I got up this morning and got ready to head to my favorite diner
for a few hours of writing.
As I passed my desk, I saw THE LETTER once more.
The letter that I found in a stack of mail the week before.
The letter that emanated from the Union of Mad Scientists in La Conner, Washington. It fairly crackled with a kind of electricity of unknown origin.
Now I am no stranger to such energies. I rather like them, in fact.
But for all that, I do accord them considerable respect.
And so it was that I did not rush to open it, but Waited
for the appropriate time.
As suspected, it crept up on me at an unexpected moment
and signaled when it was time to approach.
It didn’t help that it was addressed to "High Priestess Debra”
at the "Gypsy Ashram".
In my initial excitement, I regarded that as colorful and playful language…
that is, until one of the Gypsies shook me awake with the remark
that those words were not chosen lightly by the Author.
Of course they weren’t!
Obviously I was not fit to open it just yet...
The contents would fall on dull senses, to be sure.
It was true.
I had slipped in my perception of spiritual reality and the gravity
of my assignment.
She reminded me that I did indeed inhabit a temple and an ashram,
albeit a humble and somewhat unassuming outpost in Anderson, Indiana.
Nonetheless…and perhaps inherent in that….potent in the extreme.
How many times has the veil parted within those walls?
Numberless and still ongoing. Soul opening. Illuminating. Overflowing.
Gifts dispensed generously, often beyond the capacity of the recipient
to receive.
We are shaken awake only to fall asleep again, but something remains
and works underground.
Seeds of awareness seemingly dead but springing to life at odd moments
when all memory or hope of life and awareness has expired.
It never fails…and never fails to surprise.
We are that forgetful.
But slowly, slowly we awake in the ever-growing light of dawn.
My question is: what is it that causes such forgetfulness?
I wait for the answers which will surely come.
And that has ever been the case as I surveyed my life thus far.
Fools we are in our own pageant of life… at least I am.
When I think about it, this is not even my first Gypsy Ashram.
Back in the 60’s and spilling over into the 70s,
there was a Gypsy Overshadowing of the world….
at least that is what I recognize it as now.
A kind of mad storm swirled into our overly corrupt, mechanistic,
money and power-driven society at just the right moment.
The world, as we knew it in those years, was caught up in a wild, disruptive, deeply innate rebellion against all the life-denying aspects of the so-called Overculture*.
People, in particular the young, for whom there was some hope of escape, suddenly SAW things as they were.
For a while, the people stirred and cried out and sent jitters through the mainstream culture. They dropped out, dropped in, threw off all restraints
and set about finding their own identities.
They hit the road enmasse, which is still a parallel and unparalleled education, and one not to be dismissed derisively...
until the 'powers that seem to be' offered enough cash to lure most of the newly-awakened back into the fold, or rather, under the yoke.
University...4 yrs of carefully closeted indoctrination.
Is it any wonder that so much drunkenness is tolerated?
All the better to mesmerize our unlucky aspirants.
I am not against higher education in the least, but I reserve the right
to determine what is higher in my estimation rather than having
that dictated to me.
At the time, I found that college, for which I had cherished high hopes,
was merely a high-priced version of high school with ashtrays.
It made no sense to me to spend $30,000 and 4 yrs of my life (1969 prices) reading things that I could read on my own much faster and in my own time rather than in hour-long segments.
It struck me as a kind of a societal madness…a game for children
or those who wished to remain children a little longer.
To make matters worse, it was a game for the rich kids.
The spoils were already divvied up, whether they completed
their education worthily or not.
- Overculture: an assumed identity that most still numbly accept and pay tribute to. Apparently people’s brains have not quite evolved to the point where that is a plain and absolute absurdity.
to be continued...