Times Up

Psychic gestation stands at the window, gazing at its reflection, and what lies beyond it, a reflection of pregnant paradox, imbued with eternal impermanence. Those unscathed eyes, a map of the lost lands, scorched by faded cartography, worn away by the winds of ascension.

And beyond the glass, you can stand there and see it, a river descending a spiral staircase, whose spine carries a spark of intention, up to the council of nines, a great gathering of months, years, days, the neurulas of time, the grand minds unformed, held secure in the womb of the subconscious abyss.

This has been growing in you, and yet at the same time it is slipping through your fingers, pried from your clutching hands, collecting a symphony of perfect dust, mattering more and more until there is no other door fragment left to open, accept the one that leads to becoming. You have anticipated it, you have heard the ultimatum of astral labor, the reverberating, crystalline sound of something that is going to come out, piercing the aurora veil, crossing over from death, into blood, and finally into life, whether you’re ready or not, so choose to be ready. Times up.

Hurry now to the end of this dimly lit corridor, where stands a doorway in diminishment, held by a threshold of wasted multitudes. Your door and theirs now blurred together with tears that vibrate to the rhythm of a different story, a violet plot twist, a sacred flame narrative. As you pull yourself up from the grave of another, unwriting yourself from the page of that book, look back down up the bound minds, abrasively asleep, lost in a dream of unrest, and bless them with your spell of wildness, that they may soon enough carry the weight of their own visions.

Then walk free as silver, free as violent tongues speaking to life a tribe of shifting shadows, encamped in a tunnel of light. Place a mask over the pit, Ye wary fiend, Ye Luminist, who stood on the brink of hell and stared a while, pondering his journey. Staring up into a tunnel going straight up, like the redwoods, into the next light, sending your thought energy up into space, to create for yourself new expansion space, an assimilation of new history. Where then is the time you so feverishly seek? Time is Up.

Let your moment of waking be carried aloft in the sky, a dry leaf, a cracked seed in the air, gone to rejoin the bird tribe, the tribe of what song is to become, the tribe of things that have not been, yet always were; Everlasting, Anon, and Ever Else.

 Now awoken by the polar winds, from deep within, a primal chant that verifies the intention for renewal and reunion, and an end to the continuation of learning and loving through loss and limitation. That cycle is no longer relevant. And it knows it. It screams for release, trapped in a throat chakra that never learned to do the only thing it was meant to for: to open, to release, to scream golden pins and needles, to confront, to enchant, to live.

A sound that draws out surviving dreams from their bolt holes. Gather these refugees of dreaming. Lead them fast into the future with the two great forerunners. Air: music, blue voice, skies of vision, and infinite purpose.  Water: story, song, flow, ease in creation, purification of mind, a sober trance, forging a rhythmic path, pounding a glowing timeline into a clock that serves you: the great gatherers of primal parts, the shattered pieces that defy further severing, the last ones to die, screaming themselves back together, because they can, because they know their time is up.

“Into this wild Abyss/ The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave--/ Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,/ But all these in their pregnant causes mixed/ Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,/ Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain/ His dark materials to create more worlds,--/ Into this wild Abyss the wary Fiend/ Stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while,/ Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith/ He had to cross. ” - John Milton

Quadriptych Council

Essence portrait.

Through art, capture the abstract essence of the alternate reality you are seeking to move toward, and specifically the people and circumstances that facilitate that transition. This exercise can be done alone or as a group, where each participant is working on their own pieces, specific to just them. While they are making them they will not explain to the others the meanings behind their works. At the end everyone will review each other triptychs (more on this later).

You will create a triptych of artworks in the following order.

First (Spirit Guides): So begin first by making an artwork, here we will say a painting but it can be a sculpture or other medium, begin by creating an artwork that captures the abstract essence of your spirit guides; those who you are not able to physically interact with, but who are very much aware of you and are actively involving themselves in assisting you. Tap into their essence, and translate that essence into art. This is not a portrait, but you could call it an abstract essence portrait, and may include multiple entities. When you are done, write a description of how you interpret it.

Second (Ideal Future):  Access your concept of the future/alternate reality you are trying to move towards, and that your guides who you accessed with the first artwork are also in alignment with helping you towards. As you are accessing this vision seek the assistance of your guides in accessing the core essence of this vision. Have the first artwork on display where you can see it as you are working on the second one. Now create your abstract artwork to capture this essence of your ideal future. When you are done, write a description of how you interpret it.

Third (Facilitators): For the third piece in the triptych, you access the things that here now facilitate you moving towards that future you captured with the second piece. As before, this time you will sit with the second piece as you consider the abstract essence of things that facilitate you moving forward, towards your ideal future, in this moment in the real world. When you are ready, create the abstract portrayal of that essence, with the second artwork on display while you work. When you are done, write a description of how you interpret it.

Now you have finished the triptych.  Next have the other participants come to look at your triptych. They will look at the artworks, knowing the general subjects each once is supposed to represent: guides, future, and facilitators. Not knowing the specifics of what you were trying to capture, they will try to interpret them, try to guess what you were trying to capture in abstract form. Listen to these descriptions. Record them if necessary because you will need them later. Everyone will review each other’s triptychs.

Fourth (how they see it): Now go back and create a fourth artwork that captures the essences of all the best parts of the guest interpretations; the ones that inspired you the most. As you create this work, have the triptych on display. When you look at it, try to see it through the interpretations that the others supplied, feeling your way deeper into their interpretations, channeling it into art. When you are done, put all four on display together.  Now it is a quadriptych. Everyone’s quadriptychs are all on display in the same place.

In the place where everyone’s quadriptychs are on display, create a space where you can have discussions. Put up a roundtable with chairs, or arrange couches in a circle. Make this a comfortable place for brain storming big picture plans for the future. It is very much like a council room, where the participants with have reoccurring discussions about how to move forward collectively toward ideal futures. The presence of the art helps set the tone for these discussions. 

Schema Scripts

     The idea we wish to pass on at this time is what we will call the Schema Belief or Schema Script. You have been extensively exposed to the subject of analyzing your belief systems to uncover hidden blockages. This concept is understood in theory by many of you but still so many are struggling to unravel the energy systems associated with their deeply ingrained beliefs. By presenting this subject through a slightly different lens, we hope to give you a new source of leverage to help you move forward. A schema is an expectation for how common, reoccurring events and scenarios play out. When you walk into a grocery store, you have general guidelines and parameters for what you expect to transpire. You do not expect to walk into the store and find it filled with a herd of baby elephants, yet you still allow for a certain of range of unexpected things to happen, such as bumping into an old acquaintance. Think of a schema as a loosely defined script that common reoccurring events/scenarios must follow as they play out. We call this a Schema Script. As you go through your day you encounter a variety of “scenes”, each with its own beginning, middle, and end. In response to these scenes, you have an array of ready made scripts, or a log of learned responses which are ready to be deployed. The other half of this is that you also have an array of common scenarios you expect to encounter. At work you expect to talk to your coworker and you expect it to go a certain way, or you expect interactions with customers or strangers to go a certain way, usually the way it has gone in the past. You may find that these the Schema Scripts are highly developed, not to mention they can often be profoundly negative in nature. Yet often you are not consciously aware that you are following these scripts. You just go through your day and that’s that.

       So when we ask you to uncover your beliefs, we also want you to give special attention to uncovering your Schema Scripts. Approach this by getting clear on what kind of events you want to experience. If there is any kind of specific event or scenario you wish to experience make a note of it. Write it down, but don’t make it too specific. Don’t include specific people or places, make the description loose enough that you can easily see the specific people and places where that scenario could play out, but it could also occur under different circumstances, with different people and in different contexts. However, it is good to start this process with a very specific event schema in mind of something you would like to happen. Then look at it and try to distill it down into more basic parameters, allowing for a greater variety of contexts, and that is what you will put down. This is like throwing a wider net or opening an iris wider to let more light in.

      Accumulate a list of these schemas. What you will end up doing is distilling a short list of the most potent schema scripts that you can benefit the most from and that you want to pour your energy of imagination and expectation into. Let’s say you come up with a short list of about 12 schema scripts, aka “general ideas for good things that could actually happen”; a list that is short enough for you to give adequate attention to. On a piece of paper draw a circle for each Schema Script, big enough for you to write short memos to mark each time something happened that fit the parameters of this or that schema. Each of these circles will be called a Schema Garden.

For aesthetic purposes, the Schema Gardens should be arranged in a circle on the paper.  As you proceed through your day, try to make things happen that fit the ideal schema descriptions.  Throughout the day, or at the end of the day, put a note or symbol inside the schema garden marking the event that fit the schema. Also indicating a rating 1-5 of how satisfactory the experience was. 

Inside the circle of Schema Gardens is a triangle. Each of the three sides of the triangle represent a part of yourself that you are trying to shift or change; the three most potent focus points for personal development that you have identified. Distill your intentions for personal change down to three most important, and write them along the edges of the triangle.  Within the triangle, make a note of the beautiful things you encountered, the things that struck you as good and that you have appreciation for, but don’t fall into the category of your Schema Scripts. Put any additional random good things in the triangle. In the center of the triangle draw a wavy line that bends 5 times, and in each bend of the line is a dot (see image). This glyph will help you anchor the energy you are trying to bring to bear. You can make a digital work up of this diagram that can be printed out. You can also use this diagram mentally as visual memory tool, to remember each of your schema gardens, and organize your intentions.

     Make this a daily ritual for a period of time. Do this as a group, with other members of your household or friends. At the end of the day look at your gardens. Remember all that transpired and mark the good schemas that were fulfilled. Sit with the other people you are doing this with and review the day together. 

(rough sketch of the schema gardens diagram.)