It has always surprised me to come to the realization that creativity, whether it is within ourselves individually or groups of all sizes including the entire humanity, has an enormous potential of power. Its role as an agent of change in the stream of our history can’t be underestimated. To borrow thoughts inspired by the Mayans, we have entered an era of human history where time is becoming impregnated with artistic vision, soaked with dreams exceeding all expectations.
How often have you been moved by the sight of a new design, symbol, painting or pattern? How often have come to the realization that hidden behind what you first thought was the message a much deeper meaning rose to the surface?
Have you ever considered that this meaning might have been, and often is, brought your way without any intent by the person or people who designed the object of your reflection? What if the whole process of life did this for you at every moment, would you be aware of it?
In our dreams, realities beyond the everyday experience come forth beyond our will, even when you are using full awareness. In conscious dreaming, one can exert their power to change the way one looks, don’t we all do that all the time anyhow, or change the monster about to eat us into a kind and gentle little lamb. With enough practice, one can come to the realization that they have the power to go much further and change landscapes around them while challenging the so called laws of physics… Flying seems to be one of the most recognized phenomena one seeks as soon as they start to have a certain level of will power and awareness within a dream.
As a little kid, I used to train to “control” my dreams… From 3 and a half, four years old till I was about 9, I couldn’t get enough of it. In the world of night sleeps, I was becoming a sovereign master of the dreamscapes I encountered, so I thought. Having the illusion of control over every aspects of the dreams I awoke into or came into, gave me the feeling that I was in power to do anything I wanted and when ever I wanted, wherever I wanted and with whom ever I wanted. As some of you might imagine, fantasies way beyond my age came to fruition and challenges to the physical laws broke one after another.
Applying my will to the oneiric canvas brought a magical texture to my every night. Who could judge me into this realm but me? Judgment was out of question and the borders were only limited to the ones of my own imagination.
Outside of the wall of rationality, the mind grew and grew tearing down the walls of everyday perception: Sometimes limitless sometimes infinitesimal, every molecules of my being feeling all sounds as if they were touching me permeating through me, seeing multiple layers of realities sometimes interacting with one another, becoming air as easily as fire earth the ground of space itself, smells and tastes touching both the sublime and the most extremes of repulsion. I had grown into an omnipresent actor who was growing into an omnipotent one: At will, I could simply walk through walls, breathe under water, move at speeds unimaginable from a materialistic point of view. More importantly, the continuum of the dreams could be broken off into piece, shattered and reassembled later or on the spot, paused or totally dematerialize.
The illusion was building in strength and I came to believe that I completely controlled the dreams to a point where, after having had experienced everything I wanted, I thought it to be boring! The act of dreaming had lost its allure as I thought it to have been demystified. It was loosing its meaning, I thought. By the time I was nine, I had lost my way and reasons to let the world of dreams rise into my conscious awareness. At this tender age, now that I knew what the world around me wanted from us humans, I started focussing on making money instead, lots of money for a little 9 year old. School had always been too easy, to a point of mind-numbing boredom. I figured, might as well cash in as early as I could. Wasn’t the role of education to line us all up in the path to becoming financially free? The argument had enough power to stop the principal in its tracks and was forced to sell the desired “goods” outside of the school yard. I agreed, and started selling my giant elastics as well as snowmobile, motorcycles and all the new trends of tri- and quad-wheelers that were coming up on the market for the first time then. I thought, with all this money coming in, I’d eventually be able to buy myself a snowmobile or a semi-road semi-trail motorcycle, maybe even both!
Without guidance, sometimes, we hit our consciousness against a wall we have built for ourselves… Thus, I put a stop to my dreaming. From then till about 12, I caught a disease that had an 80% chance of making me give up the ghost. After multiple examinations in all the main hospitals in Quebec City, my parents had resorted themselves to research. Three weeks after an examination at the university, Université Laval, we knew that I was a one rare case of this particular disease which usually sees the person afflicted die from leukemia after a period of 2 month to 2 year period. Strangely enough, my sister and I contracted the same disease at the same time… Hers lasted a few weeks, mine three years. we had both eaten the same little wild peas that I had cooked in a “healthy dose” butter to which the salt shaker had added up an extra unhealthy amount of salt when its lid had came undone. Having had spent such a long time picking all these little goodies, I thought I’d finish my sister’s too after she had a bit and a half…
The results, loads of pain as the blood vessels exploded wherever a muscle was on demand. The swelling started with my feet and moved up the legs. It rendered every parcel of my skin stretched and hypersensitive, the slightest of touch would feel like a needle coming into my skin. After an entire night of cramps, I woke up to a piss looking like Pepsi cola more than anything else. Half-laughing half-crying, I told my mom I had pissed Coke, my kidneys were shutting down. Any blood infection could have went in and it would have been the end.
Spirit allowed me and guided me back on track, forcing me to face who I really am and, in times of life and death, the most pressing quintessential questions one must face one way or another come to the surface: Who are you and, in one sense or another, what are you going to do with the time you are given?
I was mostly bed ridden when the disease kicked in full force. This newly imposed lifestyle, a total opposite to my regular running around in the forest and on the streets playing with friends, forced me into evaluating what I should be doing with myself. After all, I could just stay on the coach or on my bed, not move to prevent the pains from tackling me and wait for death or whatever was going to happen. Meanwhile, I would have take my pains with patience, let the “Mother of all Virtues” somehow work its magic. I thought, if I am to die, might as well enjoy the last of it, even through the pain. Maybe I had to fight fire with fire in that case and this is what guidance inspired me to do.
The closest thing to flying I had encountered in my short life so far, outside of dreams of course, was through the experience of running… So, one day, I got up and dashed out the door, sprinted all the way to the stop sign at the corner of where my father worked, about 120 meters away from home, and came back as fast as I could. It was just as exhilarating as it had always been. This time, though, I’d be feeling it an awful lot more but it was worth all of the pains that kept on creeping in. It started with my feet bulging like basketballs rendering my ankles completely invisible and the swelling moved on.
@eric-boucher eye to eye with the strongest storm I ever experienced. (Photo credit to Robert Brown, a.k.a. "Jags".)
Every single time I bolted out, every single time I could get back up to my feet and run, I would. Throughout the whole process, my conversations with Spirit never stopped as I had always and often prayed all my life in heart-to-heart with oneness.
I still remember vividly a chat I had with my mom about this period of time. she was crying often and any news about my condition would send her heart overfill with tears that would swell up to her worried loving eyes. I told her “Mom since we don’t know if I am going to die or not, and especially if I do, would it be better for us to focus on me being here now and try to make every single moment worthwhile, every single moment as happy can be while I’m here?”
We could have spent the entire rest of my life moping around, feeling sorry for ourselves, or be scared to a point of numbness closer to motionless statues and as close to emotional zombies as one can be. Over and above that, we could have let anger, the only enemy that works on us relentlessly 24/7, 365 days a year destroy all this potential for an once of sanity, for a sip of life’s nectar. Bliss sometimes comes at a hefty price… Nevertheless, with a full heart, the cost became irrelevant and creating a life of bliss embraced the consecration of my soul to artful endeavours whatever shape the moment would dictate.
Now that the realization had came as to what I needed to do, it was time to get back on track with what I am…
Memories of my imagination, of dreams and of my past came merging into one another like waters. The texture and nature of the experience of imagining dreaming or remembering of my past, sometimes surprisingly close at hand, all fell under the same umbrella, the same categorization of nature, just like what ice is to liquid water and what is liquid water to vapour! On the long run it all feels like vapours, some of them denser than others, some of them feeling more concrete than others, more real than others. But, isn’t it all water anyway, waters where one can control to some extent its own boat but not the flow at which the waters come by?
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
by Albert Einstein
Life will seem like a dream, a time spent by the river as many culture share. “We all have our time by the river.”, they say, gently pointing out to what they believe to be what we are... Funny where our fingers lead us when we let them flow at the pace of our creativity!
Well on this slice of life I will officially wish you all "Happy Mondays Everyone!" and, till next time, keep your smiles taking good care of one another, thrive on, Steem on and...
