How I See God: Part 1: "You're a butterfly, not a bird! You don't fly...you just flutter!"

I'm not quite sure how to start this series of articles because it involves my dreams (both sleeping and awake) and an out-of-body experience, which I guess are usually not considered sound modes of proof. However, I find that certain dreams are guiding forces for me. This includes the "dream state" which I seem to be walking around in most of the time. These dream states (whether sleeping or awake) are usually ones that bring me to a place of "actualization"--that rare and fleeting experience (like Joyce's ephiphany from the flying jogger article) when you feel as if all loose threads come together. I always get a slight ringing of the ears when I have these "actualization" experiences, but it is almost as if it is not truly a ringing, rather a vibration within my whole body, as if my complete being has become resonant with an incredibly insightful force that I wish would enter me and stay.

In ancient times, when people had these "actualization" experiences, they would see traditional forms of spiritual icons such as: Jesus, Mother Mary, Buddah, Krishna, or various saints. Revered Catholic saints, such as St. Teresa of Avila, had violent convulsions when God moved through her, or the "passions" of Jesus loving her while she prayed. Today, depending upon your religious exposure when you were a child, and your own devotion as an adult, an "actualization" experience may be seen as a person or an object that has spiritual relevance to you. In other words, experiences of the Divine take the form of something, or someone, who you are comfortable and familiar with.

But I have never been comfortable with any of these images. Although, throughout my life, I have tried to embrace more conventional religious beliefs, I have always been "turned off" by some monistic (one sided) or hateful dogma. I tried to embrace being Jewish (although I am not quite finished with this exploration). As a child, I was told that I could not become Jewish by my grandmother, because my mom was not Jewish and the religion was passed along matrilineal lines. My father didn't share this with me either. My father had been raised as a conservative Jew, and he saw "sharing" Judiasm as something oppressive.

My mother had been raised Christian Baptist, but she ended up more interested in a New Age church in my teens, one where they taught you to meditate with your thumb up your derriere...I couldn't be into this. So, naturally, when I had my first major actualization experience, while wide awake, I did not see Jesus; and since Jews do not embody God (and even if they did, I had not had enough exposure), I did not see anything resembling an Orthodox Jewish rabbi (such as a Hassidic rabbi...many people see this if they have a background in Judaism).

Instead, I saw three lights, brightening at the same beat as my heart. It seemed, through their increasing and decreasing brightness, that they were walking towards me.

Because I was raised with no particular religion, my experiences of the Divine have taken various forms.

The next article will be the first of a series describing what I have heard and seen while trying to communicate with God...and while still trying to figure out who God is and who I am! My vision has moved through pop-culture, the holy and the profane, into my dreams and my waking dreams when the image of the Divine became attached to actual persons or objects in my presence. I realize that, initially, I need to be clear about my own existence...which some of these articles may represent. But they will always be a mixture of my goals of successfully integrating the sublime* or Divine** and the more earth-bound experiences when I have tried to figure out what it is, exactly, that I need to be doing in Action, within the World, to fulfill my obligation to the sublime and Divine.

The article's title relflects one of the most profound dream experiences that I have had while sleeping. This would fall under the category of the profane which makes it more interesting. As a child in fifth grade, I was having a sleepover with three of my best-friends. After my parents had gone to sleep, we decided to go hunting in the house for their dirty movies. Theoretically, we knew about procreation, how a baby was conceived. But we had no idea what it looked like. We ended up finding three tapes at the tippy top of the linen cabinet, on the left-hand side. I remember thinking that most of them were pretty gross. The close-ups looked like raw meat. I ended up saying this as all of us laughed.

But then, I remember seeing the most amazing film. It was a classic 70's porn, still early enough to be psychedelic, that famous "WAH-chicca-chicca-chicca-chicca" music that people still mimic when they want to infer porn or sex. There was a dazzling backdrop of hypnotic black and white swirls, and a young white woman with long light brown hair parted in the middle. Her body was covered in fringe and glitter. There were pink-jeweled beaded curtains that she parted to get to the glorious black-velvet covered bed, and by the bed waiting for her, an amazing-looking black man. She walked towards him, and he just stayed still, his eyed fixed on her. Both of them were radiant. She seemed to sway towards him. Then he turned to his side to show the camera the special lingam pocket sewn on his pants that sprang forth to greet her. It was incredible! I had always been afraid of the other sex, but here it was, surrounded by a psychedelic melange of intoxicants: the lighting, the dreamy images of the two actors...and then the highlight, the carefully cozied lingam that seemed to have a life of its own. Just as she got close to him, my mom walked in the room.

"What are you girls doing up so late?" she said, naive or in denial, with only one eye open (she always looked like this when she woke up with no coffee..I called her "Popeye" in the morning).

I quickly took the BETA tape out, and put in "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" circa. 1985. A Sarah Jessica Parker, Shannen Doherty, and Helen Hunt dance classic!

I think she never noticed...but I can't be sure.

I didn't think about the man in the movie until I had a dream about him when I was 23...

Only, I was the girl in the movie. I was moving slowly towards him. The air was hazy and as I looked in a mirror, I noticed that I was covered in glitter and fringe, my long hair parted in the middle... He stayed transfixed, still, staring at me in waiting. As I got closer he spoke to me,

"Wait!"
"What's wrong?" I said.
"This is NOT going to happen."
"Why?"

Something about the dream felt spiritual, like I going to find out something that I needed to know. I felt I should be with this man.

"I don't know where you're going, and I don't know where you've been.
You're not a bird; you're just a butterfly. You don't fly; you just flutter!"

After he spoke, he just sat there, completely still, like the man in the movie; only he was sprawled out on the bed, not standing. My eyelids were fluttering as the images around me became hazier and hazier. I had glitter on my long, fake eyelashes. The more my eyes blinked, the more the glitter was getting in my eyes.

I woke up with the feeling of truth sinking down deep inside me, hopefully enough to temporarily stick. He was right. I wasn't a bird; I was just a butterfly. As long as I floated above everything, I was never going to fly to reach my goals. It was because I was afraid to let my feet touch the ground. I still am.

* the sublime--an image that embodies the Divine but is of earthly or human sensations. However, these sensations, when placed in the category of the Divine, cause one to "take flight" from his/her ordinary, material surroundings where everything takes on meaning as the Divine. These "flights" take earthly forms that humans see while contemplating or being faced with the Divine. The forms include, but are not limited to: the expansiveness of the desert or the ocean, a form in a shadow that one cannot see so it remains mysterious, a human idol that one sees as an image of the divine such as "sublime beauty"--or seeing a woman/man as an archtype of an angel like Rudolph Valentino
** The Divine--that which you consider holy or spiritual