#4. Doing the Reality Dance
The tree just outside my window, now stretching above my third-floor apartment, is starting at last to leaf-out - and so is the undertaking of this journal, in perfect cyclic timing with the calendar opening of Spring. Our three preliminary entries required most of a month to think about and write, which accords with the nature of a Spring opening. February's Sprout typically needs a bit of time to take stock of itself, marshall its motivating energy, and actually get going. Don't you find it that way in the first hour or so of your usual morning?
What I want to do with this journal is to try and summarize, or organize, the fruitful insights from 33 years of encounter and discovery, along a wayside life path somewhat outside the boundaries of conventionality. It's hard for me to be very specific about how far outside the normal boundary, which is properly an autobiographical topic and not one for the sort of review I intend. But sufficiently far outside to provide plentiful opportunity for exposure to aspects of reality not generally given much credence by most people pursuing their practical lives.
I don't think being outside the boundaries of conformity is a requirement for such exposure - I think life is providing it all the time, in many subtle ways. But lives of conformity are also in the captive grip of many kinds of practical necessity, not to mention ordinary peer pressure, which leads those so involved to reject the tendered offering, as it were, and stay with the commonplace evaluation of what is taking place. Thus, meaningful synchronicities (as Jung regarded them) are seen as mere 'coincidences', instances of pure and unaccountable Providence are passed off lightly as 'lucky happenings,' moments of psychic insight are either followed as isolated 'hunches' or simply dismissed . . . and what is lost thereby are opportune openings for the exploratory pursuit of deeper reality dimensions.
The same can certainly apply to those living outside the boundaries of convention, but there is a much greater possibility, given their unconventional status and inclination, of a willingness to pursue the flicker of insight. After all, they already know that life need not be as it is conventionally portrayed. The distance from there to a perception that reality itself need not be as it is conventionally portrayed is a much more negotiable span than for the conformity-confined (or defined).
But mention of "the exploratory pursuit of deeper reality dimensions" suggests a far more extensive range of discovery and insight than those few examples I've noted. Those are merely the provocative openings that lead the willing observer into an ever-deepening journey of discovery, which may ultimately have no boundaries. That's a rash conjecture, I know . . . but I am actually seeing that possibility!
Once past the initial realization that conventional reality is a limited (and limiting) screen, maintained by unspoken social agreement, one steps down into a series of what might be thought of as 'chambered extensions', each expanding the awareness of how fluid or malleable reality may actually be. It becomes rather rarified territory, so at this point I'll just speak to the first few 'chambers' I reached, and leave the rest for later explication.
Initially, there were those startling realizations about synchronicity and Providence - how they had seemingly begun to happen exactly when I let go of my hold on conventional securities. The connection was impossible to miss, or to ignore, and the implications were profound. I was experiencing one of the elemental truths observed by sages over the course of history, and most often given their basis in religion. But I saw an insistently obvious relationship between the apparent and sudden wellspring of Providence in my world and the degree to which I had forsaken control of that world.
I began watching what happened in my world, as I let my own control of it subside, and observed something quite interesting: There were times when doors would quite readily open for me, and there were other times when I only met with closed doors, metaphorically speaking. When I took this to mean that some inner spirit was advising me which paths were 'right' for me, and which were not, and I began paying attention to those cues, my life became a whole lot easier.
Then came the discovery that I could gain insight into what was happening in my world through oracles such as the Tarot and I Ching, which opened up for me the perspective of a right and left hemisphere as our inner and outer self (respectively), leading to the eventual realization that innumerable channels of interaction could be devised and/or 'agreed to' within ourselves that could facilitate our lives. It succeeded in making an artist of me, for one notable thing, and generally enhanced my ability to communicate with the guiding spirit that was within.
I was living my life, by this time, as a grand experiment of discovery, learning things that are seldom if ever observed in 'the real world' of my earlier life - which, of course was still going on all around me. But I was inside the bubble of an increasingly happier life. It lacked for nothing I really needed - which included the satisfying resolution to some severe medical problems, and a full year's residence in Carmel-by-the-Sea, one of the west coast's most fabulous (and fabulously costly) communities - though I was no longer struggling to obtain anything. It is also worth noting that I had no money to speak of, during that year, and my time was just about entirely at my own disposal.
That was about five years into the process of discovery that I've been describing. Other permutations were yet to come. Other realizations and a deepening of the entire course I've been on. These are the things I want to summarize and reflect on, in the course of this journal, but I still don't know in exactly what order I'll choose to present it - or whether, in fact, it will have any order at all. It may just come down to what I feel like writing about, in the moment of doing it. Why not? The tree outside my window grows in whatever pattern it chooses to express. No two of them look exactly alike, and they are completely unpredictable. I could hardly do better than follow its lead.
Go to Entry #5
What I want to do with this journal is to try and summarize, or organize, the fruitful insights from 33 years of encounter and discovery, along a wayside life path somewhat outside the boundaries of conventionality. It's hard for me to be very specific about how far outside the normal boundary, which is properly an autobiographical topic and not one for the sort of review I intend. But sufficiently far outside to provide plentiful opportunity for exposure to aspects of reality not generally given much credence by most people pursuing their practical lives.
I don't think being outside the boundaries of conformity is a requirement for such exposure - I think life is providing it all the time, in many subtle ways. But lives of conformity are also in the captive grip of many kinds of practical necessity, not to mention ordinary peer pressure, which leads those so involved to reject the tendered offering, as it were, and stay with the commonplace evaluation of what is taking place. Thus, meaningful synchronicities (as Jung regarded them) are seen as mere 'coincidences', instances of pure and unaccountable Providence are passed off lightly as 'lucky happenings,' moments of psychic insight are either followed as isolated 'hunches' or simply dismissed . . . and what is lost thereby are opportune openings for the exploratory pursuit of deeper reality dimensions.
The same can certainly apply to those living outside the boundaries of convention, but there is a much greater possibility, given their unconventional status and inclination, of a willingness to pursue the flicker of insight. After all, they already know that life need not be as it is conventionally portrayed. The distance from there to a perception that reality itself need not be as it is conventionally portrayed is a much more negotiable span than for the conformity-confined (or defined).
But mention of "the exploratory pursuit of deeper reality dimensions" suggests a far more extensive range of discovery and insight than those few examples I've noted. Those are merely the provocative openings that lead the willing observer into an ever-deepening journey of discovery, which may ultimately have no boundaries. That's a rash conjecture, I know . . . but I am actually seeing that possibility!
Once past the initial realization that conventional reality is a limited (and limiting) screen, maintained by unspoken social agreement, one steps down into a series of what might be thought of as 'chambered extensions', each expanding the awareness of how fluid or malleable reality may actually be. It becomes rather rarified territory, so at this point I'll just speak to the first few 'chambers' I reached, and leave the rest for later explication.
Initially, there were those startling realizations about synchronicity and Providence - how they had seemingly begun to happen exactly when I let go of my hold on conventional securities. The connection was impossible to miss, or to ignore, and the implications were profound. I was experiencing one of the elemental truths observed by sages over the course of history, and most often given their basis in religion. But I saw an insistently obvious relationship between the apparent and sudden wellspring of Providence in my world and the degree to which I had forsaken control of that world.
I began watching what happened in my world, as I let my own control of it subside, and observed something quite interesting: There were times when doors would quite readily open for me, and there were other times when I only met with closed doors, metaphorically speaking. When I took this to mean that some inner spirit was advising me which paths were 'right' for me, and which were not, and I began paying attention to those cues, my life became a whole lot easier.
Then came the discovery that I could gain insight into what was happening in my world through oracles such as the Tarot and I Ching, which opened up for me the perspective of a right and left hemisphere as our inner and outer self (respectively), leading to the eventual realization that innumerable channels of interaction could be devised and/or 'agreed to' within ourselves that could facilitate our lives. It succeeded in making an artist of me, for one notable thing, and generally enhanced my ability to communicate with the guiding spirit that was within.
I was living my life, by this time, as a grand experiment of discovery, learning things that are seldom if ever observed in 'the real world' of my earlier life - which, of course was still going on all around me. But I was inside the bubble of an increasingly happier life. It lacked for nothing I really needed - which included the satisfying resolution to some severe medical problems, and a full year's residence in Carmel-by-the-Sea, one of the west coast's most fabulous (and fabulously costly) communities - though I was no longer struggling to obtain anything. It is also worth noting that I had no money to speak of, during that year, and my time was just about entirely at my own disposal.
That was about five years into the process of discovery that I've been describing. Other permutations were yet to come. Other realizations and a deepening of the entire course I've been on. These are the things I want to summarize and reflect on, in the course of this journal, but I still don't know in exactly what order I'll choose to present it - or whether, in fact, it will have any order at all. It may just come down to what I feel like writing about, in the moment of doing it. Why not? The tree outside my window grows in whatever pattern it chooses to express. No two of them look exactly alike, and they are completely unpredictable. I could hardly do better than follow its lead.
Go to Entry #5