Celebrating as many winter holidays and festivities as possible while dreaming deeply

Again, I didn't blog on or about the December solstice or any specific Winter 2011-2012 holiday: Continuing a new practice, I shamanic journeyed on the solstice to a standstill in non-ordinary reality and waited at that crossroads for a spirit-power boost into new directions.

On every winter holiday I know of I have and will shamanic journey for power and knowledge, basking in the vibes of many traditions and appreciating diverse customary observances without copying.

These darkest, darkening, then lightening days have become for me a season set apart for deepest dreaming and intensest recharging, when I seek and receive longer-range guidance and "longer-haul" renewal.

In the original, non-traditional shamanic ways I practice, each journey provides revelation and activation -- prophesy as direct connecting with spirit in singular here-now ("hear now") moments (for me, then and there, as an individual, subject to and requiring ongoing shamanic shifting course correcting). Prophets (or spiritual leaders by any other capital-lettered titles) in most religions pronounce on behalf of community-, nation-, or world-wide organizations, communions, denominations or other large groups, but to avoid confusion and delusion Companions Circle teaches only incremental, shamanic shifting revelations and empowerments around specific prayer intentions by individuals and circles (when two or three or several more agree).

Many unfortunate, even devastating consequences arise from institutionalized revelation and from specific revelations by set-up or self-proclaimed religious authorities, whether the pronouncements predict the end of the world or give otherwise practical instructions about how to live. This article in Elle details one point of view from experience.

The misuse of human imagination -- the re-creative launchpad and landing zone for many shamanic adventurers -- also incarnates terrible mischief throughout this world. This Vanity Fair story tells the exploits of one gifted, talented mis-creative fellow (who now claims, according to CNN, he has learned his lessons and turned his life around).

Institutionalization and dishonesty and numerous other pitfalls every day halt intuitive ingenuity and sidetrack shamanic shifting. But crows on this winter's bare, snowy branches are watching over, and showing me in my dreams new escapes from such too-long-standing, destructive patterns.

Living 'neon signs' energized my wondering...

Reading that humans devised and designed living 'neon signs' conglomerated from millions of programmed glowing bacteria activated my childlike wonder and shamanic wondering. Is the programming of one kind and scale of being by another somehow simply another natural feature of ordinary reality -- so no big deal?

Who or what programs humankind's reality -- and at how invisibly grand or subtle (or intrinsically tiny or macroscopic) a scale might it be happening?

Though it does not appear to be the case that our world is merely a bit of experimental culture growing in a giant giant's lab or even a giant giant's gigantic child's pond-water-drop viewed through a Brobdingnagian microscope (of any sort, toy to high-tech), I hear folks speculate often enough that we might be programmed.

Any mentions or examples I come upon of beings being programmed in physical, classical reality (the most obvious situations, those most likely to grab my attention) stir my childish wonder again, so I find myself asking, "How might this be happening in the universe as I know it?"

And of course there could be many improbable, un-provable and tricky ways programming could be happening to some and/or all of us. Most (if not all) the possibilities have been thought up already, then permutated, then extended to their absurdest extremes and otherwise discussed soberly or argued heatedly, formally and for entertainment purposes, ad hoc and ad nauseam.

The bacteria glowing in the researchers' sign might be doing fine, just living their spiral dances of universal FUN, no matter what. But the engineering project was undertaken for serious, practical purposes, such as developing low cost biosensors to detect pollutants wherever and whenever needed.

Image: Frostnova/Flickr.com

Secret rock garden in India inspires and encourages

This here LA Times story about a hidden rock garden that "rocks" has inspired and encouraged my humble rock gardening efforts!

The picture shows only the barest beginning stages of one of the new rock gardens I started this autumn in Dane County, Wisconsin. This layout is next to a home, but others are secret.

Much more work and play with these projects will happen after the spring thaws. Until this territory freezes over I continue adding and shifting in gradual, unpredictable increments.

Someday I would like to shamanic-shift a vacant-lot-sized public rock garden I have envisioned in shamanic dreaming into ordinary reality.

Rock garden shifting and miscellaneous musing

The picture shows a new rock garden's (soon-to-be) surroundings in early October.

My and the church's mailing address has not changed, though I have begun an "in residence" job near Madison -- installing a rock garden and assorted odd-jobs. I return to Milwaukee once a week or so, where I keep a severely downsized official residence.

Most of the branches here are barren now, in mid-November. Crows thrive on.

Miscellaneous musings:

1. I understand shamanic experience differs from psychosis -- but non-ordinary experience and psychosis might arise in some of the same brain cells and regions, and might overlap. A story like this one might be an example. But the archetypal shamanic-craziness overlap happens, plays out and materializes in many different ways everyday in ordinary and extraordinary brains, I have long supposed. Meaning, purpose and benefits (to self and others) make most of the difference, I am certain.

2. Shamanic experience is altogether different from scientific discovery, though imagination plays a role in both. When theoretical physicists discuss quantum weirdness; dark matter and dark energy; parallel universes, extra dimensions and the multiverse; vibrating strings, or superstrings (and membranes); singularities, black holes and more -- I comprehend all of these proposed marvels as matter-energy and space-time. All of that is still ordinary reality (baryonic and non-baryonic matter-energy realms that scientists can or could order or measure somehow).

But nowadays I read and hear more inelegant mix-ups of the ordinary (all of the aforementioned wonders of theoretical physics) and the non-ordinary (the routes shamans adventure), that seem to me to confound shamanic (or sacramental) dreaming, bridging and journeying, which I call mysterious, spiritual or imaginary acts of Faith, Hope and Love (the Graces).

3. Shamanic shifting begins and ends within without being of this world, and happens through mustard-seed-sized (un-measurable, more-than-infinitely TINY yet colossal) miracle-facilitating loopholes that will never be found through scientific investigations. Weirdly, I contend, believe or pretend: all worldly (individual or universal or multiversal) brains, bodies, bits and vibrations of ordinary reality (from the greatest to the least of every space-time/matter-energy kind, realm, season, direction and dimension) grace-fully contain wondrous arrays of these impossible yet dependable mustard-seed-wide doorways that are ever-ready for knocking and entering, that allow spirit-soul-imagination to reach on purpose into the non-ordinary and return with blessings.

I have yet to express what I mean by these musings, and this was only the latest rambling circumlocution, far from any final say-so.

Next adventures of the Blue Plastic Goat

Weird: I dreamed fleetingly of the Blue Plastic Goat I blogged about weeks ago, waking up suddenly, visioning the tiny battered toy lying near a dumpster in the church's parking lot, just around the corner from the courtyard garden (the last known location).

Evidently, one of the new gardeners had indeed decided the goat was trash, or simply scooped broadly and unintentionally. Yet since then repeated garbage collections failed to capture the plain, incongruous figurine for land-fill.

Both horns have diminished to stubs, I noticed. It appears the goat didn't get very far after it attracted attention!

But that is only one discouraging thought -- possibilities stir my imagination.

I shall attempt repairs and listen for stories of the blue plastic goat's multi-dimensional inter-dumpster travels.