21 Dec 2008
I've long been drawn by the emotional power of my dreams, my unconscious working to make sense of my life. People deprived of REM sleep (during which dreams occur) exhibit a variety of problems. Recently dreaming has been shown to be a part of the process of establishing long-term memories.
Over several years, dreams have been a powerful tool for me to work on myself, sometimes with the assistance of a therapist. Once in a group I re-enacted a dream involving several of us on bicycles. I chose other group members to be the other two riders and one for the bicycle. Under the leader's direction, I swapped myself into the various roles and came up with some valuable insights from even this rather simple pedestrian (haha!) dream, despite the rather sparse details.
When I note down a dream in my journal, the writing itself is a creative act. A narrative appears on paper where none was before. I give myself credit for that. In school I learned to crave credit from the teacher. I spent hours with my hand raised. I knew what the the teacher was getting at long before she even framed the question. Even with good teachers the pace was slow. It was the teachers' or the classes' pace, not my pace!!
I am in a lifelong process of rehabilitating my reward system - connecting more internally - in the aftermath of school and later after my years as a BK. Learning to hug myself or pat myself on the back or give myself a kind word or two. No wonder so many cult-ures stigmatize masturbation and other forms of sexual expression: they want everyone's reward system wired through an external control system. I am not sure about who "they" are, but I am sure they're out there!!!! Some kind of aggregate social entity that is powerfully manipulative.
Okay, here is the story, for your education and amusement.
Revolt at Tennyson Road
I am with the BKs at Tennyson Road. Trouble is brewing. Disobedience, free-thinking, revolution.
I have been working outside, and my face is covered with paint. It influences how people see me.
I am a guest, expected to be quiet and behaved. Yet my very presence brings a hush, with unsettled murmurings in the corners.
Jayanti and Co. are confronted with the biggest challenge of their careers. An actor, a pied piper, has come with all the heat and intensity of Mick Jagger. He has an odd gait, a skinny intensity in his narrow, waspish frame. He is leading a breakaway group, who at this moment are walking behind his hypnotic figure, Brothers going together down the hall to a new wing.
I am instrumental somehow, not the leader, but sitting among them, still unaware of the paint on my face, an outsider, as others bring their conflicts in front of Maureen Goodman, the wife of that kind pediatric dentist - I had forgotten they were man and wife! - and Jayanti, tireless and focused.
My comments to others, the odd cough, the fact of my living outside the trance of others in the world of my own pace is somehow catalytically subversive.
I wish I could remember the brilliant comments I made to the group on those one or two brief occasions that it was appropriate. To those who were in tune, it was like the leading sparks of a passing firestorm, leaving behind change in its wake, unidentifiable present of a transformed past. There was a rhythm and strength of the moment.
Even going to the toilet! I forgot to wear the special toilet slippers and put my socked feet on the questionable painted concrete between the edge of cleanliness and certain filth.
A Brother comes to caution me, robed in white as they all are. I have already put on the slippers, a kind of gummy tacky plastic that is unashamed of its abiological origin. (Well, petroleum did originate in the biologically stored form of solar energy, but that was a long time ago. Now the two have diverged. one wouldn't usually ingest a petroleum product, although wax and mineral oil are a common exception, being safe to take internally, in the intestines, but not in the lungs.)
He points at the mirror and I smear paint around my right, no left, eye. The mirror turns things the other way. I begin to wipe it off. While doing so I see myself as a kind of warrior in my own right.
Even the odd comment about the TV - British TV is much cleverer than in the US I say, during a brief moment that the TV is on.
And when I sit back and pause quietly, I feel the hands of some young BK, one not fully conditioned to inactivity, who has come up and is massaging my shoulders. Oh, the perks of the spontaneous revolutionary!
He sees my childlike directness, sees me as special, and gives in a gentle way that is both respectful and intimate.
Jayanti and Maureen are stressed by the effort of guiding others' behavior. Their control of others' attention is now threatened by the gyrating Jagger figure.
In all the talk and confusion, I am led to learn of the backdoor passageway between London and Madhuban. It is narrow, the width of a single plank. First I notice the office of a man, who I instinctively guess is Mruntyunjaya. The office is simple: a desk partitioned off with white sheets, loose enough to flap.
As I walk further, I see the hubbub of activity on both sides. People crowded together, bankers, businessmen, shopkeepers. I had thought the wave of revolution was going to transform everything BK, but now I see that this huge superstructure or infrastructure will go on, regardless of the principles or leader of the spiritual path. An Indian man with asian-dark skin, a check suit of matching tannish tones, contrasting against a full head of gray hair. These people are in it for the long haul.
Imagine! Every year flying to India, I had no idea I could reach it from London!!! And so easily.
"You have to meet this Brother," a young Western Brother had told me. "He was with the BKs, now he is independent and has his own shop there." I find him, away from Madhuban, among a number of merchants who serve the ashram. He, too, is a kind of subversive. We sit, the three of us. The BK-turned-shopkeeper rolls a spliff, lights it and offers it to me. Usually I would be an eager participant in this relaxing ceremony of bonding and uninhibition. (Listen to how the adjectives roll! I was taught that vigorous writing has few adjectives, so that the narrative advances by action, rather than being substantiated by what is ultimately distraction.)
I accept the gesture, without actually smoking. I sit with them amidst the cloud, in that tiny shop. At the first glance, I see in his manner, in the calculated hipness of his stubble-beard, a creative man who applies himself responsibly to sustain his children. Seeing him, it is clear that he has a boy to take care of, and a wife, accepting all of life, confident arms and angular jaw in his long-sleeved brown sweater. His eyes are dark.
He makes an odd reference, says something about a butt-plug, as though it is an unpleasant thing. "Are you kidding?" I tell him. "Try doing an internet search and you will see how many pages come up!"
. Wonderful but only 5 hours. I have been too busy lately.
So how does one cure this sort of thing???
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