LOOKING FOR LOST CAR KEYS

scrambled eggs daffodil

Dreams the last few years have been like none of my dreaming before, and so much of a pattern I wonder about the pattern. In a dream I will reach out to shake hands with someone, or reach out to give or receive something, wake and my arm will be extended, hand reaching for dream hand or object. I've dreamed of cat, Tar Baby, jumping onto my chest while I was sleeping. He was standing looking at me willing me to wake. I woke and he was not there. One morning I was in bed dreaming I was lying in bed awake, looking at the window with mini-blinds closed and down. I woke looking at the same scene with blinds raised up all the way. A few nights ago I saw a six-inch ruler I've been looking for. It was lying on the desk in plain sight. In the dream I said to self, "It's not there. This is a dream." The pattern has become so frequent, I'm now recognizing in the dream it's a dream. Thursday, I intended to back the car down the brief hill to the barn to pick up three hay bales for the donkeys. The key was not where I keep the keys. Must have left them in the car, which I never, but sometimes, do. The keys were not in the car. I searched car and house the rest of the day obsessively. I only had a spare key for ignition, none for the trunk. I went through the trash, one item at a time, all the way to the bottom. Went to sleep frustrated that night, refusing to think about it further. Next morning, automatically, the search resumed. Finally, after looking everyplace they could be in the house and car multiple times, as well as the walkway in between, I told self to stop looking. Looking is not advancing the search. I stopped looking for them. Since action was getting nowhere, I thought I'd give inaction a go. Do nothing and see what happens. 

I put the keys out of my mind. The spare ignition key would at least let me drive the car as needed. I could call a friend to bring a couple bales from the barn. No problem. It was about this time I saw it that losing the keys was like a dream. I go to pick up the keys and they're not there. Only it's not a dream and the keys are materially not there. Much review of what I did returning to the house. I keep keys and change in shirt's right pocket when I'm wearing sweatpants, all the time, that don't have pockets, I remembered reaching into the pocket and scooping out the change with fingertips. I noticed I did not feel the keys. I didn't even look, took it for granted the keys were with the change and I just didn't feel them. I've learned my senses are so subjective they cannot be relied upon. They lack credibility. Later, it haunted me the keys were not in the pocket. Taking them out of the ignition, the pocket is the only place I would have put the keys, only two of them on a ring the diameter of a quarter. After thorough examination, I was satisfied the keys were not in the car. It meant they were in the house or somewhere along the path between car and house. Recalling them not being in the pocket with the change I so absently dismissed, narrowed the possibilities to I did not know what. I did carry them into the house in the pocket. They left my pocket somewhere between walking in the door and emptying the pocket. Deducing the keys to be inside the house, I'd looked everyplace they could possibly be and many they would not. Wherever they were hiding, it would be a place I could never think to look, having covered all the places I could think of.

In a place I would never think to look. This is where I bump against the infinite. I never thought to look on Mars or the Moon or, closer to home, Mongolia or Malaysia. I solved the problem of the hay in my head and could drive the car at will. Nothing left to do, but wait, be patient, allow the keys to come forward in their own time. If the keys were playing a hide-and-seek, slap-stick donkey trick on me, I gave them a good laugh. Decided to use the ignition key and drive to Carpenter's house to fill water bottles. Get out of my head for a few minutes. I carry two bags with handles, the plastic bags they sell at the grocery store for reuse, four half-gallon fruit-juice jugs in each bag. Parked the car, went inside to the kitchen sink. I placed the bags on the counter to my left, put four jugs in the sink and started filling one. Moved the bag from left side to right side where I put the filled jugs. Waiting for the second jug to fill, I put the first jug in the bag. In the bottom of the bag lay the keys. It was so nondramatic a find, exactly where I knew they would be, a place I never would think to look, thankfully closer to home than Asia. I carried the two bags of water jugs to the house with a lighter heart. The way the keys appeared was like the pattern in recent dreams. I see the keys in the bottom of the water jug bag, something seen where it otherwise would not be. Like in a dream, walking in the door and noticing Caterpillar's catfood bowls are missing. Or see a donkey walk by a window, wonder how it got out, wake up and see the donkeys at the fence waiting for carrots.

The lost key experience was so like a dream, I wondered if dream mind, the subconscious, and awake mind, the so-called conscious mind, could be merging, the imaginary line that separates them fading, the two minds dipping back and forth into each other. Or possibly left brain and right brain flowing together as conscious mind slows enough to interact with the flow of the slower moving subconscious. Sometimes I like to analyze an everyday life experience as if it were a dream to see what it has to say of itself. It's odd to have an awake experience the same pattern as present dream experiences, especially to the point the line between dream reality and awake reality went away. It's in a time of the life where I learn daily that nothing is as it seems, appears, or is interpreted. The opening lines to the verse from the Tao te Ching posted two days ago, number 53, stays in my mind, The great Way is easy, yet people prefer the side paths. The flow between the conscious and subconscious is easy, there's nothing to it. So I take the side path of trying to figure it out. This is named one thing. That is named something else. Naming creates boundaries around that which has no bounds, compresses them into things, makes an illusion of something out of nothing. And then there is memory, the skyscraper of cards. One day the memory goes away and the cards fall to the floor in apparent disorder, returned to the flow of the great Way. The only way I can figure the keys fell into the bag occurred when I leaned over to pick up the last jug of water to put some in the kettle for tea. The keys slipped out of the pocket during the gesture reaching for the jug from the bag on the floor with right hand.

photos by tj worthington

*

DONKEY MIND

 

It's seeming like over the last few years the subconscious mind is coming through, even pushing conscious mind out of the way. Conscious mind cares less and less about having its say. By this time in a lifetime of experiences the conscious mind has seen itself misunderstand, forget, rewrite history, miss important points, not get it, enough to see mind it is fallible. Conscious mind is based in learned information from experience and study. Subconscious mind is, for one thing, in touch with the higher self. Also the lower self. I'm starting to think of the subconscious mind as the mind we had before we grew the frontal lobe that gave us knowledge of good and evil, duality. In process of getting to know a donkey, I'm hearing myself call it Donkey Mind. I don't mean that insulting. I'm learning about donkey mind already knowing Jack does not have the frontal lobe, but he has all the rest of it. This is where I connect with Jack. I've learned after living with dogs and cats that they don't need spoken language. They know very well how to use body language, eye contact, telepathy. I go to Jack with as close to a clear mind as I can, without forcing anything. I want to allow him access to my subconscious mind by keeping forebrain out of it as much as possible. I've lost confidence in my own forebrain. I understand it plays a very important part, and allow it that. I just never learned how to use it efficiently.

In my experience with the subconscious mind, I become more and more trusting. And these words, conscious and subconscious, I actually think the reverse is the case, but am using the language that is universally understood. Following my feelings more than ever. Paying attention to and allowing that I don't want to or I want to are good enough reasons for my decision making for myself. Something comes up that is expected of me and I don't want to, I'm sorry for you, I don't perform other people's expectations. The kind I really dash are the ones expected without being told, silently understood. As a kid and quite a ways into adult life I hopped to other people's expectations. Then one day I asked, Why? Nothing worth a damn ever came of it. Other people told me I needed to do something and I felt like I was obliged to do it. I can't think of anything I did or bought because somebody told me I needta, gotta, oughta, better, should, that felt right. There came a time I realized that decisions I make for myself work out better than decisions made out of supposed to, oughta, gotta, needta. Finally seeing how it worked out, I stopped doing what other people tell me to do. For one thing, I do it, I'm the one pays the consequences, not the one who told me to do it. In a way, it sounds like stubbornness, which I have a strong Taurus the Bull dose of, but in practice it feels freeing, feels like flow.

Every day I remind myself in one way or another not to allow myself to be drawn into emotional attachment to wanting to improve the world, make it a better place. By now, I've seen so much that was done to help ended up doing the opposite of original intent. I see myself pulling back from impulses to help out here and there. I can do so much, but no more, and I don't worry about it. Allowing others to push me into doing something I don't want to do, like join the Lions Club or such, it doesn't work. My heart is not there when it is somebody else's idea of what is best for me. My heart is only there when I make decisions by feeling as well as mind. I'm not talking about money decisions. I mean day to day decisions having to do with knowing other people and getting projects done. I've found that much of the thinking I was taught along the way doesn't work for me. Like coming out of high school, somebody my dad knew told me I don't need a college degree, just take two years of business administration and get a job as a manager of a TG&Y. Wow. What a boring way to live my life. I tried to take a business administration course because of being told that's what you need to do to make money. What if I didn't want money? What if I want to live in a little schoolhouse on Waterfall Road with a cat and a donkey, never have company and seldom go anyplace?

I'm so tired of the world of the false the news has even lost interest for me in the last several days. I turn it on and in a few minutes turn it off. It's not like I want to get away from everything, not that at all. I want to get deeper into what I already have around me, the people I know, to know them better, enjoy them more, that which is alive, including a donkey. I've already found that what I've been told about donkeys and how to deal with them does not apply. I've only been able to talk with people who regard them as stock. I learn how to handle them, but I don't want to handle Jack. I want to know Jack. His only job is coyote slayer. His role in life is not a beast of burden with a halter on his face and somebody whipping him every step of the way to make him take the next step. This is my chance to get to know somebody new without developed forebrain, like a baby. I've been knowing a baby for two years and became fascinated with learning to communicate without words as taught to me by dogs and cats. Now I have a chance to become acquainted with a consciousness in a donkey body with a donkey mind. It's donkey mind I want to get acquainted with. And it feels like we're getting there. I'm reading his language of gestures and eye contact, and it feels like I have a friend. Each day I see something new in our communication. He understands what I'm saying when I talk to him. I talk to him simply because human experience is foreign to his mind as people in space ships are foreign to my mind.

Today, after feeding Jack two carrots, I talked with him, rubbed his back and neck while he grazed around my feet. He put his forehead on my upper leg, almost like he was going to push me, but didn't push. He rubbed his forehead and the length of his face up and down my leg from waist to ankle three times. He performed the same process three different times. He seemed to mean something more to him than rubbing his face. I remembered how he likes it when I stand beside him and bump him with my hip. It was like he was bumping his forehead on my leg. It was not an aggressive movement. It felt like his way of rubbing me in return. He likes me rubbing his neck and back. He wanted to rub me too. He doesn't have hands. His forehead he could use to pet me, to let me know he likes me too. It was that kind of feeling. He was telling me he likes me by way of donkey mind. This is how he teaches me donkey mind. In turn, I teach  him human mind. This is going where I'd hoped it would go, unable to imagine it in advance. He held his forehead on my upper leg rubbing it with purpose, and I reached behind his ears and rubbed his neck with two hands, one on each side. I felt like it was another moment of connection where the god within me met the god within Jack. That's where I wanted to connect with Jack, really not even imagining it possible.

I'm remembering J Allen Boone's book, Kinship With All Life, where he discovered communication with the other forms of consciousness. I read it years ago. I wasn't able then to communicate as he did, but never forgot it. I learned from the dogs, each one teaching me a new level of dogness. Cats too. Now I have a donkey to learn from. A couple times Jack became so happy he got a little bouncy. I don't mind when he puts a foot on my foot, but I don't want him jumping on my foot. I backed away a little bit to give him some room to perform his shivers. I read it that his donkey mind activating the first time with a human mind stretched his mind farther than it's ever been stretched, and he's liking it. He's liking knowing a human. He's seen humans all his life, has known a few a little bit. He's still young, though appears full grown. That we've connected is the important part. From here on, it's a matter of getting to know each other. It's more fun every day knowing Jack. It's like knowing baby Vada, different every time I see her, now running and talking in sentences. I had a feeling that Jack rubbing his forehead on my leg is something donkeys do to each other. I've seen cows rub their foreheads on the side of another cow. I forget how multi-purpose their heads are to them. Forget? Never knew. It appears to be a gesture of affection. As I clear my own mind, Jack has a better chance of reading me. He's not afraid of me anymore. And I'm not afraid of Jack anymore. We're getting there.  

 

 

*

ELUSIVE MIND

the flow


Every day I notice myself dating the last 35 years by where I was in the mountains and what I was doing in that time, or what was on the news, or what was new that year, or who was elected that year, like that. It gives perspective of receding time. Or gives that warm comfortable feeling of believing I have some sort of perspective. Of course, I don't. It's faulty memory that forgets context and everything. I think of what a thin membrane over the subconscious mind the conscious mind is and how it's not made of anything but electrical charges. It's so insubstantial as to be next to nothing. The only something about it is a mind continually thinking. When it goes away, it just goes. I saw Jr's conscious mind go away over the course of one week. It was like watching a bathtub draining, a little bit more every day, until it was gone. It went away. Jr's mind was blank from then on. He continued to operate by the subconscious mind, and I knew him well enough that the Jr I knew was more in the subconscious than the conscious. I saw that when somebody asked him a question about a name, place or time, his mind went blank. I couldn't stop somebody asking such a question, so I would throw him a key word to get him back on his track.



I came to understand in that time what we call the conscious mind is perhaps the least part of our minds that we function by. When Jr's conscious mind was gone, he was still there. I saw that his identity had little to do with the conscious mind. It's in the subconscious. I have not studied the evolution of the mind, but I'm inclined to suspect the conscious mind developed over thousands of years by figuring things out. First, you figure out how to throw a spear. Then everybody in the tribe gets it and throws spears, pass it on to the next generations and the people they war against, who need to figure out the spear to keep up with the enemy. Arms race. The greatest motivation known to humanity. Next, the subtleties of spear throwing are learned until it becomes a traditional way of throwing it specific to the given tribe, passed on from generation to generation. Arrows and gunpowder. New things to learn. Possibly the conscious mind is everything we've learned, what we believe we know. When that mind is gone, observer mind continues. Language continues, reading eyes and faces continues. Jr's ongoing complaint was that his mind wasn't working any more.



Interestingly, the part of his mind that sees the conscious thoughts is still there. The part of the mind that sees our dreams is still there. I've come to think the latter is the biggest part of our consciousness, that part that is always awake, sees our mind's activity as we sleep, notes what we say to ourselves, that inner self we talk to when we say something to ourselves, like something a parent said repeatedly, "Nobody wants to hear anything you say." Something like that to inhibit a need to speak. I'm inclined toward thinking it enough to maybe say I believe the spiritual path walks through the vagaries of the mind and long, long index of beliefs our conscious minds know nothing about, through the subconscious mind to the consciousness that never sleeps. Looking at it like this, I have to say I'm not very far along on mine. But, like you, and like everybody else, I am where I am, and that's it. Attempts to convince myself I'm farther along than I am are surely tempting to go with. And it's tempting to go with a blow to esteem and think I'm way back where I haven't been for several lifetimes. Best way I can see is to let it be what it is and not concern myself with it. That's what musicians tell me about making music. You can't think about it. Do, and conscious mind comes in and messes everything up. Too many cooks in the kitchen. Don't think about it and the music happens.



*