Lucid Dreaming: When the Student is Ready
Introducing Jarli Tau, the aboriginal dream walker that kicked me in the head. I haven’t seen him in a while, but I suspect it’s due to my ADHD brain and lack of consistency in esoteric matters.
There’s no ‘real world’ connection to this character, and yes, he is a bit of a character, unless he’s real and I am the character, but if you’re out there, Jarli, I think we should continue with the lessons.
Dreams are more important than we think. Characters are not just characters. Walk the dream earth with more care than you take on hard earth.
First encounter
I found myself in a desert. It was a fairly straight forward desert. The air was dry and I was hot because the sun was beating down on me from above and off the sand. There was a familiar rock in the distance, a huge rock that might have otherwise been a mountain, except it didn’t fit the terrain as if God had thrown a rock into a wasteland just to see if sand dunes would send out ripples in the same manner as a stone pitched into a lake. As I was admiring the rock, an aborigine walked up beside me and joined me in reveling in the view. I smiled at him and returned my eyes to ‘rock.’ There was something intriguing about this situation, particularly in
my lack of responsiveness to not being alone in the desert. The aborigine didn’t speak. Nor did he go away. He just stood there. His presence was palpable and eventually he drew my attention.
He was wearing jeans, a Dr. Who t-shirt that had the TARDIS visible, the door cracked open and a bright light turning someone emerging into a silhouette. He was also wearing open toe sandals.
His hair was native and wild as one might expect. He batted at a mosquito, which perturbed me because I wouldn’t imagine a mosquito surviving out here in this desert. The presence of the mosquito suggested water had to be nearby, but also, it would seem to follow that there would be animals for it to bite, and since the aborigine and I seemed to be the only ‘animals’ here, what were the odds that one lone mosquito would come to fancy us?! The aborigine scratched his left shoulder and continued gazing at the ‘rock.’
“Hello,” I said.
“G’Day,” the aborigine said.
“Are you lost?” I asked.
“Nope,” he said. “You?”
“No,” I said, strangely enough. Never mind how I got here or what I was doing here or any of that. I just knew I wasn’t lost.
“So you know where you are,” he said more than asked.
“I’m in Australia,” I said.
“London to a brick,” he said.
“We’re in London?” I asked, confused.
“No, mate, I was just affirming your whereabouts,” he said. He sighed. “Look, I know you’re an American and can’t speak properly and you don’t know much about the real world, or customs, or how to be properly social, so I will endeavor to keep things simple, but you’re going to have to try and work with me here.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Penny assured me you had no kangaroos loose,” he said.
“I hear the words as English, but we’re by-passing significantly,” I said.
“Your elevator go to the top, mate?” he asked.
“Are you asking if I am intellectually capable?” I asked, a little annoyed.
“Yeah. Do you have durry?” he asked.
“I doubt it,” I said, quite confident that I didn’t.
“Very well. Shall we get to work?”
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Now, that’s proper social,” he said, thanking me and reaching out his hand. “Jarli Tau. Owl of the night. And I am here to teach you how to dream walk.”
I gave him a skeptical look. I then smiled. “You mean like dream time, or lucid dreaming, like from the Tibetan book of the dead, or the Dakini sky dancing?”
“You’re more of a dunny rat than I imagined,” he said. “But still a bit daft. You understand, you’re dreaming.”
“No way,” I said.
“I’m being square with you mate,” he said, showing me a symbol with his hand, and when that failed, he showed me a ring with a square and compass.
“You’re a mason?” I asked.
“No, I just like the metaphors,” he said, honestly. “Metaphors are really important here.”
“You’re saying I’m dreaming?” I said.
He smiled.
“So, if I’m dreaming, I could just take off into the air and fly like superman?” I said.
“Give it a burl,” he said.
I continued with the look of skepticism, but gave a tiny hop.
“Oh, not like that, mate. Give it a real push,” Jarli said.
“Look, I’m not…” something shifted in my understanding. I’m in Australia, standing in a desert, talking to an Aborigine. “I’m dreaming.” I felt a rush of euphoria flush through me. The blueness of the sky brightened, the sand and the rocks seemed solidly more real, if that makes any sense, and Jarli smiled at me. “I can fly!”
I leapt into the air and proceeded up, giving a ‘whoop’ that would have impressed Walt Whitman himself! Jarli took out a boomerang, tied a line to it, and tossed it at me. The line tangled around my ankles and he dragged me earthwards. He held me in place like a kite.
“You need to learn to walk before you fly, mate,” Jarli said.
“I can do anything!” I yelled exuberantly. “I don’t even have to fly! Beam me up?!”
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that, mate,” Jarli tried to warn me.
Though nothing happened, I was not deterred in the slightest. I hit my chest as if there was a communicator there, just like I had seen done in every episode of ‘Star Trek: the Next Generation.’ It wasn’t there, but I reasoned, it didn’t really have to be there, I just needed to believe and make it so! “Jon to Enterprise, beam me the fuck up now!”
The blending of familiar harmonics signaling a transport commencing broke the stillness of the desert air. I became immersed in sparkly lights, filling my vision and my entire physical being, and I was so enraptured by the sensations that I yelled out in joy that was so rich and profound that I woke myself up, yelling “Yeah!”
Then I felt deflated. I would have liked to have stayed in the dream.
The next dream with Jarli Tau
I found myself in a desert. There was an aborigine sitting on a rock. It was the only rock in sight, and the sand around it was raked as if this was a Zen garden.
“Tried to warn you, mate,” Jarli said. “If you get too stoked, you wake yourself up. You must have cracked a fat one. Makes sense. It would take a Sheila to knock you out after that high.
Honestly didn’t expect you back anytime this week.”
“Jarli, I don’t think I understood a word you just said,” I admitted.
“I forgive you,” Jarli said. “I frequently feel sad for you Americans. So lost at the lowest ranks of dream time. Might as well be stuck in Orientation.”
“You can teach me to stay lucid in my dreams?” I asked.
“Only you can teach you,” Jarli said. “I am here as a guide. You wouldn’t happen to have durry this time, would you?”
“What the hell is a durry?”
“A smoke,” Jarli said.
“No, just a cigarette. You can’t be that daft,” Jarli said.
“I don’t smoke,” I said.
“Would you be offended if I smoked?” he asked.
“Not particularly,” I said, thinking about it. “We’re dreaming, so I suppose it wouldn’t hurt you.
But, then again, it is a dream, and it’s a metaphor…”
“Catching on. Now, make me a cigarette,” Jarli said.
“How?” I asked.
“Piece of piss,” Jarli said.
“What?!” I asked, not sure if I should be annoyed.
“It’s the equivalent of you Americans saying pizza pie,” Jarli said.
“No one says pizza pie,” I said.
“Easy as cake, then,” Jarli corrected.
“Oh! Piece of pie!” I corrected.
“That's what I said, mate. Pizza Pie,” Jarli said.
“That’s not an expression, but I understand you’re telling me creating a cigarette is a fairly easy and mundane task,” I said, as simple as urinating. ‘Piece of piss…’ “But I don’t have a clue on how to go about it.”
“Not too long ago you were flying and about to convert your entire body into energy to relocate yourself into a spaceship 20,000 km away in less than a heartbeat,” Jarli pointed out. “Making a durry seems much less complex.”
“What do you recommend?” I asked.
“Well, I suppose you could grow tobacco while simultaneously creating an industry to produce paper and wrap it, or you could pop over to a servo and buy a pack, or you can use that transporter thingy to beam you one down, or just magic one up,” Jarli rattled off. “But seeing how this is your dream and I am visiting you, I think it only fair to let you resolute it out.”
Annoyed and exhausted, I handed Jarli a cigarette just so he’d be quiet. I don’t know where it came from or if it is even necessary to know. He sucked in on it and it flared to life. He closed his eyes, inhaled deep and faced the sun. He exhaled a puff of smoke that became a rain cloud. I was standing in sunlight getting wet.
“Ah, mate, that’s spot on!” Jarli said. He took another drag.
“How long is this going to take?” I asked, surprisingly even more annoyed. If this was my class time, shouldn’t he be teaching something?
“Sparrows fart,” he answered.
“Don’t have a clue, mate,” I said, with a little sarcasm twisting the mate.
I woke, annoyed. What?! Joy and anger can wake you?
