I have been thinking alot about the fragility of life, the brutality of war, the emanations of hatred, despair, futility, anti-life beliefs, subjugation of the natural world and our natural ways of being, the yin and yang of human power.
They chose Hiroshima as a target because it had not been bombed, was not already disfigured, so there would be stark contrast between before and after.
I’ve been wondering how to possibly have faith in a world where so many suffer so regularly. Do we create such realities? Do we really learn and grow from horror and death and ugly bleeding wounds?
Collective mythology points to a pantheon, whether extraterrestrial, divine, or some other origin. Somehow the group which instituted Judeo-Christian-Islam was able to wield power so that they gained sway over this segment of human history which we call Western Civilization.
I don’t know what this means, but it seems significant. The Jewish god was jealous, arrogant, warlike. These people valued patriarchic hierarchies, perhaps as being easier to control. They instituted strict rules; devaluated bodily gratification, pleasure, fun, intra or inter-species cooperation. In many ways they devalued the Earth, the eco-sphere, the kinds of interdependence that lead to valuing each and all. They favored harsh competition, violent confrontation, us-gainst-them/winner-take-all. They favored the wealthy and powerful whose ends justified any nasty means. Their moral code was about restrictions, not solutions. And Christ-be-damned, this is the god-council the Christian authorities worship. Yet, there are other gods with other values. How did this group gain so much control over man?
What is needed is to go over to the win/win concept where we each benefit when we all benefit, as opposed to survival of the fittest. Then we could do what actually makes sense rather than being preoccupied with a mythical bottom line. We could all be much calmer, easier, more usefully productive and playful. Is this the way it was before the evil gods? Was this the Eden we were booted out of because the gods had other plans? Why didn’t we fight harder to keep a way of life that was good for us? The imbalance is killing us and our home.
Man is within nature. Man’s habitats, no matter how grand and complex we may think, are natural in the sense of being created of by and for that which nature provides.
I have thot of this a bit, in terms of beauty. There is the often grand and breathtaking, often soft and ethereal, beauty of the natural world. There is such beauty as well in the art and architecture of man. Each has its story, its music, its water colour. Each has the power to move the rhythm of my heart and bring tears streaming down my face. Each has the power to make me feel hopelessly inadequate, or to inspire me to reach to the stars.
Mind can be more lonely than body would imagine. Mind can search for answers, for questions, for quests, for endless conundrums, and so enjoy the game. Yet mind wants other minds to play with, to bring in ideas that surprise and excite. It is spirit that knows to blend and meld into all that is. Yet spirit too can identify with loneliness, as an essence, as a way to die a little while caught in the ecstasy of exquisite pain. There must be a very important reason for loneliness. There must be a wholeness of interconnection that we truly need to attain.
I’ve been working the random universe/intelligent design/mystical maya one quite a bit lately. My conclusions are sometimes random, highly emotive, itchy and veiled. However, I had a revelation about the dweller on the threshhold (a revelation to me at least). It’s not about going over the threshhold. It’s about living it that eternal magic between the worlds and enjoying the view from each side. There may be a time when going onward is appropriate; I don’t know. First I have to build my home on the threshhold, learn about living there, learn who I am that I may have myself as a trusted friend on the continuing journey.
Streaming in and out of consciousness, I don’t know what I know. I feel,
but fleetingly. I feel exhiliration and fear. I feel so abysmally sad, so
ecstatically unbound, so small and insignificant, so rebellious and angry,
so tired, so endlessly used up, so guilty, so abused, so resigned, so itchy
to be free, so overwhelmed, so stagnant, so magickal, so impossible, so
dangerously close to the edge yet happy to be here dancing on the head of a
pin too small to do other than fly.
There is magic. There is the ability to send out energy and have it return
as your heart’s desire. There is a magical path that will take us there
once we have the courage and grace to find it. Like the end of the rainbow
with its pot of gold, it’s tied up in koans and hidden between the
dimensions. The only thing I know to do is dance.
We are social beings because we are born unable to care for our own basic needs. In our very earliest experience we learn it is vitally important to behave in ways which will enhance our value to those around us so they will keep us alive. Before we have the language to encapsulate our memories, and therefore subject them to reason, we learn to manifest certain strict behaviors that mark us as members of the group into which we were born. Primal conditioning.
However, our species is not just a few tribes in a small geographic area. There are billions of us, all over the planet. We have a vast variety of primal tribes, each with its own strict behaviors and belief systems. Yet, to each of us, encoded with our primal conditioning, only those behaviors/beliefs that belong to our tribe are vital to survival. Yet, here you are, from another tribe, with other behaviors and beliefs. This is very, very scary. You have no right to exist with such anti-survival ways. You may be a demon, or a test that I might fail.
I was dancing to Steely Dan’s “Katie Lied,” which brings me close to tears as I sing along because of its tale of love and betrayal. I’ve been reading Liz Greene and Howard Sasportas’ “Luminaries” about the Sun and Moon in the horoscope, including mostly stories about family constellations and curses. Thus, I have been traveling through early lessons, about …………………………….
love and betrayal.
Life lessons say trust no one. Anyone I love, anyone who professes to love me, will betray me. So, perhaps I need only learn to forgive human frailty. Perhaps my true love belongs to the gods. Yet, they as well betray me. So, perhaps the lesson is not to love. To be only for myself.
Yet, there is this need for/to love, to connect and share and be more than myself. I also want to feel real communication, that the world is more than me and what I see and feel. Like having a hand to shake the kaleidoscope and find more possibilities in the patterns.
Perhaps the lesson then, is not to have expectations of trust, of permanence, of relationship beyond the here and now. Perhaps love must be free of temporality, ephemeral, rare and precious and of the fleeting moment, exquisite beauty without further responsibility.
Yet again, “be here now” ever changing landscape; ever changing dance of me to you.
I am leaning into the whole illusion theory. Too many coincidences/synchronicities, object lessons, deja vus. There’s too much that makes too much sense in a totally fantastic way. I feel like I’m slipping down the rabbit hole, through the mirror, into the Twilight Zone.
I feel like stuff keeps coming to the surface so I can embrace it, build up my resources of inner allies. It’s moving suddenly, quickly, like there’s not much time left before I need to be secure and strong and ready for the onslaught. “Claiming my life as my own, I turn my demons into stone” I wrote that a year ago. I have greater glimpses, here and there, of quite sensible cosmic truths. My revelations are about magick and those moments, those inebriated feelings of pure will to being that are all that life need or indeed need aspire to be. I feel like I am slowly mutating, part worm/part moth. Sometimes people, just people as they pass before my eyes, seem like some kind of mechanistic cyborgs, biological, but barely. Like beings of flesh emerging from some factory vat. I feel a chronically acute ache within my inner eye. From some chronically fatigued neural net images flash in and out, sometimes clear enough to form impressions.
I feel humble; I feel weak; I feel times are turning, I know not where.
People’s lives can be so sad and frustrating. It’s like we move around with cumbersome weights that just get in our way, sometimes tragically so. I find that so many incredibly wonderful bright shining stars just can’t see their own beauty and crumble into hideous holes trying to hide nonexistent ugliness. And that bipolar thing, it’s like a hungry beast in wait to devour any lucent progress. Very exhausting. But they say some of the greatest have had to work their way through that weight; like wearing weights to increase strength, if they don’t overwhelm you first. Perhaps compassion is more effective when it is dispassionate: chop wood, carry water, dress wounds, listen lovingly to the screaming, understand it as ritual music, keep to the grace and balance of the dance. Yes, we are survivors when we survive. Sad survivors, perhaps wondering what we must do to deserve such fortune. But, yes, crisis shows us our true strength, compromised as it may have become by that very crisis.
So, maybe that is what suffering is about — that we intimately understand the fellow suffering of our kind, that we may ultimately learn to transform the pain into creative healing. I don’t know, but it is a lovely story.
Do you know about Chiron, the wounded Centaur? But he was wounded, accidentally, by a friend. He bore his wound, and made his way becoming a beloved teacher and healer. Eventually he became a hero, giving his life to end another’s pain.
I look for lessons in the myths, archetypes, fairy tales. I don’t know if what I find bears truth, but they can be lovely stories. They can lead me into deep, complicated emotions, into dancing and poetry, into a need to share. Perhaps I am consecrated to beauty, in all it’s terrible majesty. The pain of exquisite beauty is everywhere to be discovered, held closely, and set free. I am dancing closer to the fire. Giant shadows dance with me.
Curiouser and curiouser. Alone on the precipice, while the winds blow, hot, cold, eerily.
I used to feel ancient, slogging through with barely any lifeforce. Lifeforce is still flickering, but the core seems to be warmer, maybe getting ready to ignite.
I got all in a tizzy about trying to make some metaphoric hay, shoot out arrows into opportune targets, or otherwise take advantage to advance. Same old hang-up — don’t know where I’m headed, so advance to where? So then I thot, maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s all about really learning to open up and let the road unroll itself. Maybe if I let go of all the trying and frustration, the space will expand through me in feelings and thots and unbound possibilities. Let go and let Gaia? Then there’s that whole trust thing, or lack thereof. And the whole what does it really matter …
Let the games continue; let it be
Wind Song Myths 