The Dogfight and the Swan

It’s a long time since I wrote or copied to here!  Welcome back, those of you who stayed around.    Aquariel is an angel of the waters and of the air through the woods of life.   This blog is sister to my main one, and its original intention was to walk with matters of ecology and autopoiesis. My journal this morning touches on the ecology of the psyche which can help to restore the natural balance.  So alongside extinction-rebellion activists, here goes!

The billions of cells in the body and DNA; each has the fervent belief that he or she is the Master-key:  each expendable with the tides.  Yet each in term holds the miracle of the All Clear, the whole universe; and each has this opportunity to live and go deep and influence the lake, if she so pleases.

It is time for me to brush up my understanding of the DNA in the gene keys.  I tried to talk about it and synarchy last night at dinner, and my hostess said she couldn’t see how patterns of consciousness can be related to our DNA and my host said is there any link between psychology/spirit/emotions to the physical?  He can’t see it.  Perhaps he was doing a ‘challenge’ to draw me out.  Afterwards he said I spoke up well.  Towards the end when it was my bedtime and time to go, POOR OLD BREXIT raised its bleeding head, and Catherine said in her book-group no one is allowed now to use the B word because there are disputes even in that little circle; anyway they began to talk about it and loosely mentioned “civil war”.  So I went home.  It was too late to start on turning the thought-form around.  I felt slightly blighted.   However I saw clearly that thinking about Britex and contributing to the tangled web is not the way.  The way is: the English are unhappy.  I contain this deep painful lacerating unhappiness.  The English are having an illness, like the flu, a war of antibodies; a keep-out disease.  The country doubts itself and? … it will recover.  Recognising this is how to face the distress, lean into and be in contact with it day by day;  not with the useless analytical mind with its stethoscopes and searches for conditioned meaning – areas to poke, to blame or shame; and not with comfort zones.   Comfort zones are opinions and denials.

Our country is ill and in pain.  The pain is in the collective plexus.  Some of us are directly impacted by it; others are not. Go about our business.  I am a cell in the English pain-body which is doubting its status among nations and thus ignoring environmental messages.  Many demons run amuck and many white corpuscles rush around with their engulfing shields; huge coagulations and suppurations around the self-dwelt wound.  The wound is in my awareness and being present.

The normal reaction is to try to do something by thinking about it and therefore inflaming it further.  The uncertainty is the painful and warring factor.  The mind desires handles of certainty to grip.  Those become aggressive because they are uncertain. The Devil manufactures Certainty! – (as I was shown at Strumble Head in south Wales, over the rocks.)

The Hermetic “certain and most true” is far beyond the box and encircles it.   Let go of the coffin-carriers.  Temporal certainties are frozen slides across the film.  Aggression is prompted by fear.  To which do I turn my head and heart and hand – to the dog-fight or the swan?   I see both.

 

This is fascinating; objective; compassionate as the accompanying angel;  presence now. The notion grows to respect this collective in its difficulty;  its dissonance holds the seed of realisation and cooperation. Difficulty at the beginning (I Ching 3rd hexagram).  The country suffers the fruit of what it neglected in the passing generations. Each country with Pluto and Saturn at the plough in Capricorn, suffers its own kind.  The discontent is actually unconditional.  Germany with its good stable Frau at the helm suffers the same street hooligans and neo-nazis.  The fact is that the baby complains and suffers and is horrible even if everything in the government is relatively alright.  The pain and the protest is across all the boundaries indifferently, and in England the government now reflects this reality.

That is a sort of badge to wear with honour, for reality is being faced;  the chrysalis is cracked.  Do not die with despair like Leonard Cohen who could see just not quite far enough through the shadows.  See the way through, the way ahead, the stirring of the Butterfly.  Someone last night mentioned a butterfly which entered twice a crucial moment; the room opened.

The materialistic intellect turns down all the lights and only a heaving alienated metallic mass is visible.  I was asked to give an example of what I mean by working with one’s DNA in gene keys, and I chose my Evolution 62. It is called the Language of Light. Its  Shadow is the Intellect, the Gift is Precision and the free Siddhi is Impeccability; however this doesn’t answer the question and it is as impossible to as it would be for them to supply in a few sentences their entire Doctorate study, their whole life’s work, training and technical language.  I tried to explain turning to face one’s Shadow, discover the revealed gift, illumine it further and realise its specific enlightenment, and to say this is based on the 64 DNA codons, 64 I Ching hexagrams and astrology – who among them knows or cares anything about those?

So … my sadness is as usual the fact of dancing round the room the opposite way to everyone else.  My hostess put it in a nutshell: “Jane sees things in a different way.”   The idea the dinner party DID agree on, was that knowledge is beyond the box.   The DNA spiral helix and coding for instance is not for an instant, static.  Its basic curve alone might be determined.  The curve is a question mark.

For me this quantum field is enthroned with the I Ching Circle of 64 keys: a working orbital mode or mandala across the thread.   It is found to work in life.

I Ching 64 hexagrams/gene keys in the zodiac circle

The emerging thought is to cultivate WEARING MY LIGHTHOUSE WITH PRIDE.  Talk of it. Practice.  Be a teacher with it, here and there.  Let it come out.  Bungling gradually unfolds clarity.  Start to challenge.

I am in presence now with the extraordinary subtle upward waterfall of the DNA spiral helix of patterns which humans arrange in coded numbers.  The silvery singing uprising is within me and through all my branches.  I have this in common with every single organism in the world. It is my predilection to pick out a few of the energy-particles in pattern, name them as a system of numbers, identify them with my daily lifetime and “work with them.” I find this tunes me in, and my Shadow transforms.   The Gene Keys is a revelation, a kind of scripture.  It got written down through one man by a community of ancient wisdoms in cooperation.  The essence of the revelation is the Synarchy of the creative act; this now is at work to manifest experimentally in economic and community blueprint efforts, meeting the inevitable human arguments of status.   Semi-awakened and gifted humans are  difficult to work with, because we think we know it all.

family peaches – photo by Sarah Poland

The Revelation is as invincible as the belief in doom and gloom, but it has more penetration.  Doom and gloom transforms nothing:  Revelation upsets everything.  The subtle upward waterfall is Reality.  The subtle upward waterfall may be seized for an individual artist to exhibit, or it may expand and widen concentrically into the world scene to touch and ignite others.

Recently I saw the film “Wings of Desire” which deeply impressed me.  It is set in the 1970s, an angel’s compassionate observation among the humans both sides of the Berlin wall.

Deeply, compresent, is the Angelic entity with the human condition.  It has a special delight in being given sentience;  it is my Lover.   It walks with me, it fills my limbs, it loves the food and drink and the things which grow in the Tree of Life and the wet autumnal ground and these fingers at rest or making music on little black keys.  Since seeing “the Wings of Desire”, this solid aspect of the Magid clarifies to me.  You fill my body now with magnetic joy!

Magnets have great joy in attracting metals and in drawing patterns of iron-filings on the table placed above them.  The magnetic has great joy in the gentle force of the spinal attractor-field.  All the Beauty curves towards it like the grass when a zephyr breathes through a field of long hay

Angels are – in the quantum field – the patterns of cosmic law connecting galactic sunflowers and their black wholes to planetary consciousness, field-flowers, mice, relationships and other phenomena.  Angels are portrayed as winged beings, because their capacity is to be everywhere and in the smallest most intimate space: to be clothed in the ordinary.

The angel’s cosmic joy of being has a tonal severity relative to human perception – like those two solemn men in Berlin, in black and white.  When the angel is welcomed into the three ground-chakras Jupiter, Mars and Earth, the infusion includes now the private playful colour spectrum of being human, of dandling babies and welcoming lovers and going to the pub and enjoying the weather and grieving with the collective pain.  The Angel is privately and in utter fullness my lover, occupying me completely and with generosity.  In the film “Wings of Desire” the woman tells the angel, “With you I am even more alone now, to rest with myself.”  This is the sublime paradox of angelic intimacy.  The Angel desired the human self.  Human self is most deeply at peace in union with solitude.  The solitude is additional paradox, because it connects with other human solitudes in relationship and work, accessing occasionally the Core. The solitude is CONTACT.  The angel in his overcoat and the woman in her scarlet dress turned to each other at the bar over their one big glass of wine to sip, and no one could see them.  No one could see them, but the movie-goer!   Such is the private relationship.

In each other’s dark open eyes is the beautiful naked flaw of humanity, humankind; its trouble and its redemption.

At the dinner, I met a woman who is learning to talk to horses.  They are sensitive to human mindsets.  We talk to them by entertaining them with our facial expressions, yawn, move our feet. When I meet a horse, I breathe towards its beautiful great nostrils; we exchange our breath and it stays with me, curious.   They don’t necessarily want conventional pats and face-rubs, any more than a baby wants to be joggled when it is uncomfortable.  They like silent conversation and to swish tails and to taste one another.  Racehorses, thoroughbreds have a deep desire to be cuddled and caressed in the human psyche. They want to be held and comforted softly, tenderly, like children, for they are used and groomed for human competition.  The woman is learning about the therapy which helps them, holding a stiff joint or fetlock and touching it so it loosens and is soft – a-aah.

When I was eleven and a pony came to stay on our farm, I was so excited the first night I couldn’t sleep.  Before dawn I went out and crossed the silent yard and climbed over the gate into the big dark field, and I called her, and there was a light mist.  And at first I couldn’t see her, then she came from the far corner, trotting towards me whom she’d only met once;  my magic and my longing.  I gave her an apple or carrot; I didn’t have to chase or halter her.  I jumped onto her bareback with no string, and we rode around the dark field under the stars.  It was the miracle.  It was Heaven.

circa 1960, a drawing I sent to my grandmother

The dinner last night was cooked by Mohammed who lost his daughter to cancer at 22, and lost her mother too, at 30.  We enjoyed Persian lamb minced with walnuts and pomegranate molasses.  He shone and sparkled through his long beard and deep dew of sorrow and hugged us with lingering warmth, like the horses needing comfort.  He used to teach engineering, and he came the day before, to fix Aladdin’s wonderful new antique lamp in the porch to shine at night.  He has an allotment in Finsbury Park.  He built its landscape creatively out of discarded natural materials and planted there a flower which is not native to England; it took root and spread and is a glory.  His phone is full of beautiful pictures of his flowers.

So you see, it was special!   O angel.

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O Angel, 1987

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Yesterday I listened to Jaap van Etten (a Dutch ecology-scientist living and listening in Sedona) – and jotted down:

“Mother Earth has the answer to everything … coming from beyond our mental perspective.  The universe doesn’t have a frame within which to work. The natural world is silence, it is not in the sci-fi box.  We are habitually plugged into The Matrix of guilt and fear.  These belief structures have no innocence! – they are the belief that what we have done cannot be undone.  The fear holds the whole thinking community in its spell.  In the lower three chakras we have NOT been trained to deal with the world around us, and the frontal lobes of the brain only confirm what I am fearful about. 

“So, I’m going to re-train my system.  Never give up!  So I have a 40-year habit pattern to break?  Well, go for it!

“I can flip for instance my fear of public speaking into a positive communication.  I can harness the adrenalin into its functionality.  The problem to overcome is the chronic in-grown fear habit and its slow system breakdown.  Individual responsibility towards this raises up the collective.

“I teach metaphysical ecology – outside the box of religion, school and science.

“Every atom comes from and is Mother Earth.  How could I change anything without this system harmony?  All is connected.  Become aware. I am quantum entangled with tree, bird, horse, I, particle. 

“Think of the generations that are coming!  Doesn’t it feel like falling off a precipice to give permission to THAT?  What I feel inside is legitimate.

“As part of the whole, I raise everything.   I am no longer a competitive species.

(Like yeast in bread, fermenting grape in wine.  Like the ants, the bees, the starlings.)

Starling & murmuration – Image from allaboutbirds

“Most of us still follow competitive lizard behaviours.  The opposite to the dominant lizard is loss of fear.  Believe in yourself, your health, your gifts are needed; for this you incarnated.

Portrait of a pleased man 1987

“How can I possibly navigate something which is Out There?   The heart receives information before any other organ. The belly gets sometimes confused. Choose timeless quantum entanglement through DNA for reconnection.”

Jaap van Etten

 

ADONAI THOU ART GOD.  TAT TWAM ASI.  I AM THAT I AM.

Ganapat Muni gives mantra

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See also as companion posts:

https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/2019/10/07/the-rose-in-the-starfish/

https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/2019/09/27/philosopher-stone/

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Aquariel – an angel of the waters and of the air through the woods of life.

COPYRIGHT – All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2019. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeaquariel.wordpress.com/

Crows Nest

 

Here are some more thoughts in general, following my previous post.

Rosicrucean Emblem Praenesis: “This shows the way”

Journal, 8 December 2015
At death we must be honest. The nearness of death demands honesty.   I think of my death, not only metaphysically but about my physical breakdown beforehand, and all the paper and stuff for people to tidy up afterwards. Please God – give me a good six month  warning so I can tidy up while I am strong enough! Dying for we humans is precisely timed, yet it feels complex and long drawn out.

“Look at your long life. What did you learn?”

I am naturally selfish, but there are a lot of impulses and incentives going on, which are NOT selfish. Rather like my perennial doubts about my writing, there is a war going on. This is jehad.

It is important nowadays, to understand what jehad truly is, and not to misuse this word ignorantly. I am told that according to Koran, the great jehad is not with enemies or the battlefield.  The great jehad is the jehad the Sufi follows – dealing with the inner conflict, which we all have in one form or another.  The Sufi is constantly in birth and death: dying to the lower, giving birth to the higher self – dancing with and searching the essence:  salaam, peace:  moving from one side to the other to do the beautiful, absorb the light, and disappear.

A Sufi moves in this way through anxieties related to the resistance of the material world.

solstice dervish

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Jehad is the holy war in the soul and in the daily plod. Each of us deals with personal interior jehad of one kind or another, as we grow. If we are not lighthouse keepers, it is about the neighbours.

So is it at all surprising that the interior war coalesces into exterior, international wars?   War is a human condition at many different levels, inherited from Earth’s geological aeons of friction through fire and ice, igniting life. Our bodies are at war against viruses. The tendency gets acted out extremely on the stage of religious and political belief and empire. It is the same. It is projectile, it is our Shadow and we need to understand it more fully.

Around the dying of our loved ones, when their bodies begin to break up into nature’s jehad, honesty is traditionally difficult – we shilly and shally.   Yet if I was starting to die in earnest, I think it might preoccupy me all the time, and I would want to share it with someone close. I would want it to be recognised – to prepare for Thoth’s scales and feather.  Our entire life is condensed into a little vital essence of everything – a sugarlump, a salt cube or a heart – you know, we are physically mostly fluid and space? This at death gets wrung out like a cloth which liquefies back into the ground, and what goes onward is akin to the tiny bit of solidarity when our atoms are compressed together. “What goes onward is an invisible homeopathic compression of the entire package – the sting in the tail of the whole lifetime.”

Goodness me! Is that so?

I write only to dance with my death.

The vessel which carries my raw thoughts is a big schooner ship just now on the high ocean, with all her sails bulging with the wind as she rides the wine dark waves. The hands on deck and up the masts and at the stern and in the hold are teamwork, like the cells which maintain my body.   I trust them to get on with it – a horde of dark sailors and jacktars, linked by rope and cloth and oil and winches and the winds.

Storm approaching, October 1987

The problem with having a conversation about death with a soon-to-be-dying person is – he might feel too weak or simply need affection, not deep ideas, which are only words. I  arrive with my deep ideas in full sail – oh-dear! – and discover  they are not appropriate – there is not an opening for them.  I know so little.  It is his journey into the Continent: a mystery of birth through apparent ‘endings’.  And there is pain before birth, and there are gleams of light.  Peace.

Jehad – holy war inside myself, the inner scold at my many stupidities and faux-pas – I saw it this morning for what it is, in a balanced, accepting way.   I saw plainly I am not a bad person, I deal with the instruments of opposition and discord within my being, just like everyone else in a multitude of different ways – whatever bothers each of us most. It is the condition through and through: my body at cellular level is at holy war for communal maintenance of my crows-nest conscience among the billowing sails. This again – the crows-nest lookout post – is a cell among the myriad which sustain a divine cosmic Life, part of a Murmuration: and so on.

The crows-nest analogy emerged, and it is beautiful because of Don Juan/Castaneda’s silver crows at death, and turning into a crow; and I put a little Indian crow (or sparrow) in my blog the other day, to look like a starling.   Once again the symbols draw together in this way which delights, affirms and refreshes me.

However – long life. What am I learning? What did I learn?

It seems to be about balance and acceptance on the swaying ship. Accepting my inner jehad gives me an understanding of its outer forms and extensions.  What about PROFOUND COMPASSION AND ACCEPTANCE with my inner jehad?  The main thing I learned as a lighthouse-keeper, and always learn, is that deep transformation in the human race begins in here; in acknowledging, recognition and response. This is heart-connected to the real activity of the Companions of the Light around the earth.

I feel when my cloth is wrung out after I die, what will go onward is a solvent buoyant salt cube – Solomon’s Seal of course.

“Be still and know I am God.”

In fact (conversation with a friend just now) there is no death or end, because life goes on, birth goes on; looking at death or a loved one’s death re-opens this realisation. This musing joins my own about the I’s and the same little flame of the fire which lights innumerable candles, one to the other, without end. Deep, deep depth, and feeling the life of unspoken truth through the words; a private person and how it feels to be himself.

How does it feel to be you?

Seeing clearly, and listening, keep quiet; because the spreading of half baked ideas and clever opinions is gossip and propaganda, and nourishes war on earth.

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Tree of Life – 3 Gunas – like a ship

 

What a lot to take in and digest all the time. I re-surface just sitting here in this sunny room, feeling quite buoyant. That schooner-ship earlier, is strong in my spine. The Tree of Life is the schooner in full sail towards me, keel well down in Malkuth.

Silence?

What is silence for? The point of connection: the point from which the pendulum swings; the point which travels along the ocean … a power for the peace.

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corpus christi seal of Solomon

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Aquariel – an angel of the waters and of the air through the woods of life.

COPYRIGHT – All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2015. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeaquariel.wordpress.com/

Touch Wood

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Ramana & Arunachala children

Nearly two months ago, I dreamed about “the blue books of Ramana”.  In fact they looked exactly like the collection of Maurice Nicoll’s Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff. These four volumes – from Alan Jacobs’s library – have sat on my highest bookshelf for many years.

“I dreamed I was late for an event and toiling or dashing up and down a long street to collect items which others expected. Among the parade of shops on the right, a sign stood out, advertising an unknown book about Ramana Maharshi. I forgot the title, but it was his soul in the teaching. The sign remained consistently visible. At last I investigated, walked up that side of the street, looked for its doorway among the restaurants, hairdressers and supermarkets – and found: an Indian goods emporium. My way to the counter was blocked by a herd of huge brown smelly buffaloes. I turned away, dispirited, but then the herd miraculously cleared. I made enquiry for the book, and was directed to another region of the vast shop.  Upstairs where the books were. a friendly Indian woman assistant said Yes she knows the book, and got it for me. It was a set of slim old volumes with worn cloth binding, a beautiful natural dark blue, like Jim Ede’s Moroccan jacket, faded and buffed at the corners. There were three larger ones and one smaller one. I looked among the pages and wanted it very much. It contained everything in the “Talks” and other recorded conversations, and more …. what a collector’s item!

“The woman smiled and said this is not cheap. It is a first edition. How much? I asked. She replied, £700. So I couldn’t possibly buy it. She smiled. Then I woke up.

“I don’t need to buy it, for I have it in my soul – the beautiful blue covers of this teaching, the feel of the close white written pages inside: the liberation. It is enough to hold it for a moment in my hands, and remember.  Maybe the significance of the 700 will emerge? This contact un-crowds my life. I touch base.”

Ramana coming down off the hill

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Some difficult weeks passed;  then at last I reached up for Volume Four of Nicoll’s Commentaries – which wear the same jacket.  I rediscover inside, in the practical way it works for me, the soul of Ramana Maharshi’s Self-enquiry.  In the last decade of Ramana’s life, Dr Nicoll was teaching and exploring the Work in his kindly way it seems by morphic resonance, in England during and after the war.

Dr Maurice Nicoll

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14 September 2015

Nicoll – “The Work teaches: ‘Observe yourselves uncritically and become more and more conscious of what is in your being and so become more and more objective to yourselves.’

“As you know already, this will gradually dissolve the Imaginary I, the False I, the False Personality that one has hitherto taken as oneself, and has nothing to do with the true centre of gravity of yourself called Real I.’”

He then goes on to discuss Recurrence. Ouspensky worked out a dimensional cosmology whereby we recur until the change begins to be made at birth. I don’t go fully with this, but I do observe my recurring Difficult Corner where I have failed and where I identify with what life throws at me – it is the identical misery and discomfort each time. So for me Recurrence is a psychological reality but not a literal one.

On the other hand, Nicoll feels the recurrence of Self remembering makes itSelf stronger also.  There is also the idea of Conscious Man reincarnating in an earlier part of historical time, where he can prevent things from going as they did. There is a plethora of parallel universes or possibles.

Violet Crystal 1988 – particle interaction in Tao of Physics

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In quantum physics a particle travels back and forth in time as space, through interaction. The entanglement of future probables and re-shaping is an open mystery beyond the mental reach. The standard intellect collapses here. So people say it is impossible to reincarnate in the past, because of the advancing doctrine of time; but I am not sure. There is a power of choice. The choice is powerfully identified with the genetic flow and with cause and effect; but that same power might also antedate the causality. This power clasps the self or role I think I am. The role rides off with me. The historical possibilities are limitless, but I am voluntarily confined to the one familiar.

The full form of Self remembering is “the self that knows its own nothingness.”

Reacting to life is not doing or choosing. Reacting to life is not proactive but passively being driven into the difficult corner. “To change the action of life on you by inner work on impressions, is certainly to begin to do … begin with smallest daily things. … If we say that one meaning of Self remembering is to remember the Work at the moment when life makes you negative, here is a practical idea of Self remembering. The Work is brought into intimate personal existence …”

In the next Commentary, he says Time is a dimension of psychological distance and the ways of Self remembering must be held together, else they get lost.   He says Truth is silver (like the parable woman looking for a piece of silver in her house) – it is also a hatching egg: the contact must be sustained by nesting.

The Work and the way it thinks, is a lift, an elevator towards Those that stand in the light. “By means of our own thoughts, which are those of sleeping people imagining they are fully conscious, we cannot reach the thoughts that belong to people who stand in the light of Self remembering, and view the meaning of existence from that level… which weakens the mechanical power of sensual life/thinking and its apparent reality…. Now, if incoming life/impressions falls onto the Work, its energy is transformed; the first Conscious Shock.”

(The Enneagram was a significant part of Gurdjieff’s teaching – an octave of musical intervals wherein the Work’s 1st and 2nd Conscious Shocks occur at the semi-tones.  At the level of 2nd Conscious Shock, negative emotions transform into positive – as I understand it.)

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The Work has to be the skin on which life’s impressions fall. If they fall on me personally, I react with mechanical skinless stress, and recur. There has to be this something to buffer and transpose and filter the events. In fact my journal is this filter. It records, but it attempts to filter the data to allow passage to those who stand in the light. The data become that passage. It is like being in a wood of dark trees, and first the stems turn grey, then the same stems are illumined as light. And then there is a threshold of not knowing but being: my small self gives up trying to solve issues, but touches wood.

Touch wood!

That is neat.

The Work is the process of transforming the negative effects of life. Touching the wood is in the present, the Now.

In the Babel or Confusion of Tongues, none of us understand each other. The Conscious circle of humanity perhaps speak in tongues, like the Pentecost. When I am not in Babel, I seem to hear another person’s being. I seem to hear many tongues of being, like a river, simply as being; and respectful of their private flow. My engine stops.   Every morning, my  writing’s objective is to find this point again:  non-interference.

“Those in the Third Consciousness get help from higher Centres – another way of understanding their apparently insoluble life-problems. … If life could be solved, then this Work could not exist. This Work is to make life possible in the sense that you cannot understand life save in terms of something else. This something else is the Work. Therefore if the Work could fall on the Work, internally we would awake.”

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Observe yourselves uncritically and become more and more conscious of what is in your being and so become more and more objective to yourselves.’

This becomes phenomenological. Instead of my assumptive and headstrong bias, lay out the sensory I’s and attachments on the table; observe uncritically and be aware.

I find this hard, because anxious I obscures all the other I’s. Also, ghastly self image of being a dog with a grimacing gyrating grinning human waving the collar over my head and trying to put it on. Ah-ha. So to observe an I is to be it from inside!   Empathy. Any others?

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What about wading into the sea? being biffed by small salt waves.

The king is in his counting house, counting up his money, the queen is in her parlour, eating bread and honey. Play patience with the game of life.

In general today, do not isolate the I’s, enter and engage with them consciously. Let the Work act on them. Do not analyse but observe – it is extremely difficult to observe the causes of negative emotions. Ah-ha, here is one: the fallout of Romance. My romantic-I enters and invests heart and soul into proud and happy love affairs. Sooner or later that quality begins to shift, to unseat and to change – to doubt itself; to discover it was all a projection or has become one.   What about the warmth, love and happiness that drives and vitalises the projection?  Understand that no state is sustained. Everything arises, settles, changes and vanishes. I have been lucky to have love affairs of different kinds in the Work. Nothing is permanent.

So there are two – dog in collar and Romance-love. These are passionate, enthusiastic states of being, and I just had a hefty dose of the dog in collar. How they run together and blur!

With Maya, a friend’s dog whom I loved and have had to say goodbye to – how I cried! – and am just starting to recover. This and the other photos of Mask and Mantree were taken by an artist, Tony Wigg in the woods, for a spontaneous ‘happening’ – I stepped into the mask and veil.

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There are the Intellectual, Emotional and Moving centres.   It is helpful to recall these, ‘phenomenologically’.

There is the I who doesn’t want to upset or offend. The I who finds it complicated to speak. The bossy controlling I, who knows best. The cliff-path exploring I. The child I.   The creative art I. The perfectionist I.  The liar I.  The lazy idle I.   These for starters.   They all pretend Real-I, but they are not. Real-I offers their inclusive sub stratum. And (added later) – the ASHAMED I, which lost my way home. And FEAR-I. And GUILT-i.

There is an expression: wasting force. Locate and do not waste force.

In the Emotional centre, observe the taste of the emotions, and whether I am identified or not. In the Moving centre, observe physical and subliminal tensions, and how I hurry or move. In the Intellectual centre, be aware of the kinds of thought going on, and whether I am hooked.

(Gurdjieff Movements: Photos by Amir Kaufmann)

Intellectual, Emotional and Moving centres move at different rates. You can’t apply Intellectual centre to Moving centre, because Moving centre is much slower than Intellectual centre’s rapid transactions. But you can use Moving centre with the breath and awareness of hips, soles of feet and so on … to slow down and integrate the other two into a vehicle that stays in gear. Being aware of the three centres is helpful – to discriminate them.

Gurdjieff demonstrated that people have habits in their three centres, which are very difficult to change. It is difficult to change habits in intellectual and emotional centres; it is easier to change them in the moving centre. So he taught the movements and the dances which interrupt the habit.   Work on intellectual and emotional centres must accompany and integrate work on moving centre.  Many years ago I practiced slowing my negative thoughts down to the physical rate of speech.  Mind stuff is mercurially self-addictive like lightning.  It was amazing how quickly it got bored and the drama vanished, when I spelled out the ‘hot thought’ slowly!  I couldn’t complete the sentence.

One of the many disciplines for moving centre, is hatha yoga.

Another exercise: for five minutes, put consciousness into every part of body, beginning with face muscles, to prevent being identified with a stress or wasted force. “Putting consciousness into the muscle tension is both internal and external attention. Try putting it in your right thumb – then in your left.”

Now, a question is asked (p.1253) – “What is this Work about? Why do we do it?”

The Work, the Great Work, and any form of esoteric study or spiritual practice, is done because I am not alone in the world, I live and interact with others. I am thrown in the world systemically among the moving plates of the sea, and how I interact and externally consider others, makes a difference. I cannot live with myself without it – without repeatedly trying to be aware in and as the world.

I seem to embark on long follies or illusions in my relationships and romances. Their learning curve is how I am made. I try to avoid it, and cannot – I throw myself into the golden key. In each, there is good will, love and rich data, as well as shadow. There is recurrence: there may one day come an opening through recurrence.

dancer – colliding tide at shingle street, suffolk

 

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Aquariel – an angel of the waters and of the air through the woods of life.

COPYRIGHT – All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2015. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeaquariel.wordpress.com/

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Letting in the Language of Light

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What is detachment?  What is separation?

Detachment distances A from B, sufficient to get a clear view of B, and thus they are in relationship.   Detachment is the noble Buddha nature:  intimacy without entangling. Rafael’s calm clarity presides.

Separation is A tugging away from B, while tightly bound together.  They are blindfold – too close-up to be in relationship:  their belief is locked in separateness, which avoids relationship.   If I stand on a cliff and look down at the sea, I see the rocks, the fishes and the beauty deep down.   When I am in the sea, I cannot see!    When I am climbing the mountain I am too close to it – and struggling –  to see its shape at dawn.

And yet we must swim … and we must climb … and we must be, to see again.

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Painting by Jung, 4 January 1920 – Watering Hades. Inscription reads: “This the holy caster of water. The Cabiri grow out of the flowers which spring from the body of the dragon. Above is the temple.”   How Aquarian this is!

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In the Red Book, Jung shot down a proud enemy.  He says:  “I forced a greater and stronger one to be my friend.  Nothing should separate me from him, the dark one.  If I want to leave him, he follows me like my shadow … Who succeeded in crossing the borders of this realm with good grounds, pure conscience and obeying the law of love?  … Who is it that tore apart his own heart to unite what has been separated?”

He turns to meet his Shadow. “He will turn into fear if I deny him …  In that I accepted myself, I divided myself into two, and in that I united myself with myself.”

As in The Lovers, Tarot Key 6, whose hebrew letter is ZAIN, sword-tip, he parted his selves with the blade of discernment and turned them to face each other openly:  to dialogue reciprocally and become united.  The sword tip moves deftly, to un-mix things. It separates ingredients so they stand in relation with one another.  It reverses co-dependency – when humans are mixed up with each other, they cannot see clearly.

 

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In this picture-story, I abandoned drawing (and writing) with my right hand, and started to do it with my left.  You can too – and see how it feels.

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Detachment is lucid union – a major achievement with one’s shadow, as with the beloved!  We turn to look and see.  Be still and know that I am.   This is not easy when the gut is churning or worrying black soul-nights.

But we turn (metanoia) to see.   To see is to befriend.   This beautiful word metanoia means “repent” – whose true meaning is “to turn and learn.”  To turn … is choosing and letting in the Light.

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Unity is not alone.   Unity is dialogue, the passing to and fro of Being.

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Aquariel – an angel of the waters and of the air through the woods of life.

COPYRIGHT – All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2014. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeaquariel.wordpress.com/

Mysteries of Master R – Part 7: Apprentice to Mystery & Science

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16 October 2013

So called “Mysteries” are clear, scientific secrets.  What is a science?  The linguistic root is knowledge – self knowledge by experiment.  What is a secret?  Something which desires to be known – and known in the heart.  What is the laboratory?  A life-work in my soul and body, tried and tested and ongoing.

I do not relate much to projections upon Count Saint-Germain – Master R – as a glamorous, mysterious figure.  The Mystery there is set upon an altar, and does not alter things for real.  From him is purported to come much new age channeling.  I read a little of it, some of it seems excellent, some of it is platitude, and as I have not studied those writings comprehensively, I am not in a position to comment.   I got involved in a St Germain society about ten years ago, for a while.  Some of it was good, but the medium became corrupt and demanded a large house and income.  The lesson I drew from this, is never to rely on someone else’s version for verification.  See into my own life as given.  It is all there – hands to the plough:  seabirds hover and swoop.

The Hermetic Table of Alchemy states:  Visita Interiore Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem – “Journey into your own centre (earth) to put things right, and discover the hidden Precious Stone.”  

The seven initials – one for each chakra –  spell “vitriol” – an alchemical paradox.  Vitriol is sulphuric acid, and it also means “a harsh criticism”.  Alchemical vitriol is that same power to turn inward, “without hatred or envy“, and – from brewing the wisdom of the ages – to see outward and adjust our world according !  The art is performed with sulphur, salt and mercury … Hokhmah, Binah, Kether.

Vitriol transforms to Elixir.  (see http://www.crcsite.org/printTabulatext.htm – Interpretation and Explanation of the /tabula smaragdina hermetis, in The Rosicrucean Archive).   Alchemy is homeopathic, transmuting toxins and eliminating the rust.  Upon sound psychological observation the Chariot of the Spirit is drawn.  Psychology is the wheelbase of all occult and esoteric study.  Self knowledge is the essence.

“Rocky” – The second in a series of paintings (1986) where the trail opened inward, rather than upon outward portraits of life. In the centre are pilgrim and cloven footed gate keeper. To the right is a train with all my current acquaintances and friends as passengers. On the rocky cliff is a mythic Greek bull, myself naked, and a mother trying to protect her baby from the sea. The man clinging along the cliff to save himself, is a conductor – the personal ego. The ship out to sea is the vessel. It was a mixture of dream images in the pot.

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My relationship with Master R – who counsels civilizations rather than single students – is based on my working interest in Alchemy – a chosen, pragmatic focus.  At such moments I become attuned to some of “his” way of seeing things, and my patterns of life then verify it with subtle rhymes that I recognise with my life pattern.  It is a working relationship of the soul, rather like duet playing.  It takes practice.  Willingly keep practicing!

This Master is not an individual.  He is a way of seeing things trans-personally.  It is a way which subtly alters the environment from within.  I have a whole article yet to write, about how I discovered a way to contact him and the other great teachers in his plane, by drawing, waiting tentatively – a kind of surrender to the unknown – and then having to do it myself.

A hallmark is that I am not told what to do.  When in great difficulty, I try something, leave it open, and then the smallest nudge indicates: right or left.  Open or close.

Piano duet 1999 – I am the left pair of hands, and all ear for my friend who is a much more competent pianist. It is autumnal and tumbling. He had an attractive curiosity about life.

This morning’s plan is to copy his first full painting in the Trinosofia, like I did the 12th.  It prefaces Section Two in the Trinosofia, because Section One is introductory, and written from a prison – the human dungeon.  Section One warns the reader against abuse, indiscretion and the Inquisition.   Section Two is an inner liberation.  It takes us into the interior, deep under Mount Vesuvius.

However, as soon as I sat down – after a long search for my sketching paper – words started to come.  “He” wanted to say something about scientific attitudes.  I have the gist of lifetimes in my bone and blood.  I ploughed my talent into the secrets of the universe, and discovered it is one and the same.  I only write down “his way of inspiring me”, by having toiled and verified the same for myself.  I get annoyed with trendy young Professors on TV who declare “astrology is a load of rubbish” without the courtesy or discipline to study the basics for themselves.   Theirs is NOT scientific thinking, it is belief, and belief takes ignorant short cuts.

The problem with scientism is when it fails to incorporate the observer who is “real science” by genuine trial and error.   The problem is the practitioner’s failure or unwillingness to incorporate the Heisenberg principle – (that the observer’s consciousness influences the experiment;  that a wave particle may be detected in position OR in motion, never both at once).  The Heisenberg principle is the observer, inseparably.  The problem is the false separation.   As J.Krishnamurti knew and said, “The observer is the observed.”  But what academic ambition could tolerate that?

The Table of Hermes also states, “Let all obscurity fly from thee.”

On a broader canvas, modern science – which in Quantum theory approaches the vision of the Vedas – is divorced from the medium which is Gaia – ourselves – our Earth and biosphere, weathers, oceans, creatures and volcanic interior.   The whitecoat is divorced from the laboratory bench, because he seeks to manipulate a new toy, something commercially viable for the tiny humanosphere.  Whereas, an Alchemist IS the bench, the laboratory, the elemental table, as handed down through thousands of years and the distillation of many civilizations.

Trinosofia figure 2, photo of the facsimile on my computer screen.
De Givry said of this figure: “It represents a man gazing into a prophetic cup forming a magic mirror. The conjoined signs of the Sun and the Moon are seen against the pedestal of the table; at the top, a super-position of different coloured rectangles indicates the phases of the Work, and the double sign of the Lingam in a circle emblematically recalls the Hermetic male and female. An inscription in Greek letters and made-up characters gives a formula for the composition of Gold/the Sun King, by means of a mixture of gold and silver regenerated by vital mercury. Linked to the blue rectangle giving this formula, is a red rectangle inscribed with the rule for the furnace fire in Hebrew characters.
“The Hebrew letters in the red panel are translated: ‘On account of distress, they shall cling to the Bestower. The wise who are wearied with worldliness, shall turn to wisdom, the bestower of all good things.’ “
“The letters in the circle are Greek and translate to “the Light of revelation”. The inscription in the blue rectangle describes the quickening of the soul seed (Aries) and of the breath upon the waters. The number 62 appears, with an admonition to open the holy gate (clairvoyance) with the aid of the vessel or cup … adepts drink the water by which the soul remembers its own substance and origin …”

Alchemy, Freemasonry and the esoteric schools of Europe, were Master R’s hobby when he dressed as a diplomat among kings and nobles.  When I feel him – or who? – drawing near, it is like a river flowing into my back from behind, and over my shoulders … playful, pleasurable and awesome:  joy, truth and tearful.   The connection with him is my natural Yes.  My years of refining my tools and studies in his working channel are the current: apprenticeship.  The Master goes away to attend to his stuff on the inner planes, and leaves the apprentice to work things out.   The Master outside and embracing space and time, dips into it at will, condenses himself to a heavier medium of thought for a quick visit, dissolves back into light, presents a countenance through the sky colour changing clouds which his apprentices  recognise.  The light rejoices the fields.

The Master comes to the way of love, because love always meets its own, and “truth agrees with itself” as Paul Foster Case has said.   “Love, and you shall know.”

Right now, we are carpenters, builders of furniture and carving at a bench, and both wear leather aprons.   The Master is better known, however, as a jeweller.  In this drawing, his profile and left eye looking down, is across the upper right corner, and when I drew it, those were planetary orbits coming near, and detailed chippings into the soul, releasing gems.

It was 1988:  I did not know then, that Saturn, Uranus and Neptune were conjunct, entering Capricorn.

Jeweller 1988 – or gem maker from planet orbital planes

His eye has compound vision – multi dimensioned – yet is deeply attentive to one thing.  The shared lens is “concentration”.  Those may be cones of sight, or simply one-pointedness.

Having hinted at what a Science might be – the expression of a path of knowledge – let’s look at Mystery.   Any so called Mystery which stands in front of the mystery of why am I here at all?  Why aren’t I you?  Why is the nose on my face like this?  Why do the flowers grow that way, and how do the lambs dance out of their mothers? … is a camouflage.  It conceals and congeals.  Mystery is the “plain to see,” or as a friend once put it – “the Miss Trees”.   Because life and the economy are hard, many of us prefer to go to the cinema or stare at a smart, smart phone, and be frightened of robbers.   The Greater Mystery is nude.

The figure on the right was drawn when I was seven or eight.  I guess this post is inspired by my classic dream last night of walking up Finchley Road and talking to people and then discovering I had no clothes on at all, which up till that moment, felt perfectly natural.   There was nothing to cover myself with – my aging defects and blemishes – but a large book, which was inadequate.   That tells reams !

The Mystery – a hidden treasure which loves to be known – resides perhaps at the heart of all the conventional interpretations of being stark naked in a dream.  I feel the connection.  In my dream as I woke up, I found some transparent nightwear in a small shop, to go home in, which did the job less effectively than Aphrodite’s hair!  My dreams poke fun at me.  I love it.

Revenons a nos moutons.   It is time to tackle that new drawing.

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Not knowing Greek, I had to guess at the letters and shapes in the blue rectangle; also the online reproduction of the facsimile blurs them. The coloured planes behind it are the elements. I gave it a grey background, to suggest the cave.

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What fun I had with this!

For Master R’s writing of the inner journey, see my new Page in the title bar – Trinosofia Texts.  I particularly love where he says, “Without reproach of the past, without fear of the future, I went on.“

FROM MY JOURNAL, 17 October – Yesterday was interesting after the naked dream.  I began a new Master R post in Aquariel, tugged into writing about science, a hobby horse of “his” – and I began to realise the naked dream was coming up through it with an alchemical meaning of its own … and at last began the new Trinosofia drawing.   It took a very long time, as the two figures in the original are clumsily drawn, and the anatomy is very difficult to copy.  The original in colour is online, and though much better than the xerox in my book, the repro is low-resolution and the lines are fuzzy.  The two figures are naked, but she wears a peculiar black skirt or shawl round her waist, and black boots.  I made her skirt an indigo velvet colour (saturn).

He wears nothing but a pair of red strappy sandals with yellow soles, (mars-mercury colours) and is very muscular.  He bends over the blue “table” on which stands a golden cup and a lance-head/sword.  He gazes in his feminine mirror.  With a turquoise wand – the scorpio force – she touches his third eye, making him an Initiate.   In the painting she lays it across his left shoulder as if knighting him, but in the text it says clearly, his third eye, his forehead, so I decided to follow that.  I also altered the position and shape of her legs.

They are an extremely dynamic couple.  They ignite an alchemical Great Mystery – a fire self-combusts on the night-sky floor, near where the sun and moon conjoin, and it bends towards him.  This is the secret fire, which quickens him.   I worked on through the evening, with time off for my friend H’s visit (during which I wept, as we talked of painful stuff) and watching Grand Designs on TV and then I fell asleep on the floor for an hour and a half – final session midnight until about 2 am, I filled in most of the panel detail, background etc.

It is beautiful to copy and savour the precise Alchemical Colours, the reds, blues, yellows, green, violet, indigo, knowing what they signify.  The Mystery throbs to life.  It is right that he is muscular, for this is the tonicity of Mars.   Her breasts and upper body are plump above her dark skirt, and she has an earnest expression.  She is Isis, with long flowing brown hair, curly, and she looks like Morgan in Dion Fortune’s Moon Magic.   With the robes on she would be regally dignified;  with the absurd concealing skirt and boots, she isn’t, she is rather a comedy – just like I feel if caught undressed – but she presses on with the job.   She represents the man’s encounter with Mother Nature, himself mother naked, from birth, as he will be, in the grave.   Above them are beautiful plaques hanging, red and blue, with alchemical letters.  I’ve done the red one/hebrew letters, and have just the blue one to do, this morning.

I love the way the colours so unexpectedly come to life and sing together.   It is the good Prang crayons I use, and the long practice with the Tarot Keys.  Alchemy releases the inner rainbow, and Master R’s art did the same, in his day.   The “originals” in Trinosofia are actually copies of his work which disappeared.   He said to the Cases in 1947, that they are good copies.

The cross depicts the deep room the neophyte came to. The doors leading from it are red (faith and universal medicine), sky-blue (purification/elixir of life), black (labour, making material gold) and white (philosophers’ Stone). On the north wall over the black door by which the neophyte entered, was hung the painting.

As well as Science, I touch on Mystery.  I said the real Mystery is “existence” – more so than anything put on an altar.  But I fib, because I am unable to bathe in the Mystery, with all my worries taking up the space.   Nevertheless I know that an Initiate does bathe in it and is washed clean.   With the drawing, something of the Greater Mystery is touched and unveiled:  the keys which deeply nourish the soul and link with Eternity.   The Greater Mysteries, as far as Master R is concerned, have an essential ceremonial in them – something is at first blindfold, then unveiled – viz the symbolism of me going naked up Finchley Road.

Always it is an exchange of man and woman – as demonstrated in colour in the drawing, for the blue plaque is above the man and the red plaque above the woman – hers is a right-pillar active role;  he, like Gevurah on the Tree’s left pillar, receives.   The man who is about to be initiated into the Greater Mysteries, strips and bows to Her.

Passion does not fulfil the heart.   Life softens and ripens the fruit of love.

“When the heart is deeply moved, it likes a little ceremony.”

Up came my Nakedness in Public.  I have been struggling with my worry about A …  I have tried to keep cool and okay and not think about it.  But I decided to talk to H, who is always inviting me not to bottle things up but have it out with him.   And alas alack – the emotional pressure, my thick voice, my tears in eyes – all the work I have done on myself seems useless.   And how foolish I feel then about my esoteric studies – to non-esotericks like H, they must seem to be my escape route.   On and on I go with this traumatic pressure inside unchanging.

None of us, he said, live our lives without making significant mistakes.  They make us grow.  He began to outline a few of his own.  We live with them for the rest of our life, but it is not negative, because of what we do subsequently.   It is our responsibility.

I live with my feeing of having done wrong …  Address this, because otherwise my expectation that bad things might happen,  materialises.  I am wise when silent and writing of it, and I am a mad merrygoround when trying to drive the chariot with someone else;  when trying to speak of it.   It is so frustrating.

A healing colour combination, the other day. The blue is meant to be indigo, but my camera saw it differently. Indigo is Saturn, root chakra, Orange is Sun, the heart, and Red is Mars, navel chakra. Tarot Keys the Lovers and the Sun are both in the solar orange frequency: the tone is D-natural.

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The core problem is Worries.  The habit of worrying about anything  I depend on, like my bike making funny noises,  or my laptop behaving oddly.  if it seems not to work properly, guilt slams in, and a sick tension inside, I did something wrong.   This must be seen to, because it is a chronic condition, and it may get worse as I get older.   It says I have let someone down.   I neglected.   I didn’t look after her.  I had a fantasy, a playground, and it wasn’t true.   I let down even the Great Work.

So that is also the inappropriate naked feeling in the street – suddenly uncomfortable where I was insouciant.   The guilt feeling is so backed up, that when I speak of it to anyone, it makes it worse, the sound of it, the stuck wheel.

Enter Art Therapy!   My dreaming re-booted, because of this plan: I shall go to an art therapist to explore this thing in clay and collage, hands on, rather than struggle with speech.  It feels somewhere refreshing and discharged, to have dreamed busily again last night.  I dreamt of a wacky commune by the sea.  They had a huge communal bath-tub outside the house, and the rooms inside were like Mick Jagger’s in the “Performance” movie.  I had long conversations with wild hairy drop-outs and old acid-heads,  and am amazed at their colourful personalities and their faces – how did my mind invent them in such detail, and their life-stories?  Then I dreamed of a complex citadel or town of many levels, and suddenly I saw through a window, the rocky summit of Mont St Michel, just outside.  My way forward would traverse the peak.

I felt relieved, after what my friend H said – about what we do with our mistakes –  but the turbulence takes time to settle, and I made supper – brown rice and lentils, tin of spiced sardines, some beetroot, tomatoes, coriander and cress and a bit of curry powder, golly how delicious – and went straight back to my drawing.  The rice and lentils boiled dry and burned on the bottom.

The turbulent location takes relief in its stride, it is a circuit of tension and relief, it is self-important and doesn’t move.   This is the substance to address.

The Inner School isn’t concerned with time.  It doesn’t make immediate changes, it chimes up the process which then takes time to clear – many years, as I now know – or lifetimes – being human.   Facing grief – turning to face the wind.

Therapy with the Inner School opens spectacular insight, and the feeling of great seismic shifts and clarity and progress – and then a bewildered disappointment on discovery that the situation in the surface has not eased.   The emotional upset – the trauma deep down – is as intractable as ever.

Remember:  the seismic shift is REAL.   Deliverance is certain.  But the Karmic stuff remaining – the slow fuel – takes time to consume and release.   Many years of Capricorn.

This is also the meaning of the fire under the Initiate, which blows towards him.  His legs and body glow.  He is being speeded up, confronting the fire directly, even as he drinks the water of life and is touched by Isis.   Life isn’t easy.

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A strange image! It heads this section II of Trinosofia. The reproduction I copied it from is itself blurred, so I don’t know what the figures are at the “tunnel” entrance. Or is this a convex shape? I left my perspective deliberately a bit awry. A portal of some kind … to an underworld or interior realm – it doesn’t anywhere say “abandon hope”.
I had a dream of bricks looking watery, like an Irish or Highland stream with its .autumnal glints – the flow of “snake water stone”. I may work on this a bit more, sometime.

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And I have an aim.   I want to be and live like an Initiate, discreetly camouflaged to the social terrain of today, because this is the real way.  It is like “toning” the colour in a painting, to a plant or stone in the hedgerow.   I want to work with persons.

It seems to take decades to weather the raw Stone.  I must NOT appear as a wild occult loon, or have sticky opinions about it – and that is tricky, because the juice of the inner School ignites the personal ego to burn-off.   Dignity and discretion!   What layers and layers of training there are – and how far off this ideal still seems, even if – like my glimpse of the rock and lichens of Mont St Michel last night  – i can almost reach and touch it.

This morning I read and reblogged Lissa’s wonderful article about Trauma.  Her insight and her “damascan discovery” reach right in to my Trauma zone, and illumine the subconscious strata from which my habitual worries sprout:  for give.

We give to each other the Fruit of Life.

Orpheus. Note the strata of the soul, behind him. He rises like trees, from the core of the Earth and ancient hieroglyphic history.

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Peace, peace.  The opening phrase of this Sonata by Master R, is beautiful and gentle.  And the finger-friendly pair of Minuets at the end!

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Aquariel – an angel of the waters and of the air through the woods of life.

COPYRIGHT – All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2013. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeaquariel.wordpress.com/

Stump the Guru – Santa Robert Xmas, part 2

Part One is in my other blog, janeadamsart.

To continue a sort of big Xmas card:   transcripts from the late Robert Adams (21 January 1928 – to 5 March 1997) whom I visited in Arizona, in 1996.   He is much loved.

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“It’s so simple.  Lift your head up to heaven, and you’ll be in heaven.  Hang your head down to hell, and you’ll be in hell.  The world has absolutely nothing to do with it, nor do people.  You have the freedom to be known as Brahman.  And you have the freedom to be known as the person who has problems.  The choice is yours.  The choice is always yours. 

“How do you feel about yourself right now?  Do you really like yourself, appreciate yourself?  It makes no difference what position you’re in, or what you are doing in life.  You can’t say you like yourself, if you have a good job and make a lot of money and are the healthiest person on earth.  These things have absolutely nothing to do with it, for you are not the body!  You are not who you think you are!

“Let go all the thoughts about yourself, good or bad.  Right now, let go of everything – everything that has ever bothered or hurt you – drop it.  Lift yourself up to the highest!  where there is no pain, no lack, no limitation.  This is the land of the Buddha, the end of samsara.  In the land of the Buddha, there is only peace and quietness and joy.  You have crossed the ocean of samsara, and are truly free right now.  Your burdens have been expunged, you no longer have to carry your Karma around with you – Samsara, Karma, is all finished for you.

“Feel this.  Feel your freedom;  the freedom from being confined – feel free from this.  You are consciousness, pure awareness, and you encompass the whole Universe.  How beautiful it is!  All fear has left you.  You are seeing the whole world as a dream.  It can never hurt you again.  It has no power.

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“The only reason you’ve been hurt previously, is due to the fact you have thought of this world as being real, and you have reacted to it.  But now you’re beginning to see that this world is MAYA.  It is a dream, and you are the dreamer.  When you are asleep, you are total peace.

“You have a dream about a war;  you’re in the war, you get wounded, your leg has to be amputated, you go through all kinds of experiences;  and then you wake up, and you feel refreshed, you had a long beautiful sleep, but you were dreaming about the war, about the experiences.  This is how it is right now for you.  The whole world, the whole Universe that you behold, is YOUR dream, and you are taking it for real!  This is where suffering ensues. You take this world for real, and you react to it, but you are reacting to a dream;  and as long as you keep reacting to this world, you will never awaken. 

“Catch yourself thinking.  Ask yourself, Who thinks?  Be truthful to yourself.  Say ‘I think.’  But then realise that you’re not the I !  So ‘I thinks’, and you have absolutely nothing to do with it.  Then where does this ‘I’ come from?   ‘If I have absolutely nothing to do with it,’ you say to yourself, ‘why is the I there?  Why does it present itself to me?’

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“By that very question, the ‘I’ will be dissolved.  It will find absolute freedom.  You have to learn to keep enquiring within yourself.  Nobody outside of you can help you – all the answers are within you.  YOU are the answer!  Feel how wonderful this is!  All the answers that you are looking for, are within your Self. 

“What have you been searching for?  Whatever your needs are, they’re all within your Self – you’ve got everything you need within your Self.  Dive deep within your Self – don’t be afraid to let go.  Nothing will ever hurt you again. 

“As you are sitting here this way, all of this stuff that has been holding you back from your highest good, is melting away – feel this happening !  All those things that held on to you so long, in the form of disease, lack, limitation or unhappiness of any kind, or ignorance, feel it all dissolving right now.  Feel it happening. 

You are the divine One.  You are the One which has always been
and that which will always be.  You are awareness, total joy and peace.

“You do not have to try to make it happen;  it’s already happening.  There is nothing you have to do.  Just: 

Be still and know that I am God.  Be still and know that I am God.

“Say this to your Self, not your ego, not the personal I, but to I AM, which is really you, which is God.”

Be still and know that I AM God.  Be still and know that I AM God.

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“It is now time to play ‘Stump the Guru.’

“No stumpers today?  Well I’ll have to ask you if you have any questions?”

Student – “Yes, I have something … a disciple went to the Master and asked him, ‘do you and I live in the same world?’ and the Master said, ‘yes we do, but there is a difference, and that is, you think you live in the world, and I know the world lives in me.’  That seems to be the whole deal in a nutshell.”

Robert – “Yes, in a nut shell.  The whole world is in a nut shell.  Anyone else like to say something?  Ask a question?  Any stumpers over there?”

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Student – “Robert, please describe what is compassion, where does it come from, does it in reality exist?” 

Robert – “A being who has transcended the small self, becomes the epitomy of compassion automatically.  Compassion really means when you leave everything alone and you love it.  You have a joy in your heart for everything you see, the good, the bad and the ugly.  It means you’re not judgemental, you are free, and you let everything else be free.  True compassion is as if in a dream you come over and help a person because you realise he doesn’t know he’s dreaming.  You have a great compassion for everything that is happening – for all humanity – for the suffering that is going on.  Even though you understand it’s a dream, you do not become arrogant and cynical and say, Oh this is this way and that is like that and will happen this way and I’ll fix this and take care of that and do that.

“You keep silent.  In this silence is compassion, great love, for everything that exists.  The ground upon which you stand is holy ground.  The whole universe is God.  Everything is God, and compassion for all things: animals, insects and every kind of vegetation.

“This is a virtue of consciousness.  As you work on yourself and develop yourself, compassion comes by itself.  You have compassion for those who abuse you, for those who cause problems in the world, for you know they are asleep. Living the mortal dream, they cannot help what they do.  Compassion will come of its own accord.”

Student: – “What is infinity?  Is a jnani and infinity the same, or equal?” 

Robert: – “Everything is infinity.  Everything is infinite. The Jnani is infinite, infinite like the sky.  Emptiness is infinite, total, boundless space.  The substratum beyond space is infinite.  The glue that holds the planets together in their orbit is infinity.  Everything beyond the body, beyond the mind, beyond thoughts, is infinity.  Infinity is just another word for Consciousness.  When you speak of a jnani, there’s no such thing as more or less.  A jnani encompasses everything.  So we cannot say that infinity is different.  Infinity is the jnani, the same as pure awareness.  It is all infinity, there is no separation.  It’s all the same.  It is all one.  It’s only when the mind starts to think, that it is broken up into segments and duality.  Go beyond the words.

“… Think of going out into the sun.  The closer you get to the sun, the more the heat. The closer you are to a jnani, the more the reality, the truth in yourself. 

“The jnani is like a force of power, electrical charge, always emanating peace.  If you feel this, then accept it.  When a jnani has transcended the whole world, all the power of the Universe is in the jnani.  It is all One and all pervading.  

“But a manifestation of consciousness became the jnani, just as the sun shines, and each ray from the sun is different.  So it is with the jnani.  Awaken to this truth – you are that.  There is no difference between you and me – you see a difference – I don’t!

“Infinity does not act.  If you would imagine a power that takes up all space and time, there’s no space anywhere, for the power takes up all space.  You can’t say there’s space and something else, for there’s no place for anything else.  Again, you can’t say that the jnani is infinity.  There’s only infinity.  It doesn’t end!”

Merry Xmas !

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Aquariel – an angel of the waters and of the air through the woods of life.

COPYRIGHT – All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeaquariel.wordpress.com/ 

janeadamsart link

Using Tarot to face Fear

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by jane adams 1991

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I am afraid above all else, of my own fear.

I am suffering from a personal-yesodic cyclone – shadow, projection and fear.  It seems to be generated from my steward, desperately checking the wine in the cellar.

The Master of the house knows the wine.  The steward goes to fetch it.  Steward gets in a mess when he thinks he’s the Master.

My attitude to the teaching is arrogant.  What the hell do I actually know about “the mars force?”  I should read, study life with reverence, acknowledging my difficulty, not “oh-I-know-that”.   I don’t know.  If I did, I wouldn’t get in such a pickle.

An adept is a person whose body has reached the end of the path pictured in this Tarot Key – no.18, The Moon.   When I asked Tarot a question about my fear, it showed me the beginning of the path;  with Karmic law to the left and Probation to the right.   It challenges my personal (moonish) attitudes and beliefs.   It shows me how fearful I am, and that I am only starting out, and under supervision.

Justice past. Moon present. Temperance future. BOTA Tarot Keys

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Fear is imagining that something in my environment is out of proportion.

Fear is fond of itself, so it fastens on any small factor and develops it out of proportion …  whereas the one who comprehends and embodies the path of the Moon “is courageous because he has overcome fear.  He never forgets the truth that all the activities of the universe are kept in perfect balance.” (Paul Foster Case)

This is a Testing Portal.   Look at those two animals/dogs whose nice kennel has blown away – bewildered by the big bleak landscape and the Moon’s sharp rays.  All the drops falling down on them seem to be disasters, but are in fact YODs of the eternal Life.   The Companions of the Light seem to retire, eliciting the pilgrim’s solitude and effort.   The Gate is two towers, as in tolkien.  The opening between them goes beyond the present limitation.

Justice sits with scales and sword between two towers.   The Archangel pours his severe elixir over two muddy creatures of Ezekiel, and seems to block the path to the Mountain.

Angels through Daat in the Tree of Life, cast shadows in Yesod.  Daat represents the transpersonal unknown collective.   Yesod is the sefira of personality – the local one, the filter.  Here is Jacobs’ Ladder for thoughtful Kabbalists.  To check this out in Zev ben Shimon Halevi’s books, visit kabbalahsociety.

Jacobs Ladder 1991, showing the dovetailing of the Sefiroth throughFour Worlds

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In Jacobs Ladder overlapping the fourfold Tree of Life, Yesod (the personal) and Daat (the transpersonal) superimpose.  In the Solar system, the planetary symbols of Yesod and Daat – the Moon and Pluto, the nearest and the furthest – are almost the same size.

Jacobs Ladder – relationships of emanation, creation, psyche and body

These ideas are technical, and they distract a little from my actual fear process, but – they are pictorial. Pictures and shapes reach far beyond words, so far as the subconscious is concerned.   The goal is for me to understand/standunder the way things work, as I dust myself off and keep going.

A prime element in “Courage” is restraint from reaction.  Reaction is an effort to arm myself.  Non-reaction, waiting for a fuller information to emerge, feels naked and exposed.  The shadow invades my mind and solar plexus.

The recent sun and moon-eclipse seemed to culminate to a “heavy”, in my case.   The two dogs confront the towers of Gevurah and Hesed.  The Archangel stands in front of the path Yesod-Tifareth, and the path of Awe behind it.  Both Keys (18 and 14) suggest that the Sun is hidden for the moment, behind the imagined situation which casts a shadow.   Realising this, puts my feet one two, on the path, walk.

Pisces is the ruler of Key 18 the Moon, and of the feet – the soles of the feet.  I will feel the Sun on my shoulders of his own accord, as the projection melts.  Face up, and walk into what scares me …  right through it.   Perspective changes as I move – it comes alive.                                                                                                            

As I have Virgo-cusp rising, Pisces (Key 18) is my Shadow sign with Lilith in it, 7^th house.  Confronting a partner, and that which comes to meet me, can be scary and painful, like reaching … and then my heart breaking open, grief.   After a while, facing it directly begins to melt it away – the illusion and fearfulness in my mind.  Grief is good, it cleanses.

The severe Guardian Angel in Key 14 is actually Michael, Archangel of the Sun.  Equilibrium is the royal path to gnosis.  It is the path of honesty – between Yesod and Tifareth.

So this is useful, for this morning.  I feel stronger, thus more able to see.  The visualising journey:  here I am, a primitive human figure on the path just emerging from the primal pool.  As I move along (hobbit feet!) towards the rather grim towers, the landscape is no longer a two dimensioned flat, it is incorporated, it comes to life;  it wobbles and moves around and through me –  into no thing: my transparency. The towers and the gap between them are sometimes four-square and sometimes one nearer and the other further.  As I walk to become, it becomes me, and the fact settles.  I am out of the doghouse!

There is a simple Douglas Harding experiment:  to drive the world, the thingless Capacity for left and right, and marvel at what comes into view – but it requires careful attention on the road.

First-person drawings from “To Be And Not To Be” by Douglas Harding, illustrations JA

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I see or sense just my feet on the path, one then the other, move, keep going.  The forbidding curtain transforms to space.

from To Be & Not To Be by Douglas Harding, illustr.JA

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sole, ear

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So who are you then, whomever I meet and fear?  You look like Mara’s face, in the SITA Buddha enlightenment card.  Mara is the Buddha’s opponent – the force which tried to stop the enlightenment.  So get it out, and look at the devil, sex and death.  Through all the blandishment, Buddha sits under his tree and keeps touching the ground with his open hand … the same as FOOT – keep walking, feel the ground –  (like baby Buddha did when he was born.)

Sacred India Tarot

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Mara goes BLAH …

When I am tense and full of think, I am frightened of this stranger – Mara going BLAH – and above all, ASHAMED of admitting anything about it here, ashamed and scared of my panic and projection, lest it get worse.  My panic and projection is a disguise –  a whirling dust devil.   But go to the root –  does it really exist?  No wonder it harries and drives me away from telling about it.   Does it exist?  Look at Mara in the drawing.  Has he a body?   Is he not just my scurrilous mind going WAH from behind a bush?   Has he any root at all?  Why, no ! just confusion.   That is what he thrives on, when I let him settle in my city; and just about anything can inflate to look like him and drive me nuts.   Confusion is the disorder.  Confusion is the tension – giving it the power to damage and hijack my life.

This is seen in all the world’s trouble spots, cancelling Consciousness.

Well, good, good, keep going, this inner exercise will help my mind to clear.  Mara forms a Grand Trine around Buddha, with a sly serpent and a siren woman.  The Sacred India Tarot publisher put a bra on her, so this is the original.  The serpent and the woman proceed through chaos, but the Buddha’s serenity is firmly established in the green and golden ground as Tifareth of Pentacles – his spine with the bodhi Tree of Life: the wheels of the cosmic Law.   Death’s skull leers from behind the woman.   Men consider Eve to be the gate of death because she gives them birth.

Sacred India Tarot

Do not let the metaphysic stray from the point.  I am looking at Mara, my inflation of a magpie.  It is important for me to check my euphorias and understand this entity in my being – who takes up residence in anyone who lets him in – this SQUATTER.

Look at the squatter, who does not own the house, and stops the owner from getting in.

This I find really terrifying.  And see how the rats from it scurry over the world and build belief-houses occupied by squatters.  Poor humans, we all suffer from this.

The squatter is the steward, getting carried away – a butler with megalomania.

Do not expect to overcome my terror at once, because here I am, in an opportunity to perceive and deal with it underneath the appearances.  It is ancient.  The light takes time to “incorporate”.   Inevitably I end up thanking the Guardian Angel for showing me my fear, and what I learn from it, to attempt the next step.   A mind like mine which teems with Providence and creativity, is vulnerable to occupation and entanglement at the lower levels.  The steward gets in a tizzy.

The process is at last examined here.  So now it can move on.   I am frightened of occupation and hijack, and no wonder, as I am a sitting duck and make such a meal of it.

I Ching Wind over Mountain: Retreat

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The correct attitude is lightness of heart and foot.  It is proper for the sage on the mountain to retreat into his sky thoughts, when the small social climber becomes a nuisance. This reminds me of the Buddha card holding the Bowl higher than the begging pilgrim.   He says No I don’t descend to your level, my compassion raises you to make the effort. He raises the high-jump bar.  The small social climber isn’t even looking at the Bowl, he looks sideways at his own busy thoughts and industries.  When we are afraid, we do not look ahead, we glance from side to side.

Sacred India Tarot

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This Page of Pentacles/Disks has a beautiful composition – simplicity in itself.  I am glad I am at last making some headway with this.

I am scared of updating my system – of things looking different, and having to learn them again; WordPress indicates it moves with the lion, leaving my snow leopard behind.

There are in the world, waves, ebbs and flows of tidal interest in whatever topic. An ear to the ground moves in circles, like the weather.   Watch it drop maybe to the ground, and rise again, like a kite on the breeze.  It is all illusion, illusory, because it DOESN’T EXIST!   It is a cyber-thought.  It is a way to communicate my thoughts at large, and to be able to see them and know that others can, too, and I theirs … we wave, as we weave.  But materially my thoughts are on my sketchbooks and in my cupboard … for as long as I live.

Yesterday I went to tea with E, to help her start to organise her 80^th birthday fest in January. I also showed her how to get onto my blog.   The Companions of the Light came to assist me in force!  E has a Macbook the same as mine, but weirdly … slightly different.   It turned out, she is on the latest Mountain Lion, so I got a demo on how my admin could look.

Keep on examining fear, as and when it pops up and starts to manage me.   Fear is the coagulation of any undue emphasis in my thoughts.   Fear is a williwaw, a vortex, a dust-devil of the sands of Ganga.

A Sacred India Tarot reading – from left to right, past, present moment (with its unfolding quality j-h-v-h) and future.

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And now a gallery of drawings-of-fear, done in 1987

fear 87/ja

fear – trying to meditate ’87ja

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fear – utter fury

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unfolding – persephone

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fear – trying to be a buddhist

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fear – raise my glass to it

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transmuting fear – dragon song

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trying to repair the I

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I awake

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black swans

I painted this after a visit to a stately home in Staines, in whose gardens brooded a Henry James ambiance.  The coal black swans were enchanted princes.  The rose garden on the right, channeled into a different perspective (with peacocks), was painted while listening to Bach B Minor Mass – the Credo seemed to fugue itself into a flowering, divine affirmation;  a mandala … a furled thought form.

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And now a few more swans:

Swan and Camel

The camel is a symbol for the Hebrew letter Gimel, (also a door) – related to Venus and birth.  The camel carries the water through the deserts of the soul, and is considered a gomel chessed – an act of kindness.

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Swan, cygnets and owl

The owl is ambiguous – looks like a predator, but protects.  The owl as the bird of Pallas Athene, is “understanding”  Often we fear the mysterious guardians of our soul.

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Swan, Letter Beit

The Letter Beit – the second in the Hebrew alphabet – is “the Beginning.”  We can learn a lot from the unhurried poise and soft yogic movement of the swan’s long neck.  Beit contains the cosmic current which is Aleph, and is expressed through “the Intelligence of Transparency.”   Beit is the concentration of what is born.

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Aquariel – an angel of the waters and of the air through the woods of life.

COPYRIGHT – All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeaquariel.wordpress.com/