Dream, if I may

One day I dream, you will be able to read my words and undertand their meaning - not what these scribbles say, but what I had actually meant.

One day I dream, you will see not the writer, but the anguished poet that expresses himself in free fledged writing.

One day I dream, you will not hear what my mouth says, but see what my eyes see.

One day I dream, you will not know what I think, but how I came to think it.

One day I dream, you will not question what I feel but instead consider what this heart of mine has been through.

One day I dream, you will sit on my lap, not because you can, but because you wish to feel my warmth on your back.

One day I dream, you will lie next to me, not because of what I give you, but because you know what it is that I am still holding back.

One day I dream, you will wait for me, even when I've told you I'm already gone.

One day I dream, you will be the one doing crazy things in the hopes that I will ever hear of them.

One day I dream, you will come looking for me and that you will know where to look.

One day I dream that you will dream of me first.

One day I dream that we will remember all we said, and take none of it back.

One day I dream, it will all happen again, and we will change forever.

I dream everyday, don't you? For dreaming, like music and art is the result of heart and mind working together, and whether it is the heart or the mind that is foolish it matters not, for they are foolish together and anyday, I would rather be a fool than a cynic.

No Battery Watch

I can't help it, that the watch is still right twice a day in this poor state of his, where he no longer ticks. If I shake it, it ticks a little bit but seems to have no strength left in it to tick further past second 17. I could go and get its battery replaced. I might - after all, I love this watch, and this watch loves me. I'll love it at midnight and it'll love me at midday. Twice a day, one a turn. So simple is the reality of this watch. The rest of the time? An endless argument to the end in itself. As if the end were a living entity, we argue on over what time it is. I asked myself why it were so, and could not help but dream about it - I still felt your anger, but as a dream, was it really your anger or mine, or my perception of it? Questions, haunt my mind at times. Ilude it in others, entertain it with puzzles and mostly keep it ticking. What would be of life were we not to question it? Enjoy the blessing of every fleeting moment? Do I illude myself still with these ideals, or am I any closer to manifesting them? And is the gap between moments finally closing in - is this real life?

I can not cease to wonder about its marvels - and how we build stories around these very same. What I once called the dark corners of my mind I now realize they are more like rooms, filled with happy pictures in which I had forgotten to turn the light on. I wonder if I chose to keep the room dark - so I could remember it whichever way I felt like at the time, or just so I could remember you, without having to look at any pictures, just the essence that was you, just the dream we built together. And how fruitful and layered it was, how deeply I believed in it and how we ruined it all with our rushing - but who can blame a young man for being reckless when it is in our very nature? So much time devote we to trespassing the limits of our recklessness, so how could we ever blame ourselves? Were we grown into this or did we grow ourselves into it? Does a plant really choose the water it receives, but does it not choose which way to face the sun? Is a plant to blame for its own life - and is it not sacred? Every root it grows, enriching its life further and further until it can become a mature, grown tree, ready to bear fruit and face endless winters for the pure pleasure of living through summer.

Once a year, it will bear fruit, once a year, it will be naked, stripped of all its leaves. Once a day it will stare at the stars, once a day smile at the sun. Is it not the same and yet so different? And does the tree really know what time it is, or is it more likely to remember how many fruit it bore?

I remember that tree. And the lights were not on - but the stars never left.

Adventures Through the Mirror House

A friend of mine recently told me one of the things he loves doing the most is dancing salsa with his own confusion. Its important to notice this is not a confused guy – on the other hand he is quite clear of thought. But the more I know, the more I realize I don't, and the surer of myself I am the more questions arise. I often dance with my demons, is this the same? I wonder why I don't quite as often dance with my angels. What is this feeling that we more easily face our demons than chill with our angels? Or do we just not recognize dancing with our angels as such? And quite curiously, won't an angel make us notice our demons, and a demon make us notice our angels? An angel can make you aware of your angels, just as a demon can make you aware of your demons, but won't an angel make you aware of your demons? When you see someone doing something where you clearly feel the other person is being the bigger person make you notice your demons? And won't that allow you to move on and become a stronger person?

Isn't it just a choice which one you dance with? To me this reminds me of Reggae. I've had the discussion on Bob Marley a few times – His incredibly positive message is great, but does it still dig into todays issues, or is it just a general positive message? If you constantly chill with your angels that will certainly make you live a more positive life, have a more positive outlook and attitude. And we are all perfect – if something as perfect even exists, so why would we need to dwell and dig out our demons? Certainly the power of love will overcome them.

But what really happens when we dig out our demons? Undoubtedly this is different for every and each one of us. But as I know myself the best, it is perhaps only fair that it is on my own experience that I reflect. What I realized? Most of my demons are old, weak and can barely hold their point of view nowadays. When they were born they were monstrous powerful beings, but most of them have lost their power over time. As I dig deep within and realize their existence they very quickly fade away for they realize they don't actually hold a hook on me. And as they clear away I feel freer, lighter and stronger. I also feel a bigger clarity in my thoughts, allowing me to look within with less interferences. Sometimes the simple act of accepting these demons is enough for them to go away. But why is it so? Some of these demons were just simply born because I thought that my actions or thoughts were not aligned with the general way of thinking and behaving, and so I carried around the guilt of being different. And so we come to a social paradox – being different can often lead to you being excluded, mocked, ignored, rejected. But being the same, is just too boring. Often I have said “I am not like everyone else and I don't want to be like everyone else!”, but at times that feeling of not belonging, of not being the same, of being different would start to take over and I would question myself if life wouldn't just be easier if I were exactly the same, seamlessly fitting in, being completely accepted and not questioning it myself. And we then bump into another ideal – We are all the same, we all have the same right, we all are the same animal, we all are the same soul, we all are one. We are all infinitely different and infinitely equal and as such, being any more of the same would be irrelevant, because you are not equal and not different, you are relative. You are acceptable – other not accepting you is not a reflection of you, but a reflection of those who are judging you. And the way you are reacting to them – that is the reflection of you. It becomes quite clear to me that life is nothing more but a reflection – as we endlessly reflect each other until you truly fall in love with your own reflection.

But if this is so, then what the the hell are we doing? Be the person you'd fall in love with. If, just like in a dream, we all are reflections of each other, then what are we living? Is life a regular dream, a nightmare, a lucid dream? Once we go past reflecting action begins. Change begins. We are playing in one very big mirror house. As you live, day by day, and you meet people who think alike, act alike – perhaps not in all aspects but in one or another, you are meeting a mirror of yourself. You are meeting a different angle of yourself; And as these conversations develop, you are meeting yourself as you see the way you act towards your reflection. Does this mean that we perhaps are not fully honest with ourselves? Does this mean we perhaps do not comprehend every bit of ourselves? Does this perhaps mean we are not completely accepting of ourselves? This could hardly cease to be true, because if it were, that would mean that we are absolutely happy with ourselves and the life we live. Which brings me to another topic – it is far easier to be hateful than loving. It is far easier to reject than to accept. It is far easier to ignore than to comprehend. Being negative is not effortful. It can be painful, but not effortful. Being positive on the other hand, takes a conscious effort to see the positive side of things in spite of the way we are feeling, it takes a conscious effort to realize that wether the person is right or wrong or if there is even a right or wrong side to pick that what this person needs is not judgement, or at times even advice, but to simply be understood. And taken a step further, as this person talks and attempts to explain her difficulties or just simply her situation on the way she is feeling – she herself might come to clear her thoughts and realize whatever it was that she needed to realize. Because as you listen to your mirror, the other person is talking to their mirror. How often have you thought “If only my mirror could talk back to me and make everything clear”? What if my mirror could just ask me the questions that I need to answer to feel good about my choices?

Nothing changes if you just stare at a reflection of yourself – As Dumbledore told Harry that there was no point in just staring at the mirror of wishes, because the mirror itself could not make these things come true to you. As such, what you want to achieve can not only be achieved within the mirror if they are to become real. Just the same that if you wish to live your dreams, you can not only dream them. This leads me to talk about a recent experience of mine – one that often enough repeats itself, becoming more intense at every time I live through it. When you meet someone who is similar to you, in terms of being, and you are therefore talking to what you'd consider a good reflection of yourself, the more you talk to this mirror, and the freer you feel talking to this mirror, the closer you are from not being inside the mirror house anymore. I had a feeling of being so close to breaking through the mirror house. This mirror house is nothing but a creation of our own, in which we see all aspects of ourselves reflected as we are lost within our own minds and lives. This mirror house reflects every aspect of yourself, never allowing you to forget who you believe you are. Who you were will in some aspect always be part of who you are, and this mirror house will always remind you of who you were because life is nothing but a reliving of your emotional memories, while you are still walking within your same old circles. And this mirror house, clearly exists, in a very simple way. Another person is not who you believe they are. They are who they are, and you see them as you believe them to be. And as such, to comprehend who this other person is, you use the reflections that you have previously created to be able to understand who this person is, while adding some new mirrors to the house to to accommodate for anything new this person might bring into your life. And every time you meet a new person you might also become aware of some mirrors that you had lost track of, in your mirror house. That moment of breaking through I couldn't explain it another other way except for this one: As I came closer and closer to my reflections, my reflection was not coming out of the mirror nor was I stepping into it, but I was coming to realize that I am my reflections and my reflections are me, and as I stepped into this knowledge I ceased to be lost inside the mirror house but I could actually see where I was going and head there, without being fooled by reflections. This is the moment I believe you are able to create real change. The moment you accept the mirror house that exists within you and are able to step beyond it. I wonder if I'd describe change as walking outside the mirror house, and coming back to it later – as these moments do not last forever. That moment where you get the feeling you are just about to create real change does not last forever, and so I believe that once the moment has past we return to the mirror house. I've returned to the mirror house. It is wider than before, but a mirror house all the same. But I can't describe it as having gone outside of the mirror house, gone for a walk and came back, as that would imply that you found the way out of the mirror house, that you essentially escaped yourself. It was not this. As Einstein said, you can not solve a problem at the same level of thinking it was created. Rather, I'd describe it as this: On a normal day, you'll walk through the mirror house observing the different reflections that face you and making decisions upon these. The moment of change was as if I were walking through the house and the mirrors were rearranging themselves towards me, as I was not living by reflection anymore, but by purely being. Having had long conversations about deep held beliefs and thoughts that reflect where I want to go in life and what I want to do, for that evening, I had created a mirror room that comprehended me as I am today. A round room of mirrors, where the reflection is clear, clean, fresh. And it is this creating of a round room of mirrors that makes it cease to be a reflection. The mirrors became portals. I could travel freely, no longer bounded and confused by illusions.  

Inside the Warrior

I've seen the clock tick back,
I've seen myself losing track,
I've seen the moon shining,
have you?

I've seen where the seas join,
I've seen where the river parted,
I've seen tears for the departed,
have you?

I've bared pain, and sorrow,
I've lifted with joy, and ecstasy,
I've wallowed alone in misery,
have you?

Sometimes a mystery,
Sometimes pure symmetry,
Sometimes unfathomable,
Sometimes untouchable

Sometimes like a plant,
soft to touch, soft to hurt,
The water, flowing through its petals,
as it purifies the air during the day,
and slumps to the deepest of venoms at night
in light and darkness, it has its way,
By its roots, it hangs on everyday

And through storms, blizzards and fires,
it lives on, strong,
as the life within,
the flame burns,
for now and always,
but do you feel its heat?

Will you be there to tend the coals,
Shove them around when it makes cold,
Add some wood, when it runs low,
Will you add the sweet scents of pine,
For the smoke to be blissful,
Will you add the incense, that will light my soul?

And in the darkest night,
In the deepest silent,
will you hear my call ?

New Age

So surely the term "New Age" has crossed your vocabulary before and therefore you know what it means, or have a preconceived idea of it. I think the general notion goes "Hippie like ideas", but to have a better grasp of it, from wikipedia:

The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational psychology, holistic health, parapsychology, consciousness research and quantum physics".^[2]

The New Age movement includes elements of older spiritual and religious traditions ranging from atheism and monotheismthrough classical pantheism, naturalistic pantheism, pandeism and panentheism to polytheism combined with science and Gaia philosophy; particularly archaeoastronomy,astronomy, ecology, environmentalism, the Gaia hypothesis, psychology and physics.

New Age practices and philosophies sometimes draw inspiration from major world religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Chinese folk religion, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam,Judaism, Sikhism; with strong influences from East Asian religions, Gnosticism, Neopaganism, New Thought, Spiritualism, Theosophy, Universalism and Western esotericism.^[8] The term New Age refers to the coming astrological Age of Aquarius.^[1]

So....... New Age. Right... 

If for a moment we leave aside all these belief and have a more factual look upon it, what can we see, deduct about this New Age stuff? People started travelling around the world, and with travel there is an exchange of information, and for information to sink in it takes time. The moment we can probably pinpoint a hike of travelling  is the start of air-companies and more specifically the low cost ones: The start of low-cost flights indicates the change in paradigm between the flying is for people with money or just simply costly to anyone can fly and therefore travel long distances. That means that travelling in its current form has really existed for maybe the last two decades, where we've seen this bigger focus in travelling to exotic places, different continents and so on. Before that sure we had trains and whatever. Other technology such as mobile phones and computers has also opened up the world's oyster to younger people for we are able to remain in contact and quite frankly we are usually the ones with the ins and outs of technology so everything that goes from couch surfing to inter-rails we are usually the ones on top of it. But there's another very important thing technology did for the New Age Movement - The globalisation of information.  Essentially, today, a big difference between people is the information we carry with us, and the information we have access to. We all have access to the internet. But we don't all carry the same information. It is easy to find information about this, or that, but doesn't mean you actually know this or that, it just means you know where to find it. Go back a few centuries and if you wanted to know anything about the far east it would've taken a book months maybe even years of travel to reach your hands and there was no certainty that the information you were seeking would be in that book, only that some information from that culture would be enclosed in that book. So I think that a big turning point for New Age is in fact this worldly database of knowledge that now exists where if you are curious about Neopaganism or Theosophy or the sign of Aquarius it is but a few clicks away. Globalisation caused this.

My point is New Age is not some sort of bullshit that pot-smoking people made up. New Age concepts are in fact much older than most would have them believe to be; And if the western world is this place where we shed most traces of spirituality and religion and natural medicine to replace it with psychology and pharmaceutics, then the eastern philosophies are the counter parts where the fauna and the flora and the soul & spirit of a person still matter. The New Age movement brings out millenium old beliefs, and we see this movement sinking in slowly in yoga classes and acupuncture and group meditation. And so the first thing I'd ask is: Is there anything really wrong with this, and what good do we see coming out of it already? Are we willing to let it influence our society, although we can hardly fight progress, are we willing to embrace it?

Now I must say that since a tender age I have indeed read a few psychology books, not cover to cover, not extremely intensely nor have I studied them thoroughly, but out of curiosity and a belief that better understanding of self and others leads to a better life. Psychology seemed to be an obvious pace in this direction.  Obviously this reading has led me to many other pieces of literature, about the human brain, the conscious and the unconscious, attitudes & the psychology behind them, books on how to act & react better to certain situations and of course much of business psychology as that is one of my areas. I am not here to refute or even discuss New Age, not on this post anyway.

But there is one thing about it. New Age of course includes Lucid Dreaming which has been a much hyped topic as of late. I first bumped into it 3 or so years ago and experimented with it for a while without too much success truth be told. Then again most people don't have too much success but now-a-days dream theory is becoming all he more mainstream, from lucid dream apps, to lucid dream books and guides to "Inception" and another movie which I just read about and am yet to watch, 

I've somehow come to the conclusion that a life without dreams is unhealthy. I don't mean dreams in the sense of "I dream to own my own bar or company or be a big shot lawyer" or something of the kind, but the kind of dreams you have every night. Every night you have dreams, we all do, but you don't always remember them, they don't always make sense, etc. As a former pot smoker I accepted that during the time that I smoked pot it was highly unlikely that I would remember my dreams, after all it is a known fact that pot makes it much harder to remember your dreams. But you dream all the same, your subconscious brain never stops. I spent many years without being able to recall a single dream and this scared me, which might have been why I first started looking into lucid dreaming. Now for the past couple days the things I had read about lucid dreaming just happened to pop into my mind, and this post was mostly indeed just to share the developments that have occurred. The mainstream way of going about it now is getting an app that makes a sound when you enter REM sleep loud enough for you to hear it but not to wake you up, and this sound is supposed to alert you to the reality of your dream, meaning that you recognise the song and realize you are dreaming, very much how like in inception they used music to alert the need to get out of the dream. Here the music is designed to make you realize you are dreaming. The old school way is much harder and involves a lot of practice. The Old-School way is all about during the day forcing yourself to question your reality such as "If I'm dreaming then I want to have seven fingers" and then you stare at your hand and count your fingers. Honestly this was the example I learnt from, and it sucks. For the past couple of days I've been doing several things one of them being "If I'm dreaming turn this cigarette into a joint", which makes me question my reality 10-20 times a day. I've also been experimenting with small stupid stuff like "If I'm dreaming make all the lights go purple" or "If I'm dreaming make everyone get naked" or "Make the broom clean the floor by itself". I find this is much easier and funnier than staring at my hands. Also more discreet as I don't look like an idiot staring at my hands while having a conversation. The result is that I've been awake for longer and more aware in my dreams. I woke up as if I had hardly gone to sleep today, and by this I meant I had none of that morning laziness and slowness that usually overtakes me in the morning (I call it the morning brain) and I was more aware in my dreams. Usually what happened is that I only realised I was dreaming much closer to the end of the dream and had no conscious thought until then, while for the last two days I was having conscious thought although I wasn't fully aware that it was a dream. I had no real control over my actions, by this I mean I kept doing what I was doing, but thinking through it as if I had actually been there in person. I'm looking forward to tonight and will keep on doing this for long and plan to tell a few people about this, and alert them. My current plan is to wake myself up in dreams and make others realize they are dreaming. I hope to achieve this somewhat soon.    

A writer

It's been a while since I put this electronic ink onto electronic paper, it is said to be better to put real ink to real parchment for the feeling of the world is invaluably more real, but I am no longer from the age of pen-and-paper where my writings remain hidden in my under-the-mattress notebook although I've been there too. Is it that I fear not what I write or is it a restrained want to communicate my written thought to a bigger world? I don't know. But it might just be, for sometimes I feel that were I the only one to read my words, what good would they be? Whose life would they be changing, if they were changing even my own? Then again why do we write? Often, we start writing because we used to, and we know it used to make us feel good, other times, just as a hobby, and we search for a direction of our writings, whether it is a social critic or a personal journal or the sharing of an experience. And all these give us exquisitely different kinds of articles, and other times we write for no reason but to settle the swirling thoughts in our head. Sometimes we try to write better, for our texts to have a deeper meaning in between the lines of that which we read. Other times we write point blank, either because we are feeling raw, or because we just need to be stupidly clear. Whichever the reason why we write, we usually love to, and a writer goes through his life with his eyes open to the protagonist and the anti-hero, the sidekick and the villain, the secondary character and the small plot twist, the secondary plot and the total change of direction. And a writer cannot refuse reality, only embellish it and present it in a different light. Is the writer's world real, or fantastical? Is the writer any different to an engineer or a business man who see their live's through numbers and angles, through actions and reactions, possibilities and dreams? And does the writer push for his own vision, or does he merely and meekly describe what is going on around him, and if so, how does he do it? What is his emphasis, what is he trying to achieve?  Why do we so often sit in front of our typewriter and have our mind going blank? Do we not know what to think anymore, are we so lost inside our own lives we can no longer find the wire which connects us to the world outside our heads? Are we waiting for someone to throw us the rope back to our words? And so word by word, by reason or imagination every writer reaches a point where he has no more to go on but his own guts - "We truly start living once we are out of our comfort zone" and where we travel, future unknown, undecided because we have crossed the lines of fate and there is nothing written in front of us and it is now time to change our futures. When we reach the limit and have to push further into that part of ourselves of which we have only but dreamed about, we are in fact changing our future, our reality and essentially become a little bit more of ourselves than we previously were. When we face ourselves in the mirror and push through the picture within and without changes and you are meddling with the very innermost atoms of our universe. And some meddle with care, some meddle recklessly, some meddle in a sense of adventure, some meddle thoughtfully and other just let themselves go, and every time you reach that point, this point, you have the chance to do it differently. "If I were there again would I do it any differently?" - Many people say no, I wouldn't change anything about my life because my experiences have made me who I am. But if it is so, why would you not wish to push further and be even more? And the next time you get to that point? Will you push for more, or will you settle for your usual? And that is what not only makes you different from everyone else, but different from yourself as well for you wake up the dormant parts of you, the wanting parts of you, the infinite desires that lay deep within your soul awaiting discovery of this new exciting emotion which you have not yet had the chance to develop. And sometimes you tell yourself "I just couldn't explain it". Essentially everything has three stages - "I lived it, I understood it, I passed it on". When you reach the point of passing it on, your experience finally makes a story, and influence, an image that can drive someone else, and once you pass it on then you are truly ready for the next one, for your are not lost inside your mind trying to understand what or how or why something was this way. And so, word by word, every writer reaches the next point, and only by word will he move on.

I light it up. The ligther? Green Clipper. The stash? Right from next door. The papers? None other than Bob Marley X-Large. And I reminisce. I reminisce and I reminisce. In fact, I reminisce right now on this smokey memory. I reminisce for I wonder why I started, and why I stopped. Why I started? It was around. It was the thing to do on that day, and so I did. I reminisce for time flew from therein. Light, smoke, kill. Light, smoke, laugh, kill. Light, light, smoke, smoke, laugh, kill. Do I even remember it? Sometimes. Did I enjoy it? I'd like to think so. Very often I did. At other times... I still did. Dark days or bright days, the inner tuning of thought and emotion was blissful. Do I ever regret it? I don't think I do. I think I wrongfully blamed it for other factors in my life. I think I had to make a houdini escape out of a life situation and there it was, the hemp sewn rope of winded excuses. The drugs did it, not me. Like any other person in a moment of weakness I found an escape goat of which I am not proud of. In fact, I didn't find it. You did so for me. Everybody else blamed it. I didn't, I blamed myself. But when we came down to it? Heck, blame the drugs, I don't feel like dealing with this drama in a different light. Not yet, not now. And even when I tried not to, they were still blamed, still guilty. Depression? Yes, that's them too. Wandering, meandering thoughts? No it is not because you don't have a fucking clue about what you want to do with your life and how you'll do it, of course its the drugs. Spirituality? What are you doing wasting your time believing in spirits and auras and natural energy and go back to church, be a good boy. Stop doing drugs, and go drink Jesus' blood with the priest. Leave behind your heathen ways. Creative thought? Innovation? No, you're just laying on your sofa trying to figure out the universe from within you mind. No, you are not a philosopher. You are not a philosopher because you're a junky. And because you're a junky no one will care about your reformist ideas to their perfectly stable and functional economical and political studies. No, you are not a revolutionary, you are a junky, and so no one will care to hear about your anti-war policy. No, you are not of the green party, you are a junky, and since you're a junky you can't care about the trees. It is us, the highly ethical and of strong morals who care about the trees we destroy, after all, we right news articles about the junkies we find on trees, and how they were hiding their stash in the tree trunk. No, you are not looking for a change, you are looking to stay the same and live without getting a job. You're a junkie, because you do drugs and you look like a junkie because you do drugs, and you sound like a junkie because you do drugs. And we don't like junkies because you do drugs. Now leave me to my anti-depressants, and my shrinks, and my pedophile priests, and my unpaid benefits, there is nothing you junkies can do for me.