Nothing like watching myself stumble around a low scrub terrain in the middle of the night that’s mostly clouded over as the fog rolls in while holding an empty lantern and looking for “Sophia”. It was humorous to witness myself going through the very symbolic motions. On the one hand, I knew “Sophia” wasn’t a person to find. On the other hand, I know just how empty my head is, and that all I’m doing is probably just as ineffective as wandering the night desert with an empty lantern.
I really didn’t need this so dramatized. I’d rather not have a Shakespearean life. He wrote tragedies after all, and I’m trying to avoid that kind of ending. Bad enough I had just mutilated myself in the previous dream. I’d rather not find something worse.
Oh well. After I rolled my eyes at the scene I wound up being invited to a seminar. The speaker was billed as a very talented, wise, and inspiring woman. I was one of the first inside the amphitheater, so I was able to get my preferred seat for such shenanigans. Far off in the back, so I could watch the speaker and the audience. The woman came with glowing reviews. The kind of reviews that came from people that never stepped outside their comfort zone.
The seats quickly filled up. I was definitely out of my element here. All these polite women and their polite conversation and their polite clothes sitting so prim and properly as befitting their social station.
Except for That One Guy. I recognized him and had to quickly hide my face before my giggling gave me away.
The Speaker came in. Her first words were a warm and flowing blessing over all present, invoking the names of comforting and elucidating angels so that we all may have our chakras cleansed and opened to the wisdom of the ancients.
That One Guy’s eye twitched, but he kept his tongue.
The speaker, after being assured that only those seeking true wisdom were present, and that none of us were part of that nasty worldly crowd that was only interested in personal gain and not the unification of the soul with the purity of the Mother Goddess, began her presentation with a quote she attributed to Plato.
That One Guy quietly corrected her and attributed to Aristotle. He smiled at the end and said it was a common mistake.
She didn’t smile.
She continued on making a reference to the enveloping motherly attributes of Lilith. That One Guy quickly corrected her again. She mentioned Hecate as the first true revelation of the Maiden-Mother-Crone, and That One Guy destroyed that.
She confronted him and accused him of trying to subvert The Truth with his MALE ideas and his MALE domination tactics and his MALE falsehoods that are meant to blot out the lantern of Sophia.
Okay. Now the scene has my full attention.
He smiled, identified himself, identified his gods, and proceeded to completely bury every false teaching the speaker had tried to serve us. This wasn’t a seminar on finding inner wisdom, he announced. This was a bullshit session meant to make us (the audience) feel inadequate about ourselves and our lives so that we would turn over critical thinking skills to the speaker. Along with our wallets as we would be encouraged later to buy her trinkets, blessing cards, guided mediation CDs, and other knick-knacks that were taken from other cultures and recolored to sell a bit of exotica to spiritually desensitized middle-class American women as lightly salted pablum.
Most of the women in the audience cried when confronted with what they already knew but wouldn’t admit to others because they were afraid of calling out the empress’ new clothes. A few shut their ears and vehemently defended the speaker. I regretted not having a latte to enjoy the moment with.
That One Guy finished his speech and came over to sit next to me. “Sophia will not be found by crowd sourcing. She is personal and individual. She comes not to be bragged about but to make one humble. Sophia cannot be forced to appear, and certainly cannot be bought with favors or servitude. She is not a trinket on a chain. And anyone that claims to open access to [Sophia] in exchange for common coin, adoration, or importance is full of shit.” He patted me on the knee and winked at me in that wonderfully conspiratorial way. We both left the seminar, but via opposite sides of the room.
In the middle, the speaker was still trying to peddle herself. But most of the money, er, audience was already gone. Sadly, they didn’t leave to find Sophia for themselves. They left to find another less controversial speaker to listen to.
I left the room, the dream, and the state of sleep.