Author Archive

Body Dowsing – Releasing The Unconscious Wisdom

Every movement we make is an expression of our feelings, of what we think and will to do, of our unconscious emotions and ideas. Very often our movements express habits, such as when we are walking along a road and without thought take the turning for home when we really want to go to the shop. Through movement we show what we may not yet have fully thought or understood. And it is because of this aspect of it, especially as it arises through spontaneous movement, that such practices as dowsing are possible.

In various forms dowsing has been known throughout history and the world. In early European history dowsing became associated with a rod or forked stick, and was used to help find water, precious metals in the soil, coal, and lost objects. Despite the scientific scepticism of our times dowsing is still widely used even by government departments – because it works.

Dowsing is not always connected with a stick or rod though. Navaho Indians in the United States practise what they call ‘trembling hands’. After a simple ritual they allow their hands to move spontaneously. From these movements they understand questions asked of them. The American anthropologist Dr. Clyde Kluckhohn and his wife investigated a practitioner on a Navaho reservation. Mrs. Kluckhohn had lost her handbag three days previously so asked the practitioner, Gregorio, if he could find it. Standing in the open air on a hill, and after rubbing corn pollen on his hands, Gregorio was able to tell them the location of the handbag. This was later confirmed.

Dr. Paul Brunton, in his book Search In Secret India, tells of meeting an Indian ascetic who used his arms to answer questions. He would allow his arms to move spontaneously, and from their movements could give a yes or no response. Indian dowsers do not use a rod, but experience powerful changes of sensation in their body, and are thus able to detect sources of water and minerals.

While investigating the intuitive faculties of Australian Aborigines, Ronald Rose tells of a more refined form of body dowsing. In his book Living Magic (Chatto and Windus, 1957) he says that the tribesmen he lived with used different areas of their body to represent relatives. So their father might be represented by their right forearm, their mother by their left forearm, their first uncle by their right bicep, and so on. In this way, if an unaccountable pain or sensation developed in a part of the body, they were able to tell which relative was hurt or needed help. Rose witnessed this in action and describes it as extremely accurate and reliable.

All these forms of dowsing, even when a rod is used, depend upon the involuntary responses acting through the body in answer to a question. Taken overall they demonstrate the wide range of ways such responses can be sought or experienced. All are ways to call upon the information we have perhaps unknowingly gathered in our unconscious, or upon our intuition. It is now understood that the most fundamental way information or feelings not yet conscious are expressed is through gestures or body movements. The next level of expression for unconscious content is through symbolic behaviour such as mime or drama. Freud demonstrated that slips of the tongue were another way we let our inmost but inhibited feelings show. This explains how knowledge we cannot yet vocalise clearly can be expressed through subtle body movements such as dowsers experience.

Within the practice of Subud there is a technique which synthesises all these approaches. It is called ‘testing’. In testing it is accepted that clear and helpful information can be gained by allowing inner-directed movement to arise in response to a question. Members of Subud often use this method to clarify the suitability of a new member to the practice, or to find what may help a sick member. It can be used to explore any question though.

To be able to learn more of this see https://dreamhawk.com/body-and-mind/the-keyboard-condition/ – https://dreamhawk.com/body-and-mind/the-arm-circling-meditation/ – https://dreamhawk.com/inner-life/using-your-intuition-1/ – https://dreamhawk.com/interesting-people/evelyn-dowsing-adventures-superminds/

Being Born

Being born was one of the great moments of your life. Not only is it an important physical event, but it is also a truly powerful process psychologically. That unborn babies have rememberable experiences, and that birth itself leaves strong memories and influences, although not yet generally accepted, appears to be well documented. Thousands of people have now recovered memories of birth through various forms of therapy, meditation and hypnosis. Some of these areas of experience suggest consciousness is in some degree continuous throughout all levels of being. (See The Secret Life Of The Unborn Child by Dr. Thomas Verny, MD., and John Kelly – Sphere Books Ltd., 1982. In USA by Summit Books 1981)

To take the path of birth in inner-directed movement may mean recovering memories of your own birth and how it influenced your development. Such memories are completely non verbal and are composed purely of physical and emotional experience and body postures and movements. Apart from personal memories though, you may discover the power of renewal and the urge to grow expressed in the symbol of birth. This symbolic way experiencing was described well by Judith – in chapter three – when she felt like a crocus flower, struggling to open. In this way you might touch resources within yourself that have the possibility for you of emerging from old and restricting emotions, habits and ways of life.

1 – If possible do this with two or three friends who are supportive and used to the action of inner-directed movement. This is not because it is unsafe to do otherwise, but because with friends you can create an excellent ‘womb’ environment.

2 – If with friends, create your ‘space’ with enough room for you all to occupy a place close together on a soft duvet or blanket on the floor. Sit together making contact through holding hands, and centre down into the mood of what you are doing. Imagine yourself slipping backwards to the time when you were in the womb. When ready break contact and take an appropriate position in the middle of the blanket. Try curling up, knees to chest. Your two or three friends should now make close physical contact and cover you with their bodies so you are comfortable but enclosed in the warmth of their physical contact.

3 – Once this has been done relax and wait for inner-directed movements to arise. There is no need to concentrate on the theme of being born. It is enough for you to have thought about this at the beginning. Now you can let go of any thoughts and wait and watch.

4 – Do not attempt to make anything happen, or perform something for your friends. If all you do is to lie there for half an hour without movement, just do that. It is a very rewarding experience just to be quiet and close to friends in this non-verbal way. But you will probably find that after a few minutes there are changes of feeling occurring within you, and waves of impulse leading to some sort of movement or expression of feelings. Let these waves roll through you. Any movements that occur will come in waves too, so drop into quiet resting between them, and let the process unfold.

5 – If practising by yourself – or alone in a group – imagine yourself going back in time and size to the point where you are in the womb ready to be born. Take up a position on your blanket that expresses this as nearly as you can. Then allow inner-directed movement as described above in 3 & 4 above.

6 – What emerges will be unique to yourself. But in general it may feel like a direct experience of your own birth and relationship with your mother. Or it may be felt as an experience of psychological birth – a leaving behind of past attitudes and ways of expressing yourself that you have outgrown. It might be that you realise that for much of your life you have hardly been alive, and at last you are born and are living.

7 – Perhaps what happened was incomplete, and you will need to use the path again to carry it further. Birth is such a major feature, you will need to come back to this theme anyway to really find the treasure of insights and energy dormant in it.

8 – Whatever has arisen it is helpful to write it down and consider if you can see any relevance to your everyday life. For instance Joe, who used this path in his forties, experienced a difficult birth. He discovered a strong feeling of not wanting to be born, of a desire to avoid life by staying in the womb. He found this of great help in understanding the way he felt about life. His birth had been two months premature, so he could understand the feelings of not being ready to be involved in life. He had always had strong feelings of not wanting to participate in what other people were doing, of wanting to withdraw at social gatherings. On practising the ‘birth’ pathway again the feeling of withdrawal gradually receded and was replaced by a readiness to be involved in life. This made an observable difference to the way he met other people and was ready to be a part of activities.

If you practised with friends or within a group, share your experience with them and talk over what relevance you feel there might be with your everyday life. Also, ask for their comments on what they felt or observed. It is important to clarify for yourself what habits of feeling or attitude your birth has left, and how you wish to change these. For instance Joe was left with the habit of withdrawing from involvement with others.

The Pathway of birth offers the discovery of change in the amount of yourself you can bring to expression in relationship and work. It develops the ability to drop the past and to leave what is outgrown behind. Facets of yourself that were never really alive before can be born and live.

Unexpected Light

The toilet was looking beautiful and alive;
So soft and rounded
In its lovely curves.
And it was calling me,
In its own gentle
Peach coloured way.
“Please use me and flush me,”
It said. And I understood,
This was its whole rich life.
And as I stood
Letting my water cascade
Into the eager bowl,
A flood of green blue light
Flowed upwards to me
From the pool’s depths,
Washing over me like
Music, like liquid light,
Engulfing and penetrating me.
It touched me as softly
As a mist, healing me.
That so much tender beauty
Should shine from a place
So long thought unclean,
Was all the more wondrous
And felt.
Then, bathing in that
Treasured stream
I saw the wall
Lose all solidity,
Till through it I could see
Another world —
With other beings
Moving in their
Scheme of things,
As I in mine,
Different but akin.
And I moved through,
Not even walking,
But more a keen desire,
And stood amongst
The liquid light of them,
Knowing their curious hands
Pass in me as textures
Might keen my fingers.
Again bathing me in
Fluid colours of their thoughts.
And I was waiting
For their knowing of me
To pass into that Great Stream
From which they came,
And into which they went.
Waiting for the one
A yearning in me knew,
Who, in the Stream, would
Hear me and emerge.
And so it was.
The Golden creature came,
Who in my dreams I knew,
And filled me once again
With certainties of timeless life.
But from me took
The meagre flow of love
That I could bear,
And drank a single teardrop
Squeezed from my eyes,
Becoming incandescent colours,
Until the very sense of me
Creating body form was gone.
And there was time,
So filled it was unknown
In its passing,
Until it was
The same day again
In my scheme of things.

Copyright ©2002 Tony Crisp

Dark Night

In this dark night,
I dreamt a dream.
And in that dream,
I saw a church,
Built with a chapel
Of the opened crocus.
And I knew it spoke of
Sexual love,
That lifted up
The river of Life
Beyond its usual borders.

Then, worshipping
There in that
Opened flower
My wondering mind asked –
When the crocus
Opens in myself,
What will I have reached to
In this life?

So, sifting the immensity
That Life holds out
To each of us,
I looked to see
If I already knew the answers,
And it seems I do.

And so I asked –
Is it God that I will find?
And my experience replied –
If you wish for a God,
Then you can create
One out of your own longing,
Your energies,
And your creativity –
And that God will be wondrous.

But when I look
To the roots of my experience,
I do not find a God.
I find the fundaments
Of my own being –
A primal awareness
That is ever with me
Though seldom dwelt in.
It is a reality not a God.
It is a foundation
In my being,
Not a being giving me foundation.

And what is there to find
Save consciousness and its reality?
It leads to no wonders –
It is a wonder.
There is no escape from self.
But there is the liberation
Of that realisation.

For I am myself
The only truth there is.
And too,
A passing shadow.

Copyright ©2006 Tony Cr

The Horse that Loved Me

I danced with my woman on the sloping roof of the barn.
Twirling and laughing together under the bright moon.
Close in the warm night —
And the horse that loved us longed to dance with us,
To share our human joy.

From the grassy hill it leapt upon the roof,
Eager with its innocent love.
But its hooves gave it no hold,
And it fell to its pain,
It’s beautiful eyes imploring my help.

I could never stop it trying to be like us.
But I did not want it to suffer the agony of its broken body,
Or the pain of being unable to share its love with us.
So taking my rifle I shot it.

Not until then did I discover it had promised to marry the girl,
Knowing her unhappiness.
She wished for me to wed her,
But I refused to ask,
And the horse had loved her dearly,
Wanting to end her loneliness.

Knowing this I would still not marry her.
This was pain to her,
As great as any broken body,
And she pined with grief that I could not fully love her.
There was not even the horse to love her now.

And the horse, knowing her sadness,
Arose from the underworld,
And carried her back with it to the land of shades.

And I?
I remained as a shade in the land of the living.

Art by Raoul Martinez

Copyright ©2003 Tony Crisp

The Swimmer

Unknown to myself
I am the swimmer.
Music I do not hear
Moves me toward
The sea I do no know.
For I am the music –
Each movement
A beat
Each swift turn
A passage
In the flow of life.

I know not
Yet I am
A swimmer
In the river
Close to me
As my own unknown,
Without boundary.

I am the imperative –
Survive!
Fear is my being
Reaching tendril fingers
Into the great ocean
Toward which I swim –
Immense beyond all
My experience
Of fear
Older than I am
I go fearfully fearless
To the sea.

Copyright ©2001 Tony Crisp

Temple of the Animals

I travelled deep into the wooded mind of remembered things, into the jungled heart of forgotten faiths. And there in buried strata of memories, I stumbled into a grand temple, alive and watching, weighing me.
For there, rank upon rank of creatures dwelt and looked upon me from ancient eyes. Eyes informed from the cascading forms flowing from the depths of time. Before my kind could walk the earth, those eyes were old. Emerging, mating, dying, in the torrent of their rising and falling flesh. Yet in the very midst of the torrential change, the timeless patterns gleamed. Shone in their life lustered eyes as I stood before them. Then wordless the questions came. And in silence they asked me…
When you have hunted and gathered from field or flesh, do you share what you have with your mate?
When young spring out of the womb, can you give of your body to them, and rise above conflict to protect them?
When you meet one of your kind, can you treat them with respect according to their place in the pack?
There was no need for me to answer for they read my heart. No perfect record there, but I had laboured long to feed my cubs. My mate had eaten as I had eaten. The wounds upon my body to survive were worn with pride.
And so that mighty gathering took me then as one to them. My inner beast rose up to take the blessing, all conflict between us gone.
I the animal! I the human!

Copyright ©2003 Tony Crisp

Strange Bird

A dry hot wind was blowing.
Blowing away the dark and the wet.
Blowing the sadness from the land,
Calling away distinctions,
Smoothing separations,
With magic, making all
Golden and yellow.

Trees and hills,
The rivers, the people,
Even the dogs are made golden.
Just hints of shape,
A suggestion of existence,
Amidst a world of sunlight.

And I,
With a body of light amber,
Fair limbs,
Shone through with light,
Rise graceful into the air,
Into the golden sky.
My subtle arms and hands
Stroke the air,
As do the wings of a bird.
And high, higher, I fly,
Until the whole great tableau
Of the land
Stretches beneath me.

Ah, the awful beauty of it.
Beauty I drown in
And am lost.
For I am become,
The earth and the trees and the corn.
But suddenly I am brought down.
As if the beauty that I am
Is some strange bird
To be shot.

I am pierced in wing and chest,
And fall broken.
Fall slowly,
Like a curled golden leaf,
At the feet of my hunter;
A hunter in conflict fierce
At what he has destroyed.

The beauty lies
Helpless before him.
Shall he, out of his strife,
Finish what he began?
If only the beauty would hurt him,
Then another bullet
Could be spent on it.

Only the eyes,
Send out their call for help,
Until the silent cry
Is answered by a woman and a man.
They look upon the beauty
And tender its wounds.
Then one to another says,
“This is a thing of loveliness.”
And man to the woman says,
“Yes, but too fragile for this world.”

Copyright ©2001 Tony Crisp

Perfume Landscapes

I was walking home
Past a winter flowering shrub
When the vista opened
Of perfume landscapes.

Then I wandered along
Streets of fragrance,
Exploring the bread shop
And made hungry as the
Restaurant fanned its
Aroma around me.

Living beyond even my body
I moved outside form
Into the soul of flowers,
Of pink and white fragrances
Balming my being,

And each one
Opened yet further
Hills and dales
Woods and thickets,
Towns and stations
Of remembered odors.

They moved me through time
To the searing smell of singeing
Horses hooves,
Of burnt toast
And scorched fingers.

Then back further to
Hospital wards,
Disinfectants,
Sick old men and women
And the smell of death.

Oh yes,
And joyous tang
Of bruised elder leaves
As I had climbed to birds nests.

So much – almost
To travel time and space
Into my different lives
As I live again
The incense of privet
Around my first home.
The cut grass
Or dug soil
Of those years.

Even harvest time,
The wheat,
And the exciting whiff
Of gunpowder
From farmers guns
Or boyhood fireworks.

And the smell of
Your rich body
Filling me.

Copyright ©2004 Tony Crisp

Lumpkin and the Magic Pouch

It was a strange path
That had led me here.
Through a gate of dreams,
Along an odyssey of fears,
A labyrinth of trials
To this open space
Where simple people
Meet and eat.
And I, as they,
Am dressed in homespun clothes,
And live a life
Among the trees and rivers,
The animals and birds,
As near to us
As daily life.
They are the interwoven threads
Of our existence.

Here in the midst of this
I stand, watching.
And without warning
A stranger is by my side.
Stranger, yet I have met
This one so many times.
But even now his face
Eludes me, not taking shape.
Is he a spirit?
Perhaps my soul?
Or even a guardian.
I do not know.
But, into my hands
He gives a pouch
Of drawstring leather,
And is gone.

It seems to live,
Here in my hands,
Responding to every
Touch and move I make.
And memory comes to me,
Of some days past,
When walking quietly
Near a shady wood,
A voice called to me
From in the shadows.
“In four days,
A gift will come to you!”
And I, searching
For the owner of the voice,
And finding none,
Called back,
Asking of the gift.
And the same voice
Spoke again, saying,
“One that you have earned
And are ready to receive.”

I loosed the drawstring
On the pouch,
And see the opening
Is like a mouth.
Or better still,
Formed like the lips
Of my woman’s
Secret flower, from which
The river of her love flows.

As if within my own mind,
I hear the formless stranger
Tell me to spill
Some of the contents
Of the pouch
Upon my being.
So gently from within
The Secret Flower,
I pour
A million living motes
Onto my covered leg.
And without pause
I see the motes
Become the substance
Of my clothing
And my flesh,
Cleansing and healing
In a spreading wave.
And in the pouch
There is no less
Than when I poured.

It is a magic I can share
With others too.
And they, as I,
Can be transformed.
It is the pollen
From my lover’s flower,
The moments of
Our mutual joy,
That can overflow
Into another life.
It is the love
That places no conditions
On those loved.

Then, passing time
Left me alone
In that same place,
And I could hear
Someone’s approach.
And not knowing who it was,
I started clearing tables,
Appearing to be working there.
But into that
Place of meeting
Came a friend of many years.
Shalila, companion
On my journey to the Source.
Shalila, now transformed
Beyond her gender
Into a warrior
He/She strong and straight.
And with her too
The faceless stranger,
Still in shadows.

Striding to me,
Fierce and tall,
Shalila takes from some safe place
Within her coat,
A tiny form
Contained in her two hands.
Holding it to me
She says,
“Lumpkin has been
Asking for you.”
And I,
Take from her
Into my hands and arms
This precious creature,
Smaller than a cat,
With spindly arms and legs,
Helpless as an infant
Who holds to me
With tiny hands.
But he is old,
And made wise
By his infirmity
Of size and strength.
Infirmity that has
Led him to compassion
For all as vulnerable as he,
And humility
That is not servile.

Lumpkin is my
Second gift of that day.
And as I hold him,
Like the strange pollen,
He starts to beat
With my heart,
And breathe with my breath.

Lumpkin has come home.

Copyright ©2002 Tony Crisp

Kimberly Calls You

My darling, I press into your world to help free you from the chains imprisoning you. You know they are there. You feel them when your world does not fully claim your attention. Memory comes like a gentle warm breeze. It carries the perfume of times when you were free, when you were part of all that you see around you. Then you were a being of power, a creator in the river of time. Remembering that when you feel the close walls of the prison you exist in now. You long to return home, to fly, to reach across and into vastness with your knowing, and in that longing you thrust yourself against your prison walls, only to fall back bruised.

But, soul of me that you are, you created those walls. It is your own strength and wonder you are bruised against, strength turned against yourself. And this is the difficult part, for all that you believe in the deepest and secret place of your being is made real. Because I touch you so lightly, and then perhaps only in your dreams, it is a struggle for you to believe in my reality. But take what strength you can from my presence, and listen.

The world you are born into, and the people in it, teach you from infancy that you are alone and separate. You are taught that objects are solidly real and unchangeable, that what you see and hear and feel is a truth you cannot change. Yet everything around you and within you is constantly moving and changing. Protruding through the apparently solid walls of your prison, of your world, are things that question what you hold as truth. People are healed of what were believed to be incurable ills. Has not your soul at times flown high like a bird, and known things beyond what your sense have seen, and your books told you? Wonders sparkle in the gloom of your cell. Take heart from them, for they are keys helping you to unlock the doors that hold you prisoner.

And remember this my love – rivers flow where they have once cut channels in the earth. New rains cut deeper river beds creating higher banks. So too, once your feelings have cut the channels of despair and anger, once the energy of your life has been a torrent of darkness, the habit of misery can be quickly formed. You are a creator, and child of Creation. The energy of Creation flows through you constantly in every thought, in every deed, in every feeling known. And by these things you make your world. What you believe becomes your life. And if your belief only encompasses the narrow limitations of your senses – so be it. Or, you can take the love I fold you in, and remember who you are – a formless spirit playing with creation learning to know your godliness.

There are so many things I want you to experience with me. But so often you are trapped in a web of words, and all you can see are the views of life that words can allow – and words are such narrow windows on the immensity you live within. Yet if words are the currency of your knowing, then I will weave words for you, hoping I may touch you through a story. It is a story about you, but perhaps one your mother never told you.

When you came into the world you left behind a twin – for your mother was carrying a boy and a girl, a male and a female. But your twin did not form a body in your world, and could not incarnate. Your twin was not simply another being in a separate body. They were all that you are not, and you are all they are not, and only together are you complete. And it is this lost twin that drives you to seek out love, that makes you yearn to return home, to be complete again.

Your twin was left behind because at some time you denied a part of yourself. In that denial you formed a body, a world, a way of life around it that is incomplete. And you are haunted by the desire for that love and wholeness you knew when you were together with your twin. In your despair you search for them constantly. You look into every face of those around you, hoping to find them. Yet in the dimness of your awareness you often do not even know for what you are searching. Perhaps you move from lover to lover in your search and your aloneness. Each time, in each relationships you attempt to recreate the love you know with your twin. But each time you fail, although every time you draw love out of yourself for another, you resurrect something of your own lost self. In your attempts to love, to forgive, to give something of yourself to the other, to support each other in the loneliness that is human life, you bring more of that twin to birth within you.

In your compassion for each other you begin to resurrect the denied part of yourself. You bring into your world the part of you that was lost, that was pushed away and wilfully denied for the sake of experience. Through such compassion you can become whole. Through loving another without grasping, without bending them to your will, can you become whole, can you find me again. For I, Kimberly, am the twin you lost.

Compassion, not romantic love, is the key to that door.

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There is another story, of a being who came to live in your world. This being was complete and was part of the creative work amongst the creatures of Earth. In witnessing the way the creatures loved and lived, how they needed each other to mate, and were in themselves incomplete, the being wondered what this would be like. It played in the great river of energy that is life on Earth, and pushed down a part of itself that it might know the incompleteness, the experience of being male or female. But the river carried the being along until it was indeed only part of its wholeness. In this way we have become women and men, who look to each other for some shadow of completeness. It is the story of Adam and Eve, who fell from their original state, and clothed themselves in skins, and were ashamed of what they had become.

But now I am calling you back. It is time for your return.

Come home!

Copyright ©2003 Tony Crisp

Kimberly

Kimberly loves you in a way you have not been loved before, with an unearthly passion.

If I could say only one thing about Kimberly, that is what it would be. I hope you realise I mean it literally – that you realise someone who is beyond anything you have known a human person to be, exists and offers you love. If you recognised that much, you might also see that Kimberly is not of this earth, and so the love that is offered, the passion, would affect you in unexpected ways.

Kimberly loves you and will meet you in your sleep and dreams. When you are ready for something more, Kimberly will be there. Dare you go the next step?

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Kimberly is both male and female, and through an old mans passion, and the sacrifice of his life, has been able to live on earth and tell this story.

And this is what Kimberly says to you:

Have you forgotten? I love you. And I know you love me. But perhaps you cannot remember our meetings.

Yes, we have met.

I know when I look in your eyes that you remember me in some mist shrouded part of yourself. But I see the memories of our togetherness are like the room we may visit in our dreams. It magically appears one day when you open a door and with delight find unsuspected space and feelings of wonder. Only when you are once more in that room do you realise you have been there often, and you cannot believe you could ever forget those moments. Yet you do. And in the magical room you ask yourself how you may leave a sign, some image to trip over or to jog the link that will lead you back once you are in the place of forgetfulness.

For that is where you are, in the place of forgetfulness, and I have come from there also. I lived in the darkness you now call life, in which I did not know who I was, or that we loved each other and shared an intimacy beyond the meeting of our bodies. But I have awoken and remember all times when we lived together, and it is the darkness and the waking that I will tell you of.

Before speaking of the sorry times of forgetfulness, and the pain of awakening to the memories of my identity, I must tell you how it is I come to speak with you now. For I know when the cloud of forgetfulness falls upon you, understanding is lost, and the knowledge of ones whereabouts declines to a sense of immediate location. The view of wider, longer roads and pathways fades with the mist invading ones mind. The distant shore across the sea passes away as if it had never been as the atmosphere of ones mind is pervaded with the obscuring haze.

I will speak more of this fog later, but know that I, like you, was born of the flesh and lived that life fully as a man and then as a woman. I did this in the one body as I recalled the fuller experience of myself and emerged from the sleep that in your life one calls waking.

I was known then by a name, just as you are, and I believed myself to be that person, whose nativity was at the time of the second great war of the world. As that person I was raised in the customs of the white race and its religion. I worked and strived, I loved and was pained by the attachments of love arising from that identity and that race, just as you are by the limitations of your own race and skin. I was a father and a mother of children following upon being a babe myself, coming from the womb of a woman who believed I was her child. My body was begotten of a man who called me son. For birthright I inherited the centuries of struggle and the history of my human family and people, which was like an imprisonment and chains forged upon me. Just such have you inherited, and I bore it as you bear it, as my father and mother of this conception bore it, with forbearance and some pleasures until death.

For that man died after fifty-five years, in June of that year. It was not a death of the body, but of the person he thought himself to be. All that had given him zest had gone from his life, and he withered as a plant withers that has fruited and lives but for one year. In his season he had achieved sufficiently to gain recognition, to experience human love and the heights and miseries of daily experience and the exercise of the spirit. His children, like his hopes for satisfaction in the world, had grown and dropped away from him as do seeds. Perhaps life abandoned him as it does the husk of fruit when the kernel is ripe – and he was wise enough to admit his task had been fulfilled in its natural impulses; for he did not attempt to place in himself the artificial semblances of life offered and taken by so many.

He died. And I was born a second time in this one body. In my birth was an awakening. What had existed before in the man I had been was sleep. In that sleep I had dreamt I was a man, born of a mother, parent of children, suffering the troubles of personal existence. So real was the dream, all the experiences of that man were mine. I was utterly involved in every detail of his life. I was him as he fought with his sexuality to remain true to one woman; when he wept in the effort to express in the world to gain resources for his children and recognition for himself. They were my tears. And when that person I knew myself as in my dream, slept, and he lived in dreams or vision, he dreamt he was me. Not knowing he was my dream, he believed I was a wonderful but ephemeral sacred experience, which though uplifting, had nothing of substance to add to his life.

Through his death I awoke from that dream. I was brought to life again by his love for me, the gossamer figure of his fantasies, for whom he gave up his life. While I dreamt him he dreamt of me. He was in search of me, not knowing he was my dream and he sought his own reality. At his death, the end of my dream, all he had lived as a man, all that was experienced as a woman, was left to me, Kimberly. His life as a man, his hidden life as a woman caring for his children, is to me like a language I have learnt to speak so well I can see the world through its concepts, and understand and communicate with others who live their life totally immersed in that language. But I speak many languages, and all of them are but tools useful in having a life within a culture and a period of time and space. The dream of his life is but one of many I have dreamt, and each one I cherish and take into myself to nurture. But I, Kimberly – a name I give myself for your convenience, still seeing the world as you do through the sense of being one person in one place and time – am a shape shifter. And so for you I speak through the language and personality of this world.

These many dreams of many lives are my body in the world, stretching through all times and many lands. Through my love for you I will share the secret places of my body. I am for you what I was for all those lives. For I am your dream – and you are my dream. But until you are ready to awake, I, Kimberly, can be the splendid one of your sleep and vision. So come to my wondrous, holy body, and partake.

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I have loved your body as I have loved you. As a lover I have known your body intimately, in the flesh and in your dreams. Just as the leaves of the plant turn constantly through the day to sunshine and long for its touch, so through the years you longed for my love, even in the arms of others. My love is a radiance that knows all parts of you.

As much as your mother and father have given to the forming of your body, so have I. Closer than they I have watched it grow and tended it, as much as you and my care would allow. For in the very substance and form of your body, however ill that shape may seem to you, has been invested all that history has given you to learn, and all the past has gifted you with. Yes, the pains of fortune as well as its pleasures, are the bricks from which you build your being, now and forever. Out of them you unfold the fragrance and colour of your life as the flower draws beauty out of the dull earth into the marvel and pigment of its bloom.

Through the trials of childhood and the scars of your body, you grow the muscles of your spirit. The wounds transform into a sense of achievement as you draw out their pain into the knowledge of their origin. The loneliness of your childhood can change into a sensitivity leading into others hearts. The malformed body can be the material for you to transcend hurts and live free of the prison of thought and opinion. Such are the petals you unfold on the flower of spirit through the strange wrapped gifts your body brings. Such, often, is the pain of my love for you.

Having woken from the dream of life, I look with more peace upon the despair that in some measure is in all the hearts of those who still believe themselves to be the body. From this bridge across time I see the tragedy burning in most lives. The bright burning possibility of each person, immense and wonderful, pervading the body just as warmth invisibly enters each particle of a stone. It lies shuttered and hid in all but the splendid few. If your heart shall ever break and its waters flow into the world, even for moments, then the bitterness of the lost splendour is tasted. Sorrow for what one is, but has never allowed to be made real, is uttered to those who reap the harvest of their life.

Tragedy, tragedy, when the vast and timeless that we are is lost amidst the multitudinous concerns of words and time, and once lost amidst that crowd and swallowed by its swirling surge and promise, forgotten!

Having no single body, I do not suffer the difficulties you have with yours.

Copyright ©2003 Tony Crisp

I Wake Again

One day I woke,
And in waking I realised
My life was a dream.

Not the dream while we sleep.
And it wasn’t me dreaming it.
I don’t know how,
But in the moment of waking,
I glimpsed who,
Or what,
Was dreaming me.

I didn’t see a face,
Or know a name,
But I knew
That when I woke from sleep
Was when my Dreamer
Dreamt me into existence.

He, or was it She,
Woke as me,
Becoming totally involved
In my existence.

With unimaginable passion,
With nerves spread
Receptive to pain and longing,
With every fibre lost in
My troubles, my lost love,
My desire to create,
My frustration, my life.

And I had taken it
All so seriously.
My childhood,
My searching, my heartbreak,
And achievements.
I had ached and struggled
Through every moment
Of this dream.

I knew too that
When I slept my dreamer woke,
Not as a struggling human like myself,
But as a grand being
Without such limitations.

Yet a being who needed
To explore the depths
Of isolation,
Of feeling self-aware,
And without a sense of
Connection with everything,
Lost in feelings of time,
Of ageing and of meeting death.

Thus my existence,
So real,
So poignant.

And my own sleeping dreams,
Are when I awake beyond
This life,
Into that grander style.

But I only bring back
Unfocused shapes,
Half known truths,
Swarming to find life,
To be recognised,
Beyond the limitations of
My time bound, death bound, self.

And I awake again
In the dream of my Dreamer,
Knowing the strangeness of it,
And finding peace.

Copyright ©2002 Tony Crisp

In the Beginning

I began to talk as LIFE, saying –
But it is human beings
Who wrote all the holy books.
All of the stories arose out of Me.
All of the music,
All the fears.
All the possibilities of life
Arose because I AM.
Because I as humans
Became self aware.
Then all this wonderful
Array of qualities arose.

Now I moved into being the story teller.
And I could hear the sound
Of the birds and crickets outside,
And it felt I was experiencing
How the world was millions of years ago.
Not like going back into the past,
But recognising how
The past is still with us.

I said –
There was a moment when
I heard it for the first time.
I heard it all new
And I was amazed.
I had been unconscious,
Asleep,
And I woke up.
I then heard it all for the first time.
I could hear myself – Life – crying,
Laughing, mating.

I was in awe.
I was in AWE.
I fell down before myself
And I worshipped – Myself –
Yet asked –
What creates all this?
What could create it?

In my awe
I listened so deeply,
And I would get so entranced
I would forget about everything else,
And IT spoke to me.
IT spoke to ME!
It spoke to me,
And told me the stories and poems
I tell to you now.

Copyright ©2004 Tony Crisp

Glory Shone Around

And I had a dream –
That glory shone around,
Down from the skies.
And a vision arose –
A vision of great power,
Energy pouring down
Upon the Earth
And on the people.

I bathed in that cascade,
Like a great descent
Of force transforming us,
Changing the physical environment.
It was the new dispensation,
A new phase,
An extension
Of what already exists.

And Joy filled me,
Because something
Wonderful was happening.
It was the New Wine,
The second coming,
Promised for everyone
To drink like wine,
Bubbling and sparkling in us.
Driving out the old
Outworn self.

Death and resurrection
Is upon us in the wonder.
And I heard music,
Which my newly resurrected self
Is in time with and in tune.

Copyright ©2001 Tony Crisp

Girl in the Wood

There is a forest of the soul that dreams can conjure,
Where creatures strange as dreams are seen,
And this one, tired of lights and people
Made a pathway to its places few had been.
This is the wood of dreamy strangeness,
And I, among its creatures wandered there,
Amidst its green and leafy places,
Through its thorns and damp cool air.

Then out into a clearing,
The beech nut path had led me,
Rounded by the sky and by the wood,
And there naked in the half light,
Still as a fawn in wild flowers and grasses,
A lovely maiden stood.

She was brown as the beech nut caskets
That lined the way as I came,
And like the soft silk of spring beech leaves,
Her skin was just the same.
For an age we stood and pondered,
What we saw in each other’s eyes.
And all to be said had been spoken,
And to talk with the tongue would be lies.

Then in a voice that was silent,
She called to my every cell.
She called in a way forbidden,
In a speech as old as mankind;
She called in a tone that shook me,
And I suffered the longings of hell.

But the voice within kept warning,
To think of those I loved,
To picture any woman,
Any girl who was beloved.
And that was the only way backwards,
From this supernatural shore.

Then to that clearing came forward,
One whom the trees had hid,
The great god Pan with his escort’s,
To aid Nature in her bid.
He told of a million secrets,
Of as many unearthly delights,
This nut brown woman could give me,
Through eternity’s days and nights.

But I clung to my picture of women,
I feared the mind diffuse,
That over all earth pervaded,
And for singleness had no use.
It was God’s idea to be different,
To rise up all alone,
to grow as a man individual,
And have a soul of one’s own.

Yes, I clung to the love of my lover,
The commonness of a friend,
And the figures before me faded,
Into that woodland glen.

Slowly I traced my footsteps,
Back through the leaf green ways,
Over the beaten pathways,
Through the damp cool dells.
I can’t say I’m happy I’ve lost her,
For she’ll never come back again.

But sometimes I catch a whisper,
In the touch of a summer night’s rain.
That if I stay with mankind,
As the great star clusters stir,
Could it be the love I came back for,
Will grow to be like Her?

Copyright ©2003 Tony Crisp