Ordinary

In our dreams the ordinary often had tremendous significance, but it needs to be explored. The reason is that the ordinary is like a camouflage behind which lies enormous meaning. For instance if you dream about your hand you may think, so what, it’s my hand. Okay but what is your hand, what have you created or destroyed with your hand, how many women has it been inside of; and where did it arise from? How many men and women of past generations gave their lived that you could live and have a hand now? And it goes right back to the beginning of the evolution of the hand, for you hold it all within you. See Being the Person or Thing

 Example: Dreamt I had a long scarf of double thickness, made like a snake, with eyes and mouth sewn on. I was trying various ways of putting it on but couldn’t find a satisfactory one. I was doing this in an amused way. I knew the scarf was to do with kundalini. Smiling I saw Peta and Maitreya sitting as in meditation. Very heavy, they said I ought to go beyond all the silly thoughts about kundalini. This really irritated me. At this point I woke for a while. When I went asleep again I continued the dream. I went to them and said if anyone was locked in preconceived thoughts they were. The idea of going beyond was itself a conception. Why not stay simply with what is there instead of plans and goals. I then put the scarf on like a bobble hat. The snake eyes were in front, the mouth seemed to be holding my head. I felt satisfied.

I worked on this dream with Liz. I lay still for a while with nothing happening. Then was led to sit up. I felt Maitreya as a rather disciplined feeling. Peta was great stillness, a silence not filled, and empty silence rather than a full one. Then I had arising out of this a powerful kundalini feeling – pleasure flowing through me. A spot of sensitive gentleness in the chest radiated love. Then I transformed into an ordinary human – one of mankind – seeing Peta and Maitreya as common beings, and I loved them into myself. I felt the dream showed how ideologies create chasms between us, and how once we get back to our own ordinariness this chasm disappears. Yes, certainly we must go beyond kundalini, but we must go beyond going beyond.

 Example: She found, too, that small practical acts, that went against her usual careless habits, helped to increase her efficiency in the shop. One evening she returned home much dispirited and longing for some light in the darkness. Taking up a book by Hugh Kingsmill, entitled The Kingdoms of the Spirit, she opened it at a passage about practical good works, as advocated by the Buddha, not what she had hoped for at all. However, the voice said, ‘Well, there you are! You asked for help: now get out of bed and do something.’ Cursing and swearing, but feeling she had got to do as she was told; she got out of bed, darned some stockings and mended a blouse ready for the next day. In the morning, when she woke, she heard: ‘Now you’re a responsible person: get up, dress yourself properly and kneel down and pray for X’ (an actress who was dangerously ill). This made her feel tremendously restored and happy. And gradually she began to believe that she could trust Love to be in her eyes and hands; for she felt convinced that what she had to learn was to be learnt where she was, in the bookshop.

Example: I came home with the shopping. I love it – looking through all the choices of things and collecting what I need. And I put the bags on my cane sofa in the kitchen, and forgot about them while I involved myself in other things.

Later, returning to take all my carefully selected foods and goods out of the bags to store, I opened the first bag and was almost swept away – swept away by the wonder of it. In that flimsy plastic bag, with its imprint of the supermarket badly stamped upon it, I saw all the treasure of care, the fruits of labour my mother and father had carried with love into our home, carried, just as I had carried these bags today. There in glory shone manifest the skills I had struggled, or with joy learned and honed in order to have something to give to my fellows, and therefore feed my children and myself, to take as an offering to my wife. In my hands were the gifts of the generations, the forefathers and mothers throughout the ages. Such common things all shone with light, and with a mystery beyond my understanding – and I stood transfixed.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Have I explored the meaning of my own common life?

What do I find if I do?

Can I share what my ordinariness has?

See Active Passive – Key Words – Inner World – Learning to Allow Yourself