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Ask Dr. Druid . Day 15

3^rd Eye. Re-view 2

 This piece will read best 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.]

Intro; Prologue; Day 1 overview, grok; Day 2, Treasure Hunt, Fat E, The Blue; Day 3, multiverse, eclectic, manypoem place, poetry eyes, nature, man, prejudice to the pretty; Day 4 Ing-ing verbing; Day 5 Inner Perfectionist to Fiji; Day 6 Naming Game; Day 7 Journaling; Day 8 Review 1;|||| Day 9 spelling backwards; Day 10 synchronicity; Day 11 synchronicity 2; Day 12 attention as a thing; Day 13 Levitation R Us;  Day 14 Amethyst Key dreams, Earth as the Home Dream; [Any of these chapters can be found in the Ask Dr. Druid category.]

    We've been practicing the scales of attentions and eclectics. We want to give you both techniques & tricks and the demonstrations of attentions being discovered. I plan to share my experiences of the blossoming of the eclectic for me so you can get a sense of how these extraordinary experiences mysteriously and magically appear within the ‘ordinary’ day. I honor folk who spend decades in a cave devoted to exquisite experience, but my job and the druid way of life is to cajole and exhort you to the constant extraordinary within the daily life. Not so many working stiffs get to do a week’s retreat at the sea by <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Carmel or to visit an ashram in India. The same rapids of glorious communion with the creation are available to the bagger at Safeway, however. Or to, as I might be, your window washer.

    I’ve put the quick list of our topics above so you can remind yourself of where we’ve been and re-up with the steps. Spelling backwards, for instance, is a visualization vitamin. You need to take it every day. At a few stoplights. In the supermarket line. All of these attitudes and beatitudes above should be mischievously practiced and noticed.

    I trust you are making daily notes and/or sketches in your journal or log. It is so essential to combine your hand and your head. Just meditating or thinking does not give you the two-sides-of-the-brain collaboration that making contemplation or memory or imagination work and play thru your hand does. (You might say that we’re tuning up your corpus callosum, that astonishing band of giga-concentrated nerve knowledge that lies between the two hemispheres of your brain.)

   When we eventually get your attentions open, deftly alert, and eclectic enough, you’ll be in the rarefied yet sustainable and delectable state known ever so mysteriously in the occult trades as having your ‘third eye’ open.

……..<^>…

images songlines prince of wales aboriginal art balgo;

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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;……..……<^>………..…..
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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It’d be great if you sent pogblog’s link to your friends:http://pogblog.blogharbor.com  
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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 ..
………….<^>…………….          

Ask Dr Druid .. Day 14

Amethyst Key to Dreams

This piece will grok 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.]

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    Amethyst key. Ah Dreams. The octessential grok here, the amethyst key, is that for druid shamans (as often women as men) our day life, the dayreal, is just as much a dream as our remreal — our sleeping dreams or other lucid visions.

   There’s this silly myth, by the way, that the druids disappeared. Nah, we just changed our camouflage, took a shift from our darling deep-rooted oaks to being goldfinches and unicorns, invisible in plain sight. More mobile. The true observer empathetically shapeshifts into everyeachthing s/he observes.

      You will not be a better spy and ambassador in your night dreams than you are in your daily dream. We teach you the observation, attention, concentration, curiosity, and eventually shapeshifting skills in the day game so you have the chances to practice and repeat them in a venue where science (shareability & repeatability) putatively applies. These skills will serve you in worlds where psyence is more applicable: the fractal mind, the aesthetic mind, the more fluid art of psyence which includes the useful illusion of linearity, but does not exclude the quirky and enchanted which can be less tame, which can specialize in anti-order, the mischievous, the quixotic.

   Our druid duty & delight is to increase your eclectic and your curiosity until you quantum out in all directions and know from raw and wild experience that everything is illuminated, lit from within. This in your daily containable, sustainable life. Until your drug of choice is air. I remember someone asking me backwhen, “Hey, are you on acid?” “No, I’m on air.” Which I might amend to say “I’m on air and distilled curiosity.” The trick is to make it socially acceptable to be wildly, explosively alive in a culture trapped in the Religions and Greeds. Creeds & Greeds we call it, the condition of aggressive dullness and of paltry, if any, enchantment.

    So, panther up. All your day practices and disciplines are in your Familiar Dream, your HomeDream, darling Earth, Vuravura, Jeegoo. We’ll give you an panther implant so you can steal the sublime feline predator skills that shamans use to hunt the precious and delicious details in which they (& you) are immersed. The extravagant joy of being a shaman is that, unlike the glorious panther, you get to steal the attributes of every <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />isis thing for your quest, your journey. From the panther’s stealth to the dandelion puff’s lightness – it’s all your panwealth and panglee.

    A druid is so adept a thief that the heisted doesn’t even know it’s been wholly stolen. The best thieves leave no fingerprints, disturb no fields (Sorry, Heisenberg). It’s like stalking a giraffe to take its splendid picture. But in this case, it’s a holopicts, a spectrum of senses of the giraffe in its location, its spleen and sinews, holosnapshot, blink, treasured, guarded in your heart – you bothered in your life to hone your curiosity, to learnlearn, always learning the deft disciplines of attentions. Attentions is a jewels of many facets.

    An alchemic insider secret is that your pseudopod of deft attention is like quicksilver, a kind of intraworlds etheric mercury which undetectably gently surrounds and infuses the observed (object, scene) with a diaphanous attention-stuff which secretly and sweetly gathers the beauty, the unique, the élan vital of X in order to honor and preserve it for the Book of the Moon.

    It is true that AllBeing is preserved in the Cosmic Chronicle, the Akashic Record, but what is grokked is highlighted, like a poetic passage with a tender footnote, not just vaganza, but extravaganza. Your ‘soul’ is what you tenderly guard, what you wildly fiercely guard with savage, inconsolable reverence. Druid prayer is not asking for anything, it is honoring, tending, celebrating all the extravagant beautysbeautys in which you’re immersed, by which you’re accompanied, melting into a kind of butterscotch of gratitude. What you have grasped or taken does not reflect in the Mirror of the Moon . . . only what you have given and guarded shines.

   A druid would tell an apprentice child, upload your joys to the Book of the Moon. With the heart of a precious and precocious child, send the birds of your discoveries to the Golden Nest of the Moon where they can rest and play and greet their new friends and be treasured.

    Panther, panther burning bright in the forests of the night. You wake from ElseWhere into This Dream here. Be lucid and amazed. Start panthering.

…..<^>…….

Notes.

.. Amethysts .. An OED entry is:1580 SIDNEY Arcadia II. (1654) 141 The bloodie shafts of Cupids war, With amatists they headed are.  Cupid’s arrows tipped with amethyst. Ahh.

.. octessential .. oct-essential, the 8^th degree of essential; cf quint-essential, the 5^th degree of essential;

.. putatively .. ‘supposedly’, just wryer;

.. isis .. is is – the obsidian core of how shamans accept all experience;

.. élan vital .. the vital verve, the juice;

.. images emily kame kngwarreye

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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;

……..……<^>………..…..

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.

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Check pogblog’s Glossary for brave & nefarious words.

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copyright ask dr. druid 2007 all rights reserved

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It’d be great if you sent pogblog’s link to your friends:
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9 Lizard . Kan . South . tzol 204  05.26.07 sat

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 ..

………….<^>…………….

Ask Dr. Druid .. Day 13
Levitation R Us
 
This piece will grok 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.]

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   Yes, levitation is fun. Though the first time it happened to me, I was definitely er-uh-gulp disconcerted.

    I had been asleep on a mattress on the floor of a cabin in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Ripton, Vermont, the village where Robert Frost lived late in his life. I was alone in the cabin. It was a summer afternoon about 37 years ago. I was sprawled on my stomach in a tee-shirt and shorts, barefoot. I heard a man’s voice as if deep in my head say, “Don’t worry,” as the whole darn mattress and I began to rise off the floor.

    ‘Don’t worry’! Yeah, well.

    When I was an 8-yr-old budding epistemologist – one who studies how things work in all realms of experience — I had made this (now beastly) solemn vow with myself to honestly experience whatever happened in my life and simply observe it as clearly as I could without judgment or panic.

   Fine, but this was a bit much.

   Every time I began to tense with frantic fear of falling, I’d hear this helpful voice, “It’s OK.” The mattress and I rose slowly until we were about halfway between the floor and the ceiling. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. I wasn’t terrified, but I was bloody wary. The first time you have a prolonged episode of the suspension of the staid and codified, putatively immutable laws of physics in broad daylight, you’ll be a tad alarmed yourself, I promise.

    Me and my mattress kind of hovered there for a spell while my mind raced pinballedly for an explanation. I was neither drunk nor stoned. I could hear the expected sounds. I felt my left cheek on the pillow. I felt my weight on the mattress. Was I dreaming the most electric, immediate dream ever? Hallucinating? Crazy? Or was this simply a new experience like floating in water had been when I first learned to do that?

   I lay there in midair doing a checklist of reality cues. Then the mattress and I began to slowly spin clockwise. Drat, this is too much I thought. The kind voice says again, “Don’t worry. It’s OK.” The mattress and I are turned one full revolution. Then the mattress and I are gently and very slowly tipped up just until I feel my bare feet, which happen to be over the bottom edge of the mattress, touch the cool wooden floor. I felt my feet take some weight and my ankles bend as they would if you were stood up. It was that feeling my ankles bend and take weight that flooded me with certainty. I knew where I was for sure now. In my bedroom levitating.

   The mattress and I were slowly lowered back to the floor. Of course there was no one to talk to about this stuff back then. Nice people didn’t levitate on perfectly ordinary New England summer afternoons. Even now in somewhat openminded California where I dwell, you could talk about trips to Paris or Peru in idle cocktail party chatter, but not about traveling to the ceiling, a much greater journey.

   Levitation in dayreal is different from flying or floating in other dreams, in remreal, though they share the unclenching of the fist of any degree of panic.   

    Another interesting levitation happened to me right from the different mattress on the floor right here in my room in California. I felt myself (not the mattress this time!) begin to rise towards the ceiling like a Macy’s Parade balloon. “C’mon. This isn’t funny,” think I, but ever the Faithful Observer, a kind of Sancha Panza to the dear, tho daffy, Quixote Universe, I go along. I rise until I bounce slightly against the ceiling which is rough and textured. Of course you’re afraid of falling in the first few levitations.

    Another time, also in my own room, I rose until I bumped against the ceiling and then realized that I could allow myself to rise through the ceiling, and I felt the nails and joists go through me and they tickled.

   I probably wouldn’t trust less rigorous an observer than me to report on episodes like this. I’m sure many of you dear readers will be incredulous, but levitating and some other strangest experiences we’ll come to along the way only made me even more amazed by and devoted to our darling masterpiece of reality engineering, Earth Vuravura Jeegoo, dayreal.

    When you feel yourself start to rise, unclench your fear, and remind yourself to keep breathing gently —  though I have to say I don’t think I’ve ever been quite calm enough to do deep belly breathing while levitating. I’ll remember to notice next time.

   Levitating is part of the carnival of existence. If you lived through your first Ferris wheel ride, you’ll live through your first levitation. I’ve found that, like unicorns, levitations appear when you’re least expecting them.

…………<^>…………

Note: putatively = 'supposedly,' with a wryer twist;

…………<^>…………

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.
………….<^>……………..
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
article title janosh
It’d be great if you'd send pogblog’s link to your friends:http://pogblog.blogharbor.com  
email: askdrdruid@gmail.com
10 The Road . Eb . Grass . Rattlesnake Tooth . South . tzol 192  05.14.07 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 ..
………….<^>…………….

Ask Dr. Druid . Day 12
Attention is a thing

This piece will grok 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.]

    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;
……..……<^>………..…..
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
article image slice is janosh
It’d be great if you sent pogblog’s link to your friends:
www.wendyfleet.com  
email: askdrdruid@gmail.com
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 ..
………….<^>…………….

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

Day 7 .. The Journal Muse

This piece will grok 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.]

 .

    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.

…..<^>………….

.

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.
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6 Water . Muluc . The River . East . tzol 149  04.01.07 sun
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mozart..9.77g /7mb
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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 ..
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