A Beautiful Uncertainty

I was introduced to the work of Iain McGilchrist through, I think it was, Gary Lachman’s Lost Knowledge of the Imagination. And I’ve since listened to quite a few YouTube talks (the one I most recently watched was on the channel The Sacred) with Iain regarding both his The Master and the Emissary (published a decade ago) — which I’m halfway through — and his huge 2-volume tome released last year titled The Matter with Things that I plan to begin reading once I’ve completed Master.

I’m sure I will continue to write often about the influence Iain’s work is having upon me and how much I resonate with it but, in this moment, I simply want to say that my perspective of myself has shifted. I used to think I was quite left-brain oriented, what with my passion for reading, learning, and literature. However, I now realize that I usually didn’t stop with the ‘information gathered’ part (left hemisphere of certainty) and, instead of getting identified with or overly attached to an idea, I continued to explore and expand and, hopefully, integrate into my life and consciousness the ‘what’ and ‘how’ and ‘why’ of the material — all of which is using the right hemisphere (keeping present my own belief — albeit not a certainty — that the brain and its hemispheres are receivers or mediators through which consciousness/mind/soul acts). This process became more intense in my late thirties because with everything I ingested, I felt compelled to fully digest it and then contemplate how it impacted my perception of the world around me.

For example, after spending an intense and immersion-oriented nine months back in 2010 studying and being trained in the ancient health system of Ayurveda to become certified as a practitioner (in a bodily, very physical approach), I came out of it less affected by the details of the concrete methods and more impacted on a profoundly spiritual level of awe and wonder regarding life — our bodies, the world, all the energies and morphic fields we cannot see, the complexities and relationships and interactions we have in every single moment that we then pour outward again as attention and intention.

Most of us tend to get stuck in left-brain focus and part of that is because our society and civilization has become obsessed with it — with power, control, certainty, what is explicit — rather than consciously continuing the dance between hemispheres and fully embracing the value of both as necessary to wholeness. I’ve been called wishy-washy, a fence-sitter, flighty and/or inconsistent in my thoughts; in my younger years, therefore, I learned to say very little, but as the decades passed, I gradually became at ease with my embrace of the paradoxical middle and more likely to speak. I have beliefs, of course, but my path is to remain as open as possible to shifts or divergences (being merely human, I often remind myself of the value in uncertainty) that learn but return to holistic (right hemisphere) perspective. This applies to relationships, ideas, passions, health, and my connections with The Unseen, which is also why I try not to get mired in a particular system of divination according to how others see it.

This feels like a spiritual journey, the beautiful uncertainty within living.

The Book

While reading The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist, I came across the following that struck me as pertinent to our divinatory process in relation to both the Book as symbol as well as the cards as Book:

“Perhaps an analogy would be the relationship between reading and living. Life can certainly have meaning without books, but books cannot have meaning without life. Most of us probably share a belief that life is greatly enriched by them: life goes into books and books go back into life. But the relationship is not equal or symmetrical. Nonetheless what is in them not only adds to life, but genuinely goes back into life and transforms it, so that life as we live it in a world full of books is created partly by books themselves.”

In the Lenormand card system of symbols, we find The Book. This symbol can express as: knowledge, secrets (like in a grimoire), confidentiality, and perhaps the changes that are inspired by the text. For a more mundane interpretation, it could be a writing project or compilation of data.

The book as symbol is also found in The High Priestess (La Papesse) of the Tarot. In that card, the book may mean the “ability to understand express ancient or traditional knowledge in words” [Ben-Dov] and/or that “the Seeker is one with powerful unconscious knowledge and that the Seeker must activate intuition to retrieve that knowledge” [Ben-Dov]

and, further, “in a psychological method of attribution, The High Priestess is associated with memory, the maintaining and processing of information within. She represents how we encode, store, and retrieve our experiences.” [Wen]

In addition, many consider the Tarot itself as a ‘book’ that we read: this might be the Akashic Records or one of the Unseen ‘dictating’ to us or a present life that, of course, changes dependent upon the context of the seeker or querent.

McGilchrist continues: “This metaphor is not perfect, but it makes the point. In one sense a book, like the world according to the left hemisphere, is a selective, organised, re-presented, static, revisitable, boundaried, ‘frozen’ extract of life. It has taken something infinitely complex, endlessly interrelated, fluent, evolving, uncertain, never to be repeated, embodied and fleeting (because alive) and produced something in a way very different that we can use to understand it. Though obviously far less complex than life itself, it has nonetheless brought into being an aspect of life that was not there before it. So the left hemisphere (like the book), can be seen as taking from the world as delivered by the right hemisphere (unconsidered ‘life), and giving life back enhanced. But, on the shelf, the contents of the book are dead: they come back to life only in the process of being read … but always becoming something else.”

In fact, I have found McGilchrist’s book to be enlightening for all aspects of my eclectic spiritual path as a truly holistic one. The way he understands how our brain hemispheres receive messages from Mind (incorporeal) resonates and reveals the ideal spiral journey (the dance from right hemisphere to the left and the necessity of reintegrating into the right) of how we experience the whole world when we don’t become stuck in dominant left-hemisphere certainty. This definitely informs my own path in reading Tarot and other oracle systems.

“The left hemisphere, the mediator of division, is never an endpoint, always a staging post. It is a useful department to send things to for processing, but the things only have meaning once again when they are returned to the right hemisphere.”

McGilchrist points out quite clearly in his book that he does NOT “mean to suggest that the brain causes human experience.” Indeed, he states that, “The restrictive bringing into being of something by the left hemisphere depends still on its foundation in something that underwrites it in the right hemisphere (and both of them on something that underwrites them both, outside the brain).” I emphasize this because one might tend to think his view is that of the reductionist or materialist (the left-hemisphere, as it happens) when that is absolutely NOT the case. His many video interviews reveal this a lot more clearly than does The Master and His Emissary. I do look forward to eventually reading his follow-up tome The Matter With Things as that book has a section specifically on The Sacred.

I hope you found this helpful. I’m a seeker, drawn to the questions even more than the answers, because the so-called answers merely lead me to further questions. If you’re reading this, I feel a kindred spirit near.

Ambiguity as Sacred Strength

I’ve mentioned in past writing, for example in my post on “Falling into Fascination“, that I “fall in love” with people whose books, thoughts, and ideas, touch me on a deep and profoundly moving level. One of the most recent examples of this (I could name many more!) is my on-going ‘love affair’ with the remarkable Iain McGilchrist, who is definitely not a ‘materialist’ but rather a ‘panentheist’ who views consciousness as beyond matter yet infuses matter, so to speak.

Please read the above quote again and really let ‘second only to our capacity to transcend it, in order to see the whole’ sink into your entire being.

I’ve watched many interview videos with this man — one that is particularly well-done is “Dividing the Brain and Perceiving the Sacred” but he’s brilliant in all of them I’ve come across — and his very expression of person is so engaging and appealing; he has a calm, gentle, centeredness when in discussion (that reminds me a bit of Rupert Sheldrake’s nature, and the video conversation between them is an absolute delight). Maybe this shouldn’t be a surprise to me as he considered studying theology and attending seminary prior to deciding to focus on literature and philosophy only to then expand into becoming a doctor in neuropsychology — all of which are subjects I’ve self-studied (well, not the ‘doctor’ bit, of course, rather my passion for health and healing) for decades.

The thing is, his books may be daunting to many people; The Master and His Emissary is a sort of 500-page primer to his latest work which is the two-volume The Matter With Things. And I’ll be honest, at this point, I’m only a hundred pages into the amazing, incredible first book (watching videos of Iain talking with others helped provide an excellent overview of the topic that has made reading the book that much easier), but I’m taking my time and integrating the material with all the other subjects I’m interested in from the paranormal to consciousness, from nature to magic — although if one truly embraces a holistic relationship with living, of course they are connected. At the core of my concerns with where our Western culture is right now, is an apparent lack of respect for nuance, nature, and Source. I don’t want to make this post a long one so I will simply encourage exploration of Iain McGilchrist’s work and give him the final words (from The Master and His Emissary):

“In such a society as ours, any apparent inconsistency is treated as a sign of error or intellectual muddle. Ambiguity is no longer a strength, given that truth is known to be complicated and many-layered; it is a weakness, since truth is thought of as single and straightforward. It is therefore easier to accept the left hemisphere’s point of view, which is easily articulated and unambiguous and simply stands in contradiction to the right hemisphere’s view, than to accept that of the right hemisphere, which is more multifaceted and harder to articulate, and is already inclusive of the apparently incompatible left hemisphere’s point of view. This virtue makes it immediately vulnerable to the charge of inconsistency, and it is therefore dismissed.”

“I believe that reductionism has become a disease, a viewpoint lacking both intellectual sophistication and emotional depth, which is blighting our ability to understand what is happening and what we need to do about it. My current thoughts are directed towards illuminating what I see as a truer picture, a more helpful and, I believe, a more hopeful way of seeing our situation here on this planet, while we still have time.”

Three Dreams

I’m relatively new to actually making the time to consider what my dreams may mean to me, though I’ve recorded them sporadically for over a decade. Because I found last night’s dreams particularly compelling, I thought I would share them here. Perhaps they may encourage someone else to … follow their dreams.

I recalled and recorded three distinct dreams through the night; the first and third dreams were of me rescuing/helping a small young boy (one boy appeared as my younger brother, the other boy became a little dog), and the other, the middle dream, was of me ending up alone on a couples cruise.

The Two Boys

            Dream One: a young boy who looked like my younger brother was having seizures – the symptoms were being viewed as signs of “possession” by the doctors – I was trying to help heal him with energy and natural remedies

Dream Three: It was night, and I was on the other side of a park, near a building, when I saw bad men break several life-size glass reindeer that shattered into hundreds of pieces large and small – the men saw me and started chasing me and a little boy (who was clothed in pale blue pajamas with ‘feet’) across the grass as we ran toward my house – as we ran, the boy transformed into a little dog that I scooped up into my arms while running – I reached my home, which was well-lit, before the bad men could get us – we were safe inside and the bad men didn’t try to enter

Were these two dreams pointing to my need to make peace with the young masculine principle I carry within that was destroyed by patriarchy? To find a way to recover that innocent masculine principle, to resurrect its power for love?

It is interesting that these two dreams of young boys – very rare for me to see boys in my dreams – came on Christmas Eve. I don’t identify as Christian anymore (I’m a spiritual eclectic with a Pagan foundation) though I do believe the story of Jesus is a powerful and potentially healing one when heard from the feminine principle perspective instead of through the lens of patriarchy. And, as it happens, the birth of the baby Jesus is honored tomorrow, while the seeds of solstice have already been sown. Is the spark of the masculine principle joining the seed of the feminine principle?

I have always felt maternal and/or nurturing toward my younger brother, and perhaps I feel it even more now that he is challenged by physical illness. Plus, I have always had a strong desire to protect and help the young, which is extended to both genders and to all innocent life. Maybe these two dreams came to inspire faith … faith that we can succeed in protecting the innocent and resurrecting the masculine principle to its original pattern, before it became the domination power principle of patriarchy?

In the third dream, the bad men shatter and destroy the beautiful glass reindeer in the dark of night, in the realm of the feminine principle. What else do the reindeer represent? This glass is clear, cold, smooth and appears solid but can be easily broken. The reindeer represent the myth of Santa Claus, a story created for children/innocence. The bad men perhaps represent patriarchy shattering the innocence of our stories and dreams, shattering the bond between masculine principle and feminine principle? Santa Claus is also linked, however, to whether we are “good” or “bad” and, thus, whether we will receive any “reward.” So shattering those symbols which pull/carry the patriarchal father-figure could mean that Santa Claus has no effect anymore?

Also in the third dream, the boy transforming into a little dog is perhaps a personal motif for me (because of my passionate devotion to dogs) to be able to visualize the innocence that remains inside the masculine principle? That it can be rescued and taken into hearth and home? It would be easier for me to let a dog into my safe space, rather than a male, even when that male is a boy.

A Couples Cruise

Dream Two in the Middle: My husband and I were on a cruise ship – we got off because we were thinking about incorporating an overland drive for part of the vacation – while we were considering the option, he drove home to check on things – we decided not to do the drive but he was too far away to make it back to the ship before it sailed – I got on alone and finished the second part of the journey by myself, a single on a Couples Cruise

The third dream, that fell in the middle of the other two, was uncomfortable – which is odd because it wasn’t as overtly traumatic as the other two dreams. The two aspects that feel most important are that of cruise (water, sailing, travel) and that, because of a joint decision, I ended up alone/single in a group of couples. I could unravel this dream in many directions, because it feels like there are a lot of threads. It feels scary to even write about this dream, like it was an omen or premonition. Maybe that’s because I fear the separation could be permanent? But it wouldn’t be, because it was a cruise ship – a temporary journey space. Cruises are not life but rather a liminal space as are most vacations, pilgrimages, and travels. I feel better already, having consciously realized that.

In some ways, the dream mirrors what he and I have already discussed: my solo travels while he stays at home to take care of things. The fact that it is a “couples cruise” is odd, but perhaps that merely represents metaphorically the need for me to write both sides of myself, to witness and “marry” by masculine principle to my feminine principle?

Perhaps this dream is bookended by the other two for that specific purpose, in which case they become a series to build the whole?

Viewing All Three Dreams in Sequence

In the first dream, the young boy has seizures – a violent dis-ease that shakes everything up and makes one vulnerable, unable to resist or escape anything that might happen to him. Patriarchy dominates men as well as women, and, in a way, it is a debilitating cultural disease. However, in the second dream, by “marrying” masculine principle and feminine principle in love, and honoring that commitment to be joined yet honoring individuality also. Later, in the third dream, the feminine principle is able to rescue/help the masculine principle and carry it to safety and home.

These three dreams, that at first glance seem so disparate, come closer and closer together the more I reflect upon them. And I will continue working with them.

Currently, as an over-arching theme, all three seem to be pointing toward ways in which I can re-envision and thus heal my sense of the masculine principle within me and, thus, see it differently in the world as well, possibly supporting a personal faith that we can also heal our global culture.

We can return to Peace on Earth.

depaceminterris.org

 

Flourishing Transplants

[the following is a rough-draft excerpt from my nearly completed manuscript titled “Desert Fire”] One of several Desert Gifts is nearly year ‘round Bougainvillea blossoms! Is there any important difference between the gifts received by being in the desert and those gifts that are indigenous to the desert? The Bougainvillea is not indigenous to the Sonoran Desert (also referred to as Sonora) — it is a South American native though it has become naturalized here — yet its blooming provides great joy through color, profusion, vibrant energy … a transplant that has found a home here and relishes the arid climate, the heat as well as the cooler temperatures of winter’s onset. I am a transplant, too, and my infused creative energy can be mirrored to some extent by that of the Bougainvillea. I can’t remain for long in direct sunlight — unlike the Bougainvillea — but the autumn shifting brings forth a bounty of energy from me likened to the fresh, clean, bright, heather-weight bracts that laugh mischievously among their chaotic community. My recent research has helped me see Sonora through a softer, more accepting lens, to admire her and her Beings of all forms for their ability to thrive and dance! To acknowledge that she isn’t “out to get me” like a bandit who wants to rob me of my juiciness. Instead, she encourages me toward recognition of the need for self-nurture and self-realization of what I need so that I can flourish. Sonora was willing to play the devil’s advocate, to portray herself as the villain, until I could see that the true villain was inside me … my fears and insecurities and lack of self-awareness in certain qualities. She helped me see the wisdom of being able to live anywhere because to thrive comes from inside myself, not from external situations per se. Those without self-reflection can be destroyed whether they live in the blistering heat of the desert or on a tropical island ignoring the lava flowing straight towards them or in the north woods ignoring a tree that is crashing down. So, maybe it’s okay that the Bougainvillea bring me joy in them, myself, and the ability of Sonora to cause them to thrive. Which brings me full circle to my desire for travel, to wisely intuit when I need to go away to absorb the emotional and psychological nutrients I don’t have around me — just as the Archaic hunter-gatherers moved around. Finding my inner Wise Woman, she who guides me not to blame Sonora — or any other external factor — but to listen to how our frequencies sing together at different times. Are we discordant or harmonizing? When not in accord, do we need a little time away from each other? I had been resisting planting Bougainvillea in the courtyard because I didn’t want to encourage bees to be so close by … but does the joy of the visual flowering splendor outweigh the fear of the bees? I still retain a fear of bees though it’s nowhere near as intense as it used to be. Bees — fire, intensity, inflammation, heat, swelling, pain. Again, the fear of these things can constrict my breathing — my prana — more than anaphylactic shock would. A childhood wasp sting — and my bad reaction to it — seems to have elevated this fear of being stung, of having venom pumped throughout my system without my permission or any control over it. In turn, this also translates to my fear of scorpions, a separate desert topic in and of itself. Even mosquitos cause large red, itchy welts to rise up on my skin and stay a long time. My body and mind do not react well to fire … easy and frequent sunburns, severe headaches, photophobia, nausea from any kind of over-heating. That kind of fiery intensity easily overwhelms me. Combine this susceptibility with the hot flashes and night sweats of menopause and what happens? Ash results. However, Sonora reminds me to be self-aware, to either remove myself from exposure at its height or be sure to know the remedial scenarios to dissipate the heat, whether that is silence during an argument, drinking water in the shade, or simply remaining in my home-cave.  During the most intense fires of life, it does not do me — or anyone else — any good to go up in flames and disappear into the vastness of the desert, my bleached bones to be found later tossed around by coyote pups at play in the mirage of life. The key to all of this is knowing, accepting, embracing myself as a non-native of Sonora and reducing my expectations that I can be someone I’m not. Here, I’m a transplant, and my purpose requires a different approach, a different amount of fire — only a small amount of fire that is held gently, cradled close to my heart like a stone warmed to a sweet, moderate temperature that soothes and creates sparks in imagination and spinal fluid so that body and mind flow within the subterranean streams feeding all life in the desert. I say Grace … thank you, Sonora. How do each of us handle the Fire in our lives? Are we comfortable with intensity? Do we, in fact, relish the heat? Or do we shy away from the flames?

Dream Puzzles

from: Free Jigsaw Downloads

We dream and wake with eyes still closed

imagining the world outwith the night

as mysterious and foreign

speaking a language unknown … yet it isn’t.

We think we are here

for the day’s newest pleasures and pains

but perhaps we are here for the dreams at night

so we can create other worlds

where there are beings similar to all we know

yet they stand a better chance than we —

evolving as we offer them our confusion to transmogrify

like a puzzle gifted in a box.

All the pieces are contained within,

each being removes a piece at a time

to examine and smell and touch

its rough edges or smooth long side or bumpy nodules

that fit somewhere unexpected by color or preconception.

The night is our real world perhaps,

our dreams the manifestation of a window

into a parallel universe where we watch

in awe as problems are sorted

like the blue puzzle pieces here to this side

and the yellow over there

and the straight-edged here,

becoming organized —

so that the image will emerge quickly

from our sorting and prompt recognition

that perception has its value.

Dreams are the world of possibility for us

yet real for those we walk with in the dead of night,

our footsteps silent near theirs,

they imagine us watching them

and glance over a shoulder … but we are the unseen.

Gayatri Mantra – Bhuvah

free image © Michael Shake | Dreamstime.com

Continuing my journey through the Gayatri / GaiaTree Mantra …

Bhuvah — definitions or understandings of the actual word/sound are:

 consciousness, limitless, through Divine Consciousness we are free of illusion

 _______________

Greater awareness of the boundless grace of the Infinite, this is a counterbalance to Bhur’s physicality and is the opening freely to Source as more than the amazing presence in our world. Where Bhur is more than just an ‘airy’ or ‘spacey’ transcendent energy we could not touch, that is where Bhuvah comes in to awaken us to the unerring mystery of Gaia Spark that is limitless. We can feel Her vibration in every part of our body. She is the catalyst and the inspiration that cannot be named or seen for She is the field of Knowing, She is Consciousness. She shows us the mental constructs of illusion. Gaia, Wise One, holds the keys of instinct and intuition and ‘seeing’ at their Source. 

Gaia parts the limbs blocking our view of the stairway up the side of the mountain next to the cascading waterfall. Gaia shows us the miracle of the granite steps and the moss carpeting them to soften footfalls. She opens our eyes to the space between the matter, and for a moment the step disappears and only a vibratory impression remains–still there but not as we thought it was, and when we step onto the shifting image of the block we see our foot shimmer in and out of existence as well. 

Look up and see the waterfall become a veil that is transparent and not wet at all for the droplets individualize and they are filled with space and can evaporate in the blink of an eye upon the air of a thought. Time slows and we can step through the veil, gently parting the falls like a curtain that drifts closed behind us. Behind is a cave within the mountain we never knew was there–a shelter that had always been present but we never saw it behind the veil. The walls shimmer and gleam with pulsing veins of gold and silver, their pockets filled with turquoise sky and amethyst sunsets. How could we have not known? 

Gaia steps out of the solid rock that never was solid and She is smiling with delight, holding a bobcat kitten in one arm and a fawn in the other. They blink, or do I, and we are all playing as equals upon the floor of the cave, bleached bones of the pain of ignorance scattered like forgotten toys. I see myself in them and through their eyes I see myself reflected. We are all precious, all the same except that they long ago shed the veil and have been walking the earth, yearning to help us experience the joy of the present and the love in the now and the limitless potential we all share. But we–and, thus, they as part of our whole-earth experience–have been held captive to human ignorance that has kept world peace a mere footstep away. 

Splendor rises around me and we are all vibrations in a song being sung by Gaia, Her lovely voice lilting an ancient melody, all the notes of every life form coming together in harmony with no space for suffering in Her Song, only infinite space for compassion. “You can be in the world of form and also know the boundless possibility of Self.” Her words are bliss, like a cool hand upon a fevered brow too long in the driving intensity of the desert sun. Here, then not here. Nowhere and everywhere. Incomprehensible yet absolutely present.

I blink … I am once more on the mountain path gazing at the waterfall, the spray a drenching mist upon my clothes and they cling to my skin. Was it just a daydream? The rock feels solid–I stomp my foot. Was that laughter coming from the woods? There, a movement … I glimpse an agile, leggy brown body wearing white polka-dots scamper away, bounding … boundless? A whispered purr in my ear calls … I look across the river to the canyon wall where a small graceful being with long jowl fur curved around an enchanting face blinks once slowly and then turns, leaping with limitless power and agility onto a ledge, twitching a stub of a tail at me before disappearing into a dark, rocky crevice. I smile. “Gaia … !“ And I hear Her fading laughter upon the cool breeze caressing the back of my neck.

See first post HERE for backstory on the Gayatri / GaiaTree journey.