How do you get heard by those who value doctrine over love or justice?
How do you do drama without getting caught in the Drama Triangle?
In this interview Evan chose to interview a character that normally would supply useful objectivity: a building. But because it was a church, it was soon found to be exclusivist and beyond reproach. Therefore, another character needed to be interviewed, but which one? It is interesting that while the church was itself biased and close-minded, it was able and willing to recommend a character that was transformative for this dreamer: a long-haired, fat, aging hippy woman.
What fundamental life issues are you dealing with now in your life?
1. Getting my Deep Democracy Forum project going in my home town.
2. Completing the reconciliation process with my family.
Tell me a dream you remember. It can be an old one, a repetitive dream, a nightmare, or one that you’re sure you understand.
I’m in my local mormon church with Rex Friendly, a bishop of this Mormon ward. He’s like the priest of a parish. We’re not in his office (which is where I have met him in real life), but out in the building. There are lots of people moving around. One is a very large woman with a long braid at the back of her head. I say to her, “I think you were a hippie in earlier years” and everyone laughs. I have a message for Ian: The two excommunications I have had from the Mormon church were examples of “unrighteous dominion” and therefore the Lord does not recognize them. I am using church legal language to attempt to force a meeting on the matter with the local Council. My message is not only to see if the Church will acknowledge this unrighteous dominion, but also to use that acknowledgement to set an example for our city. If it can, then our city can transform its legacy and set an example for the world in terms of the possibility of transformation. I cannot tell if the Bishop understands because he is being interrupted by others as we talk. He looks at a man who is cleaning up after a church celebration and nodding approval at his cleaning up.
Why do you think that you had this dream?
I have a project I am working on called “The Deep Democracy of Open Forums.” Mary Wills book, “Bomb Power,” a history of the Manhattan Project. It seems to talk about where I am and why I live where I do. If that’s a grand delusion, it’s grand indeed. It makes sense to me and gives me an enormous amount of motivation.
If it were playing at a theater, what name would be on the marquee?
“Transformation of My City”
These are the characters in the dream, beside yourself…
Building, Ward House, Ian Alexander, Hippie Woman, Vacuum Man, Rug, Debris on Rug, People milling about, My City, the Bomb
If one character had something especially important to tell you, what would it be?
Ward House
Now remember how as a child you liked to pretend you were a teacher or a doctor? It’s easy and fun for you to imagine that you are this or that character in your dream and answer some questions I ask, saying the first thing that comes to your mind. If you wait too long to answer, that’s not the character answering – that’s YOU trying to figure out the right thing to say!
Ward House, would you please tell me about yourself and what you are doing?
I have been built with the finest materials by inspired people to exact dimensions. I am very secure and heavily financed. In me is the Truth.
What do you like most about yourself? What are your strengths?
Security! Solidity, clarity, absoluteness, confidence.
What do you dislike most about yourself? Do you have weaknesses? What are they?
There is absolutely nothing I don’t like about myself! I have no weaknesses!
Ward House, you are in Evan’s life experience, correct? He created you, right? Hippy Woman, what aspect of Evan do you represent or most closely personify?
I am a sense of very rigid clarity!
Ward House, it doesn’t sound like you are going to be able to give us much of a different perspective. Do you have a recommendation of a dream character we can interview that might be helpful?
The hippy woman!
Hippy woman, would you please tell me about yourself and what you are doing?
I am so pleased that you ask! No one asks me much of anything because I am so big! In in this place no one wants to think about wild people. I have a very wild past that I love; they don’t like to hear about it because it scares them. I love these people, and that’s why I am here. I understand their fears and I’ve been waiting for this interview.
What do you like most about yourself? What are your strengths?
I love people! I accept people for who and how they are, without condemnation, with compassion! That includes their fears!
What do you dislike most about yourself? Do you have weaknesses? What are they?
There was a time when I didn’t like myself. At this time I am so pleased with myself! I am grateful for being here! That I am this large! I am grateful that I see what I couldn’t see before! I see the fear and the rigidness, the arrogance, the blindness, and it’s OK. But that’s where the problem is. (Cries…)
Hippy Woman, you are in Evan’s life experience, correct? He created you, right? Hippy Woman, what aspect of Evan do you represent or most closely personify?
His love for his people, his family, his friends, his love for those who hate him and fear him. He is feeling deep want to know of his love that his people that you want to know of his caring that they don’t know of and don’t know that they don’t know that they don’t know. He is expressing his gratitude for you being in his life. You have taken such a strong place.
Hippy Woman, if you could be anywhere you wanted to be and take any form you desired, would you change? If so, how?
No! I’m where I need to be! I am so moved that you have asked and that there are those that care.
Do you feel that Evan is hearing you?
Yes! I am so happy to be truly heard!
(Continue, answering as the transformed object, if it chose to change.)
(Character), how would you score yourself 0-10, in confidence, compassion, wisdom, acceptance, peace of mind, and witnessing? Why?
Confidence: 10 I know who I am, warts and all!
Compassion: 10 I have been through a lot. I have learned to be compassionate. It’s not been easy.
Wisdom: 10 I can’t imagine it being less than ten. When I think of wisdom, I think of meaning, I think of seeing the connectedness of all creatures and images. I think of the meaning in trees, the ocean, the sky….It makes me smile! They are what they are. They all I have a place. I celebrate that place!
Acceptance: 10 We are who we are! I love it!
Inner Peace: 10 I can’t think of anything less!
Witnessing: 10 I see, thank God, a grandeur of being, a grandeur of beauty, of experience, a grandeur even of blindness and rigidity. It all has its place in life!
How would Hippy Woman,’s life be different if he naturally scored like you do in all six of these qualities all the time?
He wouldn’t need to react to anyone! He reacts a lot, now. He reacts a lot to the Ward House, to the leadership that inhabits and produced that building, that claims that building. He’s still in reaction to a lot of that and demanding. If he were me he wouldn’t need to be that demanding.
How would that change his life?
He would probably disidentify with that part of himself that is standing on top of the wall crying “repentance.” He would be joking, loving, accepting. He would just be there, wherever he was with understanding, without demands. Patient!
If you could live Evan’s life for him, how would you live it differently?
With more patience, compassion, without demands, with humor!
If you could live Evan’s waking life for him today, would you handle his three life issues differently? If so, how?
You have given him some ideas about how to bring about the Open Forum.
Follow through his remote psychokinesis experiment.
To bring into completion his reconciliation process with his children.
What three life issues would you focus on if you were in charge of his life?
The open forum is the one I am here for, to give him a different perspective. He is challenging, but not demanding this new Mormon leadership to bring him in front of the High Council and present to them an idea that seems to be timely, that this places has an opportunity that he wants to take advantage of. This gives him a new approach that he hasn’t considered before.
It brings to mind an event that occurred years ago in a Mormon building, May 21, 1972, when he appeared in it where he was first excommunicated, as a hippy. He had just come out of the forest where he had been for seven years.
(I had gone down to sing for my daughter a negro spiritual in hippy clothes with a pony tail. The bishop was crying. After I left this building I started getting nagged by the idea that he was Joseph Smith. He looked up the birth and death date of Joseph Smith. He added that date to his birthdate and got the present date. It was an amazing coincidence and he struggled to understand what it meant. For years he wondered if he might not be Joseph Smith, reincarnated.
In what life situations would it be most beneficial for Evan to imagine that he is you and act as you would?
In virtually all life situations. That’s the personality he needs to carry with him all life situations!
Character, do you do drama? If not, why not?
Yes, but with pleasure, without anxiety, without worry. It’s fun, it brings color, it brings humor. It brings life! I can’t imagine life without drama! It would be silly!
Do you play the victim?
I can play it, but I’m not it!
Do you play the rescuer?
I can do that with great fake self-righteousness!
Do you play the persecutor?
I can do it very well! There’s a Hitler in me – small potatoes!
What is your secret for staying out of drama?
Detachment! I can easily detach!
Why do you think that you are in Evan’s life?
He needs me! He has forgotten me! I am there for him! He sees me! That’s why I am so big. He has avoided seeing me before!
How is Evan most likely to ignore what you are saying to him?
If he were a fool he would ignore me. He doesn’t want to be a fool. Actually, he IS a fool! He has been very proud of it before. Maybe he’s not so proud of it now!
What would you recommend that he do about that?
Remember the braid!
I think Evan had this dream because
To get him focused at a new reference point. A new view of what he can bring to the table in his conversations with the Mormon community. It means a humanity to him that he hasn’t been so conscious of before, that he hasn’t allowed himself to be aware of, that he has been too proud to be aware of ! That he hasn’t felt was necessary before! He has been so stupid before!
I think this dream event happened or (some character) was in the dream because…
The man with the vacuum cleaner is cleaning up trivial stuff. that’s what the Bishop is valuing now. He’s seeing trivial stuff getting taken care of. He doesn’t see the big picture. He’s young, well-intended, a medical doctor, just beginning his practice. He’s very confident and open and aware of being inexperienced. He’s trying to do a good job, but it’s all new to him. He has no idea of what’s coming.
What have you heard yourself say?
That my experience and view of the Mormon institution is pretty rigid and insecure. It is self-contained. It doesn’t see the need of any outside influence. But there is a presence there in the form of a liberating female that is very much aware of what is and what isn’t that is there in a loving way despite that institutional self-sufficiency or spiritual conceit. The fat woman part of myself has been through the woods, the ravine, the wars and survived them and thrived in spite of them and achieved a sense of peace and wisdom and centeredness. She is good humored and doesn’t preach or attack. I’m in Los Alamos for more than just happenstance.
If this experience were a wake-up call from the most central part of who you are, what do you think it would be saying to you?
I don’t need to be anxious or sweat about consequences. Feel humor, be caring, love church authorities, family, colleagues. There isn’t anything other than that to concentrate on. The first fear of ecclesiastical institutions are fear of defilement and the second is not loving well enough.
