All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.

Native American Pounding Stone on a High Ridge

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FIND A PATH

Words and Music by Jim Robbins

Shut your windows, lock your doors, and arm

your alarm system. Find an ancient path 

into the woodland forest and hike until you stumble

upon a Native American Village, abandoned

over a century ago. Along the way, you will find

sweet, ravishing flowers, revealing how the brilliant

energies of splendor extend into the cosmos--

to the farthest stars. You might find an ancient oak

emanating peace from the Source and suddenly

feel free of negativity, and suddenly feel

compassion for all life. As you stand among

the flowers, under the huge branches, your ego

might let go as you gaze far into the distance

and suddenly you might feel one 

with Universal Consciousness and know 

that all energy is holy. Your ego might let go

as you gaze into the distance

and you might suddenly feel one 

with Universal Consciousness.

You might find flowers emanating

sweetness from the Source and suddenly

feel peace beyond understanding,

and suddenly feel free of negativity,

and suddenly feel compassion for all life.

Ancient Trail through Lupine, Popcorn, and Goldfields

PENDULUM DREAMS:

Part Twelve

   When I was a boy, the neighborhood kids ditched me now and then in unfamiliar places. They were all two years older, yet I was better at sports than some of them, especially football. In retrospect, I believe that they repeatedly tried to cut me down to size in order to emphasize that I should remain weak and subordinate, which placed me in an awkward position because they surely would have wrecked me if I had not striven to measure up to them.

   One time stands out because two aspects of the experience had a profound effect on me. I don't remember where we were that day because I had slept in the car for most of our trip into the mountains. I remember opening my eyes as we were about to cross an arched bridge over a canyon, which startled and amazed me enough that I kept my eyes open. After a few more nauseating miles on a winding mountain road, my Dad parked the car, and we all plunged down a hill to a river below. As my Dad fished, the rest of us wandered off to explore the area. We followed a trail up a hill and soon lost sight of the river. 

   Suddenly they all tried to ditch me, but I managed to keep up with one of the less athletic boys, who sprinted around wildly in a circle. 

   After we joined up together again, Alan, our de facto leader, cussed and sneered at the boy who couldn't shake me. As I was asking what the hell was going on, Alan suddenly yelled, "Again!" They all quickly vanished into the nearby woods. I didn't try to scramble after them the second time, however. For awhile I felt abandoned and vulnerable and furious. For most of the hike, I was still trying to wake up and hadn't really paid much attention to where I was in relation to the river or the car. I kept plodding up the hill, thinking I might find my friends on the trail ahead.

   Then I noticed lupine next to the trail. I had never really stopped to look at lupine before. I was usually oblivious to the environment as I tried my best to keep up with the other kids. I smelled its faint, cloying fragrance and it suddenly seemed like the most stunning flower I had ever encountered. I knew that I should probably continue searching for the other boys, but I just stood gazing at the lupine, and suddenly peace drenched my soul, a peace that was flooding the entire woodland forest, a peace that forced me to question why I kept struggling to be as good or better than the other boys.

   I found another trail heading downhill and hiked along a small stream, aware, for a change, of an abundance of flowers, especially lupine. I couldn't help but pause and gaze at each flower, now and then remembering that I was lost and might not find my way back before sunset, but I kept telling myself that I didn't need any of them, that my newfound awareness of the peace within the natural world was all I needed no matter what happened.

   I don't know how long I wandered alone but eventually I pushed through some bushes into an opening and stepped out unexpectedly onto the river bank. My father was still fishing, and the other boys were splashing around in the river. 

   As soon as my father saw me, he yelled out, "Time to go!" I realized then that a great deal of time must have passed since they had ditched me, but I hadn't noticed because along with the feeling of peace was a sense of timelessness. I realized then how lucky I was to have wandered straight to the place where everyone was hanging out as I noticed the beginnings of sunset reflected in the river. My father had always just shrugged whenever I told him what the other boys had done to me, so I didn't say anything as we scrambled up the hill to the car.

   Alan's father had died from leukemia about six months before our trip. Alan had now and then displayed leadership qualities that our small group valued: adventurousness and rebelliousness. After his father passed away, he began to demand loyalty no matter how insane or sadistic his machinations and his adventures turned out to be. He was the mastermind behind ditching me in a pitch-black cave, for instance. (See previous post.) He once got his hands on a bottle of 151 rum and commanded me to guzzle two large cups of Pepsi spiked with the noxious liquid; not aware that I was drinking copious amounts of hard liquor, I pounded down the libations given to me as quickly as I could. I passed out less than an hour later and threw up all over the kitchen table where the others were playing poker. (I was deathly ill for three days.) Once, he directed me to fight one of the weaker older boys; I pulled all of my punches, but the others all thought it was hilarious as I pretended to beat the hell out of him. Even though they acted like I was the decisive winner of the fight, we both ended up humiliated. 

   Those are just a few of his brilliant ideas. Somehow Alan knew that the group needed someone to pick on, someone to humiliate, and his commands seemed to be getting crazier every time we got together, and I was getting sick of being the target of his sadistic schemes. After he caught our tent on fire one night, which ended up severely burning the back of my head as I slept, I began to suspect that he felt no qualms about seriously harming others in order to maintain his position as the supreme leader of the group. Thanks to him, I began noticing examples of this form of behavior throughout history.

   Giving Alan the benefit of the doubt, however, I began to suspect that after his father died he needed to be in control of every situation and that his demand for absolute loyalty was a substitute for something that he was missing, but I could no longer laugh off or ignore how he was becoming more and more of a menace--especially to me. I knew one thing for certain: I could not follow him anymore. I could not be part of a group that harms its weakest members to satisfy the sadistic needs of the others. I learned because of that experience that on my own I could find a profound peace that enabled me to totally let go of anger and fear and frustration.

   Something else happened that day that had a profound effect on me. After we crossed the bridge over the canyon on our way home, I suddenly knew that my father was going to die soon, and I would not be able to do anything about it. He had never showed signs of illness or weakness, but I knew it with absolute certainty. I felt shocked and devastated as the car wove through hillsides on fire with fiddleneck. I was speechless, but I knew that they would belittle me for my premonition anyway. As we gently swayed back and forth in our seats on the way home, I eventually fell asleep.

   My premonition came true several years later. My father died of a heart attack at the age of fifty-five. I eventually realized that there are currents of time, the knowledge of which can surface due to external events and conducive states of mind. In the forest by myself, no longer worried about Alan's sadistic schemes, my consciousness had slipped into a state that enabled me to experience a profound sense of unity underlying all consciousness, which induced a sense of peace beyond understanding, and I let go of all negative feelings about my peers. In that state, possibly sparked in part also because of Alan's emotional struggles due to his father's death, I also accessed knowledge of the future. I eventually understood that those currents of time include not just premonitions about the future but memories of past lives buried deep in the subconscious mind. It was as if all time exists at once, including the future and the remote past of other lives, and instead of accessing knowledge of key moments within the soul's history, we are "normally" too caught up in the moment or too afraid to experience that knowledge.   

   Recently I went to see a psychic named Debra. From a safe distance, Debra ushered me in to sit on her couch, and she plopped down in a recliner on the other side of the room. We chatted for a while, and she suddenly blurted out that my soul is from a high angelic order known as the Brilliant Ones. Another psychic had mentioned something similar back in the days when I was an open-minded agnostic, but Debra's emphatic claim nevertheless came as a surprise. I didn't believe the statement when I first heard it mainly because I have been less than mediocre throughout most of my life thanks to a chronic illness. "You must know what it's like to suffer before you can empathize," she stated. "Not only have you been sick most of your life, without anyone making an effort to truly understand your illness, but you have also been traumatized by black magic." She made this claim before I had even mentioned my chronic illness or my experiences with black magic.
   She then suddenly stated that I had been a member of the Knight's Templar in a previous life. According to her, in that life I was an extremely devout man who massacred innocents in the performance of his duty for the benefit of the Pope and the Catholic Church, which made it impossible for me to reconcile my experiences with the Catholic Church's repeated assertions about the goodness of God and Jesus. Debra informed me that the templar knight aspect of my personality would soon reveal itself to me.
   Over the past three decades, I have searched the Kings River watershed for Native American village sites, and many times I have experienced a sixth sense about where to find them. One night recently while I was sprawling in bed, unable to sleep, I was being guided in vision through places I had known in some other life, and suddenly I knew with absolute certainty that I had been a shaman who had wandered from one village to another in the Kings River watershed during the Gold Rush times. I had survived a massacre and practiced black magic to harm as many invaders as I could.
   Then the templar knight aspect of my personality suddenly surfaced through a series of visions. During the crusades, the Knights Templar had discovered the mystic teachings of the Kabbalah. As a templar knight I eventually lost my faith because of the corruption of the Catholic Church. As a knight who had studied the Kabbalah, I figured out how to perform black magic to harm those responsible for the Holy War and for all the massacring and pillaging throughout Europe and the Middle East. 

   I began to believe that the demons and malicious spirits that I had sent to harm other people in those two other lifetimes had come back to haunt me in this life, via the government and sundry practitioners of black magic. I suddenly wondered if I might have a heroic side, which I had never seriously considered before as a possibly. I was fighting to create balance, this time, though, without causing harm to anyone.