YeKengalé

When Xi Jinping visited Jamaica in 2009, I was asked to learn and play the Chinese National anthem at his state reception dinner. I remember going to great lengths to ensure that the sound would be as grand as any orchestra he had heard, befitting the occasion. He was then of course Vice-President and although separated by only a few feet, we were worlds apart.

The nature of the human spirit is like water. Unless impeded by some boundary, it tends to cover every surface within reach. Space and time itself would not exhaust the human thirst for knowledge and intimacy except for one snag we have not yet quite found a way around apparently – the irritating little issue of mortality. What the cumbersome and often distracting demands of daily life rob us of in focus, we tend to make up for in the dream state – a fascinating state of consciousness we especially in the West are absolute novices in our understanding and exploitation of the capacities enabled through trance technology.

In the lucid dream state, I have established intimate relations with world leaders who fascinate my attention in waking consciousness. These experiences are as vivid and compelling as physical human connection and relationship; and it generally takes the rude interruption of sunlight and a new day merging consciousness with the daily activities and challenges surrendered the previous night to convince me that my visit with Obama or Trump or whosoever was imaginary and my deep sense of personal familiarity and intimacy with them belongs to another world.

I have never however, even in the dream state, penetrated Chinese culture, which has always struck me as completely other and unfamiliar. One might think that perhaps the language barrier could explain that, but in the dream state, that simply is not a factor. In fact, in the single most impactful encounter with that strange world (the world of the Orient), while I was yet a teenager, (and were I to rank my most memorable and compelling trance encounters, that one would certainly make the top five if not taking first place) not a single word was uttered but the impact upon my waking consciousness would set a trail of serendipitous discovery in my waking moments that followed me for decades. However, the background feeling, (and in the dream state, I have learned that this factors more in one’s experience than whatever objects or individuals one encounters), could best be described as ranging from quizzical to ominous, certainly not familiar.

I am not amongst those daunted by the unfamiliar or judgmental of that which one is ignorant of. I am more drawn to than repelled by the stranger, the other, (in waking consciousness, not exactly a convenient trait). But, as I sensed at the time, that encounter cast a long shadow of both time and meaning that I have been searching out since. Those who have read Natural Mystic (chapter 9 – 10) would be familiar with my passion to chase after dreams.

I certainly am not the only one convinced that we have entered a moment of global signigicance, where regardless of our daily focus in the worlds of which we are familiar, it is worth the investment of attention to seek to understand this civilization as its impact upon all our worlds demands such of the responsible.

What kind of man saves the western world from its own self-inflicted destruction, but does so in secret? Those who understand the times recognize that we have been on the brink of significant economic and political calamity for some time and have narrowly escaped the edge of disaster most recently, against all odds. The potential of the US / Iran war to plunge into chaos the fragile security that allows us all to wake up each morning and haply continue our regular engagement with our familiar worlds is as irrelevant a focus as the unknown chronic heart condition of an athlete preparing for a marathon. Exactly. Ignorance is not always bliss.

To be fair, our entire universe, the thing most fixed and permanent in our human experience, we have come to understand exists on such razor margins, the physicists tell us, that the slightest adjustment in the constants that support all existence as we know it leads to total annihilation; so perhaps there is some rationale to an intentional blissful ignorance of what might only be a distraction from some matter of more immediate import to our own private determinations.

Still, for those with an appreciation for the systems that sustain the world we have not only imagined, but also enabled through technology and trade, that global clot activated by the Israel US / Iran war we have all become recently at least vaguely aware by the name the Strait of Hormuz and the shock to the entire system it potentially represents, the attention paid to the devloping situation follows the wisdom of the athlete’s pause to listen to his body at the fist sign of unusually intense pain from the heart center.

The economists with the stethescope inform us that the only reason we made it through the night was the silent action of one man, one nation, whose draconian and apparently magnaminous measures prevented the clot from becoming a global economic heart attack. At a time when most of the nations and peoples of the world have been seeking to marginally adjust to the 20% diminished daily flow of oil that sustains our familiar worlds by perhaps some car pooling here, less travel there, some dipping into stockpiles by almost everyone everywhere, only China did what no other nation on earth can afford to do …. and without fanfare, in total media black-out, apparently unilaterally; and that alone has given us a little more time to sort ourselves out. China totally refrained from (legally banned) all their fossil fuel imports, (China was the number one importer of oil in 2025) thereby lessening the global demand, freeing up the marketshare available for everyone else thereby delaying the critical point of the Hormuz chokehold. Apparently dictatorship does have its merits – no western democracy could even conceive of such an extreme strategy, let alone execute it.

In my younger days, when I read a fascinating book that opened up my imagination to a brand new world, I would go to great lengths to locate the author from half across the globe and find some way to facilitate an extended personal conversation. Books are fine but it’s the minds of the people who write them I find more fascinating.

Xi, we’ve never really met before, but make some time for me. I’ll be visiting you for an engaging chat some night soon.

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