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.
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.
Here my latest Haiku:
The thought brought on a Haiku last week …
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.
To remain grounded and prevent the fate of Icarus, I tolerate the company of my little devils.
I hesitated posting this, since a deep sadness resurfaced and took hold of me while pondering Soul and Spirit. What’s the point, why exist, to what end? I asked this as a child, having been shown horrendous images in the wake of the Second World War, meant as shock treatment in my German primary school during the 1950’s. A poem I wrote about this experience I still don’t feel confident to share. I turned iconoclast, explored philosophies, religions, myths, literature, searched for exceptional minds, and resisted prescribed beliefs in favour of direct experience.
Unfortunately this parent and school-supported project received no support from the Government. Still, at times I felt I was making beneficial contributions to society. Of late, no new question has arrived to kick off a renaissance in my poetic imagination, or shed light on the collective mood of futility, which seems to confirm the scientific view that reality is determined by numbers.
We mostly think through conventional forms and givens, for practical reasons, while another way of thinking embraces invisible and unknown dynamics via intuition – like the seeming particle/wave paradox in quantum mechanics, where a local particle also exists as a non-local wave. The two perceptions can potentially mingle creatively, but, notably in times of social uncertainty, they clash, and fewer people maintain the ability to tolerate
I was in Prague. My then companion, for his birthday celebration, had organised a small group of friends to spend a weekend in this beautiful city, coinciding with the moon landing. We could afford a 5 star hotel, due to a bargain currency exchange rate in the wake of the short-lived 
As painters or sculptors do, I frequently step back from my writing projects, searching for the core, a half imagined essence to shine through and re-animate the creative flow. Skills alone don’t do it, techniques alone don’t do it, nor style. As long as the essence of what I try to express floats in the unconscious, my efforts will baffle and tease me.
of impact and send the pain back, assuming the wood tolerates it better than my soft tissue. It’s a long-honoured small-scale experiment with disentangling subtle vibrations. It works for me – pain and swelling ease miraculously. Try it, for fun.
As in receiving and sending waves, I converse with my body, with trees, shrubs, flowers and creatures. I caution spiders not to come near my sleeping space. I have heart-to-heart chats with my house, laptop, car, and all manner of things. I say thank you to what I value and depend upon and even use little mantras conveying something like – all is well – I hear you gasp. I do this to disrupt mindless automatic response patterns. With people, I admit, it’s way more complicated.
During recent centuries, western cultures developed multiple viewpoints. But what is happening to this wonderful diversity, given the hyper connectivity of the internet, where the masses turn for guidance, where people empowered by visibility offer opinions that swing back & forth in dramatic ways? Is this the dawn of a new tribalism that blanks out the unique contexts and realities of individual minds? One has to have one’s wits about these days.
The flashing mirrors of the media blind me at times. Wary of the hive, I also like to belong. When fed up, in need of digestion, I retreat to a cave in my mind (once real) where I attend to what bubbles up from the unconscious in that zone between dreaming and waking, until I emerge from my cave into the light of a new reality, new beauty, new meaning and new questions.
Having succumbed to waves of nostalgia, I’m unsure what will emerge next, which is fine for now. My father’s death at 99, while sad, is also a relief. During the last two years I’ve been on tender hooks, waiting for the telephone call, and the prospect of sorting and processing a left-behind-part of my life. As anticipated, the reality of it was exhausting. There’s no financial reward, since what’s left of my father’s estate will just about cover the bills. His furniture was too damaged to be accepted at auctions, and anything else of value he had given away to people whose support he appreciated. He resented me for not living up to his ideas, and I resented him for his total lack of support. He had fun, spending a fortune on years of luxury cruises around the world with his second partner. While often justified, resentment is entirely useless. I tried my best, so I’ll drop my misgivings and wish my dad’s soul a good journey onwards. It frees up my life.
It’s ironic, because my Dad had artistic leanings resembled my own. We only occasionally clicked, for a short while, especially when he needed me, after which he retreated into his controlling paranoid mode. He may have been jealous of the self determining freedom available to my generation. I should add that his psyche was injured by the last horrific war.
Course of Mirrors 