Waxing Philosophic
By Mary Hannington
This is an old piece. That its meanderings apply to similar events in my life that took place exactly a year from when it was written amazes me. That the lessons in the dream still apply... I republish it here at VagabondGuru.com because that is where it belongs.
I dream in color.
I used to write down my dreams.
I used to try and control my dreams.
I once did control my dreams…
I don’t try anymore.
The other night I had a vivid dream. The planet Earth was overpopulated. Young tyrants had taken control believing they could make the overcrowded world a better place. They began by banishing the experienced, the wise and their animals to a distant planet. (This last bit I’m sure has to do with the fact that I recently concluded that any obsession with cyber-pets is stupid, it's impossible to really love them.)
I had just finished watching “Scream Bloody Murder” about the genocide in Rwanda and Darfur. The terrible scenes of what hatred had wrought. The dead, the mutilated and the raped… Then the man who was forgiven by a woman whose family he had killed.
The unspeakable horror of these events was itself like a dream.
It made the subject of my own dream understandable. This and at that time I had just met my own young and quite evil tyrant.
As a warrior in the world, Castaneda’s character, Don Juan would say that we must use the attributes of control, discipline, forbearance and timing to defeat the tyrant. Warriors, he teaches, never take themselves seriously. Tyrants take themselves deadly serious thereby distorting their view of reality. Tyrants like Ahmad Muhammad Harun in Sudan and Bagosora in Rwanda are difficult to defeat because they force their realities on entire populations. My tyrant has a similar sense of reality. A reality in which control or power is earned by rights of a perceived superiority.
Don Juan’s theories (fictional as they are) seem to keep cropping up in my life and they jibe with my love of eastern philosophies. He puts his tyrants into three classes. Petty tyrants, who inspire terror and are physically and emotionally abusive, little petty tyrants, who may deliberately cause problems, but do little real harm and the last, teensy-weensy petty tyrants, who are just plain irritating. He says it is the lucky warrior who stumbles across a “pinches tironos” because one can only expose this person, and so win, by losing one’s self-importance thus taking the higher ground. How can you be humiliated if you don't take yourself seriously? In doing so you move further down the path of “seeing”.
That’s of course if you survive!
Zen teaching goes one step further “What is a bad man, but a good man’s job”.
My tyrants show up when I’m at my best. I had spent a month putting together an art department on a small film – a labor of love, but heavy on the labor side. We did amazing things with the little we had. We worked sixteen, sometimes eighteen hours a day. The whole crew had become a family, but one of my own was already plotting against us. I saw it coming - we had only two days left to go.
It was bad.
The tyrant wormed her way onto the set, took advantage of a young affable director and treated all that were about her like peons, tossing out insults like candy wrappers. She became a one-man band who thought she could replace a whole department, it didn't work.
She would later find herself blocked from furthering her career.
Why? I let her be herself and advised others to do the same.
Hatha yoga teaches me that you must move beyond the self to become enlightened. A kind of “Let go, let God.” When you do this bullies and tyrants don't matter and are easily defeated.
I have had many “tiranos or tironitos” cross my path. Most have failed to harm me, but they don’t like me very much. One, a first rate pinches tiranos, almost destroyed a marriage, contributed to the death of her own mother and my friend. Not finished yet, she stole the woman's ashes and had her secretly buried. She destroyed herself by destroying her own reality and no longer has any sense of power. The tyrant on the film set, having lost one fight had moved on to wage a second and a third and years later has lost the fight.
I dreamed I was in the future. I had a petty tyrant in this dream, I have one now. A woman. Women are far crueler enemies to fight than men.
In my dream millions were preparing to leave. I was packing clothes and the things I would need; It appeared I was leaving too. You see, the woman in my dream (the tyrant) had explained that I could stay, but my dogs would be confiscated. There was no food for them in the new world they were creating. She knew this was the one thing that would make me leave and I was in her way.
I had asked her for some shoes. I had none to take and when she arrived with them, the shoes were a size nine. “Oh look!” she said, “They must have made a mistake, these aren’t 7 ½!” The shoes fit her perfectly. In my dream this woman was cruel, like my current nemesis, she delights in digging in the knife.
Everything about the woman in the dream was cold and mechanical. She whisked us away on an industrial steel flying skateboard. It looked like this…
Okay, so sometimes I still sketch the stuff in my dreams…
The woman explained that we would be transported off the planet in large black mattresses. These were not comfy Serta mattresses with their fake brocade patterns, but forbidding things, huge and made of stiff rubber. These were the only things that were known to aid survival on the trip and it was hoped that inside them so would we. In the dream I was playing along, knowing somehow that I would get through. That the woman thinking she had won would become so drunk with power she would go too far as my real tyrant had done.
You might call my dream a nightmare, but it ended with a vision of an earth populated with animals. All the animals I knew were there, my animals were there and I awoke with a broad smile. A world of cyber-pets defeated!
As I get closer to my dreams for life and I have been working diligently on them. I have realized that you are rarely handed anything for free. You must work hard for it. Not by cutting down others in your path like the petty tyrant, but by being the best you can be. Never by working alone or strong-arming others to follow you, but by having patience in bringing others to where you are in your knowledge. By admitting your own weaknesses and seeking out others whose skills complement yours. Insulting those that work with you or building an environment of fear only gets you sheep.
And never ever should anyone let a tyrant win.
This is an old piece. That its meanderings apply to similar events in my life that took place exactly a year from when it was written amazes me. That the lessons in the dream still apply... I republish it here at VagabondGuru.com because that is where it belongs.
I dream in color.
I used to write down my dreams.
I used to try and control my dreams.
I once did control my dreams…
I don’t try anymore.
The other night I had a vivid dream. The planet Earth was overpopulated. Young tyrants had taken control believing they could make the overcrowded world a better place. They began by banishing the experienced, the wise and their animals to a distant planet. (This last bit I’m sure has to do with the fact that I recently concluded that any obsession with cyber-pets is stupid, it's impossible to really love them.)
I had just finished watching “Scream Bloody Murder” about the genocide in Rwanda and Darfur. The terrible scenes of what hatred had wrought. The dead, the mutilated and the raped… Then the man who was forgiven by a woman whose family he had killed.
The unspeakable horror of these events was itself like a dream.
It made the subject of my own dream understandable. This and at that time I had just met my own young and quite evil tyrant.
As a warrior in the world, Castaneda’s character, Don Juan would say that we must use the attributes of control, discipline, forbearance and timing to defeat the tyrant. Warriors, he teaches, never take themselves seriously. Tyrants take themselves deadly serious thereby distorting their view of reality. Tyrants like Ahmad Muhammad Harun in Sudan and Bagosora in Rwanda are difficult to defeat because they force their realities on entire populations. My tyrant has a similar sense of reality. A reality in which control or power is earned by rights of a perceived superiority.
Don Juan’s theories (fictional as they are) seem to keep cropping up in my life and they jibe with my love of eastern philosophies. He puts his tyrants into three classes. Petty tyrants, who inspire terror and are physically and emotionally abusive, little petty tyrants, who may deliberately cause problems, but do little real harm and the last, teensy-weensy petty tyrants, who are just plain irritating. He says it is the lucky warrior who stumbles across a “pinches tironos” because one can only expose this person, and so win, by losing one’s self-importance thus taking the higher ground. How can you be humiliated if you don't take yourself seriously? In doing so you move further down the path of “seeing”.
That’s of course if you survive!
Zen teaching goes one step further “What is a bad man, but a good man’s job”.
My tyrants show up when I’m at my best. I had spent a month putting together an art department on a small film – a labor of love, but heavy on the labor side. We did amazing things with the little we had. We worked sixteen, sometimes eighteen hours a day. The whole crew had become a family, but one of my own was already plotting against us. I saw it coming - we had only two days left to go.
It was bad.
The tyrant wormed her way onto the set, took advantage of a young affable director and treated all that were about her like peons, tossing out insults like candy wrappers. She became a one-man band who thought she could replace a whole department, it didn't work.
She would later find herself blocked from furthering her career.
Why? I let her be herself and advised others to do the same.
Hatha yoga teaches me that you must move beyond the self to become enlightened. A kind of “Let go, let God.” When you do this bullies and tyrants don't matter and are easily defeated.
I have had many “tiranos or tironitos” cross my path. Most have failed to harm me, but they don’t like me very much. One, a first rate pinches tiranos, almost destroyed a marriage, contributed to the death of her own mother and my friend. Not finished yet, she stole the woman's ashes and had her secretly buried. She destroyed herself by destroying her own reality and no longer has any sense of power. The tyrant on the film set, having lost one fight had moved on to wage a second and a third and years later has lost the fight.
I dreamed I was in the future. I had a petty tyrant in this dream, I have one now. A woman. Women are far crueler enemies to fight than men.
In my dream millions were preparing to leave. I was packing clothes and the things I would need; It appeared I was leaving too. You see, the woman in my dream (the tyrant) had explained that I could stay, but my dogs would be confiscated. There was no food for them in the new world they were creating. She knew this was the one thing that would make me leave and I was in her way.
I had asked her for some shoes. I had none to take and when she arrived with them, the shoes were a size nine. “Oh look!” she said, “They must have made a mistake, these aren’t 7 ½!” The shoes fit her perfectly. In my dream this woman was cruel, like my current nemesis, she delights in digging in the knife.
Everything about the woman in the dream was cold and mechanical. She whisked us away on an industrial steel flying skateboard. It looked like this…
Okay, so sometimes I still sketch the stuff in my dreams…
The woman explained that we would be transported off the planet in large black mattresses. These were not comfy Serta mattresses with their fake brocade patterns, but forbidding things, huge and made of stiff rubber. These were the only things that were known to aid survival on the trip and it was hoped that inside them so would we. In the dream I was playing along, knowing somehow that I would get through. That the woman thinking she had won would become so drunk with power she would go too far as my real tyrant had done.
You might call my dream a nightmare, but it ended with a vision of an earth populated with animals. All the animals I knew were there, my animals were there and I awoke with a broad smile. A world of cyber-pets defeated!
As I get closer to my dreams for life and I have been working diligently on them. I have realized that you are rarely handed anything for free. You must work hard for it. Not by cutting down others in your path like the petty tyrant, but by being the best you can be. Never by working alone or strong-arming others to follow you, but by having patience in bringing others to where you are in your knowledge. By admitting your own weaknesses and seeking out others whose skills complement yours. Insulting those that work with you or building an environment of fear only gets you sheep.
And never ever should anyone let a tyrant win.
Comments
Posted by: SharpTusk![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://vagabondguru.com/LifeInTheAerieDaily/nav-commenters.gif)
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February 2, 2010 12:37 PM
Posted by: Mary![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://vagabondguru.com/LifeInTheAerieDaily/nav-commenters.gif)
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February 3, 2010 02:15 PM