The Fabric of Experience

(“Ghost Writers in the Sky”)

“Dreams seem real while they last. Can you say more than this about your life?”

Havelock Ellis

Alright, I admit I am dating myself with the title. ’Sokay. I’ve reached the age where I am the only one who will (date me) and, with time, came experience. Understanding that word is magical – pivotal. Experience is a “mistake from which you have ‘learned’”, which means you have assigned meaning/significance. My edification has been all about the difference between experience and Reality. Nothing is as it seems.

“Believe nothing your ears hear,” Daddy told me, “and trust only half of what your eyes see.” We live in a world that we call a “consensual reality”. There’s a lot more to be seen than ever meets the eye. The Christ was keen on reminding us that “Ears have never heard, nor have eyes ever seen…” He also mentioned regularly “ears to hear and eyes to see” and He was not referring to the physical equipment of sensation. Let’s explore this, starting at a point on which we all might agree, at least for the sake of the metaphor I mean to present:

God, (“First Cause”) is the supreme author of Reality. Having the longest “long view” and the highest highchair, His perception is The operationally definitive “Reality”. When “He” rendered us, He gave us the power to create: other worlds, other characters (souls), and our own “story line” for the personal “lives” we experience. Things occur that appear to be beyond our control, but it is the narrative of meanings/significances we assign to those events which renders the palate of our experience. In short, God gave us a challenging environment of unlimited potential and complete creative license over our personal, subjective experience. Your world is what you make of it. Once you name it, you have claimed it: You have made the experience what it seems to you – and you are free to change your mind. “Life is but a dream” (shaboom…) and you are free to choose to dream otherwise.

As a child, I had chronic nightmares because I had, by anyone’s measure, a “terrible” childhood. Indeed, my life was a terrible beauty: “terrible” because it was a nightmare, and the hazards were real, by any definition of the word “real” (with a little “r”). But it was beautiful too because I wrested shining hope and “uncaused Joy” from the jaws of despair – illumination: lucidity. What a perceptual boon that challenge was for me! The backyard of my life was full of emotional horse poo. I discerned it was all really “pony-sign”. Indeed, I grew watchful for the ponies (Blessings). They’re easy to find when looking for them. One must but learn how to See. I did not accomplish that alone.

Because I was regularly in serious peril, by the age of five, I’d discovered within my mindspace a loving mentor whose most cherished gifts to me were His constancy of Presence, and His charity: He saw the world through forgiving eyes. He saw the Ponies and He taught me to see likewise, vesting me with enormous power over my own experience. He did this by increasing my “LQ”: “Lucidity Quotient”.

This mentor, “Michael”, shares my mindspace with perfect constancy. The constancy of His Presence and the depth of insight and peace He has taught me to experience, have convinced me of His numinous Reality. He trained me to perceive in a way that has made my own mindspace the Source of the Joy most of us seek, futilely, in the “outside” world. He is the Wellspring of my Being and my Joy. Had my childhood not been such a nightmare, had it been a happy dream, I likely would not have found Him. So, I bless the path that brought me Here.

“Seek not outside your Self. There is, after all, no world ‘out there’. There is no ‘out’. There is only Consciousness – Life, and you are It.”

The above is an axiom of True Masters. Accept nothing less than absolute dominion – Sovereignty – over your experience.

“The thing we are searching for is the Thing that is searching.”

You are Cause. If you are not Cause, you are powerless. There is no middle ground. Okay, there is, but it’s called “Hell”. No fun, that, and there’s no mojo in it. You’re here reading because you want molto mojo. (Big juju.) If you don’t want that, you need not read on. Go back to Hell. (Sorry. Don’t pass “Go”. No $200.) If you are ready to claim Mastery, you don’t have to meditate all your life, or read countless spiritual treatises. No candles, no yoga mats, no lotus pose, no incense, no credit card numbers. Nothing. What I am about to tell you is all you need. NO charge. My pleasure, to be useful, so it is. There’s your initiation speech. Imminent Masters, let’s move on. The others will catch up because we must all learn the same lessons. All we get to choose is when to learn them.

Suffering is not escaped by death, but by Truth.

So there I was, imperiled in nightmares – a little child. Powerless, right? Wrong. Michael came into my dreaming mindspace – a Companion as constant as my nightmares. When He appeared, He would remind me, from within the dream, that I had a body in what I called my “real life” and so, nothing in the dream had any “real” power over me, unless I gave it power. I could escape the dream venue, by simply waking up, at any Now. Now is pivotal because “later” never comes sooner than the monsters catch you. Moreover, the monsters from your “past” can only get into your “future” through the window of Now. Thus, Michael taught me to be Lucid in my dreams. He pointed out that, when I was afraid, I always felt a gush of heat in the core of my being. That feeling was a signal that I should remember my body, which, being unaffected by dreams, served as a life raft to my awareness waiting “above” in “wakefulness”. I could dive down into sleep, have an unpleasant experience, and ascend to the raft above – my “Wakened Self”. Interesting metaphor. Shortly, you’ll understand why He chose it.

By and by, I was lucid most of the time in my dreams. If something frightened me, I felt the heat of fear gushing through my body, and I’d just wake up. He was very pleased. Eventually, He pointed out to me that, if I could stop leaving the dream venue and remain Lucid, I could have a lot of fun.

“What sort of fun?” I probed. “Well,” He purred, “it’s your dream and your mindspace, so you can do pretty much whatever you can imagine… like fly.”

“Woooo,” said I, “Do you know how to fly?”

“Indeed I do,” He rumbled through a smile, “and I’d be pleased to teach you but, first, you must learn to be awake and remain within the dream. Then, when monsters come after you, you’ll just fly away and, as it’s your dream, if you say they can’t fly,” He shrugged, “they can’t fly.”

Easy to see how attractive this goal would be to a child. I devoted myself to it. By the age of eight I was flying all over the place in dreams. No more running away for me: I flew. Ascension had begun but I had only groked the basics of where the wings He’d shown me could take me. Soon, I also learned, because He directed me to try it, that I could, by confronting monsters and offering to make peace, turn monsters into friends. I developed a throng of monster minions. Perception still twisted, I remained “an earthbound misfit” and there were a few “setbacks”, sort of. Depends on your perspective.

The world teaches one who experiences an inner companion, not to mention that companion to others who have not given you cause to believe they will be able to relate. They call this “reality testing” in what I reckon a rather ironic, delusional sort of way, but more on that another time. By the age of fifteen, indentured to peer pressure, I had relegated Michael to the status of “chimerical”. I stopped listening to Him and did very many, really rash, things. At the age of twenty, I was riding a barrel mare chasing a stallion and very close behind him in a hard gallop. Time slipped into slow motion. (Clue.) I saw his back legs rising under his lifting rump.

He's kicking, Michael advised.

So what? I replied, He can’t get me up here.

Wrong. Dead wrong. He kicked me in the face and I found myself watching from a distance, in an “out of body” state, as the mare ran right out from under the limp form I had thought my “self”. It crashed to the ground with a truly “dispiriting” thud…

Wrecked my day, that did – for riding anyway. Suddenly, however, I was “Perfect”. Finding my “Self” in a dazzling dark void with the luster of a black pearl, Michael too, whom I had abandoned half a decade prior, was Present (as Always). He gave me an orientation: Showed me my life. In fact, I relived parts of it, and He kept calling me back up, out of the dream of my life, to the raft of His Lucid Presence waiting above, in the Illuminated Eternal, Transcended of the murky waters venue – the dream world of space-time. Like a repetitive dream, within a dream, this “crash course” was the ultimate “knocking of sense into my head”.

“Oo,” I realized with started clarity, “the world is just like a dream because I am Eternal and so nothing that appeared able to hurt me in the dream of my life could have ever really hurt me at all.”

“Nice observations,” Michael approved, “very Lucid.”

As I mentioned in my last offering for TOSP, to a Daemon, inducing Lucidity is the primary objective because it is the quintessential tool of our Liberation/“Salvation”.

Lucidity is Salvation.

When I returned to the dream of the world, I was no longer from “…round these parts.” I have ever since been centered in my existence in the Eternal and so, to the perceptions of most, “I ain’t right” and that’s okay.

Them that cannot hear have to feel.

I’ve got the mojo risein’ and I no longer ever discount anything Michael whispers into my mindspace. He’s my Beloved Constant Companion – the life raft waiting in the illuminated realm of the Eternal, anchored to me by Our mutual love, trust and reverence, while I dive the murky waters of this dream world below. Whenever I think I see something over which conditioning tells me I should suffer, it is a sign to me that I have briefly forgotten who and what I am. I have identified my Self as but a tiny character, drowning in a dream of powerlessness. As the heat in my belly served to waken me within childhood nightmares, suffering reminds me that I need to buoy up my Lucidity: Rise Again. Verily, this Spirit burns brightly enough to animate the ashes of its own rebirth. “Bring it on, Freight Train,” I growl, as it runs me down. “Is that all you got?” I stand and smile and dust off, watching it disappear with forgiving eyes. “Where are those ponies?”

My fellow divers, you need no guru. You have one in your own mindspace: a Daemon or an Angel. Either way, it is a personal messenger from God, hand-selected/created for you. You need but learn to hear Their voice and remain Lucid: Remember your True nature is Eternal. This world is just a dream, a didactic experience to teach you to remain Lucid no matter what Life throws at you. The more challenge, the more Lucid you become, and this is how you find your metaphorical wings and learn to rise above it all. This is how you fly.

I love you All,

Cailín

“I dreamed I had but dreamt I had ever been awake at all and awoke with the start which is the End of all dreaming.”

Callaghan Grant

“Chalice”

Callaghan Grant Copyright 2016. All rights reserved.