A Tale of Two Cities
A Tale of Two Cities
by Jean-Baptiste Duret
I had a dream one night in which I was wandering in the countryside. It looked like Normandy and I was to go back to my friend Éric’s parent’s house when suddenly I felt a strange vibration behind me. First, I thought it was a car and that it would just pass, but no. So I thought it was bigger, maybe a tractor and that’s why it wouldn’t pass before me… Well, fortunately I was approaching a parking lot and decided to go there and let it pass.
As I was hurrying my pace, it seemed to me that it was following me into the parking lot. I wasn’t afraid nor irritated and eventually I turned around to face it. The vehicle was like a big weird bulldozer and it was emitting a strong vibration. I could see a man inside; he was simply waiting, now that I had stopped. I climbed into the vehicle and once I was seated he gave me a piece of paper, some kind of brochure. I took it by reflex and looked at it closer. The document was peculiar, having its own vibration not unlike the bulldozer. The more I was looking at it, the more my attention was attracted, and it was like it triggered memories and my objective awareness: I knew I was in a dream area and I wanted to do things from that awareness. I looked back at the driver and asked him to drive me to the City.
He smiled enigmatically and… we took off with the bulldozer! Wow, what a trip! going to the City in a flying bulldozer! To help me keep my focus on that dream area I had to hold my attention to the piece of paper. I felt that otherwise I could be distracted and lose my focus in that area before we arrived —which I did not. Soon enough I began to see lights in the night sky and there it was, splendid with its buildings which seemed made of light, all white and shiny.
At first it seemed to me to be on an island, but I may have seen only parts of it. It was quite big and crowded and some of the rocks were hanging in mid-air or in positions that wouldn’t have been possible according to official physical laws. I soon felt that it was still in the making and not quite ready to be manifested. Then I woke up. Filled with wonder and excitement with the thought that now I knew the way to the City. And I knew how to find it again.
What is the City?
The first time I heard of it was in a Seth Book. It was some kind of dream platform where people could share their fun and express their creativity in many unknown ways. This was presented as a game to help us connect with our various aspects and our dream selves.
A few years later, I heard of it again. Well I thought it was the same City, but apparently it was a bit different. This new one, so to speak, was special in that it had already been manifested long ago in our past and that it could well be manifested again in our future, but different from the previous version… Hard to assimilate or accept from where I was. But presented as a game it had the flavor of fun in it. The similarities in both games were that we could add buildings, places, fountains, parks and gardens… a lot of useful or less useful artifacts just for fun. In the Dream City it really mattered not if the buildings were hanging out or upside down, in dreams you have a kind of freedom that it seems we lack in our waking reality. In the other one we would have to design it so it wouldn’t collapse once it is manifested. At least that was how I thought of it.
A description of the “physical City” existed in the book Oversoul Seven, by Jane Roberts and in that book there are references that have been made to some “tiles” that would have different qualities and would be connected to certain actions and families of consciousness (see notes). Several of these tiles have been offered during the Elias sessions by some of the members of the Elias forum and their insertion “confirmed”. Some of them are also created by people who are not aware of these connections, or that they are symbols and have specific functions —symbols at times widely spread in our everyday lives (see the ejector, the pearls etc.).
Following our own sense of the game and realizing that some of the symbols we had seen in dreams or during meditations could well be some of those “tiles”, Éric and I began to create our own tiles and vaguely insert them in the City. We first created only the numerical painted versions of these tiles and offered them for confirmation during the sessions. Then, we expanded our game in connecting with the different functions and qualities of these symbols and began to use them during some visualizations or meditations, not really thinking that they could really appear physically in the City. There was that desire to discover more of them and more of the possible connections with our own lives, and in doing so we were discovering more of ourselves and of our different qualities, expressed or unexpressed. For me, there was also that desire to render them more physical and make them manifested physically, if not in the City at least in our own lives, but I didn’t know how to do so.
During a trip to Marseille where my parents have a family house, we bought a big watermelon, and one day that we’d found a few other tiles and sketched them, Éric suggested that we could even carve them on the watermelon rind. Slightly reluctant at first to do such things at that time, wondering too much if they were the ‘right’ way or if they were something I really wanted to do, I let Éric begin and watched him. Soon, his application on the carving triggered my desire to play too. And there we were, carving the watermelon rind with a toothpick and darkening the grooves with burnt matches. These were our first objectification of our tiles. I must say that was really fun and we took some pictures of our works in different parts of the garden. The door was now open to new activities and avenues of exploration and we soon found new ideas for making objects with tiles —wood carving, glass carving, a calendar and a tile handbook— and the idea of really manifesting the City began to take a different coloration. It was no longer imagination or supposition; it was manifestation of objectified energy in our reality.
In a way, changing our intention led us to find new tiles with functions adapted to our new direction of exploration. These new tiles (named ‘the chrysantile’, ‘the puzzle’, ‘the silver bird’) along with the previous ones could help us manipulate concepts, ideas, and our energies in new ways that could help us manifest our desires. Some of the concepts exposed by Seth or Elias concerning the process of manifestation of these Cities may appear difficult to accept or understand, but approached as a game and “pretending” it is a great way to let the free flow of our creativity and of our energy projected and reflected in our world (see the editorial). Soon after that, I felt a connection with a focus of mine who is living in the City in a probable future. The information was coming bit by bit, a piece of the puzzle here in a dream, another there in a meditation, and yet another in a spam! We began to gather the pieces and unfold a creative picture of what details we were allowing in our awareness. I even spent some time meditating and exchanging concepts with him, at least, that’s the best how I can translate these experiences.
I’m not focusing on a particular outcome, I’m exploring the many avenues at my disposal: my imagination, my visualization, different arts (photos, painting, writing) and so many different games. You can clearly see how intensely children play their games, and how much energy they put into being the pirate or the interdimensional cop. Well, I decided that it would work well for me too and as I had no expectations regarding how other individuals would respond, I was lessening the possibilities of frustration. All the civilizations, organizations, and religions had been created by people putting their energy into the actualization of their dreams. This is no different.
These tiles are part of our own language to ourselves, symbols and archetypes that we can manipulate to communicate to ourselves a tremendous diversity of information, and using them as tools we can focus our energy in specific directions. For me, these two Cities are different yet complimentary, they have different purposes. They are focal points to help us release/realize our creativity and our abilities. They are in the making and it is up to us how we would manifest them in our dreams and in our realities.
Let’s do it with fun.
Links:
About
