A Simple Explanation of the Tao Te Ching -- Verse 18

Prior to reading this post, please acquaint yourself with "Start Here: A Simple Explanation--Basic Principles" in the column on the right side of the screen. The Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way, is an ancient Chinese collection of 81 wisdom verses. In the "Simple Explanation” model, the Tao spoken of by Lao Tzu refers to the metaversal information and principles of organization that have informed our universe since the moment before creation. Non-being refers to clearing your personal UC of earthly memes and karma. Non-action refers to allowing the original universal UC to direct your personal UC for the greater good. Here is the 18th verse of the Tao Te Ching, which I have translated directly into Simple Explanation terminology from an original verbatim translation by Jonathan Star.

Tao Te Ching, Verse 18

When metaversal principles are disregarded--

Doctrines of good deeds and self-righteousness emerge, along with clever, scheming minds and accumulations of memes.

This gives rise to a great deal of lying and hypocrisy. 

Consequently, relationships between UCs are no longer harmonious.

Preaching about "Duty and Devotion," "Family Values," and "Us Against Them" gives rise to discord and chaos.

Because of the breakdown of authentic cooperation with others, loyal servants appear.

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This verse of the Tao Te Ching shows how sadly misguided is the human condition. It all begins by not acknowledging, listening to, and enacting the metaversal plan. Once off the beam of truth, look what follows... lying, hypocrisy, discord, and chaos. And the need for a class of do-gooders hired to do what cannot otherwise be accomplished due to lack of cooperation.

It's interesting to note that the first efforts the individualized UCs enact on their own is filled with all good intentions. This is "me" doing my ideas of good deeds with all best intentions. But acting out of one's ego-centered point of view is what gives rise to self-righteousness, according to Verse 18. (I am being good! What is the matter with you!?)

Clever minds, self-promoting schemes, and the accumulation of "knowledge," i.e. your personal meme bundle, follow quickly on the heels of the good intentions.

Once the personalized UC becomes self-righteous and full of its own memes, lying and hypocrisy are the inevitable result. Why? Because we are all flawed, imperfect beings when operating out of ego rather than the leading of the universal UC. And who wants others to know how flawed and imperfect we are? Especially if we are holding ourselves out to be more righteous than they are. Verse 18 says it is, ironically, self-righteousness that drives lying and hypocrisy.

At this point in Verse 18, there is a breakdown of familial and tribal relations within one's own family and tribe. Rules of conduct are imposed rather than authentic. Preaching about tribal "isms" replaces real relations of harmony and cooperation. If there is a breakdown of the parent-child relationship, or between siblings, or husbands and wives, then there's a lot of talk about how important family values are and the importance of duty and shows of devotion. But these are now hollow, rule-bound memes rather than vibrant, living relations. Borders are erected around groups of UCs, labeling "Us" against "Them," because once your primary relationships are no longer distinguished by love, differences between "us" and "them" need to be noted and emphasized, elsewise how are "we" any different than "them"? 

Once true harmony and cooperation have ceased, loyal servants are needed to do the work. These servants can be government workers, social workers, household servants... any job that needs to be done that would not otherwise be done due to people following their own private ambitions rather than instantiating the metaversal plan. And note how Lao Tzu specified "loyal" servants... on the servant's part, disciplined loyalty and following someone else's orders has replaced spontaneous action in the here and now and the freedom to do what needs to be done.

All of these outcomes arise from not being in the here and now and instantiating the metaversal plan.

Meme Share: Reading

This meme-share was submitted as a "comment" under the article "Meme Share!"

Reading is one of my all time favorite hobbies. I find myself mostly reading both nonfiction or fiction books (verses magazines or the local newspaper) and find that reading is a great way to relax, learn something new, see the world through the eyes of someone else, experience another point of view, etc



Meme Share: How Can I Be of Service to You?

Here's a good meme that embodies the joyful duty of every UC:

"How can I be of service to you?"

"How can I be of service?" is a reaching out to others with help; "to you?" reminds us that it is really only here and now that we can effect any change, so the other, the "you," is someone who needs help standing right there in front of you, not halfway around the world.

Meme Share: Pay It Forward

Here's a meme-share that was left as a comment under the article "Meme Share!"

A meme I like is "Pay It Foward"; defined as doing a favor for another person without any expectation of being paid back.

It feels great to give/help others. By not expecting a favor of being paid back, one can fully enjoy that particular moment of giving to another person.

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"Pay it forward" can be seen in one of the basic principles of the Simple Explanation: reaching out to others with love and information (i.e. favors)

Meme Share: Sharing My Best With You

Here is a meme share from one of our regular readers: 

"Today I am sharing my best being with you"

my best service, my best effort, my best everything, especially when someone asks me for some favor.

I was looking for "what can I get?" instead of being my best for you.

I am going to make miracles appear if I decide to share my best with you Now, now in this moment. This way I prevent worrying about "How long will it take?" or "How will I do it?".

Meme Share: It Is What It Is

Here's a helpful meme for you:
 

It is what it is.

Realizing that "the way things are is the way things are" brings freedom from the burden of judgment and allows you to embrace reality.

Here and now there is only the situation in which you find yourself. Wishing you were somewhere else, doing something else, with someone else, is a recipe for discontent and poor outcomes.

Does this mean you have to like the way things are? No. Just let it be.

Does this mean that things have to stay the way they are? No, nothing ever stays the same. But, how can you "see the ball, move the ball" when your UC is blinded by unhelpful memes and disabling emotions?

Realizing that "it is what it is" allows you to be fully present. 

When you fully accept that "it is what it is," you see the situation clearly. When you are fully present, you are able to see what needs to be done here and now, and what your role in that is.

When you accept that it is what it is, you no longer stimulate negative emotions with thoughts of how it "should" be and how unfair it all is. When your mind is not trapped in memetic "shoulds", you are free to look around you at how things really are and how you can best help out.

First accept. Then act as the metaverse leads.

Here's how Eckhart Tolle shares this meme in his book, Stillness Speaks.

When you completely accept this moment, when you no longer argue with what is, the compulsion to think lessens and is replaced by an alert stillness. You are fully conscious, yet the mind is not labeling this moment in any way. This state of inner nonresistance opens you to the unconditioned consciousness that is infinitely greater than the human mind. This vast intelligence can then express itself through you and assist you, both from within and without. That is why, by letting go of inner resistance, you often find circumstances change for the better. (p.68)

A Simple Explanation of the Tao Te Ching -- Verse 51

Prior to reading this post, please acquaint yourself with "Start Here: A Simple Explanation--Basic Principles" in the column on the right side of the screen. The Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way, is an ancient Chinese collection of 81 wisdom verses. In the "Simple Explanation” model, the Tao spoken of by Lao Tzu refers to the metaversal information and principles of organization that have informed our universe since the moment before creation. Non-being refers to clearing your personal UC of earthly memes and karma. Non-action refers to allowing the original universal UC to direct your personal UC for the greater good. Here is the 51st verse of the Tao Te Ching, which I have translated directly into Simple Explanation terminology from an original verbatim translation by Jonathan Star.

Tao Te Ching, Verse 51

The Metaverse gives life to all things;

the Universal UC nourishes and protects them.

Every one of them materializes the form that best suits their nature, 

and challenging circumstances bring them to maturity and perfection.

Because of this, there is not a single UC that does not worship the Metaverse and treasure the Universal UC.

The Metaverse, honored.

The Universal UC, held dear. Truly, without it being demanded.
Yet constantly they come, each UC of its own accord.

This is why the Metaverse gives life to all things.

The Universal UC nourishes and protects them. 

Raises and ripens them,

nurtures them and educates them.

Shelters them. 

Matures them.

Sustains them and breaks them down.

Gives birth and yet does not claim possession of them.

Helps without expecting payment in return.

Fosters growth yet does not exercise authority.

Called secret, profound, obscure, mysterious, this Universal UC.

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The translation above is based upon the cosmology explored in the Simple Explanation. Star's verbatim translation of "te" is "virtue" or "power." I have translated "te" as "principles of perfection" and "vitality," known as "chit" and "ananda" in Yogic philosophy. In identifying "te" as the Universal UC, I had the womb-like toroidal shape of the Universal UC in mind. Here we can see the undifferentiated unity of the metaverse separated out from the womb of creation where all things become manifest.

from the Simple Explanation article "Diagramming the Ineffable"

Notice that all things arise from this male/female creation principle, where the metaverse (male) supplies the spark of consciousness and organizational principles and the universal UC (female) contains, sustains, and nurtures the offspring.

Furthermore, Verse 51 makes clear that all things are "alive," not only the life forms we recognize. This is why the Simple Explanation treats every thing equally. Every thing is a fractal replication of the original Unit of Consciousness--the Universal UC. Therefore, every thing is an equally conscious being--a UC. The Simple Explanation suggests that what distinguishes one UC from another is its particular expression, which includes such variables as its material localization in time and space (i.e. point of view), its hierarchical organizational level, and its unique meme bundle and karmic record.

from the Simple Explanation article Nested Hierarchies

The depiction of the Divine given in Verse 51 is lovely. Far from being any kind of tyrant forcing mishaps and unfair destinies upon its unwilling subjects, this is a generational force that includes both male and female archetypes, providing every sort of nurturing care to its offspring. Despite its ability to command honor, respect, and devotion as the Great Creator and Sustainer, all UCs are free to honor their Creator spontaneously, in their own way, and free to construct their own destinies.

"I" am not my Ego

My Ego is not really "me," even though that's who I usually think I am.

We think of the mind and ego as ourselves, but this is the delusion. Yes, the "me" package reflects our personalities, but "I" am much more than the meme bundles and karma of this personality.

Nor am "I" my mind. My mind is a tuning device that scans for and locks onto "my" meme bundle. The Ego feeds on the memes tuned in by my mind. My mind is directed toward its preferred memes by my karmic record. Ego is not a conscious entity. Ego is only a construction--a garment cast over; a vessel containing; the shadow outlining, "my" self's Unit of Consciousness (UC).

Underneath the garment of "me" resides a perfect fractal of the originating unit of consciousness, my Self. "I" am a Unit of Consciousness, identical to the universal UC.

"I" have the choice at every moment of time to either identify with "me" and my bundle of memes, or to identify with the universal unit of consciousness and the bigger picture that transcends personal identity.

• The Egoic "Me" is selfish, competitive, single-minded, short-sighted, meme-bound;
• Transcending Ego, "I" reach out to others with love, help, and information for the betterment of all.



Here is a more detailed definition of "I" from my article 9, "Who Am I?" 

For most people, the answer to "who am I?" is that I am my self-aware sense of "me" encased in this body of mine. This Simple Explanation theory says we are that, but also we are the things we love and hate, plus the record of our actions in this world, overlaid upon our UC. Think of a UC as a perfect echo or wave form "shaped" exactly like God's mind. You might say our universe is populated by exact echoes of God's primordial UC. The UCs are all identical--they're all reflections of the God UC. What makes "me" different from "you" is the pattern of my meme bundles and karma that overlay or filter out my UC.

The Self UC is a perfect reflection of the God UC. But "I" (the subjective sense of "me") am not that perfect, because of my meme attachments and karma.

 

Reality or Virtual Reality?

"Virtual reality" refers to our ability to use computer-mediated telepresence, either in real life or in fiction.

In real life, for example, virtual reality helps pilots train in flight simulators, and it's what makes it possible for pilots on the ground to monitor the flight of drones.

In fiction, virtual reality goes further, usually blurring the user's ability to tell where they really are and what they are really doing. In the Matrix, for example, the people immersed in virtual reality (VR) believe themselves to be living ordinary lives much like our own, when in reality they are lying in cocoons and dreaming electronically-stimulated, immaterial lives.

In Avatar, VR users have manufactured meat-bodies that they operate through computer-mediated telepresence, like drones. These 3-D meat avatars go about in the material world while the operator's actual body sleeps.

In the Star Trek universe, the VR holodeck provides a closed stage upon which the user's 3-D presence is "clothed" in VR. In that form of VR, the user is awake and present, but they cannot believe their eyes.

I'm sure I'm not the first person to notice that these VR stories are metaphors of the ancient puzzle concerning material vs. immaterial existence. If we, as the ancients say, are nothing more than units of consciousness truly existing on the immaterial plane, and these lives of ours are nothing more than projections of maya with no inherent existence outside of pure consciousness, then this "material" plane of ours is virtual reality.

To carry this metaphor further, our minds are the computers that mediate our pure consciousness and project them onto the virtually real stage of the world.

Small wonder writers all over the planet are now turning out VR stories--VR is a spiritual uber-meme. Yours truly is one of those authors. My novel, Reality Crash, written with my friend, Lou Grantt, is a fast-paced, near-future tale of a man awakening to the virtual reality nature of his world. I'd like to encourage you to buy and read my novel. You can buy it at any online bookstore, but Lou and I make the most money if you buy it at our lulu.com storefront. It comes in paperback or pdf. Reality Crash is also available for only 99 cents on Kindle.

 




To Purchase Reality Crash, please click here



Process Note: Interpreting the Tao Te Ching

Reading sacred texts often leaves one puzzled. This puzzlement arises two ways--either the reader is not sufficiently spiritually evolved just yet to understand the writing, or the translator has not quite understood the text and translated it erroneously.

Every morning, prior to meditating, my husband and I sit together and read aloud from a variety of sacred manuscripts. These manuscripts always include three different versions of the Tao Te Ching. It is interesting to see how the different translators interpret Lao Tsu so differently.

Oftentimes, some lines in a verse will not make sense to me as translated. Looking to a different translation often clears up the confusion. Now that I have my hands on "The Definitive Edition" of the Tao Te Ching translated by Jonathan Star, I can look up the original pictograms and the multiplicity of possible meanings, and then write out for myself a translation that makes sense to me. I have been progressing thusly through the Tao Te Ching for several years now.

Since coming up with the "Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything" a year ago, the Tao Te Ching has become much less mysterious to me. This explanatory power proves to me the spiritual utility of the Simple Explanation's cosmological model.

 Here's how I go about translating the Tao Te Ching:  

For every verse in the Tao Te Ching, Star's Verbatim Translation provides the Chinese character, the number of the character's radical, an English transliteration of the character using the Wade-Giles system, and most importantly for my purposes, a list of English equivalents for each character.

So, for example, the first character of Verse 21, k'ung, is translated as "Vast/all-embracing/high[est]/ great/grand/empty/ >surname of Confucius: K'ung Fu Tzu". The second character of Verse 21 is te, "Te/virtue/power }}highest virtue/a man of great virtue/"the natural expression of Power"(Wing)"

Reading the entire stanza of 8 characters for context helped me to choose "Highest virtue" as the Simple Explanation's translation. I used this process for all 71 characters of Verse 21 to come up with the Simple Explanation of the Tao Te Ching, Verse 21.

Here's a picture of two pages of Verse 27 from the verbatim section:



if you click on the image, you can make it bigger

A Simple Explanation of Forgiveness

• Everyone makes decisions that affect themselves and those around them.
• See the Simple Explanation of "The Role of Karma."
• Sometimes these decisions create painful emotions in those affected. 
• Painful emotions--anger, embarrassment, sadness, fear--always involve a perceived loss of love or fearing loss of love.
• Forgiveness is a decision to let go of the memes that provoke painful emotional responses.
• Emotions arise quickly and dissipate quickly, unless sustained through thought. Reviewing painful experiences keeps their associated memes active in your meme bundle. You must detach those memes from your mind in order to quell the emotions. See "Shed Unwanted Memes Here! Now!"
• Forgiveness is a free-will decision on the part of the offended party; it does not depend upon the repentance of the offender.
• Here's the logic: Unwillingness to forgive another indicates an unwillingness to reestablish love; unwillingness to love indicates being out of phase with the Universal UC. If one's state of grace were dependent upon another's willingness to repent, then your spiritual progress would be at the mercy of another. This is not possible. Therefore, it is upon each UC to forgive unilaterally.  
• You will be forgiven to the same degree you forgive others.
• This is such an important principle, it is stated in the Lord's Prayer: "...and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."
• If you are not willing to forgive others, you will not be forgiven.
• "Therefore you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge, for in whatever you judge another you condemn yourself, for you who judge practice the same things." (Romans 2:1)
• If you cannot forgive yourself, you will not be able to forgive others.
• This is a corollary of "The Great Commandment"--you are no more nor less worthy of love and forgiveness than any other UC.

Process Note: Why Is My Model Toroidal?

In 1979 I first read Itzhak Bentov's book, Stalking the Wild Pendulum.  Recently I realized that what the Simple Explanation has been calling the conscious "fractal" universe is another term for what Bentov called the conscious "holographic" universe. (By holographic, Bentov referred to fact that any small fragment of a holographic image can be used to reproduce the whole image out of which the fragment came.)

Here's an overview of Bentov's universal model from the website worldlingo.com

•  Our bodies are mirrors of the whole universe, at every level.
• Vibration permeates all things.
• The universe and all matter is made of consciousness in the process of developing to higher levels.
• Our brains are thought receivers and amplifiers, not the source of thought.
• All knowledge that has ever been generated is potentially available to us from other consciousnesses somewhere in the universe.
• The universe is a hologram. The brain is a hologram interpreting a holographic universe.

These memes were first planted in my meme bundle in 1979. I didn't reread the Wild Pendulum until after I began writing the Simple Explanation, but the genesis of the Simple Explanation from Bentov's cosmology seems clear. Bentov may even have coined the term "unit of consciousness." It's still a great book and I recommend it.

As for the toroids, I've been doodling them in the margins of papers and on love notes since I first read his book. I even sewed two toroids into the pattern of a house blessing I embroidered in 1982 that hangs on the wall here at the Albion Inn. Obviously I'm holding onto and regularly activating that toroid meme.

The toroid makes its first appearance in Bentov's Stalking the Wild Pendulum on page 132, in his chapter, "A Model of the Universe." Here's the only Bentov torus image I could find online.

This Winter as I have been writing these articles and searching the web for images for illustrations, I have been very surprised to find so many spirituality and cosmology articles and blogs touching on the toroidal model of the conscious universe. The Simple Explanation of this is that I and the other writers are all resonating to and evoking the same toroidal model meme out of our shared transpersonal memory. I can assure my readers that I am not researching other people's articles and blogs and cobbling together a bunch of torus ideas from what people are writing. I have written; they have written; we've all tapped the same meme; we're all manifesting the same exact concepts filtered through our various individual governing UCs. And the more we each individually explore and tap out this same meme, the stronger it becomes, because memes are starved through lack of usage and reinforced through invocation.

Images of Toroids Surrounding Black Holes, Quantum Clouds, Our Earth

It's fun to browse images of toroids on the web.  Here's a beautiful torus I ran across this morning:

Here's the text from the website describing the black hole above:

"This artist's impression shows the thick dust torus that astronomers believe surrounds supermassive black holes and their accretion discs, like the one harboured in the nucleus of the spiral galaxy NGC 4388. When the torus is seen `edge-on’ as in this case, the visible light emitted by the accretion disc is partially blocked. However, the sharp X-ray and gamma-ray eyes of XMM-Newton and Integral can peer through the thick dust and see how the energy released by the accretion disc interacts with and is absorbed by the torus.
Credits: ESA, V. Beckmann (GSFC)

The Simple Explanation suggests that these toroidal forces energetically affect all manifestations of our universe--not just the very large energy centers of supermassive black holes. From an article here at the Simple Explanation:

The building blocks of our physical universe are tiny quantum clouds shaped like toroids. These tiny toroids combine at the microscopic level to form all of the variety we see around us. Larger toroidal forces shape the larger cosmological features of our universe

Imagine the image above is not of a supermassive black hole, but a subatomic particle. How might these protoforces affect the mass and energy of neighboring space? Can you see the energetic expressions of the toroidal shape in the photos below of Quantum Clouds? 

Quantum Clouds

Here are more toroidal-shaped astronomical features associated with our planet, solar system, and galaxy. The torus is a fundamental shape that gives rise to observable distributions of matter and energy throughout our universe.

Van Allen Belt



Van Allen Belt

Asteroid Belt

Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud

Gamma Ray Bubbles

Note how the gamma ray bubbles emanating from the plane of our Milky Way manifest the same forces acting upon the torus on the large scale as the sub-atomic cloud labeled "3d m+0" in the "Quantum Clouds" plate above.

Can you see the gamma ray bubbles' resemblance to the cross-section of the torus below? You may also notice that the white line I call the "pole" of the toroid, which is the only straight line able to pass through a singularity at the center of the torus shape, is also the plane of the Milky Way in the image above.  

This quick visual examination of the very small alongside the very large suggests there is no need for a theoretical schizm between the physics of the small and large. Is it possible that the mathematics needed to unite Newtonian physics with Quantum physics lies in a simple toroidal fractal formula?

A Simple Explanation of Dreams

If you haven't read the Basic Principles articles from the column to the right of this page, this might be a good time to do so. You should at least be familiar with the articles Units of Consciousness and Memes.

The Simple Explanation proposes that our personalities are largely defined by the memes we cling to. These memes, and our reactions to them, contribute to our behaviors and subsequent karma.

In a previous article on Transpersonal Memory, the Simple Explanation suggests that memes constitute "vibratory patterns held in the zero-point field, and accessed through our minds. Furthermore, apparently personal memes are actually harmonics of collective memes and are shared in common with all who hold onto that meme. The particular shadings of one person's meme differs slightly from the next person's, as is to be expected among fractal replications  of a single phenomenon, but all who hold it recognize its pattern and are affected by it."

The Simple Explanation of Dreams boils down to this:

Dreams are nothing but the night time resonances of memetic patterns.

These meme patterns are stimulated by the thoughts, encounters, and emotional reactions experienced during the day, transformed into symbolic imagery, and enacted while you sleep on the stage of your mind. Meme bundles stirred up by the day may be dealt with again and again until the emotional reactions associated with them are resolved. If not resolved, these memes will continue to bedevil dream after dream, guised in one form after another.

In sleep we are open to the leading of the Universal Unit of Consciousness to an extent not available during waking. Our ego in sleep relinquishes the control it exerts over our waking lives. When our hearts are quieted in the hush of sleep, our governing UCs are better able to commune with the Universal UC.

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This receptive state is addressed in a scholarly article I wrote that is published in the journal Janus Head. You may read the entire article at the Janus Head site if you care to. From that article:

Richard Palmer paraphrases Richard Rorty's "From Epistemology to Hermeneutics" in his own essay, "What Hermeneutics Can Offer Rhetoric," when he describes a nonfoundationalist, hermeneutical style of thinking that is "radically at variance with the modern Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm of conclusions whose certainty is based on clear demonstrations" (110). It is this hermeneutical style of thinking, one that allows for the figurative slippage of rhetorical cognition referred to earlier by Farrell, that liberates dream analysis from the terministic strictures of rigidly authoritarian interpretive systems. One problem with theoretically-based dream interpretation systems is that calculative thinking may be prematurely applied to a hermeneutic process in need of a continuation of the more receptive frame of mind characteristic of meditative thought. Palmer hints at another alliance between dreams and hermeneutics when he describes Rorty's conceptualization of language as the matrix of all thought. Dreaming provides a nightly opportunity for engaging in a hermeneutic activity originating prior to the conditioning matrix of language. Perhaps this is the reason so many inventors and artists find creative inspiration in dreams, for by escaping language radical new possibilities can emerge. As such, dreams provide a virtually untapped site for studies of rhetorical invention.

(Ropp, Cyd C., A Hermeneutic and Rhetoric of Dreams, Janus Head,Cyd-C.-Ropp.pdf (janushead.org)

)

Personal Note: A Childhood Dream of God

In the summer of 1966, the final dream of a lazy summer morning had just ended. Twelve-year-old Cyd sat up in bed and looked at her right hand. It was hot and glowing red. Fifty years later, she's still writing about that dream.

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I am flying through the night sky with Jesus--like He's Superman in a white robe and I'm Lois Lane in pyjamas. The air is warm, the wind is brisk. I feel safe and cozy, nestled in His arm. We pass quickly over the neighboring foothills and come upon our destination a few miles away.  

Hundreds or thousands of people are waiting in a line that snakes up a hill. Each person holds a burning torch. I expect to be deposited at the end of the line, but Jesus carries me up the hillside, past all those people, to the front of the line. He sets me down and stands close behind me, His hands resting on my shoulders. I am not afraid because of His reassuring presence.

In front of us is a small table. On the table is a brass fire pit, hot with red glowing coals. Behind the table sits an old man, maybe God.

Jesus, with his hands still upon my shoulders, says to God, "It's alright. She's with me."

God nods and reaches across the table and takes my right hand. He places a burning hot coal from the fire pit in my right hand. I can feel the great heat, but it does not hurt, and my hand is not burned. God seems satisfied, as if I had passed some sort of test. He releases my hand and waves me through to a door I hadn't noticed before, set into a brightly lit wall behind the table.

Jesus gives my shoulders a loving squeeze and releases me to go through the door. I enter unafraid.

"3-D Matrix Screensaver"

I am in a long corridor, with many doors opening off of it to either side. The first room to my left looks like a waiting room. I poke my head in the door and see someone I recognize as my dad sitting on the sofa, even though he appears to look exactly like Larry Hagman as the astronaut in the television show, "I Dream Of Jeannie." He's even wearing Maj. Nelson's dress-blue uniform with the eagle and ribbons on the chest.

Larry Hagman as Maj. Nelson

"Oh! It's you!" I say in surprise. Happy to see him. He smiles and nods at me.

I go on down the hall, leaving him there. I open the next door I come to on the left.

It seems odd, but when I step out of the hall through the door I am not in another room, but appear to be outside of somewhere else. It's daytime here, bright and warm. This is small village of simple huts. I think maybe I'm in rural Mexico. I enter one of the huts.

Now I realize I must not be in Mexico but in Israel, because there is a young woman in the hut, sitting in a rocking chair nursing a baby, and they look a lot like the Madonna and Child. There is a box sitting on a crude, handmade table in the hut. I cross the room to look into the box and recognize my clothes are in there. I suddenly notice I am naked and I take my roughly hand-loomed tunic out of the box and put it on. Yes, this is mine.

I turn and exit the hut. Rather than exiting into the village, the door out of the hut puts me directly back into the long, bright corridor.

I am near the end of the corridor now. I open and enter another door, and unexpectedly find myself outside the building, back out in the night air. I turn around to see the building, and it is higher on the hill than where I now stand.

The building glows a very bright white. Its sides do not form a square, but a continuously changing polyhedron. First it's a regular pentagon; now it has more sides; now it has more; now less; etc. The effect of the continuously changing number of facets is that the building shimmers then pulses as the walls change their number.

No sign of the other people and the torch-lit procession anymore. Maybe I am on the other side of the building from them. My hand is really hot from that coal.

I wake up in bed. My hand is hot. I sit up and look at it. My right hand is hot and red. My left hand is not.

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I wrote this dream down when it was fresh, and I still have that piece of paper. Though the memory of the dream was crystal clear, much of the meaning was beyond my ability to discern at the time. I did, however, recognize Jesus as an old and dear friend and my adored Guru, and He has remained close to me from that day to this. When I wish to sense His Presence, I feel hands on my shoulders and there He is, just behind me.

Over the years, I have studied dreams and various arts of dream interpretation, partly motivated by the need to understand my own childhood dreams. Here is a quote from a scholarly article of mine on dreams, published in the journal Janus Head. You can read the entire article at Janus Head:

Dreams, as a form of proto-rhetoric that occurs largely outside our volitional control, can be thought of as constituting a kind of meditative thought largely free from calculative thinking. Viewing dreaming as a form of meditative thinking may help to explain both the unbridled creativity of dream imagery and dreaming's rhetorical appeal as a "call of conscience" leading to personal growth. Michael J. Hyde proposes that Heidegger's "call of conscience" is rhetorical in that "we are called upon to assume the personal and ethical responsibility of affirming our freedom through resolute choice" (1994, 376). Hyde explains that Dasein's openness to hearing the call of its own potentiality-for-Being is essential to becoming what it will be, for the appeal is delivered in silence: "the discourse of the conscience never comes to utterance" (Heidegger, 1962, 342-43). In order to hear that silent appeal, calculative thinking with its willful deliberation must be overshadowed by meditative thinking's "releasement toward things" (Gelassenheit), a "letting go" of practical concerns (Heidegger, 1966, 54-56, 58f). I would like to suggest that the dream may be one such avenue through which the "discourse of the conscience" may be heard, for the dreamer's lack of control over dream content reflects this necessary "letting go." The dreams' rhetorical appeal may then be seen as Dasein's inherent responsiveness to the call to personal and ethical responsibility. But this call of conscience will go unheeded unless the dreamer takes the further step of hermeneutic analysis and authentic application.

(Ropp, Cyd C., A Hermeneutic and Rhetoric of Dreams, Janus Head, http://www.janushead.org/3-1/cropp.cfm )

By this time in my life, the symbology in this childhood dream seems pretty clear. This is an archetypal dream with many archetypal figures--Christ the Savior, God the Father, Madonna and Child--and archetypal situations--judgment, torch-lit procession, shining fortress on a hill, the long, white corridor with many doors.

Here's how I would interpret this dream. First we'll associate meanings to the dream's metaphors: 

• Flying--freedom, soaring above troubles, soaring above this world
• Flying With Jesus--Absolute Freedom, Spiritual Journey, Trust, Death
• hills--obstacles, troubles, difficult to climb
• the line of people with torches--Judgment Day, Souls, each soul's light
• going to the front of the line--Salvation through Christ, shortcut to judgment
• Jesus behind me, hands on me--love, embraced, safety, has my back, my friend, reassuring presence
• God--the Judge, listens to Jesus, personally judges each person, I am not afraid because I'm with Jesus
• the firepit--judgment through fire, heat
• hot but not burned--judgment passed, trials need not be painful, trust that it will be alright
• the door in the shining wall--passage between spheres, into death, into life, into heaven
• the long white corridor with many doors--passage from one place to the next, choices, timeless threshhold
• My dad/Maj. Nelson--my dad worked at an air force base in missle programs; looked like Maj. Nelson, this friend will be my dad
• village huts--crude but effective, human made dwellings, primitive humans
• Madonna and Child--archetypal mother and nursing child, mother's love, motherhood, peaceful
• my clothes in the box--clothing my naked soul in my meme bundles and karma, covering my nakedness with old, crude garments, my clothes/the box/the motherhood setting--preparing for physical birth
• near the end of the corridor--timelessness about to end, choices constrained
• unexpectedly outside--not in control, fall from grace, removed to the world, out in the dark again
• the sparkling, faceted, ever-changing walls--the Heavenly City, New Jerusalem, God's presence on earth, Heaven in our midst
• hand is hot--lessons from judgment day learned and carried forward, karma

Now we'll look at the interpreted side of the dream rather than the metaphors and see what emerges:

This seems to be a dream about the place in between life and death. My Christian belief system obviously informs the metaphorical symbology. Jesus can be viewed as the Christ principle in the abstract, but in this dream my relationship with Jesus was personal. He felt to me like my friend, my Master, my Sat-Guru. I remembered Him from an earlier time, and I was happy to be with Him and under His care. Judgment did not come at His hands, but from the Father through fire. Through the reassuring presence of my Master, I was able to pass through the fire of judgment unharmed.

In the dream I recognized my earthly father in the waiting room. Was I being shown who my father in this incarnation was to be? If this was my father's soul, then this would have also been prior to his own birth, as well. It was as though we were being informed of each other's upcoming role--"oh! it's you!"

And while I was shown an archetypal mother and child, I did not recognize this as my earthly mother. Had she not been selected yet? If that was the case, then this dream was surely of an earlier time, since by the time of this dream I would have known my mother. In the abstract, the mother and child's proximity to my box of clothes makes the interpretation of impending birth strong.

Recognizing and putting on the clothes is such an interesting metaphor. There was no hesitation in throwing on those clothes. This attraction to the clothes demonstrates how easily our souls jump into familiar material forms. And, once clothed in those old memes and karma, rebirth is swift, inevitable, and out of your control.

Lastly, those sparkling, ever-changing faceted walls of the Heavenly City marks the first appearance in my personal mythology of the torus. When I looked up at the place I had been, aside from the changing facets of the walls, the general building shape was toroidal. (Toroidal in the same way you could say the building known as the Pentagon is toroidal.)