Narcotcs, Cults, and the Dance & Song of Play & Eros

Yesterday’s “Ask the Dream Queen” was about my recent run-in with “Mouse” - an Oregonian advocate for an Italian cult called Damanhur. It took place in a forum following a pro-Damanhur video. One of the commenters, an escapee from the cult, remarked that Damanhur was like a narcotic.

I responded: “That is a good metaphor. In dreams, anything that is addictive and destructive can be a narcotic – including that which may appear to be the very fundament of ‘normal’ life, like a relationship, or a family. What relationships and families provide, at their best, is a sense of belonging. When they do provide belonging, and when we leave it, we go through withdrawal, as from a drug, which we call ‘homesickness.’

“Often families alienate one or more members, leaving them with an unfulfilled feeling which communities such as Damanhur prey on.

“The only family that will provide true belonging is the one without ourselves, which will always elude us if we seek it in the external world. Our true siblings and parents are the heart, mind, spirit, and wisdom within us, and they are our own bodies. Once we possess these, independently of our relationships to other people, then we will be ready to reinvent community – vibrant, fluid communities without overlord figures or rules. If authority rests in the mind, body, heart, spirit and wisdom of each individual (instead of in co-dependent attitudes and behaviors), rules are unnecessary.

“No organizing can create such communities. They cannot be willed into existence. They form of their own accord, brought together by authority we have no control over: the World Soul, Anima Mundi. They sprout first from individuality, not community. Communities such as Damanhur put the cart before the (white) horse.”

In response to my point that a slogan that Mouse assigned to Damanhur, “Freedom = Work,” is very close to a slogan used at Auschwitz: "Work Makes (One) Free," Mouse wrote:“And you have not addressed the substance of what I am saying, and what every skilled artist knows, and what every Buddhist teaches: That in order to find freedom, we must master our passions, we must master ourselves, that we must self-submit ourselves to rigour and discipline.”

All work and no play makes Damanhurians dull children. There is no self-mastery without excessive doses of play.

I need to get something off my chest, so here I am repeating a bit of yesterday’s blog, which quotes the abovementioned forum:

Amy: Whatever Mouse. Here’s a quote from you about me [Mouse really wrote this, and somehow it got back to me, last summer]: “I am sure that she is influential and will be more so in the future. Thus she is the proper person to talk with. She needs to understand why she needs to change her story.” [My ‘story’ is parts of my essay, “Adam Clay,” that Mouse objected to.] You’re so insincere, such a manipulator. You bully people with your sincerity. I’ll never trust you and never believe anything you say, ever. By the way, rape isn’t ever OK. [He implied it was in some of his writings.] I know I am playing into your trap by responding to you. You’ve got your foot in the door, but I guarantee you won’t get much further. [fin]

Mouse: You're right, Amy - rape is never okay. That's why I objected so strongly to the Adam Clay article, wherein you wrote [He is quoting a dream of mine]: There are six men lying supine on tables. None is allowed to move, at all. I am one of six gleeful women wearing lingerie and satin gowns. At the same, we each mount one of the men for a few seconds. Then we simultaneously dismount and move on to the next, and so on to the next and the next...Meanwhile the men are meditatively still.

I explained this dream to Mouse over and over and over during the “Adam Clay, Lazarus Mouse and the Kingdom of Eros” forum. He did not want to hear me or understand. At the time I dreamed: I want Mouse to see me, but he doesn’t want to. He avoids me with his eyes. He finally leaves to get away from me. As he goes I call after him, “Fucking coward!”

It’s a grave mistake to believe that stillness and silence are not erotic and spiritually edifying. Mouse is like a boy who cannot sit still in church – the church of the universe that would make love to him if he would only allow, and then he would be ten times the man he is now.

You cannot be so madly put off by something – here being still and sexually receiving woman - and not have a soul-need for it. No one needs to be castrated more than he who gravely fears it. I did and I was, so I know.

To be clear, I am not advocating Mouse be castrated. I am saying that without knowing the eros of stillness and silence one will never know the dance & song of eros.

On Monday, Wednesday and Friday updates are posted to Amy George’s other blog Ask the Dream Queen, for which she interprets reader-submitted dreams.