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.
Not just her daimon, but some unforgettable characters are given voices in the remarkable life of this visionary narrator, ‘Patchwork of a Safari Pilgrim’ by Philippa Rees. The link should include reviews.
Philippa Rees is also the author of an earlier, brilliant innovative work – INVOLUTION – that seeks to reconcile Science to God, structured as a dialogue between Reason and Soul, a revolutionary fresh hypothesis of evolution.
‘Safari of a Patchwork Pilgrim’ provides a mesmerizing background to this hypothesis, based on profound direct experience of another dimension. From my own, and shared stories during my client work, I’m certain they are more common than generally acknowledged. Without support, however, to integrate such insights into daily mundane life can be challenging, and often exposes people to ridicule, or much worse.
‘Patchwork of a Safari Pilgrim,’ is a vividly told story, sharing the agonizing attempt to bridge two worlds and translate meaning and truth between different dimensions. It’s the life of a genius.
A totally engaging read.
There’s presently nothing I could add to the brilliant reviews of Safari. I’m still digesting the unforgettable characters and the brilliant prose. But out of personal interest, I asked Philippa three questions, in the light of her experiences … and she graciously responded …
How did the sudden access to the Akashic memory change your sense of coherence?
My entry to the Akashic Record- the collective memory of evolution- was rapid but not sudden. The incremental loss of all my attachments to anything that ‘placed and held’ my identity: country first, then family, then moral injunctions (obligations), and finally, abandoning my children, for their sakes, one after another, removed the struts of what I (and others) thought was my identity. Through conflict, I surrendered each allegiance for a deeper one. It is why I had to take the reader through the growth of my understanding, with its critical components, and then the loss of each in turn. Leaving my children pulled me up by the roots.
Then I found myself in the mid-Atlantic, alone without any way forward or back. At this point, I was confined only by my fears, and they manifested physically in constant hallucinations of snakes. The snakes (fear) guarded the entrance to the Akasha.
I understood that instinctively. After experiencing compassion for the adder’s fear of me, and its explosion into a shower of sparks, the entry to the greater Akasha was cleared. I no longer had any fear, and the layers of creation manifested in wider and broader visions. What characterised these vistas was their integration with my own thoughts. Thought and vision coalesced. Space and time coalesced. I could move what I was seeing with my emotional thoughts. I could dive deeper into darkness (and it was sometimes terrifying) or imagine myself back into light. By imagine, I mean evoke memories and images of natural beauty like a mackerel sky, flocks of birds, a deer tripping through a dappled light. Those emotions of love and wonder acted like helium to raise me above the sucking, self-preserving fear.
I then realised that the co-ordinates of where each of us stands are in the crosshairs between love and fear. Love lifts, fear suppresses and sinks. Where they intersect determines what and who we are in every moment of our lives.
So what is called decoherence (aka madness) was much more coherent than the dislocation we normally live in, where thought and manifestation are separated. That separation is called time. In time, the material and the mental are distinct from one another. Causation works unidirectionally only, from the past to the present. We live in a squint-eyed world with only half of creation’s story. But the Akashic experience is timeless. Everything (both past and future) is simultaneously present because we contain it all. The future’s unrolling is already coded and inbuilt.
To try to live simultaneously in both the world of time and the timeless world of instantaneity, I adopted strategies (dancing, whirling and, when they threatened to confuse, falling), all of which, of course, were deemed symptoms of insanity.
That brings me to your next question.
How would you define synchronicity and how did it serve you?
If you understand the relativity of time, as being characteristic only of upper shallow surface layers, synchronicity is easier to understand. Not very different from dreaming, although in dreaming, events are still linearly sequenced, but changes can be instantaneous from one person or place instantly to another, and very much governed by emotions. Diving through the levels of the Akasha was like puncturing overlapping transparent dreams, the colours and images interpenetrating one another, some dark and terrifying, others sublime.
When we talk of synchronicity, we usually mean the improbable and simultaneous events that happen and which link together a particular significance for the observer. The observer makes the link of significance. Other people dismiss that significance and call it a coincidence simply because of its improbability. Only the person whose thought or perception sees the linkage understands it. That understanding imbues the events with meaning. So, in that sense, synchronicities appear to have the quality of a personal signal or a gift of confirmation—something from another world.
I would say that, indeed, they do come from another world, from the penetration of the Akashic memory into the world of time. They are also a gift from that world, and they tend to happen in moments of uncertainty when the person for whom they have significance is momentarily poised between conflicting claims. They are suspended without a causal imperative. So, they have the quality of confirming independent thought and action, a sort of nudge, ‘you are right, keep on, look afresh, believe in what is happening to you.’
Other manifestations of different causality can manifest in what are called poltergeist, teleportation and remote viewing. I believe all these are capacities of the same kind of altered consciousness in which perception of time and space is akin to the Akasha in which all is simultaneously present. Thought precedes manifestation. It is the central understanding in Involution, that consciousness creates.
The other aspect of synchronicity, which I came to understand very well, was that it can never be willed or anticipated, because it is not of this world of time. In that sense, it is always a gift. A gift that rewards the trust of being open to it. When you understand it and live within its affirmation, it happens more often, perhaps because you have somewhat freed yourself from the world of time and causality and live half-embedded in the divine. By the divine, I mean the acceptance of the perfect integrated linkage of all consciousness.
How did it serve me?
Through the extraordinary sequences of things being provided just when they were needed, I came to trust and rely upon my own integration into the divine. Clearly, my life was important in some way that superseded any beliefs I might have about it! At many moments of desperation, when I asked for signs or indications, there was only silence. Nothing. I came to realise that any act of will (wish, even prayer) was an affront to a supreme reality that had its own patterns, purposes and momentum. I could sink into and accept that, but not, in any small degree, orchestrate it! Not even by wanting or articulating a need! My needs were already known! And not always the ones I thought were paramount!
Once I had learned that, I found my well-being was provided for. All the improbable gifts; of a cruise to recuperate and then a home to build were given to restore me to the world of time and material 3D reality. Every person serves the divine creation, whether they know it or not. Synchronicity served both my exile and, equally, my return. The latter implied some purpose for which I had been preserved. Unlike the rapidity of my escape, the return was very much infused with slow and dogged time. Perhaps because I had travelled so far into instantaneity, I had to relearn the rules of material existence. For this reason, the writing of Involution was a compelling obligation of gratitude, and. in hindsight it rang out as also the intention of all that had happened to me. All had been necessary and led to it. And the writing of that was fostered and accompanied by constant synchronicities and the final affirmation of George Eliot! Back to ordinary time, but with filaments of Akashic timelessness still wafting and attached!
How would you explain the demands of your unique Daimon ?
This is more difficult. I want to avoid proselytizing or imposing my experience as any kind of special favour, and it is also deeply personal. But first, I must correct you: Daimon makes no demands, ever. The initial persuasion to write the book was not coercion but encouragement to have the courage to do what I contemplated for a long time.
When he, whom I call Daimon, first revealed himself, it was after a few disguises as other lovers. Without those, I would never have recognised, accepted or believed. For the Daimon is the Divine Self, or the Divine Companion, the Voice of the Soul, personal to me, but equally personal to anyone, whether recognised or not. That Voice is an expression of all the previous loves, both human and animal, and also the abstract loves of beauty, inspiration, music and longing. For a woman, likely to seem male; for a male, to seem female (the counter completion of the part) but also plural, uniting all, communing with all. Is Daimon God? Not entirely, but the personal God within, which, once recognised, is a constant presence, but also a Voice when addressed in the deepest silence, when all thought is stilled.
As I believe our DNA links each of us personally to the Akasha of historic memory, I believe the Divine Self links us to the God of All—So, in that way, it/he/she/they is both immanent and transcendent. The Voice does not speak unless thought or desperation calls to it. Occasionally, when I was in real danger, it alerted me. Perhaps the danger itself called out? That Self intimately knows the individual, his language, his references, but also his or her place and purpose, but the knowledge waits for its natural manifestation, never imposing any constraints upon liberty or error or time. But when directly addressed, it/he/she mirrors back /calls forth what is already known. When you think about it, to understand is to stand under. The umbrella of the Soul.
In ‘Safari’ I gave a direct voice to the Daimon in the recapture of events to alert a reader to what I had relied upon and consulted, at the height of the experience, almost constantly. He did not appear or penetrate my consciousness until all else was lost, and I had nowhere to turn, but at that point, he spoke very clearly. Without him, I would never have survived. So, feeling cherished, I ventured into the timeless worlds and took risks that to others, then and now, also seem insanely devoid of fear.
I have the sense that what God waits for, and why free will was granted to humanity, is reciprocity. God is lonely. He waits to be freely and joyfully loved by those gifted with the freedom to withhold it: Unlike angels who love by their nature, we have to choose.
Hence, the ending of both Safari and Canto the Ninth.
I shall know the moment I may turn and lift you…
My hands will liquid shape your acquiescence:
In the silent break of day, upon my shoulder
Upon dawn’s clavicle, your happy cheek will lean
Cradled in my neck, you’ll breathe our essence:
I shall carry you entwined and carefully
Through the silver light and striding water…
Wade until we drown in salt bright sea.
Liquid shape, Dawn’s clavicle, neck cradle, striding water- all anomalous contradictions; the point at which the individual and personal become the united universal.
Philippa would be an honourable member of the underground community of Shapers 🙂 … scientists with a mystical bent, as featured in my novel of that name.
I was born just before a full moon. There are many theories, physical, philosophical and astronomical, about the effects of waxing and waning moon phases on nature, among them how being born at a certain moon phase might shape the life purpose of a personality, pushed towards creative completion or creative release. True or not, in my experience, I always feel enchanted by the energy around a full moon, like today. Below a collage of mine.
Re: the full moon, a previously shared a vivid fable, written decades ago, ‘The Mysterious Object.’
And related … my poem ‘Sleepless Sun,’ https://courseofmirrors.com/poems/ … is about the relationship between sun and moon. This was during the 1970s, while working in Eilat, Israel, as stills photographer.
I feel melancholic this week. Another friend has died. The number of relatives & friends that have journeyed on towards during my life-time has reached 40 … which makes me feel ancient.
And yet, life flows on and demands my engagement with it. In addition to the full moon today, I’m enchanted by familiar friends having returned to my garden, a family of Blackbirds, and Robins. They know they’ll get daily treats.
Mystical texts and phrases can annoy the rational mind, since they hardly ever get to the point or, indeed, contradict themselves. Still, at rare, often fleeting moments, sometimes in nature, a vein of light can reveal a profound truth, even in an overused mystical quote. Or, if one finds the occasional balance between the outer and inner reality, a sudden awe may unfold in consciousness and surprise.
‘Some’ scientifically minded folks, fewer these days, tend to scoff at mysticism with its vague hints and speculations as a waste of time, or look down on the fools of this world who suffer from subjective illusions. And yet, the novel feelings emerging from direct numinous experiences greatly expand the consciousness of ‘The One.’ I guess firmly set rational minds shy away from numinous personal experiences that might rattle their worldview.
The latter may shake their heads at some baffling mystical musings. I re-found this write-up on the Kaif System among many papers heaped up in corners of my home. It was shared by Morag Murray, born in Scotland, who lived and travelled in Central Asia, Tibet, India and the Far East. Her autobiography, ‘My Khyber Marriage,’ 1934, features her marriage to an Afghan chieftain. She is also known as Saira Elizabeth Luiza Shah, mother of Idries Shah.
So here goes … The Kaif System
Kaif is the effect a person, idea, event, object, etc., has upon one. But it is distinct from aesthetic pleasure or any familiarly labelled experience.
When an experience which was trivial or routine gives one a sense of uplift – this may be Kaif. Repeated experiences yielding pleasure or attractive sensations do not have Kaif.
Eating, drinking, dancing, meeting people, visiting, travel, reading, seeing, feeling, hearing, thinking – may have Kaif.
The term for something which has Kaif is Kaifdar – ‘Kaif holding.’
A person who can provoke the sensation of Kaif in an individual or a number of people is called a Kaiyyad (Rhymes with ‘I laugh.’) The instructor in Kaif is called the Sahib el-Kaif (Kaifmaster.) Also used is the term Kaifiat – which means something like ‘Howness.’
The Kaifmaster Barik Ali said: ‘Kaif is the determining ingredient in an enjoyment. If it is not there, true enjoyment is not there. If it is not there, people may divert themselves with happiness – this is not Kaifiat.
The Kaifmaster Ankabut said: ‘Kaif is imparted into a thing. It may be imparted by anyone or anything. When it leaves only the shell is left. People eat shells when they cannot get nuts.’
The Kaifshinas is the Kaif-knower. He can appreciate Kaif (Rhymes with Life.) He may not be able to induce it. His house may be untidy. But it will be full of Kaif.
Kaifju means a Seeker of Kaif. He starts by seeing other people appreciate Kaif, and tries to find it wherever it manifests itself.
Kaif is used either as an indulgence on its own, or in order to provoke higher consciousness, known as ‘the secrets’ (Asrar.)
Kaif may be found in any community, at any time, under any circumstances. It is not bound by language, history, geography.
Certain professions are held to be Kaifdar. They include those of chief of state, builder, artizan, poet and designers of all kinds. Few professions are bereft of Kaif. Certain places are more difficult for Kaifshinasi.
The very term Kaif has become cheapened, so that people use it to mean ‘This is something I like’, or ‘I enjoy that,’ or ‘He has presence,’ or ‘This is satisfying, attractive, stimulating.’ You must be aware of yourself using this term, and also of those who use it, so that the coin may not be debased.
Kaif is defeated very easily. It is defeated in its attempted manifestations by false ideas, by self-esteem, by hypocrisy of any kind
There is a danger in Kaif. People who perceive it and do not respect or honour those who have Kaif, or respect Kaifdar situations, places, and so on, become ‘inverted to themselves.’ This is a state in which a person’s bad characteristics become stronger, and where his self-control becomes less, and where his hidden unpleasantnesses undermine his very being.
Kaif is in shape and in form, as well as in shapelessness and formlessness. It lies dormant in places and among people where it is not perceived for a long time. Then only the introduction of a conscious Kaifshinas will activate it again in that community so that it may take its place to help mankind.
Kaif is not confined to humanity, but can be perceived by all living organisms.
Something which is aesthetically adequate or emotionally stimulating can at the same time be devoid of Kaif.
Certain exercises, which vary in accordance with the person, place and the general situation of his community, enhance Kaifshinasi.
Kaifmasters subject their students to experiences, related incidents, objects and other matter which have Kaif, or can provoke it.
Kaif has a ‘moment,’ called the Dumm-i-Kaif (Breathspan of Kaif) during which it may be, as it were, ‘inhaled’. The Kaifshinas strengthens and makes permanent his perception of it by exercises which apply to this moment.
In religious, musical and even social ceremonials, a Kaifdar is present. One of his activities is to ‘infuse’ Kaif into the proceedings at a time when uninformed onlookers might assume that the people are doing nothing, or else are engaged in an activity (such as a recitation) which is only the vehicle for the application of the Kaif.
Special Kaif-chambers exist, in which an individual with the correct preparation may concentrate and accumulate Kaif, and study it in its manifestations.
In degenerated usage, such Kaif-chambers continue to be used, sometimes as devotional buildings. More often they are thought to be tombs fallen into ruin because there was no apparent use for them, or seem to have other applications, such as kitchens or bath-houses.
There is a well-known watchword: Innna el-Kaif, hadha el Kaif (Assuredly the Kaif is a Sword.) Hence the word SWORD is often used as password and even as a synonym of the working of Kaif.
Objects charged with a certain portion of Kaif are given, lent and carried by many people who know. These, like Kaif-chambers, are generally disguised as something functional, or else are ordinary objects which have been endowed with Kaif. The vulgar often confuse them with talismans or charms.
The saying: ‘Kaif-alaik!’ is a sort of blessing. It means: ‘May you have Kaif.’
In Turkey the Kaif-Agha was the individual entrusted with the royal Kaif. He was a Kaifdar, and generally assigned a court function as well.
Because its smokers have appropriated the term Kaif to describe (inaccurately) their sensations, Hashish has become known as Keef, a mispronunciation of Kaif. There is no real connexion, of course.
* * *
I tend to encapsulate instances of Kaif in photography or haiku.
You may have another term for Kaif, and ways to share inspiring experiences.
Democracy starts inside us. One way to explore our inner crowd is through allowing the different aspects of our personality to have a voice, including ones we dislike or suppress, like parts burdened with shame, self-loathing and self-hate. Together with their inner persecutors and defenders, they tend to pop up involuntarily with strong emotional force during stress, or an experience that all too often had its first traumatic installment way back in childhood.
During a 1980s training with the Psychosynthesis Institute in London, we gave names to what we called our sub-personalities. The concept encapsulated what I had sensed for a long while, that I host various distinct entities inside me that can spring to live with their unique voices, interests, sensitivities and defenses in response to circumstances.
Take a dwelling that houses a family of all ages. From day to day there are debates, intimidation, fights, making up, tenderness, fun, humour, but always reoccurring conflicts, like an angered sibling can easily spark a massive row. Then ask who is in charge? A family with conflicting needs lives inside each of us.
As baby, toddler, teen, young adult and so on, we succeed or fail in overcoming obstructions. We learn, or unlearn. Ideally we mature and the understanding of ourselves deepens. Some memories we cherish, others we bury. Yet each time a traumatic condensed experience re-occurs, dormant anxieties may explode and cause us to overreact to situations out of all proportions.
The needy child seeking attention is easily recognised. Where early hope for safety and acknowledgement was frustrated, the inner child in the adult draws on an arsenal of acquired strategies, be it nagging, crying, pleading, pleasing, withdrawal, or, equally, rage. Stonewalling and sarcasm can serve as defense. The little person in us may have been confused by contradictory demands, manipulated by a toxic parent or severely damaged through abuse, yet still struggles for acceptance and love.
Another well-worn sub-personality opts for control, a no nonsense character, who detests, let’s say, hesitation and vulnerability. So when a firm response to a present situation is required, this despot may simply order the child to pipe down and shut up. End of story. You get the drift.
Internal conflicts can be harsh. Without awareness of the warring cast in us, we tend to blame others for our upsets. Alternatively we punish ourselves. Identifying and befriending judgmental players is vital before we can reach the vulnerable and fearful part that has become numb and possibly unconscious, or discover the creative dreamer that was ridiculed. Or, indeed, lift a dis-empowered warrior, who must learn to say ‘No!’
Without a mentor, this awareness journey is a daunting task.
Unable to afford Jungian analysis, my spiritual search became an escape from what I saw as our revengeful, destructive and corrupt world.
Meeting a remarkable, brilliantly creative Sufi teacher, who embraced psychology as a basis for the spiritual quest, was my turning point in the mid 1970s. Grounding and digging started with a workshop called ‘Earthing.’
I had had a wild life up to then, a path I don’t regret. My empathy and patient listening lacked skill, but attracted interesting and eccentric people into my life. However, I needed to accept my limits, and better understand myself, others, and the absurd world we are born into, with the inherited traumas from our parents’ and generation before them.
World objects from my sand tray
A welcome to my inner journey was imaginative play, giving voice to the different parts of myself through monologues, imagery, objects, drama, art, sculpting, painting and writing, etc., all effective in daring to acknowledge conflicting needs. Due to choices enforced by my early environment, I host a philosopher and poet at odds with each other, as well as a cynic and a romantic. Their conflicts are as creative as they are intimidating.
In the digital realm people have come to make up aliases based on their ambivalent shadow aspects, like appearing in different disguises on Twitter, sometimes for the sole fun of contradicting each other. As a writer one might contemplate publishing trash genre that sells well, under pseudonyms, though it seems crass, like a soloist hijacking the performance of a symphony.
Stepping aside from internal conflict, invites my unbiased mediator. My quick route to self-remembrance is saying ‘hello’ to my body, whose every cell holds a record of old wounds. The body (the earth by implication) has endured horrendous exploitation, and to call it into awareness, with all its scars, is a huge challenge for some people.
‘You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves … ‘ from Wild Geese by Marie Oliver
In the present global turmoil, my inner child craves empathy and compassion to endure the pain of the world, including pain I feel observing how some public figures ignorantly out-ward their inner stress through creating enemies – divide and conquer – a steely defense, and a betrayal of the heart. Then again, truth to the face rarely convinces, it lacks depth, and blunts out the whispers from the dark.
Many brilliant books facilitate psychological understanding, but when it comes to moving through a dark tunnel (also called the Night Sea Journey) it is best to seek a skilled companion as guide. In my therapy practice I came upon heart-breaking stories of abuse, especially sexual abuse. The last few decades have shown the full horror of such deeply intrusive and traumatising incidents, and how widespread they are, across all social settings.
‘You’re not alone’ … is the message by Tim Ferris, in a recent very moving and powerful podcast he conducted with Debbie Millman.
PRESS HERE for his Healing Journey after Childhood Abuse (including an extensive resource list)
He ends with a beautiful re-framing of suffering … The obstacles are the path.
This attitude brings meaning to our mysterious existence, to our individual and collective journeys. Obstacles force us to question rules, habits and behaviour. Suffering through adversity, hardship, ignorance, injustice and violence teaches us empathy for each other, and expands consciousness towards our interdependence and essential wholeness.
I could add a list of books here, but if the above concepts speak to you, click on the Tim Ferris link, even if you choose not to listen to his podcast, scroll down his page and find a list of books and resources.
To end this post, despite all grounding over the years, I’m still at heart a space cadet, exploring time travelling in ‘Shapers,’ the sequel to my first novel, ‘Course of Mirrors.’
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.
How to reconcile moments of pure beauty and light our restless world offers, with the heavy darkness of human ignorance? How is it the guiding spirit that is shining through everything so often escapes the unseeing eye? Is it our wounded hearts, or our anxious busy thoughts that prevent spontaneous being? Many of us like twilight, the dawn, the dusk, mist, where darkness and light do not negate but enhance each other. They mingle. As friends do, or lovers. Twilight is poetry in motion.
And what, you may ask, does she mean by the guiding spirit that shines through everything. It’s a core in me that connects to the one soul-being I belong to, the only self I really know. And while I’m not enlightened, I do experience timeless moments, glimpses into the sixth dimension, nodal points around which the fiction of my existence is woven.
The other day, my long-ridiculed romantic fool tossed out these lines:
like tiny cherubs
white butterflies loop across
green teeming canvas
thou – sweet silent mystery
do you sense me sigh
when the cold moon-rock rises
as luminous globe – hello dear ones lost in time – your intense living – is forever part of me
‘Long live the dead because we live in them.’ … Clarice Lispector, A Breath of Life
When there is no other near to share such paradoxical quickening with, I may call on those who enriched my life but are no longer present. I adore the moon, the ancient chunk of earth, reflecting and making tolerable the blinding beams of the sun, granting us poetry and symbolic language.
That night I had a dream and remembered its last facet … I’m floating through a soft, vibrant darkness. A small voice says, ‘You’re the light, look again.’ Sure enough, I spot the outline of a building and bright points, like glittering stars. A series of scenes unfolds, which brings clarity to a puzzling questions. Darkness holds memories, visions and vital knowledge, though it requires trust in the guiding spirit as a mode of orientation. Insights are shy; they wait to be found.
Nature, being energy manifested in slow motion, breathes life into countless rhythms and tunes from the recorded symphonic sounds of the universe – to continuously re-animate the one being of eternal life. Yet we humans, who pride ourselves in aiding this process with heightened consciousness, are increasingly busy destroying the homeostasis life depends on. Can a virus offer a long enough pause for the powers in charge to acknowledge this self-destructive madness? Below anger, I feel the deep sadness, the spiritual starvation, an unfulfilled longing for meaning, for being worthwhile, accepted and loved.
I sense a change of mood in the collective mind, a call for change. Upfront are manic voices using the language of warfare against the invisible enemy – let’s control it – defeat I – kill it – get on top of it. I feel this kind of rhetoric misses the point entirely.
We must see things fresh, not through tired ideas our establishments bank on, that destroy nature’s homeostasis and spill imbalances into cultures too poor to afford resistance. I say – let our children and young people decide what’s worth living for?
‘A day, whether six or seven years ago or whether six thousand years ago, is just as near to the present as yesterday. Why? Because all time is contained in now.’ – Meister Eckhart
Once upon a time Khidr, the Teacher of Moses, called upon mankind with a warning. At a certain date, he said, all the water in the world which had not been specially hoarded would disappear. It would then be renewed, with different water, which would drive men mad.
Only one man listened to the meaning of this advice. He collected water and went to a secure place where he stored it, and waited for the water to change its character
On the appointed date the streams stopped running, the wells went dry and the man who had listened, seeing this happening, went to his retreat and drank his preserved water.
When he saw, from his security, the waterfalls again beginning to flow, this man descended among the other sons of men. He found that they were thinking and talking in an entirely different way from before; yet they had no memory of what had happened, nor of having been warned. When he tried to talk to them, he realized that they thought that he was mad, and they showed hostility or compassion, not understanding.
At first he drank none of the new water, but went back to his concealment, to draw on his supplies, every day. Finally, however, he took the decision to drink the new water because he could not bear the loneliness of living, behaving and thinking in a different way from everyone else. He drank the new water, and his fellows began to look upon him as a madman who had miraculously been restored to sanity.
From ‘Tales of the Dervishes’ by Idris Shah
(This version of the story is attributed to Sayed Sabir Ali-Shah, a saint of the Chisti Order, who died in 1818)
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.
Democracy starts inside us. One way to explore our inner crowd is through allowing the different aspects of our personality to have a voice, including ones we dislike or suppress, like parts burdened with shame, self-loathing and self-hate. Together with their inner persecutors and defenders, they tend to pop up involuntarily with strong emotional force during stress, or an experience that all too often had its first traumatic installment way back in childhood.
Unable to afford Jungian analysis, my spiritual search became an escape from what I saw as our revengeful, destructive and corrupt world.
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:
How to reconcile moments of pure beauty and light our restless world offers, with the heavy darkness of human ignorance? How is it the guiding spirit that is shining through everything so often escapes the unseeing eye? Is it our wounded hearts, or our anxious busy thoughts that prevent spontaneous being? Many of us like twilight, the dawn, the dusk, mist, where darkness and light do not negate but enhance each other. They mingle. As friends do, or lovers. Twilight is poetry in motion.
like tiny cherubs
When there is no other near to share such paradoxical quickening with, I may call on those who enriched my life but are no longer present. I adore the moon, the ancient chunk of earth, reflecting and making tolerable the blinding beams of the sun, granting us poetry and symbolic language.
We must see things fresh, not through tired ideas our establishments bank on, that destroy nature’s homeostasis and spill imbalances into cultures too poor to afford resistance. I say – let our children and young people decide what’s worth living for?
Once upon a time Khidr, the Teacher of Moses, called upon mankind with a warning. At a certain date, he said, all the water in the world which had not been specially hoarded would disappear. It would then be renewed, with different water, which would drive men mad.
When he saw, from his security, the waterfalls again beginning to flow, this man descended among the other sons of men. He found that they were thinking and talking in an entirely different way from before; yet they had no memory of what had happened, nor of having been warned. When he tried to talk to them, he realized that they thought that he was mad, and they showed hostility or compassion, not understanding.
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.
Course of Mirrors 