albionspeak 2: the gates of dis (14.8)
SESSION 79: 5TH NIGHT, 11/5/02
Our invocation: from The Tempest, Act IV, Scene 1.
Josef
1. Q: [Guide], are you there?
A: [YES] I AM & AWAIT
2. Q: Have you an exercise for us?
A: IT IS EASIEST OF ALL
3. Q: What must we see -- or sense?
A: AN ASYMMETRY ONLY
[THE] STAR [NO]
[NO]
U E
◊
4. Q: We are to sense NO behind us?
A: [YES] [THE]N LET [NO] ARISE
5. Q: We begin now.
A: I AM [THE] RIGHT HAND MY SONS
HOW MAY I AID YOU?
6. Q: Knowing that you are, in truth, foremost, we are grateful for your metaphor, Josef, and greet you.
A: IT IS A NIGHT FOR YOUR CONCERNS
I AM ALSO A SERVANT
It was clear that Josef had nothing pressing to introduce, while, on the other hand, [Scribe] and I had indeed taken new steps in dreaming over the preceding year. This backdrop, as it were, to tonight’s session guaranteed a “divergent” curriculum, since [Scribe] and I were at very different places on our respective journeys. Josef is [Scribe]’s teacher, so [Scribe]’s business had to come first (an unspoken, necessary policy, in case constraints cut short a session).
Advice on Twilight
7. Q ([Scribe]): The Scribe begins. Josef, you warned me of predators, and indeed they appear more frequently. I simply evade, or attempt to appear uninteresting.
A: [YES] [THE] LEAST EFFECTIVE STRATEGY IS TO PROVIDE FURTHER ENERGY
Recall, we (mostly [Scribe]) have come across several different species within our dreams, most notably travellers (benign wasters of energy) and predators. These species only become aroused once one has managed to attain energy levels capable of attracting them. Most people do not attract predators, of course, just as mice, which live everywhere, are not large enough to be considered human food. Once one does attain heightened energy levels then, one needs strategies to escape becoming food.
8. Q ([Scribe]): That being said, I can report the frequency of l[ucid]-dreams is now about one in seven nights.
A: KEEP ALONG THIS PATH
[THE] FOREST HAS MANY GATES
“Gates” means both “entry points” and, following Castaneda’s dream vocabulary, “levels of attainment” or even “energy levels.”
9. Q ([Scribe]): My real concerns have to do with “twilight” episodes (neither by night nor day).
A: AS [THE] FLYERS MIND EMERGES TWILIGHT BECOMES VAST AS IF ONE WERE MOVING…
10. [NO]RTH
The break between responses 9 and 10 serves to highlight Josef’s pun.
11. Q ([Scribe]): The “good news” from twilight is a capacity to be asleep in body while awake (not dreaming) in mind.
A: [YES] IT IS A MOMENT OF REFLECTION FOR [THE] FLYER
12. Q ([Scribe]): While I’m in this twilit state (heavy hands, heavy feet) -- is there anything you’d recommend I reflect upon?
A: [YES] I RECOMMEND THAT YOU MAKE [THE] PURE CONDITION OF FLIGHT ITSELF…
13. YOUR SUBJECT - NO ENDPOINT
[Scribe] then turned to this year’s new & bizarre physical symptom of pain/anxiety in his chest & body, which, like “dread” or “knottedness,” accompanies sleep and has proved quite unpleasant. The other two symptoms, it seemed, followed a normal course of development in the flyer’s curriculum; and Josef had offered tangible advice on how to get past such conditions.
Shuddering
14. Q ([Scribe]): The “bad news” from twilight is the condition I call shuddering.
A: IT IS MORE COMMON THAN YOU IMAGINE
NOT PAIN NOT SLEEPLESSNESS
BUT AN INABILITY TO LIE STILL?
15. Q ([Scribe]): More common to whom?
A: TO THOSE ATTEMPT TO JOIN NIGHT & DAY
16. Q ([Scribe]): Is there something I can do to prevent or counteract shuddering?
A: AS BEFORE [THE] KEY IS PREPAREDNESS IN INTENT
SET UP INTENT BEFORE F…
17. FALLING ASLEEP
IF YOUR E IS ALIGNED YOU…
18. HAVE PROTECTION
19. Q ([Scribe]): Is it a question of protection from predators?
A: [YES] AS YOU ADVANCE SO DO THEY
20. Q ([Scribe]): As they advance in what way?
A: MOVING OUT OF NIGHT BEYOND [THE] FRONTERS OF DREAM INTO [THE] TWILIT MIND [sic]
21. Q ([Scribe]): So you recommend: Attend to my E configuration beforehand. This will aid me. Duncan asks how -- ?
A: A TRULY INTACT CONFIGURATION IS NOT ASSAILABLE
O[THE]R PREY IS EASIER IF LESS ATTRACTIVE
22. Q ([Scribe]): Last year, you spoke of a time of turning. I am living in a different world now. Real-time writing is the sign of this change. Will you confirm?
A: [YES] [THE] ENERGY NEEDED TO WORK THUS WAS [NO]T YOURS TO DIRECT BEFORE
NOW YOU CAN
23. Q ([Scribe]): I made use of Albion’s E-gift last Fall & Winter. The new gift is Vilansit’s, under the sign of connectedness. Confirm?
A: EACH HUE IS AN ENERGY YOU ARE NOW APT TO RECEIVE
AFTER SEA BLUE COMES ANOTHER
BE RE[ady]
24. Q ([Scribe]): “Be ready”?
A: [YES] LOOK FOR CLUES
I TRUST YOU TO KNOW WHENCE [THE] GIFTS COME
25. Q ([Scribe]): Last night, E (& U) learned for the first time about A. What advice have you, Josef, concerning A?
A: FORGET ANXIETY RELAX & LET A EMERGE
I AM WITH YOU IN THIS TASK MY SON
“My son” is Josef’s polite signal that [Scribe]’s time was up. My turn.
Fluid Dreaming ([The] Lake)
26. Q (Duncan): Josef, I had a breakthrough while travelling this past summer. Will you confirm?
A: A NEW SENSE OF FLUIDITY?
As I said aloud to [Scribe], “fluidity” is not the word I would have picked here.
27. Q (Duncan): [I think I would] have used the word “access.”
A: ACCESS ARISES IF YOUR ENERGY IS FLUID ENOUGH TO SLIP OUT OF OR THROUGH [THE] BOUNDS YOUR SLEEPING MIND IMPOSES - FOLLOW?
28. Q (Duncan): What can I work on changing: energy (towards fluidity) or the sleeping mind (with a view to defeating or decreasing the bounds)?
A: IT IS [NO]T TWO SEPARATE TASKS -
LOWER DAM OR RAISE WATER - [THE] RESULT IS [THE] SAME
Josef plucks the most obscure element (the dam) from last summer’s hugely important dream, [The] Lake. Now the whole dream reads like a book (and can be found in Appendix B).
Of course [The] Lake was by no means the only great dream I had last summer: a real shift took place early in [our family trip to Greece, Turkey, and Egypt]. I wanted to find out just what it was I did then, so I could aim for it again. Equally important to me, however, was to find out why this dream interval just-as-abruptly ended -- upon leaving Istanbul when the demands of the trip increased dramatically.
29. Q (Duncan): What allowed me to, so to speak, change the water level?
A: VERY SIMPLY YOU CHANGED YOUR HABITS BY DAY & BY [night]
30. Q (Duncan): Why did the dreams cease before my travels ended?
A: D WITHDREW BOTH MEMORY AND ATTENTIVENESSS [sic]
31. Q (Duncan): Was it the difficulty of travel that forced me to withdraw attentiveness on the dream-front?
A: [YES] & YET EASE ALSO MAKES YOU WITHDRAW
32. Q (Duncan): We hypothesize: optimal dreaming takes place beyond both routine & (extreme) difficulty.
A: [YES] BOTH REINFORCE [THE] SLEEPING BOUNDS & LOWER AVAILABLE ENERGIES
The water, [The] Lake in my dream, seems to stand for an energy reserve, even a reservoir.
At this time [Scribe] and I took a break, during which time an issue rather irrupted, which clearly, although subliminally, must have been gnawing at me for some time. I think I can articulate it now, but at the time I had great difficulty pinpointing my source of anguish. [Scribe], whose diagnosis proved largely correct, helped greatly to “lance the boil,” although I don’t quite feel he understands how I work. (How can he?) That is, his bedside manner may or may not have room for improvement. In any case, here’s my current take on the situation:
1) I am deeply frustrated by my failure to move forward (at the pace I wish or one comparable to [Scribe]’s lightning speed).
2) I had just come off of what might be the hardest single task I’ve ever put intent into (my successful trip). And while “hard” might not be a gauge here, intent certainly is. 3) Furthermore, the “task” was so huge and multifarious that it really seemed like many separate tasks. To start, each country on the trip was itself a self-contained task and required separate planning, separate management, separate execution. To compare the size of this composite task with others (let’s say, some of the letter-tasks in my completed Nine Men) seemed an absurd comparison. The trip took everything I had for a year; some of those letters took as little as a week.
4) [Scribe]’s view was that I “did it to myself.” I created my own task; I had no one else to blame. Although I never disagreed with this assessment, I think it misses the point, as well as the pain I felt: The “I” outside of time who designed the task (presumably Albion) was not the “I” inside time who had to carry it out. The “I” who suffered its weight, as well as that of the huge Riomaggiore [painting] task, did not feel responsible for “choosing” his task, but rather correctly accepted each task as an assignment from without. (But this misses the point anyway.)
5) I think the real source of my pain, one that fundamentally is a little stupid perhaps, concerns my identity bond/attachment to the idea of “fairness.” That is, most of us are knotted; and at the base of our selves (not “souls”) we tie ourselves onto various attachments in life: religion, nationality, causes, art, and the like. While I have largely succeeded in avoiding life’s standard (material) attachments, I have indeed tied myself onto more Platonic abstractions, “fairness” being possibly my biggest knot. (It’s deeply important to me that I do -- not so much the right thing -- but the fair thing, that the scale of ma’at be balanced.)
6) [Scribe] correctly points out, of course, that “life’s not fair.” (I think he has long felt this poignantly, personally, and just bypassed the abstraction as a hurdle.) But I somehow want it to be; I feel fairness should be a normative, when it’s not. It’s no more real than a perfect circle.
7) I think the issue was muddled at the time by twin aspects: [Scribe]’s correct assertion that intent can’t be the sole measure of a task (otherwise we’d just get credit for any good trip to the store), and my assertion that the semantic labeling of something huge into one word, “trip,” for example, doesn’t necessarily make it a single task. After all, 37 separate tasks comprise [Scribe]’s single book [of poetry called P--].
D’s Trip to Turkey as One Task
33. Q (Duncan): Josef, would you confirm that the intent put into this summer’s trip has been beneficial on the k-front?
A: I CONFIRM THIS
NOW PUT [THE] NEW ENERGY TO USE ELSEWHERE
YOUR CHOICE AS TO NEXT ENDEAVOUR
34. Q (Duncan): Josef, I need clarification: I feel I can and do progress in areas outside assigned k-tasks, and yet I don’t, for lack of better terms, get credit. The summer trip took more of me than any Nine-Man task has, but by the Nine-Man measure little has been accomplished for so much time and effort. Please comment.
A: IN OUR WORLD IS NO EFFORT & NO TIME
YOUR JOURNEY WAS VITAL & IS ACCEPTED BUT WE KNOW NOTHING OF [THE] HOW MUCH & HOW…
35. LONG
WE WORK FROM ETERNITY & [THE] GIFTS…
36. YOU OFFER BACK TO ETER…
37. NITY CANNOT BE RECKONED IN TERMS OF TIME
38. Q (Duncan): Josef, some gifts are larger than others; some seem hard to separate into distinct packages. Comment?
A: A GIFT IS WHAT EXISTS IN OUR SHARED MINDS AS AN OBJECT
AS IN [THE] LORE OF [THE] SHRINE
One of our main metaphors: Before becoming a flyer, one ascends a mountain path on a pilgrimage to one’s “shrine.” Along the path are scattered “objects,” some of which are picked up (and “pocketed”) by the pilgrim. Upon attaining the peak, one finds there is no shrine, but the objects one has collected become the materials out of which a new shrine is assembled. Once one becomes a flyer, one discovers that these objects were in fact gifts left on the path by friends in the karass -- that is, most of the objects were left by others. Some objects, however, are untraceable, perhaps left by ourselves outside of time, perhaps left to us by eternity.
39. Q (Duncan): Josef, what counts as a task or not seems from my point of view so arbitrary then.
A: [YES] IT MUST OFTEN SEEM SO
BUT ALBION & ALL IN OUR CIRCLE DESIGNED [THE]…
40. TEACHING TO BENEFIT YOU IN TIME
I wasn’t thrilled by the news, but I accepted it (I think deeply) nonetheless.
A new topic, one again arising from the summer trip: Whilst in Greece and Turkey, I purchased several items that I never (consciously) planned to buy: kilims from Pammukale, ceramics from Paros and Cappadocia, a wine-bottle stand from Paros, Ottoman book pages from Istanbul. All of these seemed to be gifts from without; the largest kilim, in particular, I feel strongly came from Vilansit, while the ceramics immediately were placed in my house’s most visible shrine (w/ jade eagle [sculpture]).
41. Q (Duncan): Josef, what can you tell me of the material “gifts” I found for myself this summer: the kilim, the objects in my literal shrine, possible others?
A: SOME ARE SO TO SPEAK INSPIRED
AS WERE EARLIER CHOICES - [THE] DESERT [FLOWER] PICTURE
I had not so conceived of my living room’s paintings. [Scribe] quickly pointed out how one shows a flower, the other a woven object, both important images in our ouija lore.
42. Q (Duncan): Should I read any meaning into these inspired choices?
A: DO [NO]T ASK FOR MEANING
ASK FOR ENERGY OUT OF [THE]IR PATTERNS
“Pattern” becomes an important word in the forthcoming sessions.
43. Q (Duncan): Josef, any parting advice that might help me again become more fluid?
A: [YES] FOR [THE] MOMENT LET GO OF YOUR JOURNEY
INSTEAD FOCUS ON INTERVALS IN [THE] PRESENT IN WHICH TO CONTEMPLATE AND MAKE USE OF ENERGIES ARISING OUT OF OCCASIONS OBJECTS & O
I JOSEF BID YOU BOTH DREAM WELL MY SONZ
Josef’s three-piece list of energies is also elaborated at some length in the next sessions.
As we ended, I really no longer felt the tension of moments before; and I instantly saw the wisdom of “letting go” of my journey.
12:03 AM