~ Jimmy Page, 1977, quoted by George Case in Jimmy Page: Magus, Musician, Man: An Unauthorized Biography
Hey, a girl can dream, can't she? In fact, she should.
Showing posts with label dreams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dreams. Show all posts
Sunday, March 29, 2015
A big little dream
“…when you've discovered your true will you should just forge ahead like a steam train.”
~ Jimmy Page, 1977, quoted by George Case in Jimmy Page: Magus, Musician, Man: An Unauthorized Biography
Hey, a girl can dream, can't she? In fact, she should.
~ Jimmy Page, 1977, quoted by George Case in Jimmy Page: Magus, Musician, Man: An Unauthorized Biography
Hey, a girl can dream, can't she? In fact, she should.
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Perchance to Dream
“I had a dream. Crazy dream. Anything I wanted to know, any place I needed to go...”
~ Led Zeppelin, The Song Remains The Same
Mage Music 86
Dreams aren't merely entertaining (or scary… or tedious) stories in your head with tidy beginnings and endings. But they also aren't just random neurological blips that the unconscious mind stitches together that, upon wakening, you may or may not make sense of.
Dreams are in fact something much bigger than either of those things. Dreams are your brain's tuning in to the infinite (what Edgar Cayce called the Akashic records*, the place outside of time and space that is the energy that is Magick).
The infinite is, of course, too much for direct human interaction. Fortunately for you and me, living beings are equipped with the innate ability to dampen down the information from the Universe to a more tolerable level. Over time the mental filters that do this are altered by experience and by stored emotional reactions to that experience. Like camera filters that distort color or guitar effects pedals that manipulate sound waves, the output – dreams – no longer resembles the original input.
So the “story” you think you experienced while you were sleeping isn't an actual independent story but is rather the memory of a finite segment of the infinite. What you remember, the dream, is only a filtered approximation of the long-running series that is the Akashic records. In order to make sense of this experience your mind, hardwired for pattern recognition, edits the package to make a story of it, a pattern. Thus the points where you started and later stopped tuning in seem like a beginning and an ending – although they aren't. You've tuned into an ongoing story.
Dream interpretation
The human mind not only reduces the saturation and filters the content of input so that the brain won’t be blown by contact with the infinite, but it also interprets what is received. Symbols are created as placeholders for infinite concepts that are simply too much to otherwise comprehend. Some would say these symbols are archetypes of the human unconscious, others believe they are entirely personal. They are both.
The symbols and the artificial constructs of beginning and ending not only create a way for the human mind to interact with the infinite, but provide a way to remember the experience. We call it story, melody, painting, dance. Vision.
~ Led Zeppelin, The Song Remains The Same
Mage Music 86
Dreams aren't merely entertaining (or scary… or tedious) stories in your head with tidy beginnings and endings. But they also aren't just random neurological blips that the unconscious mind stitches together that, upon wakening, you may or may not make sense of.
Dreams are in fact something much bigger than either of those things. Dreams are your brain's tuning in to the infinite (what Edgar Cayce called the Akashic records*, the place outside of time and space that is the energy that is Magick).
The infinite has no beginning or end, and neither do dreams.
Dreams are like turning on the TV in the middle of a long-running series, watching for five minutes and then turning it off. You don’t get an enticing beginning and a tidy ending watching for that brief amount of time, but you do get a glimpse of something much bigger than the fragment you perceived. From that little snippet you can generally figure out something about the ongoing story line. You also understand that the five minutes you watched was not the complete story in itself, no matter how complete it seems.
Dampers, filters and wah-wah pedals
Dreams are like turning on the TV in the middle of a long-running series, watching for five minutes and then turning it off. You don’t get an enticing beginning and a tidy ending watching for that brief amount of time, but you do get a glimpse of something much bigger than the fragment you perceived. From that little snippet you can generally figure out something about the ongoing story line. You also understand that the five minutes you watched was not the complete story in itself, no matter how complete it seems.
Dampers, filters and wah-wah pedals
The infinite is, of course, too much for direct human interaction. Fortunately for you and me, living beings are equipped with the innate ability to dampen down the information from the Universe to a more tolerable level. Over time the mental filters that do this are altered by experience and by stored emotional reactions to that experience. Like camera filters that distort color or guitar effects pedals that manipulate sound waves, the output – dreams – no longer resembles the original input.
So the “story” you think you experienced while you were sleeping isn't an actual independent story but is rather the memory of a finite segment of the infinite. What you remember, the dream, is only a filtered approximation of the long-running series that is the Akashic records. In order to make sense of this experience your mind, hardwired for pattern recognition, edits the package to make a story of it, a pattern. Thus the points where you started and later stopped tuning in seem like a beginning and an ending – although they aren't. You've tuned into an ongoing story.
Dream interpretation
The human mind not only reduces the saturation and filters the content of input so that the brain won’t be blown by contact with the infinite, but it also interprets what is received. Symbols are created as placeholders for infinite concepts that are simply too much to otherwise comprehend. Some would say these symbols are archetypes of the human unconscious, others believe they are entirely personal. They are both.
The choice of symbols reflects the individual’s desires. The meaning of symbols reflects Universal truths. Symbolism is the human mind’s instrument that is used to get a handle on that which cannot be handled, on the microscopic and macroscopic levels.
The symbols and the artificial constructs of beginning and ending not only create a way for the human mind to interact with the infinite, but provide a way to remember the experience. We call it story, melody, painting, dance. Vision.
Magick.
♫ ♪ ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪
* “Akasha” means “aether” in both the elemental
and metaphysical senses
Saturday, August 10, 2013
Dreamtime
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| click to enlarge |
~ Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Mage Music 65
This is the Mage's true art: Like a novelist or a movie producer who creates such fine work that the audience is totally comfortable and willing to suspend disbelief and dive into a secondary and parallel reality of a fictional world, the Mage creates a work so perfectly free of stray and undermining thoughts that he can suspend his own disbelief and enter into a new state of reality. This is the path to the manifestation of Magick.
The disciplined mind of the Mage - the mind with powerful desire and will that stays On Purpose through ritual - doesn't actually repress or block thoughts that would undermine the Magick. Those thoughts just do not even occur, because they have no place in the mental setting the Mage creates. And yet, we all know what it is like to have unwanted thoughts slip in when we least want them. They're bad enough for us, but for a Mage those unwanted stray thoughts can ruin an otherwise perfectly good Magickal ritual.
Not thinking of pink elephants. Easier said than done? Not really. We all dream, don’t we.
I had a dream. Crazy dream. Anything I wanted to know, any place I needed to go...
~ Lyrics from The Song Remains the Same
Dreams are the alternate reality of the sleeping mind, and they are also the imaginings of the waking mind in the form of daydreams. A lucid dream is dreaming with awareness. While traditionally lucid dreaming refers to dreams that occur while asleep, dreaming while awake – if a person is aware of and directing the dream – could be considered lucid dreaming, too.
Dreams are experienced as reality while they’re happening. A Mage must experience the desired changes he wishes to manifest as reality before they can happen. A Mage does this using a process very similar to dreaming. He becomes so fully invested in a secondary and parallel reality that it exists for him in personal experience which then allows him to shift from what has been to what will be.
Not thinking of pink elephants. Easier said than done? Not really. We all dream, don’t we.
I had a dream. Crazy dream. Anything I wanted to know, any place I needed to go...
~ Lyrics from The Song Remains the Same
Dreams are the alternate reality of the sleeping mind, and they are also the imaginings of the waking mind in the form of daydreams. A lucid dream is dreaming with awareness. While traditionally lucid dreaming refers to dreams that occur while asleep, dreaming while awake – if a person is aware of and directing the dream – could be considered lucid dreaming, too.
Dreams are experienced as reality while they’re happening. A Mage must experience the desired changes he wishes to manifest as reality before they can happen. A Mage does this using a process very similar to dreaming. He becomes so fully invested in a secondary and parallel reality that it exists for him in personal experience which then allows him to shift from what has been to what will be.
A Mage's desire and will, focused through ritual, channel the energy of the Universe to manifest a new reality. A lucid dreamer uses desire and will to create a new dream reality without the expectation of carry-over to the waking state.
Understanding lucid dreaming gives the non-Mage a taste of what Magick feels like when it is being worked because lucid dreaming is of the same coin as Magick, only with different expectations and outcomes.
Add a little music into lucid daydreams and the state is as close to what a Mage does to change reality as makes no difference. Try it, you might like it.
♪
Playlist
These two pieces just popped out at me today. They aren't particularly dreamy - in fact, they're hard-edged and a little scary... but dreams can go that way, too.
Baby Who’s Driving Your Car Jimmy Page & John Williams, 1970
Guitar solo Jimmy Page, Landover May 30 1977
♫
Saturday, June 29, 2013
Child's Play
“I take chances and I risk, but I don’t study. I’m trying it on. With this spacey, trippy shit, I get in the middle of it and go.”
~ Robert Plant, interview by Tim Cummings, July 11 2012
Mage Music 58
We all know about play. We might not play very much as adults compared to kids, but play is an integral part of a healthy childhood and kids play a lot. It’s probably no coincidence that generating music with musical instruments is called “playing”, because the two are related.
It probably won’t come as any surprise to you that play and Magick can be related, as well.
Children naturally and spontaneously engage in music and play, and often the two are inseparable activities. Kids often will sing or hum while totally focused on their play activities, and we all know about play activities that involve chanting or singing. How can you hop through the hopscotch pattern, jump rope or play clapping games with your best friend without music?
If you think back, you might remember how it felt to become completely submerged in the world you played in – and how that play world was not necessarily at all like the world around you in reality. Do you remember how you completely were in that world, and how you experienced it the same way as the here and now, the “real” reality?
The Swiss psychologist and philosopher, Jean Piaget (1896-1980), described how children take information from their experiences in the outside ("real") world and integrate that information into the mental structures they've created for themselves. They then learn to change or accommodate their mental structures to better match up with what they already know. That's how they learn to operate in a world of grownups.
But when playing, children do the opposite: They suspend the grownup reality and make their internal world adapt to experiences of their own choosing. And then they fully live there for the duration of the play time.
An isn't it interesting that musicians do that, too - and so do Mages.
Dreams, play, music and Magick
Dreams are like play in that the dreamer is totally immersed in a reality of his own creation. Musicians, too, can become fully immersed in a created reality of the musical moment. How many photos have you seen of Jimmy Page totally absorbed in the sound and creative process, surrounded by band and stage crew, in front of tens of thousands of people - and yet oblivious to the world around him? Eyes closed, face sometimes vacant, sometimes distorted with intense focus, the “real” reality has ceased to exist for him in that moment.
~ Robert Plant, interview by Tim Cummings, July 11 2012
Mage Music 58
It probably won’t come as any surprise to you that play and Magick can be related, as well.
Children naturally and spontaneously engage in music and play, and often the two are inseparable activities. Kids often will sing or hum while totally focused on their play activities, and we all know about play activities that involve chanting or singing. How can you hop through the hopscotch pattern, jump rope or play clapping games with your best friend without music?
If you think back, you might remember how it felt to become completely submerged in the world you played in – and how that play world was not necessarily at all like the world around you in reality. Do you remember how you completely were in that world, and how you experienced it the same way as the here and now, the “real” reality?
The Swiss psychologist and philosopher, Jean Piaget (1896-1980), described how children take information from their experiences in the outside ("real") world and integrate that information into the mental structures they've created for themselves. They then learn to change or accommodate their mental structures to better match up with what they already know. That's how they learn to operate in a world of grownups.
But when playing, children do the opposite: They suspend the grownup reality and make their internal world adapt to experiences of their own choosing. And then they fully live there for the duration of the play time.
An isn't it interesting that musicians do that, too - and so do Mages.
Dreams, play, music and Magick
Dreams are like play in that the dreamer is totally immersed in a reality of his own creation. Musicians, too, can become fully immersed in a created reality of the musical moment. How many photos have you seen of Jimmy Page totally absorbed in the sound and creative process, surrounded by band and stage crew, in front of tens of thousands of people - and yet oblivious to the world around him? Eyes closed, face sometimes vacant, sometimes distorted with intense focus, the “real” reality has ceased to exist for him in that moment.
Just like a kid.
This is the very state a Mage needs to generate in himself to manifest change in the world. The state can be reached through any well-executed ritual, but music is natural and familiar to the brain and the body, and thus using music as ritual of Magick allows transmutation of reality to become a more natural and familiar process, too.
I'm cutting this week's Mage Music post short because I want to have some playtime of my own. See you next week, and enjoy your Summer's Day.
This is the very state a Mage needs to generate in himself to manifest change in the world. The state can be reached through any well-executed ritual, but music is natural and familiar to the brain and the body, and thus using music as ritual of Magick allows transmutation of reality to become a more natural and familiar process, too.
♫
I'm cutting this week's Mage Music post short because I want to have some playtime of my own. See you next week, and enjoy your Summer's Day.
♫
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