Copyright © 2011
The River Mermaid
Introduction
The presumption of my fairy
tales is that there are a few born in human form whose souls are from the Other
Side. There is no User’s Manual lying
next to the crib when they are born that warns them that their dreams are
different from human beings.
They have a sense of life being strange in a
way that other human beings do not. A
few may turn this strangeness into success through art, music, or dance. They
may become famous writers because they sit down and write their dreams into
fairy tales and mythology.
Perhaps there is more than meets the eye
with Peter Beagle’s The Last Unicorn, McKillip’s The Forgotten Beasts
of Eld, Le Guin’s Wizard of Earthsea, Rowling’s Hogwarts and Harry
Potter, or Tolkien’s Middle Earth.
Anyone who writes genuine fairy tales or mythology is in fact creating
their own User’s Manual for how to explain to others the kingdoms they have
found hidden within them.
In the process of interviewing others, I
have them tell me their first memory and
everything else they can remember about their lives. I walk beside them as they
share their memories. Their memories
become my own and together a story is the output.
The story is not biography. The story is one
person’s life seen through the eyes, mind, and psychic abilities of two people
working together to create something that can be shared with the world.
Hopefully, the pain and darkness, the paths
followed, the happiness, love, and joy are transformed into a tapestry of
beauty that others can gaze upon and perceive clearly the way wonder has touched
all of our lives. In a sense, then, my
stories record how two separate realms come to know each other better.
Let us imagine, then, that each person has
his own inner landscape of heart and soul.
We have an inner kingdom where our dreams at night roam.
In the real world, nations and kingdoms are
marked on maps by natural barriers like mountains, rivers, and seas. And history too designs national boundaries. There are battles won and lost, negotiations--territory
bought and sold--and marriages that establish what flag flies over a piece of
land.
So it is with each of our souls. Certain fears and terrors are declared off
limits. They belong to foreign territories and we are denied access. We also avoid feelings and sensory
experiences. Catholics do not shape change in their dreams into a crow or a
deer. They do not move through the woods
at night in state of exaltation free of fear.
The homeless person or the prisoner can
easily enough dream at night of owning a mansion in Grosse Pointe or a beach
house in
The wiccans and druids do not dream at night
of a formless god nor of rising to the point where they shine with his light;
nor do they wrestle with him to obtain a blessing that shapes the destiny of
many nations. It just never happens. We stay within well-defined
boundaries. To cross over our
limitations we would have to pass by a clearly marked sign that says, Do Not
Enter or No Trespassing.
For good reason, then, we remain who we
are. Our dreams, whether we awake from
nightmares, night terrors, or wistful bliss are still ours. They support who we
are.
It is true--we may want something that life
denies us. The dream then comes
reminding us of what might have been, how much we are loved, or the love that
touched us and then left. The dream speaks with the voice of our
instincts. Hungery, prowling desires
lurk in the darkness at the edge of our consciousness.
The dream can speak with the voice of conscience. What we deny the dreams declares we still
feel inside--guilt, ramose, sorrow, and loss.
Occasionally, the dream speaks plainly--happiness is right here inside
you if only you would only let your conscience guide you.
But not all play by these rules. Their souls more malleable and flexible. Some
have kingdoms within their dreams where entire regions are shrouded in mist and
fog. Here definitions of good and evil,
of light and dark, pleasure and pain change.
A few individuals have these non-conforming dreams. Indeed, the rules of psychology, theology,
anthropology, and even our mythologies do not apply. The sign at the border reads, You May Enter
If You Leave Your Human Identity Behind or Enter At Your Own Risk But Only If
You Can Endure The Bliss.
Of course, we may all catch a glimpse of
these other worlds at times. We may have
a premonition. We may speak in a dream to someone who is dead. We may be visited by a spirit such as the
ghost of Christmas past, present, or future in Charles Dickens story, A
Christmas Carol.
Or, the animals that appear in our dreams
may be a little too real. It is okay to
meet familiar and even strange creatures in our dreams. But they must not be
too inviting or try to persuade us with enticing longings to become something
other than what we are. If they did, we
might wonder if what has appeared to us is perhaps our own self in a different
guise. To wander too close to the boundaries
of our kingdoms may make it difficult to return to where we were when we fell
asleep--getting up in the morning, we might be carrying with us something
unseen from our dreams.
Some may wake up from sleep and the room is
filled with the smell of a flower they held in their hands when they
slept--though this dream is rare indeed.
Rarer still for someone to pause and examine that scent to see if it
contains a message indicating that something wonderful is about to happen.
Many fly in their dreams. Chinese consider this to be a good thing, a
positive omen. For some the flying is so
real and graphic in every detail that they can no longer tell if they are awake
or still asleep and dreaming. Even when
they test their hypothesis that in the real world no on can fly the dream can still
fool them.
They try to fly and can not and so conclude
they must be awake. But then they wake
up. This uncertainty about reality
causes no one confusion or doubt. You
need only shrug your shoulders and laugh at your own foolishness for questioning
the nature of perception. Some say, however, that it is hard to read a book
while lucid dreaming. That is something
to keep in mind next time you wake up inside a dream.
Some occasionally stumble into a no man’s
land between sleeping, dreaming, and being awake. The mind wakes up but the body remains asleep
so the individual feels helpless. The
brain panics and imagines all sorts of monsters and horrors have caught us in a
trap. But there are no monsters or
traps--only our imaginations grasping desperately for an image to explain our
irrational fear.
There is also what is called false
awakening. This occurs when you are
dreaming and in the dream you imagine you have just woken up. You get out of
bed. You do things as if you are fully awake but usually something is not quite
right--the light won’t turn on, the door knob won’t turn, etc. And then you are
back in bed dreaming again that you have just woke up again so it may repeat
itself.
In the false awakening there may be an
ominous or strange feeling present as well. There is a sense of the uncanny,
experience lit with a strange light, and feelings that are uncomfortable or
suspicious as if something is not right.
This feeling of things being "off"
or "not right" might be generalized. If someone feels strong ties to
fairy or the astral plane, the Other Side, Sidhe, the Next World, etc., then
the “false awakening“ might seem like a permanent state--the entire world feels
like a “bad dream” because inside there is a feeling of belonging somewhere
else.
For some, there is not just one kingdom
where they go to sleep at night. The
kingdom within the soul is not shaped from the usual array of instincts,
desires, needs, longings, fears, and terrors.
For some, there are two kingdoms.
One kingdom belongs to our everyday
life. In our world there are written
records that pass knowledge and history down to us from other ages. Our world may have slaughter, wars,
massacres, natural and unnatural disasters, ruin, famines, plagues, and all
manner of destruction. Still, we try
not to call life a “bad dream.” We get
on with things. We cope. We manage. We survive. It is all we
have. And in spite of the upheavals and
change, the human race has managed to do well.
We have acquired wealth and to produce all
manner of things. We have science,
technology, and industry. We are in fact
constantly innovating. It is truly
amazing in spite of the fact that while some of our inventions are wonderful,
others are insidious and insane. But
there is no need to comment further on the obvious.
And yet there persists this other world
within our dreams. Some say it is the astral plane which is not completely
unknown. It is perhaps best expressed in
the fanciful images of fairy tales and mythology.
But regarding fairy tales, who can really
declare with certainty their origins?
Who would dare state conclusively that the sylph or gnome or the bard
who can cause an army to put down its arms upon hearing his songs is a
fabrication? Do we really need consensus
on this? Must we infer that it was a poet with a little too much drink in his
bloodstream or perhaps an senior citizen with a faint touch of delusion who
invented these quant and charming images?
Two hundred years ago we were riding
horses. Now we trample the surfaces of other planets leaving tracks and
footprints in the dust. We have finished
nature mastery 101 by simulating in our mathematical physics and our
biochemistry labs many of life’s
mysteries. We have made a decent beginning.
But in knowing the self we have little more
knowledge than the Dark Ages of superstition or even Stone Age magic: We have not
eliminated wars. Negotiators from
two different countries can sit in front of each other and not have the faintest
comprehension of what the other is actually feeling.
And our political commentators and politicians
act as if they never attended college. They speak as if their minds can not
comprehend two separate, opposing points of view at the same time. Perhaps in regard to the kingdoms of the soul
we as yet have had no Renaissance or Reformation; there has been no Columbus,
Magellan, or Captain Cook charting quadrant by quadrant the oceans of the soul
hidden within us.
Our scientists are like children who fear
their own ignorance--they are afraid that if they look inside they will find a
monster hidden in the closet of their minds. And so they have not yet opened
the door to see what is inside. They
wait for another age whose dawning illumination will free them from fear of
what is hidden in the dark.
But a few have no choice. Fairy tales
invade their lives. All manner of
creatures familiar and unfamiliar appear to them. These are creatures from fairy realms--the Sidhe, the sylphs, gnomes, salamanders, undines/mermaids,
and hordes of other beings.
Even so, the ancients offer us
reassurance. We can turn to scripture
and literature and find these beings in the encyclopedia of fairy tales of
mythology where they have already been described. There are those who have recently departed
from this life like the Prophet Samuel who spoke to King Saul in the
Bible. Ghosts may on occasion fade in
and out and haunt. But the ghost is part
of traditional story telling. And this genre of fairy has spawned an array
of movies and TV shows. Yet ghosts like the ghost of Hamlet’s father may not
always limit themselves to appearing on stage in one of Shakespeare’s plays.
There are creatures too who have a survival
instinct and want to exist for no other reason than to feed on the life force
of any living being. And there are the
demons--both of low and high rank like Mephistopheles who was assigned the task
of negotiating a contract with Faust.
The authenticity and authority of a demon are
always slightly in doubt. It does not help that the major religions of the
world habitually declare that the gods of the preceding religions are demons.
It is not just politicians and military who engage in wars of propaganda
to describe the enemy as a bad guy.
The Buddhists declared Kama, the god of love,
to also be the god of demons because Buddhists do not like desire. And Christians take the horned god from the Neolithic
age of the pagans and give his horns to the Jewish devil in order to eliminate
grey from their color spectrum because they prefer that the colors of theology
be black and white.
A curious, more discerning student of fairy
will attempt to define a fairy tale’s traits--the rules by which its landscape
of the soul operates. In fact, every single writer of fairy tales or mythology
knows full well that as long as he is consistent and tells a story well he can
follow whatever rules he wants. That is the nature of the fairy tale genre--the
writer designs the operating system.
Still, if we want a truly challenging fairy
tale we will need to have the rules of fairy operate to some extent in our
world as well. We will want empirical observations and carefully recorded
interviews with individuals. We will want sufficient data on hand so we can
draw our own conclusions about whether a gate to fairy opens to our own
world.
For example, if you should stray to the
Other Side, the Next World, or to the astral plane when you dream at night, you
might notice that the sense of time is different. In our world, time is linear.
In fairy or the astral plane, time is not a
stream; it is more like a sea of motionless time. Here one may drift—there are no shores to
this sea. It is rather one unbroken
circle encompassing past, present, and future.
What has been and what shall be are just as present and as real as what
is right now in this moment. The astral
plane has a totally different feel.
In a dream, individuals may cross to the
Other Side and return. But when they
awake at dawn they forget that they made the journey. They get up. They dress. They eat
breakfast. And nothing is
different. They do not want to consider
the consequences of what happens when you go past that Do Not Enter sign.
False awakening, then, has a sister. It is called
morning forgetfulness--you wake up from the dream and forget what you have
seen. Or else you push it as fast as you
can out of your mind.
Forgetting can be justified. To leave part
of your soul--your feelings and aspirations--on the Other Side is to invite the
destruction of your personality. It is
to be swept away by some emotional riptide that takes you out into depths where
reason has nothing to cling to when it gasps for a breath or wants a moment to
rest.
Exhausted or confused, even after returning
to our world, the five senses and the mind may not fully align. The emotions
are still lit with dazzling sights. Our
friends and lovers may then appear as our enemies because our emotions of fear
or hunger do not know where to go or to whom they belong. What used to give us comfort and satisfaction
may appear dim as the pleasures we used to know no longer can take hold.
And then too we must consider worst case
scenarios that, if true, would be too much for the rational mind to endure.
Might there not be a few born in human form whose souls are from the Other
Side? As I have mentioned, there is no
User’s Manual lying next to the crib when they are born that warns them that
their dream kingdom is different from other human beings.
At last, the introduction is over. I can now begin my brief story. I present you
a woman I know.
I have listened to the details of her
life. I meditate on what she says. I
walk among her memories as if they are my own.
I meet her in my dreams. I enter
her dreams and within the dream we walk and fight side by side.
I am not her. And the story is not biography. The story is
rather what happens when the notes and cords of two lives for a few moments
become one song. Isn’t that what a well
told story does?
For me, there is no other way to destroy the
ancient loneliness that haunts the human soul--for ages and eons it has stole
our joy and our happiness with its riptides and its whirlpools as our emotions
crash on its hidden shoals. Perhaps it
is time we make better charts when we sail at night through the darkness that
marks the boundaries of the kingdoms within our dreams.
She is not one but two. And these two parts of her have not yet
found a way to be with or near each other.
I have seen this before. It can happen this way. A man of great will
takes hold of a mermaid binding her to him in such a way that she can no longer
remain true to herself. It happens over
and over. There are remedies in this
situation.
How do you retrieve the soul of a mermaid
who has strayed and lost her way as she journeys between the worlds? What words must I write? What ancient word of
power must I speak that creates a path so enticing, so full of delight that she
will put off her human identity and realize suddenly and exclaim--“I knew it
all along that only love is real; this entire human enterprise is like a ship
that sails without a destination and without a home port. Human beings may be lost, but I am not.
“Right
now in this moment I know what I am--love is my home port and my destiny; it
flows through me in every moment of every journey I take.”
When she can say that spontaneously, the
mermaid queens will turn their gaze upon me.
They will smile with those smiles that banish loneliness from the
innermost recesses of the heart. And
then they will say, “You have once more returned one of our sisters who lost
her way. She is most precious to us. In
return, you may ask of us for any gift that we have.”
I
mention their offering a gift not because I am after one. Rather, I would point
out that unlike the human race, the mermaid queens embody the purest love on
this planet. They know that love is an
unending flow, but they also know that the best love is an equal exchange--both
give wholehearted of all that they are without holding back. When they offer me
a gift, they are just following the laws of love as established by the divine
world that rules over all realms--nature, human, and divine.
As I now write, my room spontaneously fills
with watery blue green energy. Waves of
water flow around me. Yet this water is
not just a flowing, undulating sensation. It has feeling and life. Its touch is affection, acceptance, and love.
There are times in life when a dream, as thick
as a cloud, comes down to the ground and surrounds you. Others may not see or sense it. But for you
it is more than a day dream. More than being awake inside of a dream.
Rather it is the tell tale sign of what
happens when two separate realms come together, overlap, and unite. Then there is one stream of life that again
is like two lovers whose two lives flow into each other and join as one.
I can speak aloud, type, and write. I can present you with metaphors that flair,
shine, and entice. Using these luminous
trail markers, others who wish can follow a path through the dark. But the mermaids perceive differently. We
look at each other and no words or thoughts are necessary.
Instead, there is a direct sharing heart to
heart. The life within one is felt and sensed as the same life within the
other. For mermaids, we are all immersed
in one sea of love. They have great
difficulty in imagining any other kind of reality.
But what happens when a mermaid enters a human
body at birth? It is easy to forget who
she is. It is easy to stray.
To summarize her biography in a few
paragraphs, distilling and condensing her journey among us into a few brief
images. Whether awake or asleep, she has been surrounded almost on a daily
basis with creatures from fairy and from other places even more strange.
Their forms are quite clear to her
eyes. These beings can interact
physically with the real world. And with
only a few exceptions, the creatures are unfriendly, cold, and even
hostile.
When she tries to talk to human beings about
her experiences, no one understands.
People can offer no advice. And
if she were to persist in demanding answers, they consider her crazy.
Everything else in her life is familiar to
us. They are the typical experiences of a young woman growing up. There is the normal level of failure and
success; there is the typical loneliness and friendship, rebellion and learning
to fit in.
What do I see when I look at this woman? I am sitting in a pool with a small waterfall
with the
The present moment is your
home.
The water is pure and clear.
Everything you hold dear is
here.
The water flows.
Your blood flows.
The cloud, the river, the
sea
The earth and the sky
Are you home.
To feel what I feel is to
feel free.
The image shifts:
We are sitting in the
I look into her eyes and feel the flow of the
entire river--its waves and shores, its rapids and the pace that moves fast and
slow.
Her eyes never lose their tenderness, their
innocence, their purity, or their newness even as a million years pass by in
her mind, two million, there million, four million years go by.
Gazing into her eyes, I am hypnotized,
mesmerized, for I have become like her--beyond the reach of time.
She is the mist
A soft, wet caress
On my chest her fingers drift
I am her song
The world is gone
Her breath, her lips
All that exist.
I ask, Tell me about your
self?
She replies:
I am still in the mountain
pool
My waters are soothing, serene, and cool
I am turbulent,
A rapids, a waterfall, a flash flood
Crashing and smashing against canyon walls
At times I lie down and sleep
This life is one of my dreams—
My incarnation as a human being
Yet I remain part of nature
Pure and innocent
Should I fulfill a purpose like human beings?
Does the wind have places where it must be
Or the sea have plans for tomorrow’s activities?
The river and I share the same soul
Feel what I feel—
In this moment
Million years of time
My waters splashing, laughing, singing, and dancing
Vermillion, citrine, and
violet
These buttes and cliffs
Are sculptured by my
fingertips
Inch by inch
Geological art
The work of my heart
Receptive, yielding
Yet hold and daring
Tell me more of your journey
in becoming a human being. She replies,
I love Human beings barter and trade
I dream They make and shape
I flow They use thoughts
to think
I know They analyze and conceive
I am They do and
believe
I flow for millions of years
Without thoughts,
decisions,
Negotiations, or beliefs
I am complete
Human beings strive to create
a fate
If I touch my dreams
Then with them I am unable to
speak
If I speak to them
I take their pain into myself
Which
continuously overwhelms me
It is impossible for me
To be mean or to feel hate
Yet this is what they share
with me
In the end
The sea shall find me again
And I shall be free
I address myself now to the
girl and not to the mermaid. I say to her, “Imagine if you and your lover could
offer to each other a cup of golden light from which to drink. And this gift contained the essence of your
souls and spirits. And in receiving this gift, this cup of golden light that
you can drink, or a radiance that radiates from him and flows into you and that
you absorb totally into your own being—how would you feel different after
receiving it? Who would you have become?”
She replies, “To receive such a cup of
golden light would be the kiss of two souls becoming one. It would be a
marriage, a union for eternity, of two souls entwining together in an eternal
dance, laughing, loving, lovemaking, with eyes only for the other. We would be
together, and even separate, we would not be apart. We would be independent and
individual, but complimentary to the other.”
“I would be more whole then I was before
receiving the cup. It would be finding and merging with my male counterpart,
and he with his female counterpart.”
One last
comment to wrap up this on-going story. The mermaid inside of the girl
now speaks to me,
You are not as other human
beings
Release me
Speak the ancient word of
power
That in whatever form I am
I might know and perceive
That love is the essence of
who I am
And in this knowing, this
being
I shall always be free.
Like I say, this is an
on-going story.