(seeking) (the elusive) negative capability

"To practice self-liberating thoughts, whatever thought arises in your mind, just look at it and let go and relax. Look straight at its essential nature and let go and relax; it will be self-liberated. Do not concern yourself with what you are thinking about. Do not concern yourself with the object of your thoughts, whether it is a person or a thing. Just look at the essence of the thought itself."*

This is drama, story, our stepping outside of self to view the whole. And so we act them out, the same tales, embody them.

Embody them.

It seems the thing is, the trouble is, claiming ownership. On either side, ownership is slavery (non-liberating). Thoughts blamed, thoughts blaming us, me. What are they anyway, thoughts? Coming into being by taking our shape...

(Oh, good story!)

When I was a small child, I would be held in awe for hours by the jinns wrought of painted roses on my lampshade. I would wait, held watching, until a train went by in the distance, bringing the morning light. The light train, I called it.

Sinister flowers indeed. :)

+++++++++
*Wait.

Who is this doing the watching?

(seeking) (the elusive) negative capability

"To practice self-liberating thoughts, whatever thought arises in your mind, just look at it and let go and relax. Look straight at its essential nature and let go and relax; it will be self-liberated. Do not concern yourself with what you are thinking about. Do not concern yourself with the object of your thoughts, whether it is a person or a thing. Just look at the essence of the thought itself."*

This is drama, story, our stepping outside of self to view the whole. And so we act them out, the same tales, embody them.

Embody them.

It seems the thing is, the trouble is, claiming ownership. On either side, ownership is slavery (non-liberating). Thoughts blamed, thoughts blaming us, me. What are they anyway, thoughts? Coming into being by taking our shape...

(Oh, good story!)

When I was a small child, I would be held in awe for hours by the jinns wrought of painted roses on my lampshade. I would wait, held watching, until a train went by in the distance, bringing the morning light. The light train, I called it.

Sinister flowers indeed. :)

+++++++++
*Wait.

Who is this doing the watching?

beyond the bigger picture Darwinism

Watching PBS online last night (Secrets of the Dead) about Michelangelo. All very much memory management -- a gentler, kinder, form of inquisition-- claiming (basically) Michelangelo as a a closet Protestant, that "by faith alone is salvation" and none of those sacraments or good works for him, thank you. Once again it's that modern tendency of stuffing something into a bin that simply didn't exist at the time, certainly not in the way it "exists" now. No faith? Sacraments were defined as the "outward sign of faith". Faith is essential to make any spell work (Alohomora!) and corruption simply corruption (No worry. Into the fiery hole, you scum! Back on the wheel!). And what is faith? A life shaping verb: what you act on. The gods you worship are the gods you deserve.

So -- minds that make sensuality look like spirituality? Of course and vice versa -- remembering that the great magnum opus IS the great magnum opus: stuffing souls (sentience, consciousness) into bodies (Sit up, clay!). Dancing really is a fine religion.

"...The ultimate fate of every dogma is that it gradually becomes
soulless. Life wants to create new forms, and therefore, when a dogma
loses its vitality, it must perforce activate the archetype that has
always helped man to express the mystery of the soul....the psychic
archetype .... take form and become accessible to understanding....But
the supremely important motive power which is needed .... and which
sets the archetypal possibilities in motion at a given historical
moment, cannot be explained in terms of archetype itself. Only
experience can establish which archetype has become operative, but one
can never predict that it must enter into manifestation. ..."
(CGJung, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 347, par. 488)

Or, as Mike Dickman once said

The Mass is not a parody of the Magnum Opus. The Mass is an exact manifestation of the Magnum Opus. Most Parisian Catholics have no idea of what they're about. They're Sunday Christians only. Many French people today are fascinated with all things esoteric. But it's only an intellectual fascination. Alchemical wisdom can not be understood intellectually but only experienced...or -better put- Alchemical wisdom can only be understood intellectually IF experienced.

I am by birth half mortal, half divine...

And Culianu:

Magic is not about disorder. On the contrary, it reestablishes a peaceful coexistence between the conscious and unconscious when coexistence is under attack. ~Ioan Couliano

And I dare say that's also the function of art.

And here's the kicker. "Peaceful coexistence" = Equilibrium. And that means no movement, no change, no gradients, no life. No dance. No Eros. No Mojo. So... embrace the tension. Live your story. In the end, equilibrium. And behind it all always, equilibrium. It just that just now, you're still moving through your own story.



UNFOLD YOUR OWN MYTH

Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?
Who finds us here circling, bewildered, like atoms?
Who comes to a spring thirsty and sees the moon reflected in it?
Who, like Jacob blind with grief and age, smells the shirt of his lost
son and can see again?
Who lets a bucket down and brings up a flowing prophet?
Or like Moses goes for fire and finds what burns inside the sunrise?
Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies, and opens a door to the other world.
Solomon cuts open a fish, and there’s a gold ring.
Omar storms in to kill the prophet and leaves with blessings.
Chase a deer and end up everywhere!
An oyster opens his mouth to swallow one drop.
Now there’s a pearl.
A vagrant wanders empty ruins. Suddenly he’s wealthy.
But don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others.
Unfold your own myth, without complicated explanation,
so everyone will understand the passage:

We have opened you.

Start walking toward Shams.
Your legs will get heavy and tired.
Then comes a moment of feeling the wings you’ve grown,

lifting.

~RUMI

beyond the bigger picture Darwinism

Watching PBS online last night (Secrets of the Dead) about Michelangelo. All very much memory management -- a gentler, kinder, form of inquisition-- claiming (basically) Michelangelo as a a closet Protestant, that "by faith alone is salvation" and none of those sacraments or good works for him, thank you. Once again it's that modern tendency of stuffing something into a bin that simply didn't exist at the time, certainly not in the way it "exists" now. No faith? Sacraments were defined as the "outward sign of faith". Faith is essential to make any spell work (Alohomora!) and corruption simply corruption (No worry. Into the fiery hole, you scum! Back on the wheel!). And what is faith? A life shaping verb: what you act on. The gods you worship are the gods you deserve.

So -- minds that make sensuality look like spirituality? Of course and vice versa -- remembering that the great magnum opus IS the great magnum opus: stuffing souls (sentience, consciousness) into bodies (Sit up, clay!). Dancing really is a fine religion.

"...The ultimate fate of every dogma is that it gradually becomes
soulless. Life wants to create new forms, and therefore, when a dogma
loses its vitality, it must perforce activate the archetype that has
always helped man to express the mystery of the soul....the psychic
archetype .... take form and become accessible to understanding....But
the supremely important motive power which is needed .... and which
sets the archetypal possibilities in motion at a given historical
moment, cannot be explained in terms of archetype itself. Only
experience can establish which archetype has become operative, but one
can never predict that it must enter into manifestation. ..."
(CGJung, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 347, par. 488)

Or, as Mike Dickman once said

The Mass is not a parody of the Magnum Opus. The Mass is an exact manifestation of the Magnum Opus. Most Parisian Catholics have no idea of what they're about. They're Sunday Christians only. Many French people today are fascinated with all things esoteric. But it's only an intellectual fascination. Alchemical wisdom can not be understood intellectually but only experienced...or -better put- Alchemical wisdom can only be understood intellectually IF experienced.

I am by birth half mortal, half divine...

And Culianu:

Magic is not about disorder. On the contrary, it reestablishes a peaceful coexistence between the conscious and unconscious when coexistence is under attack. ~Ioan Couliano

And I dare say that's also the function of art.

And here's the kicker. "Peaceful coexistence" = Equilibrium. And that means no movement, no change, no gradients, no life. No dance. No Eros. No Mojo. So... embrace the tension. Live your story. In the end, equilibrium. And behind it all always, equilibrium. It just that just now, you're still moving through your own story.



UNFOLD YOUR OWN MYTH

Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?
Who finds us here circling, bewildered, like atoms?
Who comes to a spring thirsty and sees the moon reflected in it?
Who, like Jacob blind with grief and age, smells the shirt of his lost
son and can see again?
Who lets a bucket down and brings up a flowing prophet?
Or like Moses goes for fire and finds what burns inside the sunrise?
Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies, and opens a door to the other world.
Solomon cuts open a fish, and there’s a gold ring.
Omar storms in to kill the prophet and leaves with blessings.
Chase a deer and end up everywhere!
An oyster opens his mouth to swallow one drop.
Now there’s a pearl.
A vagrant wanders empty ruins. Suddenly he’s wealthy.
But don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others.
Unfold your own myth, without complicated explanation,
so everyone will understand the passage:

We have opened you.

Start walking toward Shams.
Your legs will get heavy and tired.
Then comes a moment of feeling the wings you’ve grown,

lifting.

~RUMI

agalmata

The synoptic function of the myth whose circular structure duplicates that of the cosmos enables it to integrate in one vision the manifold experiences acquired by men through contact with things. As in a theater the representation of the invisible takes shape and puts rhythm into space. At the center of the enclosure built on a hill and opened to the outer world, the drama that holds together the lives of men with the lives of gods, as well as the forces of heaven with those of the earth, enacts the meeting point of all the perspectives to which it communicates its primal unity. Jean-Francois Mattei, "The Theater of Myth in Plato," in Griswold, Platonic Writings, Platonic Readings

The exercise of stepping outside, the need to observe, seems to be one of the main functions of art, tales and myths, it seems to me. I think of the "Pagans" (a late imposed pejorative: "country person"; "bumpkin") framing it out in plays, holding huge festivals and important competitions, leaving us some of the greatest and most complex (as in a grasping of paradox) works of wisdom that stand to this day.

The Christian Church would later similarly act things out in Mass in the sacrament of Transubstantiation. Very magical. The presence of the congregation, the church, the priest, the words in the rite: The conscious participation of all parties *collectively* imagining the material / physical "god" of the bread (earth /clay /flesh) and wine (spirit / blood) -- pure, essential magic, and all very Greek:

from Robert Lloyd Mitchell's Hymn to Eros A Reading of Plato's Symposium:
(from Alcibiades) :

 . . . Alcibiades speaks of Socrates by means of images. Socrates, he says, is like those figures of Silenus, made by craftsmen, which sit in carver's shops: the kind that portray the satyr with a pipe or flute in his hand, but are made so they can be opened, revealing images of gods within. . . .
. . . .Here the word for 'image' is *agalmata*: originally, images specifically of the gods, though eventually coming to refer to statues generally. But it did so out of an original meaning of 'praise', 'exultation', 'rejoicing'. In other words, these images do not just stand there like our 'sta-tues', 're-presenting' their object. Instead, they glory the gods, they rejoice them. * It is out of this activity that the gods come to visibility in these images. *

agalmata

The synoptic function of the myth whose circular structure duplicates that of the cosmos enables it to integrate in one vision the manifold experiences acquired by men through contact with things. As in a theater the representation of the invisible takes shape and puts rhythm into space. At the center of the enclosure built on a hill and opened to the outer world, the drama that holds together the lives of men with the lives of gods, as well as the forces of heaven with those of the earth, enacts the meeting point of all the perspectives to which it communicates its primal unity. Jean-Francois Mattei, "The Theater of Myth in Plato," in Griswold, Platonic Writings, Platonic Readings

The exercise of stepping outside, the need to observe, seems to be one of the main functions of art, tales and myths, it seems to me. I think of the "Pagans" (a late imposed pejorative: "country person"; "bumpkin") framing it out in plays, holding huge festivals and important competitions, leaving us some of the greatest and most complex (as in a grasping of paradox) works of wisdom that stand to this day.

The Christian Church would later similarly act things out in Mass in the sacrament of Transubstantiation. Very magical. The presence of the congregation, the church, the priest, the words in the rite: The conscious participation of all parties *collectively* imagining the material / physical "god" of the bread (earth /clay /flesh) and wine (spirit / blood) -- pure, essential magic, and all very Greek:

from Robert Lloyd Mitchell's Hymn to Eros A Reading of Plato's Symposium:
(from Alcibiades) :

 . . . Alcibiades speaks of Socrates by means of images. Socrates, he says, is like those figures of Silenus, made by craftsmen, which sit in carver's shops: the kind that portray the satyr with a pipe or flute in his hand, but are made so they can be opened, revealing images of gods within. . . .
. . . .Here the word for 'image' is *agalmata*: originally, images specifically of the gods, though eventually coming to refer to statues generally. But it did so out of an original meaning of 'praise', 'exultation', 'rejoicing'. In other words, these images do not just stand there like our 'sta-tues', 're-presenting' their object. Instead, they glory the gods, they rejoice them. * It is out of this activity that the gods come to visibility in these images. *