All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.
ROOMS THAT DREAM:
APT. 32
In Apt. 32 you are cloistered in a small room with a single bed and a tiny window, not because you are religiously inclined or disabled or unable to function in the real world, but because you have experienced the blackest evil, the malignant dark forces known as demons as well as the archetypes of negation. You also know the Shining Ones, the forces of light and love known as angels as well as the great powers of harmony, the Archangels. You are cloistered in that tiny room because you are dangerous: your energy burns the consciousness of those around you because they have not experienced the full spectrum of light and darkness in the cosmos. In a way, being cloistered protects you because people turn on you with anger and hatred due to the intensity of your energy, and they can suddenly and unexpectedly harm you in terribly unpleasant ways. Your life, therefore, is dedicated to contemplation and meditation. For a few minutes each day, as you gaze out of your window, you can see the sun, and even though you are tempted, you try not to look at it directly because, of course, it can blind you.
(You realize that you are still on the right path because you find a story by Justin C. near the back door....)
Tiger Lilies
PENDULUM DREAMS:
The Tiger Lily and the Glory
"Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; but I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass in the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, how much more will He clothe you? You men of little faith!” Luke 12:27-28.
“It is no great measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” Krishna Murti.
Sometimes when I am hiking in the mountains, I find a tree or a flower that makes me question everything I've learned. Encountering a tiger lily in a high mountain meadow, for instance, I have felt the energies of the sun and the Sun behind the sun within the petals and leaves and in the surrounding plants and trees. I had once, long ago, believed that God was in some far away heaven. Then for many years I believed that God does not exist. Over the years, however, I have kept finding myself before a majestic tree or a flower such as a tiger lily, feeling divinity in all things. Inevitably among the trees and wildflowers, in fresh air and sunshine, I sense light radiating through my solar plexus and feel, as I breathe, the magnificence, harmony, and abundance of Spirit. After numerous encounters with ravishing flowers and awesome trees, after visions of spiritual symbols during meditation, I ended up finding a belief system that reveals the magnificence, harmony, and abundance of both the spiritual and natural worlds.
Not enough is made these days of the benefits of fresh air and sunshine. Recently, at seven thousand feet in elevation, after escaping the pollution and the negative mental atmosphere of human society, I felt a surge of well-being so powerful that I couldn't help but entertain a horrible thought: Humans have created societies so polluted and so cut off from the energies of the life-force that many people think that the Source is not present in the Earth, the plants and animals, ourselves.
I had another uneasy feeling: I have formed false beliefs that for most of my life have made me feel less magnificent than the tiger lily, less full of the love, harmony, and abundance that, in the fresh air and sunshine at seven thousand feet, I suddenly recognized as the birthright of all human beings.
I did not know that the natural world is full of splendor until I began exploring every trail through the mountains that I could find. My wife told me at the beginning of our relationship almost thirty years ago that you must have flowers and trees and birds in your heart to truly see them. I have come to realize the truth in that statement: You have to open your heart in order to truly see anyone or anything. I did not know about paths through spiritual dimensions until I opened my heart and mind during meditation and experienced visions of magnificent symbols: a golden, equal-armed cross with Archangels at each end; a golden plate and chalice on a white tablecloth; a gray infinity symbol over my head; a brilliant thousand-petaled lotus with a diamond in the center; a golden crown; three five-petaled roses; a golden Celtic Cross. Then I found these symbols on the glyph known as the mystical Tree of Life.
Fresh air and sunshine, I have discovered, give me a much clearer perspective. I realized that to be well-adjusted to a sick society I have had to be sick. And, because the Valley is so full of pollution and negativity, I must struggle continuously with my chronic illness on all levels: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Unfortunately, in my current condition I cannot continue that way and hope to survive to a ripe old age.
A few years ago, before the Creek Fire, I hiked alone through a high meadow near Tamarack Creek over fallen branches and tree trunks. Where few people had ventured, I found arrow leaf tansy and tiger lilies and columbine and spent the morning immersed in rivulets and flowers. After I rested on a rock and ate lunch, a few minutes later my heart began beating irregularly. My stomach felt like a stone that had lurched up into my chest. I thought I was dying of a heart attack and plopped down on a large, flat stone. I leaned back against a pine tree as water gurgled peacefully in the nearby stream until the AFib (atrial fibrillation) finally dissipated about forty minutes later. Without knowing it then, I had reached an advanced stage of celiac disease. My small lunch, which had contained gluten, had sent my heart into a frenzy. Many months later, after numerous experiences with AFib, I finally made the connection between gluten and erratic heartbeats, in time to avoid a blood clot or an actual heart attack. After eliminating gluten entirely from my diet, I have not experienced AFib for several years now.
I returned to Tamarack Creek before the Creek Fire. After a winter of heavy snowfall, the tiger lilies were blooming more profusely than I've ever seen before. Over 7,000 feet above the San Joaquin Valley, where almost every inch of land has been cultivated and urbanized in the last century, over a mile from Highway 168, the meadow has remained pristine. Near the highway, however, ranchers have grazed cattle that have trampled a great many flowers, including some rare ones like gentian and little elephant's head, and logging roads snake down the mountain high above the creek on both sides, yet the meadow has managed to avoid molestation, possibly because of so many fallen trees and branches at its edge.
Before I returned to the meadow, I had performed a ritual. Afterwards, I became the Fool, the eternal child, resilient within fields of change and adversity, knowing long moments of inner freedom without negativity. As the Fool by the creek, for one day I experienced paradise physically and spiritually. Thanks to my ritual I returned to an Eden not of the id or the ego, but of the daimon, the higher self, which experiences the unity and divinity within all things. Because I also invoked the God Min during my ritual, I felt a surge of well-being and a greater sensitivity to the life-force: I sensed the auras of plants and trees tuned to their surroundings. Tiger lilies, so abundant that their fragrance permeated the meadow, hovered above the rivulets and broken branches near waves of golden arrow-leaf tansy and columbine bobbing in the breeze, all in a self-sustaining community interconnected physically and spiritually. Because of my ritual, I felt the life-force thrilling through me and through all the plants and animals in the forest.
Back in the city, I realized how little I have experienced the life-force. The life-force can't be found in our electronic devices, but you can't tear those devices out of my hands or the hands of most children and adults these days. The life-force does not exist in movies or TV shows, yet it's extremely hard for me to avert my eyes for even a few moments once I start watching. I began to understand why forests might seem like pure chaos to people who are only used to human order, why so many people have become terrified of the life-force as it manifests in nature, why in the past thirty years I have encountered in the wild only a handful of other people, most of whom were carrying fishing rods or rifles.
As I stare at my computer screen, I realize that in this information age, it has become so easy to lose the knowledge about how the life-force manifests within ourselves and the creatures of the Earth. So many are obsessed with the body but know nothing about the subtle energies of the aura or the holy chambers of the soul. So many are aware of cartoon super-heroes but are unaware of the Gods that throughout history have personified powerful natural forces.
After I performed my ritual and returned to the meadow, I realized that the metaphor of rebooting and reformatting my personality that I once used was wrong. I wasn't creating a new identity—I had instead returned to something like the self I had known many years ago—my spiritual life-force, undistorted by social conditioning. I retained the knowledge and wisdom that I have gathered over the past fifty-plus years, but I felt free of decades of negativity.
It became clear to me why I had never fully discovered the knowledge of the life-force. As a child I was regimented in the public school system for nine months of the year but had three months of freedom every summer. When not playing sports or hanging out at the mall during summer vacation, I was watching TV or going to the movies. Inevitably, during the last half of the summer, I spent less time with friends and more time watching TV. In fact, the TV was on all the time, even during meal-times; I was socialized year-round to become a productive unit of labor and a spendthrift consumer. When I grew up I was going to buy, buy, buy junk food and clothes and cars and furniture and houses. I would go to college just so that I could get a great job and afford so many awesome material objects.
Money is a type of human energy but does not contain the life-force. Cars have a type of power but not the power of the life-force. Clothes and furniture and houses accommodate our needs and reveal our status in society but do not contain the life-force. For decades, in public schools, at home, at malls and amusement parks, at the movies, in college, I was starving for the life-force.
When I was growing up, by the end of each summer vacation I was bored to tears. I lived in a comfortable middle-class home, but by the end of summer I felt an incredible emptiness, except when I was reading about art or creating something. My father, fortunately, took the family on camping trips that sometimes lasted a week. Those camping trips exposed me to a completely different order of existence. I at first believed that humans are more special, more intelligent than any other creature, that nature was simply a playground and a kingdom to conquer. Even though over the years I began to recognize the sentience of plants and animals, I had become so brainwashed that I did not even notice the beauty of flowers and trees until my early thirties. As I was growing up my social conditioning slowly disconnected me from the life-force in all of its splendor and diversity, so I could not experience the divinity in nature—I was not even aware that I have a higher self (known also as the soul) because I did not recognize the life-force in myself; I had not experienced my own divine core, so I could not connect with the divine subtle forces within nature and the cosmos.
I have since my teenage years felt more than a little compelled to escape my social conditioning due to illness and a gnawing sense of emptiness, but since my first experiences with Afib, I have felt an especially keen desire to break free of social constraints and leave my society far behind. I have no desire to “break bad”; on the contrary, I want to be free of negativity, without inner conflicts or chronic physical pain so that I can pursue ideals of beauty, truth, justice, and harmony. Due to my rituals, I may have finally succeeded. I still feel greatly fatigued at times, and negative memories continue to surface now and then (but with far less intensity). I don't claim to have totally healed my mind or my body, but for the past few days, I have felt free the way I sometimes did as a child, except now as an adult, I don't feel an all-encompassing fear of the unknown or the weight of parental and societal expectations. I don't need to maintain even a tenuous connection to the herd. After a long stretch of illness and spiritual dullness, I feel as magnificent as a tiger lily, and I can sometimes glimpse spiritual magnificence in other people as well.
After my recent rituals, I feel sometimes that I am at a place in consciousness where the soul meets the divine. Some people have made me feel less than worthy, but I realize that the more I let go of negativity in my body and mind, and the more I invoke powerful subtle forces, the more I feel healthy and free.
Due to my social conditioning and my chronic illness, I have struggled a long time to achieve health and freedom. Long before my recent rituals, for instance, I chose not to be ruled by a symbol system. I pick and choose the symbols from various cultures that I need in my spiritual work. Identifying with the symbol instead of the spiritual force has led to untold madness, with cultures forcing each other to adopt their symbol systems through oppression and violence. A symbol system does not contain power until people connect with the subtle forces that the symbols represent; people who are forced to worship a symbol are unlikely to connect with its power. This very act of breaking free from the tyranny of symbol systems leads to greater freedom. Connecting with spiritual principle and spiritual forces is essentially what matters, not any symbol system, not Christianity or Buddhism or Hinduism or the so-called “dead” religions that we now consider myths. Authentic spirituality for me is about the soul aligning with the divine spark and connecting with the forces of Being. Myth, which is about all that any religion amounts to, is merely one way throughout history that people have used to achieve those ends. The unseen forces do not change, only the symbols.
Stepping away from the herd does not mean ignoring laws and values. Once I had the Vision of Harmony and understood my own divinity and the divinity within nature, I understood that my soul is a tiny thread of consciousness in one vast tapestry of energy. Everything is connected. I shrink from the thought of harming anyone or anything because I am part of who or what they are; I would be harming myself by harming another. Until every person internalizes that simple spiritual principle, laws that prohibit harming others must remain in place, and we will continue to label unbalanced acts as sins. A person who internalizes spiritual principle would not dream of harming or killing another, except in self-defense. That is why I have said that the only true sin is having a value system that cuts you off from knowing all the vibrations of the life-force because that also cuts you off from knowing the interrelationship of all things and the unity underlying all consciousness. The lack of inner awareness of the life-force and spiritual principles can lead to harmful and horrific acts. Lack of empathy, which stems from an ignorance of the divinity of nature and the self, has led to ecocide and genocide and could lead to the destruction of the planet itself, but if we walk on the path long enough, we can feel the connection that we have with all people and all things.
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