All Dressed Up With Everywhere To Go Part 3: Ritual Behavior

 Prelude

Let's hop off that two-edged sword of discernment for a moment ((it can be really, really sharp!), stuff it in our backpack and take a stroll into the landscape of the Imaginal.  But, one may ask, how do we get to that terrain in the first place?  Here we are in our day-to-day real world, paying bills and making lunch and driving to work; the thousands of mundane and often irritating tasks in that shared world which constantly draw our attention, feed our anxieties, lure our desires.  Getting from the here and now of phones and computers, news and gossip, risks and responsibilities, to the Imaginal Realm seems at the least daunting, at most a pipe dream.

Putting aside the obvious fact that we go into the Imaginal naturally every night in our dreams, we'll have to look for hints and clues, perhaps even obtain a roadmap to help us on our journey.  But even with a roadmap in hand we will need a vehicle, a means of transport.  There is a clue available for us on that quest - that symbol that the Imaginal Realm passed on through the dream I referred to, the one that initiated this discussion.  Namely, the white tuxedo.  In that regard I'll reach back into my backpack and snag that black bow tie of discernment again (if you're gonna wear a tuxedo you're gonna need a bow tie), and... voila!!... all dressed up with everywhere to go.

I spoke in a previous posting of the possible symbolic associations that a tuxedo engenders.  There is one I hinted at yet somehow couldn't quite nail on the head at the time, and it's that association I want to explore more clearly now, the one I'm hoping will possibly transport us to our destination.  I'm talking here about an important clue the symbolic tuxedo gives us - the notion of ritual.

Fugue

One very common use of the term "ritual" is, simply put,  habitual action.  I have a morning ritual - I get out of bed, make a pot of coffee, turn on my computer and bring up a weather site.  This happens pretty much every morning without thought.  It's a simple routine without mysterious meaning or depth, yet it serves a function - the coffee perks me out of the night's slumber, the weather report helps me plan what I will wear that day, how my intended goals will be effected by rain or snow, cold or heat.  I imagine we all have many such rituals throughout the day, rituals we hardly notice.

At the other end of the spectrum is my dictionary's primary definition of ritual - a religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order.  This type of ritual might simply be for some a method to bring a community together, a bonding, or a networking tool of sorts.  It might, for those so inclined, actually trigger an Imaginal experience - a vision of Jesus or Mary at church; a conversation with spirit guides during a peyote ceremony in a sweat lodge; an eruption of bliss and ecstasy while chanting mantra on a yoga mat.  These are all legitimate forays into the Imaginal Realm, usually by individuals though occasionally shared by many or most of the community in attendance. 

In any case, it's a prescribed event with rules and methods, sometimes evolved and formulated over eons of traditional practice, and which by the nature of repetition can become nothing more than habitual action, remaining on the level of a networking event, a fun Friday night psychedelic trip with buddies, a soothing chant during meditation to help relieve anxiety and lower blood pressure ( all legitimate activities, but not forays into the Imaginal).

Between semi-conscious habitual actions (like my morning ritual) and prescribed ceremonial actions (like ingesting peyote in a sweat lodge) lie a whole range of ritual-like activities.  After my morning ritual I oftentimes  engage in a series of what is popularly known as yoga exercises.  My intent is very particular in this regard.  I'm not a student of Hatha Yoga, in which case these exercises might be a very solemn affair among other practices with the intent of achieving Satori, or Moksha, or Kundalini activation.  Rather, I simply want to take care of the body, make it more limber and agile in its actions within the world.  I have a book describing these exercises in word and picture, and these are indeed prescribed instructions I follow.  In this case the ritual also engages a process, in that repeated sessions over time gradually achieve my aims.  Yet in no way am I looking to explore the Imaginal Realm through these methods.

At least not as a primary process.  There is a secondary process that seems to tag along in parallel on its own.  When I'm done with the exercises I'm more relaxed yet highly focused, more open and receptive in the sense of beginner's mind.  This changed state of being just might, at times, open doors to the Imaginal.  A similar thing happens when I go to the gym 3 or 4 days a week.  I perform the prescribed activities dictated by the various machines,  ritually following a specific order every time.  Once again the primary process is oriented toward the body, to improve strength and endurance so as to to increase effectiveness in the world.  Like yoga I come out focused, relaxed, etc. (though I have yet to exit the gym to see faeries dancing in the evening sky).

All of these actions I've described are prescribed rituals, whether religious or secular, Imaginally purposed or practical.  They have their structures presented to the practitioner by a traditional institution of one sort or another, the parameters developed within a culture over time.  Sometimes they achieve their goals, sometimes not.  Sometimes they have secondary processes at work, sometimes not.  But what if you were to endeavor to develop unique rituals for yourself, rituals not handed down to you by the Upanishads or Planet Fitness, especially if your purpose was to create a vehicle to transport you to the Imaginal Realm?  How would you start?

To be continued....

All Dressed Up With Everywhere to Go Part 2: The Black Bow Tie of Discernment

Prelude

White tuxedo, black bow tie.  That was the odd costume I suddenly found myself wearing at the emergence of the Big Dream from the confused chaos of the seemingly mundane small dream that night.  I say "odd" because I have only one time in my life worn a tuxedo (at a brother's wedding decades ago) and that is not the sort of attire I aspire to;  blue jeans and a t-shirt will do just fine, thank you.  Even so, the black bow tie especially stands out for me as a symbol for the simple reason that I have owned only one tie of any sort in my entire adult life.  I find them vaguely repulsive at worst, strangely silly and superfluous at best.  The only one ever in my possession was a signed Jerry Garcia psychedelic tie given to me by Mr. Garcia himself in thanks for my volunteering at a fund raising event he had participated in.  I never wore it, and eventually gave it to an aging Deadhead I was acquainted with.  Thus, you can probably imagine just how odd it was for me to find myself in that  black noose while in the imaginal dream world.

Obviously a strong symbol here, so what would one associate with such a specific article of attire?  A few things come to mind - tradition, formality, constriction, pageantry, celebration, novelty, authority, sternness, silliness...hmm, some contradictions showing up here (btw, a bow tie also reminds me of the mathematical symbol for infinity, but I'll put that aside  for now).   If we're to tease this out it seems it's time to bring in the context of our destination, or more precisely the territory of our journey; the where amid all the every-wheres waiting in potential.  And that, of course, is the Imaginal Realm.  In that context an entirely new word symbol comes to me, one born of a particular necessity while traversing the various islands within that island nation - that is, the term discernment.

So now we have the black bow tie of discernment.

Fugue

I'll point out here that I'm not advocating the black bow tie of skepticism; or disbelief; or worse yet, cynicism.  To quote my dictionary:  to discern is to detect or perceive with the eye or intellect; to discriminate.  One might say, to discriminate between truth and fiction, to perceive what-is without agenda born of hidden or unhidden paradigm fixations.  Most skeptics and cynics can't see outside the box they've built around themselves, the paradigm they cling to.  I have a small story to illustrate this.

This story played out during the time of the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, close on the heels of 9/11.  The Bush administration was making a great effort to convince the American public of the necessity to embark on that war.  Colin Powell, a man respected and trusted by many from all sides of the political spectrum, was called upon to make the case.  At one point in a presentation to the presidential press corps he displayed a satellite photo of two trucks parked by a road in the Iraqi desert, stating that U.S. intelligence believed the trucks were carrying missile launchers armed with weapons of mass destruction capable of hitting Israel and even parts of Europe.  Later that evening Kofi Annan, then Secretary-General of the United Nations, was asked by a reporter what he thought of this evidence presented by Powell. Annan replied "All I see are two trucks in the desert".

Kofi Annan was using discernment.  He saw trucks in the desert.  Colin Powell saw missile launchers with weapons of mass destruction.  It turns out Annan was right - no weapons of mass destruction were ever found in Iraq.

One might ask in this light what the uses of discernment are within the Imaginal Realm.  After all, discernment is to a great degree a function of logic, a cognitive skill which some suggest does not apply to the island of the dream world, much less the island nation it inhabits.  Nonetheless, I would suggest discernment is an important tool to carry in your backpack on that journey.  When traveling among faeries and dead people and ascended masters a healthy dose of discernment just might be illuminating, and by default a bulwark against hazards.  And hazards there are.  When a channeled entity is met, one who has taken over the mind and body of a living person, are we to trust the message even if we accept the truth of the channeling?  I have personal experience meeting a self-proclaimed channeler who evaded questions and dissembled left and right.  Was he actually being channeled?  I have no idea.  But my bullshit detector, a great tool of discernment, was sounding the alarm.  I later found out his closest followers eventually abandoned him.  To use the analogy, they had been seeing weapons of mass destruction, then finally saw trucks in the desert.

But it's a two-edged sword, this tool of discernment.  It can, if not being used carefully, blind us to possible truths outside our hidden paradigms.  As a friend once suggested, in the Imaginal Realm one sits on the edge of that two-edged sword.  Does it cut our butts, or tickle them?

To be continued...