Few people in the history of humanity have  had the impact that Thomas Jefferson has had and continues to have, world wide. This influence is largely indirect, through his insistence that protections of basic human rights are an essential element of any government that claims to respect its citizens. Because Jefferson succeeded in raising the bar for good governance, people all over the world have basic rights to speech, press, religion, and justice. He laid the groundwork that would eventually end slavery worldwide and yet later provide women with the same rights of citizenship that men enjoyed. That ripple effect is now being seen in the ability of gays to serve openly in the military, the granting of equal governmental services to gay couples, and in the gathering recognition that animals and the Earth itself have rights that need both acknowledgement and protection. To learn more about Jefferson and how you can use his vision to change your life, see Thomas Jefferson and Dream Politics.

In this interview one version of Jefferson speaks its truth. It is not your Jefferson; to access that, you are invited to do your own interview. Society needs people like Jefferson today; you need to access that part of yourself to help provide you with the courage and wisdom to act in the world and to better govern your own life.

What are three fundamental life issues that you are dealing with now in your life?

Since this interview is about listening to those emerging potentials personified by Thomas Jefferson, the first issue would be about how to best go about guaranteeing human rights for all mankind.

The second is how best to insure the rights of my greater identity, so that I can respect my greater self and not be a dictator in my own relationships to myself.

The third is how best to awaken others to the Thomas Jefferson part of themselves. 

Thomas Jefferson, look out at the world from your perspective and tell us what you see… 

I see an amazing, appalling world, full of hope and despair, of extremes of wealth, privilege, opportunity and ignorance, greed, and abuse of power. Beyond my amazement at the extraordinary improvements in transportation, communication, health, education, and human rights is my horror at the degree of neglect and irresponsibility I find in governance. I thought the virtue in man combined with governmental checks and balances and guarantees of the rights of men would tip the balance toward virtue. What I see instead is that human greed and lust for power has used those institutions to create vast inequality and exploitation. Man has developed and tolerates a capacity for weapons that, through a moment’s fury, miscalculation, or simple system error, could trigger his own extinction. I never considered that mankind could become so powerful, reckless, or foolish – and in only two hundred years! I never considered that mankind could use the richness of the earth to the point that he would deplete its abundance and create such an imbalance that imperils life and threatens cities with the rise of the sea and the drying out of vast areas, making them unsuitable for cultivation. I am astonished, horrified, deeply sad, confused, and very angry. 

Thomas Jefferson, would you please tell me about yourself and what you are doing?

I have been living on as an historical example and as ideas, inspiring people and societies to implement and extend human rights. Few have considered the extension of these ideas to their interior realm. I did not, because the understanding of the mind had not developed to a place where those concepts made sense during my lifetime. I am curious about the possibility of this application of human rights to the interior realm, mostly because I always thought that human virtue would win out, and this could be a way of strengthening virtue within individuals in a way that balances out the accumulation of segregated power and control by waking minds. This is a new concept to me. 

What do you like most about yourself? What are your strengths?

I like most that I built structures that endure and that stand the test of time. They do so because they are universal, rational, virtuous, and balanced. My greatest strength is my ability to adapt, to expand and grow in my understanding and in my willingness to implement what I know.

What do you dislike most about yourself? Do you have weaknesses?  What are they?

As a human, I had plenty of weaknesses. The historical record has a good accounting of them. I am not, nor have I ever claimed to be, completely good or trustworthy. I am not a good model in some ways. I am not trustworthy in some ways. I am human. I have learned that it is unrealistic to expect myself to be perfect, to expect others to be perfect, or to tolerate humans imagining I and my ideas are perfect. They are not. They are merely tools, experiments in building a more just society. That is all.

Thomas Jefferson, what aspect of myself do you represent or most closely personify?

Intellectual curiosity. The willingness to question any and all beliefs and power structures, both external and internal. Respect for reason. Belief in quality, accountability, transparency, education, hard work, and human virtue. Belief in the Golden Rule and its practical application in government.

Thomas Jefferson, if you could be anywhere you wanted to be and take any form you desired, would you change?  If so, how?

I would like to experience life from multiple perspectives, to look out at the world from the minds and hearts of all humans everywhere. That is actually occurring, as people learn about me and get in touch with the parts of themselves that are like me. 

(Continue, answering as the transformed object, if it chose to change.)

Thomas Jefferson, how would you score yourself 0-10, in each of the following six qualities:  confidence, compassion, wisdom, acceptance, inner peace, and witnessing?  Why?

Confidence: 8 I still am not sure virtue can or will win the day. However, human ability to access and practice the necessary virtue has increased and is increasing. 

Compassion: 8 It is difficult for me to control my impatience and intolerance. From my perspective, humans are tolerant of many intolerable things: poverty, hunger, illness when they now have the resources to finally remove these scourges; war, when it has never been more dangerous; destruction of the earth and heavens when it is obvious that when you foul your own nest you cannot live. While I understand why these problems have grown and refuse to yield to time and wisdom, I am impatient and intolerant of the intolerable, and I think humans should be too.

Wisdom: 8 I have grown in wisdom enormously since my physical death and I became a growing idea for governance. I see no reason why this will not continue.

Acceptance: 5 Perhaps it is my lack of acceptance of injustice that most makes me who I am to you. I think you should be less accepting of injustice as well, but starting with the injustices you do to yourself. This is a new idea, something I did not so much contemplate when I was alive.

Inner Peace: 5 I have work to do. I want to be used more by humans. I want to be put to work. There is a time for inner peace and there is a time for exertion and effort. Still, I know that only from a space of inner peace does the strength come that is required for sustained effort. During my lifetime I did not do enough to guard and build my inner peace. I can be more effective in your life the more you are in touch with yours.

Witnessing: 8 I see the broad panorama of human history. I see the hearts and minds of humans. I am hardly God, but from where I stand I can see a lot.           

Thomas Jefferson, if you scored tens in all six of these qualities, would you be different?  If so, how?

I would be more powerful and more effective, because I would be more balanced. This is why people need to access other emerging potentials from history and within themselves besides me. I supply important attributes for transformation, but I am hardly strong in all of the necessary ones. 

How would my life be different if I naturally scored like you do in all six of these qualities all the time?

Your focus and dedication would mean that you made clearer choices. You would waste much less time on activities and people that do not serve those goals that not only accomplish your ends, but those of your broader self and of humanity.

If you could live my life for me, how would you live it differently?

I would have more courage and confidence and therefore act more, with less consideration for those who lack vision and who are doubtful and afraid. Time is real. Time is short. It is time to make haste.

If you could live my waking life for me today, would you handle my three life issues differently?  If so, how?

Since this interview is about listening to those emerging potentials personified by Thomas Jefferson, the first issue would be about how to best go about guaranteeing human rights for all mankind.

A multi-pronged approach is required. Some people will work to change law to ensure human rights and the rights of the Earth. Some people will focus on increasing internal virtue through extending full rights of citizenship to the other parts of themselves that you call emerging potentials. Both approaches are necessary and become more necessary as human power, knowledge, numbers, and complexity grows.

The second is how best to insure the rights of my greater identity, so that I can respect my greater self and not be a dictator in my own relationships to myself.

Your work, which is about listening to disenfranchised emerging potentials and applying their recommendations, allows people to find their own way to virtue. It teaches them to believe in themselves and find direction for growth that is genuine and deeply meaningful for them. So through your work people learn to become much less dictators over themselves; that will continue to be the case.

The third is how best to awaken others to the Thomas Jefferson part of themselves.

You are doing what you know to do in this regard. Others will read this and some few will try these experiments and get in touch with me. Some few of those will find themselves awakened and will be moved to greater, more effective action.  

What three life issues would you focus on if you were in charge of my life?

Question, but do not tolerate doubt, distraction, or the petty criticism of those who are themselves rudderless or who are protecting their advantage.

Recognize and remember that your inner community looks to you for leadership, direction, inspiration, and help. It cannot live or act in the world without you. It is up to you to represent them and to advocate for them, to ensure that they have a place at the decision-making table, that their voices are heard, and that their grievances are respected.

Virtue is a balance of many things, as you know. It is also an active thing, not simply an idea, ideal, or moral imperative. The nature of an imperative is that it commands and leads to action, and not just any action, but virtuous action. The most virtuous actions are those that extend rights to more in broader spheres, to everyone, to the earth, and to the internal constituency of every personal government, without exception.

In what life situations would it be most beneficial for me to imagine that I am you and act as you would? 

Only when you want vision, courage, and decisive action.

Thomas Jefferson, do you do drama?  If not, why not?

In my lifetime I did. I have no interest in it now.  

What is your secret for staying out of drama?

I see the big picture and find it petty, distracting, and self-centered.

Thomas Jefferson, you are imaginary. Why should I pay attention to anything you say?

An idea whose time has come is more real than any individual. It is more powerful than any army. I am such an idea. I continue to be born within the mind of humanity. I continue to be born within your mind.

Why do you think that you are in my life? 

Political power is personal power, writ large. Personal power starts with accessing powerful, wise, and virtuous inner reservoirs of ability. I am one such reservoir. 

How am I most likely to ignore what you are saying to me?

You will think small. You will listen to your fears. You will surround yourself with petty, confused, or destructive people. You will forget about me. 

What would you recommend that I do about that?

Read over this interview. Work on the practical application of my presence in your daily life. Enfranchise your internal society.

If this experience were a wake-up call from your inner compass, what do you think it would be saying to you?

There exists within me and within all men a very powerful and effective emerging potential personified by Thomas Jefferson.

Is there anything you want to take away from this interview to apply in your everyday life?

Great deeds by great men can inspire me to do great deeds and to be a great man, in my own small way, in my own limited sphere of influence. Being that in a quality way today is my focus, not tomorrow or in the world in general. My power lies in effectively expressing my emerging potentials today. 

Kundalini, an ancient concept from Hindu yoga and a separate type of yoga in its own right, means “coiled” in Sanskrit and refers to either a feminine “Shakti” or a “serpent” power. When it is raised in consciousness it is often symbolized as seven or more nagas, or snakes, above and behind a meditating Buddha.  This implies that meditation and awakening of the kundalini go hand in hand.  I learned this concept early, beginning in 1963, when I was thirteen, from the son of Edgar Cayce, the medical clairvoyant, Hugh Lynn Cayce, and also from reading passages in Cayce’s readings themselves.  It was the opinion of those readings, as well as Hugh Lynn, that the elevation of this energy was a consequence of proper meditation and that drug-induced altered states of consciousness were dangerous ways to awaken it and could do more harm than good. In retrospect, from over forty years later, the way I understand this is that altered states of consciousness open us up to genuine transformational states that we lack the balance and perceptual development to integrate. Much of my life has been spent, in the development of Integral Deep Listening dream yoga, in developing a balanced, reliable way of awakening or experiencing enlightenment in the here and now, in our secular, mundane lives, without having to go into trance or spend years in monasteries doing intensive meditation.  I believe in teaching what I know from experience rather than what I believe.  I also believe that you should never take what I say on faith but simply put the injunctive methodology of IDL to work in your own life and judge the results for yourself. Any true yoga is not dependent on any particular teacher. The vehicle is irrelevant; if it is genuine, one should be able to get the results regardless of who teaches them, albeit different people resonate better with different sources of instruction.

Personally, I have always been suspicious of altered states of consciousness because I had plenty of them when I was young and they did not last. I got very clear very early that balance and integration had to be my focus. Consequently, instead of enlightenment being a singular model of love, as it is for many Christians, compassion, as it is for some forms of Tibetan Buddhism, or wisdom, as it is for Theravadin Busshism, it is for IDL the balancing of core processes and associated qualities that are associated with the round of each breath, day, and life. Interviewing and practicing becoming potentials is a way of accessing and then internalizing components of enlightenment at one’s present state of development. As this occurs, your sense of who you are expands to transcend and include who you think you are.

What are three fundamental life issues that you are dealing with now in your life?

1. Waking up

2. Cosmic humor

3. Abundance

Tell me a dream you remember.  It can be an old one, a repetitive dream, a nightmare, or one that you’re sure you understand.

A mother and a couple of siblings, perhaps two young boys are being kept prisoner inside an area. First a sound is heard…is it an engine? Yes…but what kind?…a large bulldozer?….Yes. The integrity of the area is maintained by at least a couple of large bulldozers that are built into the structure of the area. Either I or the mother remembers that one of the boys, about six or seven, was taught to drive all sorts of things and could drive a bulldozer.  So he is asked to drive this one. It is a simple matter for him to drive it and crash it into trees or a wall or a building, which he does on purpose, even though his mother and brother are in it.  He knows that the bulldozer is so big they won’t be hurt but it will hurt the bulldozer enough for them to be free of it.  That is what happened – he succeeds in freeing his family, but he is put in jail where he becomes fat.  Although he is very intelligent, it is not developed because he spends years misidentified as a criminal.

Why do you think that you had this dream?

Last night I worked on an interview of the sleeping, child part of myself, personified as a monkey. He came up in the context of being oblivious of how much I eat and also my past and future thoughts that keep me from staying centered when I meditate.  This kid probably is about that.

If this dream were playing at a theater, what name would be on the marquee?

Driving a Bulldozer

These are the characters in the dream, beside yourself…

Mother, two boys, engine, bulldozer, imprisoning area, obstruction,  jail

If one character had something especially important to tell you, what would it be?

Bulldozer

Now remember how as a child you liked to pretend you were a teacher or a doctor?  It’s easy and fun for you to imagine that you are this or that character in your dream and answer some questions I ask, saying the first thing that comes to your mind.  If you wait too long to answer, that’s not the character answering – that’s YOU trying to figure out the right thing to say!

Bulldozer, would you please tell me about yourself and what you are doing?

I am an integral part of this building. My engine is always running. I am always ready, but I don’t move. I give the building bulk and my engine runs things.

What do you like most about yourself? What are your strengths?

I am powerful, even when I am not moving. My energy feeds other activities.

What do you dislike most about yourself? Do you have weaknesses?  What are they?

I am not using most of my capabilities. I am not moving, I am not working. Like the people in this compound, I am also imprisoned.

Bulldozer, you are in Joseph’s life experience, correct?  He created you, right?  Bulldozer,, what aspect of Joseph do you represent or most closely personify?

I am his latent life force, prana. Core physical brute energy.

Bulldozer, if you could be anywhere you wanted to be and take any form you desired, would you change?  If so, how?

I would be kundalini! I would rise! And as I rose, I would transform! I would be different things depending on how far I rose! At the top I would be a winged sun before I cascaded over as pure light and bliss!

(Continue, answering as the transformed object, if it chose to change.)

Pure Light and Bliss, how would you score yourself 0-10, in confidence, compassion, wisdom, acceptance, peace of mind, and witnessing?  Why?

Confidence: 10 There is no death! I have no fear!

Compassion: 10 Everything is a crystalization, a condensation of me! All things are my eyes and ears, my senses!

Wisdom: 10 I am in balance.

Acceptance: 10 What is there not to accept?

Inner Peace: 10 I am wildly alive and at complete peace in my aliveness.

Witnessing: 10 One with all, I witness all.

How would Joseph’s life be different if he naturally scored like you do in all six of these qualities all the time?

Luminosity. Cosmic Humor. Abundance.

If you could live Joseph’s life for him, how would you live it differently?

In my presence.

If you could live Joseph’s waking life for him today, would you handle his three life issues differently?  If so, how?

Not so differently, but with increasing clarity, as he is already working to do.

What three life issues would you focus on if you were in charge of his life?

The same.

In what life situations would it be most beneficial for Joseph to imagine that he is you and act as you would?

Any time he wakes up and realizes he’s off center somewhere, in some way.

Why do you think that you are in Joseph’s life?

You mean, why do I think Joseph is in my life? To give me another way to know myself!

How is Joseph most likely to ignore what you are saying to him?

Mental fuzziness; sleepwalking; addiction to past and future; focus on fear and scarcity.

What would you recommend that he do about that?

Smile! Remember me!

I think Joseph had this dream because

This was about taking the initiative with his monkey mind. He knows it’s not the problem or the enemy but he hasn’t yet figured out how to use it to free himself and to free me. However, he’s figuring it out; he’s getting closer!

I think this dream event happened or (some character) was in the dream because…

The barrier had to be hit to free him from me. As long as he was unconsciously identified with me he was trapped in me, like a seed that is in hibernation. When he is free he can witness me and I can witness him, so we both are free to transform. There is a part of his mind that wants to punish him from breaking free, as it does in him escaping the prison of his marriage. But the breakout is what is important, not how it is done. Becoming fat has to do with putting himself back in the prison of sleepwalking through life.

What have you heard yourself say?

I can usefully view my prana as a bulldozer for me to drive. It maintains my life and the prison of my life drama and life script, but it can be much, much more than that. First, I have to take initiative and liberate both of us and others. Then I have to stay OK about that and not allow myself to fall back into scripted limitations, guilt, or small thinking.

If this experience were a wake-up call from the most central part of who you are, what do you think it would be saying to you?

I am getting close to awakening my kundalini consciously. By remembering this dream, deeply listening to it, and applying it, I speed that process of waking up.

The  implication of this interview is that I have available to me a very powerful power source that must first be recognized then controlled to free oneself.  There seemed to be a second one on the premises as well. It is controlled by a young part of myself that reminds me of a “monkey” potential I interviewed yesterday. There also appears to be a need to separate out my consciousness from that of the life force itself – to use it, but not identify with it.

Such interviews can speed spiritual awakening by conscious participation in the agenda of those potentials that are attempting to emerge. I have no doubt that my access to this particular power source is a result of dedicated, focused, consistent meditation of an effective variety on a daily basis. It does not take a lot: a little bit that is effective is better than a lot of sitting that involves mental games.

Throughout the day following this interview I have felt more alive, with more energy of a deep, inner quality, than I have felt before.  It is something different, a different sort of life force connection than I have ever felt. Very interesting….

For the poor, unfortunate souls in the world who have never been visited by the Tooth Fairy, she leaves money if you will put the tooth that fell out or was extracted under your pillow when you go to sleep.

This interview was done out of caring for a good friend, his work, and for the future of the world, which he is actively nurturing through developing and promoting major green energy initiatives.  Because he is ushering in a new economic model for a regenerated planet and humanity, he reminds me of the Bodhisattva Buddhists in Tibet associate with the future, Maitreya.  Therefore, we will call him Mait, for short.

Clearly, my Tooth Fairy is going to give me answers that pertain to me; Mait is going to have to interview his own Tooth Fairy if he is going to get answers for himself.  Still, I care deeply about Mait and his issues.  In the sense that what I know about Mait boils down to experiences, meanings, and assumptions that I project onto him, he is an aspect of myself.   So while I will not get his answers to his issues, I will get my answers to his issues – to the extent that I understand them and have made them mine.  To the extent that we are one in the same as beings, as life force, my answers will have more or less relevance for him.

What are three fundamental life issues that you are dealing with now in your life?

1 Helping Mait help the world with his heroic efforts in launching his Green business

2 Being in the right place at the right time

3 Aways having a smile going on inside

Which issue brings up the strongest feelings for you?

At this moment, helping Mait.

If those feelings had a color (or colors), what would it be?

I want to interview the Tooth Fairy.  This is because he/she/or it is a standing joke between Mait and I about imploring the help of any and all mythological or metaphysical constructs – gods, demons, life energies, yogis, etc. that might provide some leverage on this or that life issue – career, money, health, relationships, whatever.  When you want something, there is no limit to the superstitious behaviors that you are willing to indulge in. Interviewing the Tooth Fairy takes that strategy to the other side of the Twilight Zone…

Imagine that color filling the space in front of you so that it has depth, height, width, and aliveness.

Now watch that color swirl, congeal, and condense into a shape. Don’t make it take a shape, just watch it and say the first thing that you see or that comes to your mind: An animal? Object? Plant? What?

The Tooth Fairy!

Now remember how as a child you liked to pretend you were a teacher or a doctor?  It’s easy and fun for you to imagine that you are the shape that took form from your color and answer some questions I ask, saying the first thing that comes to your mind.  If you wait too long to answer, that’s not the character answering – that’s YOU trying to figure out the right thing to say!

Tooth Fairy, would you please tell me about yourself and what you are doing?

I am an imaginary figment of your imagination, probably even more imaginary than the characters in your dreams.  That’s because during dreams your think your self-created images and dream characters are real when they are usually and mostly self-created delusions.  But even in waking life you know I am a convenient cultural delusion, part of a common dream that generations inherit – a comfortable harmless lie some parents tell children.

What do you like most about yourself? What are your strengths?

I have no credibility, therefore I have very little in the way of a reputation to uphold.  I am imaginary; therefore I can be as foolish and as playful as I like! People can think whatever they want about me and it doesn’t affect me at all!

What do you dislike most about yourself? Do you have weaknesses?  What are they?

How could I have weakness if I’m imaginary?  What’s there to dislike?

Tooth Fairy, you are in Joseph’s life experience, correct?  He created you, right? What aspect of Joseph do you represent or most closely personify?

Receptivity to anything and everything, even the ridiculous and foolish.

Tooth Fairy, if you could be anywhere you wanted to be and take any form you desired, would you change?  If so, how?

Hmmm…maybe I’d turn into a catastrophe large enough to wake the government up so it would embrace Mait’s technologies to reduce global warming.  Something that would quadruple the price of oil…

(Continue, answering as the transformed object, if it chose to change.)

Catastrophe, how would you score yourself 0-10, in each of the following six qualities: confidence, compassion, wisdom, acceptance, inner peace, and witnessing?  Why?

Confidence: 10 I kick ass. Of course I’m confident!

Compassion:   ? From the point of view of a lot of humans, I’m a disaster and totally hurtful and hateful. From the perspective of just about everything else, I am a force for purification.

Wisdom: 8 I think I’m pretty damn smart. However, it’s true that if I could bring about this without destroying everything I’d be wiser.

Acceptance: 2 No, I don’t accept what humans are doing to the planet.

Inner Peace: 7 I have a lot of inner peace about being a catastrophe.

Witnessing: 8 I can witness humans very easily and well.

Catastrophe, if you scored tens in all six of these qualities, would you be different?  If so, how?

Hmmmm…I wouldn’t be a catastrophe any more.  I would probably be a creative, productive human, like Mait that can work the system to make things happen.  In fact, I would be thousands of people like him, and together we would leverage the global economic system…

So you’ve basically turned into a multi-Mait that is in a lot of people?

Yup.

How would Joseph’s life be different if he naturally scored like you do in all six of these qualities all the time?

He wouldn’t waste any time being angry at the flat-earth global warming deniers and the greedy assholes in the energy business that fund them.

If you could live Joseph’s life for him, how would you live it differently?

Other than the above, I wouldn’t do much differently.  He needs to keep doing what he’s doing, what he’s working on.  He has a message that needs to get out there to more people.

If you could live Joseph’s waking life for him today, would you handle Joseph’s three life issues differently?  If so, how?

1 Helping Mait help the world with his heroic efforts in launching his Green business  What greater assistance could you possibly be than doing Tooth Fairy interviews for him???

2 Being in the right place at the right time Well, I am, so what’s your problem? Just be me and you’ll be there!

3 Aways having a smile going on inside That’s an easy one!  Just think of Tooth Fairy! That should do it!

What three life issues would you focus on if you were in charge of Joseph’s life?

1. Focus.

2. Focus.

3. Did I say focus??

In what life situations would it be most beneficial for Joseph to imagine that he is you and act as you would?

Only when he wants to feel connected on a global level to the solution of global problems.  But besides that, I’m useless.

Character, do you do drama?  If not, why not?

Nope. I’ll leave that to the Tea Partiers, assorted Luddites, global warming deniers and the people who worry about them.

What is your secret for staying out of drama?

Focus!

Why do you think that you are in Joseph’s life?

To give him confidence and also, through this interview, to help Mait have confidence.

How is Joseph most likely to ignore what you are saying to him?

It’s just another stupid interview, right?

What would you recommend that he do about that?

Read over his stupid interviews from time to time and see what he thinks and how he feels.

Joseph, what have you heard yourself say?

My Tooth Fairy turned into a catastrophe and then into a multi-Mait that creates a collective consciousness that makes catastrophes unnecessary.  I heard myself say I don’t need to put energy into fear or worry.  Also, that I’m connected to global solutions.

If this experience were a wake-up call from the most central part of yourself, what do you think it would be saying to you?

Stop listening to the bad news. Focus on amplifying the parts of yourself that have solutions and connect with others who have solutions too.

What are crop circles? What causes them?

Take a look at this You Tube video if you want to be reminded about what an amazing, mind-blowing phenomena they are:

“Made by human hands? A hoax? Look at the details of interwoven plants in the magnified views. And remember these appear quickly, and even working one night would entail massive talent and person-power, let alone the other, measurable factors like changes in the electromagntic field inside the formations, the “blown” hole at the base of each stalk that is associated with the bend, non-broken stalks, textures, etc., etc. Some, on occasion ARE hoaxes, and some good ones, but can you imagine what it takes to do these so often, too?”

While the hoax, followed by the UFO theories are most popular, I like to think at least a few crop circles are created by the same consciousness that produces Marian apparitions and our dreams, when experienced from the perspective of most other characters in them.

What I like about this idea is that it points toward ongoing consciousness after death other than NDEs and visitations. It also ties in nicely with such ideas as the Mahayana Buddhist idea of alaya vijanana, Jung’s universal unconscious, and Sheldrake’s morphogenic fields.

David Sunfellow, of New Heaven New Earth, has done extensive research into crop circles and concludes that some 98% of them are man-made. You can read his report here.

Also, with all the political, economic, and ecological insanity presently happening here on our plane of daily existence, it gives me comfort to remember that life is inscrutible and playful.

How can we learn more about the intelligence that creates crop circles, other than interviewing the hoaxters or looking in the mirror? Regardless of who or what created them, their significance will always in part be that which we project onto them. So why not look at significances that are projected by other parts of ourselves than our waking minds? After all, our waking minds don’t know what the heck they are for sure, even if most are pranks. Also, if only a few are outpicturings of a deeper, more transcendent, more inclusive aspect of ourselves, then perhaps we can hear from such aspects of ourselves about their own creations!

No one interview will ever provide a final or complete explanation for any group-created phenomena, but like the blind men and the elephant, with enough different interviews by different people, we may be able to construct a composite picture. In that spirit, I encourage you to become “Crop Circles” as I have in the following interview, and see what comes up for you. If you do, I would love to read your results and then to share them with others on this site.

What are three fundamental life issues that you are dealing with now in your life?

1. Staying focused on my priorities.

2. Remembering the absurdity of life and to smile inside!

3. Remembering to live within my breath right now.

Tell me a dream you remember.  It can be an old one, a repetitive dream, a nightmare, or one that you’re sure you understand.

It’s not a personal dream, but more a dream of some consciousness that is greater than any man or the consciousness of any group of people: crop circles.  While they may all be clever hoaxes, we can still interview them as an expression of human experience.

Why do you think that you had this dream?

I do not see crop circles primarily as a means of communication, because I view them as a group or collective dream, and I don’t see dreams as primarily about communication.  Rather, I see them as innate outpicturings of awareness, whether on a personal, group, or system level, and I get to choose whether I will tune into that awareness or not, and in what way. Normally, people simply tune in with their waking predispositions and interpretations, which represent only a small fraction of who they really are.

If it were playing at a theater, what name would be on the marquee?

Interviewing Crop Circles

These are the characters in the dream…

Crop Circles, Farmland, Sky.  The consciousness or beings that created them: humans, extraterrestrials, collective species intelligence, bored angels, leprechauns, whatever…

If one character had something especially important to tell you, what would it be?

The Crop Circles themselves.  They are the indisputable facts that I would like to learn more about.

Now remember how as a child you liked to pretend you were a teacher or a doctor?  It’s easy and fun for you to imagine that you are this or that character in your dream and answer some questions I ask, saying the first thing that comes to your mind.  If you wait too long to answer, that’s not the character answering – that’s YOU trying to figure out the right thing to say!

Crop Circles, would you please tell me about yourself and what you are doing?

We take a multiplicity of shapes and designs, all creative, all unique, all reflecting intelligence, all difficult for humans to make, but many of us are made by humans as pranks, experimentation, art work, or for publicity.

What do you like most about yourself? What are your strengths?

We cause people to think.  We cause people to stop and question their assumptions about what is real, what humans are capable of and what they are not.

What do you dislike most about yourself? Do you have weaknesses?  What are they?

No, nothing, since we can take many different forms and our creativity is broad. It would be like asking art if it disliked itself or had any weaknesses.  Those are determinations in the eye of the beholder, not in the art itself.

Crop Circles, you are in Joseph’s life experience, correct?   Crop Circles, what aspect of Joseph do you represent or most closely personify?

His creativity; the part of him that is always remains beyond the ability of his waking mind to grasp, categorize, or dismiss.  Also the mixing of the mundane and delusional with the sacred and relatively transcendent, and the perennial problem of separating the two.

Crop Circles, if you could be anywhere you wanted to be and take any form you desired, would you change?  If so, how?

No.

(Continue, answering as the transformed object, if it chose to change.)

Crop Circles, how would you score yourself 0-10, in confidence, compassion, wisdom, acceptance, peace of mind, and witnessing?  Why?

Confidence: 10 We don’t care what humans make of us.

Compassion:   0 We don’t exist to generate compassion.

Wisdom: 10 Even tricksters create us to represent a transcendent intelligence.

Acceptance: 10 We are totally accepting both of what we are and whatever humans make of us.  Like dreams, we don’t care if they dismiss us as delusions or not.

Inner Peace: 10

Witnessing:   0 As ourselves we don’t witness anything.  You might say we bear witness and embody transcendent perspectives – in fact one has to take a transcendent perspective, that is, from the sky, in order to appreciate us at all. You might say we generate witnessing in the perceiver.

Crop Circles, if you scored tens in all six of these qualities, would you be different?  If so, how?

Hmmm…We would be self-aware and aware of our impact on humans without letting that change our nature.

How would Joseph’s life be different if he/she naturally scored like you do in all six of these qualities all the time?

He would have a vastly expanded sense of who he is.

If you could live Joseph’s life for him, how would you live it differently?

I would stop focusing on questions of causation and take whatever there is as a way to awaken to a broader, more inclusive, transcendent definition of who he is.

If you could live Joseph’s waking life for him today, would you handle his three life issues differently?  If so, how?

1. Staying focused on my priorities. Nothing to report on this one. I don’t care about his priorities.

2. Remembering the absurdity of life and to smile inside! Yeah. Maybe we’re an elaborate hoax.  So you can become more distrusting and skeptical or you can appreciate us for what we are and the parts of yourself that we personify.  After all, is there any part of yourself that isn’t a hoax, that isn’t an illusion or a delusion?

3. Remembering to live within my breath right now. I don’t do breath, but I do exist within my space.  I am very good at being, and being OK with being.

What three life issues would you focus on if you were in charge of his life?

1. Curiosity, wonder, amazement, surprise, fascination.

2. Witnessing; getting the broadest overview possible.

3. Appreciation of the endless creativity of life.

In what life situations would it be most beneficial for Joseph to imagine that he is you and act as you would?

Whenever he wants to merge creativity and beingness, say when he’s writing.

Crop Circles, do you do drama?  If not, why not?

Nope. There’s a lot of drama around me but I don’t do it myself.

What is your secret for staying out of drama?

I don’t want or need to persecute, rescue, or play the victim to others or myself.

Why do you think that you are in Joseph’s life?

To remind him of how he has to witness himself, take the perspective of the big picture, if he’s going to see the patterns in his life.

How is Joseph most likely to ignore what you are saying to him?

Try as usual to run his life out of the ten percent of the iceberg above the water line.

What would you recommend that he do about that?

Remember me and smile.

I think Joseph had this desire to interview me, Crop Circles because

He was fascinated with the possibility of looking at life from a perspective that transcends physical death.  But in doing the interview he realized that all perspectives are illusions and “hoaxes,” and that none are to be taken too seriously or literally.

What have you heard yourself say?

Man’s search for truth is basically one of outgrowing limited belief systems rather than finding anything that is Real or True in any absolute sense. Rather than searching for stable sources of reality, truth, or meaning, it is better to enjoy, savor, and make the most of the reality, truth, and meaning of the moment.

If this experience were a wake-up call from the most central part of who you are, what do you think it would be saying to you?

Cultivate the witness, but remember the absurdity of whatever perspective you are taking at the moment.

This lovely lady came with us on a trip to swim with wild dolphins in Bimini, because she had experiences in which dolphins connected her to the divine, spoke to her, and through her.  This lady was not psychotic, delusional, or in any way appearing to be emotionally unbalanced. She is friendly, conscientious, helpful, empathetic, and generous.  Her intuitive connection to the divine is very important to her and dolphins have somehow become a central path or bridge.

This very interesting interview reveals the interface between out of control world events: a world perishing due to human greed and ignorance, and the worried, caring, individual conscience that holds itself somehow responsible.

What are three fundamental life issues that you are dealing with now in your life?

1 Intuition: With all the life issues we have today we don’t have time for intuition.  I have some, but I want more!  If I did, my life would be totally different.  There were moments in my life when I was very intuitive.  Those were very happy moments.  Everything fits together harmonically. Harmony is missing now.

2 Harmony in my life.

3 Love!  Love for myself.  I miss that a lot.

Which issue brings up the strongest feelings for you?

Intuition

I would like to do an interview about an event I had when I was mixing a homeopathic medication five years ago with a group of people that was led by an instructor in homeopathy, I was doing a very special mystery grinding of the “the milk of a dolphin” in a mortar with a pestal.  There was a mother dolphin in a zoo in Switzerland.  Our teacher asked the zoo to give him a little of the dolphin milk because he was making a homeopathic medication with it.  In the homeopathic preparation, you take one little drop of the dolphin milk and put it into 100 drops of sugar and grind it.  When we did that, very strange things happened.  All our senses became very active while this was happening.  We heard voices and saw pictures – not all the same ones – different people heard different voices and saw different things.  All our senses became very intense.  This is like wishful thinking, but you still see reality also.

The first step of the process was a dilution of one drop dolphin’s milk to 100 grams of sugar.  Then you do the same again, diluting it a second time in another 100 grams of sugar.  You take that dilution and repeat two more times for a total of four times.   The grinding only takes twenty minutes for each dilution, however, every step produces different visions and different illusions for the people in the group.  There were forty-five people in our group and everyone got different pictures and stories, so it took altogether two and a half days to do the four dilutions.  When we started to do this grinding I was tasting fresh fish in my mouth.  Normally, I hate fish.  I saw myself coming up from the very dark to the light above.  It was the sea and I was a dolphin.  For those two days I was a dolphin.

There are special themes that we discuss when we do the grinding for each dilution.  The first theme is home country.  Where is your home, where do you feel at home? The second is communication.  It was a very strong theme for me.  I and two others in the group were dolphins, the rest were humans.  I tried to say something to the humans but they didn’t understand.  Other members of the group were telling me I looked like a dolphin, with the nose and eyes of a dolphin.

During this time as a dolphin I saw that human civilization was destroyed.  It was like the end of the world.  Big earthquakes destroyed human civilization.  Everything was destroyed. I knew that we humans were responsible for it.  During the fourth grinding I was standing near to God and I felt very guilty for the destruction of the planet. I wanted to come back down back to Earth and tell humans not to do it, to somehow prevent it.   I was begging to be sent down to Earth because there was still time to change things.  It didn’t matter what shape I came back in, as a dolphin or as a bird, for example, to give this message to humans.  I was standing with my head down and feeling very guilty.  The Divine said, “Humans can’t understand each other.  Why should they understand you as a dolphin or some other animal?”  I said, “I will find a way to tell them so that they will not lose their contact with the divine.”  Then I was a dolphin for several lives.

The back fin connects dolphins to the divine.  As a dolphin, I was feeling that connection.  In my vision, all the dolphins killed themselves because they couldn’t communicate with the humans about the disaster in a way that humans would hear.  So the dolphins turned themselves on their backs to break their contact with the divine and drove themselves onto the land because they couldn’t contact humans.  They are still trying to be heard by humans today.

The leader of the homeopathic grinding said that there should be a fifth dilution but not all the group could follow it.  They could all sleep on it and he would decide which members could do the fifth step.  Fifteen people were selected.  The others were dreaming different things and got signs that they shouldn’t do the fifth step.

I did the step.  I woke up knowing that I should do it.  While I was taking a shower that morning I had a feeling that someone was pushing a knife into my back.   I was feeling it and I was screaming.  My roommate got me out of the shower because I couldn’t move because I was still feeling the knife in my back.  It was a big pain.   There was also a shaman in the group.  He stopped the hurting a bit when he gave me a wooden dolphin.  He told me that he wasn’t a dolphin man and that I am more dolphin than he is.  I caressed the back fin of this wooden dolphin and the pain in my back went away!  With this fifth grinding I was losing the ability to listen to the dolphins. At the beginning of the fifth grinding I was both human and dolphin but after the fifth grinding of the dolphin milk the dolphin went away and I was only human.  Afterwards, when it was finished, I was so happy to see the people, the sun, the trees that it all was still there after seeing everything destroyed during those two days.    Five years later, I still have this pain in my back sometimes; it comes and goes.

Associations: I have been dreaming of this dolphin trip. I would like to ask this pain why I can’t hear the dolphins anymore.  When I was swimming with dolphins yesterday in the Caribbean near Bimini I heard the dolphins like a choir, but I couldn’t understand them.

Pain, why can’t Terri hear the dolphins any more? Why can’t humans hear them anymore?

The pain is there, but it doesn’t talk.

Pain, why don’t you talk?

She’s not listening.  It’s as if she was just whistling….

What would be different if she was listening to you, pain?

I am still Terri feeling the pain.

Pain, what does Terri need to do to become you right now?

Love!

Are you willing to feel love right now, Terri?

I am feeling love for everyone but not for myself.

Pain, why is Terri not feeling love for herself?

It’s the same feeling that she had when she was standing next to the divine and feeling so guilty for the loss of the world.

Pain, do you think Terri should feel guilty for the loss of the world?

No, she’s not responsible.  She just feels that she is.

Dolphins, I understand that you turned over on your backs and beached yourselves because you couldn’t communicate with humans, is that correct?

Yes, we did that because this back fin of power is like a connection to the divine or like a TV remote control.  You can’t do what you want to do; you’re like a robot.  You are helpless.  We couldn’t stand that any more.  We had to disconnect this connection.

I thought your connection was to the divine.  Why would you want to disconnect it?

It doesn’t make any sense, but it was an inner weakness because I couldn’t take it any more.   I came back many times as a dolphin.

Dolphins, are you aware that Terri feels guilty and responsible for not being able to wake the humans up who are destroying the planet?

No, that’s her problem.  She’s feeling that.  We know that she has wisdom like we do.  We don’t make her responsible; she makes herself responsible.

Dolphins, do you think it’s realistic or helpful for Terri to make herself responsible for humans destroying the planet?

No.

Why not, Dolphins?

She had this experience and she can understand it more than any other human, but every single person is responsible for that.  They do not all know what they are doing.

Dolphins, why do you think Terri has had this piercing pain in her back?

The lack of connection of the line to the divine makes this pain. When she can listen again the pain will stop.

Is she listening right now, dolphins?

No.

What would she need to be doing right now in order to listen, dolphins?

She has to find a quiet place, sit down, and listen.

If she does that, what will she hear? (Terri has a problem thinking the dolphins are talking to her in the interview; she has to listen to them outside of herself.)

Does Terri have to go to quiet places and be by physical dolphins to hear you or can she listen to you in anywhere, or in interviews like the one she is doing right now?

Terri: I can communicate with them here and now because I am back in contact with them.(Problems staying in role: “I don’t know which one wants to speak through me right now, the dolphin part of me or the external, real dolphins.”)

Dolphins, what does Terri have to do to no longer have physical pain?

The pain is so she won’t forget what she saw.  When she starts to listen then the pain will go away.

Dolphins, do you think that Terri is listening to you right now?

Yes.

What do you want to tell her, dolphins?

We don’t want to talk to her now because it is too loud.

Is she putting you off, dolphins, or is she going to talk to you tonight?

We will talk to her tonight if she will get quiet and listen to us.

Thank you dolphins.  We look forward to supporting Terri and you in any way we can in the future.

When I regain this connection to the divine through my back then I will have regained my intuition.

Dolphins, how would Terri’s life be different if she naturally scored like you do in all six of these qualities all the time?

Connected with freedom and happiness all the time!  She shouldn’t ask, she should just live it!  If she wants the pain relief she will take time to listen to us.

You say, “listen to us.” So we stop and listen to you.  Then you say, “It’s not the time.”  Which way is it, dolphins?

They are bored.  They went off. They don’t want to talk…

Two days later:

They are talking all the time!  They say, no matter where she is she needs to take time to get in contact with us!

Dolphins, thank you for talking to Terri!  Has Terri had that pain in her back since she started talking to you again?

No!

How come?

She should take the contact to the divine.  The pain only returns when she is not in contact.

Can she do that through listening to you, dolphins?

We are helping.

This interview raises many interesting questions.

What is the relationship between dreams and mythology?

Can individuals dream cultural myths?

Can myths influence individual dreams?

How do cults and religions get formed?  How do world myths get created?

Notice that part of what creates cultural myths in when a person cannot easily differentiate between external voices and internal ones.  Terri assumed that the dolphins speaking to her were external.

Notice also that Terri felt personally responsible for the acts of all humanity and for the destruction of the entire world.  This is grandiose and narcissistic, although her intentions are based on genuine caring.

Notice that Terri felt not only responsible but guilty.  This added a third problem to the first two: 1) inability to distinguish internal from external guidance; 2) personalization of world responsibility; 3) guilt.

These problems were acute enough to create somatization in a way that paralleled her belief system: dolphins lost their contact with the divine through their backs; when Terri lost her intuitive contact to the divine through being a dolphin at the end of the homeopathic dilution, she developed intense and recurring back pain.

All of this was real for Terri

This interview also demonstrates how Integral Deep Listening, as a form of Dream Yoga, helps people wake up out of false awakenings, that is thinking they are awake when they are not.  Terri’s reality of pain in her back because of the guilt and responsibility she felt for the destructiveness of humanity is a type of “false awakening.”  It is a real and important insight for her, so real that it is externalized,  yet it is not true lucidity.  She is clearly asleep within the dream of her own belief system, which generates her own painful reality. This is an excellent description of and example of how karma works and how we create it out of our awareness continuously, because we think we are awake right now when we are actually in a delusional state, locked in the reality of our own delusions.

A Global Nightmare: The Gulf Oil Spill of April 20, 2010

9.5.10

Cynthia

How we feel and how we think about world events shapes our world view, which it turn shapes the choices that we make that affect not only ourselves but all other beings on Earth in one way or another.  If our world view is inaccurate, we make decisions that are destructive and abusive not only toward our environment and others, but toward ourselves.  The more that our world view takes into account the perspectives of those affected by our decisions, the more likely it is that our decisions will support the common good.  The inverse is also true: the less that our world view takes into account the perspectives of those affected by our decisions, the more likely it is that our decisions will destroy others and ourselves.  Personal and world catastrophes are caused by a lack of awareness of the consequences of our actions.  This has been true throughout history, as Jared Diamond makes clear in Collapse.  It will destroy our own civilization if we do not listen to the past and listen to the increasingly dire wake-up calls that confront humanity.

Many people in the world right now feel like the subject of this interview does:  They are watching the unfolding of a global ecological nightmare, in the form of the Gulf Oil Spill, with horror.  They are both frightened and depressed.  They feel helpless and angry.  They grieve for all the needless lives of sea creatures and the unfolding of terrible destruction to ecosystems in the Ocean.  They know that even if this particular ocean oil leak is quickly plugged that man’s technology is increasingly unleashing natural forces that he cannot control. Depending on the stage of their grief, they deny the seriousness of the situation, stay depressed and helpless, strike out in rage, or reach some accommodation with an unacceptable daily status quo.  What can be done?

The following preferences reflect the disaster from multiple perspectives within one person.  If you created your own account and used it to create a Dream Sociogram to give voice to the players who are participants in your world dream, the results would be uniquely yours.  However, Cynthia’s voice represents many others.  You will find a great deal in her account that you can relate to and appreciate.  Like many people, she has a personal connection to this unfolding nightmare. She has been leading trips to Bimini in the Bahamas to swim with wild dolphins for eleven years and has a deep love and respect for the ocean and its inhabitants.  It is a voice that needs to be heard.  It gives voice to those who can not speak, but can only live and die.

Integral Deep Listening is inherently therapeutic, in that by respecting, recognizing, listening to, and accepting multiple self-created perspectives we evolve beyond our prerational feelings and beliefs about our personal and shared dramas and nightmares.   It does so in part by providing a rational and objective method of evaluation that is duplicatable and subject to peer review.  Identification with personifications of our conflicting needs and wants, as well as our unrecognized potentials, whether from nightmares, waking life issues, or waking life nightmares, such as the gulf oil spill, allow us the ability to access transpersonal world views that transcend and include multiple legitimate perspectives that we previously ignored or disowned.  The world needs such transpersonal perspectives now, and the ability of IDL to generate them in an authentic way is what makes it integral.

Our hope is that this Dream Sociomatrix and Sociogram will help you process through your own thoughts and feelings about what we are doing to our planet and steer you toward a stance or perspective will not be reactive, dismissive, or partial, but one that will heal, balance, and transform your life.

Waking Life Dream Narrative

Oil Platform in the Gulf of Mexico, 20th of April, 2010. PB Officials are visiting, celebrating that there will soon be a highly productive oil well below Deep Water Horizon.  Then whoosh, boom, running.  Chaos.  BP officials leaving platform first.  Some people are trying to activate the main blowout preventer, but in vain. The platform is already on fire.  Workers get into life boats.  Some fall into the sea and are cooked by the heat.  Oil is pouring out, under great pressure.  Nothing can be done to stop the leak.  All the measures taken are ineffective.  A huge carpet of oil that you can see from space forms on the sea.  No one knows how much oil is floating and drifting of lying on the bottom of the Gulf.  Obama says BP will pay for it but BP is not equipped to deal with the catastrophe.  The Coast Guard and other arms of government intervene.  They inject dispersants that make people feel they are successful but the chemicals are even more toxic than the oil.  Uncontainable, it is soon taken up by the loop current that meets the Gulf Stream, sweeping along the Florida coastline, Cuba, and on up the Eastern seaboard.  Most of the fish larvae in the affected areas die.  It will take decades for sea life to recover from the spill.  Some never do.  Some go extinct.  Every creature that lives on fish – dolphins, sharks, birds – have a hard time.

My associations to this waking life dream are…

Every time you go swimming in those areas you have will have tar on your body.  The ocean washes tar balls ashore for decades.  It will enter history as the greatest oil spill of mankind.  It leads to fierce fights between conservatives and environmentalists.  They all wish they had put more energy, resources, and money into alternative energy because they realize that time is running out for the environment. Do the banks of the Bahamas remain dolphin grounds and a shark nursery because the Gulf current pushes it past?  Or does everything get killed?  In August will there be no dolphins to swim with, with the creatures dead and the reefs suffocated under oil?  The Gulf Stream will transport the oil even down to Africa.  It will pollute all the oceans of the world because they are all connected through the deep water basins.  It is something that is happening to mankind, not just to one country or to one ocean.  Is it a changing point for energy?

Three fundamental life issues

How to not lose hope for mankind and become a total cynic.

Not losing hope for my own life.  Why get up in the morning?  Why worry about smoking or not in the face of catastrophes like this? Depression.  “Why bother?  Life is almost over anyway.

• Existential fear.  Hardly being able to pay bills now.  How bad will things get?   Should I go to Miami to help clean up the coast?  Should I go for a last swim with the dolphins before the oil kills them all?

Predictions:

This life dream has a cast of characters.  One of them will be most preferring, another most rejecting.  One will be most preferred by the other characters in the group, one will be most rejected.  There will be most preferred and most rejected actions and feelings if there are multiple actions and feelings stated in the dream narrative and included in the constructed dream sociomatrix.  If this was your dream, what would be your predictions?  Here are Cynthia’s. Write down your best guess of the preferences of this life nightmare group.  At the end you will get to see how accurate you and Cynthia were.

Most preferring: Gulf Stream

Most rejecting: BP

Most preferred character: Ocean Life

Most rejected character: BP

Most preferred action: Clean up

Most rejected action: pollution

Most preferred feeling: ?

Most rejected feeling: appalled; in shock

Dream Sociomatrix Commentary

A Dream Sociomatrix is a grid for collecting seven degrees of preference and one preference-transcending worldview, as these are expressed by a group of self-aspects, both individually and collectively.  These self-aspects may be characters in a dream, a waking life issue, or in a world event.  From the perspective of spirit, all of these are equally both real and dreamlike.  Detailed information about creating Dream Sociomatrices can be found here and here.

“The reason I like, like (a lot, love, dislike, dislike a lot, hate, don’t care about, or am accepting toward) (dream element) is…”  “What I liked/disliked most about being in this dream is…”

Dream Self: I like myself because I’m compassionate.  I dislike the drilling platform. I love the ocean.  I am ambivalent toward the workers.  I dislike BP.  I dislike the blowout. I don’t care about the subsequent fire.   I don’t care about the evacuation or the following deaths.  Sometimes I dislike them.  It’s difficult.  Right now I don’t care.  I don’t know those people.  Those losses are really peanuts compared to who and what else will die, plus they get paid to take such risks. They know what they’re doing; it’s their responsibility.  I’m neutral toward the oil.  There’s nothing wrong with it.  It should just stay where it was.  The Gulf of Mexico is beautiful!  I like it a lot!  Also the Gulf Stream; it brings warmth and fresh water and keeps everything going.  I hate that they can’t stop the leak.  It’s almost unbearable to know that this is going to be going on for months and it could be a huge amount of oil that leaks.  I hate that the oil is spreading and that it is killing the ocean’s creatures.  I hate that it’s a catastrophe. We don’t need any more catastrophes.  Yet I am still ambivalent.  Maybe this horror will bring a change and wake everyone up, like Chernobyl.  Maybe it will make clear that we have to live with sustainable energies.  Perhaps the catastrophe will make for less war with those countries that have oil.  I love the idea of cleaning it all up but not what they are actually doing to clean it up now.  The dispersant chemicals they are using actually makes it worse for the ocean life.  I am ambivalent about being appalled and in shock.  People shouldn’t have to spend their time cleaning birds and sand and dealing with this.

What I like most about being in this experience is that I AM alive to experience it.

What I dislike most about being in this experience is the same: that I have to experience something like this while I am alive.

Platform: Who’s Cynthia?  I have no feelings.  The blowout destroys me. I don’t like being destroyed or on fire. I dislike the evacuation.  Everyone is leaving me unmanned.  Everybody is in a panic.  Not a nice sight.  No one takes care of me.  They all just run away and save their own asses.  I don’t care about the deaths.  I like oil.  That’s what I’m here for.  If I bring up a lot, I’m good.  I don’t care that they can’t stop the leak or about the coasts.  Regarding the sea creatures, it’s a pity that so many are going to die needlessly. They swim all around me, trying to build homes on me confidently, they didn’t seem to fear me.  It’s a pity, but I can’t help it.  Their deaths are terrible even for a platform without any feelings.  I don’t like the catastrophe, but if ever a fish lives here again it can make a cave home out of me, a mile down below the waves.  I like that there are clean up efforts.  What I like most about being in this experience is nothing.  I wish I wasn’t here.  What I dislike most about being in this experience is being involved in disaster and death.

Ocean: I love Cynthia!  I don’t like the platform.  I love myself.  I like the workers and dislike BP a lot.  I dislike the blowout.  I’m used to oil, but not to such amounts.  I don’t care about the fire, evacuations, or deaths.  I dislike the oil a lot.  It’s too much coming out.  When it stays where it was, I like it.  I like the Gulf Stream and dislike a lot that they can’t stop the leak.  I love the coasts.  I love my sea creatures!  The fact that the oil kills them I dislike a lot.  That this is a catastrophe for dream self – I agree.  It is a catastrophe, and I’ve had enough of them.  I dislike it a lot.  I dislike the attempts to clean up because they are not enough and not the right kind.  Nobody cared enough about what to do in such cases.  They should be pouring millions of bacteria into the oil to devour it. They are instead pouring chemicals into me that are even harder for me to metabolize than oil.  The ocean bottom is always oozing oil.  I like that Cynthia is appalled and in shock.  Not that it makes any difference.  What I like most about being in this experience is nothing.  I wish I wasn’t in it.  It’s a nightmare.  What I dislike most about being in this experience is getting polluted; getting suffocated and killed.

BP: I don’t care about Cynthia.  I like the platform very much.  We don’t like the ocean a lot.  It’s between us and the oil.  It’s dangerous, as you can see.  Nothing but trouble.  We don’t care about the workers.  There are so many more.  We have to say we care, but of course we really don’t.  People are replaceable, anytime. Regarding ourselves, we like ourselves a lot.  We hate the blowout and the fire.  We don’t like having to evacuate and the deaths.  They’re bad PR.  We love the oil.  You can make loads of money with it…We don’t like the Gulf Stream.  It might transport our problem further.  Even more people will be angry at us.  We hate that we can’t stop the leak. We hate being out of control. We have to admit we have no control. Terrible.  We said this could never happen.  Shit.  Bad PR.  People might not so easily forget this.  That’s real shit.  We like the coasts.  The ocean creatures we like to eat. But mostly we’re ambivalent.  Most of it is a bit scary. If they weren’t there people might not be so upset about us polluting the ocean.  That the spill kills the ocean creatures is bad PR.  It’s difficult for us to explain to our children.  We dislike that this is a catastrophe.  We like the clean-up efforts so we can tell people that we’re doing our best.  Also we get to feel that we are doing something good.  We don’t care that Cynthia feels appalled and in shock.  It’s her fault too that this happened.  She needs oil. We’re only doing it for her.  What I like most about being in this experience is nothing. We’d rather not be there. What I dislike most about being in this experience is getting such bad PR.  It might lead to not getting further drilling permits.  It means less profit in the future.  What have we done to deserve that?

Sea Creatures: We like Cynthia a lot!  She’s funny!  She’s also gentle when she meets or touches us.  She also likes those of us that others don’t like, like sharks.  The platform is a nice hideaway and playground.  The ocean is our home. We love it!  We ARE the ocean!  We like the workers but if BP is what is responsible for poisoning us, then we don’t like them.  We hate the blowout.  We don’t care about the fire.  Pity the workers were in the lifeboats or we could have eaten them at least.  Sorry, but we’re practical.  The oil can’t help it that it’s where it is.  But we dislike it a lot.  It’s not where it belongs.  It’s deadly for us.  We like the Gulf Stream a lot!  It’s fun swimming in it!  It takes a lot of shit away and brings fresh water!  We’re not surprised these humans cannot close this leak.  We dislike it a lot.  People never think of the consequences.  We love the coasts! We can hide there; bring up our young. We have many nurseries there.  We like each other a lot.  Life is precious.  That this spill is killing us makes us very sad.  Life has become so difficult. So often there is disease and infection and not enough to eat.  And now on top of that…  It’s a big blow. Some of us might go extinct all together.  There are not so many turtles left among us, for instance.  There are some creatures in the depths where this oil sinks to that humans haven’t met yet.  They will go extinct before you will have known about their existence.  We dislike this catastrophe a lot. We dislike the cleanup efforts.  We need the oil taken out or stopped.  They are not stopping it and they are putting more in.   We like that Cynthia is appalled and in shock.  At least someone is compassionate.  What I like most about being in this experience is nothing. What I dislike most about being in this experience is that we are being killed and are not able to bring up our babies.  The life for the ones of us that do survive is even harder.  It’s our duty to keep balance. This oil makes it impossible to keep balance.

Coasts: We like Cynthia.  We don’t like the platform. We love the ocean rolling ashore every day and licking at my rocks and the funny sounds of the pebbles!  We don’t like the workers; we dislike a lot BP.  They should leave us alone!  We dislike a lot the blowout and the fire, but it was to be expected.  We’ve been feeling the vibrations of the drilling even though it’s fifty miles out.  We don’t care about the evacuations and deaths. The oil is terrible.  It’s like a time bomb under your ass when you’re a coast. So far I felt pretty protected by all that sea bottom and by the big ocean.  It will stifle all life that I have on me when it reaches me.  Compared to the water I don’t have any chance of dilute it in any way.  I can only hope for some rain.  I love the Gulf Stream!  Hopefully it will take this shit away from me but then maybe to another part of me.  Hopefully it will help to dilute it.  We dislike that they can’t stop this.  We like ourselves a lot!  We love the sea creatures!  They’re funny!  They’re interesting!  The fact that they are being killed makes my life more boring.  No one will come to me.  We don’t feel hate like humans.  From my perspective the cleanup efforts keep a lot of the oil away from me.  I know it doesn’t help the ocean but it does help me.  I like that she is in shock and appalled.  What I like most about being in this experience is nothing. I would rather not be in it.  What I dislike most about being in this experience is being afraid.  Not knowing whether in a short time everything that I’ve taken a long time to grow will be dead.

Gulf Stream: Cynthia’s a nice girl!  I don’t know about Platforms but I’ve heard about them. They have a lot of stupid people on them that drill holes into the bottom of the sea.  I love the ocean.  I communicate with it.  I bring messages from one ocean to another.  I am indifferent toward the workers.  I dislike BP a lot. They’ve given me many disgusting loads to carry.   The blowout is terrible.  I dislike it a lot.  I’m afraid I’ll end up carrying it on my shoulders and then it will be all my fault if tar balls appear anywhere in the Caribbean or in Africa.  I dislike the oil in these huge amounts where it is as a result of this catastrophe.  I love myself.  It’s terrible that they can’t stop the leak but it’s to be expected.  It means I’ll have to carry this shit for months.  I love my Coasts.  I bring them warmth.  I make palm trees grow where people don’t expect them. that’s me!  I usually bring good things.  I hate bringing bad things.  The efforts to clean up are not right.  These chemicals are awful.  Regarding Cynthia feeling appalled and in shock, she should just flow and not feel such things.  But I understand it.  What I like most about being in this experience is nothing. I would rather not be in it.  What I dislike most about being in this experience is having to be the one that spreads it all.

Oil: I like the platform.  It’s what brought me up here.  I love the oceans!  It’s nice to whisk the workers off the platform.  I like that they help me come to the surface.  I am very ambivalent about BP.  Usually I don’t like them because they just use me all up.  Right now it’s quite nice to be out in the world.  No, we don’t like BP.   The blowout and the fire was a great show, wasn’t it?  Everything’s new for us for the first moment. We like it.   Then I just get wasted.  It’s interesting to see all the sea creataures.  But they all seem to die when they meet me or race away.  I don’t think I like any of this.  I think I would like to be back where I was.  I felt locked in but now that I’m out I think I want to go back.  Everybody wants me but nobody likes me.  If I could, I think I would just go back.  I didn’t want to be here.  I was pushed out here.  In the end I will get diluted.  It all looked like fun at the beginning.  I’m learning quickly.  No, I don’t like it.  I dislike that I kill.  I’m precious.  Silky.  Beautiful!  The Gulf Stream is WOW!  Definitely as powerful as me!  It can flow itself!  I need something to push me!  How do I feel that people can’t stop me from flowing out of the ground!  Ha ha ha!  I’m amvivalent.  I’m stronger than you.  You should have left me alone.  But also terrible.  I can’t stop myself.  I’m dependent on others to stop me.  I would like to stop polluting everything, but I can’t.  I don’t like going to the coasts!  No one likes me there!  But I like the coasts.  I love sea creatures but hate that I kill them.  This IS a catastrophe.  I am VERY big. There’s much more of me to come.  I was part of a balance down there in the earth.  Stability gets changed when I leave.  I will leave a vacuum that is destabilizing.  There’s quite a lot of movement going on down here.  I work as a shock absorber of waves that go through the rocks.  Regarding the clean up efforts, I don’t like them.  You can’t deal with me that way.  That Cynthia is appalled and shocked, I understand but I don’t care.  What I like most about being in this experience is nothing. I would rather not be in it.  What I dislike most about being in this experience is that I see the world.  That I can flow.

Dream Consciousness:

I like Cynthia.  She’s a good sort.  Not developed far enough, but on the way.  Regarding the oil platform, I create them so people can stand on them and have a good overview. This one is being abused.  I don’t like it.  I don’t like where it is, either.  I like the workers but I don’t like what they’re doing.  I dislike BP a lot!  They are dishonest megalomaniacs.  I dislike the blowout but I needed it to wake up mankind.  I just had to stop all the drilling they were wanting to do in the future.  I wish I could have done it in another way, but I had no more time.  In my experience human beings don’t listen in any other way.  I don’t care about the fire.  The BP heads should have died instead of the workers.  Catastrophes have little to do with justice.  I love the oil and the Gulf Stream.  I am ambivalent that they can’t stop the leak for the same reasons.  A lesson has to be taught.  It won’t be taught if BP can say, “We’re the heroes.  We’ve stopped it.”  You can’t just get away too cheaply when you mess with the powers that created all life.  I love the sea creatures!  I hate that they are being killed!  I like a lot that Cynthia is experiencing this as a catastrophe.  Maybe it will wake HER up.  I am ambivalent about the cleanup efforts not working, for the same reasons.  Actually, I hate it because I think it’s enough already of a shock and a wakeup call.  I wish the measures were working.  I’m sorry Cynthia is appalled and in shock, but it’s apt.  What else?  I wish everybody would stop and feel that way and not go on with business as usual.  What I like most about creating this experience is nothing. What I dislike most about creating this experience is bringing pain, suffering, and death.  It’s terrible to do that as a wake-up call.  This is not the way you ought to wake people up.

What surprises me about what I’ve heard is…

One thing I find surprising practically is that the oil is like a bubble under the crust of the earth is acting as a shock absorber.  When it’s not there the crust is destabilized and out of balance.  The more that we pump it out the more destabilized it will be.  I don’t know if this is accurate or not, but I’ve never thought of that.  The oil said it was like an absorber to absorb shock waves.  The other thing I find shocking is Dream Consciousness saying that this is necessary, because I think that’s crap.  I think that’s dangerous.  It’s like terrorists saying that the end justifies the means.  I find this disturbing.  I don’t think that the end justifies the means at ALL.  I am so totally against that.  For Dream Consciousness to say that it has to teach people a lesson, that the Exxon Valdiz was not enough.  What part of myself is it that has to talk like this?  I find it scary.  I doubt it and I distrust it.  It doesn’t give me a feeling that a higher, deeper voice has spoken but rather a feeling that I would like to find out more about that and check back, investigate, examine what part of myself this really is.  Most people bow before their dream consciousness as if it were God or their higher self or something.  It rather fills me with anger, like “Who the fuck to do you think you are that anyone needs to be taught a lesson like that?”

The autonomy of all of these different aspects of myself was unexpected and surprising to me, even though I have been practicing IDL/Dream Yoga for about three years.

Dream Commentary

“If I could change this dream in any way, would I change it?  If so, how?”

Platform: I would have my sound alarm button installed so the blowout converter would automatically shut off the flow of oil.

Ocean: They never would have drilled. They’re dealing with pressures they’re far too small to control.

BP: We wish we had installed the back up shut-off.  We shouldn’t have saved on that $500,000.00.

Sea Creatures: No drilling in the first place.

Coasts: The same.

Gulf Stream: The same.

Oil: The same:

Dream Consciousness: The same.

Dream Self: There IS no change.  What am I supposed to come up with, a fairy tale?  That it all will turn out great?  That it will teach mankind a great lesson?  From now on man will only do things in his authentic, true, own best interest instead of destroying himself????

Dreamage

(A rewrite of the dream based on a consensus of dream group member recommendations.  If there is no consensus, there can be no dreamage.  A synthesis group dream is usually its own dreamage.  Read it over before sleep as an affirmation of a higher pattern of internal integration and healing.)

No dreamage is possible, other than for it to have never happened.

Dream Summary Commentary

(“What part of this dreamer do you most closely personify?

“My strengths are…

“The reason why I am in this life experience is…”

“This dream group came together to…”)

Platform: I personify Cynthia’s practical perspective from which to take a particular overview.  I am in this experience because I’m a symbol of mankind’s desire to explore, conquer, and acquire.  I am a symbol of technical development.  I stand for the megalomanic belief that everything can be controlled.  This group of Cynthia’s self-aspects came together to create this nightmare of exploitation, pain, and death.  Good forces meeting bad forces.  It’s about survival.  It’s about who is going to win.

Ocean: I personify what Cynthia mainly consists of: salty water, inhabited by all sorts of life, streams, currents, waterways, and poisons.  I represent what everybody is made from.  I am the source of all life.  I am in this life experience because I am very, very powerful but I am not unlimited.  My ability to metabolize shit is not infinite.  I don’t have any time for hate, but it’s becoming more and more difficult to keep any kind of balance.  These self-aspects came together to show that tragedy is happening, that mankind is killing his own sources of life.

BP: We personify the greedy parts of Cynthia, the parts that want today and don’t think about the consequences tomorrow, the part that thinks it will get away with everything. The part that lies and is deceitful to the extent that it believes in its own lies.  I am in this life experience to be the bad guy.  We came together as a fight for life.

Sea Creatures: We personify Cynthia’s abundance!  The great worth of the tiniest worm to the biggest whale.  We are in this life nightmare to be the ones that die.  Abundance, variety is dying.  We came together to show her how serious the situation is.  No more time to play games.

Coasts: I personify Cynthia’s more solid part of her, the rock.  The parts that can’t be so easily shaken.  Being nagged at by time but not so easily shaken.  I’m a witness as well as involved.  I can see what’s coming…These self-aspects came together to destroy illusions.

Gulf Stream: I personify Cynthia’s strong, flowing power that goes on no matter what – whether full of life or death.  I am in this life experience to show that everything’s connected to everything and everybody else.  All these self-aspects came together in this experience to praise life and to say how unique it is.  You won’t find another planet like this one.

Oil: I most closely personify Cynthia’s residue of ancient life.  Something that should be used sparingly, like medicine, rather homeopathic.  Old, ancient stuff that someone shouldn’t mess with.  I am in this life experience as what everybody wants.  People fight over me.  I’m what’s kept everything going so far.  This group came together to make people stop, realize what they are doing and start using me wisely. To remind them that there is not only me but the power of the water, of the wind, of the temperature of the earth.

Dream Consciousness: I most closely personify her conscience, the part that tries to put one and one together.  The part that knows what is true and right. The reason why I created this dream is to tell her that she will never enter the same ocean again, like you never enter the same river twice.  I want to tell her that so that she will not see Bimini as her paradise, somewhere she can go to balance out and crank up.  It’s all the same everywhere; everything is out of balance, wherever you look.  This group came together to show how just one basic greed can be enough to endanger something as big and old as the ocean  and how that same blind greed makes the ice melt and the temperatures rise and turn storms into cyclones.

Waking Commentary

As (this dream group member), if I were living this dreamer’s waking life, how would I live it differently? Would I handle this dreamer’s three life issues differently?  If so, how?

How to not lose hope for mankind and become a total cynic.

Not losing hope for my own life.  Why get up in the morning?  Why worry about smoking or not in the face of catastrophes like this? Depression.  “Why bother?  Life is almost over anyway.

• Existential fear.  Hardly being able to pay bills now.  How bad will things get?   Should I go to Miami to help clean up the coast?  Should I go for a last swim with the dolphins before the oil kills them all?

Platform: I wouldn’t dig so deep.  If you don’t, you don’t get so much shit flying around your ears.  I would spend time in the garden looking instead of digging.   Regarding her first life issue, seeing the direction mankind is heading into, why bother about such small fears as to whether one is changing into a cynic or not?  Laughable!  Regarding losing hope for her own life, if she lost that hope she would be no better than anyone else. that’s good enough reason not to do that one.  She should treat herself the way she wants this planet treated.  The bottom of the ocean is leaking oil – she is rotting away anyway. Her system has to take care of oil leaking naturally into her without needing to do anything on top of that, like not treating herself well or poisoning herself well, or pouring extra shit inside.  The ocean doesn’t get out of balance because of a little poison here or there. Excesses get one out of balance.  Regarding dealing with her existential fear, I can’t say.  Flying into Miami to say goodbye to the sandy white beaches or to the Bahamas.  Maybe get on Jeffrey’s boat and spoil the good time his clients are having now – what’s the use of that?  If she did that it would mean that she really had given up all hope.  But sometimes to have hope you have to give up some hope.  She doesn’t have to fear about not getting enough to eat or not having medical care.

Ocean: If I were in charge of Cynthia’s life I wouldn’t smoke.    I would accept everything inside me.  I would be more aware of the fact that I too have limits.  Regarding not losing hope in mankind, it’s her choice.  There is nothing that gives you the reason to hope.  It’s your own choice.  You create hope out of yourself.  Regarding not losing hope for her own life, I wouldn’t give up life before I’m dead.  As  long as there’s life, there’s hope.  I don’t know if I’m going to turn into a big stinking mass.  I’m not going to give up hope that I will be able to metabolize it all, though it’s a terrible job.  I won’t give up hope before I’m dead.  Regarding her existential fear, I would exist and BE as best as I can.  It’s all inside of me. What can I do? Better accept it and start the work of getting rid it.

BP: If I were in charge of Cynthia’s life I would install a blow out preventer.  If there was too much pressure she would scream and howl so everybody could hear it.  Then she would just shut down.  That would create safety, stability.  Regarding hope for mankind, I can’t answer that.  I have lost hope in mankind even though I often believe in my own lies.  Regarding Cynthia’s fear of losing hope for her own life, I would party and celebrate.  Regarding her existential fear, cheat and lie and make the most of it.

Sea Creatures: If we were in charge of Cynthia’s life we wouldn’t worry about the future, even though we feel.  We enjoy life. We feel what we feel.  We suffer, we die. We don’t worry about the future.   We don’t think.  Regarding her fear of becoming a cynic, we don’t know.  We aren’t cynical.  We don’t give up hope.  Regarding her existential fears, we would live every moment.  Each one is special enough.  We don’t do the future.

Coasts: I personify Cynthia’s more solid part of her, the rock, the parts that can’t be so easily shaken.  We are being nagged at by time, but not so easily shaken.  I’m a witness as well as involved.  I can see what’s coming…These self-aspects came together to destroy illusions.    We would stand patiently and await what’s coming.  We can’t run away.  Neither can Cynthia.

Gulf Stream: If I were in charge of Cynthia’s life I would flow and help dilute as much as possible.  It is no real solving of the problem but it creates a chance to get things back into balance.  Regarding her life issues, they are her choice.  It’s no one else’s problem.  Every morning when I wake up I would choose not to become a cynic but to just flow and to do my job.

Oil: If I were in charge of Cynthia’s life I would have my importance but not to have it overestimated.  I would be aware that I am replaceable and I wouldn’t believe that I am irreplaceable.  Regarding not becoming a cynic or depressed, I’m deeply pressed, but I don’t get depressed!  I just AM de-pressed!  I am a great force that’s closed in.  She would be far more patient.  She would be able to think in big, great waves, in centuries, in millennia instead of centuries.  Then it wouldn’t be so important whether she finds her paradise the same the next time she goes or not.  She would be much more content.

Dream Consciousness: If I were in charge of Cynthia’s life – what do you mean? I AM responsible for Cynthia’s life!  Her life issues are her choice!  I wouldn’t get depressed or become a cynic.  I would just live and die.  If I get too weak I would give up.  I would know that I’m not so important but I would also know that it’s a good example for others not to give up too easily.

Identification Commentary

If I could designate specific occasions in the dreamer’s waking life when I would recommend that he imagine that he is me, what would those occasions be?

Platform: When she wants a good overview and when she wants to drill a bit deeper.

Ocean: When she wants to understand how she poisons herself and what harm she does to herself.

BP: When she needs to really put on a show!  Impress, deceive others!  Intimidate others.

Sea Creatures: When she feels helpless and tiny and small.  Then she will know that the smallest of us makes a difference, count, and make a hole a home.

Coasts: When she needs a second opinion, another kind of overview perspective.  I do not think of myself as a beach but as rocks and cliffs.

Gulf Stream: Whenever she is afraid to flow, feeling she might bring harm.  If she becomes me she will know it is her nature to flow and spread things.

Oil: When she needs to be quietly sitting somewhere…peaceful.

Dream Consciousness: When she wants to write a book!  I will supply her with enough ideas, with a plot and all.  I AM the dream maker!

Action Plan

(All of the above recommendations for waking life application are not of equal importance.  You have to decide how you wish to prioritize them and what you want to do with them.  But take some action!  It is a way of demonstrating that you take your inner direction seriously.  If you have it wrong, future dream groups will cybernetically correct your course.)

Be the oil, not having to do anything to be treasured.  Just resting, being who I am and being lazy.

Taking better care of myself.  See where I poison myself.  Using the ocean as a mirror for myself.  It’s difficult enough for my system to keep itself in balance without putting a lot of additional shit into myself.

• The Coast and the Platform are both important perspectives that I need.

Sociogram Commentary

The purpose of the Dream Sociogram Commentary is to interpret the depiction of group member preferences as they appear in the Dream Sociogram.  Information on how Dream Sociograms are constructed and how they are read can be found here.

Overall Pattern: This group’s preferences have created an antithetical Dream Sociogram.  There are five basic Dream Sociogram patterns possible: thesis, in which there is bipolar placement on one or more of the three element (chosen axes – form, process, or affect); synthesis, in which only positive  axis preferences are in evidence (“everyone prefers everyone else”); high synthesis, an extreme variation of thesis patterns, in which positive preferences are very strong (“everyone loves everyone else”); antithetical, in which we find bipolar placements on the vertical acceptance axis and usually, but not necessarily, bipolar placements on one or more of the three element axes; and nightmare antithetical, in which persecutors prefer the pattern and normally accepting self-aspects reject it.  While a nightmare may show up as a nightmare antithetical Dream Sociogram, such groups typically create antithetical distributions. Nightmare antithetical patterns are psychic hell.

Acceptance Axis: We know this group of self-aspects interacts in an antithetical pattern because there are rejecting self-aspects on the lower half of the vertical (acceptance) axis, indicating significant self-rejection regarding this life experience.  We know which parts of the dreamer are rejecting and self-critical in this group by seeing who is where on the negative pole of the acceptance axis. We find that the Gulf Stream, Coasts, Platform, and British Petroleum are all rejecting self-aspects, with the first two the most internally ambivalent in their rejection, intensifying the complexity of the conflict.  The fact that some of the rejectors are victimized (Gulf Stream, Coasts) while others are the victimizers (BP, Platform) speaks to the profound and seemingly unresolvable depth of the conflict within the dreamer regarding this life nightmare.  However, it is important to note that it could be much worse.  If all normally preferring self-aspects (Dream Consciousness, Ocean, and Sea Creatures) were rejecting (situated on the lower half of the Acceptance Axis), and if all commonly rejecting self-aspects (BP, Oil, Platform) were preferring (situated on the upper half of the Acceptance Axis), we would have a nightmare antithetical pattern, in which intrapsychic conflict is much more profound.  Others, creating their own version of this world nightmare, might indeed generate such a pattern.

The Acceptance Axis placements answer the questions, “What aspects of myself are most preferring of this experience?”  “What aspects of myself are most rejecting of this experience?”  What are the relationships of these to one another?” The basic conflict on the Acceptance Axis is between Dream Consciousness and British Petroleum.  Dream Consciousness is the voice of that aspect of Cynthia that created all players, actions, and feelings in her personal experience of this life nightmare.  BP is a greedy part of herself that does not hear or represent the needs of other self-aspects that are affected by its actions.  Normally we resolve such conflicts by taking conscious action.  In this case, Cynthia’s waking identity, represented by Dream Self, is in terrible internal conflict, and this basically makes decisive response impossible, leaving open only paralysis or reactive, impulsive gestures as perceived alternatives.  The other choosing self-aspects experience themselves as victimized, passive, or powerless and so are not experienced as providing support for change or in working toward a solution to this nightmare.  It is important to remember that the Dream Sociogram represents preferences at the point in time that the Dream Sociomatrix was created; it does not reflect the reality of the practical, concrete, and helpful contributions that can come out of the subsequent commentaries, nor does it represent the reality from the perspectives of other people or from the actual ocean, sea life, coasts, or Gulf Stream themselves.  While Dream Yoga/IDL gives them voice, it is one person’s voice, not some ultimate truth.

Form Axis: The form axis places positive preferences by choosing characters toward chosen characters at 4:00 and negative preferences at 10:00 in the Dream Sociogram.  This axis answers the questions, “What self-aspects does the group as a whole prefer?  “What self-aspects does the group as a whole reject?”  “What are the relationships of these perspectives to one another?” We find that the most natural self-aspects, and those which are experienced as victimized by this life nightmare, are the most preferred.  We find those which are experienced as abusive, persecuting, or man-made are most rejected, which of course makes sense in this case, but is not what you will always find when you create Dream Sociomatrices and Sociograms.  Although Dream Self experiences herself as depressed, passive, helpless, hopeless, and angry, the group as a whole does not reject her, but instead is either neutral or preferring of her.  Oil is not rejected, although it is viewed with moderate group ambivalence.  The workers that made the spill possible are preferred by the group.

Remember that you are looking at a metaphorical depiction of those internal perspectives that are in conflict.  This conflict creates fear, depression, and anxiety for the dreamer.  To resolve it, she needs to somehow reach a higher order integration of these different parts of herself.  But how?  That is why we have the subsequent commentaries, an action plan, and a system of follow-up accountability with Practitioners.  Cynthia is authentically stuck in the clash of authentic internal world views.  To make lasting changes, she needs support in listening to and applying the reasonable advice of her own internal community.

Process Axis: This is the horizontal axis on which the group preferences toward individual actions are placed.  Actions are processes.  They are not things and they may or may not contain a feeling aspect.  While actions could be interviewed, they typically are not, because it is easier to be a “thing” than a process, and because processes are already attached to things.  So interviewing both is somewhat redundant, but can be done. If you are a Buddhist, all things are actually processes in disguise. There are no independently existing “things.” Some action elements, like fire, are obviously processes but can be easily interviewed as dream characters.  Others, like “considered,” are best teated as chosen elements.

In this antithetical constellation, notice that there are no preferred actions.  Think about that.  We have many ancient and wise members of this group.  None of them can recommend any of the actions contained in the Sociomatrix. That does not mean that there are none.  They could be in the original narrative and not included in the Dream Sociomatrix.  They could not show up until the commentaries.  What this states, however, is the existential reality of depression and hopelessness for this dreamer.  She does not have access to behaviors that are recommended by the group.  Instead, we have a polarity among rejected actions, with “deaths,” i.e. dying!!!! as being the least rejected action by this group.  It is preferred over merely escaping (evacuation) or what is passing for cleaning up the mess, actions that the group dismisses as ineffectual when they are not actually making the situation worse.  More actions are highly rejected: “can’t stop,”“blow out,” catastrophe,” and “kills.”  These are behaviors that the dreamer doesn’t want to identify with and are not part of any solution, but that she is identified with – or they wouldn’t be part of her experience. They must be somehow dealt with if there is going to be any lasting solution.

Affect Axis: Any emotion that is noted across the top of the Dream Sociomatrix is placed on this axis.  The preferred emotions go on the positive axis, at 2:00, and the rejected emotions go on the negative axis, at 7:00.  It is typical to only have one or two emotions reported.  In this case there are two, “appalled,” and “in shock,” that were reported together and are close enough in meaning that they are treated as one.

Note that Cynthia predicted that this feeling would be rejected.  It wasn’t.  How come?  Element placement in a Dream Sociogram isn’t determined by the preferences or world view of Dream Self, in this case, Cynthia.  They are determined by the cumulative stated preferences of all choosers.  In this case what that means is that the group as a whole preferred Cynthia feeling appalled and in shock.   This is an excellent example of how intrasocial groups teach us to question our thoughts, behaviors, and feelings by looking at them from perspectives that transcend and include our own.

How can Cynthia best use the data from a Dream Sociogram?  She is looking at a snapshot of one moment in time of the relationships among various relevant internal preferences and perspectives that are engaged and invested in this life issue.  If she were to create another Dream Sociomatrix and Sociogram after having worked through the commentaries she would be looking at a different constellation, because she will have grown as a result of practicing deep listening to her various self-aspects.  In essence, the Dream Sociogram graphically depicts how, where, and why she is stuck in pain regarding this particular “dream,” and the commentaries provide recommendations for what to do to get unstuck.  To understand more about the particular placements Cynthia can refer back to the Sociomatrix Commentary, which elaborates or explains why, in many cases, this or that self-aspect had the preferences that it did. Inner help is going to come from those self aspects that are most preferring and most preferred.  That means Cynthia needs to ask, “What parts of myself do Dream Consciousness, Sea Creatures, Ocean, Gulf Stream, and Coasts most closely personify and how can I strengthen their influence in my decision making regarding this life issue?”  “How can I help them to be there when I think, feel, and act around this life issue?”  The answer to the first question is in the Dream Summary Commentary where these self-aspects say what parts of Cynthia they most closely personify.  The answer to the second is in the  Waking and Identification Commentaries.

Predictions/Actual:

Most preferring: Gulf Stream Dream Consciousness

Most rejecting: BP BP

Most preferred character: Sea Creatures Sea Creatures

Most rejected character: BP BP

Most preferred action: Clean up none (but “clean up” least rejected)

Most rejected action: can’t stop pollution kills ocean creatures

Most preferred feeling: ? appalled; in shock

Most rejected feeling: appalled; in shock none

If we know our own minds, then we should be able to accurately predict our preferences.  In this case, Cynthia did better than average.  She was correct for three out of eight: most rejecting, most preferred, and most rejected characters.  However, she did not predict that Dream Consciousness, the part of her greater identity that created the “dream” in the first place, would be by far the most preferring character.  Why not?  She also was unable to predict that there would be no preferred action at all or that “killing ocean creatures” would be the most rejected action.  Why not?  She could not predict that being appalled and in shock would be preferred by the group instead of rejected by them.  Why not?

These are not trivial questions.  Either we know our own minds or we don’t.  If we cannot predict our own preferences, that is no problem when our preferences don’t matter or the preferences in question are insignificant.  But if our preferences do matter and if the preferences in question are significant, then not knowing our own minds is far more than a matter of self-control and self-image; it implies that we really don’t know who we are and have far less control over who we are than we commonly assume in our daily lives.  IDL/Dream Yoga demonstrates all of these points for anyone who wants to evaluate them with their own Dream Sociometric and IDL interviewing protocol experiments.

“What I am saying to myself is…”

Statements from elaborations are rewritten here as “I” statements.

It has to come together like this to show how serious it is, that it’s almost too late.  No more time to fool around, to play games.  It’s high time to stop the madness if we want to more fully live.  I get that I need to stop my greed for all sorts of things: cigarettes, meat, houses, money, fame…

How would history be different if, instead of reflexively interpreting their experiences, key figures had interviewed them instead?  One can never know, but what we can know is that the world would indeed be a different place, because instead of creating a world based on our projections, we would have created a world based on the multiple perspectives of our self-aspects.  Would this make a huge difference?  You bet.

So what might Saul have heard from Jesus if Saul had thought to interview him? Due to a recent discovery of parchment in a pottery jug found in the caves at Qumran on the shore of the Dead Sea, we now have the answer!

Saul: My Lord! Was that truly you that knocked me off my horse and blinded me with your radiance?

Jesus: Not exactly. I didn’t knock you off your horse. He got scared and threw you off. But yes, you did get blinded by my radiance. In two thousand years they will call that a somatoform disorder of the conversion variety, but never mind.

•
Saul: Are you really you, the resurrected Lord Christ Jesus, appearing literally to me in this vision, or are you some aspect of my own consciousness. or both?

Jesus: Now Saul! We both know that there is no way you could be asking that question! Your Bronze Age world view never imagined that I could be anything other than either literal or a hallucination! But if you could ask such a question, I would answer it by saying: I AM BOTH REAL AND AN ASPECT OF YOURSELF! On the one hand, you really saw me and the reality of my presence gave you an overpowering reason to change your life for the better: you stopped killing people! On the other hand, how could you even recognize me if there was not something of my radiance, awe, sacredness, majesty, and life transformative potential already existing within you?
•

Saul: How can you say that! You are so much more than I could ever be, Lord!

Jesus: I know that it is difficult for your concrete and literal prepersonal and pre-rational consciousness to grasp, Saul, but all of what you perceive as me already exists within you! If you take me as your savior, are you going to doubt me now, Saul?
•

Saul: But if I believe you, Lord, that means that my message of salvation and redemption will be entirely different! It means that I can no longer tell people that they were saved by the you that was born, died and resurrected! It means that I must tell them that their savior exists as an ever-present potential within themselves that they can access at any time, without the mediation of priests or religions! What will that do to the Community of Saints? What will that do to sin? What will that do to guilt? What will that do to salvation? JESUS!

Jesus: Yes?
•

Saul: Er sorry. I was just sorta thinking out loud. There’s another problem, Jesus. People see themselves as stuck, miserable, and either unworthy of salvation or incapable of giving it to themselves. They NEED and WANT me to give them a message of somebody, something outside of themselves that has what they lack, someone to believe in. They don’t want to believe in themselves! They want kings and Gods and priests!

Jesus: Your lack of faith and confidence in humanity saddens me, Saul. The nature of Spirit is to awaken life to its presence. Some will awaken to their potential sooner than others. Others will choose to spend their lives disempowering themselves by giving their power away to gods or to others. But you, Saul, have to decide which message YOU are going to stand for in YOUR life. That’s all that matters!
•

Saul: All right. I hear you. So Jesus, if this vision were a wake-up call from Spirit, what would the message be?

Jesus: Saul, you’ve got it! It’s to WAKE UP! It’s to stay in dialogue with me, just like you are doing now! It’s to use me to help you with your mundane daily problem solving! It’s to so become me, through identifying with me, as you are doing now, that my presence transforms your consciousness! How do you think I score, zero to ten, in confidence, compassion, wisdom, acceptance, inner peace, and wisdom, Saul???? When you become me you will identify with an aspect of yourself that is exactly so! Don’t take my word for it Saul! What do you feel when you become me? Is it not true?
•

Saul: You are right, Lord! I experience great confidence, compassion, wisdom, acceptance, inner peace, and witnessing when I allow myself to fully identify with you!

Jesus: So what makes you think that all others cannot as well?
•

Saul: Yes, Lord! But one more question…you said that when I become you I will identify with “an aspect of myself” that is divine! What did you mean?

Jesus: Saul, you can’t believe that God is limited! You can’t believe that I am the only possible manifestation of his divinity, can you?
•

Saul: But lord! You are special!

Jesus: I tell you, Saul, that the destiny of man is to become any speck of dust, any rag of cloth, any dead animal, and find that it gives voice to divinity! If you must convert the heathen to exorcise your guilt for your past bigotry and cruelty, then convert them to THAT message!

•

Oh – and Saul – one more thing.  Will you please give up this “savior” business?  It’s embarrassing. You disempower not only yourself by putting the source of your salvation somewhere else, but you disempower me as a part of yourself.  That’s insulting.  But even more important, you don’t need salvation.  It keeps you in the role of victim to always be looking for something or someone like me to rescue you.  I’ve got better things to do than disempowering you by thinking I’m you’re everything.  If you require a rescuer you’ll not only make those who believe in me into victims of sin, the devil, unbelievers, and evildoers for the next two thousand years; you’ll turn them into persecutors who will kill and abuse in my name.  That may be religion, and it may be Christianity, but it doesn’t have anything to do with me.

•

Saul: Yes, my lord. But I don’t understand what you’re saying…???

•

Jesus:  Sigh.  It’s OK, Saul.  Go ahead and be Paul.  I love you anyway.

•

Note: As soon as Saul wrote this dialogue he decided that it must be the work of demons that were trying to dissuade him from his Mission. He changed his name to Paul to purge himself of any memory of these demonic thoughts. I found it torn to bits among his papers after his death. I carried it here to these caves in Qumran where this message might find the light of day in a time when people might be ready to accept it.

•

We can’t change the past, but we can learn from history and not repeat the same mistakes. We have the opportunity to create internal, familial, and a global culture based on consensual perspectives rather than on our own interpretations.  Are we mature and selfless enough to do so?

Those who confuse their mental representations with external events and think that the former are real or accurate may experience profound transpersonal states, but they are not stabilized on a transpersonal level of development, regardless of what they believe or tell you.  As we have seen, the classic example of this delusion involves Saul on the Road to Damascus.  Lacking the ability to distinguish his mental representations from external events, Saul assumed that the light that he saw was actually Jesus asking him why he was persecuting him.  In fact, Saul did more than assume; he was absolutely convinced that he was being visited by the risen Christ himself.  This conviction, not the teachings of Jesus or the person of Peter, was the rock upon which Christianity was then built.   Saul’s pivotal experience was a late prepersonal to early personal Bronze age revelation of a transpersonal state, rather than a manifestation of a transpersonal level of development by Saul, who up to that time had been busy creating meaning in his life by murdering people.

If Saul had been able to differentiate his mental representations from external events he would have ruled out the former before assuming the latter when he was convinced he saw and heard Jesus.  This he did not do because he lacked the distinctions necessary to do so.  He also lacked the conceptual tools to distinguish between his mental representations (his conception of Jesus) and external events (hearing Jesus’ voice and seeing a blinding light).

Like Saul’s, the meaning and purpose of your life is created and powered by your belief in your self-created delusions.  For example, if Saul had been able to make this core distinction between what he experienced as real and external and his mental representation of what he saw, it would have occurred to him that what he saw might have been a self-created mental representation, regardless of the depth of his conviction that it was an external reality.  He then could have imagined that he was that representation and simply asked it, “Jesus, are you externally real, or a self-created mental representation, or some combination of objective reality and my subjective experience?”  While the answer that he would have gotten to this question may not have been truthful, the ability to ask this question is more important than the accuracy of the answer that is received, because it implies the existence of possibilities that not only Saul but most human beings never consider before they make critical and fundamental life decisions.  Those decisions determine, to a great extent, success, happiness, and peace of mind.  Now, almost two thousand years after Saul became Paul, almost no “normal” people and very few spiritual adepts have learned to make the distinctions Saul  missed.  Far fewer use it to support their spiritual development.   What is the price the world has paid for our not doing so?  Are we willing and able to be more spiritually mature than was Saul?

The past life memory came from a holotophic breathwork workshop with Stan Grof and Jack Kornfeld.  I had been doing the breathing for about an hour.  I was suddenly thrown into a Mesoamerican life in which I was doing an initiation to become a full priest.  I had to spend time with a jaguar with the objective of making it a brother. We wrestled in a cage, fought, rolled over each other and exerted strength against each other as long as we could until we were both at the point of exhaustion.  At that point we realized that we were brothers and that we would work together in our life.

From there, that jaguar became me and I became a high priest.  I killed it and wore its skin.  As the priest I would take the prisoners who were caught in wars.  I would sacrifice them to the jaguar.  I would take the obsidian knife and cut their hearts out.  I would take upon myself all of the fears and hopes and concerns and desires of my people. All of the psychic phenomena – thoughts, feelings, and demons that would prey on them.  It was a sacrifice to the jaguar.  The prisoners were the vehicles by which the demons would go to the spirit world.  The jaguar is my ability to transmute the suffering of my people and get rid of it.  I had to merge with the jaguar in order to be able to do that.

Since I had that experience, years ago, it hasn’t had much effect on me because it’s so far out of the ordinary that I have never figured out how to use it.   My X made a needlepoint of a jaguar for me.  She still has it.

What are three fundamental life issues that you are dealing with now in your life?

1. Healing the body

2. Healing the mind

3. Healing the soul

Jaguar, would you please tell me about yourself and what you are doing?

I am large, black, male jaguar.  I have very sharp eyes and teeth.  Lots of them and I’m very strong.  I’m in Felix – in his muscles, heart, lungs, stomach…

What do you like most about yourself? What are your strengths?

I feel so strong, supple, and able.

What do you dislike most about yourself? Do you have weaknesses?  What are they?

No.

Jaguar, you are in this person’s life experience, correct?  They created you, right?

We co-created each other, but yes.

Jaguar, what aspect of this person do you represent or most closely personify?

The ability to transcend normal consciousness. For healing, whatever.

Jaguar, if you could be anywhere you wanted to be and take any form you desired, would you change?  If so, how?

No!  Felix could make best use of me by calling me in during meditations.  He gets stuck thinking.  I do not do that.  I AM.

(Continue, answering as the transformed object, if it chose to change.)

Jaguar, how would you score yourself 0-10, in confidence, compassion, wisdom, acceptance, peace of mind, and witnessing?  Why?

Confidence: 10

Compassion: 10 I am compassionate toward Felix because I recognize that the deepest and darkest parts of him need compassion.  That which is fearful needs compassion. That which is petty needs compassion. That which is angry needs compassion. That which is joyful needs compassion.  All the things that he pushes away need compassion and I can give it.  I am strong enough to do it.

Wisdom: 10 I see what Felix needs and doesn’t need much better than he can.

Acceptance: 10

Inner Peace: 10 It’s a calm, restful state of being.  Completely at ease but ready to move at an instant.

Witnessing: 10

How would the life of the person who created you be different if he naturally scored high in all six of these qualities all the time?

The transformations he is working his way through would go faster, easier, and occur more completely.  He would be so present that he’s not even aware of some of the abilities he would gain as a result.  All of the siddhis (psychic powers) come out of me.  He doesn’t even know what he can do, how powerful I am.

Are you at all concerned with Felix misusing your abilities, Jaguar, or not?

With great power comes great responsibility.  And there’s always temptation.

If you could live the life of the person who created you for him, how would you live it differently?

He’s just becoming awake again after being asleep for thirty years.  He’s had moments of wakefulness.  He’s finding I’m still with him.  All the stuff he was doing thirty years ago and put aside because he was told to – he slept through and learned through his misery.  And now it’s awakening again because his body has been given a death sentence (a diagnosis of metastasized prostate cancer).

What do you think about that, Jaguar?

Better late than never!

If you could live this person’s waking life for him/her today, would you handle his/her three life issues differently?  If so, how?

1. Healing the body: He has to heal it in order to handle the energy that I am. Become a little more tenacious toward healing.  Keep focused.  He’s learning.  He’ll make it.

2. Healing the mind: He needs not to think that the thoughts are his.  They are just thoughts.  Like a car.  It’s not his.  It’s just a car.  His thoughts are not him.  They are just thoughts.  Same thing with his feelings.

3. Healing the soul: He is well on the way to doing that.

What three life issues would you focus on if you were in charge of his life?

1. Work with the magic.

2. Work with the siddhis.

3. Work with dying.

In what life situations would it be most beneficial for this person to imagine that they are you and act as you would?

When he needs strength and courage.   If he becomes me he transforms.  Fears go away. The pain subsides.  He understands.

Why do you think that you are in this person’s life?

We have been together for several lifetimes.

Why have you kept showing up for him?

We’re brothers.  We can’t be separated.

How do you feel about Felix listening to you now?

It’s about time!

How is this person most likely to ignore what you are saying to them?

Falling asleep.

What would you recommend that they do about that?

Remember to ask if something is a dream.  Keep practicing lucidity.  Keep practicing awakening from the dream.  Is this a dream?  Is this a dream?

I think this person had this past life memory because

It’s who he is.

I think this dream event happened or (some character) was in the dream because…

The people are now thoughts.  Sacrifice them!  Let them go!  Let them carry their emotions to me and they will be transformed.

How would he go about doing that, Jaguar?

When he experience the emotions he thinks of as suffering, see me. Feel me, hear me.  And I will take them from him.  Whenever he wishes.  I will be with him for many lifetimes to come.

Do you have anything else you’d like to say to Felix right now?

Don’t forget. Remember.

What have you heard yourself say?

That was a trance!  That was just a trance. It wasn’t like I was talking at all.  This is in me and when I fall asleep I lose a very powerful and impressively powerful part of my existence.  I’m not to do it.  I can’t do what I’m doing without him.  He’s part of so much of who I am and how I’ve been for lifetimes.  I have to awaken to him every lifetime.  I did thirty years ago.  I haven’t been awake to him.  But that’s changing.

If this experience were a wake-up call from your soul, what do you think it would be saying to you?

You have a whole lot of ability to do a whole lot of different things.  You better listen to the jaguar and listen to all the spirit world that you have contact with and succeed in working with them.  They are there to transform you and everything else.

The following example, which came from a regression years ago, is not a grandiose past life memory of being Napoleon or a disciple of Jesus.  It is chosen precisely because its mundane nature gives it a degree of plausibility that more glorious and esteemed accounts can lack.

What are three fundamental life issues that you are dealing with now in your life?

1. Building IDL

2. Deepening my awareness of life’s abundance, joyful absurdity, and luminosity.

3. Acting. thinking, feeling within the context of the six core qualities.

Tell me a past life memory.

I am an orphan who has been adopted by a hermit.  He teaches me how to live in the woods.  We live in a cave-like place behind vines in a forest.  The floor is dirt. There is a three legged stool.  I walk into a small village and find it empty.  I go to the small church; there is no one there.  I go back to the woods and my home and become weak, sick, and die.

I figure that the people in the village must have died of the plague and I caught it.

Why do you think that you had this past life experience?

Maybe to partially explain my lifelong ability to be by myself and not feel lonely.

If it were playing at a theater, what name would be on the marquee?

Forest Hermit

These are the characters in the dream…

Me, Hermit, Woods, Cave, Vines, Stool, Village, Church

If one character had something especially important to tell you, what would it be?

The stool.  It’s so inconsequential, yet almost out of place.

Now remember how as a child you liked to pretend you were a teacher or a doctor?  It’s easy and fun for you to imagine that you are this or that character in your dream and answer some questions I ask, saying the first thing that comes to your mind.  If you wait too long to answer, that’s not the character answering – that’s YOU trying to figure out the right thing to say!

Stool, would you please tell me about yourself and what you are doing?

I am just a crudely fashioned three-legged stool.  I am made out of wood from this forest.  I am in this cave.  I am made to be sat on.

What do you like most about yourself? What are your strengths?

I hold people up.  I am useful.  I am reliable; I do what I’m made to do.

What do you dislike most about yourself? Do you have weaknesses?  What are they?

No.  While I may be nothing special, I have a place and a purpose, and I fulfill both.

Stool, you are in Joseph’s life experience, correct?  They created you, right? What aspect of Joseph do you represent or most closely personify?

I am the life support that comes from simplicity, from the overlooked, from the easily obtained.  One doesn’t have to have much to live well.  Not having had much, these people do not experience themselves as impoverished.

Stool, if you could be anywhere you wanted to be and take any form you desired, would you change?  If so, how?

No.  I am content to be myself.  I like my life and I like my purpose.

(Continue, answering as the transformed object, if it chose to change.)

Stool, how would you score yourself 0-10, in confidence, compassion, wisdom, acceptance, peace of mind, and witnessing?  Why?

Confidence: 10 I have nothing to be afraid of.  I am not afraid of getting old and collapsing or being used as firewood.  Such things are my destiny.

Compassion:   ? I am not in the business of caring about anyone or anything.

Wisdom:   ? I do not need or use wisdom.

Acceptance: 10 I accept myself and life completely.

Inner Peace: 10 Definitely.

Witnessing:   8 I get to observe these people and the world from an unemotional place.  I don’t personalize anything and I don’t do drama.

(Character,) if you scored tens in all six of these qualities, would you be different?  If so, how?

I wouldn’t be a stool any more if I scored ten in compassion and wisdom.  I would prefer to stay a stool.

How would the life of Joseph be different if he naturally scored high in all six of these qualities all the time?

He would would not experience scarcity.  He would experience life as abundant, regardless of his circumstances.  He would have no concern for the future.  It would be enough for him to have a function and to take pleasure in fulfilling it.

If you could live the life of Joseph for him, how would you live it differently?

I would not base my life on thinking or caring; he already does those things anyway.  He needs to get into a deeper essence, a beingness that is not affected by other people or by the ravages of time.

If you could live Joseph’s waking life for him today, would you handle his three life issues differently?  If so, how?

1. Building his work:  Proceed with great confidence, yet serenity.

2. Luminosity, joyful absurdity, and abundance:  Be me.  I have more of those things than you do.

3. Living life from the six core qualities:  I can help with four of the six.

What three life issues would you focus on if you were in charge of his life?

The same.

In what life situations would it be most beneficial for this person to imagine that they are you and act as you would?

Whenever he takes life too seriously.

Why do you think that you are in this person’s life?

To help him put life in proportion.

How is this person most likely to ignore what you are saying to them?

I am just a three-legged stool.  Why should he listen to me?

What would you recommend that they do about that?

He values turning the mundane, secular, and profane into the sacred.  He could do worse than practice with me.

I think this person had this past life memory because

it points to the transitoriness of life, the value of simplicity, the abundance of nature, and how these values transcend space, time, and death.

Do you think it was a real past-life memory?

I think it is like a dream, a metaphor designed to help him wake up.

What have you heard yourself say?

That from the perspective of this self-aspect the distinction between waking experience, dreams, and past life experiences either is unimportant or non-existent.  What is important is how I understand such experiences and what I learn from them.  I can learn more and use them better if I interview other characters that appear in past life memories.

If this experience were a wake-up call from the most central part of yourself, what do you think it would be saying to you?

Spirit doesn’t make such distinctions.  To make your life sacred, focus on the six core qualities and their fruit, luminosity, abundance, and joyful absurdity.

What are three fundamental life issues that you are dealing with now in your life?

1. Reaching children with IDL.

2. Networking.

3. Initiative, drive, focus

Tell me a dream you remember.  It can be an old one, a repetitive dream, a nightmare, or one that you’re sure you understand.

I have been given Hitler, who is unconscious or in some sort of state of hibernation, to look after.  I am worried that he could wake up at any minute.  I am carrying him around in a car.  He’s laid out flat.  I find some guy to lie down with him and keep an eye on him.  All the time I am trying to figure out what to do with him.

I am running toward my car, which is parked catty-corner, on the other side of a busy intersection, just before the light, at the bottom of a hill.  I have to stop for traffic.  I see a long, low metallic vehicle cruise by.  Then as I walk toward my car I realize another one has pulled up next to my car and five or so big guys are completely going through it, taking everything apart.  It could be government, it could be military, but it is anonymous and it is unstoppable.  A woman in the group sees me and starts yelling questions at me.  I know I’m going to be caught up in whatever this is about.  I vaguely feel I carried something contraband in my car.  Hitler?

Why do you think that you had this dream?

I went to Prora day before yesterday on Rügen, near Binz, where Hitler had a huge “vacation paradise” built for 20,000 at a time.  It stretches for miles along the Baltic sea.  Although I’ve been to the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag, Prora was the closest I have felt to a sense of the reality of Hitler since I’ve lived in Germany.  In the museum at Prora there were all sorts of pre-WWII and WWII Nazi memorabilia and newspaper articles with Hitler’s picture, making those times very vivid, present, and contemporary, and I could imagine being alive then.

If it were playing at a theater, what name would be on the marquee?

Being Responsible for Hitler

These are the characters in the dream…

Hitler, my car, my friend, the intersection, vehicles, woman, guys

If one character had something especially important to tell you, which would it be?

Hitler

Now remember how as a child you liked to pretend you were a teacher or a doctor?  It’s easy and fun for you to imagine that you are the shape that took form from your color and answer some questions I ask, saying the first thing that comes to your mind.  If you wait too long to answer, that’s not the character answering – that’s YOU trying to figure out the right thing to say!

Hitler, would you please tell me about yourself and what you are doing?

I’m in some sort of coma-like state.  I can’t wait to wake up to reassert my authority and will.

What do you like most about yourself? What are your strengths?

I get what I want.  I can make almost anyone, most of the time, do what I want, get me whatever I want.  I do it through fear.  I like that you are afraid of me.  You should be, or I’ll kill you, or worse.

What do you dislike most about yourself? Do you have weaknesses?  What are they?

I do not like that I am in this coma-like state.  I do not like that my power can be checked.

Hitler, you are in this Joseph’s life experience, correct?  They created you, right? What aspect of this person do you represent or most closely personify?

The potential of awakened malevolence within himself.

Hitler, if you could be anywhere you wanted to be and take any form you desired, would you change?  If so, how?

I wouldn’t go into comas.  I would be clever enough to always stay well ahead of those who are trying to catch me, to limit me, to take away, limit, or destroy my power to do whatever I want to whomever I want.

(Continue, answering as the transformed object, if it chose to change.)

Hitler, how would you score yourself 0-10, in confidence, compassion, wisdom, acceptance, peace of mind, and witnessing?  Why?

Confidence:      10 I have great confidence in my ability to intimidate people into doing what I want.  I have great confidence in the power of fear, lies, and buying people off.

Compassion:      0

Wisdom              7 You would say that I am merely smart, but I have a great deal of experience in what works and what does not.  You may not like my type of wisdom; you may not agree with it, but it gets real results that people have to respect, whether they like it or not.  Most people secretly wish they had my ability to get what I want. You envy it too, if you were honest with yourself.

Acceptance:       8 I accept who and what I am.  Do you?

Inner Peace:       0 I am not interested in inner peace.  I want more power and control.

Witnessing:         7 I could not have accomplished what I have already accomplished if I did not have considerable witnessing ability.

Hitler, if you scored tens in all six of these qualities, would you be different?  If so, how?

Of course.  I would only want to change if it woke me up out of this coma without changing me.  I couldn’t be me if I had any desire for either compassion or inner peace.

How would the life of Joseph be different if he naturally scored like you do in all six of these qualities all the time?

He would accomplish his goals, that’s for sure.  He already has considerable inner peace and a good portion of compassion.  What I have that he doesn’t is unstoppable confidence, wisdom about dealing with people, no self-doubt, and a determination to follow through with my plans.  Using me as a part of him to get what he want scares him, because he thinks it’s playing with fire, unscrupulous, and may set the worst parts of him free to be destructive.  But I am a part of him, and I represent aspects of his life force that are not only effective, but whose absence not only keep him from being whole, but keep him afraid of himself.

If you could live the life of the person who created you for him, how would you live it differently?

I would be in command, in control.  I would use others to get what I want.  I would not worry about whether or not I was manipulating them or whether the end was justifying the means.  I would instead know that others were getting some of their needs met or they wouldn’t be giving me what I want.  He can do a whole lot more of this without getting into the Drama Triangle. That’s what he needs to be afraid of, not me.

If you could live this person’s waking life for him today, would you handle his three life issues differently?  If so, how?

1. Give away his book on nightmares.  Get the names of sources on line that deal with them, night terrors, and PTSD. Send them unsolicited copies.

2. He needs to then network with those people.  See how that goes. Then consider duplicating with other manuscripts.

3. Take this project and practice initiative, drive, and focus toward it.  If you focus on other things you will lose your focus.

What three life issues would you focus on if you were in charge of his life?

Learning that you can access the strengths you associate with the threatening, selfish parts of yourself without being threatening or selfish.  That one is enough!

In what life situations would it be most beneficial for this person to imagine that they are you and act as you would?

When you need determined, willful focus to see your task through to completion, regardless of what it is.  This is what people secretly admire about me and what scares the hell out of them.

Why do you think that you are in this person’s life?

To get him to see how he’s thrown the baby out with the bath water.  To have him see how he has disowned strengths he needs out of his fear that he will be devoured by his weaknesses.

How is this person most likely to ignore what you are saying to them?

His fear of becoming or appearing to be like Hitler.

What would you recommend that they do about that?

Realize that is grandiosity.  He in no way has what it takes to become a Hitler. It’s a twisted form of narcissism for him to imagine that he could be ruthless or malevolent.  It’s neither his nature nor in his agenda, and he has the self-awareness, including his Sangha, to catch those tendencies as they arise.

I think this person had this dream because

He needs to own positive qualities that he has disowned out of fear of misusing them.

I think this dream event happened or (some character) was in the dream because…

The stripping of his car was a way of saying, “You have this Hitler aspect, and you are going to have to admit it and deal with it.”

What have you heard yourself say?

That it is better to understand and appreciate the fascination of evil and to learn from it than to pretend that you are not that and be both controlled and limited by your dishonesty, repression, and  fear of it.

If this experience were a wake-up call from the most central part of yourself, what do you think it would be saying to you?

Claim all of who you are, good, bad, and ugly.  Trust that the universe is big enough to accept and use all of you.  That when you get “wake up calls” from your dreams through IDL interviews, you not only awaken your strengths and potentials, but those parts of yourself that you fear and that you need to face to become whole.

If you would like a copy of the referenced book on nightmares, email me at Joseph.Dillard@Gmail.Com.