"Time brought resignation and a melancholy sweeter than common joy."
- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
The lilac-scented air of Spring has come and gone and my body's craving and seeking for solar warmth is finally contented. The steps of my Spring dance with Persephone shuffled from lakeside lounging, cold herbal drinks, fresh fruit, a collarbone dabbed with ambrosia oil, a book on Eros and the mysteries of love and the primordial traditions of sacred sexuality, and sowing seed-prayers with each step and turn of this seasonal waltz.
Late winter and early Spring were difficult. I entered a short dark night, but was able to understand and detach enough to endure and seek the lesson, the soul communication. A threshold was crossed internally, boundaries set, decisions made, the path forward cleared a little. These things are never easy and I suspect there will be many more to move through in this life. But I don't believe the purpose of being here is necessarily ease, do you?
Now, there is gold surrounding me once again. The gold, the anchor, the ground, the nectar. The vision that I Am.
I rest in Divine revelation that God is being and not a being, and that no religion [at least modern, perhaps a primordial truth did once prevail] contains The Great Everything. Seeking for the right canon, the right tradition, the right way to pray...these constructs only seemed to reinforce the righteous nature of the ego. In setting up camps for who holds the absolute truth about The Absolute, we claim ownership over God and it is my observation that this creates distance from Truth and certainly from Love.
The cherries are ripening in the trees
Wild roses are in bloom and delicate
if you touch them they whisper
The kingdom is within
A golden white figure glides through the center of a dark mountain lake
Like Artemis' arrow
Like silk over deep mysteries
Wolves on the shoreline and loons in the cove are howling
Be still and know
An owls cry fills the night and soars into
your dream
Where an easel holds a sheet of papyrus inscribed with music
And in the dream you hear it sung
But upon waking
Find your tongue
unable to mimic what you heard
A primordial chant echoes out through the canyon in morning
The flowers twirl on the slopes and rejoice in color and in fragrance
A cacophony of magpie, and frog, and locust erupts
High on the ridge a white elk and a black one tangle their antlers in battle
One snake consumes another as they writhe 'round the staff
That turns into the ankle
of the golden white figure
Who is walking the path devoted, singing, searching, serene
Amidst the trembling
and the spectacular light
“Spiritual realization is theoretically the easiest thing and in practice the most difficult thing there is. It is the easiest because it is enough to think of God. It is the most difficult because human nature is forgetfulness of God.”
- Frithjof Schuon
In May, on Ascension Eve (and on Julius Evola's birthday), Charles Salvo, the man behind Gornahoor passed on from this world. About a week prior, he had appeared momentarily in a dream of mine, something which had never happened before. I ask that anyone reading this will pause and say a prayer for him- in some traditions, the weeks following human death are thought to be a time of great importance as the soul travels disembodied. Charles left behind such a valuable library for the devoted spiritual seeker, those looking to piece together The Mystery, and I'm so grateful to have crossed sacred paths with him in this life. Link to a lovely memoriam.
.png)
Now I sit inside typing on what is probably one of the last rainy and stormy afternoons we will see around these parts for a long while. Life is rich with learning and experience and feeling, and also admittedly laced with a low-grade confusion and strange disconnect I haven't been able to reconcile entirely, but it's something I understand and am willing to sit with a while longer to see if [what I believe to be] the source of it works itself out in time.
I have loved being alone this year more than ever before, and have gained great insight into myself and others just by learning about Ancient Greek female archetypes. There are the vulnerable goddesses: Hera, the wife; Demeter, the mother; and Persephone, the daughter. These three are reliant on relationship to others, and I have only a tiny bit of these archetypes in my personality. Then there are the virginal goddesses: Artemis, lover of the wild, animals, hunting, nature, and fiercely independent; Athena, the level-headed strategist, the warrior; and Hestia, who is such a part of me, keeping home and hearth even if it is only she there to enjoy it, and tending her spiritual world above all. Of these three virginal archetypes, marked by self-sufficiency over relationship, I contain all and to great degree. Then, there is Aphrodite, filling a woman with attentiveness to others, interest in life, lover of beauty and pleasure, able to be in relationship without identifying as that role, and self-sufficient yet soft and captivating. Anytime we are in love or swept up in creativity, it is Aphrodite we embody. It is Aphrodite who can confuse men into mistaking a woman's conversational interest with being fascinated or enamored with them. Aphrodite is what those of Abrahamic religions might scorn as a temptress or seductress, her aura of charm and vitality unsettling to them.
The more complex the woman, the more archetypes she will contain.
While my personality is mostly composed of Hestia, Aphrodite, Artemis, and Athena, this season Aphrodite especially has wafted in on the fragrance of flowers deeply inhaled, on allowing the dessert to be enjoyed without penitence, by loving my body instead of nitpicking it, by softening my austere brow and drawing me to new and various forms of beauty and pleasure.
The water has also been a stronger calling than ever this season. The water is feminine, after all. Last year, I started swimming in the high mountain lakes here, swimming into the depths which was new to me, and I became somewhat addicted. Now, this year, that addiction has intensified and I find myself getting comfortable in very cold waters, and feeling more courageous than before... not only here in my beloved Swan Lake, but also the frigid glacial waters of Diablo Lake, and the Salish Sea. Though, I have to admit- the Salish Sea was only a dip, and a difficult one at that, I didn't manage any swimming or taking my head under, it was just too freezing cold. But I did meet a man there, from the Czech Republic, who swam for a good 20 minutes while I watched with amazement. When he came to shore, we chatted and he affirmed what I know, which is: reframe the feeling of intense cold, don't let your mind call the sensation "painful" just tell yourself "this is the feeling of cold" and let it be neutral, there is no need for resistance to the sensation. It doesn't have to be experienced as pain. Isn't so much of what we do able to be used toward our Enlightenment?
It feels as though summer has just arrived, here on this 9th day of July, five days past my 38th birthday, and already the season has been packed with new experience and feeling. In me I carry the suspicion that life could change dramatically this year, but also the notion that it doesn't have to, that all is well and good as it is too, even if unsolved, in-between, not sure yet...
I think I have finally learned to genuinely live in that state of unknowing that Rilke so eloquently wrote about:
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
The urgency I used to feel to solve all problems as soon as possible is eased now by a simple is-ness. I'm just here. Here to gain wisdom and experience, to grow, to remember and reunite with the divine. But this can all become blurry when the active mind fixates on place, people, things, careers, perceived slights, investments, choices... all of the doing. I always feel I've been here before and done it all anyway. So this time, I shall hold on, but more loosely.
.::*::.
Related to water and the unknown, here is a story that I found captivating. A tale of shipwreck and unlikely survival. Maybe it'll splash a little perspective on your day, as it did mine.
