Are you owning your own power? Most of us either think that we do or blame circumstances for our failure to do so. If we only had a different job, different partner, different body, more money…you know the drill! If you were in touch with all the power that you have inside yourself, how would you be different? What would you do? Our fear is that it would overwhelm us, because in truth, we can hardly handle the power we already have well. Instead of exercising it, we waste our time and energy on the internet, TV, the phone, and on our various mindless addictions. We allow the mundane in life to define who we are. But what if that stopped? What if you were able to access your power? What then?
In this interview we view the struggles of avoidance, of non-comprehension, of fear, fading away with measured but persistent deep listening. What emerges is a way through these resistances, a way through to our authentic self, a way forward so that our light can shine brighter in service to others in this world.
What are three fundamental life issues that you are dealing with now in your life?
1 Hard to describe… a latent experience of lacking something.
2 That I can’t get hold of my heart completely. As if my heart were withdrawing from me…
3 I am being faced with something that might be my task in life. That is working with trauma. I am fighting for a concept.
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 am joining a meeting of former classmates for a reunion. I am wearing a suit. Everybody is already there when I arrive. They are waiting for me. I feel pressure to appear nice. That’s why I’m wearing a suit, to look good. I am well-dressed and I’m almost there. The entire scene vanishes. I now see my grandfather, that I really liked the most of the whole family. (He’s been dead for twenty-five years.) His eyes and face light up. He’s radiating with energy, almost out of this world. I can’t say it was positive energy. It definitely wasn’t earthly energy. I knew he was dead in the dream. At the same time I knew he wasn’t. I ask him, “How is it to be dead?” I feel that although he is dead he is more alive than he ever was while he was alive. We did not converse verbally. I asked him non-verbally. As an answer he took a glass wand. He was pointing it at me. I knew he was going to shoot a beam of light through my head! It was a kind of initiation. I knew that he didn’t want to hurt me in any way. I knew it was part of an initiation ritual. I knew it would probably hurt so I got very afraid of it. Then I woke up.
Why do you think that you had this dream?
This dream is just loaded with energy!
If this dream were playing at a theater, what name would be on the marquee?
Initiation!
These are the characters in the dream, beside yourself…
Classmates, environment, suit, grandfather, energy, wand, light.
If one character had something especially important to tell you, what would it be?
The wand.
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!
Wand, would you please tell me about yourself and what you are doing?
I am angry! I am anger itself! I am a held-back energy! I want to shoot off! I’m touching his forehead! I’m about to go off and shoot through his head! I don’t want to hold back any more! I’m bad-tempered! I’m impatient! I’ve been held back so long! I’m really impatient!
What do you like most about yourself? What are your strengths?
I am almost like a laser beam. I like my energy! I can penetrate like a laser! Strange! I feel fiery! Yet I’m cold like glass!
What do you dislike most about yourself? Do you have weaknesses? What are they?
I’m impatient, I’m grumpy, and I’m getting a headache from this energy! No…that’s Randy talking…It’s Randy that has the headache! He can’t handle me! That’s why he has a headache!
What is it like to not have a headache?
I am at peace. Space opens up!
Wand. you are in Randy’s life experience, correct? He created you, right? Wand, what aspect of Randy do you represent or most closely personify?
He plays a role in MY dream! I dream HIM! He is a part of me!!! He could make contact with me but he’s afraid that I’ll tear him apart!
Will you?
If he does not make allow contact with me, what choice will I have?
So you love him so much that if he doesn’t wake up and listen to you you’ll tear the shit out of him?
I am not to be taken personally. I’m just energy. I need space to be. He will either understand that or he won’t.
Wand, if you could be anywhere you wanted to be and take any form you desired, would you change? If so, how?
I want to spread wings! Then I also stop being so impatient! I feel an energy that keeps spreading….not a butterfly but I am an energetic field instead of just a wand! This wand feels like a frozen energy! I’m an energy field!
(Continue, answering as the transformed object, if it chose to change.)
Energy field, how would you score yourself 0-10, in confidence, compassion, wisdom, acceptance, peace of mind, and witnessing? Why?
Confidence: 10 I have no conception of fear.
Compassion: ? It’s not that I’m against it…I would have to steal human energy.
Wisdom: 10 I’m very good at being at the right place at the right time. I’m a very structured energy field.
Acceptance: 10 It’s very human! In my natural state there is nothing else but acceptance!
Inner Peace: 10 The more I am able to expand the more inner peace I have! I’m feeling cheerful!
Witnessing: 10 I’m the creator and as creator I can distance myself. I can be the axis, the center.
How would Randy’s life be different if he naturally scored like you do in all six of these qualities all the time?
(Coughing….) Randy is getting a little taste of what happens if I really show up and take a place in his life. He will not be very different from what I am. The results would be unpredictable! He would experience and immense increase in energy!
If you could live Randy’s life for him, how would you live it differently?
I would be more in the foreground of his life. All the outward stuff would stay the same. It would be about the energy that he puts out. I want to be put into a certain form by him. I want to bring about something in his life. I want to be the impulse of life. The impulse for things happening. I am his goals!
If you could live Randy’s waking life for him today, would you handle his three life issues differently? If so, how?
1 The latent experience of lacking something.
He has not really understood at all – it’s like a physical law – that if he holds me back he will experience a lack. But there is no lack!
2 That I can’t get hold of my heart completely. Is is as if my heart were withdrawing from me.
He has to put his heart wholeheartedly into something, fully feel his heart. If he lets me in he will feel his heart and it will grow. If you hold your heart back you cannot fully experience.
3 I am being faced with something that might be my task in life. That is working with trauma. I am fighting for a concept.
That is MY theme! I want him to find a form for this idea! I want him to create concepts for it!
What form would you use, energy field?
A form of light – like a rotating field that can move forward. Like a UFO!
What three life issues would you focus on if you were in charge of his life?
The three life issues are MY life issues. They’re not really his.
In what life situations would it be most beneficial for Randy to imagine that he is you and act as you would?
I feel like a massive energy. He has a soul; I don’t have it.
Aren’t you connected with him right now?
I am now connected with his soul and with him! It’s like balm for me! I am changing too through my contact with Randy! I am becoming finer, gentler. I’m still intense, but I am capable of tuning in much finer.
How is Randy most likely to ignore what you are saying to him?
It will have an effect on him.
I think Randy had this dream because
I am becoming more like a person now! The dream was about me appearing.
I think this dream event happened or (some character) was in the dream because…
It was because of me that this scene of the suit and the reunion vanished.
What have you heard yourself say?
It felt like being in trance; that is good. This energy that I felt is very real. I don’t think I’m quite living it in my life. It would be a totally different way of approaching grief, loss, and suffering.
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 would definitely regarding it as a wake-up call from my soul. It is saying, set your energy free and then your life will unfold. ‘Those life issues will no longer be life issues for you.
Comments by others: ‘The heart! Fully give your heart into something and then you can fully feel your heart!’ ‘Passion! Aliveness!” “I want to take that energy and make it mine!”
Notice that most people who would have such a dream would focus on their deceased relative. They would probably be convinced that this was a real contact and they were getting an important message from beyond the grave. That may indeed be the case here; we did not ask. However, what we can say is that this was not the concern, interest, or point of what the wand had to communicate – acceptance of and growing into a new, transformative, highly positive identity. Next to this, questions of life after death become of lesser importance. This shows a fundamental difference in the emphasis and priorities regarding spirituality between ourselves, on the one hand, and aspects of our greater identity that already, presently, exist in a state of timeless self-fulfillment.
Notice how repressed, held back energy within the dreamer becomes constipated, impatient, and angry. Under such conditions, when it does burst out it is likely to do in uncontrolled and uncontrollable ways that frighten us and that cause us to repress more. So these transformative inner potentials are forced to become louder and potentially more destructive if they are to be recognized, heard, and expressed at all. So what we have here is a good example of a basic principle of IDL: if you do not listen to a wake-up call it gets louder, meaning that it may turn into a nightmare, somatize in all sorts of ways, in this case, as a headache, or externalize as damaged relationships, “bad luck,” and “accidents.”
Notice that our perspective makes all the difference. From the point of view of Wand, Randy is a character in its dream! It is not a matter of one perspective being valid and the other delusional; it is a matter of recognizing that both perspectives are needed and useful. We need to learn to develop the flexibility to be able to shift among them as necessary. That’s one of the skills IDL teaches.
Notice that potentials in the background of one’s consciousness shift to the foreground as they are listened to. This figure/ground shift is the essence of authentic transformation. However, it is not that ground is always better than figure. It is that the ability to shift back and forth between them at will, depending on shifting figures and shifting grounds and shifting circumstances, constitutes both wisdom and freedom.
Notice that from the perspective of high scoring self aspects “there is no lack.” Scarcity is an invention of waking identity. Abundance is the reality for the great majority of who you really are.
While it went unexplored in this interview, Energy Field volunteered “UFO” as a proper personification of the crystallization of the energy of Randy’s goals. He could interview UFO to clarify and advance his goals.
Notice that spirit must be incarnated to have identity. It says, “He has a soul; I don’t have it. I am changing too through my contact with Randy! I am becoming finer, gentler. I’m still intense, but I am capable of tuning in much finer.” Notice that spirit grows through incarnation, hence the reason and purpose for evolution. From the perspective of Energy Field, the dream was not about Randy’s resistance, his contact with his grandfather, a wand, or his fear. It wasn’t primarily about the Energy Field’s anger or impatience either. It was about its desire to be born, to incarnate, to live, to express, to be present in specific, concrete life expressions – thoughts, feelings, actions.
