The idea of waking up seems like the easiest thing in the world when you are already awake. When dreaming though, not even the smallest part of that idea enters your ‘head’.

What causes the sleeper in a dream to wake up?

• Because they have slept for their allotted time and it is now time to wake up.
• Because they ‘sense’ some encroachment from the waking world.
• Because some part of themselves catches on to the absurdity of the world that has caught them and they instantly realise that they are dreaming.

I’m not sure whether the followers of religion have much of a head start on matters of ‘the spirit’. The emphasis on form, tradition, prescription and etiquette can be a bit of a double edged sword. A framework of discipline and focus may be helpful, but too much of an eye to obedience, hierarchy & organisation, maybe not so much.

I’m sure there are many ‘ways’ though.

Sometimes I think you have got to completely exhaust other avenues before you can start to see things afresh.

I like the idea that we have lived many lifetimes. There is an element of saturation in this. Reality and the world is addictive and intoxicating and we have to fully immerse and explore it before we can begin to work it out of our system. When we start to realise that these ever decreasing circles are not the answer we start to become open to other possibilities.

Then life becomes a bit of a treasure hunt; A search and a piecing together of clues. You hear tales and legends of others who have gone before, and learn of the various ‘waypoints’ they have discovered. As other diversions lose their savour, you find that you have set out on a path.

This is not a ‘way’ in time and space. This is a chain of connections. You hear about possible goals and endpoints, but really the path is enough.

You might even build a campfire on the way and rest for the night, or build a house and rest longer, or even build an empire!. Eventually though, you will remember the path and happily shoulder that rucksack.

THE HERMIT

After long wanderings over a sandy, waterless desert where only serpents lived, I met the Hermit.

He was wrapped in a long cloak, a hood thrown over his head. He held a long staff in one hand and in the other a lighted lantern, though it was broad daylight and the sun was shining.

“The lantern of Hermes Trismegistus,” said the voice, “this is higher knowledge, that inner knowledge which illuminates in a new way even what appears to be already clearly known. This lantern lights up the past, the present and the future for the Hermit, and opens the souls of people and the most intimate recesses of their hearts.

“The cloak of Apollonius is the faculty of the wise man by which he isolates himself, even amidst a noisy crowd; it is his skill in hiding his mysteries, even while expressing them, his capacity for silence and his power to act in stillness.

“The staff of the patriarchs is his inner authority, his power, his self-confidence.

“The lantern, the cloak and the staff are the three symbols of initiation. They are needed to guide souls past the temptation of illusory fires by the roadside, so that they may go straight to the higher goal. He who receives these three symbols or aspires to obtain them, strives to enrich himself with all he can acquire, not for himself, but, like God, to delight in the joy of giving.

“The giving virtue is the basis of an initiate’s life.

“His soul is transformed into ‘a spoiler of all treasures,’ so said Zarathustra.

“Initiation unites the human mind with the higher mind by a chain of analogies. This chain is the ladder leading to heaven, dreamed of by the patriarch.”

The Symbolism of the Tarot; 1913 ~ P. D. Ouspensky