“...All acting begins with an 'as if'...
now take that 'as if' and set it as a plank, a bridge between what you
think you know and what you are really capable of
... It is time to stop being dreamed and start dreaming... time to let
go of the rock of identity that is accompanying our gravity-bound
descent from birth to death, time to abandon
belief and surrender to faith, to fly rather than fall
The shift in consciousness is from fear to faith... an unclenching of
the contraction of self, that myth of identity so insidiously woven,
thread by thread, day by day, the neural networks wiring into patterns
of self-relation, the well-trod path mistaken for the ground upon
which it was furrowed, this must be 'me', these fears, these
inadequacies, these thoughts, these images these stories... these
repetitive intimations of selfhood... the carefully maintained
scaffolding of who... Time to relax the tightened pattern of the
known... It is time to shed the past like a serpent sheds its skin...
No more victimization, no more passivity, no more being written upon,
seize the pen. Feed the fire with the conceits of the known, the delphic
hubris of self-knowledge, unmoor your presence from the anchors of your
habituated self-images,
Any time you find yourself feeling inadequate, guilty, self-pitying,
hopeless, victimized, blaming --become aware, watch how your mind has
become parasitic, feeding off the established negativities, watch from
the utter present (you are larger than your mind, back up into the
full energy of your being in this given moment, relax into your
totality and watch how your mind, your self-regulated self-portrait,
is working to keep you in these patterns). You are responsible for how
you feel. Wake up, start watching, awareness of this 'pain-body', this
limited parasitic version of you, will expose it for what it is...
time to regain the power that is always deferred and distributed
elsewhere. Approval, love, affirmation all come from within.
Truth = subjectivity = truth.
You are only as limited as you have come to believe.
"Reality" is merely tora shebichtav. Your inheritance (genetic,
historical, cultural, habitual) are mere alphabets, hieroglyphs of
energy... Now take the techniques you inspired me with and radicalize
the text you call yourself. This does not occur by remaining in the
head, in the intellect while the fundamental parameters of who and
what remain untouched ... it is a bodily-energetic process of
dilation, to access the power of transformation, to realize the power
of nature/world/spirit/whatever within you, as the totality of you
(rather than 'you') is not distinct from everything else
no more bemoaning the patterns, no more masturbatory "confessions"
of the self, suffering is boring, and easy.
Universal currency, it is the epitome of conformity
Dare to be happy/free/whatever
Dare to take full responsibility for everything that happens... everything
there is nothing that is not you
Your life is a dream, it is time to become lucid.”
Naftali Ungar-Sargon 2011
My grandfather had a recurring dream and told it twice to my cousin Anthony
who said he cried each time he recounted it. He found himself in the Paradeisi
synagogue (Cochin) with his grandfather from Jerusalem dressed in his
golden frock. He asked him who the three men on the front bench (Mizrach)
were. he replied “Abraham Isaac and Jacob”. He then asked what the light on
the bima was (a column of light projecting up and down) and he said “that is
God”. He cried as he told over this dream. Cousin Anthony remembers the
tears of Dada. I too had an experience in that same synagogue in 2008.
Visiting the graves of my ancestors in Cochin. The Sargons of India. On
arriving in the synagogue the beadle told me to remove my shoes because
the famous Chinese 400 year old tiles. They had been manufactured before
the invention of glazing so the tiles had to be protected. Having removed my
shoes and place on my tefillin I realized that this was the first time
in my life I was davening barefoot (usually proscribed because a sign of
mourning).I then had a vision of the roots of some ancient tree arising from
under those tiles engulfing my legs slowly creeping up until my waist line
then stopping. I felt so grounded in this place where my ancestors had prayed
and so rooted to the earth. So present to that moment in time that I actually
felt comfortable just being. For a glorious moment being alive felt appropriate
and without conscience. My father had a dream. Having escaped Hitler in
1949 from Vienna on the kindertransport, my father forgot his
father’s Sabbath zemira “yismach moshe” sung each week at the Sabbath
table. Some 40 years later he dreamed himself at that very table, and the
song came back to him. Now 90 years old he has sung that song each
Sabbath since the dream.
So,
Dreams, dreams
dreaming, dreaming
this wellspring of the soul.
I dream of a blue sky filled with what appears to be the wings of birds
but on closer inspection
turn out to be hands open in a prayerful posture
millions of them filling the sky
a darkish blue with a persistent light of a setting sun
just before dark.
In this in between space the blue turns from royal to dark ink blue
in this firmament I remember as a child going to this place in Finchley near
“the brook” where we lived
and sitting on a park bench with the night sky filled with a myriad stars
feeling my total insignificance at age 14
my life as insignificant
and time collapsing to where I might be at the end of my life
and the terror of that fact
removed for a moment in the face of this awe inspiring vision of the sky.
I resist the search for meaning
just basking in the gift of the very image itself
a sky full of caring hands
the very logo of my medical school comes to mind
an upright stick figure helping one crouching
with the “helping hand”
that logo representing everything I hold sacred
in a post genocide world
where one individual helping another
statistically is meaningless
in the face of mechanized technologically assisted slaughter.
In the in-between space of dreaming
just before we awaken to the terror filled day ahead
the endless traffic
and loneliness
where the reigns of consciousness are loosened somewhat
and the ego not yet awake enough to summon the inner kritik
this image comes to soften the night
to provide a wish that the unloving natural word
might be loving
in the face of reality, history and geography
genocide and natural disaster
In the face of all of this
there might be a caring
out there
a pair of hands
a sky-filled pairs of hands
filling the sky
with caring
in the bleak firmament above.
Was this all about caring? or its absence?
was all this yearning for the lost mother?
all these years seeking the potion to quench the pain?
is the inner child so wounded
he will stop at nothing out there
pay no heed
respect nothing
in pursuit of her?
Can it all be reduced to some psycho-babble
analyzable
DSM III label?
Is there nothing left to be soul?
ensouled?
