MAY ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE (repost)

I rarely have meaningful dreams supercharged with symbolism – or perhaps I occasionally do but just don’t remember. So when I read about people achieving their dreams, the idea doesn’t actually carry that much excitement or veracity for me.

What dreams? Like the one I had earlier today where I found myself in a room full of accumulated memories discussing with Rafique Rashid how to dispose of his brother Rehman’s earthly possessions? Or the one I had a couple of days ago where I was just sitting in a coffeeshop, paying for my tea and I counted out 80 cents in coins – which made me realize when I woke up shortly afterwards that I had traveled back in time to the late 1980s when a cup of tea or coffee cost less than a dollar.

The Frank Zappa dream that came to me a couple of weeks ago was interesting. I was hosted to dinner by Mr and Mrs Zappa and all through the meal I kept thinking that Frank somehow didn’t look the way he’s supposed to look. He had boring hair, wore a middle-class suit, and his nose wasn’t quite right. This wasn’t by any means the first Zappa dream I’ve had. After my first and only close encounter with Mr Zappa at the Fillmore East in New York in the summer of 1968 - where I also exchanged small talk with saxophonist Ian Underwood (husband of percussionist Ruth Underwood) and shook hands with Jimmy Carl Black (the Indian of the group) – I had a series of vivid dreams involving Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.

In the first Zappa dream I was a kid back in my hometown Batu Pahat sitting on the  front steps when I heard a squadron of aircraft overhead. I looked up and realized they weren’t actually airplanes but Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention flying in arrowhead formation. As they got closer I felt a compulsion to join them the way some kids suddenly decide to run away and join a circus. Then there was the dream where I was walking around a gypsy caravan and had to step over thick electrical cables coiled like black snakes all over the floor... then I realized I was on a movie set and noticed Frank behind a glass window in the control room tweaking some knobs.

Well, okay. The Zappa dreams do contain a whole load of symbolism if you care to delve into them, just like the vivid dream I had about a grizzly bear a few years ago. But the only dream I would like to see fulfilled is the lucid waking dream I have held close to my heart since the age of 19.

What is that dream? It’s not easy to articulate, but certainly worth an attempt if only to see how it sounds when verbalized...

I dreamt I had accomplished the greatest feat possible for any living creature on earth – to remember its own mysterious origins and to free itself from the illusion of limitation and separation! In my dream this spontaneous awakening to and realization of the absolute sacredness and miraculousness of life rippled out in all directions and dimensions, from the subatomic to the supergalactic and beyond, creating a domino effect of illumination and jubilant celebration.

Source reconnecting with Source, as the accumulated experience and memories of every expression of consciousness, encompassing the unconscious, in infinite feedback loops of awareness. All of it flowing through Me and all other aspects of my boundless cosmic Self, eternally and effortlessly, in ecstatic multidimensional mandalas of timeless beauty and self-regenerating, self-reintegrating truth.

The word “ecstasy” became a living reality and I perfectly understood what mystics, dervishes and yogis have spoken about for generations when they describe transcendent states of consciousness – using terms like samadhi, satori, beatitude, baraka, bliss. Remember, this was long before ecstasy became nothing more than a designer drug for techno-trancing urban kids. Let me tell you: once you have experienced pure cognitive ecstasy, sustained over days, even weeks, you will never settle for humdrum human notions of “success.”

Well, it’s true that at various times of my life I have entertained, albeit briefly, aspirations towards enormous worldly success – after all, would any young person spurn fame and fortune if they were within reach? And so at the age of 24 I embarked on setting up a company with two childhood friends. It was to start off as a creative consultancy catering to the advertising and public relations industry and after a few years, when we had sufficient capital, we would diversify into production of books, music, films, perhaps even launch an airline... nothing was impossible for a creative powerhouse named I.N.R.I. (for Igni Natura Renovatur Integra, an alchemical code signifying that the fire of passion completely renews or revitalizes the natural world).

This venture lasted all of three years and the main reason I eventually gave up was because I couldn’t get Telekom Malaysia to provide me with a phone line – despite residing in a diplomatic enclave in Kuala Lumpur. I even wrote a long, impassioned letter to the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications (no reply ever came, of course). But after I capitulated and accepted temporary corporate employment, the phone finally arrived.

Anyway, it was simply impractical for me to remain in a permanent state of carefree euphoria – not when I was already a father to two beautiful princesses whose mother, fortunately, earned a regular income as a dedicated schoolteacher. So I learned how to be immersed and involved in the world, but in a detached manner, lest I became trapped in its deceptive glamor.

My inner and outer lives were not always in alignment. Even though I was enjoying an active public life as a stage actor, musician and party animal, I went through patches of intense existential angst verging on despair. My Achilles’ heel was a tendency to succumb to an overwhelming sense of futility arising from a distressing mismatch between my dream of heaven on earth and what was apparently going on in the outside world. It was hard to find someone with whom I could discuss my self-doubts and the nagging sense that there might be something fundamentally wrong with me. So I took to recording these states of mind as poems and doodles (which I eventually compiled into a collection titled Moth Balls, published in a limited edition in November 1994 and now accessible online).

From time to time I would have a peak experience – whether spontaneously or with the help of psilocybin mushrooms (growing wild on grassy fields where cows grazed). Very rarely a kind friend would send me some good acid on a blotter via airmail. At these times my preferred default state of divine madness would be reinstated and my vision of paradise would snap back into crystal clear focus.

Nearly half a century has elapsed since my first glimpse of our true potential as sentient self-reinventing creatures on this bounteous planet. I used to feel a little isolated – the only other humans, a mere handful, who shared my vision were either living on the other side of the earth or long dead. But their thoughts recorded in words reassured me I wasn’t completely mad.

When the internet came along I discovered a growing network of human beings who share my dream of heaven on earth – and each one is a fractal of the whole, with unique experiences of universal truths, each one a significant piece of a colossal and magnificent cosmic jigsaw puzzle.

What we had in common was simply this: we had achieved vertical alignment with our own limitless potential, our Oversouls (I think Paramatman is the technical term for this in Sanskrit). I realized that the problem was how to persuade more humans to make a conscious 90-degree shift from being trapped in the horizontal plane where predator-prey games of eat-or-be-eaten prevail. On the horizontal plane, people subscribe to spurious notions of profit-and-loss, win-lose, and Us-versus-Them. Because resources are finite and limited on this plane, aggressive competition becomes the norm, each fighting for more food, more space, more influence, more power over others. The result can only be hell on earth!

Any individual who achieves that all-important 90-degree shift to the vertical also gains access to Source Energy – call it the morphogenetic field, the planetary mind or cosmic consciousness – and no longer buys into the illusions of limitation, separation or scarcity. Once liberated from scarcity conditioning (fang and claw, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth programming) cooperation becomes spontaneous and this allows for the power of dynamic synergy to take effect, and we suddenly become clear and coherent fields, attuned to all other fields and interacting in effortless harmony. The overall effect is that we no longer feel burdened by gravity as it only takes a bit of levity to neutralize the sense of heaviness. And once we can laugh at ourselves and everyone else, everything transmutes from being merely laughable to being genuinely lovable.

The world as we know it also transforms into something altogether different. We no longer need to be convinced that laws and lawyers, courthouses and judges, and law enforcement agencies are utterly unnecessary - the moment we become self-governing and accept full responsibility for our own thoughts, words and deeds.

Our ancestors found themselves entangled in webs of deceit and falsehood which made them turn to external authority for instructions as to what to do or don’t – whether that authority presented itself as an invisible all-knowing, all-powerful deity; an all-too-visible priesthood; an occasionally visible monarchy, or the monarch’s appointed agents (that’s right the income tax department)!

Photo by Lesly Leon Lee

Generations before us have lived and died ignorant, disconnected from their own divinity and innate nobility. Their souls often get trapped in the astral and many of them attempt to seek redemption and some misguided notion of salvation through their living descendants – namely us. Once we become aware of this, what we can do is to become enlightened ourselves; and in liberating ourselves from our own benighted condition, we also liberate our bloodlines from the curse of abysmal unknowing.

How is this possible? We are bearers of genetic codes and, as anyone who works with codes knows, once an error is rectified in the present, the correction sets the entire program aright in the illusory past as well as the illusory future.

So that’s my dream, folks. I just wish to see all wrongs set right, all cages and prisons dismantled, all locks and keys discarded, all doors and windows left open to the gentle breezes of conscious, eternally rejuvenating, growth-facilitating, ecstatic change. In a community of fully conscious humans, criminal or destructive behavior will be swiftly outgrown and become obsolete - because no one will suffer lack or the indifference of others. With the illusion of scarcity dispersed, a new age of abundance for all will dawn.

10 November 2017

[Reposted 18 November 2018, 14 December 2021, 26 August 2024 & 7 April 2025]

Planet Earth is a Buddha Factory... (reprise)

Xandi Hoesch aka Puma Woman meditating in a Buddha factory in Krabi, Thailand (photo: Antares)

Buddhahood simply means to be awake, enlightened, derobotized and rehumanized. In other words, to be fully conscious.

Planet Earth is actually a Buddha Factory. That's why so many varieties of souls choose to incarnate here - to plunge into physical embodiment and experience the bewildering world of forms, where pain and sorrow are as likely as pleasure and joy to befall you.

Think of Earth as a giant sieve for evolving souls. We arrive as coarse lumps of condensed matter... and depart refined as conscious humans. No doubt, it often takes many, many incarnations to complete the refinement process. But what are a few lifetimes in the cosmic context of eternity?

[This beautiful image was taken sometime in 1987 when my beloved Puma Woman and I were holidaying in Krabi, Thailand. In those days, it hadn't yet exploded into a tourist town and there was only a tiny handful of guesthouses. We rented a motorbike and explored the vicinity, doing a bit of rock climbing and checking out the awesome limestone outcrops. On the outskirts of town we spotted a Buddha factory... and that's how this memorable portrait came about. I didn't notice until afterwards that Xandi had tied her hair in a topknot just like all the Buddha statues! Scanned from a fading 8R print (luckily I had it laminated or nothing would have been left after 25 years) this portrait adorned my High Hut for many years and survived a massive mudslide in October 1999.]

[First posted 22 February 2013. Reposted 15 October 2019]

Yo te saludo y aplaudo, Evo Morales!

Bolivia Set to Pass Historic 'Law of Mother Earth' Which Will Grant Nature Equal Rights to Humans

Written by Keph Senett
With the cooperation of politicians and grassroots organizations, Bolivia is set to pass the Law of Mother Earth, which will grant nature the same rights and protections as humans. The piece of legislation, called la Ley de Derechos de la Madre Tierra, is intended to encourage a radical shift in conservation attitudes and actions, to enforce new control measures on industry, and to reduce environmental destruction.


The law redefines natural resources as blessings and confers the same rights to nature as to human beings, including: the right to life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; the right not to be polluted; and the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered. Perhaps the most controversial point is the right "to not be affected by mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities".

In late 2005 Bolivia elected its first indigenous president, Evo Morales. Morales is an outspoken champion for environmental protection, petitioning for substantive change within his country and at the United Nations. Bolivia, one of South America's poorest countries, has long had to contend with the consequences of destructive industrial practices and climate change, but despite the best efforts of Morales and members of his administration, their concerns have largely been ignored at the UN.

In 2009, directly following the resolution of the General Assembly to designate April 22 "International Mother Earth Day," Morales addressed the press, stating “If we want to safeguard mankind, then we need to safeguard the planet. That is the next major task of the United Nations”.

A change to Bolivia's constitution in the same year resulted in an overhaul of the legal system - a shift from which this new law has sprung.


The Law of Mother Earth has as its foundation several of the tenets of indigenous belief, including that human are equal to all other entities.

"Our grandparents taught us that we belong to a big family of plants and animals. We believe that everything in the planet forms part of a big family," Choquehuanca said. "We indigenous people can contribute to solving the energy, climate, food and financial crises with our values."

The legislation will give the government new legal powers to monitor and control industry in the country.

"Existing laws are not strong enough," said Undarico Pinto, leader of the 3.5m-strong Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (a group that helped draft the law). "It will make industry more transparent. It will allow people to regulate industry at national, regional and local levels."

[Read the whole inspiring story here!]