darkened zen

     

              

                                                         Zero Point Place  

1 In your imagination, go to a place that hangs in a timeless state. You know it as the place where you find yourself automatically reset, back to your original state, back to square one. This is your zero point place. In this zero point place there is a nest well. What is the nest well and how do you retrieve water from it?

2 After retrieving water from the nest well, you carry it to a garden where all the plants are dead. Describe this garden. In this dead garden is a dry birdbath. When you pour the water into the birdbath, the garden is suddenly restored. New life springs forth out of the ground. What kind of life appears?

3 Also within this garden you notice a group of injured surgeons at a pool table. They are playing a game of pool with balls that are inlaid with images of aquatic life instead of numbers. As they play the game their injuries begin to heal. What do you do when you see them? Describe what this healing is like as you observe it.

4 Moving on to the outer edge of the garden, you find a hammock between two trees. Lay down in the hammock and sink into a peaceful state. As you lay here in silence, a dark angel glides down from above and presents you with a crystal ball. Describe this angel and your encounter with it. Look into the crystal ball and see a vision of a road. Describe this road and where you think it leads.

5 Suddenly remove yourself from this scene. From where you are now, imagine that this world is a dream. Feel the “tug” or whatever indicators you experience when you are about to wake up from a dream. Now wake up. Where are you? What kind of person are you really? What is your first instinct now that you are finally awake? Is there a person you need to talk to? Describe the scenario you wake up into.

6 Upon waking up, you see that there is someone there, someone who has been waiting patiently for you to wake up. Who is this person and what is their circumstance for being there? They listen as you tell them about your dream, which they consider and give their interpretation of.

7 You remember now that this person is your partner in what is to be a kind of improv performance. This is a special style of improv called a Work Performance, where you will attempt to work at a random job before an audience in a staged setting. You and your acting group have the goal of trying to make this act of arbitrary labor somehow interesting to those that are watching. Try to guess what kind of job you and your partner will be asked to “perform”.

8 As you prepare to get ready for this, the two of you proceed through a garden and into a greenhouse that grows volcanos. What is this place? Explain the volcano greenhouse.

9 Inside the volcano greenhouse there is a makeshift dressing room station set up. Use this station to prepare a disguise you think will help you to fit into this role. Think about what you might be asked to do at the work performance.

10 Also in the green house is a glass centrifuge with feathers in the vials. What happens when you spin the centrifuge? How do your surroundings change? How do you change? 

11This new environment hangs in position momentarily then “deflates” as if the illusion could not hold. What caused it to collapse? Did you notice something or someone that seemed out of place? How do you imagine this deflating?

12 When the new location collapses, it takes your disguise with it, leaving only the road that you saw earlier in the crystal ball. What is at the end of the road? Whatever is at the end of the road reveals what kind of job you will have to perform, because this is where the work performance is being held. You see the chairs and accommodations for the audience set up in or around whatever this is at the end of the road, but no one seems to have arrived yet. What job is this that you will be giving a performance of?

13 Upon arrival you discover a notice indicating that the performance has been cancelled. What do you do now?

14 Take special notice of the lighting for this area where the work performance was going to be. Describe the qualities of this lighting. Tracing the light to its source, you notice that the light source is actually a glass container containing some of the lifeforms that appeared in the garden. Listen closely and hear they are whispering something.

Interpretations for Zero Point Place

1 The nest well in the zero point place represents your intuitive vision.

2 The new life that appears when you fill the birdbath in the dead garden represents what you believe will happen to the things you let go of.

3 How the injuries heal represents how you respond to the mistakes you make and being wrong.

4 Your interaction with the dark angel and the road in crystal ball represents how you feel about doing what is necessary.

5 The place you wake up in represents the part of yourself you forgot existed.

6 The person who is there when you wake up and how they interpret your dream represents how you search for the other parts of yourself that are lost.

7 What job you anticipate you will have to perform in the work performance represents the current obstacle you are trying to overcome.

8 The volcano greenhouse reflects your approach to discovering new ways to connect with others.

9 The disguise that will help you fit into the role represents how you think others discover new ways to connect with you.

10 The changes that occur in response to spinning the centrifuge represents what you think will happen once the connection is actually formed.

11How you envision the collapse of the new environment embodies forgotten priorities

12 What is at the end of the road and the job you will perform represents the mysteries you create for others to experience.

13 What you do when you find out the performance is cancelled represents something you want to know more about.

14 The lighting of this space and the whispers of the lifeforms in the glass jar represents the questions you want to answer for another.

                         Light Places

1 Imagine as many different qualities of light as you can think of and the kinds of environments they are anchored in. Notice that in each of these unique lighting environments the sense of time passing seems to be slightly different. Try to think of as many different qualities of time as you can, such as time passing slowly or time flowing quickly. In each example you think of, notice the pairings of quality of light and quality of time. We can refer to this singular quality as lightime. Make a list of as many different kinds of lightime as you can think of. Just as the Inuit have numerous words to describe the many different manifestations of ice, assign a name for each kind of lightime on your list.

2 Now, to add another layer to this, imagine that each kind of lightime you named corresponds to a person who is missing, who also has that same name. This is your missing persons list. Who are these missing persons? What does it mean that a quality of lightime corresponds to a person? Explain this connection.

3 For each kind of lightime on your missing persons list, seek out and find places that literally have those qualities of light and time. Once you find this location, hear the voice of that missing person speaking in a language of light, telling you how they can be found. Follow their instructions. What actually happens as a result of doing what they say?

4 After this is done, make a mental snapshot of each of these places and what occurred when you went there. Let these images resonate in your mind until your understanding of the qualities they represent becomes stabilized. Having this understanding, translate the subtle qualities of each lightime into a number. Strung together, these numbers form a lightcode. What is a lightcode?  

5 Now imagine a creation lock. What is the creation lock? Enter the string of numbers into the creation lock. How do you enter the lightcode into the lock? What happens as a result?

Interpretations for Light Places

1 The qualities of light and time you think of represents why you want to fulfill your purpose in this world.

2 The missing persons list and the connection between people and lightime represents what you really believe will actually happen after you have fulfilled your life purpose as you understand it to be.

3 The locations that harbor specific lightimes and what happens when you follow the instructions of the voices represents an aspect of the effect your work will have that you have not yet realized.

4 The lightcode represents how you will respond if you fail to fulfill your purpose.

5 The creation lock and what happens when you enter the code represents how your life task relates to the life tasks of others.

                                                           Thought Soup

1 Inside the spider’s kitchen. You and others are sitting at an amber table browsing through a book of recipes. What is this place? Who are they? Describe.

2 Someone comes across recipes for thought soup. In order to make this soup they will add an assortment of ideas and thoughts to someone’s head, then let it stew until a new substance is formed.

Whose head do they choose to make the soup in? Is it you? Now the whole group sets out to seek these ingredients.

3 The first stop is a treehouse library. This is a library of ideas. The shelves in this library do not hold books, but instead individual tablets with single phrases or paragraphs. Your job is to check out individual pages which are assembled together into a single book, which you check out and leave the library with. When you return the book it is disassembled and the pages returned to their original shelves. Describe this treehouse library as you imagine it.

4 Here at this library you and your friends assemble an idea book uniquely for person whose brain they are using to make thought soup (if that person is you, then you wait while they assemble it for you).

When the book is ready, they read it causing their mind to become fluid and heat up until it becomes a bubbling liquid. What is their reaction to this?

5 The second stop is a spice market inside of an ice castle. The spices here are collected by explorers who travel the universe in search of paradoxical perspectives and beliefs that should not exist but somehow do. Their work is to capture the pure essences of these perspectives and convert them into fine substances. Describe this market. What are the vendors like? What are the buyers like and what do they use the spices for?

6 As you and your group browse the vast selection, you speculate as to how the spices are extracted. Explain how you think this might be done. After you have guessed as best you can, ask one of the vendors for their explanation. What do they tell you? How close were you?

7 Finally your group makes a choice about what spices they want to add to the thought soup. What spices do they choose and what essences do they encapsulate? What happens when they are added to the boiling fluid in your head?

8 The third stop for ingredients takes your group to an illegal printing press inside an empty warehouse.

This operation is run by an elusive group known as The Chroniclers who dedicate their lives to telling the invisible stories that are mundane and not worth telling. Once recorded, these stories are told and retold and retold more until they start to shift and change and grow and become richer. Each retelling of the story is recorded and archived so that its evolution can be tracked.

Describe this operation, specifically the warehouse itself.

9 Once the story has undergone a specified number of retellings, each version is collected into a single volume and placed inside an underground cellar where it undergoes a metaphysical “fermentation”. Once the volume has aged through the process of fermentation it becomes available for purchase. The more aged the story, the higher the price. Speculate about what exactly happens during fermentation. Describe the change the story undergoes.

10 You have the opportunity to meet some of these chroniclers. Describe what kind of people they seem to be and why they choose this as a life goal.

11 They lead your group down into their cellar archives where you can choose a book for purchase.

Describe these cellars where there are many thick volumes. Describe the book that they choose and its value.

12 Before the ingredient of the book can be added, they must first go to the reading room, which is located deep in the skeleton forest. What is the skeleton forest and how did it get its name? What is the reading room and why is it located in the middle of this forest? Why can’t they add the book to soup until they go to the reading room?

13 As your group is hiking through the skeleton forest they harvest wild vegetables, herbs, mushrooms, and assorted curious artifacts they find growing near the path. What are these additions that are added to the soup? Where are they found growing within the forest? Is this a fertile or barren environment for growing these kind of plants? How is the soup turning out?

14 Finally you arrive at the reading room and go inside. Describe this place. The person whose head they are making the soup in finds a comfortable chair to sit in and begins reading the book. Next to the chair is a brass marble works contraption with tiny marble sized planets rolling through it. Reading the book is the final step in making the soup. What happens when they start reading? What is the story about?

15 At last the thought soup is done. How is this meal served? What happens when they eat the soup?

What are their reactions to tasting the soup? What happens to the person whose mind the soup was made in when the soup is removed and served?

Interpretations for Thought Soup 

1 The spider’s kitchen and those who are in there with you represents a mysterious method of guardianship that involves leading people into the right illusions; the illusions that enable self-discovery.

2The person whose head they make the soup in represents the usefulness of anomalies.

3The tree house library represents the limitations to intellect.

4 The book they assemble and how you imagine the implications of the designated soup person’s brain boiling represents the reason for collecting loose ends and what can happen if they are merged together.

5 The spice market in the ice castle represents the prayers that the collective consciousness of humanity perceives as being the most noble and thus most worthy of response.

6 How you imagine the spices are extracted represents how the routine of a person’s daily life changes once they choose to end an unhealthy correspondence.

7 The spices your friends buy and what they encapsulate represents empathy; where we are lead when we choose to follow the footprints of another down their path.

8 The printing press embodies how a failed transition into a new scenario can be a good thing. 

9 How you explain fermentation embodies the qualities of people who are able to undergo a long process, staying locked in conflict for extremely long periods of time, and what happens when they finally emerge from that.

10 The way you describe the chroniclers represents a specific side effect of social isolation.

11 The cellars, the book, and its value embody the nature of the last words that will be spoken on earth.

12 The skeleton forest represents what happens when people are forced to look at things that are hard to face.

13 The things growing near the path that they choose as the final ingredients represents ways of dissolving of illusions.

14 The reading room, what the book is about, and what happens when you read it is reflective of a debate that is taking place within the human collective consciousness about how to make their presence known to themselves in the world, and how they will achieve this.

15 The whole scene where the soup is finally served represents how the dead make do in the face of separation; how the dead let go of the living.

               The Changing Serpent  

1 Imagine that you are walking through a forest filled with wild hibiscus and many other flowering plants. What brought you to this forest? Why are you here? As you walk you come upon a campsite. Explain this setting, the campsite, and its purpose.

2 As you step into the campsite and look around, you see a serpent slithering across the ground towards you. What does it look like? As it approaches, you find some means to stop it from moving, effectively freezing it in place. How do you do this? What happens as a result?

3 The next thing you notice on the ground in the campsite is a dreaming starfish. While holding the image of the starfish in your mind, visualize the following sequence of things:

Wave Labyrinth

Embryos of a Blue Laser

Bubble Fractal Symphony

 Now attempt to explain the dream of the starfish as you understand it.

4 Pick up the star fish and place it directly in the path of the frozen serpent. Now release the serpent from whatever is keeping it frozen in place. What happens? You look up and see that someone else watching this. Who?

5 Look on as this person who is watching undergoes a transformation, changing into a form where their true nature is free, and the environment around you and them also changes to support this. Once the shift has completed this person steps forward to explore their new habitat but finds themselves contained inside an invisible box. What is their reaction?

6 Walk over and stand in front of the box. In response to this person’s situation, you release particles of encapsulated intention; compassion particles. What are compassion particles? How do you create these particles and what effect do they have?

7 Now imagine similar versions of this scene playing about in many different locations with many people, with one person in an invisible box and the other person producing compassion particles. Explore a variety of variations and effects.

8 When this has all played out, the accumulated particles from all these scenes start flowing back into the scene where you are. These currents are carried downstream through space following paths of least resistance, curving under and around unseen obstacles. In areas where the streams have thick concentrations of particles time and space becomes warped like a funhouse mirror. What kind of sound do these currents make?

9 Finally, these streams of particles are deposited into several pools in front of you as you are facing the person held in the invisible box. These concentrated pools warp spacetime to an extent that a wormhole is formed. Reach out with your hands and beat on these wormholes like drums. Describe the sound that issues from these wormhole drums. What effect does it have? Does anyone else join you in playing these drums?

10 As you play the wormhole drums, the leftover particles drift up into the sky like embers and get carried off by a Jetstream current. You look up into the sky and see this current passing overhead and are sucked up into it and swept away. As you glide through the air among these particles, you again encounter the snake and catch it in your hands. How has its appearance changed since you last saw it?

11 The jetstream carries you to the Temple of the Changing Serpent. In this temple people gather to worship and petition the consciousness a specific type of reoccurring event, as opposed to petitioning the consciousness of a deity. This is an intelligence that expresses its existence through a reoccurring event is known as the Changing Serpent. What is the Changing Serpent? Describe the worship that takes place here and why. Describe the appearance of this temple inside and out.

12 As you walk through the temple you come upon a chamber called the Chapel of the Dreaming Starfish. Describe this chamber and the people who come here. Inside the chamber are a series of monoliths. When you place a hand on the monoliths, it causes you to remember the times you experienced small, ephemeral moments that brought to bear the same amount of rewarding energy as the events you consider to be the major moments of success in your life. These monoliths are memorials to the silent moments that never receive recognition for their true value. Tell about some of these moments. 

Interpretations for The Changing Serpent

1 The campsite in the forest represents an unconscious decision to step into an understanding of wellbeing that involves ideas that to you still reside in the liminal.

2 The serpent in the campsite and how you freeze it in place represents yours intentions to experience release from pain and struggle.

3 The dream of the starfish represents your intention to release self-doubt

4 What happens when the snake and the starfish meet represents your intention to give yourself permission to act.

5 The person who is watching, the form they change into, and how they react to being trapped in an invisible box embodies the qualities of the person who is best poised to help you.

6 How you create the compassion particles and their effect reflects your orientation towards making the incomprehensible known.

7 The others across the globe that are doing the same thing and producing compassion particles represents how you see other’s ability to comprehend the invisible.

8 The flowing currents of particles and the sound they produce reflects a quality of your personality that is rarest and most unique to you, but also as a result invisible to others.

9 The wormhole drums represent how you validate the unique but invisible qualities of others.

10 How the appearance of the serpent has changed now it is in the sky represents your willingness to experience a shared release; whether or not you will experience your moment of release alone or as a group.

11 The temple of the Changing Serpent embodies the pressure to form connections with others to fulfill a need for exchange, and how you behave under this pressure.

12 The chapel of the starfish and the moments in the monoliths embodies a willingness to find meaning and belonging in the truly meaningless.

                        Moon Vault

1 You are walking down a beach by an ocean on a moon. Who are you and why are you here?

2 As you walk down the coast you come upon a beached ship that mostly appears rusted and abandoned except for lights that are coming from inside. The wreckage of this ship has been repurposed and converted into a bank. Enter the bank. Inside the interior walls of the bank are glass display cases with ancient pottery. What else do you see here? What is the interior like? Describe this bank and its purpose.

3 Also inside the bank you see a majestic elk. Somehow you must communicate with the elk and request access to your vault. How do you communicate? Describe this exchange. What do you have to do to be granted access?

4 After this you are lead to the entrance to the vault, which is nothing more than a curtain. In the space in front of the curtain a group of green children are playing. In order to pass through, you must tell them the password. What is the password? Describe the curtain and your exchange with the green children.

5 Continue onward, passing through the curtain and into an inner courtyard filled with ancient olive trees formed of living crystal. Placed in and among the ancient crystal trees are doors numbered 1-7. Each door opens into a chamber that contains a specific artifact. Describe the trees and the courtyard.   

6 Go through the first door and describe what you find on the other side. Inside this chamber is a shell that once contained ancient sound but is silent. There is a sickness that is spreading inside the vault, causing the artifacts in each of the 7 chambers to become diseased and dysfunctional. Your purpose in entering the vault is to mend the ailments of each artifact. Explain what you do to restore sound to the shell.

7 Enter the second chamber where glowing bones that explode then reform have lost their glow. What do you do to restore their glow? What is the glow like? Once they are glowing again, how does the nature of their explosions change?

8 Enter the third chamber where archaeologists, each attached to a ball and chain, are excavating something from the floor of the room but whatever it is they are unearthing keeps reburying itself.       What are they discovering? How do you cure it so that it no longer keeps reburying itself?

9 Enter the fourth chamber where there is an empty prison cell with doors that rattle and shake violently, as if the cell is inhabited by an angry ghost. On the floor of the empty cell is a tiger skin. 

Why are the bars shaking and how do you cure it?

10 Enter the fifth chamber where there is cabinet containing a crystal with polished surfaces. Reflected on the polished surfaces you normally see reflections of things that are not really there. But now, because of the sickness, it is just giving off normal reflections of what is really there. How do you make it go back to reflecting things that aren’t really there?

11 Enter the sixth chamber where you find a decomposing math mask. But instead of decomposing the mask is recomposing itself. You need it to be decomposing again. What is the math mask? What does it mean for it to be decomposing? What ailment is causing it be recomposing and how do you fix this?

12 Enter the seventh chamber where there are assorted fossilized music boxes spread out on a burning table. The music boxes no longer produce music. How do you fix this?

13 When your work is done and it is time to leave, choose 2 items to remove from the vault. Explain this choice and what you intend to do with them.

14 As you walk back down the beach, you encounter people that are on their way to a party they will never find. Who are they and what is their story? They ask about the artifacts you are carrying with you, which you show to them, explaining their purpose. What does this lead to? Is there a way you can help them, or vice versa?

Interpretations for Moon Vault

1 Who you are when you are walking on the beach on the moon reflects how you balance multiple inner driving forces.

2 The shipwreck bank reflects how secure you are in your originality.

3 How you communicate with the elk and what you have to do to be granted access to your vault reflects what you most value in your communication skills and what you use those skills for.

4 The curtained entrance to the vault, your interaction with the green children, and the password reflects the part of yourself that you are learning to place under scrutiny.

5 The inner courtyard of crystal olive trees reflects how you view the culmination of your past, present, and future relationships within this lifetime.

6 How you restore ancient sound to the shell reflects the kind of parent you are or would be.

7 How you restore glow to the exploding bones reflects your true bravery.

8 How you help the chained archeologists reflects the most valuable aspect of your persona that you keep hidden because you are haunted by it in a way.

9 How you stop the jail cell doors from shaking reflects the personal qualities of yourself that you want to explore more. The part of yourself you want to know more about.

10 How you restore false reflection in the polished crystal and what you see in those reflections reflects

what you really seek through friendship.

11 The decomposing math mask and how you stop it from recomposing reflects where the momentum of all your current relationships is taking you and how you feel about it.

12 How you restore the fossilized music boxes on the burning table reflects how you exert your influence on others.

13 The two items you choose and what you do with them reflects how you make it up to people you have wronged.

14 Your exchange with people on the beach reflects how you use what you have learned from your relationships to prepare to receive the next the thing.