Think of the world you inhabit.
It is a world full of forms and even institutions
That are manifest beliefs and structures.
Materializing things from dreams and visions
Is quantum and it is shamanic.
Take Walmart. Walmart was someone's dream
That manifested in a thousand places
Almost overnight.
A powerful Dreaming.
Many were and continue to be sucked into
The field of that powerful middleworld Dreaming.
Ok, here is my story:
20 years ago a friend of Shirley's and mine
Co-purchased a building across from Walmart.
He wanted to start a business
That would attract healers
And people seeking healing -
With rooms for therapists to rent
For their practice,
A retail space serving the healing arts,
A yoga studio
A salt cave etc.
Before he got started he wanted Shirley and me
To bless the building with a shamanic centering ritual
So the business would thrive and be successful
And meet the needs of the community.
I wanted to smudge each floor of the building
As part of the ritual,
So I asked him,
What about the fourth, top floor.
He said, Oh, don't worry about that,
It's still boarded up.
"I haven't decided what to do with that space yet."
I asked, what kind of space is it?
He said, it was a men's club house
Like Rotary or Elks.
I said, we need to get in there.
"The top floor has to be included in any blessing of your business."
All the more so because
The business would be called "Pyramid".
(The top would be key.)
When we forced open the door,
Which was locked but there was no key,
We were amazed by what we found.
There was a patch on the wall
Where there used to be a pay phone
With messages and numbers scribbled on the wall.
There was a small bar with stools.
There were chromed metal stack-chairs
With orange vinyl cushions,
None of them upright,
Almost shouting late-fifties, early sixties.
(Start of the Cold War / Duck and Cover / I'm 8 or 11 years old /
DDT is already a problem /
Black Americans are being lynched in the South /
My father teaches Electrical Engineering /
All the largest computers are still analog /
My mother is in her prime /
She is my Cub scout Den Mother /
I still believe in Santa Claus (sort of) . . .)
There are flyers scattered everywhere
Announcing a dance-event
With a local band. . .
It felt almost voyeuristic entering this space
That was almost hermetically sealed
Against the passage of time
Except that it looked like a strong wind
Had ripped the phone of the wall
And created a little chaos
Before the door was closed and locked.
Our friend, the new owner of the building
Was just as gobsmacked as Shirley and me.
It felt like we were looking at a dream
That wasn't quite finished
When someone woke up
And found himself smack in 2000 and 6.
Outside the windows, across the parking lot
Was Walmart.
Needless to say,
We advised our friend to call us back
After he had cleaned out the space
Which he was planning on transforming into a dance studio.
Several weeks later
He let us know he was ready for the shamanic cleansing
And blessing. He asked,
What do you need?
Nothing.
A few people were there when we arrived
With our sage and singing bowl.
Long story short, we ended at the top floor
Which was now a dance studio.
We brought in the directions.
We brought a small mirror with us
That we set up in the window
Facing out.
Everyone wanted to know
Why the mirror was facing outside.
We explained,
It was to reflect back the Dreaming of Walmart
(Utilizing the same principle that works
To neutralize the evil of Dracula)
So that it would not contaminate
The ideals of our friend's business model
Which was community oriented
And not all about growth and profit.
So, this little story is all about changing the Dream
And Dreaming the World.
It is about taking responsibility
For the Dreaming we manifest and promote
And the Dreaming we refuse to help manifest and promote.
We are not Aborigines.
If we were traditional Australian Aborigines
We would not have agreed to bless and protect
Or friend's vision
Even though it was, far and away,
An improvement on the Walmart Dream.
(Sam Walton's strategy is built
On an unshakeable foundation:
The lowest prices anytime, anywhere.
On July 2, 1962, Sam Walton
Opens the first Walmart store
in Rogers, Arkansas.)
..................
This prose poem is a reformatted email I sent to an associate. In an earlier correspondence I had brought up the difference between dreaming (small d) and Dreaming. I had made the point that "shamanism is a very very ancient art, the art of Dreaming. Shamanism keeps the world alive. It keeps the middle world viable. The middle world is the responsibility of shamans because it is where they live, even if they are living way up on a mountain or deep in the rainforest, and it is where we live and it is our access point to the Dreaming.
Unfortunately most people in the world have no real vision of where everything is heading. They have lost the ability to dream, and are caught up in a dead-end program, that is perpetuated by powerful algorithms. (Even people like Jobs, who some have characterized as a kind of shaman, and who supposedly mushroomed and saw beyond his own nose, was caught in the web of the self-destructive Matrix-like middle world.)
People who don't and can't dream are living in a world that has no above or below. Everything that does not serve their world-view is suspect or expendable. Their ideas and beliefs and values are the most real thing they have going and they are like gamblers who will gamble everything on the viability of their dead or dying world. It is tragic and sad.
This poem is my attempt to respond to her question: "How does one go from the dead-end program to consciously dreaming the world forward?"
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