Common steps and sub-activities

Safe House

If we are in a safe nurturing environment with perhaps a kind person to watch over us, we help to alleviate any input that might be conceived of as a Threat.

This is why so many books recommend the use of ‘safe houses’. The house can of course be your house, but any housethat has a warm welcoming atmosphere, a feeling of calm and safety and a sense of peace, is perfect. It can even be a tent, or a yurt, if the tent is safe and comfortable and warm and welcoming, with comfortable beds and chairs. Or your garden shed – or the shed on your allotment.

Background

I do not advocate drugs on this website principally because I think there are safer and more positive ways in which to ‘see heaven’, but even those on drugs could benefit from the use of a safe house. In many books on drug taking you will find reference to the need to choose the ‘set and setting’ carefully. This means the same thing, an environment which offers no threats.

For those taking drugs the set and setting are of particular importance. A drug forces open the door to the composer with a battering ram, you get a spiritual experience by sheer force of chemicals. The Will is suppressed by overload of catastrophic proportions. But unless the set and setting are right, the results can be terrifying, because the fear feeds back to the Composer and is relayed back to you as a reflection of how you feel.

The Hasheesh Eater - Fitz Hugh Ludlow

The night was much darker than it should have been for a hasheesh eater’s walk, who, it will be remembered calls imperatively for light to tinge his vision…
At length the moon sank out of sight, and a thick darkness enveloped us in the lonely street, only relieved by the corner lamps, which dotted the long and drear prospective. For a while we walked silently. Presently I felt my companion shudder as he leaned upon my arm.

‘What is the matter, Bob?’ I asked.

‘Oh! I am in unbearable horror’ he replied ‘If you can save me!’

‘How do you suffer?’

‘This shower of soot which falls on me from heaven is dreadful’………

Now, demoniac shapes clutched at him from the darkness, cloaked from head to foot in inky palls, yet glaring with fiery eyes from the depths of their cowls. I felt him struggling and by main force dragged him from their visionary hands. The place wherein he seemed to himself to be walking was a vast arena, encircled by tremendous walls. As from the bottom of a black barathrum, he looked up and saw the stars infinitely removed; they gazed mournfully at him with a human aspect of despairing pity and he heard them faintly bewailing his perdition. Sulphureous fires rolled in the distance, upbearing on their waves agonised forms and faces of mockery, and demon watch fires flared up fitfully on the impenetrable battlements around him.

He did not speak a word, but I heard him groan with a tone that was full of fearful meaning.

Method

You are not aiming for a House and Gardens show house. In fact you are probably aiming for the opposite. If you have created a home where a dog can run in wet through and jump on your chairs, or children can wander around bare foot, painting and gluing and jumping on furniture, throwing the cushions around and making pancakes in your kitchen, then you have created a safe house.

A safe house is one where people immediately feel at home and don’t really notice the décor, they relax when they come in, throw themselves on the chairs and don’t even think about the colour scheme or the pictures or the soft furnishings. They make themselves a cup of tea when they feel like it, they lean up against your Aga and chat away happily about what they have been doing that day, a cup cake in hand – crumbs all over the floor. And you shouldn’t mind.

Lots of large sinky sofas, lots of jolly pictures on the wall, warm colours, photos of those you love everywhere, and plants – lots and lots of plants. Books on the walls, TV out of sight and barely accessible. Plenty of equipment to play your favourite gentle music. Soft lighting, no fluorescent lights which are reminiscent of a Nazi terror camp.

Big windows looking out on greenery and a lovely garden helps, and you can do this even with a small house and a tiny garden, you just have to fill the view with the plants, so you feel you are cocooned with plants. Anyone can put in patio doors or a small conservatory extension. Plants and gardens are absolutely essential to a safe house atmosphere.

Always keep the house warm and cosy. Cold is a Threat, a real threat. If you have a big house and are always cold, you are frankly daft – get a smaller house and keep warm and cosy. Open fires and wood burners are unbelievably restful and keep you warm. They are also very conducive to spiritual experience as are all flickering flames.

Apart from the noise of children laughing or the dog bouncing around and enjoying itself, try to be peaceful and avoid too much noise. Loud noises are a Threat.

And don’t be lonely. Easy said, more difficult in practise I know. But you can be ‘alone’ and not lonely. Get yourself a dog or a cat or two cats, or two dogs, if you don’t want a partner. Something innocent and bouncy to love. A dog is the least threatening thing I know, but then that is because I have known only loving dogs.

List what you feel threatened by in your environment and do something about it. If you can’t do anything about it move. I know it is easy to say and very difficult to do, but this is your life we are talking about, your link with the spiritual world, your health, your sense of well being and your door to happiness.

Observations

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WHAT AND WHERE IS HEAVEN?

VISIONS AND HALLUCINATIONS

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Common steps and sub-activities

Safe House

Background

Method

Observations