St. Porcine

Ok so I had an interesting string of Pig conicidences during and after my Dream Teacher Training week in Seattle that wanted to form into this little squealing story. I had just started dating a much younger woman who happened to also be born in the Chinese year of the pig 12 years after me and we were joking about it after we got together as two pigs on a blanket listening to a free jazz concert under a sky full of pink piglet clouds. She came over that night and we had some fun foreplay when I sang her a pig song and we played with a big pink squishy stuffed animal pig that I had. The next week I was in Seattle at Mosswood Hollow retreat center in the foothills of the Cascades for the second week of my dream teacher training. It was one condensed waking dream with lots of bleed between dreams and reality especially in relation to my cabin mate Jerry. On the third day, Jerry and I were sharing our dreams over breakfast and it turned out that our dreams were very similar, both involved fishing and pigs. I had dreamed that I was with several guys who wanted to go out fishing but I was bored by that and I went off on my own and walked out on the water. That right there should have been a lucidity clue but I was only rational enough to believe that I had to walk really fast to keep from sinking. So as I’m racing across the top of water, I see two white pigs swimming towards me and I walk around them because I’m afraid they will try to bite me. Jerry’s dream starts with him fishing with a deceased father in law who was an alcoholic and who he had a difficult relationship with. He walks back through some long grass and discovers a litter of baby pigs. The sow is across a road and he is afraid some carless drunken fisherman will accidentally squish the piglets so he goes to his car and gets out a bag of limestone chips and puts them around the pigs to make a path, a circle of protection.
When we joined the main circle, Robert Moss asked us if we had any shared images from the previous evening’s dreaming and so Jerry and I shared our overlapping dreams. Robert, always the compendium of ancient mysteries, explained that in Biblical times and in the Eleusinian mystery school in Greece, there was a cleansing ritual where demonic spirits were put into pigs. People would jump off of a cliff into the sea with a pig in their arms and the demon soaked pig would then be released to drown in the sea, taking the offending demons into the deep with it. We did a dream theater reenactment of Jerry’s dream that morning and got more information. The fisherman theme took on a Christian savior element and the pigs took on a sacrificial element with an Egyptian tinge after the person playing the limestone chips spoke and told about Egyptian coffins being carved from limestone.
I had been having another weird thread of dreams and coincidences for the first two days around the Egyptian black cat faced Goddess Bast that was coming to a head that day as well. It began with an actual black cat on the property that I first met after I had a vision of her in our first shamanic journey getting into a blue lake of healing and healing her wounded right leg. Right after that journey, I went off toward my cabin and a sweet little black female cat jumped up on the trunk of a red car in front of me, demanding and then reveling in my petting. Of course she had a nasty open wound on her right leg. The next day I was picked by another dreamer to play Bast in her dream theater and I brought through messages from the Black Cat Goddess. Slowly this theme had developed into a sense of a negative energetic connection to a ancient Egyptian/desert djin spirit. The theme that week was about psychic boundaries and energetic protection and cleansing, so Jerry and I did some ritual energy cleansing and chord severing and decided to finish off with a visit to a nearby blue lake of healing to re-enact the Eleusinian Pig Mystery in a playful imaginary way. Jerry had changed into a T-shirt with an Orca on it which sparked me to share with him on the drive to the lake a dream from last year’s dream teacher training involving an Orca whale. I was in the pool that I used to swim in on swim team and I was feeling great sorrow as I held the dead carcass of my childhood dog , a chocolate lab named Penny, in my arms. Then an Orca swam by and devoured her remains and then the pool wall fell down leaving a big opening to the bright sunshine outside. Of course, when I had shared that dream Robert Moss he launched into a story about the Orca shamans of the Pacific Northwest and how their specialty was helping the spirits of the dead cross over.
I had been at this lake 3 years earlier, when I was at a weekend workshop on Dream Healing through the Energy Centers with Robert . I stayed an extra day and walked all the way over to and around the lake and halfway around a black dog with no tags came walking up to me and then followed me the rest of the way around the lake and then down to this public beach and then left. Robert Moss had just shared some stories the previous day about how he used to have a big black lab and how friendly black dogs often showed up in his life as good omens. So I had us return to that same beach for our ritual that that cosmic Anubis dog had led me to. Jerry and I held our imaginal demon filled pigs and ran into the clear cool blue water to release those old energies. Right after we got in, a male chocolate lab with no tags came bounding over the hill and jumped into the water to swim with us. We played fetch with him with a stick for a while and several times he seemed to be seeing something in the water and biting at it as if he was guarding us, keeping those dark energies we’d put in the water from trying to get free.
Robert had explained earlier that the dream healing temples of Asclepius which were connected to the Eleusinian mysteries were full of dogs. People would go there and sleep in the temples until they had a healing dream which involved a dog or a snake. That night I had a dream where I was involved in a ceremony. A man was wheeled in on a hospital gurney with a white cloth over it. Another man came around to the head of the table and then turned into a giant snake and appeared to devour the man on the gurney. But I could see it was a simple magic trick and the man was really down below behind the curtain. I commented to the woman standing next to me what a poorly executed trick this was. We could see the sheet flapping from the clumsy transfer. Then I walked down this hallway and was briefly transfixed by a painting on the wall full of Egyptian black cat headed goddesses and pyramids and ankhs. At the end of the hall was a kitchen, and the wife of the man who was just “devoured” came up to me franticly asking what had happened to her husband. I told her in a booming theatrical voice that “Matter can be neither created or destroyed, only changed in form. So your husband is out there somewhere! We can’t give up hope, it’s all that we have!” After she left somewhat placated, the woman who was next to me and who knew the truth started laughing at my dramatic overacting. We ended up rolling on the floor laughing at the bad roles we had to play to get by, sort of like we were starving actors living on the margins trying to eek out a Hollywood existence. I titled that dream “Bad Actor” and it encapsulated the dark energy I had shed in that healing blue lake. That part of me that would use spiritual energy for manipulation and control of others rather than for healing.
The next chapter happened after I returned home to Madison. I was at this outdoor concert with my Pig sweetie and we fell into an intimate conversation. She was sharing a recurring fatiguing illness that she had been dealing with for six years and I told her the story of the Celtic shamans who were weak and ill while they were taken by the faeries for seven years. This was an initiatory sickness that familiarized them with the world of spirit and prepared them to be healers, bridges between this world and the next. I also told her about this past life memory I had had glimpses of for a while of a lifetime in India where my wife and three kids died of Cholera. After burning them all on a pyre by the Ganges I went up into the Himalayas and spent the rest of that lifetime meditating in a cave and making some progress toward enlightenment. I was beginning to think that she was that past life wife. Later, we went to her place and I noticed a quote on the wall that I liked. She went and got the book that it was from Cool Mind Warm Heart by Steve Roberts, and I did a quick bibliomancy, opening it and random and reading the first passage my eyes alighted on. Imagine my delight when the first sentence was about how every seven years the cells in your body were replaced. The gist of the paragraph was about seeing illness as a gift and it even used the phrase “joyfully cremated in the fire of love” to describe what was necessary to live in this spirit of eternal gratitude. Of course to me this was a big GOD inspired underlining of the importance of our conversation earlier that night.
She lent me the book and I read it right away the next day and imagine my squeal of delight when I got to the chapter titled St. Porcine (St. Pig) which bore a striking similarity to the dark heart of my Egyptian cat tale. The author describes a recurring past life memory where he was an abbot who learned how to do an energy trick to make a bowl constantly fill with fruit. This miraculous slight of hand has everyone worshiping him. He has become addicted to this adulation, even though he knows it is based on trickery and manipulation. He lives in secret shame of his lack of godliness. Then a 13 year old shows up at his monastery who is the embodiment of the pure saintly devotion he is lacking. He is deathly afraid that if this radiant teenager stays around for long he will be exposed for the hollow charlatan that he is and his gig will end. So he keeps setting up the rules so that the forgetful, blissed out William gets in trouble. He disciplines him in progressively harsher ways hoping that he will run away. Eventually, he banishes William to the outdoors in the middle of a snowstorm and he freezes to death. The abbot breathes a sign of relief, but then William starts appearing to all the other monks in their dreams, spreading love and healing. The abbot becomes terrified afraid again that his treachery will be unmasked. So he resorts to an inquisitional ritual that was said to trap a soul in astral limbo for 1000 years. He cuts Williams’ body into pieces and feeds them to their pigs. Then he worries again what will happen if the monks eat the pigs, so he has all the pigs sold to an itinerant butcher. Of course, it isn’t long before he begins hearing tales of miraculous healings that are taking place all across the land and he is hired to look into it. He realizes that all of the people who are experiencing these healings have eaten pig meat from that itinerant butcher, and then ends up getting credit for the miracles because the pigs all came from his monastery. But fear and shame still haunt him and eventually he uses his psychic powers to give himself a terminal illness so he can die before his reputation is tarnished.
The book was written by a recovering alcoholic and its theme of letting go and blessing everything resonated deeply with me. Unfortunately, that whole story was preparing me for the next day when the pink cloud dissolved and I was informed that my blossoming PIG lover was moving on. Luckily, we managed to avoid any demonic drama so that no actual pigs were sacrificed in the crafting of this story. In fact, we have remained close friends, and if you happen to be walking along a certain astral blue lake of healing in your dreams, you just might see our shiny white demon free pig spirits swimming happily beneath your fast moving feet.

The Blonde in the Mirror

4/19/08 Dream: I am in some sort of sexual contact with my ex-wife and then we separate sort of embarrassed by our weakness. Then I am looking at the computer thinking of her e-mail and then thinking “well, this happens.” Then I am withdrawing from the place and she is talking on the phone as I float towards the door of what is an unfamiliar place. I am surprised it is not our house and also surprised that she doesn’t see me as if I am a ghost. I feel that she senses my presence though and she is talking to someone on the phone about me. I become lucid and I decide to leave and fly out through the screen door, but the screen sort of gets stuck on me and wrapped around me making a grey haze out of my vision.With effort, I peel it off from my face and then everything gets Technicolor bright. I look back at where I was, a white apartment building in the 2nd floor apartment. As I turn around and float away, I feel very light and free and the sun is shining and the sky is blue and there is this song playing “It’s a beautiful day” Like the U2 song, but slowed down and done reggae style like Ziggy Marley. I am sort of surf flying and I see and think of my best childhood friend and windsurfing buddy Kyle. I think “I can go anywhere” and get excited and then think “It’s no fun to travel alone” and my spirits sink a little. Then there is a big train going by, and I grab the surf board from under me and it turns into a big bag. I fly alongside the train and it quickly becomes night. I look up into the starry sky and I a start wishing I could travel through a Stargate and I spin the bag fast in circles above me to try to open a wormhole but it doesn’t work. It does light up different constellations as I spin it though, and one which lights brighter than the others is the constellation Pegasus. I am flying faster and faster, matching pace with the train and then I find myself in a building with a high ceiling like a train station. There are two young boys that approach me the older around 5 and other around 3. They are playing some game together but I am not interested in it and I sort of shoo them away. There is another boy sitting at a table. I still want to try to go to the stars again and I fly up with that in mind but I lose speed quickly and hit the ceiling and slowly float back down. As I float down I notice a large mirror on the wall and instead of seeing myself reflect I see that I am a blonde woman which is surprising. I do not like being a blonde woman so I imagine myself as a kung fu master and see myself flipping and kicking gymnastically in the mirror briefly before I wake up.
A month later I am in a workshop with Robert Moss in Chicago and, after sharing the dream we decide to do a dream theater with the intention of dreaming it forward and paying more attention this time to the blonde in the mirror and the two boys. I pick a pretty blonde woman Lisa to play the blonde in the mirror and when it comes to her part, she gets a strong message to step out of the mirror and improvise. She tells me that she is the feminine that sees me and hugs me. And then the people playing the two kids are likewise inspired to run over and let us know they found some wonderful dinner digging in the garbage. We go together as a little family unit to the Pegasus and there’s room for all of us to get on and take off to the stars. My new bumper sticker for the dream becomes: “My dream family is just a sunbeam away!” Life starts to rhyme later when I meet a woman online whose screen name is Sexy Bodhisattva. She responds to an incomplete online profile of mine that consists only of a lucid dream where I travelled through a wormhole and became a whale like creature on an alien planet. Her hair is bordering on blonde and her real name turns out to be Lisa and she has two boys 5 and 3. She is also crazy like me for dreams and synchronicities and one of the first that brought us closer together is that she posted a giraffe dream and waking synchronicities that flowed out of it on her blog http://www.emotiontoolkit.com/journal/ within days of my own Remembering Giraffe entry.

Remembering Giraffe

A couple months ago I had an intensely emotional dream that later resonated with waking reality in an interesting way. I am in the home I lived in as a teenager, which was a magical Spanish style house built in the 1920’s that I visit frequently in my dreams. In the dream, Joe Sommerness is standing in the middle of the sunroom. Joe was a friend in high school who also struggled with addiction, but who lost his battle, committing suicide in college by gruesomely shooting his heart out with a shotgun. His shocking death was a turning point in my recovery and is at the heart of the novel I've been trying to write for the last 16 years GUT: Nuts and Bolts. He is surrounded in the dream by bloody rotting pieces of what I slowly realize is a dismembered giraffe. I am filled with rage and I yell at him "What are you doing leaving this rotting mess in here? All the bacteria is going to infect everyone else!" it ends with me howling a final ultimate threat, "I'm going to call your mom!" I realized when I woke up that that sunroom was where my family surrounded my ghastly drug addled self and did the heartfelt intervention that led to me going to treatment. I was really surprised by the Giraffe as this was a totally new addition to my shamanic dream animal pantheon. So a couple of weeks later, when a friend Duncan was presenting a video at the local Institute of Noetic Sciences meeting on Marshall Rosenberg’s non-violent communication and the e-mail talked about “Giraffe language” I knew I had to follow that long necked synchronicity. In the video he presented, Marshall had a hilarious way of explaining his radical approach to defanging our language. He used jackal and a giraffe handpuppets to comedically illustrate the difference between the violent divisive language of the mind and the healing unifying language of the heart. I discovered that this language of the heart is called Giraffe language because the Giraffe has the largest heart of all of the land mammals. And then to top it off, at one point in the conversation I looked behind me and was surprised to see a little stuffed Giraffe that some child had left perched in the window sill of the Friend’s meeting house. I got the crawling feeling that I was being stalked by Giraffe! So at the end of the discussion when Duncan invited us all to a Giraffe gathering the following weekend at a place nearby called Bumpity Road I was there. It was a wonderful group of big hearted seekers stretching way up high to get that yummy hard to reach green. While communing in the sun filled meeting room with that circle of green and growing people, I felt parts of my heart that had become infected lately with the bacteria of resentment and judgment towards the addicts that I work with fill with antiseptic compassion. In the radiant glow of the springtime sunshine, in the loving company of the Bumpity family, I remembered Giraffe.

Scott Free...the right glove of the Father: Black...Whole

One of the things I want to track with this blog is the play of coincidence, large and small. Here is a funny small one: Last weekend, I manged to fulfill my yearly ritual of losing one of my winter gloves. I keep them stuffed in the pockets of my winter jacket, overflowing precariously, and inevitably one falls out at some point. Luckily this year it happened at the tipping point into spring. I did all the requisite footwork of backtracking through my weekend and inquiring into all of the safe places it could've landed, but I had no luck, no glove. Then, at the end of the day Monday, as I was walking to my car from work, just after my cold right hand made the thought of my recent loss flash into my consciousness, I noticed a haggard looking glove sticking straight out of a chain link fence. I went closer, and was surprised to see that it was a right handed glove of the exact same make as the one I'd just lost, a Scott mitten. It had been wedged in between the post and the beginning of the fence, and it took considerable yanking to pry it loose. The only difference between this glove and the one I lost was that this glove was XL instead of L. So one way I interpreted this cute little whisper from the universe was that my right hand O' the father power which has always been more problematic for me was healing and expanding to the degree that I am going to need more space for it. My second thought was to send out a beam of gratitude and healing to my frustrated soul glove partner who wedged the glove into that fence. I imagine them losing their left glove and giving up hope after a desperate search for it's lost partner. I see them in a fit of indignant frustration wedging the lonely suicidal right one into a permanent grief filled salute to it's absent better half. I love imagining it this way, the poetic unity of a deathly gesture of protest against the meaningless cruelty of a hopelessly unpaired universe leading mysteriously, circuitously, to a happy rebirth ending. One glove abandoned in sorrow and doubt, being transformed through happy accident and magical re purposing into a faith (and hand) warming emblem of grace for me. This little glimpse into the sweet interconnected singularity at the center of everything, the story of this black glove whole, gave me just the boost I needed to snap me out of my winter post-divorce doldrums. UPDATE: Writing this inspired me to give that glove a wash last night and it was, to quote a favorite line from a Peter Mulvey song Thirty "as dirty as a mitten in a winter street"! By the sheer volume of street that leeched from it, I think the more likely story is that someone lost that glove and it got tromped through the street slush for a bit until a psychic passerby picked it up and put it in that prominent place hoping to facilitate a tearful reunion with it's owner. But then I came by and did a little shamanic slight of hand to pad and warm my own sad story! If that is the real story, I can only hope for an even exchange where some other anonymous matchmaker finds my glove and runs it up some flagpole where it is sighted with joy and surprise by the forlorn owner of my pilfered mitten. Then on some dark icy future day we'll run into each other in some cosmic parking lot and notice we are a mirror image of lopsided Scott gloves. Then I hope we can forgive each other and exchange our lost fostered gloves for a better fit.

Obama and Hillary embody the Astrology of 2012

OK, so for those of you who don't follow astrology, the astrological energy underpinning the big shift of 2012 that has everyone atwitter with expectation is a square between Pluto and Uranus (90 degree angle). If you want to know more, read Rick Tarnas' wonderful book Psyche and Cosmos, and get the bigger picture of how the outer planet aspect cycles have coincided quite precisely with archetypal waves of planetary change throughout the history of civilization. The last period when Pluto and Uranus were in a “hard” aspect (conjunctions, oppositions and squares) was the conjunction of 1964-1968, and we can look to that period to get an idea of dramatic change tsunami that is fast approaching. We have just entered within the 10 degree orb of influence of this building energy, so we are getting our first glimpse at its potential future influence. And it appears that our first taste of this coming cosmic conflict is taking place through the squaring off of Hilary and Obama in this democratic primary race, each of whom embody in their astrology one of these two planetary archetypes.

After a misty eyed moment of inspiration watching the Yes We Can music video for Obama that's been electrifying the Internet, I finally got off my butt and dug deeper into the astrology behind the two Democratic contenders and I was amazed at what I found. I use the nodes of the moon as a central focus in my astrology readings. They help pierce the veil of the personality and get down to the core soul energies that are really running the show. I highly recommend Jan Spiller's book Astrology for the Soul if you'd like to know more about the nodes. The south node is associated with our past lives and the north node with our current soul’s desire. Generally, when we are moving in the direction of our North node, there is energy and support from the universe and our projects go smoothly. This is because things are juicy and new and our souls are excited. Conversely, when we operate from our old soul habits and return to the familiar territory of our south node, it's harder to be passionate about our projects, and they tend to be dead in the water energetically. Those old hat roles bore our souls and our projects tend to fall flat. Now, because the nodes are always opposite pairs, it's easy to look at them as I just have, as diametric opposites with the north node positive and the south node negative, but of course, on the soul level time doesn’t exist. And in Vedic astrology, both of the nodes, Ketu, the dragon’s head, and Rahu, the dragon’s tail, are considered problematic. I think this is because both being stuck in old roles and projecting towards future goals can throw us out of the fullness of the moment. The Ideal then is a balanced, flowing both/and approach where we use the experiences and gifts of our past incarnations but we make sure to apply them in a fresh new direction. Our current personality then can act as a rainbow bridge, unifying all of our past and future incarnations into one big kundalini dragon filled flowing moment of soul. It is with regard to their capacity to achieve this ideal rainbow bridging synthesis where I see the biggest difference between Obama and Hilary astrologically.

Obama has the south node in Aquarius, which is ruled by Uranus, the planet of lightning like revolutionary change that first came into our consciousness in 1781, just after the radical birth pangs of this nation. Archetypally, it is associated with that same energy of liberty, equality, and brotherhood. So while Obama’s current personality may still be a little green, he has the deep Aquarian soul knowledge that we desperately need at this point to recreate unity, democracy, and community in this country. And he has his Sun, Mercury, and Uranus all in Leo, the sign of his north node, with Uranus actually conjoined to his North Node. The sun shining bright in its sign of rulership gives his personality the Leonine courage and strength it needs to successfully bring forward his Aquarian soul wisdom and lead us through this next great wave of Uranian Change. I believe that if we can empower him to lead, there will be crystal clarity around right use of power and fidelity to democratic principles that we have not seen in a long time in this country, if ever. I believe that he will use his position of power (Leo) to empower the collective (Uranus).

Hillary, conversely, has her south node in Scorpio along with the Sun, Mercury and Venus. Her Venus, the planet of the heart chakra and the ruler of her Taurus north node, is in its detriment in Scorpio. It is also in a tight square with Mars and Pluto, the two rulers of Scorpio. So her personality structure, her Plutonian heart of darkness if you will, tends to prevent the full Taurus flowering of her soul’s desires, keeping her mired in swampy Scorpionic power plays based on never ending cycles of resentment and retribution. Politically, she brings with her a cabal of old guard political figures that would most likely populate her cabinet, many of whom have shadowy pasts and blood on their hands. Pluto, which came into our consciousness in 1930, is associated with the energy of that period, the black hole vacuum of worldwide depression that set the stage for the will to power and control of Nazism, Fascism, Communism and Corporatism that culminated in the great struggle for world dominance of WWII. The atomic bomb shows the lengths that Pluto is willing to go to for power and control. Pluto rules by fear and threat, fighting cold wars marked by shadowy abuses of power and undemocratic old school solutions. Look to the Godfather or the smoking man and his group in the X-files for how Pluto “takes care” of its problems. Hilary’s support for GATT and NAFTA are examples of her tendency to support these kind of undemocratic Plutonic power structures. On the positive side, as long as it’s used for a higher purpose, Hillary’s dark Kali energy could be very helpful right now as that kind of vicious tenacity is the only language that the crusty old Republican guard seems to understand. Ammachi’s sanctum sanctorum at her Ashram is occupied by Kali.

So, while both Pluto and Uranus bring great change, the methods to their change making are quite distinct. Pluto is more secretive and behind the scenes and unscrupulous, Uranus is more transparent and collaborative and principled. Pluto’s tends to be more reactive, trying to achieve its transformation by force, power, and control while Uranus is more proactive, inspiring others to join in a liberating collective vision. The Pluto Uranus square of 2012 will take place with Pluto in Capricorn and Uranus in Aries. I suspect that one of the major conflicts of this period will be between corporate (Capricorn) power (Pluto) and the freedom and rights (Uranus) of the individual (Aries). Again there are parallels to our two democratic contenders. Hillary is much more tied into and beholden to the old political and corporate power structure, demonstrated by her support of the Iraq war and her 6 years on the Wal-Mart board of directors during its pivotal tumorous growth period. Obama, on the other hand, has more grassroots support and authentic connection to the collective as evinced by his Opposition to the Iraq war from the beginning and his chosen legal focus fighting for people on the fringes as a civil rights attorney.

I think in an ideal world Obama and Hillary would share the ticket, and perhaps even create the template for a whole new dynamic of shared power and collaboration between President and Vice president, an enlightened co-leadership. We have actually have a template for that kind of co-leadership in the Bush/Cheney axis of stupidity/evil. We just need to flip the script. Instead of Bush’s dry drunk rage and stupidity slowly destroying our tenuous web of shared humanity, we can have Lightning Rod Obama with his brilliant inspirational oratory, weaving a new unified world community and igniting a new dream of peaceful interbeing. Instead of Darth Cheney running the Death Star from his shadowy bunker, we could have Kali Hillary doing her own heavy hitting behind the scenes for the cause, chopping crazy talking heads and leading great counterrevolutionary enema purges to wash out the truly evil shits still clinging to power in Washington. But then I looked at the synestry between Obama’s and Hillary’s charts, and the program that I use gave them a number of 95 percent tension (lots of “hard” aspects) and only 25 percent harmony (not much in the “soft” aspect category..trines, sextiles). I haven’t been using that program for long, but they have the highest tension between two people that I’ve seen so far. So I worry that there will be a lot of mud-slinging and debilitating hard ball attacks over the next several months that would make such a creative unified solution impossible. This is all tense energy, but it’s also a tremendous amount of energy, and if they could harness that dynamic friction between them and honor each other’s soul energy, I think that they could transmute it within the container of a sacred committed running mate relationship and be quite the archetypal Uranus and Pluto duo. But if that’s not possible I at least pray that we don’t end up with a smoke filled Plutonian backroom full of super delegates overruling the popular vote, deciding the race for Hillary, and reopening our old wounds of disenfranchisement and division. So, though my Heart of Aquarius longs for Obama here in the rarified air of Aquarius, I hope and pray most of all for a clean fight with a minimum of shadowy antics and negativity which leads to an integrated solution that we can all rally behind by convention time. And I pray that that integration will create a foundational building block, a block that will give us all a step up towards the quantum leap of 2012.

Googlemancy

Ok, so recently I dreamed I was floating outside a trailer full of people singing kirtan with words about manifestation. I was looking at the underside of the trailer where there were rainbow wave interference patterns that danced along with the music. They were beautifuly entrancing. I then floated down into a peacful temple garden in front of a wooden statue of a god or goddess that I couldn't quite identify. When I turned to look around the area a black and gold cobra was right behind me poised to strike, and before I could react, it bit me in right in the balls! I pulled it off but I looked down at the fangs still lodged in my nuts and thought, "I'm full of cobra venom...FUCK!" Later, while I was sharing that dream with my dream group, ’d received an e-mail from a fellow dream teacher in training who had just moved to Bombay. So I decided to do some “Googlemancy” and I googled golden cobra + Bombay and the first hit was this article about a musical fundraiser to preserve an ancient holy spot.

He explained the significance of the sacred spot: "When Lord Chaitanya first adopted the outward dress of a sanyasi monk he travelled down the east coast of India to the holy town of Puri, accompanied by Nityananda Prabhu, who broke his bamboo sanyasi staff and threw it into a nearby river, protesting that God Himself should not have to carry a staff of renunciation. There is a prediction written hundreds of years ago that the wooded island where this pastime took place would be a source of spiritual strength for multitudes of devotees and that Jaganath would come to live there.

A holy man living on the island recently had a dream of a specific tree in a distant village from which Jagannatha would be carved. Upon reaching this village the holy man and his group saw that this tree was being worshipped by the villagers. On enquiring he was informed that the tree had been planted hundreds of years ago by an associate of Lord Chaitanya who predicted that one day in hundreds of years time someone would come and ask if the tree could be used to carve deities of Jagannatha. The villagers had been waiting for this day for generations! As if to further confirm that this tree was actually for Jaganath, a golden cobra was discovered sleeping on the tree the morning after it was ceremonially felled. A golden cobra is said to appear very near a 'Jaganath tree' that is seen in a dream". The link between seventies pop stars and a sacred spot in India may seem tenuous, but the plan of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu for the worldwide spreading of the sankirtan movement can involve every single man, woman and child - each of us in our own special way.

So it was wild how this mysterious post tied together all of the elements of my dream: the kirtan singing, the wooden statue and the mystical golden cobra…Someday I’ll have to go to Jagannatha temple in Puri and see what magic happens. For now, I'm honoring the dream by diving deeper into kirtan music and keeping a watchful eye out for venomous ball biters....Also, the golden and black cobra recently popped up in an interesting way in Tom Kenyon's book the Magdalen Manuscript which I got for Christmas. According to this channeling, the golden cobra was the symbol of the Isis cult that Mary Magdalen was initiated into. She used her sex magic training to help Jesus raise his kundalini and charge his KA body up so that he could do what he did. I much prefer this jucier version of how Jesus raised his game. The book also mentions that in Indian Tantra the black and gold cobras are the two kundalini serpents spinning the chakras, the two currents ida and pingala that when turned up the spine and raised to the crown enlighten us with liquid singing starlight...