Metaphors within metaphors

This could be my last post.  Or not.  But I was so close last night.  I’m not sure I can get any closer and remain in this dimension.  I awoke from a dream into total clarity.  And because I’m not ready for it yet, I have to write it down before the clarity fades.  How I know I’m not ready is a whole ‘nuther story.  So I guess this isn’t my last blog, but maybe it’ll help me later.  Or maybe it’ll come back to bite me on the ass.  Anyway, here’s what happened.

As usual, I was lucid dreaming.  When I know I’m dreaming I can direct the action in order to seek solutions to personal issues.  As a shortcut, I often reuse dream settings to re-examine continuing issues.  One place I go to in my dreams is the martial arts school I always hoped I’d someday have.  The population of my dojo depends on the issue upon which I’m working, but always includes me, my mentor, and my old senior student, who has his own, separate school.  Of course I understand that they don’t represent the actual people, but rather my own personality traits: daily self, wiser self, and questing self.  But let’s face it — if I put my face on all three characters, even I couldn’t keep up with who’s who.  It’s much simpler to use the faces of people with whom I have a special relationship, even though they might not appreciate being “borrowed” for my own purposes.  It’s actually  a sign of respect.  Yeah, that’s it.  Besides, I figure what they don’t know won’t hurt me.

In last night’s dream dojo my senior student brought his senior student to me to help jump-start a deeper understanding of the martial art we both teach.  In the dream I try to explain to my student that his student isn’t ready.  He hasn’t laid the foundation he’ll need to keep from getting lost inside the greater knowledge he seeks.

I put it this way: life is like fishing — you start out as a child tying a piece of bacon to a string and dipping it into a crawfish hole.  You learn to tease the crustacean, since there’s no hook to capture him.  Later you use a minnow on a hook to catch perch.  That’s when you learn about fishing line, spools, and tangles.  Eventually you try casting dry flies and discover that this is the Olympics compared to how you started.  Like the Olympics, you can’t just walk in off the street and start fly fishing.  You’re going to need to put in some time understanding tangles first.

The weird thing about tangles is how a single filament can become so enamored of itself that it’s impossible to straighten out again.  When a bad tangle happens you generally resort to one of two solutions: (1) throw that reel away and buy another, or (2) scissors.  Since fishing line is cheap but reels aren’t, scissors is generally the way people go.  Just cut that knot out of there.  After all, there’s plenty of line left on the spool.

What most people can’t understand is that cutting away the knot teaches you nothing about avoiding the knot to begin with.  You got the knot by trying to force the cast.  You get a knot, you cut it out, and throw the line harder.   Only when you put in the time and effort to tease the line back into its original condition will you learn the importance of relaxing.  If you put in hours undoing the tangle, you learn to relax and let the line flow at its own speed.

When that metaphor didn’t work, I tried another: think puzzles.  The knowledge your student seeks is already within him.  All the puzzle pieces come with the box.  But he can’t visualize  how it all fits together.  Here’s how you know when he’s ready for the slight, zen-like nudge a teacher should provide — ask him how many pieces are in his puzzle.  Any answer more than ‘one’ means the student needs to spend more time looking at the ‘puzzle’ from different angles.  Once he realizes that it’s all one piece you can show him where to gently poke it so that it unfolds itself.  Then let the student have his moment.  After he gets smug about that you can always tell him there never was a box or puzzle if you want to start the process all over again.

Yeah, okay — it’s not an opus.  But it sure spoke volumes to me.  Which was the point, of course.  After all, it was my dream.