Ufo's,ghosts&me

 From the time I was a child I've always loved ghost stories and tales of the fantastic and weird. One of my favorite memories is watching an old Dracula movie at the Rebel Drive In Theatre in my hometown. In Technicolor! From my seat in back beside my little sister I saw Dracula caught out in the sunlight. A stake driven through his heart and the sun coming up. 

The old monster was finally doomed. Right before my eyes and my mouth jammed full of popcorn he was desolving into dust. I can still see it vividly in my mind's eye. The vampire struggling, gurgling, dying as the sun hit him and all that was left was a pile of ashes and a bloody stake through what was once the heart. Man, That was fun!

Another childhood memory is watching the old Dialing for Dollars movie out of Birmingham. Old science fiction with collosal man in scary black and white as nuclear fallout changed a once handsome scientist into a giant angry crazed monster. The leading lady shouting his name but it was to late. 

Ironically it was my conservative country music loving mother who helped nurture my love of horror movies and black and white science fiction pics about the danger of nuclear weapons and men and creatures from outer space. 

One day at around 7 or 8 years old I'm watching a scary movie. I happen to look behind me and my mother had left the room. No adults. Not even an annoying sister. Just me. But you can't run. Because if you run the ghosts will know it. They will grab your foot and pull you back and no telling what else. So I stayed put. Glued to the TV as the lady on the screen has a running dialog in her own mind. 

What was that? The garden statue moved! She saw it! The camera pans into the idiotic face of the statue. It's blank staring eyes. My young mind is sure it moved. The lady is trying to persuade herself it didn't move. She must be right. I sure hope so. Just stay calm. An adult will come back any minute and the ghost will go away. 

But, they didn't! Not when the little girl aged on screen to an old woman beating on the wall with her cane. Not when the woman climbed the rickety staircase to hang herself. Not even at the end of the movie when the narrator said "Whatever walks at Hill House walks alone!" finally a commercial and I make a break for the front door and safety while the ghosts are distracted!

I'm at the movies with my cousin.It was a more child friendly Disney movie. Something like That Darn Cat or Herbie the Love Bug. But there is this preview for a movie called "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane." As a child I didn't know Bettie Davis or Joan Crawford. I assumed it was a movie about ghosts. They had a doll with a hole in it's head from a hammer in the preview. So in my child's imagination the movie was about a little girl named Baby Jane and the doll was part of what Baby Jane's ghost must have done.or maybe when the bad guys killed Baby Jane they broke her doll and the ghost of Baby Jane was mad.

Those of you who know the actual movie can see that my imagination created a whole nother movie! So one day I come in my aunt and uncles house and my older cousin is hiding behind the door. Right as I come in he steps behind me spreads his hand on top of my head and intoned loudly "BABY JANE!"

And people wonder why I have trust issues. But, I digress. Horror and flying saucers and monsters in movies, books & comics have always been scary fun for me.

So imagine how pleased I was in my later years to find a whole thread on Twitter devoted to Ufo's. Yep #ufo what could possibly go wrong? Well believe it or not some people don't find things that go bump in the night to be fun. These people call themselves skeptics. But they aren't skeptics. They're debunkers. Want to know how I know? Because their skepticism only goes one way. It's never pointed back at their own conclusions. They hate anything that even hints that there might be more to life and consciousness than their sterile ultimately meaningless March to personal and even species oblivion. 

The other group that sucks all the fun out are the true believers. It has to be highly evolved spacemen in nuts and bolts craft just chilling under a Star Trek type "Prime Directive" and swooping in once in a while to butcher a cow or stick a probe up a human's butt. 

Meanwhile I'm just thinking of all the possibilities of our weird universe and thinking of starry nights and how much fun it is to just entertain the thought that we will never be able to put existence in a box and we will never have to cease our exploring. 

Peace!

Dreaming myself awake

 

Are you asleep or are you awake? I was preparing to do a meditation using my phone app. I had turned off all notices so phone calls would go straight to voicemail. Breathing in and out. Watching the breath. Being present. Watching my thoughts but not engaging with them. 

The meditation leader then asked the question. Are you asleep or are you awake. I gradually, slowly left the dogma of my life long religion. Signposts along the way were books, history and my constant prayers to be open to the truth. Finally it was like ripping off a bandaid. It hurt. 

Prayerful meditation and honest self reflection got me through. Or I should say is getting me through. I tried to pretend nothing had changed But it had. Them I tried or at least casually explored Buddhism. But for me the faith of my youth stripped of the silly dogma and lived humbly while treating people the way I wanted to be treated still worked for me. 

So one day as I'm practising a Zen Buddhism group meditation at the local UU Church I came to the conclusion that was similar to FR Thomas Merton who while practicing Buddhist meditation realized his own Christian mystical tradition worked for him. My thought was a little less uplifting. I thought "Hey. I ain't trading one religious box just to crawl into another one." 

Death must be good, otherwise God would not have obtained that it happen for everyone. Why live in fear of it? Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda. 

Autobiography of a Yogi was a game changer for me. I read through it both by listening on Audible and reading it on my Kindle. But, honestly it was at times uplifting and at other times a slog. But. I think I got the gist of it. Chapter 43 titled "The Resurrection of Sri Yuketeswar" is one of my favorite passages in any book I've ever read.

Not because I converted to Hinduism. I didn't. But it just seemed to strike a chord with me. The body that was buried was the dream body in this dream world. The body Yokananda reported seeing his guru manifest was the actual vessel his spirit used. And it was itself not the final manifestation. Anyway I found it to resonate with some of my own journey. Was it literally true? I feel that when it comes to spiritual experiences truth can be spoken, modeled in nature and dreams and visions. 

Imaginal is how I think of it these days. Jeffery Mislove made the distinction on his podcast. Imagination is fine but we are mainly just doing wild conjecture. The Imaginal realm however isn't imagination or even myth. It's the actual possibility of consciousness. So chapter 43 May or may not be true in a by the book here and now sense. But, away from the dense filter of this dream world there might well be a world where the old body drops and our thoughts create a greater deeper reality.

I looked back and knew my sleeping body was back there. My companion was wise beyond all earthly measure. We walked under a red sky and the landscape was rocky. I asked him "what is the dream?" But as happens in dreams what I was really asking was who is God? What is life? What is death? 

He said "You ask too much." to which I felt myself start to cry. I woke up with a tear running down my cheek. 

Years later I think I understand. It wasn't that I wasn't allowed to know. It was the question wasn't the right question. You can't put reality in a box. You can't house God in a religion and death isn't something strange or final. It's part of the continuing journey. This is the dream. This world of limits and hard surfaces and sharp edges. 

I don't rush towards death and I'm not trying to hurry it. But, I am looking forward to waking up from the limits of this dream.

Peace!