A dream about the progressive movement

Guest post by practical mystic’s husband, continued from yesterday

Here is my 3-part dream of Friday night/Saturday morning.

1. I arrived by car at a state park or natural area near a lake. I could not see the lake, only a large grove of pines covering a high sand dune. The dune was exposed since a large portion of the trees had recently been clear cut close to the ground and cleanly removed. It seemed that the cutting of the trees was done for ecological reasons to bring the area back to its more original state of health. I wandered around this area, and went inside a building that housed some exhibits regarding the area. It seemed dark, barren, and empty.  

Should we have gone?

A response by practical mystic's husband to yesterday's post

After a day of reflection and a night of sleep and dreams I can unequivocally state that practical mystic and I made the right decision not to drive to Lansing yesterday.  If she had really insisted, I probably would have agreed to travel with her. One part of me enjoys complaining and being angry over the sad state of politics in this country, but the other side says “stop complaining and take action, do something about your beliefs and convictions, do something that you have control over.”  So, it would have been entirely appropriate and positive to have decided to get out yesterday and stand up at the state capital in support of union people everywhere, who are insisting on their rights and fundamental dignity. 

Why I didn't go

This morning I woke up at 6 am thinking about going to Lansing to join a protest. Just a few days ago when we were watching the amazing showdown in Wisconsin I told my sweetie that if somebody organized a demonstration like that nearby, I’d go. And now they have, though Lansing isn’t exactly close. It’s 166 miles away. I checked on Mapquest when I was thinking about rousing Vic, feeding us blueberry pancakes, and setting off.

A show and tell dream

I woke early with a dream. We may indeed have a series going.

I am walking through a large, hilly city like San Francisco after a conference, making my way back to the hotel. Many people are walking in the same general direction. It is early evening, quitting time. I start humming an old gospel hymn to myself, the sweet, mournful tune, “My Jesus I love thee.”

Asking for dreams

My dream life has gone blank recently so last night I asked for a dream. How do you ask for a dream? Politely. Be specific. “I would like a dream, please, about _____.”  But don’t be surprised if you get a dream that doesn’t exactly address the issue.

Last night I asked for a dream about love, fear, and anger, the topic I started writing on yesterday. I was secretly hoping for profound wisdom on that topic, something I didn’t already know. I wanted to demonstrate to you, dear readers, how dreams collaborate with conscious thought and daily life to take us beyond what we can manage on our own. It was kind of a show-offy request.

Instead I got a dream that told me, in no uncertain terms, something I already knew.

Love, fear, and anger

I believe there are only three basic emotions, or innate propelling forces, in human beings: love, fear, and anger.

I’m sure someone well qualified to make such pronouncements has come up with this formulation, but what I see in my lazy Wikipedia research are examples of how psychologists have made us a lot more complicated than we may be. That page contains a whole lot of semantics. We have worked up an extensive vocabulary to describe the nuances of our feelings, which do exist. These dozens of words describe how we feel, how we respond. But they don’t help us know how to live.

I love semantic precision. But sometimes definitions need to be stretched rather than narrowed in order to give a different, helpful perspective.

Do less

Why do I consistently overestimate what can do in a day? Yesterday’s list was short. Give the house a quick clean, do a load of laundry, write, exercise, and go to tea at a new friend’s house. A Saturday is long and those activities are simple enough. My life is simple enough.

But I managed only three of the five: housecleaning, laundry, and tea. No writing or exercise unless you count vacuuming as exercise, which I did just to make myself feel better.

This is a consistent pattern. If I make a to-do list for a day I almost never get through the whole thing, though I always think the list is reasonable and I should be able to do all of it. I think the same pattern applies to my life as a whole. I may be systematically overestimating what I can accomplish.

On calling

Writing almost daily may not last but for now it continues because a floodgate has been opened. I’m trying to figure out what is happening because I think it has to do with calling.

A week ago I was thinking that calling was overrated. I could drive myself nuts, and nearly have, figuring out what my calling is, the reason for which I was placed on this earth. I’ve seen some of my friends nearly drive themselves nuts over that question, too.

By contrast, other people I know have quite clear and compelling callings that shape and even dominate their lives, obliterating the divisions between work and play, private and public, and producing remarkable additions to the human enterprise. These people, along with many public personalities, stand as examples that indeed such a thing as calling exists. 

From the Librarian of Alexandria

Have you read this Salute to the Great Youth of Egypt?* It’s from the director of the modern reincarnation of the greatest library of the ancient world, which once aspired to collect all the world’s knowledge. Knowledge is not neutral: it reveals good and evil. When you know, you must choose.

You have been called the children of the internet, or the Facebook generation, but you are more. You are the vanguard of the great global revolution of the 21st century. So, go forth into the journey of your lives, and create a better world for yourselves and for others. Lead and all shall follow. Think of the unborn, remember the forgotten, give hope to the forlorn, include the excluded, reach out to the unreached, and by your actions from this day onwards lay the foundation for better tomorrows.

Ismail Serageldin, Librarian of Alexandra, declares:

NO Politics without principle
NO Wealth without work
NO Commerce without morality
NO Pleasure without conscience
NO Education without character
NO Science without humanity

Amen!

*Via my friend Dawn K, who passed it around her office--the US State Dept.'s Office of Citizen Exchange, Youth Division. Thanks!

Think small

You know those meditative exercises that have you expanding out? Puffing yourself out with each breath, pushing the boundaries of yourself to the room, the house, the surroundings, out and out until you are infinite, one with the Infinite?

Try the opposite instead. Try feeling small. Sense the boundaries of your body, or whatever is the minimal you, maybe the core of your breathing self, and let everything outside of that be the great Other. Get small, sense your smallness and the greatness of everything outside you. Know that you are an infinitesimal piece in an infinite puzzle.

I am finding something right about this.

February strikes back

When I think something seems to be shifting in my little universe and/or the big one, I read the psychic weather forecast for clues about what’s going on and how to make the best of it. When you have a moment for a longish but interesting read, check out this month’s Shamanic forecast. It seems to be working for me as well as for the Egyptians.

Routine

You’d think weekends would be a good time to write but no. After only a week of this I find it easier to sit down on a Monday morning and dash something out than I did to gather my thoughts on a Sunday afternoon, after good church and a great pre-valentine lunch in the city with my sweetie. Instead of writing something calm and profound yesterday I finished that awful, fascinating fantasy book; ate popcorn; and watched Masterpiece Theater.

But this morning I’m back to the weekday routine, where this writing has managed, in one week, to nestle in like an extra person on the couch. Routine is not boring; it is the route. It makes the path through the day that keeps me steady. The days that work best are the ones in which I follow it.

What I'm chain-reading

I love the NYTimes Book Review. I used to read it online every Friday afternoon and think about all the books I would read if I had time. After getting an e-reader for Christmas, however, I developed the scary habit of reading the reviews and going immediately to the e-store and buying an appealing book right then and there, with one click.

Such instant gratification feels sinful and I have indeed sinned gloriously since December 25 by buying the George R.R. Martin Song of Ice and Fire series--violent medieval-esque fantasy--one after the other and chain-reading them every evening after dinner. Blame my son. He got me started.

Yesterday’s choice was more NYTimes-y. (My brother has accused me of being cerebral and alas he is right.) The review that caught my fancy was of James Kugel’s In the Valley of the Shadow. “A biblical scholar uses his encounter with death to investigate the state of mind in which one intuits something on the order of God.”

Death and God. Nothing more exciting than that, eh?

Click, I bought it.

“Let me confess,” writes reviewer Judith Shulevitz, “that when I finally understood what Kugel was up to in this somewhat rambling memoir-meditation, I gave a little adolescent fist-pump. I was glad to see him point out that the recent debates about religion — is it a force for good or for evil, intrinsically violent or intrinsically peaceful? — have on the whole been a bit ‘narrow.’ Too many pundits, anthropologists and evolutionary biologists fail to imagine their way into the rich, elusive mental condition called ‘believing in God’ or ‘being religious.’ They dismiss it as a neurosis, a superstition or a mistake. “

I can’t wait to find out what Kugel has to say about that "rich, elusive mental condition." I, too, am interested in what makes people think there is God. I mean, really think so, not just take someone else’s word for it.

But first I have to finish A Storm of Swords.

When animals show up in dreams, pay attention

Last night I dreamed I was selling the house in which I’d been born to an acquaintance. Everything was cleared out and I was ready to go but a problem showed up, an infestation. A tiny herd of tiny kittens and zebras—each no more than two inches long—was galloping through the house. They were coming from the attic, where I knew more critters must be breeding. I was in a hurry to leave but I would have to call the exterminators. This disturbed a young animal-loving friend who was helping me move. She went into the attic to try to save the creatures but I pulled her away so we could get on with the extermination and evacuate the house.

Cumulative impact of fear

Three days into my new enterprise I am left with nothing to say. I was afraid this would happen.

“I was afraid”: that is the operative statement. What I do with the fear is the real test. 

The thing about fear is that it accumulates, one fear confirmed leads to an expectation of further confirmation, which becomes self-fulfilling. OK, what I’m talking about here is a psycho-spiritual version of cumulative impacts.

What is practical mysticism

What I mean by practical mysticism is spiritual experience that makes you a finer person: Stronger, wiser, kinder, happier. More accomplished, generous, responsible, and ethical. And more fun to be around.

That last criterion is important. It is perhaps what distinguishes my version of practical mysticism from what you might find on sites like www.practicalmystic.org or www.thepracticalmystic.com.  But I am expecting it to be challenging to meet that criterion because writing about personal spiritual experience in a way that is interesting to other people is difficult. I risk boring you.

Do you really care about my dreams, my prayers, and what I see with my eyes shut? Honestly now.

You should, however, care about your own experience and what I can do is set an example that may key you into that. But this is not only about you or me, but what happens in the world and our communities when we get mystical.

It can be a real adventure. In this forum, as in the real world, I hope to be fun to be around.

During the laundry and before work

Early this morning during the laundry and before work I sat down to meditate. I expected to devote some time to this but something happened almost immediately and so I cut it off right there.

What happened was a phrase: “The Practical Mystic: a blog.”

And so here we are.

Enough said about the nature and purpose of this blog, i.e. as little as possible because it's likely to unfold and shift. Let’s just start right in with a dream that set this all in motion.