Tag Archives: sleep

… the psyche’s tectonic plates …

Do you find yourself staring vacantly into space after scrolling through daily headlines?

Just like ocean waters rise during an earthquake, information can dumbfound us when unconscious content is shifting, erupting, and sudden bursts of awareness surface, which is the psyche’s attempt to seek balance.

We are stirred by the rough storms of fervent feelings that emanate from the collective mind spectrum. I may feel safe from natural disasters and human brutalities shaking our planet, but am, like most people, bombarded by the alarming images that land on my laptop screen. I consider it a duty to witness what goes on around the world. But how does one face the magnified realities of injustice, suffering and death?

Those inclined to psychotic violence tend to crave emotional catharsis as a way to deal with paranoia, anger and resentment, spurred on by sensational or false reports that frequently spout blame, hypocrisy and sarcasm.

Ensuing are toxic environments that employ punishing control. A sensitive and too tenderly attuned individual may sink into a trance of inner turmoil and depression, or renounce their moral dignity and engage in violence themselves, often self-harming.

Beyond strength, it takes subtlety to stay awake, present to suffering, and centred, when the functional energy balance of the cosmic psyche wobbles.

There seems nothing useful this helpless me can do. Or is there?

My body complains when muscles cramp up with stored emotional tension, restricting its spontaneous movements, its fluid dance. So I’m forced to listen and allow offered solutions. One example is: to stomp the ground with heels, like in Indian Kathak, Spanish Flamenco, Irish or other dance moves … it’s freeing to ground and rebirth intense energy.

I appreciate the body’s wisdom, true and real in that its physical form is mortal. And I like to believe that the energy state of each of us influences the environment – near and far away. Also, thankfully, our metabolism allows sleep, where impressions are processed via dreams. My dreams are fairly wild these days.

What is your experience of trying for a balanced state of mind within these mad times?

Do share if you like.

The above image was created by Cynthia Holt, inspired by my poems.

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… bed-time dialogue with my body …

Time to close the book and prepare for sleep, not always assured. Still, let’s advance to our night time ritual.

Thank you my little palace.

I love you. I know you are me too, and both of us rely on the mysterious soul, but I call you my body. Forgive our mind for ignoring your gentle cautions and prompts, again. Forgive the unreliable promises, like the hot shower you craved, less time in front of the laptop screen, not eating that pretzel baked with wheat, which gives you gas, or indulging in that late extra glass of Rose. Our rebellious mind has a masochistic streak of resisting your well-meant counsel.

So before sleep, here are some treats. I massage our feet, and toes. Each toe has a name I address it with … big one, forward one, middle one, enchanted one, and little one. Next – a neck-rolling, then pinching and rubbing its surrounding muscles, and, not to forget, finger-cracking. These exercises are not just mechanical, without the imagination to sincerely call in the divine spirit, these rituals would be meaningless.

Pulling the duvet round our shoulders, we adopt a first position, curling on our right side, like a foetus in the womb, finding a cosy arrangement for the head with a small cushion, and recalling the last pages of the closed book, and summarizing impressions of the day.

Now it’s us wishing to just drift off into weightless realms – this remains a wish. We want to stretch, so we shift to lying on the back, flick toes, gently massage the stomach, pull up legs and spread them in a kind of opening-flower-like choreography. This feels good for a while. Then we shift to lying on the left. With less muscle tension our stomach rumbles, its juices are sighing with relief to get on with their purpose, digesting food.

Still, the mind is restless, processing past, present and future, wanting answers, hunting memory land for nostalgic moments, fresh connections, insights, inspiration, all quite useless, since it pulls us in a thousand directions and stops us from sleeping. So let’s do another shift to lying on the right, to escape the meandering thoughts. Our somewhat remorseful mind suggests sinking into images, in the belief that hypnotic images will put reason to rest. So we must try soothing the overly receptive brain. The restlessness may of course be due to oncoming temperature changes, or the energizing influence of the full moon.

Now we remember, a mantra, a prayer, sending blessings to dear ones, gratitude for The One that allows our mind and body to exist together in relative harmony, here, now. These neglected rituals are often surprisingly effective. Finally, vivid images emerge, of friends, places, visions. The self-regulating system of our body-mind will soon update itself in ethereal dream space.

It matters how we achieve sleep, it has a bearing on the way we wake up, clear and resolved for another day ahead, or confused and fretting over the unfinished gestalt of an idea that floats around evasively, like a butterfly. It can’t be helped; there are greater forces at work.

What grounded us next morning was watching a young fox frolicking and eventually flopping down to sunbathe in our garden.

How do you, my readers, go to sleep?

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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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… souls roam and arrange impressions …

let sleep do its work

so the spirit will guide you

and leave helpful dreams

in that rich abode

of our collective being

– the only being –

 

awake souls roam and arrange

streams of impressions

rebel angels see

the judge slaves under man’s law

… while nature rules all …

in this earthly home

we catch our face in mirrors

that slowly unveil

through rhythms of remembrance

the source of freedom

 

heeding the heart’s pulse

your hand cascades poetry

and transmits secrets

I really must start to sort my poems …

The left sketch is a possible cover for my first poetry chapbook …

I was recently encouraged when two of my poems were published with Queen Mob’s Teahouse:

https://queenmobs.com/2019/05/poems-photographs-ashen-venema/

And then mentioned once more in a Berfrois magazine article by Joe Linker. Thank you Joe.

Paintings and Poems: City on a Hill

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