I had some more lucid dreams last night - which is nothing unusual, although I still appreciate and enjoy the experience (and I even appreciate and enjoy some of the "tests", such as looking at my hands, registering texture/colours, etc). What was unusual was that I had my first lucid dream shortly after going to bed, whereas I normally only remember those from later in the evening, and how I ended that dream - which was to stand up, arms outstretched as if I was diver in a sporting competition ... and then to gracefully lean backwards and do a backflip sort of dive back into the body. And, incredibly, I awoke comfortably, without any headache - and no water splashes on the wall from what would have been a "backflop" ☺
Some of the other experiences last night also got me wondering about a few other matters, as well, including comments I've had through much of my life of the value of simply existing as someone with good energy in their aura (which, as I am human, is NOT always the case!) rather than significance being what I do in my life.
I tend to feel that is a bit of a sop: some people, through their position / opportunities, are able to have major influences on world events - for better or worse. I am also aware of the importance of things engaging in political / human rights matters, but even there, most people have only a contribution to make. We are all snowflakes in an avalanche.
That can be hard - not only for people who are ahead - spiritually - of where others are, but also for those lagging behind. The laggards fear the change and/or the rate of change, and their auras also have an influence - not a good one, for them or anyone else.
Nevertheless, this is the situation we are in: we are part of a collective known as the human species - a collective broken down in to many other smaller collectives, such as nationality, socio-economic grouping, gender/sexuality, ethnicity/culture, religion, etc. Some of those we may be able to change - e.g., religion, but others we cannot - e.g., ethnicity, sexuality, etc. Whatever groups we are in, we have a choice. We can choose to be outstandingly good as an individual, and work at holding ourselves separate to others in our group - the, sort of, fear of being viewed by others as morally less worthy out of being tainted by past wrongdoing - or we can buckle down, and get on with making change for better wherever we are.
When Gandhi was advocating for change in South Africa, he had a bias towards "the English Empire is good", and even led an ambulance group during World War One. Later, he had a realisation, and started advocating for Indians to take pride in being citizens of India - not that the trappings of Englishness were necessarily inherently bad (although I consider many of those trappings were inherently bad), but that it was irrelevant to the situation he and other citizens of India was in.
Consider someone who is a cook in a school. They may dream of being a chef in a fancy and famous restaurant: fair enough, dreams can be good, BUT if that results in them treating the students they are feeding with contempt by not serving the best food that person can prepare, there is absolutely no way they are going to be fit for a chef role. The role they desire relies on being at the peak of focused caring about everything (which often leads to abusive temperaments, a bit like bad skippers in sailing shouting, instead of training their crew in advance), but they are demonstrating the exact reverse of that. The person may well consider they could do better, but could they, in reality?
Around two decades ago, I spent several years doing highly engaged human rights activism (I used to call it lobbying, but commercial interests have stolen that term from me - ironically, given how out of pocket and ill I wound up [partly because I used almost all of my long service leave on the task] ). At the time, I became interested in politics to the extent that I considered and started thinking about a change to a political career - including possibly standing for election. I chose not to for a range of reasons - although I've continued being an activist in political areas - including the impact that the 80 hour weeks (anyone who thinks the only work politicians do is when they are sitting in Parliament is an uninformed idiot) and extremely intrusive and invasive levels of scrutiny (sometimes justified - as in the case of those hypocrites who opposed same sex/same gender marriage for reasons of "traditional family values" but broke those same "traditional family values") and the stress of trying to persuade dozens of other, equally passionate people to support something you consider to be "good" and a priority, while they try to the same for their "good" priorities.
As I've aged, that option has become even less feasible.
Our circumstances change, partly for reasons beyond our individual control (e.g., the right wing reactionary backlash that grew from the late 70s, the current pandemic, and issues such as ageing), and partly for reasons of choice - including my decision, at the end of the 90s, to stop living on a boat.
We can daydream about such things being different - which can sometimes help our mood and thus our energy state of being, but that should never move into an obsession.
We need to face where we are, and what is going on around us - we need to be the school cook doing the best they can to feed the kids who the cook has a duty towards, rather than being distracted, instead of inspired, by dreams of being a chef. In terms of what I advocate for on this blog, that often means just keeping your aura in as good a condition as you humanly can - which is not always easy. Just as the cook may have budget cuts, inadequate resources, and trouble accessing good ingredients, we have responsibilities to family and friends, work demands, stress, limited time, psychic attack, lifestyle vulnerabilities, etc.
And we cannot, in this timeline, gracefully swan dive back into how things used to be, even if we do choose to work hard to bring some past benefits and good things into renewed being now.
See also https://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-importance-of-bright-aura.html
