Friday, June 25, 2010

Numinous



“The main interest of my work is not concerned with the treatment of neuroses but rather with the approach to the numinous. But the fact that the approach to the numinous is the real therapy, and inasmuch as you attain to the numinous experience you are released from the curse of pathology. Even the very disease takes on a numinous character.” C. G. Jung

Thursday, June 24, 2010

God and Me




A wondrous poem from the writings of the German mystic Angelis Silesius (1624-77).



I know that without me God can no moment live;
Were I to die, then He no longer could survive.

God cannot without me a single worm create;
Did I not share with Him, destruction were its fate.

I am as great as God, and He is small like me;
He cannot be above, nor I below Him be.

In me is God a fire and I in Him its glow;
In common is our life, apart we cannot grow.

God loves me more than Self, my love doth give His weight,
Whate'er He gives to me I must reciprocate.

He's God and man to me, to Him I'm both indeed;
His thirst I satisfy, he helps me in my need.

This God, who feels for us, is to us what we will;
And woe to us, if we our part do not fulfill.

God is whate'er He is, I am what I must be;
If you know one, in sooth, you know both him and me.

I am not outside God, nor leave I Him afar;
I am His grace and light, and He my guiding star.

I am the vine which He doth plant and cherish most;
The fruit which grows from me is God, the Holy Ghost.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Nirdvandra



Presence is all-powerful.

This was the message.

Presence is where we meet God.

The point of integration between conscious and unconscious,
The perfect blending of polarities,
The balancing of opposites.

Nirdvandra

Friday, June 18, 2010

Aliens Among Us



I attended the June Evolver Spore of Reality Sandwich, with the subject “Aliens Among Us.” The discussion was lively and spirited, as nearly everyone has strong feelings about this subject.

Close encounters of the First Kind (CE1K) were defined as sightings of a UFO. CE2K constitute physical evidence, and CE3K result in actual contact with extra-terrestrials.

The Evolver Spore moderator posed the interesting question: How should we react if a CE3K indisputably occurs on a global level? One opinion was that such a development would be frightening. This fear point is based on the assumption that any alien contact would be motivated by the intent of subjugating humanity.

H. G. Wells set the tone for such a pessimistic view with his “War of the Worlds.” The planetary battle theme has been repeated in countless science fiction books and films, including the recent blockbuster, “Independence Day.”

We who live on earth identify ourselves as “earthlings.” Originating from earth also necessitates originating from this particular solar system (which, inconveniently, has no name). It is a reasonable assumption that any extra-terrestrials who introduce themselves will NOT be from our own solar system.

Humans experience in their personal lives the planetary conditioning of the solar system. This is an essential principle of astrology, in which the placement of the planets at birth (and thereafter) synchronistically reflects the energetic influences which are also manifesting in the material realm.

According to this perspective, the “inner,” close planets have the most pronounced and immediate effects upon human behavior. One of the most dramatic of those inner planets is Mars, associated with the “god of war,” whose characteristics are violence, passion, aggression and hostility.

Battle and conflict are thus ingrained features of the human psyche because of Mars in this solar system. Yet, such an aggressive and warlike stance is not necessarily consistent with any alien intelligence that may contact us, which would NOT have been subjected to a Martian influence.


In fact, this assumption is a projection of our own violent dispositions. We are a species with a long history of exterminating its own kind for completely selfish and self-righteous reasons. The image of a technically and militarily stronger (though spiritually impoverished) civilization conquering supposedly inferior ones is a pattern that has resulted in the decimation of many indigenous cultures throughout the world.


This archetypal horror and its resulting guilt rankles the conscience of those who have had nothing personally to do with such atrocities, but are nevertheless the descendents of those who did. From this point of view we are the children of monsters, devils incarnate who have devastated the earth for gain and glory, who have destroyed knowledge and wisdom for the sake of perpetuating their ignorance and prejudice.

We assume - perhaps unconsciously, probably inaccurately - that any other civilization must be as inherently cruel and despicable as us.

Hopefully this is not so. But if it were to be, any resulting conquest by aliens would perhaps be

. . . well deserved.

Reference Reality Sandwich Evolver Spores: http://www.realitysandwich.com/

Monday, June 14, 2010

Dionysus



Fredrick Nietzsche was acutely aware of the existential problem of man – that he is "Apollonian," an egotistical entity divorced from his feeling nature, capable of inflicting death upon his world because he cannot find real life in himself.

Nietzsche’s answer to this was to invoke Dionysus, the ancient god of drunkenness and debauch. He felt society should abandon itself to primitive, instinctual urges in order to regain that lost sense of vitality.

Nietzsche’s reference to Apollo and Dionysus may seem quaint and irrelevant to a modern mentality that dismisses "gods." But C. G. Jung elucidates these same concepts using the terms consciousness and the unconscious.

Contemporary consciousness has been dominated by a sterile, self-serving rationality producing war, disease and all social and personal ills. The antidote, according to many, is wholehearted obedience to whatever makes them feel most alive - no matter how such behaviors may seem to conflict with existing moral or societal strictures.

The unconscious offers an endless variety of insights and impressions, but these are like clouds that materialize in the morning and quickly fade away. A person perceiving them feels wise, but such wisdom is ephemeral and transient unless integrated with conscious awareness.

"Dionysus," is (so to speak) lord the unconscious, though he doesn't require declarations of faith from his subjects. Loyalty and allegiance are permutations of consciousness, whereas the followers of Dionysus are not even aware of being possessed by him. They live "high" without knowing what is truly happening, or of comprehending that their experience - which seems so full - is only partial.

This is unavoidable since the unconscious does not represent the totality of existence. Dionysians seek ultimate fulfillment, yet lose their energies in an exhaustive attempt to find satiety. They are frustrated because it is impossible to debauch to complete satisfaction. However immense the orgasm, whether sexual, political, relational or otherwise, it has one fatal flaw: it ends!

The pleasure of surrender to sensation, though intense, is fleeting. Such experiences are NOT heaven on earth – in fact they might be construed as a definition of hell: Wonderful feelings that don’t last.

Dionysus knows no law, and exerts no limits upon his followers. The native unconscious is immensely powerful in both creativity and destructiveness, but cannot tell the difference between them. Bestiality is the inevitable result, thus Dionysus transforms into a bull at the height of his powers.

It is only the consciousness that can distinguish between health and disease, and determine how the energy of the unconscious can best be utilized. Only consciousness can apply morality, law, and judgment to the questions of life, and discern between right and wrong.

Yet the conscious without the unconscious is, as Nietzsche observed, prone to its own extremes of behavior, to inhumane acts of self interest at the expense of others.

The ultimate solution is for neither the conscious or the unconscious to dominate, but for both to come into balance. Wholeness is only possible when these blend and merge equally, and become in unison what neither could ever be apart and alone.

This is no mere logical or mechanical conjunction, but represents the emergence of a new state of being.  

Beyond the capability or even the knowledge of the Apollonian and Dionysian realms of which it is composed lies a further frontier . . .

Friday, June 4, 2010

Teepee Mandala



I was in a large marble-clad room with a vaulted ceiling. The shape seemed circular. In any case there was a circle of people sitting in it. These were the members of my “dream” group – we had gathered to share with one another the process of our waking dream together.

So I began to tell them a vision I had seen. It was of a large circular mandela viewed not from directly above but rather from the edge, and thus appearing oval. Along the circle’s periphery were twelve stations that were highly energized and in states of transformation.

These stations I understood to represent the various elemental aspects of an individual’s life, which needed to be tuned and set to an optimum state. That optimum state was called the Radix Integra, and depicted by √1, the square root of one.

At the center of this mandala was an Indian teepee. Inside sat a dark-haired young woman holding a child. Both were dressed in buckskin. Outside the teepee a cross-legged Indian warrior was on guard.

Somewhere in the middle of relating this vision, it occurred to me that the dream group itself could be considered such a mandala, and that each person in it compared to those peripheral stations needing to be tuned to harmonize the whole.  Even in realizing this dynamic it began to be illustrated.

Suddenly a rock wall arose between me and the others, and words no longer flowed between us. A state of isolation had been imposed on my station, or someone suggested, cauldron.

My spot in the large room became a separated alcove and I found myself sitting on a bench. Next to me was a young woman (the anima), who accused me of falling asleep while she was speaking to me.

I protested that I would not have done such a thing, but she insisted it was so. In fact, I knew nothing of what she might have said and therefore had to wonder if she was right and I had truly been as rude and insensitive as she was claiming.

Suddenly another woman also appeared, younger than the first (the anima often appears in multiples). This person said nothing to me, but spoke directly to Annie with speech that seemed garbled and unintelligible. Annie responded to her, also in words I couldn’t follow. Yet it was obvious that the two of them were conveying important information to one another.

In spite of my fervent attempt to understand, the conversation was completely beyond me. I heard the words but could not grasp their meaning. I even asked Annie to repeat what she had said, but to no avail.

When they had finished their perplexing dialogue Annie smiled at me and said, “This is the new way.”

What did that mean?

I felt these women, representing the human soul, were creating something extraordinay, perhaps a life experience yet to manifest outwardly. I ought to have been aware of it, and was invited to be, but was unfortunately incapable of such subtle perceptions.  The rational awareness was too dense, too “conscious” in the worst sense of the word, to hear their language and thus be optimally “tuned” by that fore-knowledge to live more truly.

Yet Annie's "new way" suggests that such intimate communications with the psyche are what the future holds for people dedicated to wholeness.  And the collaborative effort by which healing process are accentuated is clearly indicated as effective, while the message of hope is unmistakable.

I believe the teepee at the center containing the Indian mother and child signifies the Self, which is both the initial impetus and ultimate destination of all transformative movement. The guarding warrior could be likened to that shadow dragon common to oriental traditions, the fearsome creature that must be overcome to enter the presence of the Divine. In our American milieu, such an indigenous representation is fitting.

For those who believe themselves to be mentally compentent, it is daunting to realize how small our self-created world of rational intelligence is.  Yet the wisdom we wish would guide us is near, even within.

We must learn to listen. 

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Radix Integra



The painting was intended to reflect my own psychic state, the intense desire to find spiritual balance and wholeness.

It named itself. One morning while I was brushing my teeth the words "Radix Integra" came to mind.

Having no idea what this meant, I searched on the Internet. Google returned five entries, only one of which was in English.

This term was from a mansuscript on Hindu-Arab mathematics dating from ca 835 by al-khwarizmi, and means "the perfect square root of a number." 

There is only one number whose perfect square root equals the original number, and that is one.

Then I looked up the individual words. Radix is from Latin and means root or source. It is linked to life-force, Chi and Prana.

Integra is from Greek and means whole or undivided.

Radix Integra, the whole and undivided source of life