Tag: spiritual journey

Storytelling and The NewTribes-Musing

Before the invention printing press-communities (or tribes) would gather together in a circle and tell stories and entertain each other. The creator of the story would get instant feedback from his listeners, perhaps in stories of their own, perhaps in shouted out opinions.

With the invention of the printing press, people would read printed books and broadsheets, they could seek out the author and give their opinion, perhaps even invite him (or her) to a community gathering where he and they could address each other but the possibilities of direct feedback were limited. It was also possible now for a writer to avoid either responsibility or credit under a pen name .

With the advent of the electronic age, with radio, movies and television, several more layers of anonymity were introduced. It becomes progressively rarer for the audience of a story to even know (or care) who the author is. They may still gather in circles to see or discuss the story but now the storyteller and the audience rarely meet.

Now with the internet, social networking and shared video such as YouTube, once again we gather together in tribes, maybe not in the same physical location but we of similar natures band together, we share stories, give feedback and once again become part of each other’s stories. The main difference now is that we are spread globally but we share much of the same idea space and heart space.

What does this mean exactly? I don’t have a concrete idea. I do find it interesting tho…

My Hero Zero (Nothing to be considered)

Tonight I find myself thinking about nothing (I wish). Actually My thoughts float around the idea of zero.  Funny, as a number and as a concept, zero was first seen in the Mayan civilization(Those ahead-of-their time advance civilization type Mayans again :)) They used the concept of zero as a place holder in their base 20 numerical system.  0 was represented as a shell, 5 as a rod (or line), 1 as a stone or dot.

Why am I thinking about zero? Why does it seem all for naught as it were? 🙂 Earlier tonight a friend tweeted (what one does on twitter) something like “What is good or bad anyway?” The Wheels started turning. At first, I thought, wow relative concepts in a dualistic system but then I went deeper. What constitutes good? I then free-associated  (which was good, these days I can’t pay to associate, it gets too expensive and people tend to look down on it 🙂 ). Good makes us happy, good gives us joy, no, not exactly, good gives us pleasure, ah good is a thing of the ego, what’s good for me is what satisfies me, you satisfy me therefore you are good or what is good for you is what I like, good is the opposite of bad, we split things into two piles good and bad, this pile is better than that one, we discriminate, saying something is good, always involves some form of discrimination, but in a non-dualistic universe, it all becomes very relative, something may feel bad but it exists so we can grow, learn and evolve, it has already happened, it is happening now, it will happen sometime in the future and then we ascribe value to it. It all becomes part of our path, our journey so it becomes equal. So then everything is at the neutral point, the zero point between good and bad.

Then I thought about a cartesian coordinate system where 0 is at the intersection of two lines to form a plane or of three lines to form a cube. So then from zero we can go from width (horizontal) to height (vertical) to depth. From zero, we can jump dimensions, from a zero point emotionally, we can go in any direction, from a zero point emotionally we can jump to any mood, it all seems to be about getting to zero. When we quiet our thoughts in meditation we arrive at zero, from zero comes everything. When we return to 0 we return to infinite potential. Anything can come out of nothing, King Lear’s adage to the contrary.

Also zero is indivisible, therefore non-dualistic…

Hitchhiking on the Hero’s Journey

I’ve always enjoyed quest stories, stories in which the somewhat innocent naive protagonist through undertaking a series of adventures reaches a defined goal (returning home, finding his/her fortune, destroying the one ring etc) and comes out enlightened in some manner. Perhaps reading these stories becomes in some sense a form of religious ritual for me. I imagine myself in the shoes of the hero or heroine. I become Jack going up the beanstalk and escaping from the giant. I find myself, stuck to the tar baby like Br’er Rabbit begging Br’er Fox not to throw me into the briar patch. I can see myself as Aladdin, trapped in the cave rubbing the lamp to get it lit, Alice down the rabbit hole and Luke Skywalker taking that last desperate shot to destroy the Death Star. Their journeys too I have undertaken within my imagination. It doesn’t appear to be restricted to words on paper. Movies and TV shows can also spark my imagination tho somehow it doesn’t feel as effective.

I go into Chapel Perilous, seeking the grail only to find I must encounter the darkness inside myself. I sit down with the Mad Hatter and the Dormouse to find that their word puzzles and inverted logic reshapes my mind into new insights. I take peyote with Carlos Castaneda and jump across the abyss. I fight their demons, both inner and outer (assuming for a moment that there exists a difference). If in facing their demons and perhaps by doing so discover and confront my down, can I claim a piece of the enlightenment at the end.
I don’t know.

En La Kesh

If you are another me
then why am i filled with fear
when you approach?
If you are another me
why don’t I feel at ease?
We both encompass the cosmos
and thus contain each other
and yet… this loneliness
but if you are another me
you understand.

If I am another you
then I can feel
when your heart speaks
If I am another you
then there’s no skin between us.
I reach out to feel
the you-ness of my soul
and yet…this awkwardness
but if I am another you
you feel it too.

If you are another me
I will love myself
completely
I will gaze in your reflection
and adore the rising sun
I will live
inside my heart
and share…this providence
and since we are all one
you know it too.

Tarot – Devil Wisdom Reading

Again–The idea of 1 (or 2) spreads for each major arcana card is taken (as are the spreads) from Rachel Pollack’s excellent book Tarot Wisdom. As often as possible I am using the textual definitions from Ms Pollack’s book as otherwise there exists a possibility of skewing the meanings to serve my own ends rather than get any insight into what the cards are showing me. Recently I have also been taking (for the minor arcana) cards some of the textual definitions from Eileen Connolly’s Tarot: The First Handbook for the Master. Way back when I started working with the cards Ms. Connolly’s Tarot for the Apprentice was one of the first books I used.
Lately tho, I have had a new insight. That if the goal of these readings is a greater internal knowledge and understanding these forces then subjectivity may just be the way to go. Still I will give Ms Pollack’s and Ms. Connolly’s definitions because I feel it may be useful for anyone reading this to follow along.

1) What is evil?
Strength
Strength		 3) Where does it originate
The High Priestess
High Priestess
4) How should we respond to it?
VIII of Swords
VIII of Swords
2)Why does it exist
Judgement Rev
Judgement

Interpretation

1)What is Evil? Strength

“What should we say when Strength shows up in a reading? …Is it the power to wistand life’s struggles? Overcoming your animal nature? Working with your animal self? ”

When I first saw this card come up, I was a bit puzzled. How could Evil and Strength be equivalent? If you look at it from the point of view of duality, Evil would be at the negative pole of the good / evil dichotomy  where Strength would be at the positive pole of  the Strength / Weakness  one. The more thought that I put into this, the more sense of sorts it makes.

When we think of duality, we always tend to end up chasing our minds in circles. Many of us were brought up in our respective religions with the idea that we should always strive for good and oppose evil, always treasure our strength and eliminate our weaknesses.  Despite Jesus saying that the meek would inherit the earth, few of us conceived of times where not using our strength could be a better choice. It seems that it has only been in the last several decades that the idea of passive resistance would take hold. In other words, both strength and weakness had their place  and value.

What then of evil? Does evil have relative value? I would say that would depend a large part on one’s perspective. A caterpillar might see going into the cocoon as evil, where the butterfly might have quite a different opinion. During the cold war, the Soviet Union was seen as being evil by the US, the average Russian might have had quite a different opinion . The United States, according to several fundamentalist Muslims in the Middle East is considered “the Great Satan”. From my perspective, good and evil seem to be a function of one’s reality tunnel and are totally relative.

Since both evil and strength seem to be defined by the observer, what were the cards telling me personally when it came up that evil = Strength?  Maybe that I have been trying way to hard to ride herd on myself, and to keep a tight rein on the more animalistic part of my nature. I’ve been keeping way too many things bottled up inside, imprisoned as it were and that that has been holding me back a bit from my own growth. Hmmm

2) Why does Evil exist? Judgement Reversed

“Judgement reversed suggests denial, fear, or doubt. We still hear that trumpet call within us, summoning us to embrace a new existence, but we don’t trust it. Perhaps we simply do not know how to recognize what has happened or do not know what to do next. Or we do not want to hurt someone’s feelings or embarrass ourselves”

Wow this fits so well with the idea of evil as Strength, It seems to be saying that evil exists because one is resisting the call of the higher self (or evolution or ascension however you may wish to word it, we could always go back to the caterpillar analogy and say that one is choosing to stay larval.) Maybe our culture and  life at this stage has made us so complacent that for many of us, staying asleep is easier than waking up spiritually. Maybe for many of us, we have to get jolted, woken up either by the awareness of  what we consider our own animal nature (dark side) and the damage it is capable of inflicting or the dark side of our culture and how it has been spiritually numbing to ourselves and everyone around us.

3) Where does evil originate? The High Priestess

“She may at times signify secret doctrines and teachings, or even the office of a priestess, someone who guides and inspires others”

So the Fool falls starts on his journey and in order to evolve splits into duality,  the Magician and the High Priestess. This ties in nicely with what was stated above about the idea of evil coming from duality-consciousness and largely being a matter of perspective. Why the High Priestess and not the Magician for the card answering this question?  It seems easy to say that evil springs from the will, the active principle, deeds and thought would seem a more likely source for evil. Why the High Priestess?  Let’s take a look at the garden of eden story from Genesis. According to the eden story, human beings had no concept of evil until they ate from the Tree of Knowledge. Until that point they were innocent, If I remember correctly the tree is actually called the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil , in other words, folks, the the tree of duality consciousness. It took duality-consciousness and the understanding of the same for evil to exist… that seems to make sense.

4) How should we respond to evil?  VIII of Swords

“Someone needs to understand. Keeping it to yourself will cause hurt and confusion”

“You cannot continue this way. Worry affects health”

“Be straightforward, it is the only way”

“There is no easy way! But it is possible! Get the wheels in motion.”

OK, Let’s look at that, so what the card would be suggesting then is that the response to evil would be to gain understanding of what is really going on, avoid becoming anxious about it, being straightforward and true to ourselves, shining out who we are and realizing that dealing with what would be from our perspective evil is not easy but both possible and necessary in order to transcend it. This reading has struck me as being rather awesome as far as perspective goes…..