This dream was also encouraging me to accept both the basal aspects, the dark side of myself, as well as those aspects that I find acceptable.

The tree and the staircase, the plains and the mountains, and the roots and crown of the tree suggest that I need to live in and/or seek the center– I need to live my life as though bound to both. And bound I am for the Earth and I are connected, the soul of both the Earth and myself are inextricably linked.

How do I know this? I did not find it in some book and no pulpit would have uttered such magic, for meaning is not found in the studying and memorizing and trying to figure out what somebody else is trying to say from some great books. Meaning cannot be found in things, meaning comes from encountering ones self both in the dream and in the awakened state.

I know when I’ve touched my inner self, that space between Heaven and Earth, when the reality around me changes for I’ve learned that the world that I see is a reflection of the development of my own psyche, as it shifts, the world I experience shifts.

_________________

Picture found on– https://samissomarspace.wordpress.com/2015/05/25/as-above-so-below-6/