Chapter 13 – First Steps

Smoking Grass Again

He’s stoned now – for the first time since he quit smoking grass to work on his dissertation. That was over six months ago. He’s amazed that he ever gave up this awareness, although he has been getting a lot of work done lately.

He smoked just a little while ago, and, for the first time in a long while, he sat down on the kitchen floor and played with the cats, down at their wise and cool level. They seemed to notice that he was back. They certainly enjoyed him.

When he smokes, he shouldn’t structure the experience, except perhaps to see it as a teaching. But he should definitely spend time listening with his inner ear, listening to what is really going on, no matter what seems to be going on in the outer world.

From his here and now stoned head, he sees that he has been quite scared and unsure of himself lately, but without even knowing that he was or why. He also sees how well he has learned and integrated all the previous lessons of grass – how, even unstoned, he has still been nicer and more able to relate to Karen and Jonathan and all his other friends, both human and animal – much more able than ever before.

Smoking grass after all this time is like a yardstick, letting him measure himself as he is now against who he was back when he was last stoned – thereby letting him see how much he has grown and learned in these past months without her guidance.

There is so much more to learn too. Already grass is giving him new lessons for the future. He is going to use grass more seriously now, as he uses acid, no longer as people use beer or cocktails to relax at the end of their day. Grass is much more than a relaxant. She is also a teacher. And he wants to learn all that she has to offer.

He has also been seeing today that being stoned lets him be a nicer person in the here and now. When he is stoned, he slows down and gets out of his structured and impatient head, becoming more in touch with himself and reality. He becomes wiser, more understanding, and more loving too.

It was good for him to stop grass when he did – his dissertation is almost finished now – yet it has been just as good for him to take up smoking again now. He did have to temporarily sacrifice his connection with grass consciousness in order to complete his schoolwork – although, interestingly enough, it was grass itself that helped him to be the loving and together person who did the work.
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The Native American
And the White Man

He’s teaching a class called “Bringing the Native American within you to life without killing the White Man.” Karen is helping him with it. It’s more like a group than a class really, centered as it is upon the students learning from their own experiences. He’s excited about it.

Both the Native American and the White Man are metaphors for aspects of consciousness common to everyone of European descent. At some point in the White Man’s history, their ancestors were like the Native Americans in many ways.

Native American is thus a metaphor for an older aspect of the White Man, an aspect of consciousness that was still close to body and the land and in touch with Spirit, way back in those early days before the Europeans developed their rational egos and pushed both body and Spirit out into the wilderness of their unconscious.

The White Man, on the other hand, is a metaphor for the White Man’s overly developed egos that have lost their connections with their bodies and the bodies of all the other animals sharing this planet – and with Spirit too, along with any sense of the meaning of it all. The White Man has sacrificed all this in order to gain the ability to make things happen in the world and to persevere through time.

When the White Man came to the Americas, he brought a potent and overwhelming weapon – not his horses and guns nor his ability to be deceitful, although all these helped him greatly – but rather his ego, with its ability to persevere through time and to make things happen.

While the Native American was still pulled by the primal rhythms of day and night, of summer and winter, and would fight accordingly, usually quitting for the night or for the winter, the White man would just keep on coming, relentlessly and regardless of the time or the season.

He understands that this ability to transcend time and the seasons and to effect change in the world, won for all of us by the White Man, has proven beneficial for the entire human race. He knows that it has been won by sacrificing our bodies and our connection with Spirit. He knows that we must continue to treasure this ability that we have gained at such cost, although it is becoming increasingly one-sided and destructive.

Because of this, he also knows we need to return to our bodies and to Spirit now. He knows we need to bring the Native American and all that he represents back into our lives, while still retaining the gains of the past twenty or so centuries of Western consciousness. He knows we need to bring the Native American within us to life without killing the Whiteman.
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The Magical Woman

He dreams he’s on a large ocean going ship. His brother is here too. This young, dark-haired woman comes on board now, from a smaller ship that pulls up alongside. She has this red object, somewhat like a crossbow. It shoots off a red ball that grows in size until it envelopes the entire ship. It will protect the ship, she says, and it will deflect missiles too. It feels like what they are doing here is very important.

Now he’s on land with several people – the young woman from the ship, an older businessman whom he doesn’t know, and someone else, like his brother but now much closer to him. They descend, using this special old elevator, down deep into the earth, to the woman’s home. On the way down, one of them takes on the necessary danger of holding onto these two loose wires, knowing that if anything goes wrong, he could be electrocuted. It was to have been him, but the woman insists that one of the others hold the wires. The older man volunteers to do it, and they get down to the bottom all right.

It’s strange here, deep underground. There are these cleverly placed holes that allow sunlight to come in, filling the place with light. He’s looking about in awe. There’s even an outdoors, a backyard with a garden. The woman says she’s really different from other people. That’s why she lives down here all alone, away from the others and what they might think. She’s very wealthy too. It’s beautiful here in her world. She has made it wonderful. He can understand being alone like this.

She’s showing him her home, where she has lived all these years, and how she has taken care of herself. She’s saying goodbye to all this now to be with him in the outer world.

There are many people up above, all waiting for them to return. They’ve been up there all this time. As they prepare to go up, she tells them that they won’t all be able to go. The elevator will break down if they all try. She wants the older man, the businessman, to stay below. He wants all of them to come up. Can the businessman come on a second trip? No, apparently this is it, once they’re up, they won’t be able to return.

Then she suggests that they make him small with her magical red contraption. She remembers something else. She has one for him too. She gives it to him now. It’s red, and it will put a protective screen around him and anyone he includes. It will make another person small. It has many other uses. He uses it now, with the older man’s permission, to make him small, or weightless. Then they start up to the surface. The people above are seeing the effects of their doings – vibrations and rumbles.

He really appreciates the gift!

The woman of his dream, of all his dreams really, is his hidden feminine, his anima in Jung’s terms. She gives him the red magic of the heart. She gives up her underground fantasy world to share life in outer reality with him. She’s his medicine sister, his wild, magical, earthy, Celtic, Native American side. She’s his luck.

What an awesome responsibility he has undertaken, with her following him and giving him the gift of protecting himself and others. She’s giving up her underground life to be with him in the outer world. He has to be the best man he can be to be worthy of this responsibility. He has to be the I Ching’s Superior Man or Jung’s Individuated Man or Castaneda’s Man of Knowledge – all of which are really just different names for the same centered and whole being.

His magical woman is breaking free from the archetype of the inner mother, especially the negative mother, Granny. His dream is showing this inner drama in vivid detail. She’s willing now to give up her old trip, her fantasy life that is separate from and seen as crazy by the rest of the world, so that she can be with him in this world, so that she can live with him this life of the body. This is a definite affirmation that he’s finally beginning to live a life of meaning, one that will be worthy of her sacrifice and her devotion.
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His Father’s Tools

He dreams that he’s with a large group of people on this rich man’s estate. Somehow they have managed to damage the man’s swimming pool while he was away. He stays here, although everyone else runs away. When the owner returns, he’s impressed that he’s still here and asks him stay on, to take care of the place. The owner reminds him of the guy who turned him onto grass years ago.

Now Pamela is here, taking Jonathan for a walk. She’s uptight and bothered by all the mud, not wanting him to get into it. He and Pamela are arguing over whether or not Jonathan should wear boots. He doesn’t think he needs to.

Finally though, she leaves him for good, and he’s alone again on the estate. The main room in the house has been wrecked too, and all the instruments and tools that he has inherited from his father are gone. He sits there alone, grieving for his losses.

But then, just as he has finally accepted his losses, a large box flies in through the broken western window and settles gently upon the floor at his feet. It contains all the instruments and tools that he had lost when Pamela left. He’s himself again. Accepting his losses has somehow given him back his manhood.

His work, although different than his father’s, is similar. His dad built and remodeled houses. He helps folks build and rebuild their egos, their lives, and their relationship with their inner and outer worlds. His dad had his house building tools, and he has his person building ones.

One of his tools is his ability to get inside other people’s dreams with them and then help them to see what their dreams are telling them about themselves and their lives. Another of his healing tools is the powerful love within himself that he can share with another whenever they are open with themselves. Other of his tools are his ability to encounter anyone on whatever level they wish, his wise use of medicines for self and reality exploration, and his use of the woods and being alone for healing.

He will do as well with his own tools as his father did with his. He will be just as productive as his father was. Maybe he’ll even work for himself as his father did.
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Chapter 14 – Into the World

The Real World Calls

He and Karen are in the San Jacinto Mountains, in Southern California. He has really missed the mountains. It’s early February and there is still a lot of snow on the ground. They have found a sheltered and dry spot under some pine trees and have made their camp. They don’t have a tent yet, but, although it’s quite cold, the weather is clear.

They’ve been out all day hiking in the snow. They’ve been tracking animals and learning what it’s like here in the winter. He has never lived in the snow. This is all new and exciting for him. He wants to live here forever. He has to live here forever – above six thousand feet and in wilderness. He would even live in a small mountain community somewhere. The new direction his life is taking is definitely up.

He wants to be able to be here whenever he wants, in this real world of fun and danger and adventure. Wandering there, together with working below in the city to make a good living, is much more interesting to him than all those inner images and fantasies that have preoccupied him for so much of his life. Only here, in these high mountains and in his work below, can the real world compete with that inner world of fantasy. Today is an affirmation for all of him that responds to living on the edge.

This world – of his fire before him now, of deep snow, coyotes, wandering trails, barely thawed creeks, and tall, snow-clad trees – this world is worth living fully, as is the world of his creative work in the city below. He wants to continue to live in both worlds, recognizing that it is their interplay that drives him on, keeps him a man.

He wants to live in the mountains all the time. He loves this snow. He wants to live in the Sierras somewhere east of San Francisco. He wants to buy land adjacent to a national forest. He can work somewhere in the Bay Area, having a small place there, maybe just a room in a house with other people.

He won’t have to commute every day. He can come in once a week and spend several days seeing his patients and doing his groups and classes. His patients can come out to his place too, when he feels they’re ready for the woods, for being alone, and maybe for medicines.

He’ll have his Ph.D. very soon. If he starts moving some of his practice north now and rebuilds the rest when he arrives there, he’ll be able to actualize all this. He’ll probably move first to Berkeley, and after he has built up his practice there, he’ll be able to buy land somewhere in the Sierras and move onto it.
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Steve and Boney Ridge

He met Steve just over a year ago, back when he moved in with Karen. Steve was different from everyone he had known, reflecting a new way of being – a way more kind, more generous, and more conscious too. He saw that he would have to leave behind everything he knew and valued to follow this way that Steve exemplified. He also saw that it would be a meaningful life, with roots and with connections to both the earth and Spirit.

Steve has been an inspiration for him ever since. Steve didn’t turn him onto medicines – others did this – but he did inspire and encourage him to continue with them and to use them wisely. He bought his first grass from Steve – very high quality smoke too – and began to see from his example that dealing could be positive and useful work.

Steve also turned him onto Boney Ridge, this wild and hilly land up in the coastal range, north of Malibu. Without this spiritual refuge, he would not have made it through these very stressful past months of earning his Ph.D.

Steve brought him and Gypsy here the first time and showed them around. The trail began at the parking lot and headed straight up. That first time, they hiked to the top and then got stoned together.

They could see all around – the city surrounding and encroaching upon this little bit of wild land and the ocean beyond. Sitting there, he realized that he could return whenever he wanted. That day, Steve was wondering what the spirit of this place was like. Got him to wondering too.

That day passed all too quickly. Steve went off by himself for awhile, and he and Gypsy rambled about themselves. They found a little meadow, and he sat and smoked again while Gypsy explored everywhere and everything with her nose.

Later, they met Steve and ran down the trail to the parking lot. He’ll never forget watching Steve stumble and begin to fall. However, instead of falling and maybe hurting himself, Steve did a forward flip and landed back on his feet, continuing on down the trail, all this without missing a beat. It was beautiful to see!
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Wanderer Saves Him

He dreams he’s with some folks in the mountains. He is leaning out over the edge of a cliff. He’s holding onto some branches, but they break in his hands and he falls. When he regains consciousness, he realizes that he has somehow survived and is lying on a ledge part way down. He’s shaken but unhurt.

His hobo friend Wanderer comes by then and lowers him a rope. When he grabs onto it, Wanderer pulls him up to safety. Wanderer seems to have realized that he really needs help and has decided to stay with him all the time from now on. They’ll be partners, with him the junior partner. They head home together now.

The very next night he dreams that he’s with the same folks again, this time going across a narrow and treacherous ledge in the mountains. At first, the folks with him are afraid to follow, so he clears the ledge of loose dirt and gravel and ties his rope alongside it for them to use as a handrail. Now it’s easy, and they all cross over safely.

Looking about then, he sees this slide at the top of the mountain that goes down into a comfortable living room far below. He uses his rope to let himself down till it’s safe to slide the rest of the way home.

In his first dream, Wanderer shows him the point of carrying a rope in the mountains, rather than trusting himself to branches that might betray him. He learns this lesson so well that in his very next mountain trip, in his very next dream, he already has a rope with him and is using it to make a dangerous and difficult way safe and easy for himself and for those traveling with him.

He wonders what else Wanderer will teach him now that he is almost finished with school and can soon be with him all the time? He wonders who he will become from letting this old hobo into his life?

Wanderer is like Castaneda’s Don Juan, except that Wanderer is a part of himself, a deeper and wiser part, one that has always had to live outside of consciousness and the existing culture. He knows he’ll really change from knowing him. Wanderer’s ways and wisdom conflict with all the cultural norms, especially with those regarding what constitutes a person’s relationship with society and those regarding what is sane and insane.

He has been doing the best he can in his life, keeping his head together, actually improving it, both in the mountains and in the city too. At the same time, he has almost earned his Ph.D. and has built up a small but rewarding private practice. He’s done all this, yet he has never felt himself to be all he can be. Wanderer intrigues him. He’s suggests more than he has ever thought possible for himself.