Wednesday, June 2, 2010

"All Day She Sits Upon the Stair,

Or on the chair, or on my hat..."

Or on my blanket to do Bound Lotus. And then the laundry. And then vacuuming. Cleaning. Eating salads with chives, lettuce and black truffle oil. Thinking of Sobin. The Fly-Truffler. My Father. Eating poppy seed toast lost in memories. Watching all eight scenes from Lynch's "Rabbits". Looking at the oxo kitchen utensils in a wierd way. Reading. Always reading. Eating melted chocolate. Valrhona. My favorite. Did the lights go out? Recovering from Memorial Day. I was day-dreaming. Thinking of "Naked Lunch". Reading Phil Hine.

"Periodic descents into the Underworld are a necessary phase in the cycle of personal development, and is also associated with depth psychotherapy."

Anything less is a spiritual bypass. I wouldn't say that a spiritual bypass is what most New Agers are doing, but if they aren't, and they are delving like me...then, they can't talk about it to most other New Agers. It's like the family secret. You can't tell. Can't talk. It would ruin the bliss. But as Ammachi says, "It takes us a long time to get to the bottom of our anger."

And Phil Hine continues in my head.

"According to the Western Esoteric Tradition, one of the key stages of initiatory confrontation is the encounter with 'The Dweller on the Threshold'. Less prosaically, this phrase refers to the experience of our understanding of the gulf between the ego's fiction of itself and ourselves as we truly are."

I am frightened at times. Like Bernadette Roberts. This work is harder. It is nice to come up for air, but sometimes the tunnel is so deep you have to keep going. You can no longer bring up just a few diamonds and pearls of wisdom, proclaiming yourself enlightened. You have to go back down again. And again. And again. Just like the sun. This work is hard.

"This necessitates the acceptance of light into the dark corners of the self, and the acceptance of our short-comings, blind spots and personal weaknesses as aspects of ourselves that we must take responsibility for. The recognition that we are, ultimately, responsible for all aspects of ourselves, especially those bits which we are loathe to admit to ourselves, is a step that must be taken if the initiatory journey is to proceed. It is not uncommon for people to remain at this stage for years, or to come back to it, time and time again. Such ordeals must be worked through, or they will return to 'haunt' us until they are tackled, else they will become 'obsessional complexes' (demons) that will grow until they have power over us. There are a myriad of techniques - both magical exercises and psychotherapeutic tools which can be actively used to examine these complexes, but the core of this ordeal is the beginnings of seeing yourself. In shamanic cultures, physical isolation from the tribe is often reinforced by physical ordeals such as fasting, sleep deprivation, and exposure to rigors of heat or cold - all powerful techniques for producing altered states of consciousness."

I'd venture that making dragon bowls sing, watching David Lynch surrealist video clips while alone for hours, and doing Bound Lotus are of the aforementioned techniques.

Phil Hine goes further.

"The initiatory cycle can be likened to a snake sloughing off its skin."

Or a butterfly's cocoon.

"As we reach the initiatory stage of descent into the underworld, so we are descending into the Deep Mind, learning to rely on our own intuition about what is right for us, rather than what we have been told is correct."

I think of David Lynch and his interviews about the creative process and 'true' enlightenment. A kind, gentle old man, whose films are exceedingly dark. He owns both his demons and his angels. Would Christ have been murdered or Osiris dismembered if we could all own our demons? Is it all a metaphor? Metaphorical questions. Paradoxical even.

And then there is Natalie Goldberg in "Writing Down the Bones":

"Yet it is good to know about our terrible selves, not laud them or criticize them, just acknowledge them. Then, out of this knowledge, we are better equipped to make a choice for beauty, kind consideration, and clear truth. We make this choice with our feet firmly on the ground. We are not running wildly after beauty with fear at our backs."

After a while every child has the choice to grow up, and let go of a need for father figures or mother figures...the New Age makes that harder to do. We are always looking for wisdom in someone else's words...what about listening internally, stilling the mind, and hearing the tortured voices within as well as the lightness? Inanna and Erishkegal are one woman, not seperate sisters in the Sumerian myth. They are symbolic of the one who has pretended to have no darkness within them, who goes back to hold their own hand in the darkness, while radiating the intense light they have developed in the upper world. When you are healed enough, you must go back for those abandoned selves in their tortured cells. Without them you are neither whole nor human. I have no wish to be a cartoon or cute pink characature of myself. I wish to be REaL! So I delve into the darkness...where it is sometimes dangerous...but I have selves to care for there. They are worthy of love as well.

1 comment:

  1. Ah, this is exactly what I needed to hear, exactly where I am. Seeing myself as I truly am and trying not to be scared or disown them again, and I feel my heart open every time I tell an emotion or inner character "You are welcome here"

    "It is nice to come up for air, but sometimes the tunnel is so deep you have to keep going. You can no longer bring up just a few diamonds and pearls of wisdom, proclaiming yourself enlightened. You have to go back down again. And again. And again. Just like the sun. This work is hard." Ahhhhh, right on the nose.

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