The “Way” of the Dream

We should be able see in the light of these opposites in our behavior or emotions that there is a need for them to be brought to balance. In each life situation there is a changing point. This is the ancient Chinese wisdom in the Tao. “The Tao is the intuitive knowing of “life” that of which cannot be grasped full-heartedly as just a concept but known nonetheless through actual living experience of one’s everyday being.”

Ashung Jay: That is my name.  I am living here in this man.  I am an old part of his being that he is only just coming into contact with.  This is because he is learning to bow low enough.  I am living within this man from an earlier period of history.  I am giving him my essence, my life essence.  He can draw upon it.

The way of life is strange.  A person’s life develops many connections.  Sometimes in unlikely ways you may love somebody who is of lesser class, or scorned.  Yet that person may link you with aspects of life that are important to know about, and you will be the lesser if you did not understand them, and have sympathy with them.

What I teach is that within each situation there are various factors.  There is an area of strength, and there is an area of weakness.  There is a male area and a female area.  If you understand these things there is no need to fear the situation, because you can move within it and shift as is necessary.  You can be weak, or you can be strong.  You can withdraw or you can advance.  You can use the momentum of what is opposing you, or you can stand up and direct it.

Let us see if we can translate this.  In each life situation there is a changing point.  There is change, and within that change, if you understand it, there is possibility – there is possibility.  There is not something defined, but there is possibility.  Within the strength there is weakness.  Within the weakness there is strength.

There are apparently divine laws that are cast in stone, and we have created a God, and a view of the universe, like that.  Static. But it doesn’t fit the facts that we can observe all around us.  It doesn’t fit life experience.  Other cultures saw this continuum, this flux, this ever shifting state that yet has within it a condition of stability.  Despite its movement it yet expresses in certain slowly shifting ways.  Nevertheless in many ways we are still feathers blowing in the wind.  It is also love, reaching out against all odds, and that may at any moment be torn apart, yet continues in its expression of love.  It does this again and again until it creates a new way, a new life.  Against all possible odds creation takes place.

Enquirer: I wish to learn of your wisdom.  Help me understand.

Ashung Jay: There is wisdom in us as old as time.  To survive the future we need to reach beyond the barriers that we have developed in ourselves and in our society through the ages.  These barriers that we have gradually developed in our way of life, show in how society and sometimes our religion express and create dogma. Over many generations some things have become almost rigid. Because of events in the past they have been necessary.  But at a deep level of our being they do not exist in that rigid way and are transcended.  In the love a man has for a woman, and a woman has for a man, they do not exist rigidly as moral laws of God.  They are not there in the depths.  Love overrides so much that in our society is taken as gospel in today’s world.

I touch your spirit.  I honour it, and I am ready to learn.  It is an old wisdom that you long for.  I feel that this ancient part of you wishes, perhaps painfully, to break through your present limitations, until you are ready to let that larger life emerge and create a larger community.  I feel something very magical is happening here.  Something is unfolding.  As I listened to you I gradually hear more of your spirit.  But perhaps sometimes stronger than you do.  It is bigger than your present personality.  It is older than your present personality.  It is calling you with a longing that is old and beautiful.  It holds in it the recognition of connections and the building of clans.

This is about the forming of a new type of relationship.  It will not be based on the grabbing, the acquisitive attitude of many in the present world, but from a recognition of older and deeper connections we build with each other.  There are older and deeper ways of relating than those we have developed in our consumer society.  They are fuller and more inclusive in the relationship than are part of corporate life in today’s world.

Such relationships arise from the recognition not of riches or status, but of achievement.  It is about the recognition of allies; in the recognition of being a multifaceted team who do not necessarily have to agree with each other.  People can develop their own strategies, but in the end they know their connection and can call on each other.

For myself, there is something I am still cautious of.  As far as I can tell it is about how new life emerges from the very fundamental levels of being.  New life comes from deep down in that cellular level, the bacteriological level of our being.  That’s where it begins.  That’s where new life begins.  We don’t actually start a living thing from our conscious logical process, up in our head.  It’s organic.  It connects.  It joins.  It is a mutual effort, combining whole families or races over periods of time.  It searches amongst all that it is for what will be, or might be, and it emerges as a new thing.  We know it as a new little critter.  And to really connect with that critter we have to be biological.  The baby connects through the breasts, not through the head.  To understand that we need to be able to feel life squirting and squirming through us.

 Enquirer: How can I deal with the future? Can you can help me understand it?

Ashung Jay: But if ones aim is then simply to relate in a similar way – by battle and conquest – then there is no great advantage.  But if it is to gradually build greater connections, living and meaningful connections, then that is another matter.  That is creativity.  Then you dance in the ever changing.  The captivating, in the moment between movement, when there is complete stillness, holding the creative dream until it becomes real in the phenomenal world.

Dear God, I have seen the moment of creation.  I have lived in the moment when form takes place.  Each moment is the moment of creation.  Each moment, what we hold on to takes form.  Unwittingly, in that way we constantly create our life and the world around us.  Whatever we fill those sacred moments with takes form.  Whatever we fill them with takes form.  Enlightenment is living all the time in that ever shifting moment – living consciously in that moment.  Living, moment by moment, without holding on.

For most of us, normal life is a process of constantly holding on to what we know and what we want.  We will not let go of our beliefs or convictions.  Somehow we want to be in control and to avoid at all costs the constant movement of reality.  We grasp hold of a dream – I want to be rich – I want the beautiful – I want to be famous – I want this – I want that –we grasp hold of it and it swings us off in a particular direction.  In doing that we swing ourselves off in a particular direction.  Then, because we don’t let go we continue in that direction.  And every particular direction has in itself the seeds of decay.  It is only when we hold and then let go that life regenerates itself and us with it.

What we hold and bring into being can be anything.  We can create a heaven or a hell, beauty or ugliness, life or death, well-being or illness.  So we need to ask ourselves what is worth having.  Do we forever want to pursue the ever tantalising pussy or dick – forever?

Everything changes.  Everything atrophies, even dreams.  What doesn’t change is the changeless.

So what has this got to do with looking at the possibilities of dealing with the future – what the future might bring?

The message here is that, without repressing the basic in you, you need to allow all that fundamental life in you to live, and thereby understand it without being its victim, without being dragged along by it. Then you are able to deal with forces opposed against you.  It is not just about physical defeat is it?  It is about dealing with a higher order of things.

But if ones aim is then simply to relate in a similar way – by battle and conquest – then there is no great advantage.  But if it is to gradually build greater connections, living and meaningful connections, then that is another matter.  That is creativity.  Then you dance in the ever changing.  The captivating, in the moment between movement, when there is complete stillness, holding the creative dream until it becomes real in the phenomenal world.

What we hold and bring into being can be anything.  We can create a heaven or a hell, beauty or ugliness, life or death, well-being or illness.  So we need to ask ourselves what is worth having.  Do we forever want to pursue the ever tantalising pussy or dick – forever?

In your life there is a point of conflict.  It is between what you presently exist and live in and what your desire is.  Within that point of tension you could be overthrown.  That is your weakness.  You could be cast down at that point.  Or at that point, if you swing carefully, there can be a transition, a new phase, a new rearrangement of the points of tension and weakness. That is the use of wisdom/insight/strength. By integrating the two points of the conflict a third point manifests- it is new, not a combination of the old, it is a manifestation of Life which is ever new – a creation.

Enquirer:  You have told me so much, can you summarise it for me?

Ashung Jay: I see that the highest and lowest are inseparable.  The most refined and the coarse run together somehow and are needed by each other in creativity.  For the highest to take on form it descends into the very fundamental, to the slime and the deeply biological and earthy.  At this point I experience that extraordinary moment of creation, in which everything is there together, unseparated.  We partake in that extraordinary moment of creation.  And it is only when we can love as broadly that we can be a part of it.  It is only when we can love that broadly that we can enter into it without manipulating it.  But there is a quiet presence to be drawn upon if we so seek.  That presence enters every moment.  There is no moment more significant than another.  This is the moment of creation.  This is the moment when you can recreate yourself – again and again and again.  Or perhaps you want to create yourself again, and hold onto that moment.  Or you can play with it until you have exhausted it and let it lie in the way.  Isn’t that life, when we hold on to moments, lover, beloved, the child, the lost waif, princess and the prince, business person, the world dominator – my God, the roles we can assume are extraordinary.  And it’s all okay because it is all a part of creation and creativity.  Nothing is ever lost or destroyed.