Frost

"December" - by Anna Dittmann (escume @ deviantART)

We got our first blast of really cold winter air overnight. There are gorgeous little flurries dancing in the air right now. Sometimes they get so numerous that it almost looks like snow - and I get excited. Maybe I should just stop hoping for snow. I just miss it; it's so comforting and magical to watch. Plus, I haven't seen what it looks like in this neighborhood when it snows. 

The high for today is 25 F, and we're expecting to hit a low of freaking 7 degrees tonight. It hasn't been that cold in years.

I had a rough night of sleep. I was awake for almost two hours listening to all sorts of things moving and falling on the house (it was windy). And when I finally fell asleep, I was restless. It makes me wonder if I should even try. I'm not in school anymore, after all. I just miss the days when I was able to get up at 7 AM. 

Would going to bed earlier help? I have no idea. I feel like that would be worse. For now, I'll keep going to bed close to midnight, and if it seems like I can't sleep, I'll do other things. Maybe I'll get back into meditation, or start preparing my mind for lucid dreaming again. 

I never mentioned that, did I? A few weeks back, I purchased three books: Dreams of Awakening by Charlie Morley, Spirit Walking - A Course in Shamanic Power by Evelyn C. Rysdyk, and Awakening to the Spirit World - The Shamanic Path of Direct Revelation by Sandra Ingerman and Hank Wesselman. I began reading Dreams of Awakening yesterday, and even though I've only been reading through the introductory stuff, it's still been highly interesting. One tidbit stuck out to me the most:

The implications are huge - our neurological system doesn't differentiate between waking and lucid dream experiences. In other words, for our brain, there is no discernible difference between lucid dreams and waking life.

It's definitely an idea I resonate with. It's kind of confirmed something I always felt I knew about the dream world, or the dream state. I won't even pretend to know what dreams are or why we have them; I can only determine a meaning or purpose for myself. 

So why the lucid dreaming again? Well, I never really got far into it the first time. When I tried a year ago or so, I remember only having two "witnessing dreams" (in which you are aware you're lucid but choose to simply watch the dream unfold). I stopped trying for whatever reason, and never had another after that. 

But lately, I found myself wanting to try again. I want to learn about dreams, as well as various states of consciousness, and how it all relates to spirit - hence the books on shamanism. As my interest in spirituality returns, I find myself longing to study the "old ways." There's something about shamanism that really captures my interest (much like branches of paganism). It feels primal and natural. I find a lot of new age views tend to be a bit too "sky-oriented," as well as constricting. It's a bit hard to explain what I mean by this, but think of what spiritualists often believe in: past lives, karma, angels/guides, starseeds, astral planes, soul groups, afterlives, etc. We tend to want to look "above," or focus on what comes before/after our present lives. This isn't in any way a wrong view. I'm still interested in these various areas of spiritualism, actually. But I've always felt a connection to the more primal, ancient energies of nature and the planet, and I feel like those energies often end up missed by those who have their gazes fixed indefinitely to the stars. 

It reminds me of a quote from Avatar, when Jake asks who Eywa is. Norm answers, "Who's Eywa? Only their deity! Their goddess, made up of all living things. Everything they know!" 

From the Avatar Wiki:

Eywa is the guiding force and deity of Pandora and the Na'vi. The Na'vi believe that Eywa acts to keep the ecosystem of Pandora in perfect equilibrium. Some believe that this interconnectedness, which on Earth is merely a spiritual concept, exists in a physical and tangible way on Pandora, in the form of a strange, collective, psionic consciousness embedded in the planet, drawn from all Pandoran life. It is, in a way, a little like a huge biological internet; the trees being computer servers that store information.

The reason I mention this is because I watched Avatar recently with my brother, and its information seemed a lot more relevant to thoughts I've been having on spirit and its connection with Earth. I'm going to elaborate on this in another post, but I often wonder if a similar system is in place here on Earth - most of us have simply forgotten how to connect with it. 

There are a lot more thoughts on my mind in regard to all these topics, but they'll have to wait for subsequent posts, as I need to start being productive today.