Tag Archives: psyche

… my mind – kept by a stranded pirate …

Imagine your brain functions like a psychic radio, tuned to a self-reflective universal mind, the field of consciousness of a cosmic being that gathers, transmits and receives information (aka Noosphere in Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s sense, or the Akasha in Indian cosmology.)

We interact with this field. Some thought waves are fuzzy, others strong. We exchange thoughts woven from strands of routine interests, be they based on curiosity, fear, obsession, faith, doubt, novel ideas, myths, facts, dreams, wisdom … Let’s assume the way our brain radio communicates with this field shapes the smaller sphere of our individual mind.

I depict my mind as an island in a tumultuous sea, operated by an idiosyncratic stranded pirate, me.

On rough weather days, when the radio emits white noise, my pirate feels moody, lacks motivation to tackle survival chores, and vacantly skims across the crest of waves spanning towards the horizon. On other days the pirate is energised, be it by rage about world events washed up at the shore of the island, or the sun’s beauty shimmering back from the moon. On occasions the pirate is inspired to dive under the surface, where reflections are held in silence and darkness. Dream-stations may reveal the whereabouts of treasures deep under. There is a reoccurring rhythm to this process. In recent years my pirate has developed a bizarre humour, and tends to favour the dream stations, especially when the quest for coherence and meaning among the debris washed up at the shore seems a tad too tedious.

Maybe it’s the backward arc of old age, but memories pop up suddenly, before and after sleep, succinct impressions, lucid images of past and future events, faces, gestures, objects, the unspoken, and concepts too … associations are sought. A revision of the pirate’s life narrative is feeding surreal dreams. Intuitive hunches chase relevance. How do these images of people, landscapes, houses, objects and concepts, familiar and unfamiliar, relate to now?

Could the restless question be trivial as well as dangerous?

Calm returns when my pirate observes plant life and the movement of animals, then a wonderful symbiotic symphony resonates from cells within the body. Intimate knowledge arises, which also subtly confirms that my pirate has this intimate sense about people, too, and, well, just about anything. I’m hesitant to give weight to this phenomenon, since those who share deep knowledge without collectively approved evidence were and are often crucified. I don’t know about you, my readers, but with some controversial subjects my pirate is a little reticent.

It can’t be denied that our conditioned individual mind has access to primal clusters of knowledge, as well as intuiting visions of the future? What do we do with this information? It’s frustrating to realise that we have limited control over what we attract and reflect. A higher intelligence is at work, perpetuating divisions while consciousness expands.

The universal mind and its network of individual minds remains a complex mystery.

we all use thoughts which

once animated travel

to destinations

distance seems irrelevant

 

a wide open mind

may suffer indigestion

mirroring too much

spook actions from far away

 

thoughts are absorbed or bounce back

harmonise or clash

our energy in motion

signals at high speed

intention matters

 

‘Thoughts are beings that generate … One thought of kindness, gathers a thousand beings of love and kindness around one.’            Hazrat Inayat Khan

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… remember me – the body implores …

Day and night we receive and tie up new thoughts, mostly subliminal. By keeping track of this neuron dance we find fresh associations that expand the architecture of our imagination. Sudden insights lift our spirit. Frequently practical innovations arrive, novel ways of doing things. But with thoughts adrift, we often fail to be present to our bodies, and this neuron dance turns mechanical. We may be hampered by depression, presently a global dis-ease, but life perks up a little when we listen to our body.

‘Remember me,’ it implores. ‘Love me, give me attention.’

Stretching limbs calms the stress in fascia tissues and muscles, stirs the senses, and deepens breathing. Food tastes better, small things delight, movement gives pleasure.

‘We are souls dressed up in sacred biochemical garments and our bodies are the instruments through which our souls play their music.’ … Einstein  

The unconscious collective psyche continuously churns up vital signals through the body, but has long been denigrated by wrong-footed ideologies … the greatest crime against humanity, since the neglect of nature’s voice led to the abuse that threatens the balance of life on this planet, and our health.

Nature – the wild, matter, psyche breath, being, anima, the feminine principle – contains all life. The term has acquired many slants of meaning during previous centuries. We have now established frames through which nature is perceived … the scientific, economic, political, apocalyptic, holistic, visionary, philosophical, romantic, and the spiritual frame, for example. Each outlook influences the relationship we have with nature, as a person, group or nation.

Since all human innovations are inspired by nature, every manmade thing is natural, yet by lengthening the duration-span of too many products, nature’s cyclic process of decay is disrupted, often with dire consequences. It’s like stuffing ourselves with food the body can neither absorb nor digest. Controlling nature’s rhythm does not work. The best we can attempt is to seek rapport, fall into step, attune and harmonise with this dance we are part of.

Quite likely all the varied frames which determine our relationship with nature were formed by the wish to make the unconscious force of the wild psyche more bearable.

We demand nature’s protection. This includes humans. Do the ecological villains among us also deserve protection? In a psycho-therapeutic practice this would be considered as the expansion of consciousness through befriending and owning the shadow. I forever wish this map of knowledge was introduced to the educational curriculum.

First call is the body. If the body’s messages are fully received (giving varied frames their due) and understood (in a deep loving sense,) the messages are always essentially true. Only humans manipulate and deceive, by ignoring and belittling nature’s raw truths. The planet suffers the same neglect. Our best efforts at deep listening will always be partial.

I count on the constant minority that grasps a wide spectrum of meaning in relation to every rift that endangers our world. While this minority tries to uphold a wider view, as a small collective it is not geared for action, knowing well that whatever succeeds in being legally determined cannot please all, but usually intensifies disagreements, especially in cultures where emotions and thoughts are censored for political ends.

One could say the will to action is diluted by the wider view. But there exists a subtler use of the will, like rehearsing positive outcomes, which requires imagination. Efforts of this subtle will are hardly visible; but they no less influence and create our reality. This subtle will is based on trusting the intelligence of nature, of soul, the One Being, the Spirit of Guidance.

A prayer/song by Hazrat Inayat Khan:

Let thy wish become my desire

Let thy will become my deed

Let thy word become my speech beloved

Let thy love become my creed

Let my plant bring forth thy flower

Let my fruit produce thy seed

Let my heart become thy lute beloved

And my body thy flute of reed

Crossing and bridging divides is the theme of my life. As a child I came to believe in a spirit that guided me, sparked by a print that hung in my paternal grandparent’s bedroom, where a guardian angel leads a girl and a boy along a rickety bridge across a ravine with rapids rushing below. The image left a deep impression, and, over the years, similar images appeared in dreams, revealing the scene’s symbolic power. Training and working as a transpersonal therapist I often helped clients to explore the complex relationship between the masculine and feminine principle (Anima and Animus) active within each individual and across the gender divide. But most useful work on the road to greater wholeness begins with listening to what the body knows, and, by implication, what the self-regulating planet tells us.

The theme of bridges plays in my novel, Course of Mirrors, and continues (in the sense of bridging time) in a sequel, Shapers, which I hope to publish this or next year.

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… how past and future flipped their meaning …

Painting by Theodor Severin Kittelsen

I noticed that since the lockdown of active living was brought in to control the spread of the Corona virus … the isolation from social engagement has affected children and the elderly in different ways.

The middle group, people who kept our social systems functioning, deserve deep gratitude. The work pressure surely involved intense stress and risk-taking.

As for children and young people, bursting with energy and hungry for experiences, I felt for them, being trapped in often cramped homes, while having their future projects halted. No rite of passage events, no opportunity to find their tribe, dreams lost in a distant mist, a mirage on the horizon, where sky and land meet. Recalling my own childhood and youth, I find it hard to imagine the sense of futility and sheer frustration. Some kids will have coped better with this situation than others, not least because there is now the internet, zoom, and generally the disembodied metaverse to engage with, but to what end, when bodies become redundant?

The elderly, to which I belong, for whom work and social engagement may have slowed, and then jolted to a standstill during the past few years, have at least the advantage of a rich and often meaningful past. At best, they can make use of an enforced solitude to regain contact with the unconscious, travel inwards, and use the overview from a distance to lift and re-weave the threats of their lived experience.

From where I observed the young and old sections of society, it seems that past and future flipped their meaning in relation to the expansion of consciousness, and, dare I say it, soul-making, which requires the organic experience. Compared to a bland future, the past holds abundant treasures for the imagination, and an almost luminous creativity. 

As long as I remember I felt a desire to deepen my understanding of time and space, nature, human behaviour, the sciences, people’s perception and differences, the collective psyche … to which end I travelled to seek adventures, read countless books and studied many subjects, some of them formally, like philosophy, spiritual traditions, psychology, mythology, art, photography, film and video, each time meeting interesting and inspiring groups and ideas. I was too involved with people to value the poems and stories I wrote, until my introspection flowed into a novel, ‘Course of Mirrors,’ and a soon-to-be sequel, ‘Shapers.’.  

I’m presently reading Italo Calvino’s ‘Invisible Cities,’ a dreamlike dialogue between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo about imagined or memorised cities. A sentence I came upon yesterday sparked this post …

“You reach a moment in life when, among the people you have known, the dead outnumber the living … “

This does not yet apply, but I get it. During the last three decades I lost over 20 dear friends, including my parents, not taking into account writers and public figures I admired. Grief meanders freely in my mind, is palpable, and unavoidable. Yet, due to their influence, all significant people that died during these last three decades live on in my psyche.

While my physical engagement with people has slowed these last years, time itself has dizzyingly sped ahead, which, for me, is enough reason to resurrect the embodied insights of past decades, if only to defy a sensational but boringly flat metaverse. Young people might of course have a totally different view.

Several themes were on my mind to write about here this month, until this curious thought of a reverse past/future junction came up last night. So I wonder if my reflections resonate with some of my readers, especially those of you in the second half of their lives.

My week living in a cave on the island of Elba

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… without sleep & dreams we’d go mad …

Sonnets to Orpheus    

                Part II

          10

All we gained is threatened by the machine

As it assumes possession rather than obeys the mind,

Ignoring the hesitant gesture of a radiant hand

It wilfully forges ahead, cutting sharp into stone.

Nor does it ever slow down enough for us to win distance,

Yet oiled by itself remains in the silent halls of fact.

It circles in living and claims to know best about living,

And with equal resolve creates, destroys, indifferent to all.

Yet our being remains spun in the mysteries of birthing,

Origins from enchanted wells, a play of pristine powers,

To behold only with eyes closed, and in adoration.

Words still softly dissolve before the unspeakable state,

While the most resonant stones give form to ever new sounds,

Gathering music into the divine unmade.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Translated by Ashen Venema

A friend called earlier, lovingly concerned, wondering why I hadn’t posted anything this month. I don’t plan posts ahead, but asking myself – what lingers in my mind – this poem by R M Rilke asked for attention. I used it to upfront a film degree dissertation (as a mature student) during the mid-90s … ‘Body Electric,’ An Exploration of Human Identity in the Digital Age. Once I discover how to transfer Mac Claris Work from floppy discs into a Word doc. or PDF, I’ll share the dissertation and other articles with my readers.

I like translating poems from German into English, poems by R M Rilke, W Goethe, H Hesse. It’s an adventure to find the right word and phrase. Maybe I should share such translations more often. The title of this post … without sleep and dreams we’d go mad … relates to the above Rilke’s poem, since the internet with its avalanche of information can assume a machine-like relentlessness, and yet, we can’t do without it, which makes me grateful for being able to sleep, so my psyche can assimilate new information during dreams.

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… musings on order and chaos …

As an example, not a general theory, a parent who habitually keeps everything organised, clean and in place, may feel displeasure when their child does not follow this model. Sensing displeasure, the child may feel restrained and controlled, and possibly develop a reaction via contrary behaviour. Of course, reactions to initial conditions are way more complex. But both, excessive order and excessive chaos in the early environment set a tone.

My early impressions were in the middle, yet plenty of condensed experiences pull me into repetitive behaviour. But people for whom, let’s say, the organised model felt intolerable, meeting an adult partner who likes order, even in a mild way, easily hooks into their initial reaction. The desire for order is stability, beauty, keeping the wild and unpredictable at bay, and also serves as a buffer against anxiety. But someone who felt restricted by order may easily feel controlled. In this two-way process, any projection also frames the projector, and various complex relationships are such defined, with children, partners, work colleagues, mentors, groups, and even political parties. The irony is that instead of choosing a partner or group where this conflict does not arise, we often unconsciously attract an early model we disliked, maybe because of its familiarity, maybe because of the implied challenge. I assume it’s a psychological trick allowing for lessons in tolerance and, hopefully in time, a reframing of one’s life story.

While periods of stability are necessary, it is from chaos that creativity is born and new forms emerge, which is why some artists embrace chaos, allowing for the spontaneous discovery of new patterns and hidden harmonies.

To voluntary endure the dissonance between order and chaos is a spiritual quest towards an attitude of transcendence.

In this sense, and with the emphasis on becoming, my Sufi teacher, Fazal Inayat-Khan, who was also a musician and poet, used to orchestrate chaos in workshops for his students to great effect. He trained us well for the turbulent cultural changes that are now upon us, a global rite of passage we best consciously engage with. Faith in the unknown tends to signal our guiding spirit to open unsuspected doors towards a deeper resonance with the collective psyche.

“Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.’ — Fyodor Dostoevsky

‘The Gods envy the perfection of man, because perfection has no need of the Gods. But since no one is perfect, we need the Gods.’ … Carl Jung, Liber Novus, page 244

‘The ideal is the means; its breaking is the goal.’ Hazrat Inayat Khan

Ever since I came upon James Gleick’s book ‘Chaos,’ the William Heinemann Ltd 1988 edition, I was fascinated by the concept which has radically changed scientific enquiries, as well as giving new meaning to my practice of transpersonal therapy.

James Gleick’s book also contains the amazing Mandelbrot set. Here a short introduction …

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3orIIcKD8p4

James Gleick’s newest publication is on ‘Information.’

Phew … here I’m challenged … a new wordpress format with its insistence on ‘blocks,’ disallows me the use of the classic editor. It’s a headache to create a post.

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… Trump – a prologue asking for the proper story …

       The seed -painting by Silvia Pastore

Stories inform, entertain, inspire. They make us think, dream, identify, or divert us from reflecting about what is going on inside us or in our present situation. Images and story lines reinforce each other. If we can’t detect the symbols images hold for us, be they evoked in paintings, literature, in the frame by frame images in cinema, or in the media, a story may grip with sensational elements, but remain otherwise flat. Feedback can vary, to use comic extremes, from, ‘What a thrilling yarn’ to, ‘What the hell was that all about?’ Stories that hang in the middle might satisfy both contemplatives and the sensationalist, and occasionally become best sellers.

A story well told acts like a seed in the psyche, is subtle and opens cracks in the unconscious with contradictions to ponder upon. A story well told is often mysterious, far from obvious at first impression. A story well told takes deep questions into our dreams. Then, out of the blue, we’re struck by an insight, and a door to the imagination opens.

I’ve been wondering about the Trump story. How many of you have had an inner voice saying, ‘You can’t make this up. It can’t be, how does he get away with it?’ even while chapter after chapter the public across the world was spun into a nightmarish trance. The surreal and sensational element the Trump protagonist brought to the world stage has wrought continuous fascination and cravings for the next cliff-hanger. ‘Wow, he says it like it is … a kind of superman who gives a fuck about good manners or political correctness.’

No Aha moment, no insight, no transformation, just point by point affirmations for the disenchanted, the frustrated, to let it all hang out, a continuous clowning spectacle, embodying, well, possessed by the archetype of the sulking child whose gratification is denied, the Id with its breath-taking rages. No contradiction here. No subtle narrative, more like an attention-demanding prologue. The meanwhile addicted public won’t take kindly to the sobering. Where does it go from here?

For this prologue to develop from a catalytic incident into a worthwhile story begs the questions, and not just from ungratified Americans, but from ungratified people all over the world … and though I could dare answers, they’d only resonate with a few psychologically aware, the already converted.  So I include myself as curious as to where those vital questions will find ground to grow:

What is denied, and by whom?

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… story codes in nature and psyche …

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.

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…alone with the alone …

By bending towards light all life unfolds and is shaped by obstructions – and the dark, compressed sphere behind the crack that allows growth to emerge.

It’s the same for all plants and creatures, and humans, who, once visible and mirrored in other eyes and minds are drawn into a labyrinth of self-reflection that informs the self-image.

Beyond eyes, we perceive each other via dreams, intuitions, catching glimpses of transient truths and falsehoods beneath the visible. How many mirrors acknowledge, ignore or denigrate us? Our families reflects us, our social environments, school, college, university, churches, travel companions, sport clubs and interest groups in general. For some the mirrors branch out to success and fame for a talent. For others the mirrors narrow to a work environment, or peter out once the job comes to an end.

In come informal internet platforms, where simple ‘like’ and ‘love’ buttons are often pressed almost by chance. It’s easy to assume that friends who ignore our posts don’t care about us, though they may have missed it. In any case, we know there’s a limit to responsiveness. Even at private parties we only engage with a few people in any significant way.

Multiverses – Mindfunda

Is it a buried memory of the evasive calm center of life’s storm that animates our journey? Will we come to the sobering conclusion that all we are not is a facets of us, of the one being? This psychic tapestry of the dominant attitudes and repeating thoughts we have of ourselves and others work their invisible threads. Whether we’re aware of this process or not, these thoughts weave the state of our collective psyche.

And off we are into the multiverse – what is real?

In the village where I grew up (near Munich) there was a small group that discussed the ideas of Carl Gustav Jung. His ideas settled in me and have influenced my thinking ever since. I hope one day it is understood that the psyche is not confined to space and time and this insight will be acknowledged and utilised. I always rejoice when Jung gets a mention, like at Maria Popova’s wonderful website: Brainpickings … which in this link features a memorable interview with Jung. She never lets us forget about the people who inspire and keep in balance this world we live in.

Another sustaining influence for me was Ibn’ Arabi, the Sufi mystic, first encountered through Henry Corbin’s translation of the ‘Creative Imagination.’ Get a taste of the quest for what is ‘behind the many’ in this wonderful poem ‘Alone with the Alone.’

Here my latest Haiku:

 

an angel wings by

leaving a fluffy feather

that will dip no scale

 

 

And I can’t resist mentioning my novel, ‘Course of Mirrors.’ – Some comments about it are on my book page. The book yearns for readers. Check it out on my bookpage. 

Stay safe, avoid sensationalism, stay sane ♥

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… outer and inner horizons …

Atlantic coast, Morocco

Whatever dream is dreaming through me brings stimulation, challenge, insight, learning, or, during dark times, unlearning. The latter, with its accompanying disillusionment, has tested me for a while now. I’m not alone. The whole planet seems to be going through a dark moon phase.

I like to think beyond every effort, every hill and every sea are new horizons, outer or inner, where adventure beckons, treasures might be found.

But I tend to forget that the most relevant information is gifted by the body, and the planet. It is unsettling to accept the physical signs and their metaphors, because nature’s truth is scary. It holds a mirror of knowledge surrendered over time, with glimmers that engaged the human imagination and has given us the tools of science. As living organism and self-correcting system, nature deserves deep gratitude and respect.

The mind (psyche,) a finer and faster kind of matter, with the ability to emulate nature, plants and re-plant itself in any field of interest … outraces wisdom, seeks drama, familiar patterns, fertilises, grows, invents, designs, builds ideal dwellings, ideal systems, ideal worlds … be they citadels of power suppressing the underdog, utopias of love and liberty, or creative realms, where artists embrace and make the ordinary luminous and sacred. The mind loves myth-making, explores symbols, plays with forms and random connections, re-interprets reality and generate new meaning.

Continuously rejuvenated, mind pursues all imaginable universes across time, seeking eternity, since, even if unawares, it envisions the wholeness of its original home, where it will never be lost, but forever be enfolded by unlimited potential.

Yet when it comes to the daily business on this planet, the mind fares best when listening to the body, the living matter, the feminine principle (irrespective of gender,) and appreciates its cosmic interconnections, since all secrets arise from nature’s dark chambers. A severance from these intricate physical and mythical roots of our being can result in a devastating sense of futility, where the question, ‘What’s the point?’ brings up no action worth considering, no ideal worth following. Somber and futile looms a future that wants to fix waves into particles.

The thought brought on a Haiku last week …

 

if I were this calm

river without internal

discord – I would miss

how the waves urge particles

in random beauty

While unsettling at times, I must attend and listen to my body – learn and unlearn, flow with change, light and darkness, of dust, the chorus of wind and birds.

 

From an exhibition in Amsterdam, Dec 2014

And, hopefully, I’ll catch ever now and then a spark of Duende,’  the poetic escape. Goethe called it the spirit of the earth – a mysterious force that everyone feels and no philosophy has explained.

Follow the ‘Duende’ link above for Lorca’s talk.

Below, a related post from 2017 – Both links open new pages without losing the page of this post.

… letting go of letting go …

 

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… there is a place …

Imagine a circle of people, 20 to 40, adding their voices to the drone and tune of a reed organ, repeatedly singing a phrase for an hour, or longer, with short intervals when the organ’s tune breaks into musical improvisations, only to return to the melody and phrase. In the end the sound slows and fades, leaving the echo of your voice as an indispensable part of all voices.

Then imagine a deep silence.

One of many musical tunings my spiritual Sufi friend created went with these words:

There is a place of beauty –

There is a place of peace –

There is a place of harmony –

In me

Before you grunt at the sheer illusion of such place, consider the evocation of beauty, peace and harmony as an ideal, a means –  not a goal – a means towards the hub of the mill, where the grain is ground to flour in a process of transformation.

Musical tunings are regular events among Sufi friends. Their rhythmic repeating, with or without words, produces a trance-like state in participants – not aiming at escape, but at a homecoming. Fazal Inayat-Khan’s teachings broke rules, exceeded conventions. While honouring the value of traditional methods, he introduced  contemporary phrases, like the one above, and responded to his audience with spirited musical improvisations.

The purpose of such events is remembrance of the Self, or the One. In traditional Zikr it would be Allah, God, though in strict Islamic circles music is not allowed.

I occasionally play and sing the above tune on my reed organ, especially when distressing incidents happen around the world and I have a need to tune mind and body. The place of beauty, peace and harmony only exists in the imagination, as a timeless inner realm, a state where duality co-exists, a state of unknowing, where the spirit of eternal potential lingers.

For me these group events were profoundly renewing. The body, my temporary home, became a tuning fork brought into resonance with the ground and the marrow of my bones. Suffused with consciousness, any mind-chatter merged with the yearning sounds, and my atoms realigned in new constellations.

A darker cover for my novel I wish I had used.

Intention does not bring us to this uncharted and unmeasured inner place. And even glimpsing a truth flashing from there may shock the angels in us. Catching such truth can happen equally through other means … nature, art, dance, literature, drugs, breath work, praying, guided imagery, computer programming, psalm singing, sport, silence, fasting, dreams, etc., but resonance is needed, and a deep desire for truth must lurk in the heart.

While practices towards this ungraspable inner realm may have repetitive elements, the place is never repeated but ever fresh. It is where the breath of life pulses, just not at our timescale.

Returning from the inner realm to the contemporary flow of time, we get on with life. Yet such deep memories remains and will respond to a sincere recall, where we detect once more how matter is revealed in its essence and shine. For the psyche this is gold. This inner place shows that while we embody birth and death, light and darkness, good and bad, past and future, in true essence we are pure consciousness.

To remain grounded and prevent the fate of Icarus, I tolerate the company of my little devils.

My angels like it so, agreeing that while the obscure company I keep makes living complex, painful, a challenge, it also makes existence more interesting for that, and aids the psyche’s expansion of consciousness.

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