Exciting … If you type … Ashen Venema, Shapers … into google, you’ll find several platforms that allow you to pre-order #shapers. The e-book link will follow once the paperback is released.
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The image above is a painting by Cynthia Holt, inspired by some of my poems. I lost contact. Can’t find her now
Over time, shifting seasons leave strata in matter that can be studied like pages of a book, be it in air, water, ice, earth, rock, stones, fossils, bones, or in more short-lived material. Take the rings of a tree, spiralling upwards, normally hidden, but clearly readable when the trunk is cut. Even a single hair tells a story of the duration of its growth, likely composed of fluctuating water and nutrients intake, but nevertheless showing an overall pattern of fairly consistent data within a slice of set time, like a snapshot of nature’s heirloom, whose treasures our runaway culture seems hell bent to recklessly damage.
When it comes to psychic codes, we must enter a different sphere and use a different language. Let’s say being cognizant of our changing thought patterns gives us our mythical code? What image might depict the Spirit of a generation, developed by a mania for progress, but also formed through individual and collective archetypal demands, via symbols and dormant dreams that pop up, shifting outlook and direction?
I’m spinning here a few thoughts into nowhere, or maybe the kind of noo-sphere, a term used by Vladimir Vernadsky & Theilhard de Chardin, which was later seen as an early vision of the internet. The concept resonates with the ancient concept of Akasha. Jean Raffa on her blog https://jeanbenedictraffa.com/blog/ recently reminded me of Lynne McTaggart’s book, The Field, collating more recent scientific discoveries, again affirming how our minds are influenced, and vice versa, by an interactive field spanning the cosmos, from where we connect up and process thoughts and feelings through our body and brain (call it our radio stations.) Frequently, the purpose of anything is established in hindsight. So one could say events happen for reasons we don’t know of, and we assign meaning only at a later point in time, stretched to hours, decades, centuries or aeons.
A medley of my inner crowd, the seeker, philosopher, writer, artist and poet, all receive and transmit through slightly different wavelengths, following their interests, but affected by the media, the weather, moon phases, astrological constellations, vaguely remembered dreams, company, and my body’s metabolism. In that process I jostle for meaning that could gain purchase towards a cohesive point of view. Alas, cohesive points of view can be tricky. While keen to learn and unlearn, when I encounter a fixed point of view I sense a false solidity, while my truth seeker floats, suspended, like the protagonist in my novel, ‘Course of Mirrors.’ https://twitter.com/mushkilgusha
C G Jung suggested the mind has been developing over a very long time, and keeps developing from as yet hidden seeds that rest in the unconscious, holding ideas that will slowly grow and unfold, which implies the seeds already exist, waiting for fair conditions to be recovered.
This process is the theme of a brilliant epic, ‘Involution,’ published by Philippa Rees.
We know that when gifted individuals dare to go public with an insight that rocks or contradicts the Zeitgeist, they get vilified. The list of such intuitive people, historically and up to this present time, is long. We owe a great debt to their insights and efforts, bringing us understanding from the unconscious. New decoding is looked at with suspicion and hardly ever welcome, though small sections of society receive and embrace new ideas and nurture their meaning until collective acceptance happens. There are also those who clearly understand a message but fear the implications. They will try to shoot messengers that threaten their profits or their hard won reputation.
Myth & stories, the most reliable cultural codes, are treated with moderate tolerance by players attached to short term gains, who may lack the imagination to grok the symbolic significance of fresh and life-enhancing interpretations.
Returning to my interest in changing thought patterns, I checked the archive of my website, going back to 2011. It shows that for more than nine years I’ve been jumping about a lot, which makes the content of my postings consistently random. But do my posts have an underlying code that relates to this past decade? Some vague answers bubble up. I’m waiting
C G Jung wrote in ‘Men and his Symbols’ … ‘We have obviously been so busy with the question of what we think that we entirely forgot to ask what the unconscious psyche thinks about us. …
Placing this writer here into the third person … considering the time slice of a decade, and given the random themes of the posts, do Ashen’s readers depict a pattern, a code? Anything like a famous elevator pitch authors should have up their sleeve, and which she seem incapable of formulating. She knows it’s cheeky to ask, but sees it as a reality test.
she must keep alive
the rare glimpse and utter awe
that consigned her fate
a timeless moment
of totality that won’t
fit reality
only a fresh one will do
Inspired by a dark moon thought, this is a new moon post.
This image should have been on top. I admit to be totally lost in regard to the new editing format wordpress has installed. Lost as how to place images, how to do elegant links, or how to escape back to the classical editor, since I can’t open the plug-in zip. I hope to figure it out somehow. Tips are welcome.
Course of Mirrors 