The real cover of my real novel
The Highway Shaman Wisdom for August 5, 2020
This is the morning after I pulled the CREATOR card. What will I create next? A month or so ago I had the idea of putting together slate and cement bonsai cactus planters. I finished thirty-two of them. They’re worth at least $10 each. Prior to that I finished making 40 necklaces, worth at average $75. What’s next? I’ll draw my card for today.
BEYOND ILLUSION (Judgment) – This is the only distinction between the dream and the real: reality allows you to doubt, and the dream does not allow you to doubt. The capacity to doubt is one of the greatest blessings to humanity. The religions have been enemies because they have been cutting the very roots of doubt, and there is a reason why they have been doing that – because they want people to believe in certain illusions that they have been preaching. Why have people like Guatam Buddha been so insistent that the whole existence – except your witnessing self – is just ephemeral, made of the same stuff as dreams are made of? They are not saying that these trees are not there. They are not saying that these pillars are no there. Don’t misunderstand because of the word ‘illusion.’ It has been translated as illusion, but illusion is not the right word. Illusion does not exist. Reality exists. Maya is just in between – it almost exists. As far as day-to-day activities are concerned, it can be taken as reality. Only in the ultimate sense, from the peak of your illumination, it becomes unreal, illusory.
“This card reminds us to not look outside for what is real, but to look within. Drop your opinionated mind and move within. There, you can relax into your own deepest truth, where the difference between dream and reality is already known.”
This has meaning to me regarding my creations. I have spent ten years working a novel series, which nobody has read. It sits in space, in my computer. Is it real? Only to myself and only because I say it is. I could print it out and hand it to someone, but that person will only think its real if they have some reason to believe it so. If not, they will put it aside or throw it away – validate it unreal since it has no value to them. I have a pile of 40 necklaces. I can give them value. I can make them seem real. But they only have value as a dream – the dream of having value to someone else, a buyer. I will have to somehow Create a buyer, to convince this person that my dream is real and has value. The process of turning illusion or dreams into reality isn’t that easy. I suppose this is why I’ve chosen to be a spiritual person, because I can “say” that I’m this amazing God being – “relax into my own deepest truth, where the difference between dream and reality is already known,” and be content there. At this place there is nothing tangible I must create and convince another to like or dislike, to buy or walk away from. I don’t need to prove my value to anyone except myself. It almost seems too easy proclaiming to be Divine, to separate oneself from the struggles and pain of life. Maybe this is the cosmic irony or joke. If it is all a dream, an illusion, or Maya, then why not turn away from the struggle and choose peace and serenity?
Because . . . we need money to buy the dream, which is marketed to be bigger and better and more expensive. Marketing has given the dream value. Society forces me to be a salesmen to convince people to buy my books and necklaces. I must struggle doing unnatural things, like trying to be a salesman, or I go without. Fail.
I am the Highway Shaman because I listen to the guidance of the unseen world around me. I sit at the feet of the beauty of nature. My life is over-flowing with air, water and food. I have been given the basic tools to stay healthy and thrive as a Creator. In these ways I am living in abundance. Grateful and Loved.
