Sunday night, I dreamt I had overslept and was late for work. In my dream I looked at the time: it was 2pm! I was in the town of Deadwood, and all the clocks were out of sync. Sheriff Bullock was coordinating them so they all read the same time. The dream was like watching an episode of Deadwood, only I was in it and the opening credits were different. Instead of the usual intro, I was treated to a high-altitude desert vista surrounded by mountains. I thought to myself, "this isn't how Deadwood begins, where am I?" In another dream this night, I was on an ancient ship at sea. It felt Egyptian or Incan, but was wooden and not made of reeds. A huge wave crashed over me and I was almost swept over, but I grabbed hold of the image. People in ancient Egyptian-styled robes were looking at me, wondering where I had come from. I can't remember if they helped me or if I fell into the stormy sea.

In my dream last night, I had people over at my house for a small party and I was trying to straighten the bookshelf to prevent it from falling over. Instead, the whole thing fell, books crashing to the floor. There were a lot of books. Everyone laughed good-naturedly, and helped me pick up the books. Strangely, we took the books outside and set up the bookshelves in the garden.

I'm not too sure what to make of the first dream, except to compare it to the dream in which I was assigned "number two". The second dream however could be a couple of things.

Moving the books outside, to the garden, could mean I need to move out into the world to further my education, instead of staying home and looking for it in books. Or I need to share my books and knowledge with the outside world: people helping me to move the books could represent this. Moving the books into the garden is intriguing -- could this be a hint to gain wisdom in the natural world, such as ayahuasca?

I recently cut down on my zoloft medication and I've immediately noticed a heightened dreamstate. I was prescribed zoloft over a year ago, by a doctor who wouldn't test me for thyroid problems and was certain I just had anxiety and stress. Last year I saw another doctor, and was diagnosed with benign thyroid cancer and hypothyroid. Now that I'm taking thyroxin, and my hormone levels are almost normal, I don't need the zoloft. And my subconscious is thanking me for it.

I look forward to your insights.

I had a disturbing dream where I was preparing to go to jail. I don't know what my crime was, all I knew is that I had been sentenced to three and a half years jail. I was upset of course, but I didn't argue my innocence: which is odd, if I'm wrongly accused of anything, I fight like a cornered wild cat. Instead, I decided that I would use the time to develop myself physically, mentally, and spiritually, so that on release, I'd be a better person.

Interesting that in three and a half years, it'll be the end of 2011 and only a few months away from 2012. The dream also coincides with decisions I've made this year, to tone down my ambitions, keep life simple, and take the small steps that will place me in a better position several years from now.

A dream I had last night. A woman was handing out numbers, for what reason I don't know. I had a pessimistic feeling, that I would be last or my number would be so high I'd be waiting forever. To my surprise, she looked at me first and said, "You're 2!" She hadn't allocated number 1, so I assumed she was 1 and I was chosen to be second. Second for what, I can't remember.

Why was I chosen to be number 2, and what does it mean? Dualism? Yin & Yang? In Kabbalah, the second sphere of the Tree is Wisdom: intuition, synchronicity, life beyond space/time. Two sides to a coin? Am I missing a third force?

~~

I had another musical synchronicity yesterday. I had a Tori Amos song stuck in my head all day. I haven't listened to Tori's music for a long time, and I haven't heard her music played anywhere else recently. I don't know why this one suddenly popped into my head to haunt me. It really came out of the blue.

Later in the day after work, I walked into a store looking for a new shirt, and the exact same song was playing on the stereo. The song is Angels, and it's on her Best Of cd Tales of a Librarian (Amazon US or UK). Ok, it's a popular cd by a popular artist -- but to hear the same song that had been stuck in my head all day, a song I haven't listened to in at least a year... that's more than a coincidence when you consider my Indiana Jones jolt last week.

I was walking home from work earlier this evening, lost in my head daydreaming, and for some reason a thought popped into my mind that I should use the Indiana Jones theme music as a ringtone for my mobile phone. A few seconds later, a phone belonging to a woman walking in front of me rings -- it's the Indiana Jones theme music.

Is my excitement for the new Indiana Jones movie due in two weeks so intense, I'm creating synchronous psychic events?

Is the writing on the wall for Gordon Brown? The Conservative Party's Boris Johnson demolished Labour to become London's new mayor.

But is the C word really an improvement on Brown?

It's official. Guillermo Del Toro will adapt JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit to the big screen, with Peter Jackson Executive Producer. And it'll be TWO MOVIES!

If only we could see the grin on Red Pill Junkie's face. ;-)

*DISCLAIMER: I am not anti-Chinese, I just want to make that very clear in case people take this blog post as such. I'm campaigning as much for the rights of the Chinese people as I am for Tibetans. Millions of Chinese have suffered and continue to suffer, and it's not right that the rest of the world turns a blind eye in return for trade favours. My incident involved a loud minority, and I do not judge all Chinese by the actions of a few. I'm a quiet, shy, peaceful guy in person, but this incident really shook me up. Thank you for understanding.

On my way to the football today, I walked past a march by pro-China nationalists through the Melbourne CBD. I didn't know the march was on, it took me by surprise. What really took me by surprise were the banners:

STOP TERRORISM IN TIBET!
STOP TIBETAN TERRORISTS!
STOP THE LIES ABOUT CHINA!
TELL THE TRUTH!
STOP MEDIA DISTORTION AND LIES ABOUT CHINA!

This wasn't a protest for peace and unity, it was unadulterated nationalism of the worst kind. I stopped and with an American couple, tried to engage a dialogue with several young Chinese, to ask them why they think the West is lying about Tibet and China. I didn't get the Americans names, but they were very calm and reasoned and knowledgeable, and the Chinese students didn't know what to say. As we were talking, we were screamed at and pushed from behind by protestors marching by. The heckling and yelling was so loud, we could hardly be heard by the Chinese students we were speaking with, and they could barely hear us.

I have to leave to meet people at the football, so I walk away and yell, "Support human rights in China and Tibet!", over the shouting of the Chinese nationalist marchers.

A large section of the 10'000 strong protesting crowd stop. Suddenly I'm surrounded by yelling Chinese shoving cameras in my face. I'm spat on, and I'm continually kicked from behind. When I turn around, the culprits duck their heads and pretend it wasn't them. And now that I have an angry face from getting spat on and kicked, more cameras are shoved in my face. Flashes on digital cameras go off, I have a video camera with a Chinese media logo shoved in my face with the cameraman yelling at me and laughing.

And no one stopped to help me. NO ONE. I don't blame them really, when there's several hundred Chinese yelling at me and spitting and kicking me behind my back. But still, it's bewildering that people hurried past with their heads down and didn't help me.

An uncontrollable urge to break heads hit me, like the Incredible Hulk. I spun around to look for the latest person who kicked me from behind and I was about to grab him by the hair and sink my knee into his face, I was grabbed from behind by a police officer.

To my surprise, they told me to walk away, that it wasn't worth getting into a fight with these people. The copper said they agreed with me, but starting a fight wasn't worth it and it would just give the Chinese nationalists satisfaction.

So I walked away, went to the football, and forgot about Tibet and China and human rights abuses with 80'000 other football fans.

I got home an hour ago, turn the tv on to watch the news, to see if they covered the Chinese propaganda march. They did, but what I saw shook me to my core and I am so angry, I can barely type this.

The news report didn't show the banners. Instead, they showed a group of people marching peacefully, and at the end of the report the news reporter briefly interviewed several young, affluent Chinese international students who calmly said the march was all about promoting "peace and unity".

It gets worse. The interviewees said that they support Tibet, and that the Chinese Government is doing its best to help Tibetans. The violence in Lhasa a couple of months ago is the fault of "terrorists".

I am so angry, I'm sure steam is coming out of my ears. Not because I was kicked and spat on and humiliated, but because of the blatant lying and deceiving and manipulative propaganda.... and no one cares. No one fucking cares.

And I'm sure my blonde-haired, blue-eyed evil racist face is being splashed across Chinese blogs and media right now. Too bad no one filmed me getting kicked and spat on and abused.

Here's another random entry from my dream life. Last night I dreamed I met an elephant in the street, near my house. It ran up to me like a puppy and we immediately became friends. The dream was very vivid and may have been lucid, the elephant responded happily to me when I patted its trunk. I can remember the bristly hairs on the trunk and the wrinkly skin in vivid detail. As I was figuring out where the elephant came from, a passerby said that the elephant probably came from a circus that was north of our location and not too far away.

I can't remember whether I took the elephant back to the circus, kept it, or returned it to the wilderness.

Recently I had a dream of a stunning spiderweb. At its center were many hexagons.

A few days before this dream, I had admired a web an orb spider had spun outside my kitchen window. I had also read about the hexagon at Saturn's south pole. Somewhere in my subconscious, sparks of DMT combined the two images and created a spiderweb with hexagons.

I dreamed I turned into a wolf last Sunday night. I don't remember how or why I turned into a wolf. I was surrounded by old buildings, such as a monastery or university campus, but definitely urban and modern. When I turned into a wolf, I immediately knew I had to hide from people. Unfortunately they saw me, and I had to run. I ran like the wind, I was incredibly fast. I ran away from the buildings and towards a forest. The path ran straight ahead to a river, and I remember thinking that turning right would take me to the city, and turning left would take me deeper into the forest. All my pursuers had given up except for one, right behind me, so I ran straight ahead, diving into the river. I waded out to the middle, trying to dive underwater to hide, but I couldn't, I had to paddle with my head above water. My pursuer didn't follow, they remained on the bank, watching, before eventually giving up and leaving. When I was sure they had gone, I returned to land and chose an old dirt path leading away from the city, deeper into the forest. I came upon a large hole in the ground, like a rabbit's burrow, and I knew it was the entrance to an underground lair where all the wolves lived. I hesitated, frightened, thinking the wolves would kill and eat me. But then I realised I was a wolf, and they would recognise me as one of their own, so I entered the lair unafraid. I remember walking through underground tunnels, passing other wolves who sniffed me in greeting. I may have spoken to some kind of a leader, a king or queen, but the dream becomes fuzzy at this point and I can remember no more.

Dreams are getting weirder. I was on an alien planet and something big was about to happen -- massive storms, something bad that was forcing everyone to find shelter. I remember a bizarre robot running to warn an old hermit living in a shack. At first I was disgusted by the ramshackle, dirty shack, but then I grew used to it and after a while I viewed it as home and didn't give it's impoverished appearance a second thought. The planet was dry and dusty. And then, as the sun was about to set, a magnificent rainbow surrounded it. I counted the colours. There were only six, not the usual seven. Then I realised the seventh colour is invisible. The bands of colours began to move and - this is hard to explain - separated, one behind the other. I had the impression I was witnessing something miraculous. That's all I can remember. There was a welcome home for the crew of the spaceship -- there was one person who received all the credit when he did nothing, and an ex-astronaut who came out of retirement to fly the mission gave me a reassuring smile and shrugged, as if to say "that's how the world works". There was a Japanese man on the craft, a young scientist with long hair, looks like a musician, who had a long screw in his hand that required surgery to remove. I can still visualise the x-ray.

But the rainbow sticks in my mind, the way the bands of colours moved and separated. It was epic.

This is a repost of my response to Robert Schoch's latest blog entry about catching a frog that turned into a salamander. I had a dream about being entrusted to protect a blue frog a few days ago, almost exactly the same time as Robert and Collette were catching frogs.

Update:

Just did a quick online search for symbolism. The frog is traditionally viewed as a symbol for transformation, particularly for wisdom and spiritual awareness, in shamanic customs. This is due to the frog's dual elements, earth and water. In Celtic tradition, the frog is the messenger for supernatural beings.

The colour blue is also interesting. In Egyptian mythology, Kneph (father of Ptah) was the only deity to be depicted in blue. Kneph was connected to transformation and immortality. Jesus Christ always wore blue robes when teaching. Vishnu and Rama are blue, as are deities in Tibetan thangka paintings. The Norse god Odin wore a blue mantle. The word for blue in Japanese is aoi, which also means innocence and inexperience. Blue denotes the eastern direction in Chinese cosmology. And of course, blue is representative of water, which has its own meanings of spirituality, wisdom, unconscious, etc.

Is this a message from my unconscious, from supernatural beings, or from the Divine? It was such an odd dream, I was entrusted to protect a blue frog (by whom, I can't remember), and there were beings out to catch it. I became a fugitive, running and hiding. I remember humanoid beings, but they definitely weren't human. Very strange. I've recently made a life-changing decision to take up art again, to start from the beginning, relearn (or remember) how to be creative like I was when a child. Could this be what I'm expected to protect and nurture, my inner child and creativity? Or is there something else to it?

Maybe it was a distress signal from the frog Robert caught! :p

Cheers,

Rick

After reading about calls for various ancient ruins and wilderness areas around the world to be granted World Heritage Status, I just came up with a brilliant idea:

How about we grant World Heritage Status to the entire Earth? =D

Sign your name, and I'll submit a petition to the UN.

A very realistic, sometimes lucid, dream I experienced last week:

* * * * * * * * * * * *

I'm at a musical performance. Daniel Lanois, whom I've never listened to before, was performing with classical musicians. There were books in cabinets nearby. I look at the books, and they are about hidden cities in Tibet. One book is titled The Dharpa, who led an explorer to a hidden city in Tibet. I lucidly wonder (and I remember actively pondering this in my dream) if it actually reads Dharma, but no, the word is definitely Dharpa. It's a word I've never read before. Daniel Lanois walks past, and mentions a Dharpa leading the explorers to the hidden city, perhaps thinking it's a word similar to Sherpa. I reply bemusedly, "No, not a Dharpa, but THE Dharpa!" Daniel Lanois laughs and replies in a skeptical, but friendly, tone, "The Dharpa? Haha, I don't think so!"

Fade.

I'm walking a path with a group of people in Tibet, a path I feel that countless others have followed believing it leads to a hidden city. All have failed to reach it. There are monk lookouts, and seeing us, they rush ahead and close enormous gates that we have no hope of opening ourselves. It's then that I realise the path won't get me to the hidden city, so I step off it, and make my way through the scrub up the slopes of the mountain.

Fade.

I remember flashes of extraordinary architecture, a city touched by the sky, the sun flashing off golden spires and fantastic buildings, but I can remember very little.

Fade.

I see myself at the city. Another me! He looks exactly like me because he is me. I get the impression that I've traveled to the hidden city in Tibet to meet this other me, I've come to find him and become one person again.

Fade.

I'm back at the music performance, showing an unknown lady and several other people photographs I took of the hidden city. They are all impressed by the hidden city.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

That's all I can remember. I immediately did a search for Dharpa and discovered it's the name of a real village in northern India, Uttar Pradesh, one of five villages whose inhabitants claim direct lineage from elite royal warriors. Dharpa also means "tree" in the dialect of northern Australian aboriginals. The Dharpa, not any old Dharpa, led me to a hidden city in Tibet? Intriguing. I've never heard of the Indian village nor the aboriginal word before.

There's also DARPA: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA raises some interesting questions indeed.

Dharpa. DARPA. Dharma. I have no answers, no explanations for this very vivid (and oftentimes lucid) dream only a burning desire to explore the hidden valleys of Tibet in search of a secret city!

Last night I dreamed I was talking to Dan Brown about a new book of his. It was set on Mars, where the planet is rich in a unique kind of volcanic glass that is a super-efficient fuel. As we mine it and use it, it's discovered that if we eat it, it has incredible healing effects. So incredible, it cures every disease and illness known to humans. Dan says the plot twist is these pieces of volcanic glass are actually the tears of God. I exclaimed, jokingly, that Dan had just given away the plot of his new novel, but he shrugged his shoulders and said he didn't mind. Weird.

Anyways, even though it was Dan Brown's idea, it was my dream and I'm copyrighting this novel. ;-)