What is the Adventure?

 

A lot of my inspiration comes from dreams, many of which appear archetypical. It often seems the dream world presents a scenario that could have come to anyone, at any time.

And maybe that's so. Maybe other people have had my same dream, or its essential content, though in some other form. Maybe the collective unconscious is constantly burbling up into distinct, specific impressions through whoever is open to it.

It is not hard to imagine the unconscious as an infinite soup of psychic content - a cosmic stew of all possibilities floating around, yet under pressure to rise up into awareness and become embodied in the light of human experience.

So when a simple, symbolic dream is presented, I sense that the message is universal and that it will speak to others as well as me. 

I see a woman working, attending to the duties life has presented. She is endeavoring to do what needs to be done without creating or having any more problems.  She had experienced a lot of crisis and calamity in the past and is now careful and cautious as a result.  Her overriding desire is simply to carry on, to make it through the day and the rest of her earthly cycle while avoiding suffering as much as possible.  Her future seems rather bleak and uninviting.

At the same time this woman is also blessed to have a remarkable daughter, a wise medicine child. The daughter is always available to help not only with the woman's outer, physical work but also with her inner spiritual work - of which most children would be completely unaware. 

When the woman struggles with fear and doubt, the daughter calms her spirits and enables her to cope.  When circumstances are unsettling the woman turns to her daughter for guidance and thus regains her own emotional strength and mental clarity..

The compassionate daughter understands her mother's wounds and limitations, but also comprehends the wonder and fulness of what her mother could become. She sees a bigger picture of freedom that is possible through letting go of fear and doubt.

So she cheerfully asks, "Mom, what is the adventure? What is the adventure we are looking for?"


Hmm . . . somehow that seems like the archetypal question of these times . . . 

What is the adventure we are looking for?

Fire and Water

 

Life can be the experience of existing in both fire and water.

An image presents of human incense, slow flames smoldering while fragrant smoke rises to He who is the bestower of that everlasting flame. It is not a comfortable sensation, but it is at least comforting.

It seems a person must become - to some degree, at least - like Jesus in order to believe in Jesus. Belief in what one cannot really comprehend or relate to must be superstition.

Only the heart knows how to believe in God, how to worship God. Only the heart understands humility, as something felt rather than conceptualized. Humility is the heart's natural state, through which it recognizes the presence and grandeur of the divine and surrenders to God in love.

My personal view is that a flowing heart with Christ at its center is the goal or fulfillment of human existence, and that a person in whom this state becomes operative and functional is no longer living for himself. In that case he or she would become a vehicle or portal through which Christ comes into the world again . . . or more fully.

God brought forth His begotten, Jesus Christ, to enfold mankind in salvation, to wrap all in the robe of forgiveness and absolution, to abide with and within us. This transformation into new creatures, this rising from the dead, would leave behind in the grave the abandoned husk of "individuality" with its fallacious mystique of separateness and wrongdoing.

The living waters flowing from the wells of the heart nourish famished souls far beyond the temple boundaries.

"He that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water" (John 7:38).

Still Coming Down the Road

 I wasn't sure I'd be coming back to this blog. After all, it was all about preparing for 2012, and then 2012 started to happen and I didn't know what was really happening. I didn't know what was going on in the world or in me, except that all of it was swirling rapidly and debris was flying off in every direction.

 I also felt I knew nothing and therefore had nothing to say. I was speechless and in shock and suffering from feelings that arose like ghosts from the woodwork of my constructed story with its manifold cracks and crevices in which the forsaken spirits of my seemingly regrettable past and fearful future hid.

What made any of that change enough that I could return now and offer a few hesitant words? 

An urgency arose to strive harder to step beyond my boundaries and to dig further into the little acre of psychic space that is mine to work with and play in, and offer what comes up to speculative consideration once more.

We'll see what becomes of the effort . . .