The international SETI community receives a Nobel prize and gather to celebrate. I am among them, but am a little dismayed that they are not coordinated and organized better. In the late afternoon, I give a talk which helps give focus and organization to the group as a whole. (more…)
I am visiting a friend on Nesodden. She lives in a beautiful house, in an equally beautiful location, but is thinking of selling it for something smaller and more appropriate to her life. After leaving in the evening, I end up on a long adventure with someone else. We arrive at one amazing and beautiful place after another. Amazing natural formations and rivers. Old and beautiful houses with a great deal of character.
I pass by a wise old man, and he delivers a string of sayings and pointers. One is “the cosmic is the cure for the mature human”.
I am a close friend with a Jewish family. There is a growing hostility towards Jews in the community, and one day - while I am visiting but in another area of the house - the family disappears. I notice my fear of speaking up against the almost universal hostility, recognizing that I will almost surely meet the same fate as them if I do, and instead try to find a way to either help or escape unnoticed.
I am at an event with many other attendees, including Siv Jensen, the head of FrP, a liberal-conservative party in Norway. We end up talking, and it turns out that we had far more in common than I suspected. (My political views are as far from hers as they can be, on most issues.) She even pulls up a series of books from her purse which are identical to several of my favorites from my time in Oslo: books by Alf Larsen, Goethe, classics such as Sir Gawain and the Green Night and so on. There is a strong and felt sense of connection.
Two friends of mine are publishing a string of books and documentaries related to anthropology, religion, social inequalities, health and well-being.
I am at a techno-oriented expo. As I walk around, someone insists that I try a spiffy and fast little electric car. I agree, drive down an isle at the fair, through a door and down a corridor. It turns out that the expo is held in a wing of an large European palace, similar to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. I race around in corridors and rooms and halls with beautiful artwork, and beautiful living quarters still in use by royalty and visitors. Eventually, the guards caught up with me and several people are quite upset. I feel uncomfortable and give a pitiful excuse of not having been shown how to stop or steer the car, although I obviously know having raced around the palace.
When I place this dream in a nutshell, I find three main ingredients: Being cavalier, a little nonchalant and careless. Going outside of norms and expectations. And being mortified, slightly ashamed.
I discover that I can put my arm - up to my shoulder - into and through anything. It is a new discovery for me, and yet it feels familiar, natural and mostly unsurprising. It happens with ease. Others are mildly surprised and at first assume it is a trick, although cannot understand how it is done.
I woke up from a dream (fuzzy on the details) where I traveled around and engaged in a variety of activities. It was all enjoyable, rich and meaningful. There was also a sense that it didn’t really amount to anything, which was partly what made it so enjoyable and rich. There was a freedom in it.
A friend of mine from the Zen center is in prison and is given a death sentence. I and others of his friends read through the documents but don’t understand it all at first glance.
When I woke up following this dream, I took the opportunity to be with the experiences that came up, including a slight sense of dread. Allowing the experience gave a sense of softness around it and a sense of sweetness mixed in with the initial emotions. It then opened up and the experience shifted into a sense of a nurturing fullness, mixed in with some sadness and a sense of being sobered up.
After a few minutes, I explored how this is true for me. How am I already in a prison? In what way am I given a death sentence?
I see a book with a selection of Buddhist verses, each with a commentary by the Dalai Lama. It is a beautiful book with one verse on each page. The commentary for the first verse talks about freedom outside of and within stories, and the importance of emphasizing freedom within stories for those with a western mindset.
This is something has drawn my interest in waking life as well.
I am visiting back at Kanzeon in Salt Lake City. The center seems different each time I visit. This time, they have several large buildings, as before, but many more people. I arrive during lunch, and there must be more than a hundred people there eating together. Some outside, as me, and some inside in the buildings around. The meal is fresh, nourishing and made with care. It is a very diverse group, including many homeless or others who cannot afford regular and healthy meals, and who may also be hungry for the type of connection found here.
I am in charge of inviting people to a New Years party. As the party is about to start, I see a homeless man there, apparently inviting himself. Even for a homeless man, he seems to be at the bottom of the heap. I ignore him, hoping he will go away on his own, and mentally prepare to do what is needed to have him leave. A woman welcomes him wholeheartedly and without reservation. I am surprised by how she is so unreserved in welcoming him, and even more surprised when I realize that he is fully awakened and lives it with a great deal of life experience and wisdom. Far more than just about anyone else I am aware of. Other homeless people show up, and are now welcomed wholeheartedly as well, by me and others there.
There is a panel discussion of some sort, and I am in the panel. At some point, the others share their impressions of me and these are not very favorable. I am mortified.
Most have one or more recurrent childhood dreams. I had the typical one of flying, and a nightmarish one as well.
I climb up the pull-down ladder to the attic. As my upper body enters the attic, I fall. The ladder and floor disappear, and I fall through darkness. Suddenly, below me I see a large cauldron stirred by a witch. She looks up and grins at me.
The pull-down ladder to the attic was in the house I grew up in, and it was always exiting - and a little scary - to climb up it and into the attic. I would wake up before falling into the cauldron, with the image of the witch grinning up at me etched in my mind.
A baby Buddha looks to be three or four years old, although he is newly born. His insights - and ability to combine familiar elements in new ways - goes beyond all the many current and past Buddhas. They have prepared the ground for him, as others did for them, and he in turn will do for future Buddhas.
I am led by a guide into a secret Buddhist city, ancient and new at the same time. It contains all the wisdom of Buddhism and beyond, and research is being conducted into every subject under the sun. A man greets me in a small central office. He tells me, cheerily, that I am to learn all the knowledge in the city, not only once but ten times over. I say that it is not only hopeless but futile, and he says “yes, that is exactly what you will learn. It can’t be done, insight is endless, and it won’t get you what you desire the most.”
There is an group of smaller bays just north of San Francisco used for processing the waste from San Francisco. I vist on bay where they process used clothes. Large plastic bags with used clothes are dropped in the water, and a whole community of people gather them up, sort and ship it off to where it can be reused. The area is lush, green and beautiful, and the community is a little town nestled in a hillside. I am slightly ambivalent at first, seeing the people as grimy and wrinkled, but my perception of them changes. I am attracted to the closeness of the community. It seems to be a naturally well functioning intentional community.
I am with two or three woman healers and there is a sense of shared essence and quiet understanding among us. I notice how beautiful it is that it is naturally expressed differently for each of us. One of them gives me a long kiss on the cheek, and there is a sense of a stream of sweet nectar flowing from the kiss into and filling my heart.
I am taking over my father’s house. Although similar to what I remember and am familiar with, it is all also slightly different.
Two neighborhood kids are used to having free reign in the house. They retreat to the basement when I arrive, and leave completely after I am firm and persistent with them for a while. Their father walks his dog in the yard and is upset with me, but I am firm and clear with him as well.
There is a sense of it being necessary for me to be firm, clear and stand my ground for a while, until it all realigns.
There is a flying event where we are to fly to Paris and then Copenhagen using balloons. I am on a three person team, and design a combination of a hang-glider and a hot-air balloon that is fast and maneuverable. We get a little exuberant and fly low along a road, but have to steer off the road when a truck comes towards us. We crash and take a day off. It turns out that my two team members design a new craft on their own, but one that only floats and is not fast nor maneuverable. I plan on redesigning it.
Amnesia I return to where I used to live (a spacious, artistically decorated loft apartment with a co-housing feel), but don’t remember anything. Everything - memories, skills, passions - are gone.
Secret Project A tycoon has some of his people working on a secret project which will come to fruition in 5-6 years time. I am somehow in the center of the project, as the one who will bring it to the world. The only condition is that I keep it an absolute secret until then.
A lion has escaped. It is one that I know well, and it seeks me out and is very friendly and playful. I am a little concerned at first, but then realize it is all OK.
Day residue: I was in Ashland this weekend, noticing the banners of a golden lion on a red background. (or the Shakespeare festival, I assume.) I mentioned to Jen that the banner is similar to the coat of arms of Norway. There was also a toy store we walked by a few times with lots of stuffed lions and lion books in the display window.
I am with a group of teachers, and they are all enthusiastically sharing how the world of form continues to deepen and evolve before and after awakening. It is a continuing process of exploration. They use a Buddhist term for this unfolding, and although I am familiar with the term I didn’t realize it referred to the inseparability of ground and evolution.
All of these teachers are people I know in waking life, either in person or through their teachings. They are teachers who tend to emphasize the awakening aspect and de-emphasize -or leave out - the development/evolution aspect. And this tends to bug me somewhat.
In the dream, all of them emphasize both aspects equally and with great enthusiasm, and use a term from traditional Buddhism which refers to the inseparability of the two. There is a deep sense of this equal emphasis being an integral part of all mystical traditions, although teachings tends to - for different reasons - emphasize one or the other.
Unusual things are happening. A series of people I don’t know try to connect with me in peculiar ways. I am cautious at first, but then decide to talk with one of them. They want to recruit me to help with catching large scale international drug traders. I will play a small but important part in gaining their confidence, and others will collect the evidence and go in for the catch. It is dangerous. I ask why they want me. They say they need someone they can trust, someone who is sincere and honest. There are not many who has the degree of sincerity and honesty they need. I accept, especially since they are going after the largest fish, the ones who often go free when the smaller ones are caught.
I am in Antarctica with my wife and a group of other people in their twenties and thirties. We ice skate, kayak, row in inflatable boats, swim in dry suits, and overall have a great deal of fun. There is a sense of being completely at home in this clear, brilliant, stark and immensely beautiful place on earth.
We are here together for a few weeks before heading home, and I realize that I would like to stop over and experience the deserts in Australia on my way home to Norway.
I help one guy with his skates, and I notice he is buoyant somehow. It turns out that there is an anti-gravity effect around him, which helps him in his professional ice skating.
I see what is left to be worked through, represented as a black rectangle with some substance and thickness.
This was a dream image that stayed with me after I woke up.
It has a sense of something that needed to be exhausted through practice and effort. And also that they exhausting itself is the point of it.
I am on a beach and wade out to a small island of sand. As I arrive, a large group of orcas of different sizes stream around both sides of the island. I am drawn to them and experience a sense of intimacy with them, but there is also some fear coming up.
This seems very familiar in my daily life. I am drawn to something and experience a sense of intimacy, but there is also a little fear coming up, a slight hesitation. In the dream, as in daily life, the attraction and warmth envelops and is there in more abundance than the fear.
In daily life, this dynamic comes up towards people and groups, sometimes towards specific activities, and also towards shadow/disowned parts of myself.
It is interesting to see how dream themes come up in the days before and after a dream. I noticed yesterday, the day after the Himalaya dream, a pattern that I only later connected with the dream.
For a few days, I had purposely gone into stressful thoughts to take them to inquiry, and also gone into unpleasant emotions so I could fully allow them and be with them., and noticed I had gotten a little stuck in that mode. So I decided to do some heart centered practices to lift it up a little, including the practices of rejoicing in other’s happiness, and prayer for the happiness and awakening of all beings, that I know from the Tibetan tradition.
I then realized that this mirrors exactly the dream. I purposely went down into the abyss, into the stressful thoughts and unpleasant emotions. And then climbed up to the top of the plateau again using a rope ladder, guided by a Tibetan teacher. Or as it happened that day, climbed up using a simple made-made device, the practices, and guided by Tibetan teachings.
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