Just wanted to say thanks to everyone who has stopped by over the past year, and to let you know I'm going to be moving most of my new entries over to a new journal at:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/quantumshaman/

While I'm not abandoning my bravejournal, I'm just finding that most of my friends are over there, so it seems to make sense.  Hope some of my friends from bravenet will take a peek at my new journal.  I'd love to hear from you over there.

Many blessings,
Della

All material in this blog (essays, rants, images, poetry, et al) is copyright © by Della Van Hise, and may not be reprinted elsewhere without the prior written permission of the author.  This includes all print and electronic media, including other blogs, other websites, and so on.  Thanks for respecting copyrights.

The nights here in the desert have been silent of late, and though that may be perceived as a good thing, I have come to wonder over the past few weeks what has become of the coyotes.  Normally throughout the summer months, they may be counted upon to prowl the empty desert across the street, engaging in a myriad of lullabyes and war cries and lonely ballads to the crisp, clean edges of a sliver moon as it slides behind the mountains to the west.

Instead, for several weeks, I have not heard a single coyote.  And, indeed, there is evidence that other forms of wildlife have noticed their absence as well.  Jackrabbits who are normally skittish have been walking up onto my front porch on their hind legs - looking somewhat like small children in rabbit suits with their long ears lolling lazily to the side as they pluck through bird seed looking for some special treasures.  Under normal circumstances, the rabbits do not come up onto the porch because it essentially traps them should a predator come calling - and coyotes are well known for their unpredictability.  Contrary to myth, they are not solitary night stalkers, but may hunt at any time of the day.

Additionally, during the summer months it is customary to hear the ungodly screech of what I have come to call the sentinel squirrels - sentries who position themselves atop tall rocks or bushes to keep an eye out for approaching predators.  Of course, the mailman or the UPS guy may qualify every bit as much as a coyote or perigrin falcon, but suffice it to say even the sentinel squirrels have been ominously silent, and so unconcerned squirrels mill about the cactus garden as if having forgotten the nature of the predatory universe, and entire coveys of quail roam the yard with seemingly not a care in the world.  Their numbers are larger than I have ever seen them - normally by this time of year, the amount of young ones following their parents have dwindled to the 3 or 4 who have survived the summer predators.  This year, it is not uncommon to see the parents being trailed by 10 or more "teenagers".  Normally, the youngsters may be observed gazing frantically from side to side as they pay heed to the possibility of attack from any angle.  Now, their existence seems altogether idyllic.  No fear.

Even the owls who normally call to one another during the early part of the evening have been strangely absent.  In the course of the summer, I have heard them only one night, and that was several weeks ago.  It's as if the desert has become a strangely silent garden of Eden - which, of course, is usually only a prelude to some great catastrophe.  The predators have all gone away, and the prey seems to have forgotten it is prey as a result.

There is a sense of serene forboding.  Something is afoot.

All material in this blog (essays, rants, images, poetry, et al) is copyright © by Della Van Hise, and may not be reprinted elsewhere without the prior written permission of the author.  This includes all print and electronic media, including other blogs, other websites, and so on.  Thanks for respecting copyrights.

Is there such a thing as justice/karma or is the universe completely amoral?

I personally have seen no evidence to support the idea of karma as it is commonly (mis)understood, and imho, the universe itself is entirely unconcerned even with our very existence.  In that regard, I see it more as the stage upon which we walk, a setting rather than a character.  For it to be moral or even amoral would imply a sentience at some level, and other than the ascended sentience of all those singularities of consciousness, I've seen nothing to indicate that the universe even notices we are here at all.

To me, the idea of karma is something of a scapegoat for people who want to blame their woes or attribute their seeming good fortune to something other than their own actions in the Now.  Granted, the actions we take in the Now will certainly have consequences in the future (and, to a sorcerer, even in the past, through retroactive enchantment), but in the quantum vision of it all, this can all be tracked straight back to the individual herself. 

With that said... gotta admit that sometimes the universe does seem to be "out to get me".  Or, on the opposite side of the coin, I will have incredible runs of good luck.  So while I don't attribute it to karma, I do see evidence for what I can only call a "flow of energy in a specific direction."  Chances are if I stub my toe first thing in the morning, I will hit my funny bone in the afternoon and fall on my face before the day is done.  If I wanted to attribute it to karma, I could perhaps say it was because I lied to my mother at the age of 6, but more likely, I'm just a klutz who wasn't being impeccable.  Heh heh - we were talking about impeccability being a matter of not crapping in one's own path.  Well... karma seems to me to be nothing more than what happens when we step in our own leavings.  Nothing cosmic about it.  Just cause & effect.

Does the existence/nonexistence of justice mean anything in terms of our relationship with our double?

Not as far as I'm concerned.  This would take volumes to really explain, but let's just say there was a time when I felt I didn't "deserve" Orlando.  I have certainly not lived the life of any sort of saint, nor even a particularly "good person" at times - at least not insofar as the cr agreements are concerned.  I've lied to get jobs I wasn't qualified for (so sue me); I cheated on my ex (more than once); and I once hid underneath the front porch where my crazy granny was waiting for Gabriel's horn, and tooted on a flutophone so loud and hard that the old lady went tumbling out of her rocking chair with her feet sticking straight up in the air like some cartoon character while I laughed hysterically at her cries of "Lordy, lordy, Jesus is a'comin'!"

There's a special fire in hell just for me - just ask my crazy granny. (Though you'd have to use a Ouija board at this point).

Point being... if there was any sense of cosmic/karmic "justice", I certainly would not have deserved to ever meet or create or interact with Orlando.  Now, I'll be the first to admit he can be as much devil/tormentor as teacher/beloved, so it's certainly a double-edged sword.  But in all seriousness, I think he is a reflection and manifestation of who *I* am - and so it stands to reason he is going to be every bit as much a trickster as a mentor.

As far as our doubles are concerned, it seems to me we create them through our actions in the Now, through dreaming, and through writing our identity on the fabric of the nothing with the quill of Intent and will.  That being the case, it doesn't seem to have anything to do with justice or whether we "deserve" something or not.  I suspect that whole idea of "worthiness" comes straight from some Catholic program  that occasionally seeps out of its cathedrals and into our awareness.

Thou art god.  There is no other. 

All material in this blog (essays, rants, images, poetry, et al) is copyright © by Della Van Hise, and may not be reprinted elsewhere without the prior written permission of the author.  This includes all print and electronic media, including other blogs, other websites, and so on.  Thanks for respecting copyrights.

Okay... perhaps it was inevitable that when I started whining about my humanform imperfections (the list is long and wide) on my private forum, it stands to reason Orlando would let me have it... quite literally "right between the eyes."

Last night, Wendy and I went to dinner and a movie down in Palm Springs.  The Constant Gardener, if anyone cares.  Can't recommend it.  Slow and too political for actual entertainment, but WTF do I know?  Ebert says it's best film of the year.  I think Ebert is getting senile.

But no matter...

During the course of the movie, I was aware of Orlando's presence - not unusual.  I often feel him looking out through my eyes and vice versa, during movies.  He's a voyeur and a sneak.  Never has to pay for movies that way.  *LOL*  But afterward, at the restaurant where we went for dinner, I had more or less forgotten his presence altogether as I stood in the restroom, washing my hands at the sink.  My mind was playing over scenes in the movie, mulling over recent conversations here at The Crack, and generally busying itself with trivialities.

So it came as a surprise when I glanced up to see a woman standing behind me as if waiting for the sink.  At least that was my first impression, and it confused me a bit, since I was the only one there, and there were plenty of empty basins.  She was slightly taller than myself, with a definite athletic, healthy build; and had her hair pulled up in a manner not unlike how I wrestle my own on top of my head in the hot summer months.  Her features were perhaps more angular than my own, her skin tone pale but even and smooth.

It occurred to me that we could be sisters... right up until the moment when the "woman" seemed to merge with my own reflection and I realized I had been looking at myself all along.  But even upon realizing that, the image of the woman superceded my own, and I was able to gaze at her for a full minute or more - frankly perplexed and pleasantly amused by this being in the mirror who was me, and yet not at all how I see myself.

"It's how I see you," Orlando said with a little laugh.  "Sometimes you get so distracted with the imperfections that you fail to see the perfection underneath."

Having been raised in a Southern home with Southern manners,  wherein it was considered impolite to brag on oneself, I actually saw the face in the mirror flush slightly when I realized he actually sees me as "beautiful".  (And, yes, I still have trouble writing it even today, almost a full 24 hours later).

What matters, of course, is the lesson I learned from this little excursion into the nagual.  I had recently said in another post in this thread that I have occasionally felt I don't "deserve" Orlando - and what was included in that statement was the realization that I have grown older and what was once perky is now saggy and what was once smooth is now wrinkled, and what was once concave is now convex.  Funny, of course... yet not.

So, for what it's worth, I've always believed in the inner beauty.  Now, having seen it, I know it is real.  And somehow, that is very refreshing and reassuring. 

Moderator at Private Counseling Available

All material in this blog (essays, rants, images, poetry, et al) is copyright © by Della Van Hise, and may not be reprinted elsewhere without the prior written permission of the author.  This includes all print and electronic media, including other blogs, other websites, and so on.  Thanks for respecting copyrights.

Impeccability is a matter of what don Juan called "the right way to live", taken to ever higher levels.  Orlando has always said, "Make the impeccable choice."  What he means is that everything we do involves a choice.  Turn left, turn right, go to the store or go home.  Literally everything.  That being the case, there are an infinite numer of choices, but in most cases, one choice may be seen as "the impeccable choice".  Being human, of course, we are going to be less than impeccable at times - we're going to choose the candy bar over the granola bar, but that's where the whole idea of "controlled folly" comes into play.
 
In the big picture, it's ALL just folly.  And that's a major stumbling block for a lot of warriors first starting out on the path.  We WANT to believe it all matters or that it's going to lengthen our lives or give us enlightenment if we choose the granola bar.  But the reality of it is that in the big picture, it probably doesn't make much difference at all. So warriors engage with controlled folly - i.e., I may eat a chocolate bar on occasion even when I know it isn't the impeccable choice, but I also know it's all just folly in the end, so I choose the experience of chocolate.  *grin*  (Okay, maybe that's a minor indulgence, so sue me.)
 
But on a more serious note, impeccability is essentially a matter of choosing the path and the choices that further our journey whenever possible.  It's why I gave up television, just to use one personal example.  To ME, it wasn't impeccable to be sitting like a mindless zombie in front of the tube - which was proven to me the very first evening I sat out under the stars and just allowed myself to experience the night as an entity unto itself.  Had I been in front of the t.v., I never would have seen that falling star, never would have heard the owls singing or watched the big male coyote walking like a silver ghost in the moonlight as he came up my driveway.  And what tells me I made the impeccable choice that night is simply this:  if I had sat in front of the t.v. that night, I would no longer be able to tell you what program I watched or what it was about or even who was in it.  But I will never forget that coyote underneath that silver moon - and so that "experience" became part of who I am.  The t.v. would have simply distracted me from ever having that experience in the first place.
 
But - hey - that's just me.  *grin*  A lot of very good warriors watch t.v. and maybe that's impeccable for THEM.  It isn't for ME - so again there are no rules.  Just what works for each of us as individuals.
 
Impeccability for me is also a matter of really employing the old adage:  Think before you speak.  Or:  think before you act.  There was a recent incident involving Sue, which I wrote about in the thread, A Shadow in the Night which may serve as a tale of power in a way - just my own experience with regard to learning to make more impeccable choices.

Warriors with awareness often find themselves at a crossroads - at least about a hundred times every day. Impeccability determines which road we take, and impeccability enables us to turn around if we find we are wrong, as well as giving us the ability to be both confident and vulnerable at the same time.  Even impeccable choices may sometimes lead to undesirable circumstances, but it is impeccability that will give the warrior the advantage of getting OUT of those undesirable circumstances with a whole skin.

Some have suggested the impeccability is an attempt to "live a perfect life", yet I can tell you from experience that this is neither possible nor desirable.  First of all, what would qualify as "perfect"?  It would require an agreement to even come to a definition, and so the idea of "perfect" flies right out the window for me.  Instead, impeccability to me is synonymous with forward thinking - i.e., using one's awareness to see the pathways which will be created by the consequences of our actions.  When a warrior develops the ability to do this, and begins to make the impeccable choice as opposed to clearly unimpeccable choices, s/he begins to amass personal power which, by strict definition, could be described as the energy one saves as a result of making better choices the first time. 

Impeccability is a matter of not crapping in one's own path.  And further, it is a matter of not stepping in the droppings left by oneself or others. 

On Seeing the Little Yellow Flowers
At a Gas Station in Big Bear

Soon I will blow a white kiss
upon the land,
turning all the graves wrongside out,
hiding fallen tombstones
beneath my cold silver blanket.

...

The words that went whispering through my mind while sitting at a stoplight in Big Bear, California. 

All material in this blog (essays, rants, images, poetry, et al) is copyright © by Della Van Hise, and may not be reprinted elsewhere without the prior written permission of the author.  This includes all print and electronic media, including other blogs, other websites, and so on.  Thanks for respecting copyrights.

I had recently posted one of my dream-visions in my online forum, The Shaman's Rattle - an entry which also appears here until the heading Raven Angel.  In response to that post, a good friend commented that she hoped I wasn't getting bored or tired out from all the shennanigans of life.  What follows is my response to her - and my thanks to her for posing the question.

***

Every day, I cannot help but marvel at the true mysteries of life, the world, the tonal and the nagual.  Last night, as we drove home from Big Bear, we came down the opposite side of the mountain from which we are accustomed to traveling - down Hwy 38.  It was dusk when we first started the trip, with the sun already long since set, leaving behind a peculiar mix of deep purple/fuschia horizon scarred by a bruising of thunderheads which appeared oddly sinister.  Not even sure what I mean by that - except that I normally feel an affinity with storms, and yet the Intent of this particular bank of clouds seemed almost sentient.  Words fail.

We paralleled the lake briefly, and I couldn't help noticing that the water levels have finally risen.  For the past 4-5 years, even the fishing docks had straddled nothing but parched earth, yet now, in the aftermath of the winter rains & summer thunderstorms, the lake was still low, but at least much healed from the last time I had seen her; and the purple sunset reflecting in black waters was like some upside-down doorway into the otherworld, standing open just a crack.

But as we left the town of Big Bear and began the long trek down the mountain, we found ourselves in an area of twisting switchbacks, and the absolute silent darkness of the nagual itself.  Massive pines pressed close to the road, and though the sky was still light, the sheer blackness that had enveloped the forest itself was at the same time comforting and foreboding. 

Don't know if anyone here was or is a fan of David Lynch's old t.v. series, TWIN PEAKS, but it used to be a fun pasttime for me years ago, and though I hadn't thought of it in ages, I suddenly found myself knowing exactly what Lynch had been attempting to convey when he spoke of "the black lodge".  For those who never saw the old series, that will mean nothing, but essentially "the black lodge" seemed to be a space/time/continuum of energy that might be somewhat akin to what Lucas called "the dark side of the force".   There, in those dark woods, was a presence of the nagual that was tangible, visceral, and entirely real in a way most people choose to never see.  It was all around us - and the fact that we were in an SUV moving at a relatively high rate of speed would be no protection at all if it chose to manifest.

Perhaps that sounds like the ravings of a loonytick, but I mean it literally.  Seldom have I experienced the sheer power of "the black lodge" or "the dark side of the force" or "the sinister muse" or whatever it is that has inspired writers to attempt to capture with words what which must simply be experienced.  Perhaps it is some concentrated energetic field from which we may call forth anything we could imagine, or perhaps it is a sentient force unto itself.  No way to know.  But one thing was certain - I knew I was passing through the netherrealms of the nagual, brushing the doorknob of the black lodge, in the midst of the same force of energy that has the potential to create or destroy.  And, for what it's worth, I felt it was examining me in the same way I was examining it. 

Alas, it's not as easy as saying that it was "evil" and therefore I turned my back on it and walked away.  I personally maintain that good and evil are only human points of view based on human choices.  There was "evil" in the black lodge, but only if I chose to manifest it as evil.  Ultimately, there was only power.  Some power may be experienced as the wind pushing a magnificent sailboat gently across a sunny sea, while other power may be experienced as a cold and unseen breath of Spirit blowing across one's neck in a dark room in the middle of the night.

The truly amazing thing to me was the absolute sense of mystery that accompanied these perceptions.  I know now what prompted David Lynch to write Twin Peaks, for I feel I have been to the black lodge and discovered, in being there, that it is all around us all the time.  Sometimes we see it.  Most of the time, it is hiding in plain sight.

Being an experience junkie, gotta say it was rather like a brief but fiercely passionate love affair with the unbending power of the Nyght.

At times when I close my eyes just prior to going to sleep, I will observe what I can only describe as a living mass of energy which I tend to see as a white, writhing field that has no correlation to anything in the tonal.  Last night, I saw this dream precursor for the first time in quite awhile, and as I focused on it, I made a conscious declaration of Intent to find Orlando in Dreaming.

*****

It is the space in dreaming which I have come to call "the white place" - essentially a backdrop of a blank canvas, yet imbued with the light of all possibility.  As I appear there, I realize Orlando is already waiting - though not the Orlando I have traditionally seen either in Dreaming or vision quests.  An Orlando I have intuited, but never actually seen in the manner he now appears.

The first thing I notice are the wings - rising off the shoulders and forming a smooth and powerful arch above the head.  Jet black and reminiscent of raven feathers, the black wings are so large as to sweep the floor with a soft shushing sound as they move ever so slightly when I approach.

He wears a black silk tuxedo, and his hair is somewhat longer and more wavy than it was when I knew him in manifestation, and when he looks up and our eyes meet, he opens his arms to me in a gesture that is both welcoming and foreboding.  No words are spoken.  None are necessary.  None are possible.

I have the conscious thought that I cannot face my double in the tonal, for to do so would mean my death.  And so I wonder again, as I did last weekend in San Diego, if the time has come for me to face the eagle and open my eyes forever inside the eternal double. 

I am aware that I am dreaming as I go to him and rest my head on his shoulder.  Our embrace is loving and sensual and yet not at all sexual.  It occurs to me for an instant that perhaps it might be entertaining to resist, and yet to do so seems far too much trouble, and so I simply relax into his arms, feeling the brush of ravenesque wings as they fold me into his embrace.  His lips brush lightly over my throat, and the dream ends.

***

All material in this blog (essays, rants, images, poetry, et al) is copyright © by Della Van Hise, and may not be reprinted elsewhere without the prior written permission of the author.  This includes all print and electronic media, including other blogs, other websites, and so on.  Thanks for respecting copyrights.

Just when I said it couldn't get any weirder... it did.  She's baaaa-aaaack!  What?  Who's back?

After a long and difficult weekend in San Diego (see Danse Macabre), Wendy and I went into LA on business yesterday - an excursion which begins in the early morning and often does not end until after midnight.  It was on the trip home that I got a call from the housesitter and was informed that Charlene - the mind-boggling wanna-be-burglar - had returned, and with reinforcements.  Jim was sitting on the front porch observing the aftermath of the flash flood which had struck no more than an hour previously, when a car pulled into what was left of our now-non-existent driveway(driveway? driveway?  What driveway?) .  As fate would have it, he could see the car, but the occupants could not see him.  Red & white pick-up, a man driving, woman in the passenger's seat.  The vehicle stopped, turned off its engine, and the occupants simply sat there for quite some time.

Believing them to be motorists stranded by the storm, Jim walked out to inquire what he might do for them, only to be confronted with a woman who introduced herself as Charlene, and began telling him how I had told her it would be okay for her to come back, and that she had promised to buy some things from me for $550.  She introduced the man in the driver's seat as her husband, then began walking toward the carport, telling Jim that "The stuff I'm going to buy is right over here."

Of course, I had told Jim the entire saga of Charlene's initial shennanigans, so he was well-informed that 1) I had told her I had NOTHING to sell he; and 2) the amount she had mentioned was $55 (not $550); and 3) she was not to come back on the property under any circumstances or she would be arrested.

Can't get any weirder, right?  Wrong.  When he informed her that there was nothing to be sold, she insisted he take down her phone numbers so that I could call her and set up a time for her to come back!!!!!  She gave two numbers - a landline and a cell phone.  Then, she and her male accomplise simply drove away, off into the mud puddle reflections of the setting sun in the aftermath of the worst flash flood this area has seen in 20 years.  I thought of coyote trickster and doorways left open by lightning tearing the air. I thought of the nagual's laughter echoing off the black velvet fabric of the abyss's nether-regions.

I was starting to think I was in a Monty Python skit (again).  But on a whim, I called the two phone numbers, expecting them to be entirely bogus.  To my surprise, the landline connected to a gentleman who lives less than a block from here.  When I inquired if Charlene was home, he hesitantly said she doesn't live there anymore, and volunteered in the same breath, rather apologetically, "The police had to put her out."  Needless to say, this came as no surprise.  I began talking to the gentleman, and further learned that she had been staying at his house, but had to be evicted forcibly when he discovered she had stolen several items from the house - mainly his clothing.  And his boots. 

The rabbit hole just seemed to be getting bigger with every moment I was on the phone with him.  Turns out, "Charlene" has some sort of psyche problem, and the man urged me to "Get a restraining order against her." 

Long story short, he was able to provide me with her real full name, and confirmed what I had already suspected - that she is apparently not plugged into this world with even a single prong, and yet she is walking around free as a bird, and at least as loonie as a koot. 

She has apparently targeted my house and/or myself, and frankly I am at something of a loss to know what to do.  The police will do nothing.  County Mental Health won't pick her up unless she is violent.  And essentially I am left wondering precisely why she has singled us out of all the other houses in the area.  There is little doubt that if Jim hadn't been here, they would have loaded up the pick-up until the springs gave way, and I would have come home to an empty house. 

The world is a nuthouse and the lunatics are invading my asylum.  The thief packs up my belongings, and gives me the phone number of her former victim, who knows her name, her history, and her rap sheet.  This cannot be real.  And yet...

Aside from that, I cannot help but wonder if this is yet one more sign that perhaps it is time to be moving on, letting go, surrendering to the inevitability of entropy.  I do not feel defeated or afraid - just rather perplexed by the whole strange affair.

All material in this blog (essays, rants, images, poetry, et al) is copyright © by Della Van Hise, and may not be reprinted elsewhere without the prior written permission of the author.  This includes all print and electronic media, including other blogs, other websites, and so on.  Thanks for respecting copyrights.

If I believed in Hell, I might have thought I had arrived.  Though the temperature in San Diego was officially a mere 78, the high humidity combined with the complete lack of a breeze gave the illusion of a sweat lodge at high noon somewhere in the badlands of Death Valley.  The Renaissance Faire which had traditionally been held at another venue had been moved to a hilly ravine, and to make a long story short, what had once been merely difficult had become nigh on to impossible, since entire shops and guild encampments had to be moved in by hand (lest the dead grass be damaged - though how it could be any more dead was a mystery to all), and all down a steep hill without the use of vehicles of any sort.  I had left my wand at Hogwarts, and despite all evocations of Intent (in varying degrees of colorful language), that 50 pound box still weighed 50 pounds and refused to be levitated even though I am wholly aware that it is possile to do so.

Somehow, we managed, though by the end of the day on Friday, my body felt like it had been a punching bag for some super hero in training, and this led to fitful dreams which were a far cry from Dreaming, but nonetheless may have served some purpose not yet clear.

By the time the event opened on Saturday morning, temps & humidity had already soared, and the definition of relief had come to be spelled with a bottle of ice cold water dumped down the back of one's shirt - rather like attaching electrodes to one's nipples and flipping the switch.  A real eye-opener, to be sure.  And, in the end, not much relief.

So we sweated.  Took to counting phantoms to pass the time in between customers.  And sweated some more. 

It occurred to me at some point that it was all rather amusing.  Patrons who would tout the solidity of reality at any other moment swirled past in peasant bodices and merchant-class jerkins. A noblewoman fanned herself with an array of peacock feathers, remarking at length on the heat.  Dressed in a long-sleeve, high-necked thick brocade dress complete with hoops, underskirts and a flowing black velvet cape with hood, I could only inquire with a certain degree of curiosity, "What do you do when you return to the 21st Century?"  Perhaps not surprisingly, she was a high school science teacher.

Approaching on the path of dead grass, I saw the Danse Macabre - a troupe of musicians who dress entirely in black, with skeletal faces and the trappings of death.  Their movements were slow, lethargic.  Their music had hooked into the heat and gave it a voice of a heavy, slow drum, like a heartbeat slowing, slowing... slowing.

My mind drifted, and as the dansers passed by, I felt my own heart jump wildly into my throat.  A very real gasp slipped past my lips, and I realized I was looking straight at Orlando.  Sitting on a low block wall about 30 feet away, wearing a black tank top and dark glasses, there was no mistaking him for merely another man - a fact that was validated when I realized I could neither breathe nor move.  Time stopped.  Between tick and tock.  Only the dansers continued to move, and then only in slow motion. 

The very real thought crossed my mind that perhaps this was simply "it".  End of the mortal timeline.  Time to dance with the double past the lair of the eagle.  To my surprise, I had no particular fear of that dance - in fact, I was far more unnerved by Orlando himself than by the idea of my own potential demise.  This was not some passing vision.  What I saw was as solid and physical as any of the other patrons at the Faire, and all the more because the luminosity of him was the same unfathomable black light I have always associated with him.  The reverse luminosity of the singularity, whose cohesion is so tight not even light may escape.

A black-clad flutist passed between us, obscuring my view for no more than a single second. And yet, as the danser moved on toward the west, the wall where Orlando had been sitting was suddenly empty.  No place to hide, nowhere to run.  He was simply gone, back to the nagual, behind the veil of third attention, into the minor-keyed melody of the flute which is without substance, yet omni-present throughout the air itself.

I do not specifically know what this incident means, nor why it chose that unlikely moment to manifest.  After returning home on Sunday evening, I fell into an exhausted sleep, though not a restful one, and dreamt of serpents in my house.  Within minutes, I was awakened by a fierce storm over the desert, with lightning flashes so intense and prolonged, they seemed to reveal shadow worlds not normally visible to the naked eye.

The nagual is a restless tempest, its darkest waters doorways into otherworlds.  Something is afoot.

Woke up yesterday morning to discover the DSL connection wasn't working.  Waited awhile, but finally got on the phone to the service provider.  At first, a recording informed me that their website would be most helpful in troubleshooting problems with DSL outages.  Hmmm, I thought.  Should have taken that as fair warning.  But I waited diligently on hold until a perky tech came on and asked the nature of the problem.  Told her several times in several manifestations of language - "My DSL isn't working.  I have no internet connection.  Computer no workee."

After being instructed to unplug this connection, reconnect it here, disconnect that thing over there, and stand on one foot while whistling Dixie on the armpit chorus, the perky little tech tells me, "Okay, now I want you to go to our website so we can troubleshoot some other things."

"Computer no workee," I repeated.  "DSL is down.  Internet connection kaputz."

"Well, yes, but from the website we can determine the precise nature of the problem based on a series of questions."

Was this girl deaf?  So I repeated my woes.  "DSL is down.  Interet connection nonexistent.  Enterprise plunging into atmosphere. Scotty has died and there is no one left to beam me out of here."

I don't think she ever really understood.  Kept insisting that I go to the website even when I was telling her the DSL was non functional.  Good thing I wasn't trying to troubleshoot a toilet.  Could get ugly.  And deep.  Fast.

By mid-afternoon, temperatures had soared to over 100 degrees, and the monsoon season had taken its toll on my patience.  Sweating is for race horses and clammy-handed Baptist ministers who always want to pat me on the arm.   I do not find sport, honor or pride in sweating, so when the swamp cooler abruptly gave up the ghost in a fit of screams that sounded like demonic laughter, I didn't even WANT to try to fix the damn thing myself, even though I am quite capable of doing so.  Picked up the phone and called The Elusive High Desert Repairman.  Was told by the first guy that he could send someone out on an emergency basis in 2 to 3 weeks.  The next guy's phone was disconnected or no longer in service.  The third guy had an answering machine that played Dueling Banjos.  Guys number 4 and 5 had "gone a'fishin".  Guy 6 wanted me to take the motor out myself, bring it to his shop about 30 miles away, where he promised to have it running again in a couple of weeks.  The rest of the jolly band of misfits either didn't answer at all, had been shut down for non-payment of bill, or did not speak English.

So call me a spoiled brat.  When I lived in San Diego, this was NOT the norm.  If I called someone who had bothered to place an ad in the yellow pages, chances were they answered their phone and sent someone out within the hour.  Imagine that - a business that actually shows up, solves the problem, takes my money, and hands me a receipt on their way out the door.

I am rapidly becoming convinced that 99% of the "workers" of today are inorganic zombies, created and hatched by the pods in the savage garden of entropy.

Aliens have eaten my roses and a rattlesnake I encountered on the road last night said he was late for a very important date, as he tipped his tiny top hat and slithered off the stage to make room for the next nonsequitur.

The rabbit hole has fallen into itself and the serpents have eaten their own apples. 

As I lay in bed this morning, I made the conscious decision to engage  Dreaming - a task that is increasingly difficult as our busy season gets busier and I tend to fall in bed exhausted and ready for sleep.  But this morning, it would be different, I told myself.  I would Dream.

And so I lay there gazing at the rock wall above the fireplace, shifting the assemblage point from the world of ordinary awareness to a dreamer's, allowing the mind/body/spirit to align with Intent.

What surprised me was that almost immediately I found myself deep into Dreaming - yet I was still awake.  I have never quite experienced this position of the assemblage point previously.  Full dreaming, including visuals, lucidity, etc., yet at the same time a dual perception that I was still very much awake and still gazing at that rock wall.  At first, the awareness of this unusual state brought me back to ordinary awareness, but with very little effort, I once again sank down into the state of dreaming-awake - or some manifestation of it.

It wasn't long before I encountered a man in my Dreaming - one I knew to be a teacher.  Without allowing my mind to drift, I said to the man, "Tell me about time."  In the past, I have had dream guides tell me that humans simply do not comprehend the nature of time, and so we are stuck in it.  So I made it my task to at least try for a better understanding.

The man - who was standing somewhere between the fireplace and third attention, in the terrain of dreaming yet the awareness of waking - regarded me briefly as if attemptiung to decide what to do with me.  Finally, he said, "You humans need time and so you create it as a milieu or a platform, a stage on which events play out in such a fashion that they can be planned, experienced and then examined."  He hesitated for a moment, and I could tell he wasn't satisfied with that explanation.  "The problem, you realize, is that I am attempting to tell you about time while on that very platform, and so the explanation is rooted in words and symbols which add to the creation of time rather than doing anything to aid in its disenfranchisement."

I drifted in and out of dreaming.  The man left me after that, and I saw an old woman who appeared haggard, old, and tired.  No one I recognized, yet every woman, perhaps.  The crone in her final days.  Wise and yet a prisoner of her body.  She did not speak, but I saw that she was also a passenger on the timetrain.

Other visions came and went, too brief or fleeting to bring back.  But what seemed to matter was that I Dreamed while awake.

Definitely a position of the AP that is going to get more attention, because the result seems to be that I am able to experience the true depth of dreaming, and at the same time record it in detail with the preceptors of ordinary awareness.  Curiouser... and curiouser...

***

I've had experiences, particularly on the mushroom ally, wherein time is perceived altogether differently than it is in ordinary awareness.  We're still attached to the meat suit, and the only thing that has altered is perception - so I have to conclude that it is really only our perception that creates time and "governs" it to a certain extent.  As children, time is also very different than it is as we grow older.  As a child, for example, it seemed to be an eternity from one Christmas to the next, yet as an adult, I honestly cannot account for the time that has passed from January 1 until the present.  Literally, it seems no more than a couple of weeks ago that I was sitting here at my desk, wrapped in a blanket, shivering from the cold.  Now, with very little sense of time passing, I sit here in front of a fan in my undies (a frightening sight), overwhelmed by the summer heat.  The earth has tilted and the quail have hatched their young, but other than that, nothing appears to have changed.  Where is "time"?  In the tilt of the earth?  In a bird's egg?  In the force of gravity, as one of "the little voices" once suggested?

A few strange facts I've gathered with regard to "time".  People living in colder climates have longer lifespans.  All lifeforce is suspended at absolute zero (about -432 degrees Fahrenheit).  As an object accelerates to near the speed of light, relative time slows down or stops altogether.

So... if I put all of that in a blender and swirl it around, it still comes down to perception, yet it may also have to do with being "earthbound" - because the conditions which seem to be required to slow down or stop "time" exist naturally in outer space, in the absence of gravity and light.  In the void, in other words...

No conclusions, just ingredients in the mix.  Just not sure yet if the mix is a cake, a pie, or a meatloaf.

And - yes - absolutely, those moments of being outside of time do indeed reveal to the warrior that it is possible (and indeed desirable) to transcend the prison of time.  I do sometimes wonder if the whole reason we climb inside these meat suits to begin with is to motivate ourselves to evolve beyond the need for them.  Sounds trite, but I mean it with absolute sincerity.  We may have to come into "matter" before we can inhabit the totality of ourselves through the double.  Without the powerful motivation which is the awareness of our own mortality, there might not be sufficient cohesion.  It is through mortal life that we find the reasons and the means to transcend even time.

 To get the full gist of this weirdness, please refer to my previous entry, Bizarre Burglar.

***

Got up this morning at 6:30, thinking immediately of the incident which occurred 2 days ago.  That in itself is a lesson, for I do not consider the incident worthy of that kind of ongoing attention, and yet... there it was.

Put the dogs outside, came to the computer and sat down, only to hear the dogs start barking wildly a few minutes later.  Went outside and looked around, saw nothing.  Walked all perimeters, still nothing.  And yet, the dogs continued barking... and it was only THEN that I saw a car parked next to my driveway, and a woman on foot right up at the fenceline.  At the distance I was located (at least 150 feet), I couldn't see exactly what she was doing, so I crouched down in a chapparal bush to watch. 

She knelt down at the fence, and seemed to be attempting to lift something, but on closer observation, I relized she was actually pulling something underneath the fence, lifting it with some amount of difficulty, then taking it to load it up in her car.  This process was repeated 3 times while I covertly watched. Couldn't help wondering if "Charlene" had been back and had stacked her ill-gotten gains over by the fence, and that this was now her accomplise.  Occurred to me at that point to burst out of the bushes like a wild woman and go charging forward, but instead because my seeing could not find the link between Charlene and this woman, I simply stood up and walked over to the fenceline to confront the woman.

And again, the symbolism wasn't lost, and though circumstances were different and the location on the property was different, here I was confronting a woman with her on one side of a wooden fence and myself on the other.  I thought of cycles of energy, patterns of behavior, the mating habits of owls (well, it crossed my mind, so I noted it).

This woman was different from Charlene in every way.  No junkie aura about her.  Older woman, probably mid 50s, casually dressed, and she actually had a car.  When I asked if I could help her, she said her driveway had been washed away in the flash flood on Sunday and that she was gathering rocks to fill in the holes.  I immediately saw this as truth, and commented briefly on our own woes from the storm, including our own dearly departed driveway to the west.  She was friendly enough, but cautious of me - can't say I blame her, as I was carrying my staff, though I had leaned it on the fence so as not to be intimidating.

We talked for less than a minute altogether, hitting the highlights of the storm, and I mentioned that the only reason I came out was because of what had happened 2 days ago, re "Charlene."  The woman apologized for disturbing the dogs, got in her car, and was on her way.  Straightforward, tendrils of awareness aligning with what had been exchanged - nothing terribly weird about it.  She was telling the Truth.

... only one bizarre note to all of this.  The south side of my property where she was picking up rocks faces an empty field that is FULL of rocks.  So what?  Well, that being the case, why was she pulling rocks out from underneath my fence when there is an entire world of rocks here in the desert that are not on someone else's property?  Because of the storm, there are also TONS of rocks (literally) in the washes which adjoin directly to the road.  Again - why not just pilfer rocks from the wash?

Can't help but smile.  While I don't consider myself an "owner" of rocks (rather like fleas arguing over who owns the dog), they WERE on my property, and in hindsight it seems just kinda funny and strange, and at this point I am convinced it is no coincidence. 

A test of awareness, perhaps?  Who's to say?  With "Charlene", I can only say that my tendrils of awareness (deep logic, if you prefer) were out of kilter throughout the entire exchange.  To a seer, this meant, simply, she was lying, obfuscating, creating a stealth haze.  The incident today with Rock Woman was altogether different, and as a seer, I knew she was neither lying nor attempting to steal.  To her perceptions, she was just gathering rocks to fix her driveway.

And yet... the nagual has a bizarre sense of humor, and I am left wondering why the hunting and gathering process was occurring on my property when other rocks were displaced in the storm and looking for good homes.  Curiouser & curiouser...

All material in this blog (essays, rants, images, poetry, et al) is copyright © by Della Van Hise, and may not be reprinted elsewhere without the prior written permission of the author.  This includes all print and electronic media, including other blogs, other websites, and so on.  Thanks for respecting copyrights.

Went into my bathroom this morning around 7:30 and heard a lot of scrambling/noise on the carport just outside the window.  Thinking it must be squirrels, who are known to dig through boxes in search of cardboard for bedding, I dismissed it momentarily, until it became progressively louder and more intense.  Attempted to open the bathroom window, only to discover it blocked by boxes which had seemingly fallen from a shelf nearby.  Odd, I thought.  Those boxes were heavy and no squirrel should have been able to budge them, not even Old Hercules, who is the grandfather squirrel to rival all others.

As the window impacted with the boxes, a woman's voice said, "Hello?" from the carport.  Thinking perhaps the mailperson was lost (not unusual), I answered, "Who is it?"  No response.

Picking up my staff in response to a progressively increasing intuition, I headed to the door, calling out to Wendy to get up.  Living where we do, somewhat isolated, it would be easy enough for an intruder to kill or injure me, and no one would be the wiser for who-knows-how-long.  So I took my dusty staff - an icon from ages past in my martial arts years - and went outside to find a woman standing at the gate of the picket fence - and no, the symbolism wasn't lost on me for a moment.  Not waiting for an explanation, I asked in a neutral tone (intentionally neutral), "Mind telling me who you are and what you were doing on my carport just now?"

She launched into a cool and collected story about how she had been told I am a swap meet vendor, and that we sell the things on our carport for $50.00 per tub.  When I asked precisely who had told her this (none of it true, btw), she pointed to the workmen cleaning up after yesterday's flood, and said, "The guy driving the tractor."  Seemed unlikely.  The woman went on to insist that I should sell her these items.  Claimed she lived in a house on a nearby street - coincidentally, the street where Ellen lives, barely a block from here.  She told me her name (Charlene), and asked mine.  I did not give it, but continued to question her as to precisely what she thought she was doing.

Then the stories started to get REALLY weird.  When I asked why she didn't just come to the front door, she claimed, "I heard your dogs barking earlier and I was afraid."  Made little sense, as I had let the dogs out an hour earlier and they had not barked at all.  Claimed she was afraid to come to the door because of the dogs, yet when I pointed out that I could have simply turned the dogs loose on her, believing her to be the intruder she clearly was, she had no quick answer.  When I went on to say that I could have just as easily shot her, believing her to be an intruder - which she was, of course - she acknowledged that, yes, this was true, but said the dogs might have jumped through the window to bite her.  She was once bitten by a dog.  Perhaps not surprising if burglary is a way of life.

And yet... she wasn't afraid, even when I told her I could easily call the police and just let them sort it out.  Didn't seem to faze her - and, the only reason I DIDN'T do precisely that was because I would have had to go inside, make the call, etc., and in the meantime, she would be gone.  So I decided to simply stalk the situation for as much information as I could get out of it. 

She kept saying how nice it was to meet me, and how "nice" I was being.  Hah!  I wasn't being nice at all, at least not to my own perceptions.  I was grilling her up one side and down the other, though not in an angry fashion.  What would anger have solved?  Absolutely nothing.  I could have driven her off the property with my staff, but ultimately I couldn't see that that would offer any resolution either.   Her hand was in her purse, and for all I knew, she had a gun, and yet my advisor, Death, said it was not my time to die. 

The truly weird thing about it is that she had loaded up an entire tub of stuff, clearly with the intention to steal it.  Yet when I pointed that out to her by saying, "Hmmm, seems to me you have loaded up an entire tub of stuff with the intention of carrying it away, and if I hadn't caught you red-handed, that's precisely what you would have done," she just stared at me blankly, blinked stupidly, and told me I have beautiful eyes. 

At this point, I was beginning to be amused as much as annoyed.  Yes, this person was attempting to steal from me, yet the machinations were as bizarre as anything I have ever encountered.  She had no car, yet had loaded up a tub she clearly could not carry.  Conclusion:  there was Intent to return later with an accomplise, and so I set my Intent on finding out who THAT might be - and the only way to do that, seemingly, would be to let her go and see what comes back later. 

She kept insisting I should sell her these items.  For $55.00.  I quickly fabricated a story and said they were not mine to sell.  They belonged to a business partner who was coming by later to pick them up, I told her.  She said, "Cash money!  Let me come in and use your phone and I'll have someone come by with the money."  So, she was offering to pay for what she had originally planned to steal, but she had no money on her, and wanted to inquire if I might be stupid enough to allow her to use my phone to call up a male accomplise or two and have them drop by with a van and some weapons.

Hmmm.  No, I think not.

Gotta confess, I was on the verge of laughing despite the dark gravity of the situation.  Surely this had to be some strange manifestation of an ally, a walk-in from the world of the weird, or simply a woman on drugs who had no idea how strange the whole thing seemed to anyone with any degree of rationality.  When I told her I don't let anyone in the house, she suggested I should go in, get my cell phone, and bring it out for her to use.  At that point... I really did laugh out loud.  Started looking around for the Candid Camera crew.

And that was just the tip of the iceberg.  I cannot begin to express the real degree of weirdness about this.  A woman scrambling around on my carport in broad daylight, making enough noise to wake the dead, as if she wanted to be caught, and when she IS caught, begins telling me how her six year old daughter collects dolls and therefore I MUST sell her the entire crate of things she has loaded up (worth hundreds, actually) for $55.00.  The guy on the tractor told her it would be okay.  She had no way to take the items with her.  She had emptied out at least 2 dozen boxes, including unwrapping the merchandise from its styrofoam wrappers (no easy task, and very time-consuming!), and all because she had heard my dogs barking and was afraid to come to the front door.   Non-sequitur, to quote Mr. Spock.

In the end, she gave me her address - undoubtedly bogus - and said that if I changed my mind about selling her these items she had packed up and loaded off the carport, I should come by her house.  Gee... maybe she'll invite me in for tea served on the dishes of that once belonged to my neighbors!

Just before our communication ended, she once again repeated that the tractor driver had told her we are swap meet vendors, and so it would be okay for her to come in and "look around."  She then met my eyes and, with the intensity of someone who knows precisely what they are saying, she inquired, "Do you think that man is stalking you?"

I did not look away.  "I think someone is," I replied, my meaning crystal clear.

So she walked away.  I was halfway hoping Wendy (who was watching from the window) would call the cops while I was engaging this strange person, but Wendy later said she was thinking I was going to come in the house and call them myself, and so... they were never called.  After the woman walked away, I got in the Suburban and went covertly looking for her - just to see where she would end up.  And as fate would have it, just as I turned off my street, I came face to face with a sheriff, whom I flagged down and told my weird, weird story. 

...and on the way back home, I saw "Charlene" walking toward the main highway, back in the direction of town, away from where she had claimed to live.  Called the cops to tell them I had found their criminal, but no one seemed particularly interested, even though I could tell them precisely where she was, and suggested they might want to go pick her up for questioning - for her own safety, if nothing else.  This woman was terminally weird despite her calm and collected exterior presentation.

On a strictly tonal level, this was perhaps just an attempted burglary, yet immediately upon hearing the noise on the carport when it all began, there was a sense that it was and continues to be something far more strange than that.  Most criminals do their dirty work in the dark of night, or when no one is home.  This woman clearly knew I had dogs - who never barked at her, even though they bark at every other living being on the planet - so clearly she must have suspected someone was home. 

She says I have beautiful eyes.

It's what I see that concerns me far more.  I do not feel this encounter was at all what it "seemed" to be.  And so I am waiting, stalking, waiting.

***

All material in this blog (essays, rants, images, poetry, et al) is copyright © by Della Van Hise, and may not be reprinted elsewhere without the prior written permission of the author.  This includes all print and electronic media, including other blogs, other websites, and so on.  Thanks for respecting copyrights.

What drew my awareness to the storm was the scent of rain that drifted in through the open window.  I neither heard it or saw it at first... just the unmistakable scent of wet chaparral combined with what amounts to steam rising off the Earth when water comes in contact with the scorching layers of sand.

At first, it was just a typical desert rain - fat drops plopping on the Joshua trees, glistening like scattered diamonds in the slivered rays of sunlight which managed to pierce the clouds creeping in from the east.  Hummingbirds flitted at the feeder, and there was no indication - other than a prickling of the hairs on the back of my neck - that it would be anything more than a brief thunderstorm at the edge of monsoon season.

And yet, it wasn't long before the clouds grew darker and finally opened up to dump what must have been six inches of rain in less than half an hour.  Within moments, the driveway was gone altogether, and somewhere in the frenzy, the mail box has pulled up its roots and gone searching for otherworlds somewhere to the west. We shall not meet again in this lifetime, that much is certain. The road closest to the house is blocked by firetrucks and emergency vehicles, while small cars litter the landscape like discarded matchbox toys.  Lightning scatters the shadows for an instant, thunder hammering at the windows, causing the house and the weenie dog in my lap to tremble.

I draw it all in, savoring its flavor, its scent, its textures and sights and sounds.  The raindrops on my skin are sentient passengers, each one telling a thousand stories of a thousand lifecycles, the coming and the going, breathing in, breathing out. 

The odd thing about the storm raging outside was that it mirrored the one raging inside.  Over the past few days, an old conflict with an old friend had reopened, and despite all attempts at resolution, it seemed no resolution was possible.  So as I stood there in the aftermath of the storm, watching the raindrops drying on my feet and listening to the curses of a cactus wren as she shook the wet from soaked, spotted feathers, an awareness crept in through the crack between the worlds and settled somewhere in the vicinity of the crossroads where the nagual and the tonal overlap on rare occasions at the leading edge of a storm or the crumbling footing of a dangerous precipice.

"Life is a desert and the rain is too rare and precious to squander," it whispered.  "If you fret, trying to fix the leak in the neighbor's roof, you'll never find time to tango with the lightning or dance in the rain."

So... against all logic, I danced in the cold, cold rain and watched the lightning striking all around me.  And I let go of any idea of fixing my neighbor's roof or salvaging the remnants of a friendship that has clearly been washed away in the flood.

Life's too short not to dance in the storm.

Breathing in.  Breathing out.

All material in this blog (essays, rants, images, poetry, et al) is copyright © by Della Van Hise, and may not be reprinted elsewhere without the prior written permission of the author.  This includes all print and electronic media, including other blogs, other websites, and so on.  Thanks for respecting copyrights.

My exposure to the idea of string theory has been minimal indeed, and that's just fine with me.  What I mean is simply this:  I have never found it necessary or desirable to dig too deep into the scientific end of it for one simple reason that is entirely personal to me:  I can run the risk of getting absorbed and even lost in the minutiae of the theories, or even having my attention hooked by the details - IOW, trying so hard to "understand" that I may actually thwart actual understanding.  I'm the type of person who, when I start something, tends to take it to the limit - and though this may not sound rational on the surface, I've truly discovered that that isn't always a good thing for me.  In fact, I would say the same thing about my exposure to other forms of shamanic practice.  I've never really studied it and have no great desire to do so, because ultimately all true shamanic practices are the "same" at the level of Intent.  And, indeed, the same could probably be said for all true quantum theory.  The fact that they are often describing the same events - the shaman through the eyes of magic, the scientist through the lens of his microscope - is just icing on the cake.

What's interesting is that quantum science is beginning to be able to write equations for what shamans have simply Known through gnosis & experience since before the idea of time itself sprang into being.  That's cool.  We don't begrudge the slow kids their need for special tools and lengthy procedures to arrive at what has been obvious all along.   Garlic is good for you.  Consciousness is a field of energy attached to a body but not "of" the body.  Energy creates matter, not the other way around.  Thou art god.   The scientists seem to think they've discovered something altogether new because that's what they have to believe in order to facilitate their own validations.  And that's okay, too.

What's interesting about "string theory" in more shamanic terms is that it was expressed by Carlos Castaneda as the "filaments" of energy which a seer may see when looking at a luminous form, or even just seeing the underlying structure of the so-called "physical" world or what it really is - an energetic "history" of events which have formed "strings" of "memory" stretching into infinity in both directions - past and future, if linear time must be considered part of the equation at all.  The tree was once a seed which was previously a different tree which sprang from a different seed, prior to The Mutation, but dependent on the pollen on a honeybee's leg, who came from a hive of bees, whose queen came from a distant location, swept to the forest by a strong storm which was the result of a butterfly flapping her wings on the other side of the ocean at the dawn of time, at the edge of the abyss, just after the universe called herself into being with a thought, which was the spontaneous parthenogenesis of self-creation, and contained within it the blueprint for all evolution, for each part of the whole was imbued with the will of the whole, and no matter how far those filaments of energy may stretch, each being has within itself the ability to create its own singularity of consciousness through the process of spinning a new thread which is its own beginning... alpha and omega, worlds without end.

And so on...  Now, of course, that's my own shamanic vision and gnosis of string theory, which would certainly cause the nearest quantum physicist to run screaming, I suspect.    That's what I really liked about that movie, WHAT THE BLEEP DO WE KNOW.  Really brought together the visions of the mystics with the language of the scientists and showed that both are saying the same thing.  One speaks in word-pictures, while the other speaks in numbers and squiggly lines =-+<#2>.  Having been a *ahem* somewhat less than impeccable student in math, my natural predilection was to lean toward seeing and Knowing on an intuitive level. 

Speaking again of string theory, I have always found it interesting that my very first visual vision while engaging the mushroom ally was of a giant red spider at the center of the universe, spinning it all into being.  Her web was the "is".  And upon later reflection, I came to realize each of us is the spider at the center of the universe.  What we spin into filaments of energy (force to go through the motions of actually occurring) determines the answer to the first question:  "Who are you?"

Fascinating stuff, no matter which side of the bridge one views it from.

*****

All material in this blog (essays, rants, images, poetry, et al) is copyright © by Della Van Hise, and may not be reprinted elsewhere without the prior written permission of the author.  This includes all print and electronic media, including other blogs, other websites, and so on.  Thanks for respecting copyrights.

From a post to The Shaman's Rattle

***

This past weekend in San Diego has been an exercise in frustration, and I've spent a lot of time stalking my reaction to the events and non-events - both of which were equally annoying.  Long story short, we normally work Renaissance faires.  This past weekend, we worked a huge science fiction event at the SD Convention Center.  To say I was an unhappy camper would be rather like saying the sun is sorta hot.  I literally felt as if I had been dropped down inside a more intense madhouse within the madhouse, and though I was having a fine understanding of why clarity is the second enemy of a wo/man of Knowledge, even clarity itself wasn't sufficient to answer the questions of WHY I was having this kind of reaction, especially since I used to attend sci-fi cons regularly as a vendor, speaker and writer.

What it all boiled down to would require a book unto itself.  But in a nutshell, what I really discovered is that I was seeing my own past in these people, and simultaneously recognizing the abject futility that would result should any attempt be made to sway them from their chain maille and the buckets on their head and their total immersion in the world of "fantasy" to such an extent that the fantasy had lost all ability to heal and had turned, instead, to a symptom of the dis-ease.  Having spent more than 20 years of my life in the same type of indulgence, I speak from experience, and not any sense of judgment, except perhaps of myself. 

I seem to be at a critical place in my own life at present - a crossroad where I can either continue doing the same business indefinitely, or begin to branch out into other things which are more in alignment with the path of my heart.  What's interesting is that when it's "time" to do something different, pathways seem to open - not to make it easy for us, but to at least show us other opportunities.  That's certainly been the case in my life over the past month or so, very intensely.  Still don't know where it will go, but I think that depends largely on where and how I "force it to go through the motions of actually occurring."

Intent is really the backbone of a warrior's foundation, but it requires Will to force that intent to manifest.  Like the old joke about the man who was complaining to God that he had been praying for years that God would let him win the lottery, but now he was an old man, still poor.  To which God replied, "You have to buy a ticket." 

The problem I encountered when I was working with writers years ago is that a lot of them were waiting to be discovered.  They weren't really writing or producing much - just sending out "sample chapters" here and there, and wondering why the world wasn't beating a path to their door.  Same in the warrior world - it's a matter of us remembering to "buy a ticket" - put will behind our intent in order to force our desires to go through the motions of actually occurring.  What stops us - usually - is fear of the unknown.

As far as fantasy immersion, I guess for me it comes down to what I said originally.  When the fantasy becomes all-consuming, it loses its ability to heal and becomes a symptom of a much deeper dis-ease - which is usually a dissatisfaction with the Self at a deep level.  Don't get me wrong - I strongly advocate the use of fantasy, imagination, creation, writing and even role-playing games as a means to get in touch with the aspects of the self which have been programmed out of our conscious awareness.  But as with all things, there is a fine line between role playing games, and becoming a role-player.  The trick with all of it is that a warrior needs to have the awareness to see beyond the tool, and to keep it AS a tool, rather than letting it take command.  In that way, the tool remains at the level of controlled folly.

That's the whole thing about lessons, I think.  I was extremely unhappy during the entire convention and couldn't really figure out why until afterward when having some time to reflect on the "lesson" -- which was really a lesson on the dangers of indulgence.  It's one thing to use fantasy as a paradigm for one's double.  It's another thing when one starts to get stuck in the energetic gravity of the fantasy itself.  

 ***

My mother is 84 (tomorrow, as a matter of fact), and unless I were to drive out to Florida, pick her up physically, put her in the car and bring her to California to live in my spare bedroom (I think that's called kidnapping), there is very little I can do to "help" her.  Used to make me crazy, but I finally came to the conclusion that her choices have to be respected, even if they appear on the surface to be self-destructive.  I can advise and I can offer, and I can even occasionally send anonymous gifts of money in the mail (which she believes come from her church), but other than that, I cannot change her mind or force her to leave her home.  It is her choice to stay, and my lesson has come to be one of unconditional love - which often includes the hard task of letting people destroy themselves even if it may be in my power to "save" them.  One of the very first things Orlando ever said to me was, "You can only save yourself." 

The most annoying of all is that, by their own choices, warriors set themselves up to be in the path of lessons.  You say you don't want or need anymore lessons - but if that were really true, the lessons would cease and you would live in an idyllic setting in the woods somewhere over the rainbow.  And, alas, much as that sounds appealing at times, I think that would be the definition of "dead".  Warriors and lessons seem to go together like blood and vein - it's simply within a warrior's nature to seek lessons, even and especially the hard ones.

If the person is a warrior, the event becomes a lesson.  If they are a phantom, it becomes a tragedy or comedy within the play, but all is folly, either way.  The warrior's way enables us to face the lessons with awareness and an opportunity for growth, while the phantom's way allows for experience that may or may not ever be assimilated into any sort of foundation of Knowledge.

 I've found that "detachment" is really the only sane position of the assemblage point for dealing with these types of lessons.  I'm not talking about shutting off all feeling - but essentially approaching these events with the awareness that it is all just a huge script penned on the surface of water, destined to wash itself away before you can blink.  Easier said than done, and don't think for a moment I'm not scared shitless when I think about some of the lessons of my past, and some of those that obviously and inevitably still lie in the future.  I just have to keep reminding myself that what survives & transcends/evolves is the perfected Self and not the scars. 

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Traffic was moving at a steady pace; I was in the fast lane leading the pack; and so it made little sense when I found myself cutting across 5 lanes of freeway to dive onto the offramp leading to The Past.  The road to Ixtlan, the trail that goes toward a destination that exists in memory, the path of shadows skirting the edges of recapitulations long finished.  The road to where I was living at the time I first met Orlando in manifestation.

Not surprisingly, the hillsides which had once bloomed vibrant yellow with so many wildflowers were now covered with a different kind of transplant - the urban virus which continues to spread like an out-of-control cancer on the face of the land, houses so close together the rooftops must certainly rub paint in a stong wind, with yards barely big enough for a single bush and a small dog to pee on it.  Not the way man was "meant" to live, certainly, but this is no longer the world in which I grew up, so I have come to accept that i