Dreams of Escape From Spirituality

Dream of Escape From Spirituality

The other night I lost track of time and read and wrote until the sun had come up. I did not feel so very good the rest of the day and so I resolved to catch up upon my sleep and I did, so much so that I began to have some leisurely dreams.

In one dream I levitated, though not so spectacularly as when I was younger. Nowadays I am content to rise but imperceptibly above the ground and float along at sometimes great speeds without the strain or bother of even pretending to walk or run. One does not have to fly like a bird, and as far as ease of transportation goes, to rise up an inch is as good as a mile.

Then I had a dream that I was a prisoner in an old school – not a lavish old traditional school of brick and ivy, but only some run down single level cheaply fabricated school built by the lowest bidder to the County. But the Prison Routine was not very strict and the guards not plentiful or particularly observant. I soon discovered that outsiders would approach and pass keys in through the window, and those with these keys could escape with fairly minimal trouble or risk. So I effected an escape.

I took up residence in a building further up the hill. At first I passed my time in ease, but somehow I discovered that I could come by those Keys of Freedom, no, not very many at a time, but I could get such keys (keys that seemed sometimes keys and sometimes coins), and so I determined to become one of those people who would go down the hill below and pass keys through the window.

Then my mother came to me and was telling me that my brother was down the hill below and was a member of an Ashram. I looked out and saw the Ashram, and it was not quite the Old dilapidated School I had escaped from earlier, but some crudely nailed together single story dwellings, what they call Ranch Houses, all with cooking fires as I could see whiffs of smoke curling from chimney pipes popping out from the roofs. Against the minimalist desert landscape, this Ashram must have been about some kind of Spiritual Work, as nobody was there for the Aesthetics.

Well, I had been a member to several Ashrams and found the idea of my brother being an Ashram Member interesting… he did not seem the type, having taken an entirely different path in life from mine. As she elaborated, I found that the language of the Ashram was not Sanskrit, the Holy Language of the East, but some Native American Language, supposedly ancient. Well, I really did not know what to think about that.

Now that I review some of my readings, there was some rumors that the Native American’s at the time of the Spanish Invasion were responding to Prophecies that held them as Liberators who would free them from the Aztecs who they saw and suffered under as veritable devils who had stamped out the True Religion of the Mayans or whoever. And then the Apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe was seen as the Prophesized reincarnation of some Merciful Feathered Snake God or whatever. It is remarkable that almost the entire population of tropical America converted en masse to this Religion of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and with hardly any official Catholic instigation, indeed, for the Spanish had to send off to Spain for reinforcements of Priests just to take care of finalizing the Conversions, where all the convincing propaganda was handled by the Natives themselves, in terms of the Old Legends and Prophecies (which the Catholic Priests were not overly curious about).

My mother has shown me some examples of this Native American Language, in writing. I wondered at the time whether its meaning was in any ways as sensible as spiritual Sanskrit. But I must admit that one can go through reams of old Sanskrit literature without finding anything particularly inspiring, as we Moderns have come to expect. And then we must wonder that after one has plucked the gems from the pages, what all the rest of it had to say. You see, while we may pick one phrase as a favorite and suppose the entire Religion is based upon that, well, some other group with another agenda of interest may pick something entirely different, something we dismissed for being too obviously mundane. Yes, Religions should keep themselves short and to the point, it being almost as important not to say the wrong thing as it is to say the right.

The importance of Viewpoint should not be forgotten in evaluating this Dream. I was up looking down on this Ashram, and so I should dismiss immediately the possibility that I might be missing something in not being a follower of this newly uncovered Field of Spirituality. And I need to remember that only moments before I was running Keys down that same Valley to help people escape from it.

Hmmmmm. Is there something inherent in much of Today’s Spirituality that one would consider imprisoning and where it could be thought a benefit to escape from it. Remember, in my dream, nothing was very strict in that Prison, and the guards were few and far between, and the Escape proved rather easy. And after the escape I did move up in the World, up the Hill to a Higher Level. All very symbolic, but how does it compare to the Real World?

Well, most Spiritual Organizations are wrong about something. They formed around some old political or economic agenda, in reaction to something, or for some interested end in itself. In those senses, of course they would be impure. Then there is the matter that most Spiritual Traditions are polarizing, as they set some Languages against others, some Countries against others. Sometimes it is only a matter of Accident, where the wrong People happen to be in charge – perfectly good spiritual organizations being contaminated by the Idiots in Charge.

Oh, this brings to mind the very importance of insisting that there is a Transcendent God above it all. While there is a Transcendent God to point to, albeit its Invisibility, then all the imperfections of the Spiritual Organization below can be somewhat allowed for, even forgiven some of its ineptitudes because, after all, the Organization is not really the center of focus – God is. But in cases where the Spiritual Organization sets up a Super Guru, a God on Earth, then we have the problem where any imperfection noted in the Guru disqualifies everything.

Indeed, all Religious Leaders should insist upon their own personal Imperfections… they should even Institutionalize their Imperfection by perhaps always wearing mismatched socks, or something. Wherever Religion Deifies its Leaders it comes to be a problem. Christianity Deified Paul and now has to live with a man’s doctrines as though they are God’s. Islam deified Mohamed and now they can never pry the Sword out of God’s Hand. The Mormons deified John Smith and so their God has a penis and a huge sexual appetite. God needs to be kept Transcendent.

Well, does there absolutely need to be a Spiritual Organization. In most cases a Civilization depends upon its concrete established Institutions. Organizations can be extremely important. But often enough great Influences on Society are not Institutionalized in the Organizational sense at all, or only peripherally. I can think of the influences of Shakespeare and Jane Austen. Yes, peripheral Institutions in Theatre and Publishing have contributed to the wide Influence of Shakespeare and Austen, but neither of them have an established Priesthood or a dedicated College. No one pretends to maintain purity of Doctrine. Here I am saying that if a Spiritual Influence were Culturally Powerful enough, it might be able to operate free of a Concretized Organization, or any one particular Organization, as I am sure there are any number of Shakespeare and Austen Reading Clubs, without the danger of any one Club creating an embarrassment large enough to humiliate the Whole.

What Spirituality and the Cause of Civilization needs Today is a Cultural Phenomena, and not just some new Organization.