slowone
Jedi Master
I was just reading a recent post whic mentioned Jonathan Blacks Book 'The Secret History of the World' and it has prompted me to share my experience of a dream that led my to Laura's book of the same name and sbusequenltly Via her other books to here.
If I share a bit of background I hope you wont mind.
Some years ago a friend introduced me to the books of Carlos Castaneda. I read them all and was alternately fascinated and horrified by what the books proposed about the nature of mans reality and a predatory universe.
I didn't share my worries or thoughts with anyone else then and for the best part of ten years held my suspision that he knew something that other people didn't to myself. The part that worried me most was the having your awareness eaten and I felt a generally quite bleak outlook on our chances of breaking free.
I read in that ten years many books (not Gurdjieff) and not one touched on the subject of being eaten or said anything much other than nice touchy, feely, it is all ok really.
I personally found it really difficult to hold a belief that I couldn't share, that didn't seem to show up very often in other literature. Even books that quoted Castaneda didn't mention 'the Flyers' I am a yoga teacher and even the yoga texts I had read seemed to believe that at the end of enlightenment lay Bliss. No path between the two could link the opposing ideas, for me.
I had my third child nearly three years ago and after four months of giving birth had a most bizarre episode where I fell asleep but was 'awake' in my dream. I remember looking at my hands ( a technique from 'The Art of Dreaming, Carlos Castaneda), being ware that this dream was different, I could fly for a start and then being aware that I had been met by beings with wings who showed me things that had a kind of cartoonish element to them. They met me as if they knew me and wanted to take me to where they were. The whole thing had a knind of 'Beetlejuice' feel and look. They were showing me a link between dogs and death! The ramblings of my mind no doubt. I remember meeting a relative who had recenty died whose face I wouldn't normally have been able to recall and seeing it in the most precise detail, suprising myself, and then being attacked by an entity who wanted to entrap me,who I shocked by shoving something up its nose and getting away. Terrifying but also again comical. There were many other elements but one that now seems to be significant was seeing a black spidery thing coming out of my third eye area...
You can see that it was kind of farcical but it was terrifying and it got worse when I woke up because I 'saw' the reality of my room, life etc reasemble like a dream in front of my eyes. I couldn't look at objects for too long as I was convinced they would dissolve , I couldn't stop shaking, I couldn't sleep because I was terrified I wouldn't wake up in this reality again and I would be 'lost.
I was so ill that my doctor prescribed anti-depressants, it looked like an episode of Post-natal depression. the anti-depressants did work as they calmed me down and I makde it my mission to only read books that had a 'pleasant' spin. I felt that years of hanging on to 'morbid' beliefs about the nature of reality had forced me to have a breakdown an that i should make more effort to be opptimistic and seek out opptimistic worldviews.
Which brings me to Jonathan Black's book 'The secret History of the World'. It was exactly the kind of book a love, I bought it for my husband for christmas thinking I would read it after him. Needless to say I read it first. I liked it, it was inventive,interesting and non-threatening I could see that here was a book that was well researched and well thought out and I was comfortable with the ides he was putting forward except...
I had a dream towards the end of the book, which brought me to Laura and her book of the same name. I dreamt that I was in my garden at my childhood house and it started to snow. Not over everyone's house only mine. The most beautiful thick white snowflakes, it was magical. When I looked up into the sky though I discovered that it wasn't snow, they were feathers being thrown out of a plane by people or entities that were flying over the house.
I can't remember now how I made the link exactly but I remembered the dream on waking and realised that it was about deception. I recall reading once that a precusor to enlightenment was seeing something falling from the sky like a golden dust or rain.( I can't find the reference now, I must check where i read it ) .
By some connection it made me want to check into the background of Jonathan Black i.e other publications etc to see where his ideas had come from and in my search on amazon I found Laura's book. When I read the synopsis I knew this was a book I had to read.
I still cannot believe that I got here, I feel lucky to have been steered somehow to this community. To say it has changed my life would be true. I read very quickly all of Laura's books I could get hold of, and now need to reread more slowly! But I have found people who are also wrestling with the kinds of questions and challenges that I am and do talk about it. I have struggled to post anything personal on this forum, because everyone else seems to have so much that's interesting to say and I don't.
This is my contribution and I hope that it is the first of many for me and that I can become part of this community giving as well as recieving.
Thank you once more I have come a long way to get here (emotionally) and I hope to keep going . I have started to read Gurdjieff.
If I share a bit of background I hope you wont mind.
Some years ago a friend introduced me to the books of Carlos Castaneda. I read them all and was alternately fascinated and horrified by what the books proposed about the nature of mans reality and a predatory universe.
I didn't share my worries or thoughts with anyone else then and for the best part of ten years held my suspision that he knew something that other people didn't to myself. The part that worried me most was the having your awareness eaten and I felt a generally quite bleak outlook on our chances of breaking free.
I read in that ten years many books (not Gurdjieff) and not one touched on the subject of being eaten or said anything much other than nice touchy, feely, it is all ok really.
I personally found it really difficult to hold a belief that I couldn't share, that didn't seem to show up very often in other literature. Even books that quoted Castaneda didn't mention 'the Flyers' I am a yoga teacher and even the yoga texts I had read seemed to believe that at the end of enlightenment lay Bliss. No path between the two could link the opposing ideas, for me.
I had my third child nearly three years ago and after four months of giving birth had a most bizarre episode where I fell asleep but was 'awake' in my dream. I remember looking at my hands ( a technique from 'The Art of Dreaming, Carlos Castaneda), being ware that this dream was different, I could fly for a start and then being aware that I had been met by beings with wings who showed me things that had a kind of cartoonish element to them. They met me as if they knew me and wanted to take me to where they were. The whole thing had a knind of 'Beetlejuice' feel and look. They were showing me a link between dogs and death! The ramblings of my mind no doubt. I remember meeting a relative who had recenty died whose face I wouldn't normally have been able to recall and seeing it in the most precise detail, suprising myself, and then being attacked by an entity who wanted to entrap me,who I shocked by shoving something up its nose and getting away. Terrifying but also again comical. There were many other elements but one that now seems to be significant was seeing a black spidery thing coming out of my third eye area...
You can see that it was kind of farcical but it was terrifying and it got worse when I woke up because I 'saw' the reality of my room, life etc reasemble like a dream in front of my eyes. I couldn't look at objects for too long as I was convinced they would dissolve , I couldn't stop shaking, I couldn't sleep because I was terrified I wouldn't wake up in this reality again and I would be 'lost.
I was so ill that my doctor prescribed anti-depressants, it looked like an episode of Post-natal depression. the anti-depressants did work as they calmed me down and I makde it my mission to only read books that had a 'pleasant' spin. I felt that years of hanging on to 'morbid' beliefs about the nature of reality had forced me to have a breakdown an that i should make more effort to be opptimistic and seek out opptimistic worldviews.
Which brings me to Jonathan Black's book 'The secret History of the World'. It was exactly the kind of book a love, I bought it for my husband for christmas thinking I would read it after him. Needless to say I read it first. I liked it, it was inventive,interesting and non-threatening I could see that here was a book that was well researched and well thought out and I was comfortable with the ides he was putting forward except...
I had a dream towards the end of the book, which brought me to Laura and her book of the same name. I dreamt that I was in my garden at my childhood house and it started to snow. Not over everyone's house only mine. The most beautiful thick white snowflakes, it was magical. When I looked up into the sky though I discovered that it wasn't snow, they were feathers being thrown out of a plane by people or entities that were flying over the house.
I can't remember now how I made the link exactly but I remembered the dream on waking and realised that it was about deception. I recall reading once that a precusor to enlightenment was seeing something falling from the sky like a golden dust or rain.( I can't find the reference now, I must check where i read it ) .
By some connection it made me want to check into the background of Jonathan Black i.e other publications etc to see where his ideas had come from and in my search on amazon I found Laura's book. When I read the synopsis I knew this was a book I had to read.
I still cannot believe that I got here, I feel lucky to have been steered somehow to this community. To say it has changed my life would be true. I read very quickly all of Laura's books I could get hold of, and now need to reread more slowly! But I have found people who are also wrestling with the kinds of questions and challenges that I am and do talk about it. I have struggled to post anything personal on this forum, because everyone else seems to have so much that's interesting to say and I don't.
This is my contribution and I hope that it is the first of many for me and that I can become part of this community giving as well as recieving.
Thank you once more I have come a long way to get here (emotionally) and I hope to keep going . I have started to read Gurdjieff.
