Adam Blatner

As I’ve been contemplating the nature of some more vivid dream images, it occurred to me that I’m experiencing in dream-imagery some aspects of the lower levels of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. Semi-mythically speaking, “my” angels—the super-conscious forces, personified, of whatever is “growing” me—have been reminding me increasingly of the seemingly infinite horizons in every direction: dream forms of lights, circus stages with floating aerial acts, story-lines and episodes with all variations. (The picture on the right suggests the colors and tones, though it wasn’t a birthday card—it was a very large stage with floating lovely-colored creatures and sparkles. (And then in the dream I went backstage into the “prop” room and discovered innumerable types of lamps and lights!)

On later reflection, it’s awesome that this incredible variety draws only from those forms that are part of my broadest of cultural heritages—but apart from that, others in different cultures populate their dreamscapes with animals and plants that I don’t even know exist, others whose behavior or significance I don’t recognize, and spirit forms that fit only that culture—yet it’s equally diverse. And even within my own culture, as I think about it, there are a near-infinity of sub-cultures, hobby-interests, sub-ethnicities, and forms, tastes, images, sub-plots, and nuances that I couldn’t even imagine. We deeply live in different “worlds,” if we recognize that the world where we overlap and interact is only one level and beyond that there are many other levels of increasing differentiation.

As a picture, we all live in one planet (or three-dimensional material matrix), which is like the sea-bed. But above it are multiple ecological realms where different creatures thrive on different mixtures of light and air—and these beyond-the-sea-bed dimensions also become sea-bed when they transist (die) and their skeletons and body parts sink down and become part of our world. We on the sea bed hardly know where-from these sources of new food and minerals come. The fish will be the last to realize that it lives in water—and that water is different from dry land or air, and that beyond those, there are the depths of the planet and the vastness of space.

But my angels, bless their over-souls, are clue-ing me in, so I can transmit the message to you: There are realms beyond, above, within, more essential in some ways. (On the other hand, our particularities, our ordinary world, is as essential to them as the chessboard is to chess players—we are the playing field. Without us, there’s no game—at least at this level. God needs us to dance with—we are God’s fingers and toes—as much as we need God to be the source of energy and form from which we dance.  Enough and back to other tasks.