This was a wild Buddhist/shamanic dream, painted as a Tibetan tanka.
Why shamanic? Well, my soul rose, journeyed, made an ally, challenged powerful spirits, returned with a prescription for personal and social ills... If you read it in a Siberian anthropology journal you'd swear it was a classic mushroom-and-drumming-induced shamanic trip. Nope. Dream, dream, dream.

Follow me round the wheel.

REALM 1: Dark Satanic Mills

Start here! At the bottom. This IS America!...

I dreamed my friend David found a path up to the spirit world. A cold, clammy, corpse-like, slippery slope... sagging under me as I climbed. Lugging his stash, his TV, and his bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, he still galloped where I crawled!

But if HE can do it, I can. No carnivorous couch potato's gonna beat me to nirvana!

Yes, even keeping up with the Joneses can start you on the path of dreams...

REALM 2: Horse Sense

I climbed up an endless stair into a windy night sky. On a landing, I met a Night Mare.

"But... you're BEAUTIFUL!" I blurted. We climbed on, together--friends.

Up a thousand more... Dark. Wind.

Nightmare feared she'd fall through the rickety steps. Hooves aren't made for bleachers...

It sure wasn't a simple astral plane. Thousands of steps, each having to be negotiated individually.

The steps were dreams, of course! Each different, bringing up different issues...

REALM 3: I Have Been to the Mountaintop

But we made it to the top: the View Point!

Below, on the Material Plain, the city shone.

Every streetlight a soul, every soul a story!

The view was worth the climb.

Still, we were cold, and it seemed a dead end.

Doesn't the spirit world offer anything more than just a new perspective, an overview of the old material one?

Well... yes.

REALM 4: Talkshow of the Gods

For suddenly we were in a white cloud. Gods' faces floated by like butterfly masks.

A dragon-mask god asked us: "Why have you come? What do you Desire?"

The mare said: "Desire? I... I want a mate... who'll lick me and mount me and kiss me and pet me and NEVER EVER TAME ME! Oh... and I like organic carrots..."

I was at a loss and finally said: "I've withdrawn from life... what am I meant to contribute?"

I shook as I heard that hyphenated word, for I hadn't a clue.

The dragon-gods were so cheerful! They had such fun skewering my delusions. They looked like floating Kwakiutl masks, or terrifying butterflies, and I can't really draw them--lack the skill, and I worry if I draw them too well, they'll be summoned...

REALM 5: Sprouts of Right Desire

One younger god pitied me. A girl called Liberty.

She led me back down the slippery slope... of wishes come true! All feathery now, with seedling carrots.

Night Mare found her carroty desire, and we knew a mate would show up soon...

The Eightfold Path, a key Buddhist idea, includes right thought, right action, etc... but never right desire. Desire is seen as the root of all suffering.

So it was a shock to find my dream cheerfully proposing Right Desire! But you know, it makes sense. I think it's what Americans (at least) need now. For the Goddess of Liberty rules that realm, and she'll guide us--IF we tell what we honestly want.

Because Americans want to do good, not just do well.

Down through the Chomp Gate, by the skin of my genes.

Reborn into the American world.

REALM 6: Hungry Ghosts

The path led next through suburbs full of sad bored bright girls waiting to be free... for 20, 30, 40 years? Through their rooms, through their BEDS... Should I have mad affairs? David did!

But I was haunted by a dragon's accusation... what IS my soul-desire?

The forked tongue of that dragon's nether head wore two puppets, twin aspects of the god:
A monk-head chants "Renounce! Give! Donate! Save! Do not..."

A cop-head chants "Work! Produce! Do! Do not! Do nut! Donut!" And then he dunked.

The signs by the road said "Stop! Donut pass go." Uh-oh! Trapped in Monopoly! I was hoping for a deeper game.

Tibetan gods have a horrific aspect; but the dark face of this American god was a subtler snake-oil type, a preachy puppeteer. With, of course, consumer choices! Be a worker, or a monk. Hey, you're free. But under the masks, they spoke the same tongue: do good, by action or renunciation.

Yet is good the deepest good? That dragon would have us think so.

But one donut ran free. And little munchkin voices sang to the pilgrim donut, and to me: "Follow the goldbrick road." And goldbrick is old American slang for slacking on the job.

And so, I did. I dared to be a lazy slob.

No easy feat for a dutiful child, but to climb out of materialism, face my dreams and befriend my nightmares, get a clear overview of this world, face the dragon of my soul, win the freedom-space for sprouts of right desire... I'll have to focus. Work, money, success... or the inner wheel?

I know what America recommends--and what I feel.

REALM 0 (THE HUB): The Core Idea

So--what'd I learn?

That dragon-advice HURTS!

Yet I'd go back.

For in a world obsessed

with comfort,

really useful pain

is not all that easy

to come by.

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