Emerging From The Piscean Dream

Waking life.

Recently, I awoke, from what seemed to be a lifelong dream, a haze of living slumber and somnambulistic poses, breaking into a cold sweat, waking nightmare. I looked around and it seemed like half the world was out of work and the only thing that even remotely mattered was the raw, naked teeth of capitalism and securing cash–everything else was just a luxury.

I wiped the silicon sleepers from my eyes and the world was transformed into a stinking and vile meat packing abattoir, straight out of Sinclair Lewis, and it was consuming the flesh of my brethren, from follicles to fingers to soles. I asked in a semi-audible voice; “What the hell happened here?” From behind me, just to my right, a different voice responded; “It’s always been this way, it’s just that the veneer and sheen of your experience has been wiped away. You’re seeing “the world” as it was and now truly is, a monster of leviathan proportions, an eater of lives.” I spun around to catch the speaker, but in the rush of the crowd, I couldn’t make out any form.

So I asked again; “Why didn’t I see it before now?” This time the same voice came from the other side, just off to my left. I could see the trace of a shadow dancing in the corner of my vision; “Before now, you had cheap money and cagey masters. They used the sweat of your brow to get rich beyond your wildest dreams and “allowed” you to have a relatively easy life, with even the hope of retiring and living out your final days in relative peace and general prosperity. But that’s all changed. They don’t need the money anymore, since they have most of it and they don’t really need you. The circus is leaving town and what they are leaving behind is the wasteland of your dreams, where you’ll have to fend for yourself or be devoured.”

I turned hard to my left and the shadow had shifted quickly into the crowd.

I managed to collect my thoughts and wander home. When I got there, I had a message from a friend that had been looking for a job for well over a year. She had sent out 500 resumes alone in January and the rejection had become threateningly demoralizing.

Another friend was absolutely exhausted from the draining exercise of “creatively” meeting her bills each month. Always, by the skin of her teeth, she managed, but it was taking it’s toll. She was constantly tired. She was thinking about leaving the country.

Both of them had looked back on their lives and were wondering if they had done the right things, made the right choices, wondering what it all was worth. Since I had awoken into this nightmare, I had been doing the exact same thing.

I looked back on both my failed marriages, my dot.com salad days, my adolescent drug use, my hunger to understand “the truth” and my rejection of a traditional lifestyle, hugging the razors edge of the continental plate for most of my adult life. In them and in myself, I could sense a measured reckoning taking place, a life review of what’s happened and why we’re suffering under the yoke of a system that’s faltering and failing us.

These sorts of things usually draw out recrimination and regret, which may or may not be real. They may be non-issues really, in an atmosphere of hope, but when the oxygen levels drop, we begin to gasp and they take on immense proportion.

Now some good may come out of this. For me it was realizing, beyond mere concept, how my parents had worked hard, sacrificed to keep things together as much as they did and have a home, raise a family and so on. I saw the love hidden behind their Virgo Moons, demanding perfection in themselves and me, unable to fully drop into the moment, for fear that something might get taken away, like it did to their parents during the last time we experienced this in the great depression.

It’s happening right now. If you can look away from Charlie Sheen, Lady Gaga and The Royals for more than a day, you’ll feel the heaviness descend, the darkness encroach and the cold wind rip across your shuttered gaze. You’ll stir as well and when you finally emerge from your slumber, you’ll view your life too in the sobering light of this brave new world, where phantasms of the mind take the shape of orphaned memories, broken promises to self and others, aborted dreams, and missed opportunities.

These are the last days of Uranus in Pisces. The sleep and comfort of westernized capitalism has come to an abrupt end. It’s okay. The other half of the world has been living out this nightmare for the past fifty years and now we get to feel how the other half does.

My advice for you, when you get to the life review is take it seriously, but don’t allow it to demoralize you any further than the events of the world that are already doing a nifty job of. It’s strong medicine and you have to go through it. You’re not alone. We’re all dying. When you realize what the game is now, there is immense power waiting for you to take back the reins of your life and re-engineer meaning, heart, compassion and purposefulness. These are powerful times. Take advantage of your awakening into the heart of Samsara, because now you finally have a chance at dealing directly with the beast instead of it’s manifold minions disguised as distractions, altering your direction.

Carpe Diem.