In an effort to “roll out the crazy” gradually, I’ll sometimes hold back ideas until they start to make sense in a larger context.  One of these ideas is Angel Training.

During one of the first readings I did for Sweetie, she asked, “What is the point of this?  Why am I here, living this life?”

The answer fell out of my mouth immediately:  “It’s part of your angel training.”

I’d run into the idea of angel training once before, when I looked into the deaths of two paramedics in our community who died together in an accident.  Those two were in angel training together, and they still are helping the hospital.  They’re usually riding along in the ambulances, comforting the injured, assisting in elevating them above their painful injuries, providing calm and clarity of mind to the newbie paramedics who took their place.  They assist in crossing over those whose bodies die before they can reach the hospital, and they occasionally prod awake a fatigued highway driver.

According to her guides, Sweetie was a very reluctant participant in this incarnation.  She had a long list of demands prior to even considering incarnation, which included the constant company of white cats.  She ultimately consented to this incarnation after her teacher, “Brian,” gently pointed out that if she truly desired to progress any further in her angel training, she really needed one more incarnation on earth.

So Sweetie is definitely on her last incarnation on earth.  Even now, she holds herself above and apart from the world.  She gets frustrated and angry quickly when topics like pollution arise, and she’s observing a broad judgmental side of herself that tends to simply condemn this whole planet’s fate.

It’s fucked, basically, so why would anything she could say, do or create make the slightest difference?

This has been her spiritual struggle, yet slowly, painfully, she’s progressing through it.  The lessons from John, over the years, have been helping both of us (some are chronicled in the John Lennon Friday entries) and now Kurt has come forward to continue the discussion.

Here’s an email I received from Sweetie talking about a recent conversation with Kurt:

Hey Love,

Here’s a synopsis of the ideas I was talking about this morning.  Plus a couple of other things I was thinking about:

1)  Kurt’s been working on breaking down some of my cynicism.  Sometimes he talks to me, sometimes he plays his songs in my head, sometimes he drops whole ideas on me.  He may also be priming my mind while I’m sleeping to better receive these ideas while I’m awake.  Some of the conversations I’ve had with him lately:

a)  I was in the car listening to Pennyroyal Tea.  I wondered if emotional turmoil is a necessary part of angel training.
He said, “No.  Not necessarily.  I mean there are things you want to try to learn while you’re here but it’s only as easy or as hard as you need it to be.  You define your own experience”
Later “Lounge Act” came on, and these lines jumped out at me:

Don’t – tell me what I wanna hear
Afraid of never knowing fear
Experience anything you need
I’ll keep fighting jealousy
’til it’s fucking gone

Which is exactly the same point, just stated another way.  So, he understood this while he was alive.  I think he was more spiritual than most people realize.

b)  I’m pretty sure he has wings now.  Although he doesn’t usually show up in that guise.  Is he done angel training?  I swear he gave me a hug the other day and actually folded a wing around me.

(My answer to Sweetie:  The first time I saw Kurt, I’m pretty sure he had wings, and he definitely ascended from “very high up” which is a sensation familiar to me when talking with “known” angels, such as the one who watches over my mother.  Some psychics say that angels have the ability to appear as incarnated humans at times when needed; maybe, at first, we were seeing Kurt as he was in his most recent life, because that’s how we were able to best connect and relate to him.

Now we’re able to open ourselves up to other ideas of who Kurt has become since he left his last incarnation.  It’s similar to talking to John as John Lennon for a most of our conversations, even though we’re aware that he is not literally the person known as John Lennon, but the spirit who experienced the life of John Lennon, among other incarnations and other lessons on the other side.  Back to Sweetie’s email:)

He told me my back sometimes aches where my wings should be.  He told me that I shouldn’t sleep in my bra because my scapulae need a chance to spread out.

He’s taken to calling me “angel” lately, where before he was calling me “baby”.  Occasionally “bitch”, but only if he was feeling jokey.

c)  With regard to the things we were talking about this morning, he’s really been appealing to a spirit of rebellion and nonconformity in an effort to get me to look at the world differently.  Really trying to impress upon me that it is not necessary to go along with what everyone else is doing, not necessary to accept their version of The Way Things Are, and that I basically don’t need to go along with their bullshit.  Not only do I not need to participate in bringing about their vision of the world, but I don’t actually have to live in it, either.  I don’t have to suffer the effects of their actions.

Just think of politics as one big fucking pep assembly that you’re better off skipping. 

Think of World History as a class that you might as well drop out of, because at worst it’s a bunch of lies, and at best it’s one person’s version of the truth.

He dropped the idea of divergent realities on me as I was going to bed after watching the Bigfoot documentaries, after John told us the Neanderthals were still here.  It just suddenly all made sense.  The Neanderthals split off, the Atlanteans split off — that’s why we can’t find a trace of them.  Everything that goes along with their cultures exists on their vibration level, as well.  They probably don’t experience our culture either.

So, if that’s true, then we can probably split off as well, and choose not to experience the effects of the military-industrial complex and it’s agendas.

But it sounds totally crazy, right?  Isn’t that just denial, refusing to see the world as it actually is?

(I think we’re on to something here.  It’s common for ghosts, earthbound spirits who refuse to move on after their last incarnation, to see the world around them as it was when they were alive.  They would see the old ranch where now stands a Toys R Us.)

He described reality to me as being really fragmented, not this cohesive thing that we tend to perceive it to be when we’re incarnated.  It’s actually a fractal, it’s the whole and its parts, like the urchin consciousness.

(Recently, we had the opportunity to observe, communicate with and then eat a live sea urchin.  Urchins have been a food staple in our region for hundreds of years.  It was amazing talking with this creature, which could best be described as a collective consciousness like the Borg from Star Trek.  In the picture of the urchin, see how each spine waves individually?  Each spine is an awareness.  As the fisherman broke apart the living collective to access the roe, the edible part of the urchin, I was braced for the urchin to feel pain.

But it didn’t happen.  All that happened was the collective consciousness separated into its parts – now there were half a dozen singular collectives where once there was one.  The message came “Put us back!” and the image of returning some of the pieces to the water formed in my mind.  I understood that this would seed future whole urchins.  I also understood that when many hundreds of sea urchins are together, they form a singular collective consciousness too, almost like one huge animal.  The moment a single urchin is removed by a human, otter, crab etc for food, this portion of the collective is simply unplugged from the larger one, and simply becomes it’s own consciousness.  It was so fascinating and instructive, talking to urchins.  It makes you wonder about the sheer nature of consciousness. Back to Sweetie’s email:)

We each have our own tiny realities, and there are larger shared realities.  And there is a lot of crossover but it’s not exactly one immutable thing.  He showed me a string of translucent beads, three in a row.  And then showed them to me end ways so they overlapped.  That’s the world, in essence.  It looks like one thing, but that’s where divergence can happen.

I’ve had Stay Away in my head often, lately.  Or part of it:

Monkey see, monkey do
(I don’t know why)
Rather be dead than cool
(I don’t know why)

It’s serving as a good reminder that other people’s bullshit is other people’s bullshit.

d)  He’s been talking to me about art, understanding that part of the problem I’m having is in seeing art as an act of altruism in a world that does not wish to save itself.  He said it’s okay, that I don’t need to fix that.  I don’t need to be a perfect spiritual being, I don’t need to love everyone in the world and want to help them.  I don’t need to want good things for everyone in the world, including Mike, Monsanto, and the Bush family.  I don’t have to be altruistic.  I don’t even need to be happy — although he’d *like* it if I were happy — it isn’t necessary.  The only thing that matters is that I know how special I am, that I matter, and that any art that I might choose to make is okay.

So, I thanked him for that.

2)  Yesterday, someone convinced me to read Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray”.  (It’s a story about a man and his vanity — he becomes obsessed with his own portrait, in which his image is mysteriously aging).  I’m not really sure who thought I should read it.  But anyway.

It begins with a 4 page essay of Wilde’s, in which he describes the role of the artist in our society.

Wilde says that art is a mirror: it’s completely objective and can only be judged on the basis of its form rather than its content.  Essentially it’s the viewer that is the spectacle; people who dislike “realism” art can’t stand to see themselves reflected back, people who dislike “romanticism” art are vain, and aren’t interested unless they’re seeing themselves reflected.  It actually reminds me of Yoko’s work, now that I think about it.  Perhaps it was John who thought I should read it.

But I’m only in partial agreement.  I was like, “Okay.  Let’s suppose I accept the premise that the artist is creating a 100% objective reflection — which I don’t, but I’ll set that aside for now — the artist is still an editor.  He or she chooses to represent or omit things as necessary.  It’s impossible to represent everything; there needs to be a focus.  That focus creates a subjective reality.  You can choose to paint a rose bush growing beside a dumpster and omit the dumpster, or paint the dumpster by itself.”

And then I heard a bit of a smug, “Aha!  See, you *do* care about the artist’s role in society.  You *do* want to participate in this, after all”.

Ah, crap.  Well, touche.  All right, you got me.  Busted. :p

Wilde’s take is that art is neutral.  There’s no “good” art or “bad” art, “moral” or “immoral” art.  Art just is.  Everything else is criticism.

I think we still live in a world where the powers that be are afraid of what might happen if people wake up to the idea that spirituality is simple, accessible and powerful.  As though spirituality can be 2 of these things at once, but not all 3:

Simple and accessible, but not powerful.  Like Yoga at the Y.
Accessible and powerful, but not simple.  Like a Course in Miracles.
Simple and powerful, but not accessible.  Only for the Buddha.  Or maybe some Tibetan monks.

Yet on a gut level, we know that spirituality truly is Simple, Accessible and Powerful.  The trick is truly, whole-heartedly taking in this knowledge with certainty.