“New Age Shop Talk”

Tucson painting by Felix Pasilis

Thursday, May 22, 2008, 6:25 AM

“New Age Shop Talk”

For Jan, with love Annie

I am going thru changes. This is the first time I have actually felt it happen. It is like being pushed down a birth canal, or being relocated, or on a jet plane to somewhere. I mean I can feel the transportation happening. These haven’t been ordinary days. Each day has been one of movement, as if I am on a wagon train moving out west.

I do wake up in a different place each morning and know I spent the previous day traveling. A wagon train is a good metaphor, because when it is pictured in the movies, their whole house is really behind them in their covered wagon. They are arriving out West but taking their whole house with them. And so much daily living goes on, they are always preparing food, and having meals, or socializing around campfires, and taking care of pets and children. They’ve already forgotten their life in the settled city they came from, those stores, those neighbors, those schools for their kids, their church. And they don’t know where they will arrive at, they are setting out to unknown. Their whole life takes place on the road now, that is their community, that is where they live their daily life.

But there is no road, they are pioneers. They are making their way thru uncharted wilderness, to god knows where. They don’t know where they are, just that every day they travel. And they don’t know where they will wind up. And so there is big emphasis on ordinary daily life routines. The preparing of meals, the washing of clothes, the feeding of children, everything to keep up a semblance of normal life.

It’s funny I can understand their minds now. There are too many unknowns in it. You can see them all pretending life is normal, trying to have normal life. But a completely unknown future lies ahead, there is ever-growing distance from their past, the present is all they have. And the present is one of transportation.

It is odd that I am going thru this and so is everyone else in the world, whether they are aware of it or not. And I bet the conversation on the wagon train was not one bit about what they were going thru. I don’t see how they could, it is too inexpressible. Their conversation would have to be about ordinary life. What are you going to fix for dinner? Or the bedtime story they will read their children. Or tucking them in at night. And coffee in the morning. And washing dishes. Or about their clothes. These would be where their thoughts were. And they would all talk to each other as if they were each leading perfectly ordinary lives and this huge thing were not taking place. Husband and wife would not talk about it to each other. He would talk about what he fixed, and how he fixed it, and what he will fix tomorrow. Maybe very occasionally two women would have a very quiet conversation about their experience, what this experience is, but not often. In the evenings they would all entertain themselves with song or story.

But everyone would know this is a momentous trip.

That’s a little like what this experience is now. I know we are on the move. I know each day we are moving and I know each morning I wake up in different place. I know each day is transportation. And it’s not as if I can see destination off in the distance, but we must be getting close to it, or accelerating faster towards it. Because I am starting to get glimmerings of the process by which we will arrive there. In other words I know we are in the process, and I am having a glimmering of how this process will work, and how it will deliver us there.

It as if before, my ideas of destination, and my ideas of process of how we will arrive there, were romantic fairy tales. I can see why I didn’t believe them completely, as much as I wanted to believe them. I believed them the way you believe a fairy tale. But there was too much enchantment in them for them to be real for me. As if you would be whisked to this enchanted place and then find yourself in an enchanted place. There is nothing wrong with believing them and I believed them with all my heart. It was offered to me and who would turn it down! No one turns down paradise when it is offered them and are told it is within reach, just a little bit ahead on the road.

LOL how long have we been told, “it is just ahead.” To be a New Ager means each new year is filled with promises made to all of us. “This will be the year” we are told “that all of paradise is yours.” And so we dream of paradise and have stars in our eyes, and set off with joy for the new year. And a point did come, after many years of this, when everyone started to wonder “are these promises going to be delivered on?” But we had all reached the point of no return. You couldn’t not believe in the promises anymore, you had hitched your boat to those promises.

But it became a bit of “waiting for Godot.” On one hand we were so hungry for these promises, it was all we had. On the other hand, so many years had gone by and paradise had not happened. But I guess there was too much reality in spirituality, too much evidence spirituality was real, to even think about not being on this voyage. But I will tell you the truth. We were promised constantly “paradise is just ahead, it will arrive this year,” and the fact is paradise never arrived, and I don’t think anyone believed it ever would. Except for the famous date given in the Mayan Calendar. We could all believe in 2012, because the proof of the pudding of that, was always years away.

But I will say now, we are on our way. I can feel it. I can see it. I know it. Something really is happening. And now that we are undergoing it, I see it is not one bit like the fairy tale I imagined. I see how the destination is not a fairy tale, and the means by which we reach it is not a fairy tale. There is no enchantment involved. You are not whisked into anything. There is no whisking. It is all about changes in the mind, changes in perception. It is literally about having a new perception. And that is what is going on right now, we are all in the process of changing our perception. That is the whole story in a nutshell. We are actively changing our perception, and we are the active agent in it. Annie is not being whisked to paradise, but she is involved in changing her perception. Which turns out to be a very specific, very concrete, very real thing. No fairy tales! no enchantment! no whisks! No promises held out and then not delivered on.

Because we are the ones who are doing it. Hahaha it turned out it was all up to us, that we would do it. I have no idea where I am in the process. How could I? All I know is I am in the process. Which seems to mean for the first time I am aware there is an old perception and a new one. I know my old perception, I have had it my whole life. It’s just that for the first time I am aware that there is a way of perceiving differently, that I could see in a new way, that I could perceive in a different way. And I am aware that what I would see, would be different from what I see now.

When I was just in the world of old perception, which would be until two days ago, I didn’t think of it as “the world of my perception.” I just thought “this is the world, period!”
Yes I know I had read long texts proving to me this is not so, but those texts (I realize now) are just blueprints. If you want that house, you have to build it, the blueprints don’t give you the house. That was another part of my fairy tale thinking about this all. I studied the blueprints and thought “where is my house!” The title of the blueprints was “this is your new house.” And I actually believed, whisk! one day I would walk right into it and was frustrated it never arrived.

But a blueprint is like a map. I still can’t believe I pored over those maps and thought it was the real thing, mistook it for an actual landscape. Thought “Why is this not my landscape now! You promised if I studied these maps, this would be my landscape.”

I’m not so sure now if that is exactly the promise which is made, altho it is sure the promise I heard. All I know is yesterday and the day before, is I realized there are two perceptions, an old one and new one, and the two perceptions are opposite, or at least very very different. And paradise lies in having the new perception. Altho some of my fairy tale ideas of paradise aren’t there in quite the same way. I no longer have images what paradise will be like, or I mean what the new perception will bring. This is exactly as far as I’ve gotten. I know from the blueprints I studied at the start of all this, that the new perception will show a perfect world. But perfect may be a blueprint word. It may turn out to mean you see everything as fine, and it holds steady at that. It may just mean the world is fine.

I am still in a place of transportation. I am like those wagoneers, those pioneers, I am in transit. I know the world the old perception showed me. And really the biggest change I have made, is instead of calling it “I know what the world is like,” I do now call it “I know the world the old perception showed me.” That is the big change over the past two days, and that is a tangible idea for me. Plus I have some awareness now there is another perception, which would show me a different world, a world which is fine. Whatever fine means.

I still really have no idea what the new perception will show, but I do know I want the new perception. That is another big change, I want the new perception with all my heart, above everything else in the world. Because if it is possibly true, that you could see everything as fine all the time, your pets are always fine et cetera, why not go for it! How could I want anything else! What else could I possibly want than things be fine for me always. Maybe that is what perfection is.

It was nice having all these fairy tale dreams, but when push comes to shove all we want is life to be fine always, for us and for everyone and for everyone we know and all their animals, for every living being on the Planet.