Casting Dreams Crossing Time

By Janet DeLong PHD

Standing Bear and I met again for the first time in the 1980s. To say he changed my world would be the biggest understatement of my life. He, and his shamanic ways, sent amazing waves through my universe. I wrote Casting DreamsCrossing Time, my remembering of our story, in 2000.

What took so long to release this book? The three of me could explain . . . Janet would tell you I had to finish living it. Dr. Jan would tell you that timing is everything. And Auntie Jan would wax my truth poetically, Ah, twill be midnight rising 2015 when that clock will chime. I can publish this book now because it is our truth, way back when and even then. Bear and I really did and did really cast our dreams and cross our time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504901567

Janet DeLong PHD

Janet DeLong, PhD, is a philosophical writer. With the publication of Casting Dreams—Crossing Time, she has joined the tiny house movement. Since her house is now on wheels, we just say she's in private practice somewhere.

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© 2015 Janet DeLong, PhD. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 03/27/2015

ISBN: 978-1-5049-0157-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-0156-7 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

AUTHOR’S NOTES

FOREWORD

CASTING DREAMS CROSSING TIME

AUTHOR’S NOTES

What you will read in this book, twice, now three times is, I couldn’t decide how in the world I was going to explain this to people who cared about me; or for that matter to people who did not care about me. That’s still very true. I also know it’s true that we all have our own pageantry, our own stories. It’s a gift that comes with every soul’s imagining. This book is uniquely mine and I do own that.

Standing Bear and I met again for the first time in the 1980’s. To say he changed my world would be the biggest understatement of my life. He, and his shamanic ways, sent amazing waves through my universe. I wrote Casting Dreams - Crossing Time, my remembering of our story, in 2000.

What took so long to release this book? The three of me could explain … Janet would tell you I had to finish living it. Dr. Jan would tell you that timing is everything. And Auntie Jan would wax my truth poetically, Ah, ’twill be midnight rising 2015 when that clock will chime. I can publish this book now because it is our truth, way back when and even then. Bear and I really did and did really, Cast our Dreams and Cross our Time.

I’m finally publishing what I promised him I would publish. Luckily I did not say when I would publish it, I said only that it would be published. I think he knew it would take me some time. He knew that I had not lived long enough to recognize that all the pieces of my life were together in these words. I wrote them all in such a jumble of my own prophetic goodness.

When Bear read our story he said, You almost got it right. Fourteen years came and went while I tried to figure out what I had wrong, what was almost right. I wrote an entire theory, technically a new paradigm in philosophical and psychological thought, just to explain myself. I published four books of my thoughts. I still couldn’t figure out what he found almost right.

Knowing that now was the time to publish this book, I spent weeks trying to edit something I promised him I wouldn’t edit. Promises are promises so I corrected the typos and marched, even more slogged, through every jumbled vista of my mind.

Many of my friends, his too, asked me why Standing Bear just couldn’t be Bear in the book, why I’d called him something else. That answer always was, and remains, that his being Lakota didn’t matter even when we all know it did. I’d given us both different names because the truth is the truth, it doesn’t matter what you call it. I did notice that nobody seemed to ask why I couldn’t just be Janet. That intrigued me, made me smile.

Trust me, you can even chuckle in your understanding, I’d thought the whole concept of Janet through way far enough when I finally glanced skyward, If you are Bear then I’ll have to be Janet. You’d really have to know those who guard and guide me to understand how really funny that actually is. And I digress …

What I finally understood was my taking ownership of my own journey. I had named the people in the book something they weren’t just to hide me further in any woods they left me. I even bought some real woods, twenty remote acres of them. I hid myself on my own mountaintop in the midst of some glorious views for fourteen years. I did that all because this book really is about me, all about me.

When I finally pushed the Find and Replace button on my own name, on me, I joined in all the laughter I heard. That’s really what it’s like to be in my world. In my world, in the collective we I am, Auntie Jan, Dr. Jan and Janet, I mostly laugh. And very truly, as everybody who knows me knows, I laugh because my life really does trip the light fantastic sometimes.

If I hadn’t used my own name, this would be a story, a nice one maybe, still a story. So, with me now … it’s still maybe a nice one, it’s just not a story, it’s my shared reality, my life. All of my life condensed into a week of my pageantry. This book is real for me, it can even be real for you too … real is literally what you make it. And time really is the imagining of all our souls.

I have always known that there is a place between the wind, a place where time doesn’t just slow, it stops. Smiling, I could write a whole book on that subject alone … so I’m just going to stop right here and say …

All I am and all I seem,

Janet

FOREWORD

Fourteen years have come and gone since I wrote this book. Reading it again, knowing it was time to publish it, was almost nicely gut wrenching. Very telling is this paragraph:

I used to be afraid of what people would think of the real me, what evaluations a professional team of psychiatrists would produce if asked. How long would their Ativan shuffle be required to make me normal? I learned that my silence was my protection, especially in matters spiritual. I knew in my heart that I wasn’t so much different as differently aware. Fear was in some metamorphosing cocoon.

I was misdiagnosed for years 32 years. The psychiatric and medical professionals attached to me a list of possibilities that ran the gamut. I swallowed way, way too many prescription drugs in their efforts to prove to me that I could be like them. I was 50 years old, watching Mozart and the Whale, when I knew it was Aspergers, AND I knew I would never be like them.

Shockingly, at least to me, that was a diagnosis I could own and now officially do own. And yes, I even own it when the captains of DSM V rolled their ship and my sector into something larger. They really need to know that even when you call us a different name we are still the same.

Twenty years before the psychiatric ones agreed on Aspergers, (and way before they hedged on that bet), I was explained. Thankfully and gratefully, I was 30 years old when a shaman, my friend Bear, told me, You are Heyoka, Walking the Visionary Path, the Way of the Muse. I wanted to own the loftiness of that thought. It sounded so right, it explained everything to me. It made me feel special. It is a positive explanation for me not a negative diagnosis of me. It defines my ability, not my disability. And, it’s true, either and both ways.

What I understood is that Bear’s explanation for me exactly correlated with the psychiatric diagnosis of me. Technically, and even more logically, they are just different perceptions of my same whole. Heyoka means I think backwards, I’m non-neurotypical. Visionary means that I think in pictures. And I am most definitely a muse. I write and think incessantly. Gift or curse it really doesn’t matter, it’s what I do.

The moral of my story is, in my ability, or even in my disability, I remain the same. The truth is, I am Indigo. I am a part of a changing consciousness. That consciousness is the wave of souls arriving now in order to specifically put an end, both physiologically and psychologically, to the brain reign of the Reptilian amygdala. If you’re like me, you’ll innately understand the truth of that statement. Smiling …

Know that I, like so many other people who color this and our spectrum, am differently aware. I’m smart, I will give myself that one because I recognize I don’t hold a candle to the minds arriving here now, at best I can throw a wee spark.

Well folks, the truth is that when you finally face yourself a particle, you just have to wave. I’m wavin’, I’m throwin’ that wee spark now.

Enjoy the read,

Janet

P.S. As always, I am sending and will forever be sending many, many, thanks to and for all the people in my life who made it possible for me to write all of these words real. Even if some of you don’t know who you are, I do.

We survive many lives.

That’s not a marvel, that’s the plan.

The wonder is that we make a conscious choice to live,

knowing that we never die.

The miracle is that any soul takes even one breath,

sharing with you moments in your time.

CASTING DREAMS

CROSSING TIME

JOURNAL 52

Writing in the stream of my consciousness has always been comforting for me. It gives me clarification. Sometimes I imagine Faulkner, pages and pages of the dance in the rise of the moon. Sometimes I imagine Solzhenitsyn, one line, moon rose. Sometimes I write until I fall asleep; sometimes that takes days. Sometimes the thoughts take so many pages I tape journals together. Sometimes that takes more than three.

I knew in my heart comfort would arrive for me, it always did. All I had to do was change my mind. The cabin was the perfect place to remember my peace. It was Bear’s cabin.

I sat patiently waiting for the miracle of inspiration. Journal Number 52, you’d think the muse could help me with better titles.

Humming again … I never knew what I was humming until I stopped to listen. If I stopped humming to listen, I had nothing to listen to. It’s difficult to think and listen at the same time; unless of course you are thinking what you are listening and then there would be no need. I said a silent thank you to Bear, he heard me, he always did.

Bear had been the first person to tell me I wasn’t crazy. Actually he hadn’t been the first person to tell me I wasn’t crazy. He was the first person I believed. He told me that you could only really listen in the tiny spaces between thoughts. The truth, he told me the truth.

The song I heard was an easy catch. I could name that tune in three notes, maybe even less. I once was lost and know I’m found, was chumming the Amazingly Graceful backwaters of my brain. I change the words to songs sometimes. Semantics matter. I have never liked the word ‘but’ it negates everything before it, and is a better choice in most cases.

The space between thought is different from the space between thoughts. We forget that a lot especially when listening.

Today’s topic is TIME: Total Imagery MacroEvolution. I clearly heard laughter sounding in my head. There were only a few souls who would find my quantum sarcasm amusing enough to laugh.

I looked up and there he was, sitting on the bed. Long ago I quit trying to explain visits from other worlds, other dimensions. It is far easier to keep silent about my visitors than to explain, than to try to justify, my ability to see these spirit people and the ones sometimes mistaken for spirits. They are not all discarnate.

I had long since resigned myself to telling only half of my story, only half of any understanding. People had so many lengthy and inadequate explanations of spiritual forces. I smiled at him. He was so familiar. He smiled and then he laughed. He and I were good friends. We went way back, lifetimes of dreams back. He laughed again when I reminded him. We had had our fun together. We enjoyed each other.

He was as beautiful as I remembered him, of course that was his option since he was technically, only, an apparition. Filling the room was a feeling reminiscent of two people who have grown together in love for a very long time. Sometimes I watch old people together and all the passion they have for each other comes flyin’ out of them like beamin’ rays of sunlight. I know in that heartbeat of understanding; you always see only what you want to see.

He smiled, I heard him grin as he said with a gratuitous sigh, Ah Janet, if only I could grow old with you. I looked at him and laughed out loud. For a long while there had been only one way we would grow old together. We’d be near death when we happened to meet, not hard with so many wars on this planet. Old had always been a relative concept for the two of us.

Our relationship is extraordinary. There were lives we’d been together when we simply nodded at one another across a crowded courtyard, our alliances different, our paths the same. There were lives we had been lovers, usually illicit since neither one of us ever understood commitment to one other person, unless they were sequential. He grinned.

We both had the cause commitment covered. If there was a cause worth fighting for, we usually fought for it. Survival of the fittest meant something different to us, something way beyond evolution. We tended to die a lot and we laughed mightily at that one. Death never scared us, living did. Karma works that way.

I sometimes forget that I can be anywhere, anytime. He laughed. How difficult is that to explain? When talking, I had finally shortened my explanation to if I want to be somewhere, aren’t I already there? I remember reading something like that and it made sense. It had also shortened the class time dramatically. Humans are usually stumped by that concept. He laughed about my human stumped thought pictures. They were shades of Monty Python.

Thought is a form of energy. Everything is a form of energy. Energy is everything. Thoughts are everything. That seriously translates, or should. Intention, personal thought is everything too. Intention is the essence of personal power. The time is swiftly coming for people to remember the true essence of power.

I had stopped trying to help people remember that the essence of personal power and the true essence of power were entirely different, the same. Humans have trouble with bigger pictures. Most humans do not understand their own power. That would be a start, a good beginning, toward the awareness of true power. I was tired of attempting to explain power and tired of looking at all the external trappings of power.

Power is power. Power is, truth. Power is. Truth. Ultimately there is only one truth. I looked up at him, nodded, done, thank you, and closed the journal. I even waved bye-bye.

I wondered why I was really staying in this humid, sultry, sticky, slimy climate when I could be somewhere else. I laughed when I