Self is a Circle of Friends
Part One
Unlearning the archetypes is prerequisite to uniting with Self - which is prerequisite to manifesting Everlasting Life bodily.
Ironically, archetypes are not learned. They are inborn tendencies to experience the world in a certain way. Many socio-cultural types, for example, the head-banger, are really expressions of an archetype. In this case, the head-banger is an expression of the angry man, which is rooted in an archetype I call the “existential Satanist,” or ES.
An ES bears others’ shadows, but instead of practicing Buddhist detachment and releasing them, the ES uses them as fuel for power. But they are not pure power. Instead, they are animated with the force of imbalance – imbalance that may be social, chemical, psychic, et al.
ES is often brazen; most so with actual practicing Satanists. It is also for Goth teens, who can exhibit an unmistakably satanic bent. Finding themselves teetering between the adult world and the eternity of childhood, Goths become fixated on the raw sensuality and passion absent from their environment. Since the sensuality and passion they crave is shadowed by society and family inertia, it readily becomes associated with darkness.
ES need not be seen as “bad” or “evil.” It is merely a means of compensating for imbalance created by repression. Comedy, especially that which relies on shock, is a tool of ES. Culture-bound, Christian religious groups never fail to stoke the fire of ES, ironically unaware of their own diabolic nature.
~~~
Archetypes obscure the Self, which is also an archetype, but one that can neutralize all the rest. It does through individuation and at death.
The Self is the same for all living people. It is comprised of the mind, the body, the heart, wisdom, the masculine and the feminine. The Wizard of Oz is an eloquent expression of this template. The Scarecrow is the mind, the Cowardly Lion the body, and the Tin Man the heart. Since Dorothy lacks wisdom, she relies on intuition through Toto. Dorothy, of course, is the feminine, and the Wizard is the masculine. Through the modern myth of Oz, Self is glimpsed as if in a dream. The purpose of this century’s story is to completely manifest Self in waking-life; to unite Oz and Kansas.
To do this - to fully actualize the Self - the other archetypes must be unlearned. An intensive unlearning of the archetypes is dramatized in the below dream, which I had in 1998. The relation of aliens (God/the Self) to archetypes informs the drama of the dream:
The archetypes are in charge of guarding a circular door day and night. The door leads to another door behind which the aliens live. A guy's job is to guard the circular door while he sleeps all night, but in his sleep, or in a state between sleep and waking, he opens it. Opening it is a very complex procedure of turning and undoing parts of the outer door, removing it, and then doing the same with the inner door. There are lots of circles and crosses on each door.
The inner-door is ajar only for a moment, but this is just enough. It gives yellow light from the dimension behind the door just enough space and time to be admitted into the world. The dimension behind the door is a realm made entirely of the yellow light. The light has a greenish hue, reminding me of the green-gold Jung mentions in his alchemy studies.
The alien comes into the world through the yellow-green light. There's something terrifying about the admittance of the alien, a sense that it could annihilate everything in an instant if it chose. In a cloud of yellow-green light the alien travels around the area around the door where the archetypes live, and which they care for. To speak to people the alien becomes God, personifying itself as a friendly looking cartoon man, which is not frightening at all. Its countenance is so crudely imitative that it has a kind of falseness to it, which is a reflection of our need to contain and oversimplify it.
Much of the dream is self-interpreting. Its circular doors symbolize the Self. Self is shown as a final barrier between the world and God. Sleep neutralizes the archetypes, which allows access to Self, which in turn gives God access to the world.
The night I had the dream, I had been on a spiritual quest for six weeks. In waking-life as in the dream, God was opening through me, into the world. I did not intend this. I was following the guidance of my dreams. God did the rest. I was like a hand puppet and God the hand. God began pulling out of me once I reached the pinnacle of the quest, ten weeks into it. Since then I have learned that the practical way to neutralize the archetypes - thereby gaining access to the Self - is via self-knowledge.
I had a dream where the phrase INDIVIDUATION IS KNOWLEDGE was etched into the wall of a church. Here, individuation’s inclusion of all knowledge implies that everything one knows is oneself.
Self-knowledge, in contrast to knowledge, is not edified by what one knows so much as what one knows of what one is not. When one knows what one is not, what one is may come clear, leading to self-knowledge. Complete self-knowledge is Self. Self is not an endpoint for individuation, but rather its center.
I dreamed “Self is simple. I is complex.” Indeed, as mentioned above, Self is the same for everyone. It is a template formed by the mind, body, heart, wisdom, masculine and feminine.
I dreamed “Self is a circle of friends.” In the dream each member of the circle of friends - the mind, the body, the heart, wisdom, the masculine and the feminine - possesses a seamless symbiosis with the whole. From one life to the next, the development of this self-symbiosis, though fluctuating, is perpetual and evolutionary. It is an evolution constituted by accumulated experience.
It is usual to pass life not as a circle of friends, but as a jumble of discordant complexes with some weighted by ignorance, and others lightened by wisdom. A lot of the time, the personality-jumble maintains enough continuity to enable a person to function under a perceived sense of unity. The perceived sense of unity is denoted by the name the person goes by, for example “Bill” or “Jennifer,” or what have you.
In 2000 I lost my name, which had been “George.” I reached this point through two years of solitary self-observation and attendance to dreams. In seclusion, I unlearned the archetypes which puppeteered my identity, which led to psychosis. One day, three months into the psychosis, in the words of my memoirs: My ego was fighting the pull, trying to stay in the present. I felt as if I was disappearing and reappearing from one moment to the next. Identity became so muted that I couldn’t recall my name. This didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. It was all spirit. I don’t know how long I was in that state.
As I bobbed up toward consciousness from oblivion, I became a group of selves (i.e., a circle of friends/the Self). We instinctively dialogued to put me back together. After two weeks of dialoguing we were stable enough to design a page in our journal that introduced us. The heading of the page read, “POST-APOCALYPTIC RECONSTRUCTION.” Under that we wrote these self-introductions:
The Mind: I was tired and hoped that Wisdom would cleanse me so that I could merge with it and disappear. I hated thinking.
Wisdom: I am a flower with five petals: observation, thought, reason, logic, knowledge.
The Heart: Too much importance was given to me to compensate for how neglected I felt. I confuse myself with the Mind or vice versa, i.e., the Mind and I sometimes say we don’t know how we feel.
The Body: I am innately humble. I was the last part of the group to have a voice. I found my voice during group therapy, with the Therapist [a temporary self in my circle of friends]. Suddenly, I went, “WHOO!” This made me happy.
The Therapist: All the parts of this self would run to me for safety. This gave me a role I came to feel very attached to.
This child endured primal terrors that were beyond my ability to manage. My response to this was extreme moral indignation. I think of myself as beyond danger, but I am not.
The Sesame Street Buddha: When I am not in harmony with myself I am a ten-year-old Brother and Sister with emotional problems and Mind/Body disconnection. When Brother and Sister are in union, I am wild; a joyous rampager, an uncontrollable force. I am water oblivious to the dam. I am whole and intact.
Within me, male and female are in perfect balance, but I am a girl. There is nothing boyish about me, except that I am more physically powerful and coordinated than any boy or man.
The Scientist: I was often overlooked in the process of unifying these parts, but I was the one who was unifying them.
I am a scientist of the soul; a real psychologist. I was my greatest asset; the observing ego. My knowledge of perspective, context, meaning and relation allowed the process of my self-reconstruction. I am knowledge personified; the beauty of intelligence.
Amy from-three-years-in-the-future: I can speak through this body at will if it lets me, and I just want to say that this has been the most horrific experience anyone could ever possibly imagine. I am really sorry it had to be me to go through it, but the thing is, it had to happen because we had to find out what we are, and now we do, Please don’t think I am any different from you. LET’S GO.
Amy from-three-years-in-the-future was a failsafe self. Her existence proved to the Scientist/ego that it would survive the ongoing deconstruction/reconstruction. Amy from-three-years-in-the-future faded away in a few weeks after she had served the purpose of grounding me in existence, of helping me cope with the psychotic process.
Although I don’t refer to myself as “We” anymore (I did for a year and half), I am still this group, this circle of friends. We continue evolving and live as though we will indefinitely, without the interruption of death. Sometimes our attitudes and behaviors are still colored by archetypes, roles and ignorance, but we know this is natural to the individuating process we participate in and dance with.
Of Amy as woman and child during the psychotic process, by Amy George, August, 2000
Part Two
Part Two of “Self Is a Circle of Friends” exemplifies my experience with psychodrama during the psychotic process. During the first months of psychodrama the circle of friends discussed in Part One (Mind, Body, Heart, Wisdom, Brother, Sister, et al) were still latent. Instead, the process centered on Little Rose Mary and Georgie, my female and male child-selves, who are the foci of Part Two.
(At the time, my adult female self was called “Rose Mary Pillowwater” - a name that had come from a dream ten years before, foreshadowing the dissolution of my male identity. My present name, “Amy George,” was not conceived till after consciously living my first year as “Rose Mary.”)
Sometimes I dialogued with Georgie and Little Rose Mary through my hands. Georgie was my left-hand and Little Rose Mary the right. (I am left-handed.) One day the fingers of Georgie-left-hand walked up the wall again and again and again. I couldn’t figure out why. Georgie was sad and frustrated that I didn’t understand. Finally, after turning the walking-up-the-wall gesture over and over, looking at it metaphorically, I realized Georgie was telling me that being inside, in my room, was driving him up the wall.
“Yes!” he gestured and his fingers walked to my Hungary guide, which was full of places we might go. He wanted to go away badly. I had been cooped up in that room for a long time, leaving it only to run or go the shop. Georgie needed to get out into the world. I would have gone immediately if some editing work hadn’t been hanging over my head. Georgie continued walking up the wall. Being stuck in the room had become an ongoing undercurrent of frustration and sadness.
Then Little Rose Mary right-hand shyly, apprehensively fingered steps up the wall. It was the first time Little Rose Mary had ever expressed a desire to do anything. It was painfully sweet.
“Oh, Baby, Honey,” I said to her, “I didn’t know.”
I relaxed my chest and she spoke through me in a girl’s voice: “I want to go.”
I could feel Georgie looking at her, seeing his companion, knowing her intimately. I didn’t know Little Rose Mary at all. I asked her, “What are you like? What do you like to do?”
She paused for a long time trying to find the words for an answer. Finally she said, “I don’t know.”
She was quiet and watchful.
I began to feel her inside my head and neck. If I relaxed as I went down the street, I could let her see out and look around. My head would float easily left and right, Little Rose Mary peering out through me, seeing the world, not stopping to analyze or understand, just looking.
At the time, I was living in Budapest, Hungary. One morning, I went to the airport and got on a plane to New York City to become a dancer. I was writing in a journal mid-flight over the Atlantic. I put down my pencil and looked out the window. Little Rose Mary woke up inside of me. Looking through my eyes out the window, she cowered and peeped, “Yikes! What’s that?”
“You don’t know?”
“No,” she said matter-of-factly. She was a very matter-of-fact girl.
“We’re in an airplane, Honey.”
“Really?”
“Do you know what an airplane is?”
“Well, yeah.”
“It’s safe. Don’t worry. You can look. Remember: the bad things: they’re not real. Just look.”
Little Rose Mary had gone into deep-sleep when Georgie changed to “George” at six years old, when he was first trying to be male by degrading the feminine, as boys did it those days. At six, George thought girls were disgusting and the idea of being one was humiliating. Little Rose Mary’s metaphorical experience of George’s so-called masculinization was of being gang-raped, and covered in mud and bugs. Afterward, every time she tried to look at the world, the images wouldn’t stay still, so she stopped seeing and went inside herself to dwell in non-existence. After that, every time she had peaked at the world it had frightened her back into her dark, safe place. Finally, at age 32, George had made it safe for her to come out.
After some encouragement, Little Rose Mary looked out the cabin window and said, “Ooooooh, oooooh, it’s so beautiful.”
George let her look for a long time. It wasn’t anything fantastic - just blue atmosphere and a flat white sheet of cloud below. Eventually he said, “Let’s look later. This is boring.”
“Really?”
“In a few minutes it could be a lot more interesting.”
“What do you mean, George?”
“Uh, do you know where we are?”
“Not really.”
“We are flying high above the world really really fast.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Where are we going?”
In his journal, George drew the world with oceans and land. “This is the world. We started in this green place and now we are in the air over the blue place and we are going to the green on the other side of the blue. The green is where people can walk, but the blue is water. Honey, most of the world is water.”
“Really? That’s so neat.”
“Yeah. So you see how the world is round,” George said pointing to the world with his pencil.
“Round?”
George traced the perimeter of the world and said, “Round.”
“Round,” she repeated.
“Rose Mary, look out the window and see where the blue and white meet. Can you see how there it’s round a little bit, a teeny-tiny bit?”
“Not really.”
“Well, it is, just a little. So, how can I explain this? Honey, the world is so big you can’t even imagine how big it is. That little round thing I drew is so big that here we are up in the air, above the clouds, and you still can’t see the world is round. Honey, the world is so big.”
George was crying a little.
“What’s ‘clouds.’”
“That is the white,” George said, pointing out the window, “Clouds are made of water. Water becomes really light and goes way up to the sky and makes the clouds. When the clouds become dark they turn into water and the water falls down to the land and we call that ‘rain.’”
“Wow,” she said, “Rain.”
“The rain makes everything wet. Remember when we were walking the other day and saw all those houses.”
“Yeah.”
“People live in those houses.”
“I know,” she said and went “pf” as if George was acting like she didn’t know anything at all.
“Sorry, I don’t what you know.”
“Just tell me.”
“Okay. Do you know how many people live down there under the clouds on the land?”
“No.”
“Six billion.”
Little Rose Mary was silent with wonder. She and George were quiet for a minute.
He suddenly had a sexual feeling for her and a vision of her rape and of the bugs. He felt weird and guilty. “George, come on,” she said, “I know you’re good.”
George let it go. Little Rose Mary looked back outside. She could because George let her. George let her see out through him by letting his eye sockets go slack. His eyes would roll around a little as Little Rose Mary took control of them. But when George concentrated on something, like making the drawing of the world, Little Rose Mary was temporarily shut out.
The clouds had shifted some, but were still boring to George. Little Rose Mary thought the scene was more beautiful. “Rose Mary, this is nothing,” he said, “The clouds turn different colors when the sun rises and sets.”
“The sun?”
George supposed she had known “house” because she had lived in one. She was a very internal girl. She knew nothing about the world.
“Okay, so, uh, this,” George said covering their eyes, “is dark. And this,” he said uncovering them, “is light.”
“I think I understand,” Little Rose Mary said.
George started drawing another diagram for explaining the sun to Little Rose Mary. A stewardess came by offering hot towels. Accepting one, George said thank you in Hungarian. “George, what did you just say?” Little Rose Mary asked, perplexed and a little suspicious.
“Nevermind. I’ll tell you later.”
George washed his face and put the towel down. After he returned to drawing, another stewardess picked the towel up and George thanked her, too, again in Hungarian. “George, what did you tell that woman?”
“Do you know about languages?”
“Yeah,” Little Rose Mary said.
“How people speak different languages?”
“Yeah.”
“I know a language called ‘Hungarian.’”
“Where did you learn it?”
“Well, we lived in a country called ‘Hungary’ for seven years and that’s where.”
“Hm,” Little Rose Mary said thoughtfully. She had lots of questions. George didn’t really want to start talking about Hungary. He asked, “Did you ever go to school?”
“I think so,” Little Rose Mary said, “a long time ago.”
“Did you learn how to write?”
“Write?”
“Yeah, people communicate with each other by using a special language that goes on paper. Wait a second,” George said, and wrote, “I am teaching Rose Mary.” George let her see the letters and pointed to each as he sounded it out. Then he sounded out her name a few times as he traced underneath it with the pencil.
“Wow,” she said, a little mystified.
George got back to the sun and explained how it gives light to the world and that’s why we can see anything. George wanted to show Little Rose Mary all the beautiful things she had never seen. Each new thing made her gaze with wonder.
George was thinking of how Little Rose Mary’s hand had climbed up the wall that day like Georgie’s had all the time, but she went about it so slowly and shyly - and sadly. High above the ocean, George said, “I love you, Rose Mary.”
George wanted to show her night for the sake of teaching her about the colored clouds at sunrise and sunset, but first he wanted to teach her about the moon because he didn’t want her to be afraid for a moment that her darkness would return to the world.
Teaching the moon was hard. George tried to do it by showing rotations and orbits, which required teaching “ball.” He looked all around for an object shaped like a ball and there weren’t any. George had to draw one, making a ball by shading properly. He made a couple that had no three dimensional feeling at all.
George realized that he would have to teach Rose Mary about everything in the universe and that he would do it by drawing. It would be a book called “Teaching Rose Mary,” and it would be about everything in the world. George was telling Little Rose Mary all this as it came to him. George said, “And the best part will be the insects. You’ll learn to draw the most beautiful bugs because you were so frightened of them.”
“Yeah,” she said. She understood why George would think this way. The principle of exploring my deepest fears to find my deepest beauty was ingrained into me through and through.
George kept trying to draw the ball, but he couldn’t.
A meal came. George let Little Rose Mary examine all the food before he ate it, holding it up close to his face so she could study the form. Little Rose Mary gradually began to notice that George was putting the food somewhere into a place below their eyes. “George,” she demanded, “what did you just do?”
“I’m eating.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, this is a sandwich.”
“Sandwich,” she repeated.
“Remember what it looks like.”
“Okay.”
George chomped off a sandwich corner and quickly put the sandwich back in front of Little Rose Mary’s eyes. “Do you see how it changed?” George asked.
“Changed?”
“Do you see how it’s different?”
“Not really.”
George tore off another corner of the sandwich with his hand and let Little Rose Mary see him put it back in place and take it away a few times. George explained he was “changing the sandwich,” which meant that he was “making it different.”
“Uh-huh,” Little Rose Mary said, “changing.”
“Honey, this sandwich and all the food is going into my body through my mouth. This stuff keeps me alive. See look.” George opened his shirt and looked down at his stomach.”
“Oh, my gosh,” Little Rose Mary said and wanted to get back to eating. She was beginning to remember the mouth and George let her chew and taste. She would squinch up her eyes and chew really fast with her mouth pulled close around the food and then swish it all around.
They took a bite of a second, littler sandwich. Little Rose Mary didn’t like it and stopped chewing. She wanted to stop tasting it, but didn’t know how. George let it fall out onto to the tray and she examined the mauled piece of sandwich, but wasn’t able to sense how it had been the thing she had been chewing on.
They went on to the coffee, which Little Rose Mary didn’t like either. George told her it was bad coffee, and that they would have incredible coffee when they got home. George explained that bad coffee was always served on airplanes. “That’s weird. Why?” asked Little Rose Mary.
“It’s kind of hard to explain.”
George saw his reflection in the coffee when he lifted it for a sip. He let Little Rose Mary see it, but it wouldn’t hold still between the bumpiness of the plane ride and how relaxed he needed to be for her to see. George wanted Little Rose Mary to see him, but it wasn’t possible. Instead, he let her watch cream pour into the coffee. She loved that and watched it swirling. Even with cream she still thought the coffee was bad.
The dessert was a piece of chocolate. George explained the concept of dessert and let Little Rose Mary see the chocolate. It was sealed in a little clear plastic bag. It looked strange to her. The name of the Hungarian airline “Malév” was stamped on it. Little Rose Mary couldn’t read so the word didn’t mean anything to her, but in “mal” George saw the Latin prefix for “bad,” while “év” meant “year” in Hungarian. “Yeah, it’s been a bad year,” George told himself privately.
The chocolate overwhelmed Little Rose Mary’s tastebuds. “Mmm, mmm, mmm,” she kept going. She felt it course down into her stomach. She looked down again and felt deeper and located the penis. She looked up with her eyes wide, chocolate still in her mouth. She stopped chewing. “Yeah, you’re a boy,” George said.
“Whoa,” she said.
George felt embarrassed. “George,” she said, “Go ahead and touch it.”
He tentatively brought his hand between his legs. It seemed like to him like he was going to touch a little girl’s genitals and this frightened him. “Come on, George,” Little Rose Mary said.
George relaxed his hand and Little Rose Mary acted through it and shook George’s thing saying, “Penis, penis, penis.” Then she quickly spread through his whole body and was the adult Rose Mary.
Years later, Little Rose Mary still reemerges from time to time, but after our transatlantic flight she never needed to be shown anything more.
As my dream of “Rose Mary Pillowwater” came ten years before the dissolution of my male identity, perhaps the phrase “Changing the Sandwich,” conceived in 2000, awaited emergence through Reality Sandwich.
Changing-the-sandwich, to me, means changing reality at an individual level through mindful observation. When one is in a mindful, observing state, reality tears off a corner of the reality-sandwich and lets the beholder see it before putting it back in place. In observing change one is observing death.
Death will not stop till it has been duly observed, and then it will never return. The broken-off corner of the sandwich will return like the nipple to the infant’s mouth, and reality will be whole as it was in the beginning – but it will be different because it will be understood, at long, long last.
Image credit: "The Circle of Love" used under Creative Commons license.
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Headbangers?
Shellby
the Divine Virus
Thank you for your comments.
Shellby, yes, people do tend to identify with or unwittingly personify the devourer, whether it is God or Satan. The irony is that the ego/devourer believes it has a godlike perspective, which greater perspective inevitably devours. Or if the ego is willing to be devoured, seeing being devoured as a process, then God/Satan transforms instead of devours; and the individual is transformed.
Monkeyblood, being “snapped from a trance” reminds me of how Brian George describes the Archons: “the hypnotic powers of time and space.”
Perhaps mitigating global attention deficit disorder starts on the individual level, and the bounty of its mitigation may then spread like a contagion – perhaps what Aeolus Kephas calls “the Divine Virus,” spreading the perceived-sickness of health, individuation, wholeness, perfection, Self,
The Hypostasis of the Archons
Hi Amy and monkeyblood,
Putting aside all fear and judgment, perhaps we can say, about Earth’s rulers, that they do what they were made to do. The Archons are the Archetypes that hold the energy of the field in manifestation. That we not, too quickly, return into empty space.
It is clear that they do not love us. At each turn, they do harm instead of good.
In this, like tyrants everywhere, they are performing a kind of public service: by inciting the otherwise unconscious Body Politic to revolt.
Already, they are dead; they just don’t know it yet, nor do we. And the teacher, who again resembles us, almost, has removed the last of the bandages from the astronaut, lifting Him/Her from the fluids of the cybernetic tank.
If History were not a dream, then we would not have any symbols to interpret in the morning.
The Mornings of the World
Without the tyranny of the Archons and archetypes, the "tyranny" of the Self could never be realized.
The Archons are the Archetypes that hold the energy of the field in manifestation. That we not, too quickly, return into empty space.
Yes, the Archons/archetypes force time to slow down and expand the length of history so that it may be emerged from, in the morning – the morning of the World. Symbol and metaphor are in the currents that carry the ego past self-imposed limitation.
The root of “metaphor” literally means “carrying over.” Metaphor then is not the end-all be-all. It is the “Christian” Ship carrying the ego over the unoncscious.
The non-reality, or already-deadness, of the Archons was fuel for many episodes of psychotic processing in 2000. Time for me was sped up and condensed. The implications of cosmic and psychic truth then created dramas, like this one:
“[Because of verses in Revelations] I assumed 144,000 was the number of names written in the Book of Life. I also concluded that since the world had ended, 144,000 was the number of people still on Earth.
“I was a crucial link in the 144,000 because I was the only person in the world to have met them all. They were everyone I had ever had any kind of interaction with; all the kids in my elementary school classes, people who had blocked my way on the sidewalk, long forgotten neighbors from when I was little, the kid who mugged me when I was eleven, etc.
“To explain the problem of all the other people, the majority of the six billion, I deduced that they were without hearts, like robots or dummies. God made them as props for our movie, the movie the 144,000 were acting in. The nearly six billion never really existed. They were waking-life dream projections of our own fractured psyches. Over the last twenty-four hours these dummies had been running down like tired machines and, at the present moment, were slowly fading into oblivion, literally disappearing without feeling anything. They experienced no pain or panic.”
alpha omega sis boom bah
The conspiracy to give birth to something new
Hi Amy,
Thank you, for yet another beautifully crafted and explosive saga of exploration. You raise so many thought provoking points, that I could all too easily be overwhelmed; so let me pick a place at random to begin. (This last sentence will also be the subject of this post.)
You wrote, “Archetypes obscure the Self, which is an archetype, but one that can neutralize all the rest. It does through individuation and death.” And then a bit further on, “Self is not an endpoint for individuation, but rather its center…I dreamed ‘Self is simple. I is complex.’”
–Let me turn these insights over in my mind, and then attempt to relate them to central paradox that we face: if Self is “simple”, and as close to us as our breathing, which it is, and which I have experienced to be the case, then why is it the work of so many lifetimes to establish a direct connection to it? It is not as though either it or we had anywhere else to go, or as though the Ego had any method of escaping from the demands imposed upon it by the Self.
What you have said about the “unlearning of the archetype” is the key. Following in the wake of your idea, my own answer would be as follows:
Great energy is needed to gain access to the Self. In our normal state, we do not have nearly enough; so where is the rest of the energy supposed to come from? If we look at “E=Mc squared” as a metaphor, we could assume that it does not have to come from anywhere at all, since no energy can be either created or destroyed. The sum total remains constant. How then do we get from a contracted to an expanded state of energy?
In the physical world, we could free the energy that is trapped inside the atom, and, in the world of the collective psyche, we could free the energy that is encoded in each archetype. The price of freedom, in both of these cases, would be death. In the world of the psyche, however, death is only the first in a long series of ordeals. We die, and some form of trapped energy is released; what we want to do with it can take an Aeon to discover. Step by step, we approach the boundary of the time cycle, where its gears interlock with an even greater cycle. Without the Self, there would be no way through or out of the beyond.
As you have said, it is the archetype that puts an end to the power of all other archetypes. It is the point that creates a center for the circle. In this, it is like the Earth, or as the Earth was in the good old days, when we saw it as being at the center of an 8-tiered cosmic amphitheater, where the powers projected by the 12 signs of the Zodiac met and interacted.
Much better informed now, we realize that we are only here by chance, and that the Milky Way has not, in this last installment of 4,320,000 years, conspired to give birth to something new.
The Autogenetic Clock
Hey Brian,
if Self is “simple”, and as close to us as our breathing, which it is, and which I have experienced to be the case, then why is it the work of so many lifetimes to establish a direct connection to it?
Though the question is rhetorical, I would like to offer responses: Dharma and cosmic clockworks, that are greater than our present selves can now perceive, govern direct connection between ego & Self. Individual illumination is more accessible today than ever because global awareness is more possible; given the computer, and advances in scientific, technological and spiritual understanding. And a lifetime’s drama is no longer enacted within 100 kilometers of where one was born.
A soul can take any path, but is chained to history, to be awakened through history into total self-awareness. The global collective answers to a great alarm Clock by which the awakening takes place. The global collective is not free to escape the Clock till the global collective incorporates global identity. The Clock expends the time needed to realize global identity and to make possible Everlasting Life in the body.
Since the 1960s the Self has been acting on the global collective to transcend itself, preparing it for take-off. The Self gets individuals tuned to each other like parts in the engine of an airplane – tuning them with feeling, inspiration, metaphor, knowledge, awareness, suffering, compassion, wisdom, and so on. The originals, the 1960s pioneers, die only to make way for newer models – and to live again as newer models.
why is it the work of so many lifetimes to establish a direct connection to [Self]?
“In 1900 there were two billion people in the world. Their souls are likely to be more reconciled to existence than the four billion who followed them. The new four billion are born into circumstance that the two billion who preceded them had endured over and over, life in and life out.” (from my essay “A Story of All Souls”)
Great energy is needed to gain access to the Self. In our normal state, we do not have nearly enough; so where is the rest of the energy supposed to come from? If we look at “E=Mc squared” as a metaphor we could assume that energy does not have to come from anywhere at all, since no energy can be either created or destroyed. The sum total remains constant. How then do we get from a contracted to an expanded state of energy?
Tao breathing through us. Breathing fire through us. Breathing water through us. God breathing ignorance out of us, quicksilver through us, through the flesh, breathing zinc through the flesh, birds through the flesh, dance through the flesh, Eternal Life through the flesh…People are puppets and flesh is bread.
A crowning implication of Self is the self-aware evolution of the Gnostic Autogenes into earthly form.
In the physical world, we could free the energy that is trapped inside the atom, and, in the world of the collective psyche, we could free the energy that is encoded in each archetype.
The atom and the archetype can be so subtle, and yet loom gargantuan.
Without the Self, there would be no way through or out of the beyond.
The Self adapts to any existential conundrum – so the ego is able to, too. Self drags ego kicking and screaming; and sometimes into silence through death, but then back to life, kicking and screaming as a newborn.
Much better informed now, we realize that we are only here by chance, and that the Milky Way has not, in this last installment of 4,320,000 years, conspired to give birth to something new.
Here is an excerpt from another essay, “And the Word Was OM,” (rejected for publication by RS): "Many billions of years ago the planetary seeds of the Solar System were arranged in their present configuration. They were molten gloms of element and fundament spinning much faster than they do today. The gloms were in transition from spirit to their eventual material form. The rotation of the gloms as they orbited the sun was accelerated compared to its current rate. At its highest rate, it may have been faster than the speed of light. Hence, time, by our understanding of it, is misapplied to the time elapsed during the inception of the planets."
Definition of "Arche"
Hi Amy,
I just finsihed a new post on the relationship of the "Archons" to the "Archetypes", and wanted to see how my explorations compared to the original Greek understanding of the word. Here is the definition from Wikepedia:
"In the ancient Greek philosophy, arche (ἀρχή) is the beginning or the first principle of the world. The idea of an arche was first philosophized by Thales of Miletus, who claimed that the first principle of all things is water. His theory was supported by the observation of moisture throughout the world and coincided with his theory that the earth floated on water.
Thales' theory was refuted by his successor and estimated pupil, Anaximander. Anaximander noted that water could not be the arche because it could not give rise to its opposite, fire. Anaximander claimed that none of the elements (earth, fire, air, water) could be arche for the same reason. Instead, he proposed the existence of the apeiron, an indefinite substance from which all things are born and to which all things will return.
Anaximenes, Anaximander's pupil, advanced yet another theory. He returns to the elemental theory, but this time posits air, rather than water, as the arche. Anaximenes suggests that all is made from air through either rarefication or condensation (thinning or thickening). Rarefied, air becomes fire; condensed, it becomes first wind, then cloud, water, earth, and stone in order. The Arche is technically what underlies all of reality/appearances."
--Thus the "Arche" is projected into manifestation by becoming apparently "Other" than what and where it came from. You wrote "The non-reality, or already-deadness, of the Archons was fuel for many episodes of psychotic processing in 2000. Time for me was sped up and condensed." --Yes, when the cogs of the great clock are aligned, the black ice sculptures of the "Archons" will be melted by the new and improved power of the "Self."
Flooding the Archons
Hi Brian,
Must the Arche give rise to an opposite? If it must, the Arche would be non-being, which gives rise to being, and then a multiplicity devoid of duality, I would think.
Anaximander claimed that none of the elements (earth, fire, air, water) could be arche [because they do not give rise to opposites]. Instead, he proposed the existence of the apeiron, an indefinite substance from which all things are born and to which all things will return.
It sounds like he was talking about spirit, or perhaps the Pleroma; a principle from which comes multiplicity.
Where the inherent multiplicity of being is trapped, there is an Archon. Perhaps an Archon is an “anti-arche,” an absence of awareness of the first principle.
-…the "Arche" is projected into manifestation by becoming apparently "Other" than what and where it came from. You wrote "The non-reality, or already-deadness, of the Archons was fuel for many episodes of psychotic processing in 2000. Time for me was sped up and condensed." --Yes, when the cogs of the great clock are aligned, the black ice sculptures of the "Archons" will be melted by the new and improved power of the "Self."
Yes, psychosis is being flooded with psyche. The more horrific of my psychotic episodes were polluted with the blackness of the Archons. While I had extensive awareness of the first principle, it was not complete. My awareness of it developed through the psychotic process, by maintaining an observing ego through the psychodrama to determine what held true and what did not. The “disappearing dummies” did not hold true in the short term, but does in the long. Every part of the psychotic process has relative truth that floods the Archons.
The tyranny that coagulates the ocean
Hi Amy,
Here is the meditation on the "Archons" and the "Archetypes that I referred to in my previous post. The dialectic between "contraction" and "release" relates directly back to the meaning of the original Greek root "Arche." My comment is as follows:
It is the Archons who embody what the Archetypes project. They are the instruments that inflate, the masks of a tyranny that coagulates the ocean. They then turn the Primordial Male/ Female into a roost for unclean birds. Earth’s Rulers are the playthings of their shadows. Archetypes are the doors that should lead both into and out of space; most often they bar access to the data base of the soul.
They articulate creation, allowing Memory to give birth. At the same time, the form of every potency has been fixed, and each Archetype stamped with a warning; that their radioactive energy not destabilize the world.
The 1-inch city is the trash-compaction of the 4 Earth’s that have occupied our orbit. It is heavier than prehistory, but lighter than an atom. The Gnostic maps the monstrosity of the footprints left by the Deluge. Bit by bit, then suddenly, the black sun of the Self now returns to the non-existent. The good teacher does not go anywhere at all.
A Campus with a Somewhat Psychedelic Spirit
Hi Brian,
It is the Archons who embody what the Archetypes project.
So, the man who harbors, for example, the Archetype of Adam Clay, is an Archon?
Given the meaning of “Arche” (as “first principle”) the Archon attributes “first principle” or godlikeness to itself.
It is the Archons who embody what the Archetypes project.
I would like to elaborate on this: “Mother” is an archetype, “Child” is an archetype. Madonna and Child would not be considered Archons, but players in a world drama (and Aeons). Yet, “Family Values” mis-valuation of Mother and Child has a definite Archonic stench. An Archetype that projects into the Archon of “Family Values” is not Mother/Child, but the Thief. “Family Values” desire to steal the world.
If history is seen theatrically, as a play, the Archons are its antagonists – and are as prescripted as any script.
The [Archons] turn the Primordial Male/ Female into a roost for unclean birds. Earth’s Rulers are the playthings of the [Archons’] shadows. Archetypes are the doors that should lead both into and out of space; most often they bar access to the data base of the soul.
My tendency is to throw out all Archetypes – after the lesson I received in the dream about God living behind the door the Archetypes guard. I treat all Archetypes as actors, behind which is reality.
The wholeness of existence is fractured into Archetypes, which animate Archons. At the depths of purest being even Mother and Child are Archons. Being purified of the Archonic Mother and Child, they may be reborn as Archetypes with capacity to access "the soul’s data base."
The drama of history is prescripted to do away with the Archons, the Shadow, the Thief, so that the remaining Archetypes may bear full fruit.
Archetypes reside at the farthest reaches of human existence, encircling God. The promise of the future is in the whole world evolving to centralize the far reaches of existence, to make the world resplendently existent – to live in direct contact with the Pleroma.
The good teacher does not go anywhere at all.
From last night’s dreams: G. comes for a visit, sort of at my parents’ house. We are not connected, yet I do have a video that is of interest to him. I enter it – sort of dozing off on the sofa - and lose G.
Inside the video, I am in my world as a kind of queen of a huge community in a scholastic atmosphere - a campus. At certain times, in a synchronized way, people begin moving at once. Most follow the clockwise course of a giant circle. I alone follow it counterclockwise. Most of the people are children. All are childlike. I heal some people; gift others. There are Mexicans with hearts overflowing with love. A transcendent, somewhat psychedelic spirit pervades this place. I explore it in different rooms, various settings, with diverse assortments of people. I teach through my actions. This is the main part of what I do.
The job of a very small, almost elfin woman is to guard the grounds from the old world. I put one hand on her back and another on her chest, wishing her safety.
The campus is very beautiful. I am walking on a shiny marble floor. It is made of gray, almost-black marble with grayish off-white cloud-forms in it.
Someone mentions that the campus cost 100 trillion dollars to make. I can believe it. I ask how it was financed. The person says, “You know, a Japanese company,” and explains it has something to do with companies getting money from companies.
I wake from the dream back on my parents’ sofa, and, still dreaming, I look for a place to write the dream down.
The way forward is the way back; EXIT HERE
Hi Amy,
You wrote, “So, the man who harbors, for example, the Archetype of Adam Clay, is an Archon?”
I didn’t mean to suggest that only the Archons could embody the Archetypes. Archetypes can and do exist on many different levels, including the human level, where, of course, the power of the archetype is considerably stepped down, and it is usually mixed with many contradictory elements. Although an archetype may occasionally take complete possession of a political leader, flooding his/her body, mind, and psyche with its overwhelming power- Hitler would be an example of this- for the most part humans do not have enough power to be classified as “Archons.”
This is just as well, since, as Jung and more recently RS contributor Paul Levy have pointed out, any direct identification of the ego with the archetype tends toward the total takeover of the personality by the unconscious.
Thus, Adam Clay, although operating underneath the shadow of an archetype, or, rather, within the intersection of the Eros and Ares archetypes, does not possess the raw personal power to become a generative principle of creation. He is, as you have said about yourself, a puppet, but, unlike you, he has not yet become conscious of the energies that make him dance.
On the most primal level, an archetype exists as an almost invisible pattern, like a magnetic field, hovering on the edge of what to us is non-existent. At the next level this archetype might be embodied as a god, as this god is understood by a particular culture. In the classical world, this activation of the Totality by the Archetype was regarded as a cause for celebration, since, without these active principles, how would the world ever have come into existence? And this is where the thinking of 2nd to 4th century Gnosticism turns radical.
The Gnostics had, many centuries before Jung, also noticed the direct connection between archetypes and unconsciousness. Archons, in this view, where really no more than the “gods” of the classical world dressed up in a new paranoid terminology. Archons, like the gods, were often associated with the planets, but, rather than being exemplars of cosmic harmony, they had come to be seen as the self-interested impediments to higher knowledge. Yes, they served activate the Totality, but their acts of generation were also acts of obfuscation; to create was to divide.
To maintain their power it was necessary to keep humans in their place. The once incarnate gateways between worlds had somehow hardened into obstacles, immovable in their hypnotic force, which the Gnostic voyager would have to overcome by stealth.
It is for this reason that we can say that Gnosticism was “a-cosmic”, in the same way that Buddhism is characterized by the doctrine of “an-atman”, or “not-self”, in a deliberate subversion of the earlier Vedic view. It is possible that this connection is not at all accidental, and is perhaps due to their similar location the time cycle, when many centuries of slavery and greed and warfare had corrupted the earlier direct contact between worlds. Then as now, communication always moves in two directions, and it is possible that the “gods” themselves had become hypnotized by the forced march of our devolution. Perhaps, after a hard night of blood sacrifice, they awoke to regret any and all involvement in our history. They are not, in this scenario, dead; they have merely learned their lesson.
In any case, to the Gnostic, both the diagnosis and the prescription are the same: Somehow, we have forgotten what we are, and there are influences- call them gods or archons, if you will- that prevent us from reconnecting with that knowledge. It is not their fault; it is ours. What we say of them is no more than a projection of our fears. It is we who are under an ultimatum to be conscious, and to take back the powers that we have hidden behind symbols. The way down is the way up. The way out is the way through. The way forward is the way back.
True consciousness originates in a zone of primordial emptiness, which is also an ecstatic fullness, and all acts of liberation must occur at an angle to the Archetype.
Here, let us look again at the equation “E=Mc Squared”, which I had mentioned in an earlier post; if energy can be contracted into matter, then matter can be (explosively) translated back to energy. Finally, there is no distinction between the “Other” and the “Self.” The demonized “Archon” has turned back into a “God.” In the “Shadow” we can locate the supernatural power of the “Daimon”, who is waiting to again act as our guide. A key has been left at the depth of the unconscious; we can use it to open the door marked “EXIT”, which we had earlier misread as “ENTRANCE”, before wandering into a dream.
clarifying questions
You are saying that the Archons are pockets of obfuscating energy diverted from primordial archetypal energy – diverted during the awakening of human consciousness into its opposite: unconsciousness. Yes?
Then as now, communication always moves in two directions, and it is possible that the “gods” themselves had become hypnotized by the forced march of our devolution. Perhaps, after a hard night of blood sacrifice, they awoke to regret any and all involvement in our history. They are not, in this scenario, dead; they have merely learned their lesson.
Here, when you say “they” as in “the gods,” you are at the same time talking about “we”? Aren’t these inextricable? And when we have learned our lesson, we collectively decide it is time to be less brutal in some way (e.g. abolishing slavery).
it is possible that the “gods” themselves had become hypnotized by the forced march of our devolution.
It is as if our actions hypnotize them/ourselves. No?
True consciousness originates in a zone of primordial emptiness, which is also an ecstatic fullness, and all acts of liberation must occur at an angle to the Archetype.
This primordial emptiness is what you refer to as that which is “a-cosmic” for the Gnostics, and “an-atman” for Buddhists. Right?
all acts of liberation must occur at an angle to the Archetype.
Do you mean “informed by archetypal energy”?
Would you say the Aeons (Sophia, Jesus) are animated with the same energy we call “archetypal” when it is unhindered by the Archons?
The lost history of a civil war
Hi Amy,
You asked, “Here, when you say 'they' as in ‘the gods,’ you are at the same time talking about 'we?' Aren’t these inextricable?"
When I argue that 2nd-4th century Gnosticism was “radical”, I do not use the word lightly. Here, for example, is an except from “The Gospel of Philip”, which would seem to point to this covert relationship between apparently quite separate levels of being. Even to the contemporary reader, this type of statement can come as something of a shock. It reads as follows:
“God created man and man created God. So is it in the world. Men make gods and they worship their creations. If would be fitting for the gods to worship men." (Logion 85: 1-4)
Like the “Ego” and the “Daimon”, perhaps the “Human” and the “Archon” are involved a kind of adversarial but finally good natured game, which the Non-Dual Referee will ultimately declare to be a tie. We, the divine and mortal twins, are joined both back to back and face to face, but some trauma has obscured our awareness of the once fully transparent Sphere; the Primordial Male/ Female Body of the Aeon; where we live, and where the potency of each Archetype will be rendered fully conscious.
Making Wisdom Come Alive
“God created man and man created God. So is it in the world. Men make gods and they worship their creations. If would be fitting for the gods to worship men." (Logion 85: 1-4)
The truth of this underlies all the compensation religion enacts, the psychic fracturing religion codifies.
We, the divine and mortal twins, are joined both back to back and face to face, but some trauma has obscured our awareness of the once fully transparent Sphere; the Primordial Male/ Female Body of the Aeon; where we live, and where the potency of each Archetype will be rendered fully conscious.
Yes, the trauma is the conversion of spirit into matter, that necessitates consciousness. The core wisdom of religion is all toward the healing of the trauma.
As I incorporate successive spiritual perspectives into my own (most recently Yoruban, Gnostic, Cabbalistic), I find their core wisdom recognizable as variants on that which I am already aware of. Their elaborations on what I already know are like flowers blooming on an already well-grown vine.
Wisdom must be retraced constantly to make it come alive.
The locked circular door of the precession of the equinox
Hi Amy,
You wrote, "The archetypes are in charge of guarding a circular door day and night. The door leads to another door behind which the aliens live. A guy’s job is to guard the circular door while he sleeps all night, but in his sleep, or in a state between sleep and waking, he opens it. Opening it is a very complex procedure of tuning and undoing parts of the outer door, removing it, and then doing the same with the inner door. There are lots of circles and crosses on each door.
The inner door is ajar only for a moment, but this is enough…The alien comes into the world through the yellow green light. There’s something terrifying about the admittance of the alien, a sense that it could annihilate everything in an instant if it chose."
In this very resonant dream, I would say that there are two somewhat distinct things going on. The first is the concept of the Archetypes (and below them of the Archons) as themselves being the doorways between worlds; doorways that originally led both into and out of space, but that time has frozen shut. The second is your actual description of this very complicated door, whose outer circle I would read as a metaphor for the precession of the equinox; the circles are the lesser and the greater cycles of the planets, and the crosses represent the fixed signs of the Zodiac, each one of which was put in charge of a world age.
The inner door I would take to be the hypnotic field around the Earth. In this interpretation, it would be best to envision the Earth as it was understood in the Ptolemaic solar system, as the innermost of a series of concentric circles, dense and imperfect; an arena in which the conflicts between all of the Archetypes was acted out.
Within the Earth, however, as within the atom, a truly terrifying power had been encoded beneath the appearance of the world; for the power that brought creation into being was in no way different from the power that would ultimately destroy what it had projected.
We fear the generic “Alien”, yes, as the Alien perhaps fears the DNA of the Primordial Female/ Male in us. The green-gold light is the atomic force of Hermes, the shape shifter, who shows us only as much or as little as our psyches can encompass; and, to this end, he disrupts, forcing us to grow. An impassibly vast ocean stretches between one world and the next, which may prove, finally, to be no more than a dust speck in the eye.
The Self is not a klutz
Wow, Brian! Your interpretation makes a lot of sense. Someone who has insight into my dreams that I don’t! Thank you!
I have seen the two-door motif in other dreams when some kind of transcendent passage is being expressed (though never again with circular doors or with all the complex parts to them): A person leaves behind the world through the first door, spends time in a middle place, processing what came before door 1, and perhaps purging as well. Then they are ready for the transcendence represented by going through door number 2.
The 2-door motif may also sometimes refer to innocence (before door 1), experience (between the two doors) and higher innocence (behind door 2)
We fear the generic “Alien”, yes, as the Alien perhaps fears the DNA of the Primordial Female/ Male in us.
Would you elaborate on this?
I am reminded of a dream from 1999 - that may not have anything to do with the idea you are putting forth:
Beings of the distant future – beautiful, cosmic beings who traveled the universe – were afraid of me and this wacky, handsome, highly-sexed, usually high, southern, vaguely intellectual, elegant, aging waiter I used to work with. The cosmic beings were afraid because they were so gentle and we were so indelicate. They came from 12,000 years in the future. Their crafts ran on diamonds.
We are klutzy compared to our higher selves.
"Doors" and multi-polar insights
It seems very tempting to us to reduce insights into structured thoughts which, in turn, can be systematized and ordered and structured yet further so we can become comfortable. All the while fighting an inner 'adversary'.
Is this 'adversary' a 'dogmatist'? Do we have to really develop new and vast structured 'temples' wherein to 'worship' life in all Its varieties?
Is uncertainty being beat-up as the 'black sheep'?
Maybe to think in black and white terms, and 'male' and 'female' polarity while ignoring the possibility there may be modes of life that have three or even four 'sexes' or some mergence of both 'sex' and parthenogenic expansion of varieties of indivuated forms of consciousness is done for the sake of convenience. We can't count beyond 'two' without utter confusion.
I know of one thinker who believes the 'primal' number is actually 'two' and all other numbering is a differentiation of this: both towards one and 'nothing' and all complexity and combination.
He often jokes: 'Why does George Washington get to be the first president? Why can't I be the first?' I don't know. Take that kind of humor any direction you like.
'Words that rhyme and don't make sense, please the pussled, and pussle the dense'.
What if 'consciounsess' uses both differentiation and devolution both as methods to escape a hum-drumness of 'more of the same' which chafes It's heels?
An open mind is only open as 'something' opens It's heart or ability to love and order this love in such a way that 'It' preserves groupings or proliferation of, perhaps, something so 'minority' we barely notice it as 'sexual' beings or beings with a preference for living in mere 3 dimensions. "The greatest nation is IMAGination" says Santa Clause.
I recall a story of an individual who claimed he had a 'close encounter' of the fourth kind, and the people he met demonstrated to him how these 'types' 'populated': they split right down the middle.
Maybe this was a bloomin' idiotic sci-fi writer who wanted to get into the 'fray' of rampant excitement surrounding 'ufology' or seeings of 'odd' things in the sky and on the ground. (is it grounds?)
Maybe so. Did he shoot himself in the foot, so to speak, in having these 'beings' possess only 'one leg' or 'foot'? They hopped or maybe it was 'levitation'.
They built 'ships', somehow.
I, for one, think that 'fiction' can be actually 'real' and the desire of consciousness will find some means or another to make any 'aim' pertainent to such desire manifestly 'logical' and functional. If consciousness can have its way, it can prevent us from seeing 'illogic' as illogical. A two-dimensional being sees 'three' types as 'ufos'. Utterly incapable of being 'brought forth' on demand.
It seems very like what we observe in crystalization of so-called 'inert' elements. We spend tons of energy trying to quantify and explain these processes and we have seen to what extent these processes of seemingly mathematically perfect reasoning lead us into the 'highly strange' . . . and yet more uncertainty. Personally, I like that. That's open-mindedness. That is generosity for hopefulness.
Your diary of experiences really appeal to me because they provide information to more deeply inform my discressions.
I believe your form of 'quantification' and description and delineation speaks to something perfectly real. Or should I just say just as real as other dialogues?
I mean, your posts and this back and forth between you and Brian George is simply intriguing.
Now: I'm sure I'm not the first person to wonder: is this an internal dialogue? Is "Brian George" "Amy George"? Can you dispel this for us?. . . beyond just saying 'everyone is one'? Is this just coincidence? (I believe in coincidence . . . I'm no George Noory who thinks there is no 'coincidence' or imposes 'meaning' to everything. Some things are truly 'meaningless' co-happenings that confuse.)
This blog seems to speak to just how versatile consciousness is . . . or, even, are. Still, it is a variety of experience, as I see it. Other 'realities' might not mesh except as something your reality sees as 'aberration' or 'imagination'. Quantifying or mapping such disparate realities may forever be beyond attainment.
And that's okay. The candy-store is open 23/9.5/494 . . . or as earth-people say: 24/7/365. (just an example, not to be taken seriously).
I find this dialogue here just very intriguing and enlightening. I commend you for putting it all 'out there' . . . er, here. Or anywhere-when.
All things do exist in this vibrating thinky/thingy/feeling/feedy.
Sorry. Didn't mean to interrupt.<
Oz: a facsimile of Paradise
Thank you for your comments, Rogerscott.
My ongoing psychic survival was dependent on the construction of the template of Self. It was something that only could have arisen from a slashed and burned identity. It was a production of necessity – coming from a need for experiential order rather than a need to establish a system for its own sake. The “inner 'adversary'” is not dogmatist, but it wants to be mapped for what it is.
Do we have to really develop new and vast structured 'temples' wherein to 'worship' life in all Its varieties?
Perhaps not, but this is what we do over and over – Gnosticism, Cabbalism, Tarot, Lukumi, alchemy, Hinduism, yoga, etc. Any of them can edify life when the time is right. And perhaps we need to build them until we have have no need to keep building them - in Paradise. There they can be built on top of.
Is uncertainty being beat-up as the 'black sheep'?
In Paradise, there is no uncertainty outside of what awaits discovery. Every moment awaits discovery, so there is also no complacency.
It seems very like what we observe in crystalization of so-called 'inert' elements. We spend tons of energy trying to quantify and explain these processes and we have seen to what extent these processes of seemingly mathematically perfect reasoning lead us into the 'highly strange' . . . and yet more uncertainty. Personally, I like that. That's open-mindedness. That is generosity for hopefulness.
The template of Self has been a door to greater uncertainty (possibility) that could not have been realized without it - just as was the ability to observe inert elements was a door also. Perhaps the keynote of truth is its absoluteness opening onto ever-greater discovery.
Now: I'm sure I'm not the first person to wonder: is this an internal dialogue? Is "Brian George" "Amy George"? Can you dispel this for us?. . . beyond just saying 'everyone is one'? Is this just coincidence?
Often in our writings when we mention the other, we add "(no relation)". Brian is in my dreams all the time. I began dreaming about him before I met him. I have only met him in person once. (He lives 90 minutes away.) I recognized him from my dreams. I invite you to check our RS profiles.
Quantifying or mapping such disparate realities may forever be beyond attainment.
My objective is to elaborate the map so long as ignorance keeps dissolving into Gnosis.
A recent dream elaborated on the parallel the essay draws between Self and the Wizard of Oz: The first character in it is a relative of mine who is a sincere, devout, born-again Christian. He is not obnoxious about his faith, but his approach is too inflexible and narrow for my taste.
In the dream he has a bunch of my work, reading it to see whether he wants to invest in it. As his negative response comes a massive storm comes to wipe out humanity. We hear a woman who is like Lindsay Nagle [soulless, power-suit businesswoman on the Simpsons] say, “I want to die. I keep getting knocked down.” Once the storm has cleared the characters from Oz are left as cosmic giants presiding over it. They play a rhyming game.
Re: your sex change
Was this change 'organic' or was it mediated by chemical/surgical methodology?
a dancing skeleton
Identifying as a female overtook me suddenly, with circumstances that prompted me to assume it would happen magically. I awaited a magical transformation for four years, at which point it was clear that it needed more proactive methodology to move forward.
That said, my experience of my inner-woman tangibly emerging through my body has been ongoing since its inception. Here is an excerpt from my memoirs recounting my first emergence through my male self. It takes place toward the end of a ten-hour meditation, the day before Easter, 2000:
“The meditation was supine, in what yoga calls the ‘corpse position.’ In perhaps the eighth hour of the meditation, my face began to twitch and shudder as God readied me to feel him exercise through it. He did a kind of yoga, stretching my face into positions I had never experienced. My face filled with flowing warmth that rippled in my flesh like water. After about a quarter hour of exercise and sculpting, I could feel my countenance had become Rose Mary’s [‘Rose Mary Pillowwater’ is my spirit name. It comes from a dream I had in 1990.] It felt beautiful and gentle.
“God then practiced making music with my mouth. It sounded like a combination of speaking in tongues and beat-box. He moved down to my hands and arms. My hands were especially spastic because God was trying to shake them awake.”
During my first year identifying as Rose Mary I saw her face instead of mine in the mirror a number of times. I experienced my body taking on female form, too. At the end of summer 2000 I even experienced the “melty” feeling transsexual women report when HRT (hormone replacement therapy) starts kicking in.
Then as today, I practice being a receptacle for my inner-self to live through. I remain still and simply feel as she moves through me. In this way we learn to unite. Up to this point, hormones (since 12/04) and an orchiectomy (11/05) have enhanced the process.
There are some things lost
I'm sure the history of Jesus and his family are almost utterly lost to the literary world in any obvious delineation. No apparent work signed: Jesus, Mary or Claire.
That would be too easy. It would also, it seems to me, make any private lives they went on to live had they been so blatant incapable of being able to have any privacy or to enjoy the privilege every anonymous one enjoys of being confused or possess the major and minor strifes always involved in family life.
The idea that is inherant to shapeshifting is that no one can be satisfied with any one single form of self or personality. We are not personalities. We are individual motivating centers of expression which can collect experiences and in any given period of such, when that period ends, that becomes a 'personality'. A persona now only because we have moved on and into new circumstances.
But what if, what if one has conquered the mortal addiction and obtained a consciousness of the permanency of life and has gone yet further in perfecting the body by informing every atom, cell and tissue of the flesh of this so as to have perfect harmony throughout with atomic agreement throughout and so form can change to suit circumstances and need? Directed from the atom of consciousness or small self?
The body is a large 'self'. A container or vehicle.
The 'we' we call 'us' feeds on love and relation. On forming streamlets and rivers and cords of connectivity with like-minded and like-hearted others.
Sometimes, to satisfy the fullest expression of this urge, form itself must be remolded and made most suitable to such circumstance of two or more who wish to relate.
I think if people knew what kind of family Jesus belonged to, they'd burn them all as 'witches' and 'warlocks' and abominations of nature.
So they don't have anything to do with the mythology built up around them. And the Jesus as the male who became the Jesus as female is a history yet to be writ.
Where Jesus went was too much for some, and yet later they altered their expectations out of the pure force of love for the individual while being forced to erase from their minds the personality they superposed. And this is a very painful process. In many ways, it is even an insulting process and warrants some readjustment of the discrimination with regard to expectation.
People want to meet Jesus and ask questions. And when Jesus appears, there's no long hair, no beard, and maybe even breasts. And that insults their model. And adherance to that model prevents their very own desire or requests. They shut it all down.
Whose fault is that? Jesus'?
Consciousness is not simple, but the goods it cherishes are. When we leave the particular and idiosyncratic out of it.
There is no doubt this lineage of appearances of this one can fill in much of known history, but not always under the guises we would expect. But why would that one in particular have to be followed anyway? After all, it was a life to demonstrate what all can and actually do anyway. It was an affirmation of self faith, not creation of something that didn't already exist. We will not be compelled and we will not be limited.
This is highly strange to the West, but in India, which our bible calls "Ends of the Earth", this is simply called 'kayakalpa'. No big mystery to the relevantly informed. And they are informed who make enquiries with open minds.
Interlocking stars of corporeal divinity
Since drama is a far more God’s vehicle than the Crucifixion, it is just as well that the Passion be a made-up story. Whether it was witnessed firsthand ultimately has no bearing on its veracity - though it obviously leads to stronger sense of its realness for some people.
what if one has conquered the mortal addiction…
Spiritual evolution is toward harmonizing sub-atomically, individually, collectively, globally, cosmically…and alchemically as a means of overcoming birth-death cycles.
The body is a large 'self'. A container or vehicle…
…as the universe is also a container and vehicle…
I think if people knew what kind of family Jesus belonged to, they'd burn them all as 'witches' and 'warlocks' and abominations of nature.
Surely they would, but they cannot once it is time for Jesus and family to live again fully in the body. Jesus and family dance around (or on) violence like water.
People want to meet Jesus and ask questions. And when Jesus appears, there's no long hair, no beard, and maybe even breasts. And that insults their model. And adherance to that model prevents their very own desire or requests. They shut it all down. Whose fault is that? Jesus'?
Being less cynical, having a child’s faith may help them not to shut down so reflexively.
Even the most unfit and contrary people can be irresistibly "called" out of the blue.
[Jesus’ story] was an affirmation of self faith, not creation of something that didn't already exist.
It did not exist in all its glory, but it did in primitive forms, in hints. And in the Gnostic, eternal sense of having already happened.
And the Jesus as the male who became the Jesus as female is a history yet to be writ.
I had a dream in 2000:
Jesus comes to me naked, first as male and then female. The skin of each incarnation is made of interlocking stars, as if tattooed, but realer. The man’s stars are larger than the woman’. Half of his are yellow, and half red. The woman’s stars are blue and yellow.
Each will give me anything. The woman is sitting in front of me with her legs open. I am too hurt to approach her. Instead, I lay down on the male, with my head on his chest.
growth
Nothing now or ever will exist in 'all its glory' if we count the possibility of infinity expessing through a unit as a rational or 'ratio-ic' impossibility.
What I mean by this is the idea that infinity and eternity can never be exhaustively expressed or encapsulated by any single individuality or a 'one'.
However, another point of view is that each individual is always vibrating between their limited exitence and their involvement with infinity/eternity as their base or alternate 'self'.
This might be the basis for the varying interpretations of just what 'vibration' really means.
In a theoretical concept of 'primality', vibration can consist only of an alternation between 'something' and 'nothing'.
If that can provide a substrate for mere dimenions then 'time' becomes the veriest substance and not a 'dimension'.
Then if that can differentiate and become an issue of polarities, then 'male-female' become 'vibrations' and we can further speculate that this 'oscilation' isn't just 0 versus 1 but can be so distributed as to provide one phase having dominance and another having resticence or 'minor' revalation or appearance in a given period of notice.
The same applies to how people react to life writ-large: the female aspect as the 'ego' center uses the 'male' aspect as reflector or medium within the body to defend. Vice versa for one in whom the ego is centralized in the male aspect. If, however, in the latter, the female potentiality is inhibited by cultural norms or traditions, the defensive quality is shut off. It would make perfect sense that, out of a mere need to defend onself, this reflector side should be either activated by alteration of thought structure, or the ego-center must move into that so as to make the reflector active.
In either case, it takes some willingness to be free from fear and a bold kind of bravery to bring about this protection which is normal to all life. In humans, obviously it is a much more tortuous thing to undergo.
And it is all based on inflexibility and intolerance and irrational prejudice . . . usually out of fear of being osctracized by those whom they love or by whom they are loved.
We've had enough of that kind of narrow mindedness. <
I should have known better than to use a cliche
ostracized and free
My dad once told me, “You ostracize everyone when you say what’s on your mind.”
I replied, “I can’t help it.”
He said, “I know.”
Fear of being ostracized is as strong as any biological drive. It’s been a curse & blessing that I have lived an ostracized life.
Home Is Where the Polarites Meet
in the Kabbala,chaos (tohu bohu) is simply a state in which order is latent
I enthusiastically see it this way.
This morning I had this thought: Chaos is a tot playing with a deck of Tarot cards.
I think there is a soul agreement between those terrified of chaos and those who uphold it. Where these polarites meet there is Home.
Poor Humble Ticks
When illusion does not obscure truth, Wall Street insiders are like ticks on the bodies of “outsiders,” as tiny and parasitic as money-mongers are, as bloated with others’ lifeblood as they get.
A thing that ought to be more obvious to outsiders is that they are more inside than insiders.
If life is a circle, so-called outsiders occupy its center.
The sphere whose center turns through its circumference
Hi Amy,
You wrote, “A thing that ought to be more obvious to outsiders is that they are more inside than insiders. If life is a circle, so-called outsiders occupy its center.”—It seems to me that what you are describing is a version of the “torus”, the sphere that turns through itself, whose center changes place with its circumference. This image is central to my thought and exploration, and appears, both explicitly and implicitly, in many places throughout my work.
This reversal of the “inside” and the “outside” helps to explain why one seed or one voice can have so much explosive strength, i.e., that the part has been correctly planted in the whole, and is related to the concept of “the stone that the builders rejected.” People fixate on institutionalized images of sex and fame and power, all the while ignoring the new world that is growing from a seed. Here are excerpts from two essays.
From “Life Returns to the Uroboros; Space Does Not Go Anywhere”:
Let us imagine that we are grains of sand stuck to a beach ball that revolves. Two alien children are playing catch with the orbit of the Earth. A throw goes wide, and the Earth is swept off on the currents of an inconceivable sea. Habits are subverted. The marriage- once happy- of the vertical to the horizontal is over. Space is big. We are very small, or so it would appear. Is there any objective reason that this disproportion should bother us? The macrocosmos watches.
Is life absurd, and would death make any difference? Intellect is a doctor without hands. Ego is a shaman without power. Imagination is a fish without a boat.
Let us suppose that intellect, ego and imagination are colored areas on the surface of a turning torus- a kind of donut- whose circumference turns through its center, and whose center then turns into the circumference. The motion of these areas is continuous; their separate locations on the surface do not appear to change, anymore than we must leave home for the Earth to orbit around the sun.
Is it possible that our consciousness is neither here nor there, that up is down, and that the inner and the outer worlds continuously change places? Is the one self many? To whom should the inhabitants of the torus turn- if they desire to deconstruct the movement of the 10-dimensional kaleidoscope?
From “The World Tree as Moebius Strip, Whose Higher Form is the Turning 10-Dimensional Torus”:
From section 1:
The roots and branches of the world tree form topographically a torus, a kind of donut, an explosion which turns continuously through itself, and whose end is in its origin. The sap moves from center to circumference and then back again to center. The whole of the tree is contained within one seed.
…
Let a flash of lightning break our own heads just enough. Let us court wounds to the ego, as we reenact the world-centering gymnastics of the Maya.
Let us put aside our contemporary emotions. In silence, let us alter time by listening to the music in our blood, which is not different from the green sap of the tree. Hands may yet reach from the underworld which we do not believe exists, to align our feet with the patterns of the astronomical dance.
From section 10:
Before there ever was a world an ancestral tree existed. To say that it existed is a convention of the human tongue. The world tree was the nonexistent center, from which the existent grew. It generated death. It was the axis of what was, of what then and now is, of what could be dreamed, by him or her, or by a race in the future beyond the gods' imagination. As the creation of the present Earth approached the intersection became pregnant with potential life. Its branches grew one of everything in the form of self destructive fruits.
Not only did gross objects such as dinosaur eggs, weapons and asteroids appear, there were even such elements as lightning, and such puzzles as time, in its abstract configurations. Was the abundance too much for the one tree to support? Branches creaked, bending low. Ancestors hung by their necks from nooses. The shadow of a solar system rustled among the leaves. War banners flapped and fluttered. Like freshly laundered clothes, skins were waiting for the creatures that would one day be instructed to put them on.
Planets sang in the middle branches. Black holes, like drowsy eyelids, blinked. Constellations whispered among themselves. Hieroglyphs from every culture revolved in the stiffening breeze. There were gods and monsters, animals and plants, and many alien species from beyond the present framework of creation. Modern inventions were disguised as the most ancient of technologies. White blossoms grew. Red dwarves became enormous. Cities fell. Every known variety of shoe was waiting for its foot.
__
Ancestral spheres dissolve. Today the world tree is a tiny stump at the edge of the ruins of Zinacantan. It looks like nothing much. This unimportant stump is the original father/ mother. Does it wake or sleep, or continue even now to act? A few leaves grow. The mystery of the Black Transformer is hidden in plain view.
Interesting analogy
In the article 'Lucid Dreaming' by Paul Levy, I posited something akin to this 'toroid' figuration in terms of conscious versus 'subconscious':
"The only problem is, finding some mutuality amongst the potentially infinite number of tendancies or affections and wills. So, what one calls 'conscious' may be another's 'unconscious' or something relegated to a 'periphery' or 'most innermost'. The active focus of personal life must needs leave much much more out of consideration and any potential for definite expression. And that can be like 'checkerboarding' of positive expression or will and influences left on 'back-burner' or outside even peripheral vision. That's another form of 'unconscious' isn't it?"
http://www.realitysandwich.com/lucid_dreaming
I too have found this model of the torus or vortex as a universal in nature and and perhaps this oscillation takes place in our waking life in a kind of stroboscopic way. The 'on' 'off' function of attention may just be a habit of position while the 'atom' of consciousness undergoes the 'labor' of daily life.
In looking at actual supposed photos of an atom, we took it through various parameters of filters in an image inhancer and it showed some oddities that we were very curious about, and yet couldn't come to any definite conclusions for them, and it was the appearance on the surface of a vortice which seemed to show a definite surface character akin to body of water with the sculpting as of a kind of checkerboard. That would indicate the this 'ether-vortex' had not only a toroid spiraling character, but capacity to vibrate and differentiate within itself so as to be a real record of impulses from within and responses to impulses from without. Perhaps. But the level of resolution even being so great could still be leaving a lot out. Interpreting such with just mathematical methods, however complex, could never derive much information for this reason: the vortice itself is simply a bounded infinity. From this it was postulated by others that if information goes in, it must be possible to get information out: hence the idea of a camera of past events and the thought the atoms are little computers or memory systems.
======================
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance -- that principle is contempt prior to investigation." HERBE
Torus Bridge
I thought of writing that “outsiders” are both all along the circumference, and in the center, while the insiders are between them. In this case, if all insiders and outsiders were seen as comprised by a torus, not a single insider would be visible on the surface of the torus. In this scheme, if insiders existed at all it would be within the inner-darkness of the torus.
Self can be a circle, a two-dimensional mandala, or a three-dimensional orb. A circle is a cross-section of the orb of Self.
It seems that no matter how many circle cross-sections there are, they will never add up to an orb because of dimensional disparity (between the second and third dimensions). It appears that the torus forms a inerdimensional bridge between the circle and orb. Self Is a Torus of Friends, a Globe of Friends.
“Standing” as a revolt against the horizontal axis
Hi Amy and Rogerscott,
In the Nag Hammadi text “On the Origin of the World", there is no love lost between the Elohim, who are here portrayed as oppressive agents of the Demiurge, and what appears to be a genetically traumatized version of Adam. One section of the text reads:
“Regarding this thing, when the chief ruler remembered the saying of Pistis, he was afraid lest the True Man enter his modeled form and become its lord. For this reason he left his modeled form 40 days without soul, and he withdrew and abandoned it. Now on the 40th day Sophia sent her breath into Adam, who had no soul. He began to move upon the ground. And he could not stand up.”
—Let us put, for the moment, all issues of gender politics aside, to examine this passage from the viewpoint of topology; it is clear that Adam was intended to exist at a right-angle to the Earth; a host of jealous gods has conspired to obscure his memory of this function, thus consigning him to a horizontal status.
Valentinus, the 2nd century Gnostic theoretician, wrote:
“Something like fear overcame the angels in the presence of that modeled form (i.e. Adam) because he uttered things that were superior to what his origins justified, owing to the agent who had invisibly deposited a seed of higher essence and who spoke freely…For Adam, modeled as representing the Male/ Female, made them stand in fear of the Preexistent Male/ Female; for precisely the latter stood in him. And they were stricken with terror and quickly concealed the work.”
–Why this emphasis on the simple act of “standing”? Do not all (or most) human beings stand? Potentially, yes, but in actuality, no. “Standing” in Kaballah seems to have a great esoteric significance, and, even in exoteric Judaism, there is much emphasis on standing during ceremonies, although I have never, in all of the many writers on Kabbalah that I have read, come across a completely satisfying or comprehensive definition of the term.
Nonetheless, I would argue that “standing”, in the traditions of both Gnosticism and Kabbalah, refers to vertical movement along this “toroidal” axis between the microcosm and the macrocosm. Thus “to stand” is to fulfill one’s archetypal function as an intermediary between the vertical and the horizontal axes, in this way unifying not only the “above” and the “below”, but also the “inside” and the “outside” of the one 10-dimensional sphere.
Or we can imagine the “torus” in a slightly different way:
Let us draw in our minds a sphere that is divided by an X; the point of intersection is the singularity that preceded the Big Bang, and that now exists as a perpetual moment of creation. The immensity of space, like a tornado, revolves around, and is funneled through, a single point, an apocalyptic bathtub drain; that is infinite in density and unspeakable in power; this is, perhaps, the stone that David inserted into his “sling” to defeat the apparently greater power of Goliath.
Atlas Under Stands
I would guess the fear that overcame the angels at the sight of Adam standing was the same that might overcome them being in the gaze of the Creator (since the Autogenes is a facsimile of the Creator, and Adam a facsimile of the Autogenes (the Creator > the Autogenes > Adam)).
Without a ground of ignorance on which to stand, an ignorant person would fall down dead - thence finding themselves in the all-encompassing light of knowing in Heaven.
As it happens, the ignorant person sleeps instead of falling down dead. In sleep the ignorant person tosses and turns in bed like the “modeled form” moves upon the ground. In sleep the knowing of Heaven arrives through dreams. Through dreams the modeled form learns to stand, to dance. Dreams are an existential dance class.
Yes and yet
While recognising a spiraling that obtains in nature, the mind or function of memory can connect down and up: into the so-called 'past' or fully concretized and into the nebulous, as of yet, condensing tendancy.
We take frequent reference to what we have expressed before and perhaps project that into the as of yet not fully defined or concretized or 'infantile' future self or selves.
If we are open to past continuity and are honest about that, we can see an alternation of generation that must include changes of sex, changes of opinion, changes of status and circumstance and a grand mixture of a motivating center which vehemently strives always to preserve what it has while thinking of what it didn't express or wanted to express and didn't.
This is a pattern of projection of 'plan' and impels towards seeking circumstances most akin to fulfilling these 'unsaid' or 'undone' things most especially, love. Or rather: loves.
The analogy of the torus or 'circle' is pertinent in terms of a spiral better than a static model or relatively isolated 'vortice' or some self-contained thingy. That is what gnosus feared touching on 'argument' in another stream might lead to 'solipsism'.
We all have 'selves' and we all operate on some level with exactly the same potential as any other 'motivating center'.
I'm of the opinion that such 'center' as we are has infinite resources even just within it's own position in a minor spiral of growth. Somewhat in the same way we say a note of sound can induce or be induced to vibrate in consonance or sympathy.
And we select such when we deem it appropriate to our affection and then render such into expression.
That preserves our individuality and uniqueness and also allows us to have information about other options or access to 'histories' as lived and actually done by others.
That is why I so appreciate your tack in this, since it is confirmatory to my 'faith' that all things are possible and that all things do exist. Even a cartoon world or a world in which living is pure art.
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"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance -- that principle is contempt prior to investigation." HERBE
The Trickster & the Torus
Brian George remarked that a recent piece I have written about the Trickster “ties into the concept of the 'torus' in that the trickster is neither here nor there, high nor low; he has no attachment to any one level of creation, and it is through him that the center and the circumference can be kept in a state of continuous interaction. Fear and habit limit the primordial breadth of our vision; it is no doubt naive to see the trickster as our 'friend', but he is not, on the other hand, as randomly destructive as he seems. All oracles are ambiguous; it is up to us to interpret our exact role in the story, and to cooperate with the pattern that is scheduled to unfold.”
Here’s my Trickster piece:
At any point human and divine consciousness diverge, there are mishaps - mishaps, as such, being the work of the Trickster. The Trickster exists in the gap between human and divine consciousness.
The Trickster undermines human certainty at every point. The purpose of this is to teach humanity from mistakes till it is no longer capable of mistake. In learning from mistakes human consciousness has the opportunity to align with divine consciousness over time, over history. Divine consciousness knows no accidents, catastrophes, or atrocities, but makes itself known to humans through them.
The Trickster is personified variously in all cultures. Tricksters known to North Americans include Bugs Bunny, Batman’s Joker and the Merry Pranksters.
Puck, a Trickster of Old English lore, appeared in two of my dreams. The dreams came 11 years apart.
Dream 1, June 7, 1997: There’s a bad person named Puck who has locked a guy into a painful torturing mechanism. The guy whines for the money he needs that Puck told him he must have before Puck sets him free. Puck is standing on some stairs. Someone gets an idea and calls out to Puck, “Hey Puck! Those aren’t stairs!” The stairs disappear and Puck falls to the ground. A couple more tricks are played to make Puck fall foolishly. Puck doesn’t even seem to realize he’s being manipulated, unaware that he’s falling because he’s inside the illusion that the power of suggestion is creating for him.
The message of the dream is that if one believes in the inescapability of a situation, there is no escape. For me, the “inescapable situation” was my identity itself, which was locked into torturous illusions. I unlearned and outdistanced them in the years following the dream.
Dream 2, August 31, 2008: I am playing a game with a group of people taking turns holding this tiny bug in a tray. It’s tricky to keep an eye on the bug. I’m really tired of the game and excuse myself. Outside the room I hear the cry of a baby. I go to it. It’s crying so loudly and no one is taking care of it. It’s tiny, in a tiny cradle on a bookshelf. I am distressed. I ask if its name is Puck. “Yes,” he says. That explains it – why he’s been left out here, why I can’t bring him in.
The game is the ongoing conversation I have with like-minded esoteric thinkers. Puck is a part of me that has not been allowed into the conversation, yet he is a primordial part of me; as primordial as a baby. In conversation, as a personage of the Trickster, Puck would reflexively undermine every attempt at civil discourse, so he’s “kept in another room.” I ignore whatever Trickster there is inside me that may want to interject biting and/or nutty remarks into conversation.
My question is: How can the Trickster archetype be non-destructively included in anything at all in waking-life, let alone my conversations? In the following dream, from 1992, the answer is through dance. The “clown” in the dream is the Trickster:
I am asked to be a clown for some dance performances. The dancers are divided into groups and have ornate costumes. My costume is white and light blue and I am wearing an Elizabethan ruff around my neck. Someone paints my face. I’m a little nervous. My face is not painted like the faces of the other people in my group because I am different. Music starts and I feel inhibited, but I quickly feel freer as I breathe and wave my arms rhythmically. Then I dance without limits as if I were bouncing on the breeze. I become a character. I am inhabited by a mischievous man-sprite. I am like the joker in a deck of cards. I am both clever and senseless. I am athletic without muscle. I have no mind. My identity is gone. I weave around the other dancers. I am wild.
In living my life offering myself to Creation, I am building a bridge of consciousness to the freedom of this figure. The world will grow into or through the figure’s consciousness. The conduit of growth is experience of the body’s mind; the mind of the foot, of the face, of the solar plexus, pressure points, scalp, heart, calves, palms, gut, spine...The spine is a snake. Spinal awareness is giving mind to the snake. In giving mind to the body, awareness is given to all non-human life. It all happens through knowledge of the snake, of Kundalini.
On this Brian George remarked: "What you are describing is, I think, the key to transformation; the making of consciousness fully physical, and the making of the body fully conscious. We only appear to be small and separate because the universal information that is encoded by the body is in an opaque and difficult to translate form. The uncoiling of Kundalini empowers what is already there to speak. ". . .
I rarely respond to a blog retro like this . . . out of temporal linearity. (today is 10 October, 2008).
Brian George Nostrodamus-like has here told a thing I can vouch as, at least, true for me. And, I find, in your diary, also true for me: touching. And that shows, for me at least, a truthfulness of your inner impulse, even if, were it me, I'd not have taken the path you engaged in. That is not a 'judgement' about what you've done. In being honest, I'd have to just say you're either a little impatient, or setting a very difficult example for variety as the true 'spice of life'. Yet, as true as that is, the mode is still rather a value system in favor of technology or 'art' than, as I see it, the greater quality: patience and learning greater patience. A little more digging, researching, might have lead one to learn about 'kayakalpa' or method of transition of form in place rather than depending on 'reincarnation' or resort to 'surgical arts'. Same applies to those seeking to understand and apply certain disciplines of yoga and when they can't, take up the knife to 'get there'.
Kechari mudra. Infants do it. We've all been infants. We need only reacquire a consciousness of infancy and childhood to recall these 'esoteric' practices. To do so, though, does mean dropping some ideas and practices appropriated as 'adults' that inure us to these most innocent and spontaneous 'kriyas' that are involved in developing and accelerating self-transformation or 'resurrection in place' and without the neccessity for death or reincarnation.
'Unless you become as little children, you can by no means enter the sphere of paradise'.
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From the Keylontic Dictionary
"Adam" and "Eve" were symbolic personages representing the polarization of the sub-strands of DNA and the birth of duality of consciousness.
The symbolic story of Adam and Eve was itself twisted from its true meaning, which in allegorical form stood for the polarization of the twelve single strands of the subspecies.
The Bible promotes the idea that "Eve was created out of the rib of Adam", which symbolically implies that man was created first. The polarization of DNA, and the resulting birth of duality of gender, occurred simultaneously.
It further encourages you to believe that woman was created to serve man, to be "lesser" and to play a subservient role. These distortions were purposely given to you to keep from you and suppress the power and wisdom held within the female form and consciousness.
Through this distortion the polarities or duality within each of the 12 subspecies could never be overcome , and thus the completion of human evolution into its original exalted form could never be actualized.
www.keylonticdictionary.org
exalting Adam's rib
Hi Joan,
The symbolic story of Adam and Eve was itself twisted from its true meaning, which in allegorical form stood for the polarization of the twelve single strands of the subspecies.
What are the 12 single strands of the subspecies?
The Bible promotes the idea that "Eve was created out of the rib of Adam", which symbolically implies that man was created first.
I read it as more symbolic of man having an inner-woman. This is what it means to me, and I see patriarchy as having twisted it to suit its egocentricities.
Where Genesis says Eve was meant to be Adam’s helper and he was to lord over her, I think Eve represents wisdom. Wisdom has not often helped Adam, nor has he owned it well.
Another parallel to the rib story is that Buddha is said to have been born out of his mother’s side.
It does seem that spirit preceded matter as Adam preceded Eve – if God created matter.
and thus the completion of human evolution into its original exalted form could never be actualized.
I would continue, “…so long as Adam remains ignorant of his Anima (balance, wisdom, & recpetivity) and estranged from wisdom.”
Acts of revolutionary violence take apart the 12
Hi Joan,
This division of primordial unity into 12- whether 12 competing tribes, or 12 guardians on a council, or 12 revolving signs of the Zodiac- appears in many places throughout my work. 12 strands of DNA would fit easily into this pattern. If I remember correctly, Plato also said that the Earth was a dodecahedron- like a ball made from 12 pieces of leather sewn together.
If viewed from this perspective, human history can be understood as a form of devolution, not of evolution, in which acts of ritual violence divide the Primordial Male/ Female Body, projecting the 12 once integrated powers into the cycles of time/space, thus giving a wounded ego to omnipotence, and laying siege to the tyrannical harmony of perfection.
Here is section 6 from “Maps of the Metaphysical Double; In the Footprints of de Chirico”:
6
Each of the 12 tribes had its own agenda. As specified- contract. Blood activates the genius of the fate producing mechanism. The future's grasp extended far beyond its reach. Birth was just an idea. In its day great- but nothing to loose consciousness about. Hallucinations ate the gods. Birds petrified in the labyrinth.
Someone he knew heard something about a type of memory they had long ago. He followed a strange voice. Discovery- of in a flash “The Collected Works.” The incarnate force of the seer stands before you!
Experiments lash the Cyclops to a barge. The One becomes monstrous. The Many grow as complex as their fears. They have killed their parents- as instructed by the story. Bald monks track the fallout spewed by a Paleolithic radio. Fear is the only record of the technology of the ancients. Factories puff. Reproduction rocks on a branch. The automatic hand of Tzavaot opens above the tundra.
After 50 thousand years is the human prepared for harvest? No, my being is not. Our machines will get back to you. Birds chirp in the oscillating straw. On a blue landscape made of bones- they dance. Oceanic energies make home look far away.
Sunset. Autumnal sails depart from the gyroscope at Carthage. They curve around Point Chaos. Silence rules in the wake of epileptic transport. The world grows cold to the touch. From beneath those astronauts the floor flew. Salt scars their instruments.
__
Revolt broke Earth. We shut it off. The computer banks of Alexandria are just a stone upon your tongue.
—And here are 2 excerpts from a poem called “The Departure”, which is section 7 from the book quoted above. The first excerpt deals, again, with the devolutionary displacement of the 12, and the second deals with one possible method of return:
Excerpt 1:
Already, the keys to every childhood had been lost. Memory was a layer of ashes on the skin. The warmth of home faded, like a world that never was, like the love song of an architect. The music of the spheres became no louder than the surf.
On the coast crematoria glowed. Fate moved the heroes like the clockwork of a mechanism. Each had been charged with the expression of 1 sign, and with the transformation of its corresponding power. For our purposes the 12 do not need faces. There was a figure 8 on the brow of every manikin.
Excerpt 2:
The Earth was a fulcrum. Space acted like a lever. Death had broadened their ability to project the powers of creation. They found they could move monuments on distant planets with their thoughts.
They rode the wave of superconsciousness. Through a rip in the fabric of the projected world the sea shot like lightning. The atoms of the boat were rearranged. They disassembled the wheel of history. The heads of the unwrapped manikins turned inside out. Did the boat survive its destruction? They found themselves on a shore beyond the Zodiac.
Biology had petrified. Warriors had frozen in gymnastic positions. Stone wet-dreams. The playthings of Medusa. Their death-throws were beautiful. Atrocities had been transformed into art.
The shadow of a hand extended from off stage. It touched the mouth of a statue. Spheres, reeking with alchemic force, then erupted from the statue’s mouth. Out of each sphere stepped a doppelganger. Again, having shaken hands, the 1 and the 2 collaborated on a survey of the Zodiac, to determine how each sign should help to activate the circumference. And so on, down into chaos. Before riding on the back of the revolution, home.
The spheres chose music for the triumphal march of species. Robots made their bodies into instruments. They tuned their heads with hammers. Monkeys hit gongs. Fish played tubas. Dinosaurs blew on hollow tree trunks. Birds played living pianos. Snakes waved themselves like banners. Whales performed their songs. Skeletons plinked on ribs like xylophones. Vast armies juggled the most dangerous of weapons. In a bubble you could hear the Egyptoid prophet buzz. Welcome!
Would the 12 return to work on the assembly line of the projected world?
Tall trees projected by the Red Planet down have converged up on the Earth. A great eye blinked. 52 thousand years went by before it opened. Spiders took charge. The language of the birds did not run through the aqueduct.
Is there a soul that has ever been destroyed? The acupuncture manikins became what they saw. They could not launch Earth's navel without help. Oannes took his fish suit out of storage- If you want a thing done right you have to go yourself. He too forgot.
the 20-12
Variety is the spice of life
I hesitate to mention Emmanuel Swedenborg here, since he most specifically confesses his inability to breathe amongst the 'celestials' and couldn't divulge their 'secrets' or mode of life.
Yet, as a 'seer', he did delineate things that were obviously obscured purposefully by those who pretended to understand 'Christ' or the secrets of 'Jesus'.
Swedenborg was of a 'devotional' nature, which in the parlance of the strictest form of yoga would mean that he was a 'chela' or one still wed to form.
The 'strictest' forms of 'yoga' or 'union' delineate purely internal and impressionistic conditions that pertain to consciousness. And that can develop any number of 'forms'. Not just the 'human' form.
Swedenborg carefully delineates his experience of 'death' and tells us about being approached by 'celestials' and then, when he couldn't stand their presence, by 'spiritual' angels.
In other words, as he admits, spiritual beings of the same affections as he owned or appropriated.
Swedenborg idolized Jesus, and Jesus was the 'very' and 'Itself' and 'Only' or "God Almighty".
We can read of such emotional attribution by many 'chelas' or 'students' of their 'gurus'.
And that lineage of 'devotionalism' may even have evolved a literature which was appended to an actual 'science' or literature which was not, in any form, anthropomorphic.
Thus, people took lineages of teachers and with blank spaces they extended their speculation backwards and tried to impose on 'primal reality' a cult of personality which dominates the consciousness of mankind to this day.
And so an otherwise exacting science of consciousness became polluted and reduced to a cult of personality and even prejudice with regard to sex or gender.
An honest appraisal of the most primitive yet polished poesy and some prose, shows that the roots of information was about a 'Mother-Father' or bi-sexual CAUSE. And, if one looks honestly at this literature, it appears to be actually A-SEXUAL summarized under the term: PRANA.
We read this, today, as 'vitality' or 'vital force'.
This is not correct, as I view it. The Sanskrit term can be read much more simply: NOT MINE.
This leads one to consider the possibility of a principle of consciousness that is truly impartial and unselfish and lives in something BEYOND SELF. It is the same thing as is speculated upon in many of the most primitive speculations in the Upanishads. A common expression being: only the 'gods' know, and, perhaps, even they don't know.
In terms of a 'perfect' delineation of such, I believe we do have a record co-temporal with stuff found in the realms of Raja yoga and the Upanishads: the sources of the diaries of Moses and lived by Jesus. That people are born of consciousness and consciousness is both father and mother and all are essentially capable of understanding any predominant outer physical capacity that channels either of these roots.
"Zero means nothing to me" is a common metaphysical joke. It is still slanted. "Zero" is composed by something and nothing in perfect equilibrium. A 'one' and a 'nothing' seems to be contradictory to us. So, I think it logical to think there is another prime number that is neither. It seems we cannot accomodate that. Not even mathematics accomodates that.
Yet, math has failed us in accomodating what is.
Human nature, however, expressing fearlessly some 'thing' or 'principle' defies definition as well.
Something 'new' can be deemed the meaning of the term "spice of life".
I wish to digress here for a moment and refer back to something attributed to Jesus:
"You are the salt of the earth; if the salt loses its savor, it is accounted of no worth and is tossed into the garbage heap (gehenna)."
I believe the actual term was 'spice' and not 'salt'. Who ever heard of salt in any form losing its 'saltiness'? Spice can go stale, become rancid or lose its 'savoriness' with age. That is what was referred to. Not 'salt'.
Are we willing to admit we don't have the vocabulary or spectrum of conscious concept to accomodate or allow irrascibility? Variety by a new perception?
Not an odd number, not an even number.
Not 'nothing', but something indefinable in neither 'set' of 'something'.
In fact, we can see all individuality as potentially inexhuastible in terms of variety. The surrounding or 'space' which defines individuality or number can be deemed not "NOTHING", but another condition: one infinity expanse with all individuality as the object of perception. A background and 'womb' or 'mother' seeing 'children' as units ever expanding. Infinity doesn't expand by definition alone. This is differentiation of an all-encompassing expanse. The 'other' number or value is or must be source of both 'all encompassing space' and 'individuality' or 'motivating centers'. A resource common to both is undefined as of yet.
How odd. Yet real. Not even odd. Just: unfamiliar.
So: 'new' is another quantity or quality we must either be interested in, or at least become accomodated to, or maybe, in ignorance, wish to erase, destroy or fight and so stay and stay and be the stagnant thing that such behavior seems to indicate we wish to be.
If you can create a longer or more clumbsy sentance than that. Please do.
======================
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance -- that principle is contempt prior to investigation." HER
May, again, unsay . . .
Further thought required.
unsaid
Said some things which, on after-thought, deemed better left unsaid and so pulled a "merrick".
Pax.