Ask Dr. Druid . Day 12 . Attention is a thing

Ask Dr. Druid . Day 12
Attention is a thing
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This piece will grok better for you
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[Ask Dr. Druid is designed to begin at the beginning. Click here.]


    One of the glories of our beloved Earth Dream is the suddenness with which a lifechanging learning can occur to you – the apple falling on your Newton head. Thus it was when I learned that attention is a thing.
    First, a few new tidbits to pack for the jaunt to Attentionland. Frolic is my pure-essence-of-creation’s-wonders tiny, silver Burmese cat.
   Then we need to recall the amoeba and the pseudopod. Remember that a paramecium is the oval-shaped single-cell protozoa with many little hairs sticking out of its sides which act as oars to busily propel it through the water. It is a sensible, orderly tiny creature.
   The dear single-celled amoeba on the other hand looks like a small splat, a spill, a tiny puddle. It moves by oozing a portion of its inner gluck into a pseudopod or false foot towards which it glides.
   So now we have the main characters for the little drama which taught me one of the great secrets of the universe.
   Stick with me while I set the scene. I was standing next to the end of a couch in my living room. Frolic, the silver Burmese cat, happens to be sitting down on the seat of the couch where people sit. On impulse I decide to play a quick game.
   I scritch my fingernails back and forth on the top of the couch’s seatback to attract Frolly’s attention. Her eyes gleam darkly as her pupils widen. She takes her attack crouch.
   Pause here to know that the game I’m playing is to get her to pounce toward my hand which I will cleverly and brilliantly snatch away at the last instant and I will win. Ahh, ain’t I swell! So I scritch my fingers. She watches intently, motionless. I scritch my fingers. ‘Damnit, Frolic, attack my hand,’ I think. I scritch my fingers impatiently. The moment irritation dilutes my attention, the moment my attention wavers, boom, ouch, she attacks my hand, she wins, my hand is lunch.
   Aha! I get it! Eureka! Of course! How obviously and wondrously clever. If a sublime predator like a cat can see its prey’s attention, it can attack at the instant the prey is at a momentary disadvantage, the moment its attention wavers. That’s what all this motionless, crouching waiting is about.
   I swooned with the radiant, inner nova, blood-igniting joy of knowledge. I did the trick over and over and over, and, every time as soon as I made my attention wander, boom, she hit my hand. She wins.
    Now I go forth in the world knowing that attention is a thing, a substance. I don’t have a clue whether she perceives that attention as northernlights-esque or as the waviness in the air of heat off a highway or as polka dot or plaid or salty. But I do know that attention to her is as evident as whether I’m wearing a hat or not.
  Knowing that attention is a thing, knowing that single fabulous fact, changes everything.
   Now, besides proving to your cat that you’re an inadequately evolved idiot and easy prey, you can begin to detect the pseudopod of your own attention as it reaches out to touch things in the world.
   There are two vivid ways to reveal your attention-substance to yourself. To allow your attention to vividly pseudopod out, you need to feel safe. If you ever get to see someone holding a kitten or holding a puppy, all your defenses will fall, and you’ll feel the warm flow of your attention “Awww” flood out to touch the kitten or puppy.
    If you haven’t chanced upon a kitten or puppy recently, fret not. Take a pencil and a piece of paper and look at something on your coffee table, bedside table, or desk. A cup, say. Draw it quickly.
   Whoops. Look at the object again. Notice that the handle is higher or lower, and so4th. If you’re not a natural drawer, this trick works dramatically to reveal to you your ability to increase and refine your attentions. When you re-look at the object to see it more clearly, you can feel your attention specifically pseudopod out to touch the object. Natural drawers may not feel the difference so keenly.
   Look at a newspaper headline. Now count the letters. Look at your cat’s whiskers. Now count the whiskers in each little row of whiskers. Or how many claws does your dog have on his front paw? What colors are they?
   I find that when I shift from looking at something to really seeing something, I can feel a pressure of intensity pushing my left eye forward in its socket.
   So, today, notice the shift from vague attention to keen attention 3 times. Note those in your log. We get to wizard-quality attention as we shift eclectically from things being interesting to their being deliciously, uttermost fascinating.
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Ask Dr. Druid, 66 Days from Lead to Gold, Secrets of  Alchemy You Can Use, a druid shaman’s playbook .. Intro; Prologue; Day 1; Days 2 & 3; Day 4; Day 5; Day 6; Day 7; Day 8; Day 9; Day 10; Day 11; Day 12; Day 13; Day 14; day 15 Review 2; Day 16; Day 17; Day 18; Day 19; Day 20; Day 21; Day 22; Day 23; Day 24; Day 25; Day 26; Day 27; Day 28; Day 29;
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If you know or are an agent, editor, publisher person who would handle this kind of pogblogian material, please let me know at .. askdrdruid@gmail.com. Please put ‘agent’ in the subject line.
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3 Serpent . Chicchan . East . tzol 185  05.07.07 mon
lobolobo201§9641/1367, 26d12h14m11s34.41g;
mozart..9.77g /7mb
..
the education-obsessed world begins today with you ..
.. let’s spend the $820,000 per minute Military Budget on education instead ..
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Ask Dr. Druid . Day 11 . Synchronicity part 2

Ask Dr. Druid . Day 11
  
Synchronicity . mismotiempo . part 2
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This piece will grok better for you
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  My relationship to manypoem, the multiverse, is mostly mischievous, often sublimely, supernally silly, sometimes deeply sweet, seldom solemn. So, most of my synchronicity messages are tinct with Vitamin I (Vitamin Irony) and are what they called a few centuries ago: joaks. More than instruction or prophetic nudges, they tend to be hilarious or tender tonics. A quick swill of psychic brandy to brighten the tasks at hand. It is the intersection of the seemingly external event with your own train of thought and feeling that gives synchronicity its bullseye startling feel.

   The universe gets lonely. It wants to preen and be appreciated. Applaud dear manypoem with your private chuckle, grin, or awww, and watch the synchronous presents cascade and parade.

   In my experience, the universe is very quirky. It above all likes surprises which is why this forcefield of the multiverse can’t be prayed to for the red Cadillac convertible or whatever other earthly riches you sycophantically or querulously think you require.

    Messengers are many. Insects, birds, license plates, big words painted on sides of trucks, half-covered newspaper headlines. Who knows.

   My all-time favorite is the gallynipper. A gallynipper is a preposterous and impossible creature. It’s a sin to kill a gallynipper. A gallynipper looks like a gigantic mosquito – as if if it bit or nipped you, it could sip up a gallon or gally. But this creature is uttermost mild and harmless. Its legs are so long and jointed and spindly that if you have to gather one up to release it outside, you will be as gentle as you have ever been lest you bend one of its absurd, fragile legs. Gallynippers can appear or manifest out of nowhere. They are clearly an intraworld creature. They often appear when I am blue, or feel fear of abandonment, or am beset by bewilderment with a belligerent world. Poof – legerdegallynipper. Tenderness and courage are unfailingly re-ignited in me when a gallynipper appears.

   Now, the point of synchronicity alertness is not to become obsessive nor analytical, but to be lightly alert for the extra-enchanted moments.

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Notes:

.. legerdegallynipper .. leger-de-main in French means light of hand or sleight of hand, the pulling the rabbit out of the hat, the magic move. Thus, magically pulling the gallynipper out of the hat;

.. joaks .. from the OED. from 1741 spelling for jokes; tho seven years later, <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Richardson in Clarissa says “I..should not forbear to cut a joke, were I upon a scaffold” – which if I were to have a mantra, this would be it. .

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Ask Dr. Druid, 66 Days from Lead to Gold, Secrets of  Alchemy You Can Use, a druid shaman’s playbook .. Intro; Prologue; Day 1; Days 2 & 3; Day 4; Day 5; Day 6; Day 7; Day 8; Day 9; Day 10; Day 11; Day 12; Day 13; Day 14; day 15 Review 2; Day 16; Day 17; Day 18; Day 19; Day 20; Day 21; Day 22; Day 23; Day 24; Day 25; Day 26; Day 27; Day 28; Day 29;

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If you know or are an agent, editor, publisher person who would handle this kind of pogblogian material, please let me know at .. askdrdruid@gmail.com. Please put ‘agent’ in the subject line.

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10 Rainstorm . Cauac . Redbird. West . tzol 179 05.01.07 tues

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mozart..9.77g /7mb

..

the education-obsessed world begins today with you ..

.. let’s spend the $820,000 per minute Military Budget on education instead

..………….<^>…………….    

Ask Dr. Druid . Day 9 . Spelling Backwards

  Ask Dr. Druid

Day 9 .. Spelling Backwards

spells & spelling

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This piece will grok better for you if you read it
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[Ask Dr. Druid is designed to begin at the beginning. Click here.]

    Another lifelong attention & visualization tuning and honing exercise is spelling backwards.

   Many people insist they ‘can’t visualize anything.’ This isn’t true, of course, but, gee, they are convinced. (Ask them to tell you how to get to their house or how many chairs they have in their living room.)

    To understand how I came up with this spelling backwards trick, let me tell you a glimpse about NLP. NLP is one of the cleverest and clearest templates of how the mind works, but it has this silly enormous rhinocerously cumbersome name: Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Luckily the acronym ‘NLP’ is easy to remember. By sherlock-holmesian observation, the NLP folk discovered that when we’re processing our internal info in primarily auditory terms, our eyes track along the horizontal axis. When we are tracking inner info visually, we look up. When we are tracking info in the kinesthetic or feeling modes, we look down. It’s as if the eyes were the mouse of the mind. An excellent thing about NLP is that it has no belief content involved, it’s strictly process.

   One of the unhelpful things that teachers do when they are doing spelling tests is to tell students to “Keep your eyes down on your own paper.” Of course really good spellers visualize. And where is visualization stored? No, not down on your paper, but up!

   Back in the day when I was studying NLP, I realized that if you spelled words backwards, you would have to visualize them in order to be able to do the task at all. So, for yourself and for a kid, make a list of short words to spell backwards. Start short so you will have lots of success.

     There are the classics that spell another cool word when backwards: evil spelled backwards is live. Dog/god. Devil/lived. Straw/warts. Rats/star. Ward/draw. These are nifty, but whenever you’re waiting in a line, you can practice any short words. Most words won’t ‘mean anything’ spelled backwards. Stay short in the early going. This is a cool trick, not a test.

    You can learn to imagine the word on a screen or the sky for that matter. You can imagine a plane skywriting the letters. You can notice the ‘font.’ Make the letters bigger and brighter. More neon or chiseled in marble. Play with the effects.

    Tibetan monks learn to visualize worlds with such dimensionality and completeness that they can enter those worlds in the way that we enter this one. We’ll talk more about that kind of visualization later. In the meantime, this little inner scrabble game can hone & tune your visualization so you can become more conscious and deliberate about visualizing.

   You should play with this game with your eyes open and with your eyes closed. I do implore you to stick with three and four and five letter words until you can manipulate the qualities of the letters with ease. Bigger, tiny, red, orange, cursive, print, all caps, lower case. Play.

    When I do this game with kids, I have a list of words that are something they like or recognize when they spell them backwards. Azzip/pizza. Arbez/zebra. Drib/bird. Evif/five. Yks/sky. I say the letters slowly. And repeat them. A-z-z-i-p. They have to see them in their mind’s eye and write the reverse down. They do not write the a-z-z-i-p down. The point is to visualize the letters with your mind's eye.

    I have to remind you to stay short early on because of our cussed and cursed temptation to compete. You’ll learn so much faster if you build on successes rather than making your mind sulky or baffled or balky with failure. And short is three letters or four letters. If the trick isn’t working for you, it’s because you’re not staying with short words. If someone says ‘t-a-c’ to you, you can spell back ‘cat.’ Practice three letter words if necessary until you can do them like eating popcorn.

    You are visualizing the whole daggone world you’re walking around in, by the way, so quit saying you can’t visualize anything. We’ll unwrap that metaphysical, nature-of-reality present more later. In the meantime, spell back.

   Ni eht naem emit lleps kcab.

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Notes:

A trick to backspelling longer words eventually is to use the sky or an inner sky – something really big so you can make the word big enough so you can see it easily.              

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Ask Dr. Druid, 66 Days from Lead to Gold, Secrets of  Alchemy You Can Use, a druid shaman’s playbook .. Intro; Prologue; Day 1; Days 2 & 3; Day 4; Day 5; Day 6; Day 7; Day 8; Day 9; Day 10; Day 11; Day 12; Day 13; Day 14; day 15 Review 2; Day 16; Day 17; Day 18; Day 19; Day 20; Day 21; Day 22; Day 23; Day 24; Day 25; Day 26; Day 27; Day 28; Day 29;

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If you know or are an agent, editor, publisher person who would handle this kind of pogblogian material, please let me know at .. askdrdruid@gmail.com. Please put ‘agent’ in the subject line.

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9 Serpent . Chicchan . East . tzol 165  04.17.07 tues

loboblobo201§9641/1367, 26d12h14m11s34.41g;

mozart..9.77g /7mb

..

the education-obsessed world begins today with you ..

.. let’s spend the $820,000 per minute Military Budget on education instead ..

………….<^>…………….

Ask Dr. Druid . Day 8 . Review 1

 

Ask Dr. Druid . Day 8

Re-view Re-sense Re-mind

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    So what have we begun to learn so far in our introduction to the alchemy mind? We’ve begun to imagine the infinite optimism of deft attention, the treasure hunt of eclectically finding that everything is interesting. We’ve begun to grok (drink in deeply) the understanding that we’ll be increasing the voltage of interesting to fascinating throughout our 66-Day apprentice druid adventure.

   We’ve begun to notice that the truth is verbing thinking. That noun think is convenient — and false. Being a lert – a lerting is lovely and lively.

   We’ve broached the concept of a spherical spectrum of reality from dayreal, that masterpiece of K1 (persistent kinesthetic or touch) reality engineering — to remreal, very powerful experiences but not necessarily solid or repeatable.

   With your poetry treasure eyes, you’re learning to be surprised and de-lighted and ignited by the spectacularly abundant gifts that manypoem has strewn in your path.

    To be freed upon this glee, you’ve sent your Inner Perfectionist off to hula and grog in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” /><?xml:namespace prefix = u1 />Fiji. You’ve begun to extirpate or uproot that pernicious weed Guilt from your inner garden. Guilt doesn’t make you better . . . it makes you annoying and narcissistic.

    If your drug of choice is air, you’ll besottedly gain the companionship of the whole world. By Day 88, you’ll know that you can never be empty, bored, or lonely – or even more than a little unkind.

   Just like practicing scales or free throws, you’ll use the Naming Game, the Treasure Hunt, and your poetry-eyed magpie alertness to ignite and refine your attention. The point of all Druid Shamanic teaching is to give you treasures and tools you can’t lose, which won’t rust. Riches that increase by giving and which cannot be stolen. Notice, thus, that your imperishable fortune is increasing. The Book for the Druids is The Worlds. The Worlds is rather better illustrated, let’s say mildly and wryly, than the Biblic or Koranic kinds of Books.

    Scribble in your journal or log some random observations about these early days. Phrases are fine. Notice. Celebrate.

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Notes:

   In Greek myth, Narcissus was a handsome youth who leaned over a still pool in a forest glade and became transfixed by his own reflection in the water. He was so obsessed that he was starving to death until the gods took pity on him and turned him into a flower, a frequent remedy. Thus narcissism is the condition of obsessive self-absorption.

   //A magpie is a crazily curious bird who loves to steal shiny objects to decorate its nest. Becoming crazily curious may be the only way to become sane.

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Ask Dr. Druid, 88 Days from Lead to Gold, Secrets of  Alchemy you can use, a druid shaman’s playbook .. Intro; Prologue; Day 1; Days 2 & 3; Day 4; Day 5; Day 6; Day 7; Day 8;

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If you know or are an agent, an aspring agent, editor, publisher person who would handle this kind of pogblogian material, please let me know at .. askdrdruid@gmail.com. Please put ‘agent’ in the subject line.

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Druid . Day 7 . The Journal Muse

Ask Dr. Druid .. 66 Days from Lead to Gold 

Day 7 .. The Journal Muse

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This piece will grok better for you if you read it
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[Ask Dr. Druid is designed to begin at the beginning. Click here.]

 

 .

    It’s time to get you going on a journal. You may already keep a journal, but having kept a journal continuously for over 30 years, I’ll tell you my details, and you can refine what you do or begin anew as the case may be.

   I have only two agreements with myself. I will write the full date and something every day. I may write, “I’m too beat to write.” In truth, with that allowed, I have almost never written that sentence. I may write a paragraph or pages, but I have kept faith with the Muse. It is the fact of keeping faith that matters to the Muse I think.

   Why do I always put the full date? Because I have sheaves of journaling which say 03/15 or 11/22 and I have zero idea now what year they were in. Of course it was clear as a bell what daggone year it was when I wrote the entries, but a few years down the road I had no clue. You will love yourself if you start now putting the whole date: 03.15.07 or if you’re not in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />America 15.03.07.

   I’m going to give you the exact details of what I do, but you can adjust anything except the full date and the some words every day.

   I’ve done all sorts of journal containers, fancy and plain, but for years now my favorite is to take acid-free laser typing paper and fold 12 sheets in half. This makes a 48-page little journal that’s handy to write on in bed.

   You do not need to do these refinements before you start but in case you want the handiest stuff down the road, I actually went to TAP plastic and for a coupla bucks got them to do me up a 1/8″ clear plastic sheet 6″ by 5″. They always have scrap of this basic clear plastic 1/8″ material which you can get them to cut down. I quickly sanded off the sharp edges and corners. I used an old empty video tape box to hold under this sturdy clear plastic sheet and now I have a nifty and very light little desk that I can use to perch my journal sheets on however I’m lying in bed or elsewhere. You’ll see when we start keeping notes on our dreams how darn handy this arrangement is.

   I use a softer lead wood pencil #1 or in an auto pencil #2B because it writes dark with no effort. I use pencil because when I’m taking dream notes, the pencil doesn’t care what angle I’m writing at. I buy auto pencils and throw away the lead they come with and replace it with the 2B soft lead. This lead only breaks if you push as hard as you used to to make the harder lead look dark.

   Just start a journal today. Worry about the details later. I just put the details here so you can play with them later if you want. I like this 48 little pages format so I can decorate the first little page as a new cover fairly often. As I go along, I number the pages with little abstract decorations. There was a period when I just printed up numbered pages from a master I did on the computer, but I like doing the numbers by hand lately.

   I happen to have a little digital clock that has hours, minutes, and seconds. For some reason, I find it amusing to most always put down this exact time when I begin. It’s interesting later to see the difference between after-midnight writing and afternoon writing. Totally unnecessary, but oddly interesting. I never cheat on the numbers to make them more cool.

   Never ever let anyone ever look at your journals while you’re alive. (When you’re dead, they’ll just have to deal with it and you’ll be beyond embarrassment or shame.) If you must share something from your journal, copy it out. You need a place to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Write only for yourself in your journal or anywhere else for that matter. Get over imagining some audience you want to please. You won’t please them anyway. You can’t worry about your girl or boy friend, your spouse, parents living or dead, present or future children, or History. You’ll get a personal truth detector eventually. You’ll feel when you’re beginning to fib or lie in order to please or placate or not offend one of the above. Stay ruthlessly true.   

   Of course you can do journaling directly on your computer, but then you will need a separate journal or log to keep by your bed for dream notes. (If, as my friend ChanceLucky does, you keep a blog that blog article counts as journaling on the days you write for it. However on the days you don't blog, you need to do a journal entry, however short and sweet.)

   In your journal or log, grammar and spelling do not matter one bit. When I take dream notes or travel notes or am particularly rushed or tired, I only jot down phrases. You can always do up sentences later but with dreams and travel, you want to make sure you get down the impressions.

   We’ll talk more specifically about dream journaling another day. Log whatever you want, but something every day. There is no single thing you can continue or begin that will make you gladder down the line than keeping a daily log or journal. When you look back even 2 months from now, you’ll be astonished at what you would have forgotten if it hadn’t been noted in your journal.

   Now, a log is not a diary. It can note something from the day. Or it may address something unrelated to the day at all. What will keep you doing a journal for perhaps the first time in your life is that you may write “I’m too beat to write.” Somehow the permission to not be meaningful or important or articulate allows you to sometimes actually be articulate and meaningful and important.

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Notes:

     I’ve taught writing for years and when I began teaching journals, people would ask, “What can I write about?” I used to give some lists of clever or lovely or interesting things for them to write about. Then when they finished that list, they’d come back and say, “What can I write about now?” Finally I realized that they would ask for lists forever. I learned to say, “Whatever you want.” It drove them crazy at first.

  One poor high-school senior thrashed about like a caught fish on a dock. He wrote ghastly little pieces like “What I did last summer.” When he finally ran out of topics he imagined I might like, he began to write stuff so real that it was breathtaking. I had another kid who wrote night after night in tiny engineer’s handwriting about stereo components. It was riveting. Because it was his passion. In a month or two, all my students began writing stuff as compelling as any author on my bookshelves. When it got real – to them.

   I never ‘correct’ journals, and with your Inner Perfectionist off grogging out in Fiji make sure you don’t become some imaginary inner teacher either. The only remark other than an exclamation point in the margin I ever made in a student’s journal was “Be more concrete. Instead of just saying it’s a beautiful day, mention the strawberry ice cream cone and include the bluejay you saw.” Poet Marianne Moore said that poetry is ‘imaginary gardens with real toads in them.’

     Be patient with yourself and you’ll develop your own voice. In the meantime, just put the full date and write something every day. Some days it’ll be pedestrian. Some days it may be literature. Never worry about that. Only worry about keeping faith with the page. The Muse will love you.

   I’m convinced that if everyone on Earth, Vuravura, Jeegoo kept private logs or journals, we would quantum leapfrog into a much saner planet. Your log will become a refuge, a forge; you will find solace and record thrill and the fascinating ordinary.

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Ask Dr. Druid, 66 Days from Lead to Gold, Secrets of  Alchemy You Can Use, a druid shaman’s playbook .. Intro; Prologue; Day 1; Days 2 & 3; Day 4; Day 5; Day 6; Day 7; Day 8; Day 9; Day 10; Day 11; Day 12; Day 13; Day 14; day 15 Review 2; Day 16; Day 17; Day 18; Day 19; Day 20; Day 21; Day 22; Day 23; Day 24; Day 25; Day 26; Day 27; Day 28; Day 29;
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If you know or are an agent, editor, publisher person who would handle this kind of pogblogian material, please let me know at .. askdrdruid@gmail.com. Please put ‘agent’ in the subject line.
………….<^>……………..
It’s an honor to have you visit pogblog. Do comment.
…………….<^>……………..
Check pogblog’s Glossary for brave & nefarious words.
copyright pogblog 2007 all rights reserved
copyright ask dr. druid 2007 all rights reserved
blog title image is a piece of andy goldsworthy
It’d be great if you sent pogblog’s link to your friends:
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6 Water . Muluc . The River . East . tzol 149  04.01.07 sun
ffwofw1201§9641/1367, 26d12h14m11s34.41g;
mozart..9.77g /7mb
..
the education-obsessed world begins today with you ..
.. let’s spend the $820,000 per minute Military Budget on education instead ..
………….<^>…………….
                
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> 
 

Druid day 5 . Inner Perfectionist to Fiji

Ask Dr. Druid . Day 5
Inner Perfectionist to Fiji

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This piece will read best for you

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[Ask Dr. Druid is designed to begin at the beginning. Click here.]


 

   Outsight will give you insight. Train your brain. The faceting and polishing of consciousness is infinitely interesting.

   A principle of teaching is to chunk stuff down into pleasantly accomplishable pieces so you/I/any learner can have a lot of successes to build upon. Why then am I seemingly fiendishly going to give you a practice tomorrow at which you/I/any learner are guaranteed to spectacularly fail? How can something at which you’ll always fail be such a grail?

   Well, we’ll see about that tomorrow. Today I’m giving you a key tool so you can fail in glee. I’m asking that for these 66 days & nights of our druid apprentice adventure, you send your Inner Perfectionist off to <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Fiji to chill out and drink mai tais. Actually the mai tai of Fiji is grog. So please send your Inner Perfectionist off to Fiji to lounge about gazing at soaring palm trees doing a gentle hula against sapphire skies, guzzling grog.

   The deal is that on day 67, your refreshed Inner Perfectionist can return if it can agree to be cheerfull and encouraging at all times. If it doesn’t whisper sweet somethings into your inner ear, “Well done! you clever learner. You know more today than yesterday. You know more this minute than last minute” — fire that Inner Perfectionist and hire a jollier one.

    If, on the rare chance post-Fiji, it continues to carp and snipe and play the Guilt Card, fire that Inner Perfectionist and hire a better one.

   You can always remind it slyly that if it were really Perfect, it could arrange for you to have a delightful time — fun! — while you learn anything.

   A note here on the complete uselessness of guilt. Guilt is implanted in children by parents, churches, society. It’s damn handy for control. The implication is that you’ll commit immitigable evil without this dog collar, spikes inward, to restrain you. This is balderdash. Quit guilt as cold turkey as you would quit smoking. Guilt only slows down learning. The learning Zone is guilt free. You should indeed have one single lightning flash of clarity and insight about how inelegant, stupid, foolish whatever action or inaction was in order to grok it. Being oblivious ain’t the point. But after you’ve seen it, simply do it better next time.

   After the initial flash of insight, guilt is merely a self-indulgent wallow in more self-absorption.

   So, remind your Inner Perfectionist to teleport off to Fiji for hula and grog, leaving lighter and more giddy you to have a delectable day.

…………<^>…………

Ask Dr. Druid, 66 Days from Lead to Gold, Secrets of  Alchemy You Can Use, a druid shaman’s playbook .. Intro; Prologue; Day 1; Days 2 & 3; Day 4; Day 5; Day 6; Day 7; Day 8; Day 9; Day 10; Day 11; Day 12; Day 13; Day 14; day 15 Review 2; Day 16; Day 17; Day 18; Day 19; Day 20; Day 21; Day 22; Day 23; Day 24; Day 25; Day 26; Day 27; Day 28; Day 29;

……..……<^>………..…..

If you know or are an agent, editor, publisher person who would handle this kind of pogblogian material, please let me know at .. askdrdruid@gmail.com.
Please put ‘agent’ in the subject line.

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It’s an honor to have you visit pogblog ..  Ask Dr. Druid. Do comment.

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copyright pogblog 2007 all rights reserved

copyright ask dr. druid 2007 all rights reserved

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8 Flint . Edznab . Knife . North . tzol 138  03.21.07 wed

ffwofw1201§9641/1367, 26d12h14m11s34.41g;

mozart..9.77g /7mb

..

the education-obsessed world begins today with you ..

.. let’s spend the $820,000 per minute Military Budget on education instead ..

………….<^>…………….<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> 

Ask Dr. Druid . prologue . treasure hunt of the magpie

Ask Dr. Druid . prologue 

The treasure hunt of the magpie

image
This piece will read better for you if you read it
with your mouth as if out loud.

[Ask Dr. Druid is designed to begin at the beginning. Click here.]

 

    A key, a lynchpin to the arts &
sciences of fascinations is the simple grok of rem real and day real.
In the modern West we are generally taught that day experience and
day physics are the properly real and the possible rest of our
experience is pretty much suspect. (The perfectly horrid Siggie Fraud
single-Idedly ruined a century of dream study with his peculiar and
pathological views of the dream realms.)
   For the purposes of our Fascinations
Studies, I recommend attending to and appreciating rem-real and
day-real seamlessly.
   By rem-real I mean all the realms of
experience which are idiosyncratic, unlikely to be repeated, and
which can be observed full of care but cannot usually be domesticated
like day-real. I use ‘rem’ for the rapid eye movements which
often accompany so-called night-dream states. I myself do not
distinguish between day-real and rem-real in terms of value as
experiences. The skills involved in navigating the experiences are
just sometimes different. 

image

   The quality which will translate most
readily between lucid or vivid waking & lucid or vivid dreaming
is fascination. If you have a natural knack for fascination, consider
yourself 4-2-n8 indeed. However, if your ability to be fascinated is
enervated or sporadic or clichéd, there's help at hand.
You can learn more facets of fascination, and the luminous
will rise in your life like a sweet tide of light.
   We’ll cajole
you into being
struck
– thunder-struck, dust-struck, spaghetti-struck. A trick for the
fascination juggle is to be
struck.
When you learn to poet all your day and rem, you become dazzled in an
intimate and deeply fond way. The reigning druidic assumption is that
it is all a treasure hunt, it is all riveting — thus
how
can you see it that way each
heartbeat?
   My life has been
the education of an alchemist.
How
do I turn the lead of my stagnant
attention into the gold of fascination? This study of
How
Do We Know is called epistemology by the ancient Greeks.
   The magic of
personal experience is in conscious and lively consideration of the
parade in which we are immersed. The midas discovery is the
eclectic trick
. The notion of eclectic is choosing the
best from all possible sources
. I find that folks are often
clichéd and brand-narrowed in what they find interesting. They tend
to be interested in what their friends are interested in. I recommend
being interested in anything. We'll increase your attention from
interested to fascinated. Be a magpie: notice and collect all shiny
objects.
-:::-:::-:::-:::-
Notes:
..I
do these Notes because I remember reading TS Eliot’s big poems and
they’d have these passages of Greek or Latin. I wanted to know what
they meant. I was happy to learn, but had no way to find out
in those days. I like to be able to use idiosyncratic or coined
words, but for the curious reader, it feels fair to give an
occasional explanation fuller or wryer than what one can deduce from
the context. Tidbits for word-nuts, I suppose, and for fellow
thought-weavers.
..The
Greek philosophers had three big questions:
metaphysics/What
is real?
ethics/What
is good?
epistemology/How
do we know?
..The
lovely thing about fascination is that you can get drunk on it with
no ill effects.
..enervated
means drained of juice; like champagne with no fizz left.
..A magpie is a crazily curious bird who loves to steal shiny objects to decorate its nest. 

…………<^>…………

Ask Dr. Druid, 66 Days from Lead to Gold, Secrets of  Alchemy You Can Use, a druid shaman’s playbook .. Intro; Prologue; Day 1; Days 2 & 3; Day 4; Day 5; Day 6; Day 7; Day 8; Day 9; Day 10; Day 11; Day 12; Day 13; Day 14; day 15 Review 2; Day 16; Day 17; Day 18; Day 19; Day 20; Day 21; Day 22; Day 23; Day 24; Day 25; Day 26; Day 27; Day 28; Day 29;

……..……<^>………..…..

If you know or are an agent, editor, publisher person who would handle this kind of pogblogian material, please let me know at .. askdrdruid@gmail.com Please put ‘agent’ in the subject line.

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It’s an honor to have you visit pogblog. Do comment.

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title image from orientalbirdimages,org, magpie 

11 Vulture . Cib . Owl . South . tzolkin 76  01.18.07  thur

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mozart..9.77g /7mb

..

the education-obsessed world begins today with you .. let’s spend the $820,000 per minute Military Budget on education instead

………….<^>…………….

 

The Power of Lucid, Active Dreaming

The Power of Lucid, Active Dreaming

image

 

05.18.06

Dear Dreamers.

   An update on the Janie/Johnny DreamSeed Project. (In the first Fort Mason Gate piece of March 21, I outlined the idea of upping the active-ante of openly promoting lucid/active dreaming while carrying my Dream Peace sign and otherwise being out & about.) Here’s what I’ve gleaned so far. [Bringing up dreams to strangers; Prejudice against dreams; Dreams for the disabled; Ted Kennedy & training dream engineers; Your night at school; new handout card.]

 

   First, in just this short time, bringing up dreaming has become a much more comfortable part of my ‘casual’ patter with strangers. “I’m doing a lot more to remember my dreams these days. How about you? My favorite remembering trick is to give the dream a quick title, nothing fancy, not literature, just a quick descriptive phrase like ‘Pile of Dirty Socks.’” HaHa. A laugh always helps.

   If I get a chance, I send them to mossdreams & say, “Try any of the books.” I hand them the Power of Dreaming card as often as I can.

<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> 

   There are other tidbits to share with you. There keeps coming up an undercurrent of unconscious prejudice against ‘dreams’ as having a connotation of ‘pie in the sky.’ I’m now prepared for this & go straight for dreams, in addition to being amazing fun, as being a powerful resource. I changed the title of my handout card to say ‘The Power of Lucid, Active Dreaming.’ I say something like (as if conspiratorially sharing), “Of course Albert Einstein got the theory of relativity in active visioning and Mozart says he found his symphonies ‘whole in lively dreams.’ And when I can use a few sentences about Harriet Tubman, “Did you know that Harriet Tubman guided all her folks on the Underground Railroad away from the overseers and dogs through her ability to lucid dream? I was never taught that in school. Were you?”

 

    I was talking to a client who is a nurse about the idea of getting nurses in hospitals & nursing homes to introduce dreaming/visioning to their transitioning patients. She said she didn’t see many people who were about to die anymore. Then a flash came to me about how dear & excellent it would be if people who were physically disabled (cerebral palsy; war-maimed; etc etc) could be taught to dream – what a vacation, a relief, and a power of study and fun and exploration it could be. How ameliorating. I remember years ago paralyzed Chris Reeve saying that he still rode and sailed in his dreams.

    Obviously one would need to be alert to keeping both parts of their lives in balance.

    Having been financially poor and in mind/heart with so great a good fortune of many mansions, an absurd abundance of poetic riches, I realize how dream travel has kept me from any envy or enervating longing. I have never felt ‘stuck’ as I see so many people. The same thing could happen for people in wheelchairs.

    After the nurse’s kid graduates from high school in a month, she and I are going to meet to talk more about including nurses in dreamseeding.

 

   I saw Ted Kennedy on Larry King talking about <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />China graduating 750,000 engineers and India 350,000 engineers, and America only 75,000 engineers. He spoke of his concern about our nation’s future. I got a flash that what we also need is to start training & graduating tens of thousands of dream engineers every year in the USA. That as we have ambassadors to Switzerland & England, we need ambassadors to the DreamLands.

    One of my most popular lines so far is “With my fabulous & lucky education, no one ever even once asked me, ‘How was your night at school.’ They look curious. “I bet you ask your kid every day, ‘How was your day at school.’ One of the most important things for your kid’s future would be to add dream resources to their life. Every morning ask, ‘How was your night at school.’”

 

    I’ve distilled my quik handout card even more for the Lightning DreamWork with the mnemonic device for remembering the steps & taking folks right to the webpage with that article. Note that I also made a quik list of the steps themselves.

 

 

The Power of Lucid, Active Dreaming

try Dreaming True by Robert Moss

http://www.mossdreams.com/lightning.htm

Lightning DreamWork mnemonic:

Two Ducks Suddenly Quack 3 Times; Four Red

Cavorting Kangaroos Ingest A Banana Split

title; dream story; 3 questions: feelings? reality

check? what want to know? if my dream; action;

bumper sticker;   email: pogblog@yahoo.com

my blog=http://pogblog.blogharbor.com

Click on Dreams in Category column on Right

 

 

Anyhow, cheers. I’d love any tips or feedback on how it’s going with you in the spreading the word about lucid/active dreaming.

 

Carpe dreams,

 

…………<^>…………

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If you know an agent, editor, publisher person who would handle this kind of pogblogian material, please let me know at .. pogblog@yahoo.com

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13 Monkey . Chuen . Raccoon . West . tzol 89  05.18.06 thur

978 days/2y8m02d left  

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..

the education-obsessed world begins today with you ..

.. let’s spend the $820,000 per minute Military Budget on education instead

………….<^>…………

The Fort Mason Gate .. Dreams & Worlds Unfurl

<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> for Robert, Janie, and the Fort Mason Dreamers, with gratitude

 

The Fort Mason Gate .. Worlds Unfurl

(This piece is designed to be read with the mouth as if out loud.)

 

The Experiment

   ShaSha Man was debriefed at the Spa of Sloth in the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Calder Desert in South Mars.

   “How was your trip to our pet planet Dlareme?” asked Dan Gero, philosopher journalist for the South Mars Gazette. “I hear you went back to Northern California.”

   “Yeah. San Francisco shone like a jewel. The lighting down there is an envy. I was pretty stoked to see how our Velv Eeta would take the deceleration and the extra Gs after gallivanting so long around the boschian edges, funny and awful, of muchasD, the many dimensions of our sweet Holosphere Grande.

   “Remember how much we worried about how she’d take it when she found out she’d been an experiment of our clan, the Celtic Ironists? I have her sardonic but cheerful comments on that and let me read them to you before we get to the Fort Mason Gate Debrief. They come to bear on what happens there.”

   Dan Gero nodded.

   ShaSha Man read Velv’s notes. “‘Besides the male-mind transplant from a Socrates to a little girl at seven years old, the great experiment done with me was whether with no ‘help,’ one could ‘read’ the secret communiqués. Along the last twenty centuries, so many Christians were virulent and deathdealing – not tender like Jesus. So many animists died at their hands, guilty only of  raw joy. Paying fealty to no institution nor their minions, could I trust, like Frodo in Shelob’s cave, the elf light alone? The world itself my dream and beloved beacon? A universe in a grain of sand, as dear Billy would put it?

   “'It was all about love of Earth, of Dlareme, as the Big Dream. Can a perfectly ordinary child be ignited? Make the journey alone, if needs be? If all the ‘masters’ are lost? In the darkest ages? This is the gist of the quest and the question. The Celtic living holo-bible, the church with no walls, the sky is a song, the shine of leaves the promise, the talisman, and the record.

   “The 2nd big experiment required getting old, fat, and toothless – and a late discovery of peculiar and necessary love, of grok so ruthless, of obsidian humor so brutally, erotically funny that it would illuminate the xanadu halls of temptation and devotion across times. Could one stand the crushing loneliness between the stars without insanity or bitterness? Could coal be taught to be diamond? Without false allegiances? Without a desperation to belong? To belong to some tribe, some cult? Eclectic, choosing the best from all possible sources, could such a creature drink the ocean and not drown?

   “Well, there is never an end to any journey, but we came this far still bylar (to dance) and with an elf star (unquenchable gladness) in our pocket.

 

Photonic Ethics

  “As the worlds get closer and the veils thin, fusion emissaries and translators will need to be trained –rather like fusion cooks – people who can use ingredients from different cultures. How to introduce ourselves to ourselves? The challenge isn’t the variety of photonic physikses, the multiplicity of physikses, but the variety of photonic ethics. Not the envelope-pushing unfamiliarity of pork sushi, not the vertigoes on the way to happy levitating and ebullient flight, but your beloved’s other cosmic mistresses and the different meanings of murder and of war, & so4th. Monogamy (at least serial) tends to work better so far earthside, but eternity sure ain’t monogamous (cf til death do us part). How do we incorporate these strata, these exhilarating but often turbulent meteorologies of ethics we find ourselves suddenly inhabiting amongst the far-flung realms of densities?” 

 ……

   ShaSha Man said, “I was always afraid we’d get cynicism, some dearth of mirth, but we didn’t.”

   Dan Gero grinned. “What we got was wry defiance. Remember that letter she sent me about Earth, Dlareme, not being a 'Colony of Heaven'”? She flayed the idea of earthers being some kind of dolls or children overseen by phalanxes of winged nannies. ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ she said. ‘I’m grateful for my non-carnate and semi-carnate experiences. Learning to fly, walking on water, floating through the ceiling. Giddy stuff. But I will not have us be a colony of heaven. We are the experts on relatively sequential time, on solid experience, on being able to actually eat a whole chocolate chip cookie, to drive where we’re going and not end up somewhere else. Our beloved realm is a masterpiece of reality engineering — there is no higher place to be. Different, just different.’”

   “Yes,” said ShaSha, “and I got that letter defrocking the Vertical Model with its putative Higher Selves. Let me read you that excerpt I keep in my wallet. ‘All of Earth's old troubles came from the Vertical Model which had kept its heel on the throat of the human spirit for centuries.

    “‘Simply turning the axis of understanding to horizontal solves 99% of both human horror and human awkwardness.

    “‘First consider the range of densities our consciousness crisscrosses in a life's experience. We have spaceless/timeless thought. We have dreams, daydreams, fantasy, imagination, memory. We have the precious, moving kinesthetic present, seemingly sequential and solid. Now, in the dominant Vertical Model, as invisible as space, our religions have posited a non-solid, spiritual realm which is above us–is better, purer, less gross than our terrestrial experience, all muck and rut.

    “‘Of course, conveniently, the priests, monks, gurus, and shamans had the key to our escape from all this toil and turmoil.

    “‘What I'm about to tell you is radical because I have searched the literature of the globe and that literature is invariably full of the higher self or the soul or spirit, all more valuable and more wise than we sluggish, lesser, benighted earthdwellers who will ‘ascend’ in death or enlightenment to our truer selves. Balderdash.

    “‘If we see consciousness vertically, a ladder to be climbed, we are falsely forced to see ourselves on the lower rungs staring up at the compassionate rump of the priest, guru, monk, shaman who precedes us to the heights.

     “‘If, on the other hand, we rotate the axis of consciousness to be sideways, we can more correctly and coherently see the spectrum of our consciousness as including all the densities with no greater value implied. Just as in light, ultraviolet is not better than infrared, our less-dense experience is not better that our solid experience, only different.

    “‘The old Vertical Model organized millions, then billions of people for millennia. In a rough sketch, the Vertical Model puts God up in Heaven & the Devil down in Hell. God & his Angels in idealized pure heaven and us down on gross, coarse Earth. The lower chakras are coarse energy, the upper increasingly more sublime. We are basically a colony of heaven. And when we refine ourselves enough, we'll get a white robe, join the junior ranks of the choirs of Angels and be allowed to kiss the big toe of God. And then when we've really refined our unruly consciousness, we get to dwell in the vast seamless rippleless nirvanic stillness for our Good Behavior. Thus, depending on the phase or fullness of my rage, the virulent or pesky Vertical Model came about because the daggone Head/Heart got an inflated or puffed-up view of its importance to the whole system though it cannot even digest a single groat–not a single grain of barley nor grow a single toenail.

    “‘The higher self doesn't have digestion and mucus and dirt under the fingernails. One could wax as rhapsodic about digestion as about Christ Consciousness if we were less prissy and overfastidious about what qualities we invited through the spiritual front door.’”

     Dan Gero laughed, “Indeed.”

 

Velv Eeta at the Fort Mason Dream Gate

  Me & my dog-eared Teach Peace sign went to Fort Mason Building C, Rm 307 on Feb 11, 2006, Saturday. How could I know that 2/11 would be a concatenation of Such Events? A Dream Council – a circle of Janie & Johnny Appleseeds of Dream Play and the sublime ridicule wreaked upon Darth Dick by my darling Fat E in the bliss-struck When Dick Shot Harry Episode, oh frabjous joy. Every now & then, Fat E cooks up a scenario so sublime, so birdshot blast of hilarity in your face that you forgive her for her other many petulant and mulish sins.

   What the changes? what the fate? How could Fat E embroider us so fancifully, her delicacy, her brutality? What the design? What the signs?

   When I got to Fort Mason 9-ish Saturday morning, it was radiant, preening. It was day 1222 in a row with my Teach Peace sign, 16″ x 18″, black letters on apricot matte board on a 4' 7″ stake. It and I are completely old-shoe (comfy) by now, and our mini-spur-the-world-to-be-bloody-better (and less bloody) is keen and honed and street-tested. “Let’s spend the $820,000 per minute we spend on the Military Budget on education instead.”

   I see a silver-maned bear of a man sitting at a picnic table with a paper cup of coffee, musing. I figure it’s Robert Moss and I decide not to say Hi & gee-whiz giga-thanks for the brilliant, grounded, vividly sane books. I teach a lot of TV-for real-people workshops and I know how on he’ll have to be shortly enough. So I leave him in this sweet lull and wander over to the dear slosh of the Bay through the pilings by the great Fort Mason docks.

   I always feel a bit balboa when I’m near the Pacific (“…when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific – and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise…”), but I’m one of the chosen lucky to whom this great-heart ocean has become a friend, if, like the MultiVerse herself, both bright-&-dark-hearted, capable of halcyon and fury.

   Multi-Verse — many-poem place. Halcyon – the kind of sweet day in which the kingfisher can make her nest upon the bosom of the sea.  

   I gaze at the reflections of the cream-colored with maroon trim warehouses on the glossy indigo water. An indigo-emerald rather than an indigo-sapphire. Undertones and undertows of black-green.

   As I lean against the fence of old thick timbers right at the edge of the dock, a grackle appears on my left with a bright yellow insolent eye. He’s an obsidian shiny black so sheened and burnished that I laugh. A grackle, the coyote of crows, mischief maker. Clearly your messenger, my daemon darling, a talisman for my adventure.

   There are about 40 people in the big circle in Rm 307. Other than being as good a student and participant as I am a teacher in my own classes, I have no plans except the usual being ‘deftly intent.’ It’s always a bit of a challenge for a teacher-to-the-bone to give over 100% control to another teacher or director. The habit of seeing the big picture, coalescing the energies, and moving the pieces is a strong template. Being a pawn is tricky.

    Playing someone else’s games – especially holding hands and swaying in a circle without being sardonic is for a moment more demanding than I expect. I am naturally edgier than all these very nice people. But ‘earnest’ is also truthfully my mode so I default to that.

      I like Moss because he’s secure enough to teach true – he wants to define and refine so he can distill what he knows so his ‘students’ get as good or better than him as fast as can be so we all can move the active knowledge and journey forward. I loathe guruism – the holder-of-secrets priestrabbiguruetc to whom you have to be subservient in order to enter the inner sanctum, the heaven, the nirvana. Triple piffle. Truer teachers know there’s a universe in a grain of sand and that they’re lucky to be able to point at a grain of sand and say, daffily, “Ain’t that grand!?”

   The drumming is astonishing. Literally. It strikes with small thunder. You feel the percussion into your blood and into the vault of your mind. In a sense, it keeps startling the mind quiet perhaps. It obviates left brain chatter & clutter & clatter. You just go straight to the vision with sonic precision. Being in the same immediate space with the drumming is stunning. Again literally. You are micro-stunned by the percussion. I think the effect may be as much K (kinesthetic) as A (auditory). It’s certainly a gift the drumming. I’ll always treasure it.

   It was fascinating being in a DayLand room full of all people for whom visioning was assumed. What was it like? It was like visiting Versailles – fabulous gardens and mirrors. Or like my darling Point Lobos, all wild flowers and wild sea and sky and otters, dainty and spectacular splendor—holo-runes through which one walks immersed in the shimmer of awe. These folks’ visions were, indeed, fabulous.

   I felt a staggering sadness and a somersaulting of flagrant gladness. Sadness because of the soulless corporatocracy which steals too much time and energy from these glorious founts of creativity, the dreaming & visioning birthright of each human. And blazing gladness because we are all part of the prometheus dawn of stealing our fire back from the war and money mongers.

   The holo-tapestries of people’s visions are fabulous. I was surprised, I suppose, at how masterful and intricate people were at vivid visioning or dreaming compared to vivid waking. As I looked at the circle of dear and true-hearted people, the energy they had in their daylife was so much less confident and vivid than in their stupendous dream or vision tracking and acting. Why? They didn’t seem to treat their daylife as another masterpiece of local dream. Almost without exception, any of them could have bumped up the quantum level, the champagne fizz of their daily energy a step or two with only an increase in delight and mischievousness.

   Here were people brave enough to dare sacred journeys, vivid journeys in a dream-dull culture. Yet they seemed unaware of the rheostat they also had in their day. Of course, there is the factor of the shyness or reticence of a roomful of strangers, but I’m speaking of the general brightness or luminousness of people at repose. This surprisingly low octane of earthside elan vital of ordinary poetic or distilled energy of delightful and interesting people is why I think we need to encourage the study, the training, the experience of vivid waking along with vivid dreaming.

       (‘Surprise’ to me is a definite and visceral feeling – it’s a poof of inner fireworks or the pop of a champagne cork at about the bellybutton. Being slightly startled or surprised or seized by everyanything is my luckiest modus vividendi – it’s how to have a peak life rather than peak experiences.)

       Ah, the sweet geode surprise of just how fabulous the veins of ultra-emerald, infra-sapphire, and marvelous opal are in these people’s dream mines. They are such accomplished and vivid and fearless visoneers. Clearly, achingly, this courage, this ability this agility must, like apple trees, be spread across the planet – for the sweet wealth of it, the health of it. The sheer ebullient delight of it.

 

Honor the Dream

   As the Fort Mason Feb 11 weekend was a big waking dream, what am I going to do to honor it in a specific, new & concrete way? Well, I’m doing two specific things. After the class was all done on Sunday, I happened to end up in the elevator with Robert and several of his assistants. One of them asked me about my Teach Peace sign which I have carried around my small city, Mountain View CA, for 1252 days in a row now. I said that I’d only felt like a raving idiot for the first two weeks. Now I’m used to it and it gives me a chance to talk to people about Peace, to shock and wake people with the “We’re spending $820,000 per minute on the Military Budget. (Dramatic pause) Plus an extra $200,000 per minute on Iraq.” Hmm, I thought on my way home on the train, what was the synchron of being in the elevator and the Teach Peace sign & so4th? Aha! I could carry a sign about dreaming. Hmmm. To have a sign one can bop around the world with in a daily way, one is constrained to a max of 5 letters per line. Between mulling and my darling pal, The Blue, who showers me with sudden presents, it appeared, seemingly self-evident: DREAM PEACE. Then when people stop and ask me about the sign, I can do a fortune cookie on Peace and a fortune cookie on Dreaming.

   I bought the new sheets of a goldish matte board and the Avery Marks A Lot chisel black markers. I’ve done the lettering and with gratitude and wistfulness pried off my old faithful TEACH PEACE sign & stapled on the new doublesided DREAM PEACE sign. After 3 years 5 months & 5 days, I’ll take it out tomorrow on my pal’s birthday and start this new campaign.

   The second honoring thing is that I’m teaching myself a new habit of bringing up dreaming at every opportunity as I’m out and about. I realized that it would be handy to have a business-sized card with the name of one Robert Moss book & his website url & EastWest Book Store so the person has the info for their own concrete step & I don’t have to keep jotting down all that info for folks. I use the Avery 8371 packet of blank business cards so I can run off a sheet or two at Kinkos and try them out and refine them as I get feedback.

(Here’s the first run of the dream & peace info card.)

 

šLucid, Active Dreaming Tidbits ›

Try Dreaming True  byRobert Moss

check out www.mossdreams.com & www.eastwest.com 

(None of my personal views represent Robert Moss. I just admire his astonishing books on dreams.)

Lightning DreamWork mnemonic:

Two Ducks Suddenly Quack 3 Times; Four Red Cavorting Kangaroos Ingest A Banana Split

my blog = http://pogblog.blogharbor.com

Click on Dreams in Category column on Left

email: pogblog@yahoo.com

 

 

    A key to these Janie/Johnny Appleseed of Dreams tactics is ‘the elevator pitch.’ What do you get to say if you only have 30 seconds? The subtext is The Appleseed Project. Plant dream trees. Your day as an illustrated poem, your night as an illustrated poem. Dreams, dreams burning bright In the forests of the night. All dreams, all tygers, all bushes, all dirty dishes – burn. I’ve been starting with ‘I just took a class in lucid dreaming. I’m doing a quick informal survey about people and their dreams. Do you remember your dreams?’

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   The Fort Mason Dreamers. The parade, the cascade of power animals, landscapes, and treasure – all the hieroglyphs, the oneiroglyphs of a hololanguage through which they ride, glide, stride, make evident, make manifest their artistry. It’s intensely inspiring.

   A person beside me tells of a winged black leopard who bears him on his journey. After lunch, I show him the postcard of a black leopard I just happened to grab at the very last second before I ran out the door to go catch the train to San Francisco that morning. A delectable synchron & we both grin. 

    There were so many gifts and treasures and pleasures of the “abalone mirror” weekend that it’s hard to single any out, but a meta-gift was to be in the same DayLand place with so many people who honored dreams and visions, where one wasn’t secret and underground. Where and when I grew up on the East Coast, if you spoke of Other Realms of Density, of Dreams, if not quite still burned at the stake, people shied away when they did not recoil. And then wretched Freud (Siggie Fraud) poisoned dream study in the West for 100 years by making it a mirror of pathology rather than an ebullient waterfall of creative abun-dancing. I realized how long I’d been silent except in my writing and with a few friends. I still can’t talk much about the Unspeakable Realms of Obsidian Humor where my pal and I bring the odd, beloved light of  brutal and fierce silliness to buried pain of horrible sorrow. But to speak of and hear tales of OtherLand at all is a rivendell oasis on a long lonely journey – the alchemy of the Shadow – chiaroscuro, the celebration of cosmicomic art in all densities of realities.

   Of course I’d really like the universe (or multi-verse, many-poem place) to arrange a cache of cash for the May Dream Teachers Class. If I were even accepted. I haven’t asked yet. Come what may, a few years back, I dedicated the last third of my this-life to promoting the Integration of Lucid Waking with Lucid Dreaming and that purpose is polished and radianted by Fort Mason with its intrepid and dear dreamers. I’ll always be grateful. Frabjous joy.

 

Lightning DreamPlay Mnemonic

   I have one more piece of honoring that tasty Fort Mason weekend. I found that I didn’t have the steps to Robert's quick and sleek Lightning DreamPlay nailed. Aha! I need a mnemonic device. The two I’ve had since I was six are A Rat In Tom’s House Might Eat Tom’s Ice Cream — arithmetic. And George Eaton’s Old Grandmother Rode A Pig Home Yesterday – geography. Once you embed these in your mind, they last forever. Roy G Biv for the colors of the rainbow.

   Anyhow, I found that I didn’t have the Lightning DreamSharing steps on the tip of my mind. Title. Dream Story. 3 Questions: Feelings when you wake. Reality Check. Know – what do you want to Know about your dream. If it were my dream. Action – what action to honor dream. Bumper Sticker. So I came up with this mnemonic device: Two Ducks Suddenly Quack 3 Times; Four Red Cavorting Kangaroos Ingest A Banana Split. It’s quirky enough to remember and highlights all the key DreamSharing steps. Yippee. If you use it with your friends a few times, it’ll become as embedded and automatic as a mnemonic device should, & you’ll start doing the Lightning DreamSharing out there with more confidence. I put the mnemonic device on my dream card handout so I wouldn’t have to write it down for folks whom I accost in the supermarket line.  

 

Dlareme .. jeweled planet

ShaSha Man smiled at Dan Gero. On the Galactic Council, they were both not-so-secret devotees of dear Dlareme, the jeweled third planet in a minor solar system. In spite of all the evident blaring glaring reasons the bipeds had failed as a biomental experiment, ShaSha and Dan Gero were always murmuring sweet somethings into the ear of this Councilor and that in order to stay the Black Hole Cleansing for another year, another decade. ‘We have projects that are becoming fruitful,’ they would soothingly assure Black Beak from Dnimtirips, Polipo the Octopoid from Inchiosto, and most importantly Tortuga, the Great Tortoise who was the chief-among-equals philosopher queen from Antares. With torture, war, and grotesque poverty next to obscene gloating midas accumulation, the Galactic Council was on a hair-trigger of impatience to clean-up ‘that benighted toxic backwater planet in the Sol system.’

   ShaSha and Dan Gero had worked tirelessly to delay the dreaded Black Hole Edict. “We’ll meet with Tortuga for some Lugavulin tomorrow evening,” said ShaSha. “I’ll show her this report from Velv and she’ll believe that we aren’t just fumaring again. She’ll see that there are Dlareme dreamers actually acting, not just lying around like spongeoid spectators.”

  Dan Gero said, “We should be able to get her to table the Edict for two months. The idea of losing Lugavulin and Mexican food has always been our trump card, but the Council might just download the codes for those and scrub the planet in a fit of galactic pique. Hard to blame them.

  “By the way, I still am on for that mozartian megahertz pulse of photonic energy into the Dlareme grid on May 27, 2006. We’ll give’em a nice jolt of quetzal energy to promote the waking lively alliance between our bioElans bipeds and the Mineral Queendom. All the jewels in the planet will ignite. For the alert, it’ll be like fireworks of emerald song under their feet. I had to escroq Black Beak to get her to let me tune the Arbol Hub Pulsar to Dlareme one more time. She rolled her eyes and said, ‘Only for old pal’s sake, Dan Gero. We have lavished that damned planet with everything from giraffes to avocados to daffodils to zephyrs and they’re still largely a ratminded herd of billions of ingrates. Chile verde burritos, for galax’s sake! What more do they want? If it weren’t for our ever so pleasant fling back when the stars were young, Dan Gero, I wouldn’t waste a megalerg on these whinging beasts of whom you’re so unaccountably fond.’

  “So ShaSha, we have a stay, a respite, but our Dlareme Dreamers need to start talking to apparent strangers in order to seed the Dream Game far and wide. Wake up. Speak up. Somersault. The Dream’s afoot.”

 

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Fort Mason Gate Glossary

for words not defined in the text.

Dlareme .. the galactic name for the planet Earth.

escroq – a cross between to con and to cajole, from the French escroquer, con, swindle.

K1 .. the Dlareme ‘masterpiece of reality engineering’ signature is the persistence of the kinesthetic notated as K1.

muchasD .. the many dimensions usually ignored by standard physics, even quantum. We experience them, but standard science disdains them as evidence worthy. Muchas means many in Spanish.

Universe in a grain of sand .. from William Blake.

Pacific/wild surmise .. from Keats. He said Cortez, but meant Balboa.

Calder Desert .. A tip of the sombrero to my darling Alexander ‘Sandy’ Calder who managed to be a great artist and a funny decent guy. His mobiles look like Miro in 3D.

prometheus .. Prometheus stole fire from the gods to give it to mankind – for which he got his ever-renewing liver devoured daily by Zeus’ ravenous eagle. As an entirely unrelated side note while we’re on livers, it was the liver which was the seat of affections in the Middle Ages, not that mere old pump, the heart. I always chuckle at the Valentine’s Day cards with their faux organ of love. Now, “I lost my liver over you, my darling” has got a visceral ring.

Darth Dick .. Mr. Cheney, the Deeply and Dangerously Deluded.

midas .. Midas is the symbol of pathological wealth past any usefulness.   

Fat E .. is Fate. She writes the scripts for persons & worlds, sometimes drunkenly.

xanadu .. from Coleridge “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/A stately pleasure-dome decree:
/Where Alph, the sacred river, ran/Through caverns measureless to man/Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground/With walls and towers were girdled round:/And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,/Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;/And here were forests ancient as the hills,/Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. … /But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted/Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! /A savage place! as holy and enchanted/As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted/By woman wailing for her demon-lover!”

bylar .. from Spanish to dance;

oneiroglyphs .. cf hieroglyphs. Oneiro means dream in Greek and oneiroglphs are dreams, are a hololanguage (including your daylife) through which you walk. You are immersed in meaning and synchronicity – you can ‘read’ it like a full-body braille.

multiverse .. multi-verse/many-poem place. Probably my favorite phrase I’ve coined. As some people might speak to ‘God,’ I chat up many-poem who gives me a myriad of multi-dimensional poems to wander around, to braille in.

deftly intent .. another favorite phrase. It refers to an attention which can be always maintained – not quite effortless, just the amount of energy that a butterfly expends to keep from crashing into a flower it’s about to land upon.

geode .. geodes are these totally plain looking rocks which when they’re cracked open sort of like a big egg, reveal fabulous crystals, often amethyst, attached to their inside walls. Very thrilling to see a geode.

chiaroscuro .. the interplay, the intercontest of light and of dark.

putative .. supposed.

fumaring .. to blow smoke; fumar is to smoke in Spanish.

everyanything .. a word-phrase of ee cummings.

bioElan .. a galactic phrase for the mobile meat-embedded consciousness featured on Dlareme. Elan vital (ay-lawn vee-tahl, the ‘ay’ as in hay) is Henri Bergson’s phrase for the vital and delightful energy which keeps us bipeds humming and abun-dancing, which is why sullenness, dullenness, sulking, and self-pity so suck.

rivendell .. like Lothlorien, one of the few magic respites for the Fellowship on their journey to Mordor. A place for deep heart rest and restoration.

joyas .. jewels in Spanish; jeweled joy.

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 Thanks again to Robert Moss and all the Fort Mason Gate Dreamers – most especially for the nudge & the tools to get out on the street talking up Lucid, Active Dreaming hand in dancing hand with Lucid Waking as the joyas road to peace.

 

Cheers,

pogblog

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If you know an agent, editor, publisher person who would handle this kind of pogblogian material, please let me know at .. pogblog@yahoo.com

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It’s an honor to have you visit pogblog. Do comment.

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Check pogblog’s Glossary for brave & nefarious words.

copyright pogblog 2006 all rights reserved

Please send pogblog’s link to your friends:

http://pogblog.blogharbor.com

7 Cane . Ben . Reed . East . tzol 32 . 03.21.06 tues

ffwofw715§26d2h33m11s33.84g3.25g;  

..

the education-obsessed world begins today with you ..

.. let’s spend the $820,000 per minute Military Budget on education instead

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Hololanguages: pandreaming fluency

This piece is designed to be read with your mouth as if out loud.

 

Hololanguages: pandreaming fluency

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   Just a reminder that I use the term K1 to refer to the earth-dream masterpiece whose signature quality is the persistence of the kinesthetic (K). Other dreams have their own (photonic) physics, but tend to be less persistent in the K. (With drugs or meditative mindbending, we can short-circuit this sturdy & faithful K, but then we are playing a different game.)

   Also recall that ‘oneiro’ is the Greek for 'dream.' Instead of hieroglyphs, the Egyptian pictograph writing, oneiroglyphs are the holo-words or holo-structures through which we move in all the dreams including our home-dream, Earth.

   Grok is the Martian word for drink-in understanding (from Stranger in a <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Strange Land.) Funes is a word I derived from a Borges character. Funes is the Borges character who remembers everything in a blakean heart-exploding honor of universe-in-a-grain-of-sand detail. The key image is that Funes cannot understand not only how any 'dogs' can be lumped together, but even more, how dog, Swen, asleep in the idle sun-blasted afternoon street at 2:13 pm can be considered the same dog as that dog at 2:14 pm. We smear and lump and clump stuff to a dimmed degree of dullness that we surely live in the back broomcloset of Plato's cave, unalert and unillumined. Anyhow, I add funes to grok as a more whole and paganly holy embrace of perception.    

 

   All dreams or states of experiencing or oneiroglyphs are hololanguages through which we grok and funes — or else dully drift like flotsam. The hololanguage presses past you like a full-body braille – you can learn to read this hololanguage with a little deft attention. Synchronicity (striking apparent coincidence) is a sign that you are beginning to learn to read holo. (Of course metaphysically it is all synchronous if you could but translate, but that intimate chronos is a deitific level of cosmipoesy.)

    Once you have the first key which is simply beginning to remember as constantly as possible that you are immersed in a hololanguage, you can begin the deciphering and translation. The intimacy of all the dreams becomes astonishing (astonish = strike with thunder) when you increasingly realize that you are within the meaning. that extra radiance you inhabit when you are inspired or in the zone or delighted can be the floor state, the steady state – heck with peak experiences, have a peak life.

    The first trick is to grok that you are walking through stonehenges of runes or speaking stones. Except that it is all speaking itself to you and with you. Not just the big splashy stuff, but the little intimate dramas too — washing the dishes, the dirty socks. I often talk about the multiverse or multi-verse or many-poem place. You are in the poem. It is this holographikness or immersion that is tricky at first. We are used to reading or viewing (like a movie) things on a page or a screen or a stage and we are observers. In hololanguage we are in the poem the play the living book.

   As an aside this hololanguage is why the Celts are baffled by the idea of a sacred book on pages as ‘the [putative] word of God.’ The Celts are in the sacred books of pandreams and find all this huffing and puffing about inked books a tad thin gruel when the holobooks are a banquet.

    I get violently vexed when people prattle on about ‘Heaven.’ Triple Piffle. Earth is a masterpiece of reality engineering so breathtaking that one must explode with fascination and adoration if you’re paying any attention at all. This is not to say that I don’t think that the OtherLand experiences are also stunning & compelling and that we ought to be alive all the time as vividly as we can – cavorting and somersaulting of attitude. Oh frabjous joy.

   My cause celebre is to goad and cajole us to integrate Lucid Waking with Lucid Dreaming so we get global, then stellar. The modes I find myself in are inhabitant, tourist, scout, explorer, ambassador. Deftly intent curiosity serves you well in every dream.

   First, please extirpate (uproot) Freud whom I unpleasantly refer to as Siggie Fraud. I can’t think of anything he has to say about our less-dense experiences that isn’t sad and warped — or too damned serious. Look for yourself and be amazed.

   There is a word I coined for cheerfulness called hasyasattva or silliness warrior: increase the gladness of all sentient beings by as many very tiny kangaroos as can waltz on the head of a pin; pogblog coined this hasyasattva word because the notion of ‘decreasing suffering’ breaks the hypnotic-suggestion rule of putting the ‘command’ in a positive cast. “Don’t fall off the ladder!” is an embedded command to fall off the ladder: In order to comprehend the statement you have to imagine falling off the ladder. “Hang on to the ladder” is the better form of the statement. So kind bodhisattva folks wandering the Earth talking earnestly about  'decreasing suffering’ are causing all of us to gloomily, if unconsciously, contemplate suffering, oh woe is we. On the other hand, if you talk about ‘increasing gladness’ — in order to understand the statement you have to imagine some facet of gladness, a step on the somersaulting path.

   If you hasyasattva all your dreams, you’ll have gadzooking amounts of fun.          

 

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Note to Person asking if you could enter other people’s dreams.

 

Stay humble for as long as possible, perhaps.

 

(Humble in the literal sense from humus, earth, stay on the ground.)

 

The key is to get in the habit of logging your dreams & dream snippets — so you begin to get a feel for the astonishing range of volcanic creativity (tho not burning hot usually, still vermillion & luminous) available in dreams. It'll knock your socks off, rip your ears off, and leave you breathless. That's the place to start & once you have your lava-sea legs, then think about other stuff would be my suggestion.

 

All muses (dream & poetry & music etc etc appreciate apprenticeship & honoring of oaths. If you prove faithful to the logging game, your dream muse will begin to trust you & the fruits of that are grailish indeed.) 

 

Anyone from our culture is ipso facto in night-dream kindergarten re integration with day consciousness. I may be in first grade by now. (Not in OtherLand itself where one might shine, but in the translation & fluency of hololanguages on the cosminet.)

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If you know an agent, editor, publisher person who would handle this kind of pogblogian material, please let me know at .. pogblog@yahoo.com

………….<^>……………..

It’s an honor to have you visit pogblog. Do comment.

…………….<^>……………..

Check pogblog’s Glossary for brave & nefarious words.

copyright pogblog 2006 all rights reserved

Please send pogblog’s link to your friends:

http://pogblog.blogharbor.com

9 Wind . Ik . Whirlwind . North . tzol 21  03.10.06 fri

ffwofw715§26d2h33m11s33.84g3.25g; 

..

the education-obsessed world begins today with you ..

.. let’s spend the $820,000 per minute Military Budget on education instead

………….<^>…………….