Water from the Fountain of Lions

   ∞   

8

On a Backstreet in an Old Town by the Great River       •      13 September 2007
Image by Beau Bosko

Sanctum

By Ebenezer Baldwin Bowles

Posted from Crow's Cottage on 17 August 2015

Do we dare drink from the china cup of uncertain opportunity?  The cup brims with sparkling water from the Fountain of Lions.  You’ll find the cup on the other side of a door marked 3 2 7.  Just pass by the lion — and be sure to close the door behind you.

Pari Banou the Fairy tends bar at Dreamland Place.  She expects you to have a key to open her door.  Once inside, she’ll show you a pattern set by the face of the ruins.  She'll ask if you’d like to tame the lion.

“Yes,” you say.

“Here,” she offers, setting the delicate china cup before you.  “The sovereign medicine…  yours for the taking.”

Astride the Tempest You Ride.

Legend tells us the sparkling water will cure even the most dangerous of fevers.  Yes, but….  The water might, just might, rouse a tempest of passion and awaken the fiery inner life of the king of beasts.

From the Opposite Loft, ever watchful, the Guardian intercedes:  "Potent stuff, the potion of the lion.  Are ye thirsty enough to risk it?"

Are you?  Is your strength sufficient to endure a ride on the tempest?  The ticket is cheap enough, Pari Banou says.  It can be printed and punched for a song.  Who among us hast not a tune?

"Once underway, there's no turning back," the fairy matron warns.  "You have to guide the fiery forces like a cosmic charioteer and channel the winds of the mystery all the way to a level shore."

We are rife with questions tonight.  So, another:  Is your spirit too world-weary to withstand the sudden jolt of vital electricity?   Answer:  We think not.  You're strong.  You can make it if you try.

A Secret in the Pattern

“Change the pattern, and you change the result,” the Adept P.F.C. writes.  “Make it accurate, profound, courageous, positive.  Then you tame the lion.  This is the secret of all spiritual activities, the secret of strength, the secret of ultimate mastery.”

In the illusion — like many aspects of Ancient Teachings, the illusion is projected to hide foundational truths from the profane and the venal — 327 Dreamland Place presents a disintegrating form in the guise of an abandoned honkey-tonk.  But the form conceals the sanctum.  Each one of us must find the private key, stamped for eternity in our name.

Your 327 Dreamland Place might be an oasis amid the shifting sands, or a luxurious spa at the feet of breaking waves, or a seat in a sacred urban temple, or a grove on the mountaintop.  Human artifice exists to shield us from the dreadful howls of beasts and the subhuman forces of destruction, giving us space and time to distill meaning from the patterns we observe and interpret.

And the lion?  She remains visible as the conscious expression of strength and courage…  a visage on the screen…  after the dreams fade…  and the sun begins to shine with the Eternal Splendor of the Limitless Light.

∞

The Old Town by the Great River is Helena, Arkansas -- home of the late, great James 'Nashid' Bingham... May God rest his soul.

A Lion at Dreamland was posted on Monday, August 17, 2015

 

Kali Ma,
Guide and Protector

Merwynn L. writes from Saint Louis in Missouri, USA:

My cat in dreamland and in my body spirit is a huge white Bengal tigress named Kali.  Most of the time she is docile — unless someone is treating me bad or she feels my agitation and senses my anger.  Then she paces and wants-in on the action, which translate through me.  She becomes Kali Ma.  She is my guide in dreams and my protector in nightmares.  She is of my soul as one, yet separate.

Kali and I have a soulful and spiritual connection.  But if, in defense of me, she becomes too fierce, which comes out in my words and actions, I can calm her down and make her go back down the path.  But sometimes I do get so mad that things happen I am not aware of till later, so I have to rein her in because then she took over as Kali Ma.

Kali is an amazing spirit and soul.  Her purr is like no other.  It has immediate soothing and healing effects.  But she's no pussy either.  Sometimes, when she wants out to play a little like cats do with their prey, it actually feels like scratches on the inside —'til I use the... "voice".

Thanks, Merwynn, for sharing the story of your spirit animal.