I-MAGI-NATION

 “Right now you think this room is real, and tonight you might have a dream and - if you are lucky - remember it as a dream, but not as reality. Well, if to dream is to dwell in unreality now knowing it as such, what is life but one uninterrupted dream? Until you have certain experiences, you will no doubt question my sanity, but when you have them you will know that this which seems real is no less a dream than the dream of the night.” - Neville Goddard

 There comes a time when we all face the problem of being in less than ideal situations and not knowing how we got there. Although some adversity is inevitable, the constant suffering that is endured by good people seems unfair or at the very least it is bothersome. Some might say that it just ain’t right. But so it is common. 

We need a better understanding of how we create reality, for when they say - you imagined your life to be this way, and so it is. And you answer- I did no such thing, for this is not what I want. Perhaps then it must be that we simply do not know all that we are imagining for ourselves. 

 After nearly 10 years of recording my dreams I realized one morning that I start every day by writing the words I Am. This is how I have begun nearly every recorded dream. There is the definition that means “to picture oneself” which is fine but I prefer this break down I picked up from a friend of mine:

I Am - ima - to be

Gin - gen - creating

Ation - the act or process of doing something

Imagination meaning then to be in a state of creating something, to exist in a state of creation. So then if it is I who is imagining and therefore creating my problems then I must not know what my problems are, for if I did then surely I would cease my bringing them into being. 

If I have a nightmare then I am imagining fear. They ask, what are you afraid of? And I say - “I don’t know. In my dream I was afraid of lions but there are no lions where I live so why would I fear them.” So then what fear am I imagining for myself in my life? Well we would have to re-enter the image to re-imagine it and understand it. We must speak to the dream like our dreaming God speaks to us. As I re-enter the image of my dream I come to the point of terror in which I had previously fled and I stay there, for I am awake now to my dream. I say- Lion, I am not afraid of you, for this is my dream. In an instant the lion stops its speeding towards me and turns around to walk away. But that is not good enough. I say then, Lion, where are you going? And the lion says, Follow me. And so I follow the lion down the alleyway and as we turn the corner I am back in the theater of my elementary school. Today is the day of auditions for the musical. I watch myself about age 12 stand up and sing a song in front of the microphone, and I am overwhelmed again with the feeling of knowing that this was not going well, and then I remember that I was not chosen for any role at all and I never took a stage again. And so there I was, at the waking moment of which I AM GEN ATED a fear of speaking aloud on a stage. So now I have the chance to imagine differently, right at the germination of the original imagining. And so this time, aware of the dream, I sing my song and I get a round of applause from the judges. It was a heroic performance. I now birth myself a love for the stage. See I never knew that I wasn’t speaking in public because I was afraid, I simply thought that I did not want to, or really- I didn’t think of public speaking at all.  If I am not conscious of something, how am I to know to change it? The dream shows us, and it shows up at the right time. I would only have this dream now as there approaches an opportunity of which I must prepare myself in ways I could not have imagined. And if I never let the dream bring light to my fears then I might miss these opportunities completely. The dream always comes on time and never gives us more than we can handle. 

See dreams show us what we are imagining for ourselves that we do not know we are imagining. Dreams show us what we are creating that we do not know we are creating. Through the dream we can alter our imaginings to our liking in order to avoid ending up in situations of which we would have never consciously hoped for ourselves; or on the other hand, to bring us closer to images that we do wish to bring about.

 Perhaps another example. I had become irritated with an acquaintance and they were occupying a large space in my mind, far too large than I wanted. I tried to reason my way through and could not seem to get them out of my mind and it was distracting me. I had a dream one night that they were in a room of my childhood home. They were in my brother’s room next to mine. Their things were everywhere, spread out all over. It was a mess. 

 Now this dream would seem easy to “analyze” because I was already conscious of the fact that this person was occupying an unwanted amount of space in my mind - my imagination - my nation of magic. Good thing analyzing isn’t the point. What the dream allowed to me was an alternative tool to my Reason Mind, which was not solving my problem (as it solves less of our problems than we might think). So how did this dream help me with my problem? Well it gave me an “in” quite literally. And so to solve my problem I re-entered the image of my dream with a plan. I brought helpers with me, little birds who helped clean my aquaintance’s things up. They folded the clothes and put the objects in boxes. Then they fascended them to the backs of some horses and just like that, all of my acquaintances' belongings were packed up nicely. I arranged for a guide to wait for them at the door of the house, so that I would not be sending them off without some assistance. And that’s what I did. Little by little each day I watched the visions and thoughts of my acquaintance vanish from my attention until they were gone completely, and only once in a while do they cross into my mind. My problem was solved. Not with reason but with imagining. With creation. It’s a direct line to resolution. 

 Dreams help us understand that we are in a state of creation in a deeper way than we might ordinarily conceive. We want to be consciously creating so we are not making decisions for ourselves while we are (metaphorically) “asleep” or unconscious of our imaginings. 

For Neville Goddard (1905-1972) a mystic, lecturer and dancer, the Bible is a parable of the human psyche as opposed to a record of historical events and therefore there is no external God who answers prayers, but rather that "you are the creator". 

 “You are god sleeping, dreaming horrible dreams mixed with lovely ones; but someday you will awaken from the dream to know you are god. You will then remain a little while to tell your experiences to those who are willing to be disillusioned and will allow their false ideas of the past to fall away; and in the end you will leave this little shadow that walks across the earth to enter eternity.... How do I know this? Because I have awakened from the dream of life. I know that God laid himself down within me to sleep, to dream that he is I; for when he awoke, I was he!”

 Now all of life is a dream, both “waking” and “sleeping” states. In this sense, God can awaken to the fact that he is dreaming (as us) just as we can wake up in our sleep dreams to the fact that we are dreaming. We call this conscious (or lucid) dreaming and in this state we can work with our intentions under far less restrictive measures than are allotted to us in our “waking life”. And what if, just as we have awoken to our own dream, god can awaken to his dream of us? Then god too would work under less restrictive circumstances than we have allotted him. Perhaps then god will take the lead of our lives and the divine intention can be known. Then we would certainly be living our purposes, wouldn’t we? And for all those who choose to walk the path planned for them by the infinite intelligence, so might they not suffer so consistently and so often? I believe in Goddard’s world the answer would be yes, and I am also inclined to believe it. 

 “While I remain in this body of blood and flesh, I must abide by its restrictions and limitations; yet remembering it is a dream, I can change it. If this world is reality I cannot change it; but if I am its reality, I can change my world relative to myself. I can imagine a desire fulfilled and watch it come to pass in my outer world. But first I had to know it was a dream. This I do know, for he who is in the depth of my own being said to me: “I laid myself down within you to sleep and as I slept I dreamed a dream. I dreamed that I am you.” 

 I like to think then of this. I, Michaela. I am the dream. Now acting as the dream when I am awake,  I can go about my day giving hints to the sleeping creator in me in an attempt to wake him up! I get this idea from my sleeping dreams, as this is how dreams act to us -- they give us hints, images, clues to themselves and their nature. No matter how convincing the dream is every single night we are absorbed in it as its image closes around us and becomes our only reality for the time of our slumber. Even in its apparent solid and concrete nature, it still gives us clues and hints to its identity. Often, though, we are still too attached to appearance to get the hint. I am being chased by dinosaurs in New York City in 1929 and I believe fully that this is my only reality, as it always has been and will always be and there could be no other way. The challenge is to break loose of the appearance of things, and this strongly fashioned nail gets loser as we experiment with correct tools of imagining. 

 [God] [Creator] [Great Spirit] [Infinite Intelligence] is asleep, dreaming that they are me, Michaela. God is asleep dreaming that he is  ________ (your name here). 

I, as I identify myself, Michaela- I am the dream. God is the eternal reality. I change. I come into being and I disappear, but GS remains, eternal and in all things. This is why I am the dream and god is the reality. I cannot change reality. I cannot change the eternal structure of the Universe, but I can change the dream. I can change myself and what I perceive as my world around me. I do this through I Am Gen Ating it as so. 

 “Real are the dreams of gods and smoothly pass their pleasure in the long, immortal dream.”

-Neville Goddard

I have an exercise then that you can try it for yourself. I had a dream last night that, although it was not terrible it was also not ideal. I could have tried to pick apart the symbolism but I felt the urge to just change it. The dream shows us what we are imagining for ourselves. The dream showed me that I was still imagining a world filled with dense urban living and although I no longer live in the city that the dream resembled, I know now that there is a part of me still imagining myself in that environment. This will not do. I made up a very simple game that proved itself worthwhile, entertaining and powerful. Dream Madlibs.

 I took my original dream and I changed the descriptive words until the dream transformed into a wonderful dream that suited me well. Here is the sample template as an example: 

I am in a _______ . Im with_________. There are tons of ________ people. It's kind of just how it is. It almost felt like _____ in a sense. I ________ once with one of the _____  because I was trying to have a conversation with his friend and he kept playing his guitar ____ and I asked him to _______. Typical ____. Anyhow one of those guys was ______ maybe ___ year old. As me and ____ were coming from _____ somewhere we passed the guys or all of us were in an elevator somewhere.  Before we all parted ways _______ asked if we wanted to hang out. Yes we did. So we all went on (________ included). It was fun, we kind of just bopped around the city. We stopped in a fancy clothes store and we _______ something to try on so we could all get fancy for _____. ________ looked great in a suit. It was totally awesome. I wind up back at ______. _______ left a painting dedicated for me. 

In the original dream those blanks were filled in with things like “dense urban city” and “gutter punks” and “some dude.” In my revised dream I filled in the blanks with things like “clean beautiful city” and “nice young men” and “my divine match”. After that I went back into the image of my dream. I started in the original dream and proclaimed that it was now changed, and I changed it to my new dream. I then proceeded to have a wonderful dream of nice people in a beautiful place doing fun things with my divine date. It was so uplifting that I made my action plan to write a Thank You note to my divine match for gifting a nice painting to me and I stamped it and put it in the mailbox.

There will be more to come on the advances of this experiment, but I’d call it a fine success. 

You can try this experiment on your own. 

1. Print a dream of yours that could use some updating.

2. Change the descriptive words and nouns so that the dream is ideal for you.

3. Read the dream out loud to yourself, get it good in your memory. Then, close your eyes and reimagine the dream. Put yourself back into this dream but with all it’s new revisions. Play the whole dream out so that each revision is made. We must experience the revisions. For these things to work, it's not enough to think of places, we must think from them.

Enjoy.

Please read for yourself the Neville Goddard text archive for a better in depth understanding on this subject, particularly “Imagination” and “Behold the Dreamer Cometh”.

Philosophical Midwifery and Dreams

I am in a room where a woman is in labor. She is about my age with blonde hair. The room is the apartment of the man who is midwifing the child or, more specifically, children as we find out that it is triplets right before birth. The man is the professor type, very intelligent, very calm but also lively, likable, trustworthy. I stay for the whole time, it takes some hours. There are some weird visuals that I don't quite know how to explain, like protruding biological parts. There's no drama, I see no blood. Maybe she experienced some pain but it wasn't so terrible. I turned around for just a moment and then the triplets were out. When the 3 boys came out each had a light blue circle or triangle painted around one eye, I think the right. They came out like that. A light blue circle with a darker blue outline. 

Part 1

 I shared this dream with a friend who pointed me in the direction of Plato’s Theaetetus where Socrates describes himself as a Philosophical Midwife. 

In the Theaetetus Socrates explains that his role is not to teach others what he knows but rather play the role of the Philosophical Midwife wherein he helps induce the labor of bringing one’s own ideas into being. He, like the midwife, also acts as a matchmaker in that his experience has lent him the knack for being able to sense when two ideas may come together well to birth one that is greater than the sum of them. And after the child (or idea) is birthed, he may help to “run around the hearth with him to see whether he is worth rearing.” 

Socrates gets this idea from his mother who is a midwife and compares the pains of childbirth to the psychological pains of labour induced when one is giving birth to a new idea. 

 “You forget, my friend, that I neither know, or profess to know, anything of these matters; you are the person who is in labour, I am the midwife; and this is why I soothe you, and offer you one good thing after another, that you may taste them. And I hope that I may at last help to bring your own opinion into the light of day…. I only know enough to extract them from the wisdom of another, and to receive them in a spirit of fairness.”

 This is a perfect way to describe the essence of the relationship between the dreamer and the dream guide. The dream guide is not here to tell the dreamer what his/her dream means, nor are they there to interpret the dream for them. Instead, the dream guide acts as a Philosophical Midwife in helping the dreamer birth their own ideas from their own inner knowing and wisdom about what the dream means to them and why it has come up right now.

 “Can a man know and also not know that which he knows?” 

 S: When you are imprisoned in a well and the self-assured adversary closes one of your eyes with his hand, and asks whether you can see his cloak with the eye which he has closed, how will you answer?

 T: I should answer, “Not with that eye but with the other”

 S: Then you see and do not see the same thing at the same time.

 This passage sparked my interest due to the imagery of one eye as it relates to the original dream where the triplets born each have one eye painted blue, but the overall concept relates to dreams on a larger scale.

 “If it turns out that this dream could help the gentleman, then you would agree the dream is for his benefit. Therefore whatever is fashioning the dream considers us personally, crafts a message out of our own past for our benefit, it opens up the past, it prepares us for our present, it can anticipate the future- it’s pretty wise isn’t it. And the more you go into these the more you’re going to then add different keywords to what it is that fashions the dream. Let me give it to you simply. If we can show again and again that these dreams relate to something you’re going through right now, the day before, a couple days to come, then there’s something in us that’s aware of all of this, it’s aware of our whole past better than we are- it awakened all kinds of memories, did it not? There is what we are consciously- or the image we have of ourselves. But there’s something in us that’s quite awake. Right now there’s something awake in all of us. And if you get in a bind or have difficulty today, or there’s something important that you overlooked that you should have picked up, you might have a good dream tonight ‘cause that’s what dreams do. They pick up things you’ve overlooked- things that are significant that you’ve ignored. If that’s the case that means that right now there is something that is more aware than we are. When we identify with our subjective feelings we forget that there’s something that’s awake which is quite wise and quite knowing that always works for our benefit, right now. So of course the problem is, which one do you want to identify with? And apart from which one do you want to identify with- by repeatedly playing this game, you’ll see which one you do identify with. And that makes a big difference. You’re no longer that narrow thing that stumbles along but you can enjoy your stumbling and learn from it. So what does it?... I call it the Dream Master.” - Pierre Grimes 

Source: Philosophical Midwifery and Dreams

The end of Theaetetus sparked my interest as it related to my last post about Hermetic Principles and Dreams. Socrates concludes that -

 “The wise man is he who makes evils which appear and are to a man, into goods which are and appear to him...the teacher of wisdom causes the good to take the place of evil, both in appearance and in reality.” 

 This is the essential principle of Hermeticism and Alchemy - that the nature of the world is such that all dual and opposing forces are in reality the same thing with varied degrees of frequency. There lies potential in all things to manipulate and change its perceived nature. That is not an idea but a physical Law of the Universe. We can know things that we perceive and we can be wise of how they really are and use our power of attention to change them. Dreams are a window into this world as it concerns us personally. 

Part 2 : Dream Party x Star Party

 DP x SP pulls Astrological Charts for the moments of dreams to see how personal mythology relates to universal mythology. 

We begin in the Astrological chart of dreams by looking at the 9th House where dreams come from. The 9th house of this dream is in the constellation Ardra, the teardrop, the storm, the star of suffering. Across the sky, “aspecting” or “looking at” this dream is Jupiter. This all fits in very nicely as Jupiter rules midwifery and childbirth and is of the professorial type, exactly like the male midwife in the original dream.

In Vedic mythology Ardra is where man’s consciousness is birthed and therefore where he suffers “the pangs of labour, my dear Theaetetus; (when) you have something within you which you are bringing to the birth.” The triplets in the dream fit into the theme of creation as 0 (nothing) 1 (something) 2 (chaos) 3 (union). The triplet’s painted right eyes also lend themselves well to Ardra's wild nature and to her identity as the sky, birth and suffering. In Ancient Egypt the right eye is associated with Ra the sky god who is portrayed as a falcon. In some accounts, humans were created from Ra’s tears (hint: Ardra teardrop). The eye of Ra is also his mother Hathor (his feminine counterpart) who protects him from his enemies (think, blue “evil eye” emblems still used today to ward off enemies). “In Egypt she was one of the deities commonly invoked in private prayers and votive offerings particularly by women desiring children.” 

 Listen: 

Ardra 

audio by the Slow Owls Mens Association

In regards to the Seven Great Hermetic Principles and the role of wisdom according to Socrates, the particular alchemical act portrayed by the constellation of Ardra is taking the suffering of man and “turning the tears upside down” into laughter- or, changing the calibration of suffering into it’s higher calibration of joy. We can start by using wisdom to change our attitudes and attentions until we have literally transformed ourselves through raising the frequencies of our suffering to their dual natured state of being, that of joy. These are good things to do now ‘cause you can’t sleep when you’re dead. 

Further Listening on Ardra

audio by the Slow Owls Mens Association

Dreams and the Seven Hermetic Principles

Dream:

I am given a detailed instructional tutorial about how we create everything with our minds and therefore it is only appropriate to let it go (not attach to any of it). It was the opposite sense of "this was given to me and so I must hold onto it" -- instead it is "I made all of this and it is only appropriate for me to let it go."  

I shared this dream with a friend who then suggested to me a video he had recently seen concerning the Seven Great Hermetic Principles. I am inspired to give a quick summary below including how it relates to Dream Party and a link to the original video made by Robert Sepehr who’s channel I highly recommend.  

 The Seven Great Hermetic Principles

“Hermeticism is a philosophical and esoteric tradition based primarily on the writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus which were considered to be of great importance during both the Renaissance and the Reformation.”

Hermes Trismegistus // Hermes // Mercury // Messenger between Man and God // The Number 3

The number three refers to the three planes of existence - the physical, the mental and the spiritual. These are all one and the same although they vibrate at different frequencies which distinguishes them empirically. Hermeticism, in essence, is the tradition of transmuting one plane into another by altering its vibrational state which is accomplished using the mind during heightened mental states such as intense focus, trance or ecstasy. 

1. Mentalism: Everything is mental in nature and everything in the Universe is created by thought or mind. There is nothing that exists in the material universe where this is not the case. Our actions arise from thoughts, even if those thoughts are unconscious. What we think, we shall become or attract. Thoughts become things. Thoughts create reality. 

2. Correspondence: As above, so below. The three planes (physical, mental, spiritual) are not separate, but work in correspondence, where everything is literally connected in some way.

3. Vibration: All of life is vibration that differs in terms of frequencies. Everything vibrates (sounds, thoughts and material things). High frequency vibrations like sounds are not registered by our eyesight, while low vibrations like mountains or anything we can see are that which our sight can translate the visible light.

Hermetic Principals 1+2+3 = thoughts literally create vibrational frequencies and this in turn will manifest our feelings, beliefs, attitudes, emotions, health, energy and what we attract to ourselves.

4. Polarity: Everything is dual in nature, opposites are identical in nature and only differ in terms of degree (think: hot and cold). Spirit and matter are then really the same thing and exist in different states and degrees. This applies to all pairs of perceived opposites including emotions and at it’s essence culminates into transforming the physical body into the light body (ascension, enlightenment).

5. Rhythm: Everything flows in and out, everything has it’s tides. Enjoying the high while neutralizing the low. Mastering the attitude and outlook so that one is not at the mercy of the shifting states of all things. Unable to be moved from a state of detached neutrality or “divine indifference” that is really an eternal state of bliss. This applies to all states including and most importantly death and dying..

6. Cause and Effect: There are many planes of causation but nothing escapes the law. Every cause has an effect and vise versa. The universe is governed by Laws and there are no accidents. Mastery of the mind, emotions and physical desires place one at the conduit of cause and not the victim of effect. “Thinking must be submissive to the soul rather than the ego. Unfortunately most people do not live in alignment with the soul’s purpose and desire and have been manipulated by subconscious programming and social engineering and fall victim to the opinions of others, limiting thoughts and negative emotions. How many of your thoughts and opinions are truly your own, and how many were skillfully and subtly planted into your mind?” 

7. Gender: Everything has a yin and yang, male or female energies. This applies to emotional, mental and spiritual aspects and should be understood to promote internal balance and can be seen exemplified in correct sexual practice of unity of opposites that results spiritual ecstasy, enlightenment, awakening by avoiding the loss of spiritual energy in the process. “Spilling the cup of Hermes, or eating the forbidden fruit describes overindulgence in carnal activity and is equated to a spiritual death or loss of life force.” 

When we change our mind we can eventually change our realities past, present and future. Since we know that we are able to change our thoughts and therefore our realities, we must start at which thoughts and realities we even want to change or more importantly, which thoughts and realities we must change right away or else endure unwelcomed consequences. Some are obvious, like daily stressors and triggers, and some are subconscious or that which we are unaware of. Many times recurring stressors or negative thoughts have their origin in a deeper place and deeper reality than we are aware of. Dreams can point us to these deeper realities and make them known to us through images (the dream itself). By working with these images and even re-entering them we are able to literally change them. Change your mind, change your reality. Dreams show us where to begin, what is ready to be changed right now, and what we must change in order to stay alive and well. During the Dream Party we use a gentle drum to induce an altered state where we use our dreams as doors into which we can step into our mind in order to change it. 

The Seven Great Hermetic Principles by Robert Sepehr (Original Video)