This is different and weirder than I have any idea how to begin to explain. The Poetic Mysteries clearly run very much deeper than anyone can see at any given moment. Because I intuited that I should study them in every way I was able, some years ago I turned to dreams as the most readily available source of understanding. For five years, I made dreamwork a full-time occupation. Everything changed because of that.

Dreams provided me with evidence again and again, over an extended period of time, of psychic faculties I knew I had but could not consciously use. And then they went further, to show me abilities I would never have dared to believe in. Chief amongth these was precognition–accurate visions of future events. That part is still sinking in.

Since my days of focused dreamwork, I have continued to think about precognition and to consider what it suggests. Others are working on the same project. For instance, several years ago I ran across a blog called The Nightshirt by a science writer named Eric Wargo. He was posting the most fascinating essays about his own precognitive experiences. Soon I realized I was reading a book in progress. Indeed, it turned out to be Time Loops. I haven’t read the book yet, but I can recommend the validity of the material he posted online. Anyone who wants to argue with him can try!

When I was in ninth grade at school, about 14 years old, I woke up in the grip of a fascinating insight. I tried to write it up into a short story while I could still hold onto it, but I didn’t get much further than the title before the rest escaped me: War Crimes. All I could remember was that it had to do with going back in time to intervene before atrocities took place–future humans, more aware of consciousness and the actual nature of reality, would shift back to the past over and over on clean-up missions to avert disasters, then individual traumas, then bad-energy days in general, and finally even tiny hangnails. Sharp little fingernail parings on the floor, even. Our future selves are trying to tell us, We love you and we don’t want you to suffer, so we will continue to dream and redream the past until it is entirely free of illusion. Time is not real.

Suffering, real suffering and not just unpleasantness, is an altered state of awareness–a bad one. It lies. It says, Time has all but stopped here; pain is all there has ever been and all there will ever be. The profoundly lived insight that time is an illusion is the antithesis and antidote to suffering. If one can keep it in mind–a future self is trying to reach through with the knowing that this is even ‘now’ being resolved. Dreams are infinite, eternal, all encompassing; then they end. Consider by this light the meaning of Boddhisatva vows. Those who have sworn them will not enter enlightenment until every other sentient being has entered before them. No one will be left behind. Along with other illusions dispelled, the true nature of time will be so thoroughly revealed that no one will be able to be trapped in it anymore.

Death by hanging has been a recurring theme for a long time. The interval before the rope snaps taut goes on and on and so does the timeless song. Sometimes I hear echoes. Today feels less Virgin and more White Goddess, so perhaps I ran across a stray thought of e.e. cummings’ “All in Green Went My Love Riding,” and then this happened:

18 February 2021

23

All the While She Sang

Through the forest run the pathways

often dreamt of, seldom seen.

One is woe transfixed by sadness.

One rides in a coat of green

tied all round with silver laces

knotted fast against her breast.

In between and changing places,

shadow riders face northwest

find the pathway leading farther

follow it across a stream

flashing green amidst the starlight

have you seen your rider dream

frequent breaths a ragged answer

fraying at the edges coat

rainy water running after

icy rivers close a throat

knowing narrows in on seeing

nothing but a ghost remains

after she has shared her greenest

mantle and her silver reins

she bids the rider after her, Be

so transparent, no one sees

the hands you hide the while these words in

running rain you bring to me.

In a mantle on a mountain

in an airy field she sang

then he drifted down and down and

snapped he’d had too long to hang.