CreativeMythologyCreating Personal Mythology

I’ve been procrastinating again. Well I imagined I was until I had a rather significant discussion while out to dinner the other night. We were talking about personality and I mentioned that my conversational skills had been described at times as being like squeezing blood out of a stone. Yes I do tend to hold myself back. And I brought up my blog. This is how I am putting myself out into the world, how my stone is beginning to ooze blood. The talk turned to excavation and then to archaeology.

“Emotional Archaeology” was bandied about as we talked about where the blog is going. I wasn’t sure if that captured the tone correctly. Was it deep enough? The word “psychotropic” came to mind. On reacquainting myself with the word I discovered it meant “acting on the mind” usually referring to drugs. My thought around psychotropic was in the  deeper sense of “psyche” meaning soul, and “–tropic” meaning turned toward, or having an affinity with. So the blog in a poetic sense felt like it had a “Psychotropic Archaeology” an excavation of my deeper self to develop this sense of a Creative Mythology

A few days prior to this enlightening discussion the thought had come to mind that at its conception a blog is a blank slate yet to be written and each post the same. I choose a subject and the words that will populate the screen and speak to the readers.

A new born is a blank slate when they enter the world. Initially what is written in their psyche is chosen by the environment they inhabit. They take their original cues from their mothers, then fathers, siblings if they have them, and so on until a day comes when they have to select or reject the cues they’ve picked up during their formative years. Their experiences may dictate to them that this or that cue is not working in a certain situation leaving them to wonder if this is really how life is meant to be for them.

And so collectively with Humanity. In its primitive state what might have been the cues taken that evolved into the wars of today? War seems a huge manifestation of an inhumanity wrought in the tribal communities of prehistory. My ponderings coincided with a visit to Wellington to see my children. And the following image struck me as I walked along the waterfront….

What is it that anchors our inhumanity in our collective consciousness?? Can we blame the media for placing images in front us ad nauseam or is there something deeper going on? An opportunity for individual or collective compassion and action perhaps? An opportunity for us to wake up to a collective and personal need to change.  First our inner selves and then the outer manifestation of this inhumanity which seems embedded in our very nature.

As always I rely on my day to day experiences to fuel the blogging fire. What can I excavate from the previous weeks events to furnish the room of understanding. And the inspiration (or is it desperation) to complete this post keeps coming. Only yesterday I received this in my inbox….

I see desperation in the images accompanying the script. And sorrow that the way the world works leads to this.

I have also been trawling through the M*A*S*H series on DVD. Hardly an episode goes by without a tear being shed. There is no dearth of material for an examination of Sacred Sorrow. A couple of episodes stand out…

Dear Sigmund: Sidney Freedman their on-call psychiatrist is spending time at the Unit during which he is composing a letter to Sigmund Freud. The plotline that touched on this inhumanity theme involved a pilot shot down over Korea. His war has consisted of flying missions from Japan dropping his deadly payload and then returning to Japan to spend his off-duty hours with his wife. During his stay at the 4077 he comes face to face with the horror he has wrought in the form of a injured child whose village has been bombed from the Air. A defining moment for him. In a parallel plotline there is a prankster at work in the camp offering some lighter moments. While funny there is something faintly dark about using someone to be the butt of another’s pranks.

Preventative Medicine: A sobering episode where Hawkeye contrives an affliction for a Colonel who has an overwhelming casualty rate, whose achievements as a commander are more important to him than the welfare of his men. Hawkeye has him come down with symptoms akin to an infected appendix which he then removes. The resulting recuperation time means the colonel will be taken off line duty indefinitely.

With his penchant for bringing the ironic to life I often find the voice of Hawkeye in my head….

While we’re on the DVD trail I picked up The Cove a couple of weeks ago not knowing that it would have relevance to the post. The blurb mentioning elite team, covert mission had piqued my interest a while back and it seemed the time to hire it. As the story unfolded the issue of dolphin exploitation and secret slaughter was in the foreground.

Then I received an email showing photos taken in the Faroe Islands where the slaughter of the calderon dolphin was openly acknowledged and was described elsewhere as a rite of passage for young adults males. The images are sickening. Another sorrow of our inhumanity.

And last but definitely not least is a sense that what we create in our lives is related to our predominant thoughts and feelings. Focusing on this theme brought that home for me. The ease of which all this arrived at the threshold of my awareness and then battered down the door seeking sanctuary. So when I turn inwardly and consider further – what are the ways I am wreaking inhumanity on myself and why…..

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As I looked again at the photo of the tree in my last post the word gossamer came into my mind and made up a bed. It’s been pacing up and down waiting for sleep to overcome it. It doesn’t seem to want to rest until I do something with it. Thoughts have been swirling around nearly three weeks now.

Standard dictionaries say gossamer is derived from the words goose and summer. I much prefer the definition in Brewer, The Dictionary of Phrase & Fable where the source is thought to be from God’s seam. Legend has it that it is the ravelling of the Virgin Mary’s winding sheet which fell to earth as she ascended into heaven.

That seems somehow apt with the first stop on my walk the other morning being the cemetery. The view is stunning and a deep sense of peace touches the place as though those who are buried there are truly at rest.

As I continued my walk around the Wainui community the universe offered up the perfect gifts.

The word gossamer also evokes memory. Like the thread from Mary’s winding sheet, memory weaves our lives together, creating a picture on the tapestry that will become this lifetime.

The words of Led Zeppelin’s “All of My Love add to this metaphor with the lines “with the glow the weaves a cloak of delight/ there moves a thread that has no end”. And “yours is the cloth, mine is the hand that sows time.” For me the thread that has no end is the thread of divinity that runs through us all and connects us not only to each other but all things. It is the thread of our memory of all that is sacred within and without.

Memories of silk and satin, of babies skin, of cobwebs in the early morning, the first touch of sun on hills, and shining through the plumage of a hawk on the wing, the point where light meets shade.

As I was pondering Gossamer I had a conversation about being kept awake by thoughts and I remembered a passage from Your Sacred Self by Dr Wayne Dyer .

He has this wonderful way of fading out one’s inner dialogue using the imagery of a pond with unlimited depth. He conceives of 5 levels in this pond and imagines a pebble or shell sinking through the water. On the surface is a place of turbulence where everyday life has an immediate effect on our consciousness. The next level is a little beneath the surface slightly removed from the incessant distraction and analysis of your thoughts. Deeper still is the third level where you arrive at the flow of awareness experiencing an acceptance of what is without needing to comprehend it all. As the pebble or shell shifts to the fourth stage the pond is in a state of stillness, totally removed from judgment and entering an experience of joy. At the fifth level he describes being in essence, open to the prospect of infinite possibility in your life. At this level he proposes that “you will have a sensation of knowing God”.

It seems almost paradoxical that if we allow the weight of our thoughts to carry us down to deeper levels of consciousness we experience the gossamerlike touch of Godness.

Blessings

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I went for a walk on Monday. Banks Peninsula juts out from the East Coast of the South Island. I was hoping to reach the edge of the cliffs where I could look at an uninterrupted ocean, the wide expanse of the Pacific, an unknown horizon.

I didn’t quite make it to the edge but saw it further on. I’ll give myself more time when I next venture out there. The road is precarious in places and icy during the winter.

Horizon

In view of the point I was surprised to receive a phone call. I didn’t imagine there’d be cellphone coverage that far out. It was one of the sales managers that service the district. She rang to tell me that she was leaving the company and moving on to another firm. While I was looking at the horizon, she was seeing a new horizon in her work.

A goal is a horizon that has yet to be reached. Sometimes there is no landfall visible as we seek the goal. It is unknown and yet we set a course to where we imagine that landing point will be. As we sail outwards we may be caught in storms, tossed by seeming savage waves as we struggle to keep the boat on course. We may have to tack from side to side to make headway as we endeavour to keep going forward though we have as yet no sight of land. We may become becalmed, no wind moving us wondering, wondering, wondering…..

And when the breeze stiffens behind, rushing us forward the feeling of wind through our hair, the coolness of seaspray on our skin; the excitement of the impending landfall filling our souls.

Anastasia

As I set out for YMCA Wainui I wasn’t aware of what was going to stir my soul there. Around the same time I was moved to read the Ringing Cedars series. The story of a woman, Anastasia, who lived in the Siberian taiga. Untarnished by living in an urban environment she has extraordinary powers honed by the embrace of living close to nature. She posits a change in the world through Russian people being given a hectare of land where they’d build what she calls a kin’s domain. A place for a family to create a space of love which would enable them to feed themselves in perpetuity.

The series stretches to nine books each building on the previous one. What was proposed sat well with my heart and I began to think of ways that could be introduced here in a small way. A visit to an eco-expo further raised my expectations to what might be possible. Having a week’s leave has given me a new perspective and this week I have begun to finally see some of what is already present where I am. When my focus changes I see what I had previously been blind to.

A bay tree, oregano, marjoram, parsley, silverbeet, lavender, rhubarb, rosemary. It’s a start. A first landfall on a beautiful journey.

“In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.”
Albert Schweitzer

I was uncertain why I put this quote here and as I’ve sat with it, it seems as if he’s talking about coming to edge of one’s experience and and not knowing what comes next. At this edge we may well be imagining the fire is dying and we may meet another human being; but just as likely we may encounter another place, another event, book, or idea that creates a renewed enthusiasm for life.

I also get the feeling that in some way we are always coming to the edge of our world. One moment begins to fade in its significance as we begin to converge on the edge of a new moment. A different set of circumstances arises of which we need to be mindful to grasp the fullness of the experience.

There is an ecstasy in the fullness, not an effusive ecstasy but an ecstasy that secretly touches our souls with an inner and eternal knowing.

Back up Akaroa Harbour

Blessings

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Banks Peninsula

It has been five weeks now since I began at YMCA Wainui Park in the position of Catering Manager. My son drove me out there the day before I was due to start. As fate would have it we ran into a little difficulty on the way. An accident on the hill to Banks Peninsula meant traffic would be held up for two hours. We decided to take a back road. Though I later discovered the accident had had tragic consequences the choice to take this road less travelled seemed an inspired choice. The day was clear and we had views all round for miles stretching to the south and west.

Looking South from Southern Bays Road

Since then it has been full on. With groups requiring catering almost back to back. It has only been the last two or three weekends that I’ve been able to take a some time for myself . There have been moments of grace though. The quiet time first thing in the morning when I’m able to connect with the beauty of nature that surrounds me. The silence punctuated by bird song and the wind through the trees. I had a couple of friends visit yesterday and as I showed them around they commented that everywhere they looked both at Wainui and on their trip from Christchurch seemed picture perfect.

That is the way of nature. There is perfection as we look not only closely at the plants but also at the panoramas of the bigger picture. What is it within us that seems imperfect? Creation takes time on the physical plane. Each second, each minute, each hour, each day is a step towards a perfect life. And each moment can be perfect within itself if we are both mindful and heartful in whatever it is we are doing.

Rhythm is important. During those first five weeks the tempo was intense. And now, the season over, I am finding it difficult to find a new step. Last week it felt like a pause between songs. It was like coming away from The Who concert. From the raw power of the music to ordinary life outside the stadium. That inner space that had been moved by the intensity of the music had to rediscover the pace of the everyday. And the concert was only 2 hours long. I’ve been working with that intensity 9+ hours most days for 5 weeks with the odd days respite here and there.

I’m finding a new rhythm this week. Making to time to work on my blog. Allowing work in the kitchen to develop a new pace. In the past I discovered that coming in to a new environment required time to tune into the tempo of the place then once that happened the work began to flow and more of who I am came to the fore. This change from being super busy has had a similar effect.

Talk of rhythm and tempo brings to mind the oral traditions in the times before we had written language. I imagine that the bards, the keepers of the histories, had a highly developed sense of the musicality of words which enabled them to commit large amounts of their history to memory. And I’m sure that once they got into the flow of communicating to their fellow men what was simply information in lyric form the rhythm and tempo would take them beyond the mundane to flights of fancy and into a mystical realm where they would begin to add a mythological context to the histories.

In essence the mystical experience enabled the bards to experience their God-Self. The God within. I acknowledge we all carry the seed of the Divine within us. What is it that brings us closer to experience ourselves as divine? The ancients first attributed divinity to elements of nature, to their external reality. Over time the attributes became internalised governing aspects of themselves that are seen today as forms of intelligence and yet they were seen as being somehow governed by these “god” manifestations.

Howard Gardner describes seven attributes of multiple intelligence : linguistic, logic-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic, interpersonal and intrapersonal. These can be seen manifest in the characteristics of gods described not only by ancient cultures but also in the important personages of the Common Era – masters, saints, mystics, philosophers. Their inspiration derived from experience in nature, or by seeking the silence within.

It is this space that I feel close to as I look upon the view from the deck surrounded by nature’s beauty, experiencing the silence early in the morning or late at night and allowing that to nurture my soul. Although this encounter is more immediate in rural and wilderness areas I’ve found a deeper appreciation for those green areas within the city when I’ve visited on different occasions.

I’d love to share the photos I’ve taken over the past weeks as I’ve explored my surroundings and those I’ve snapped on visits to Christchurch. Unfortunately each time I go to load photos into the post the program closes. Its frustrating and rather than seeing the beauty that I bring to the page I hope you’ll take the time to encounter the divine beauty that is waiting for you wherever you are.

Blessings

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What do we need to look at within ourselves when we consider these modern plagues? We saw the Egyptian plagues had a probable natural cause while these modern plagues are largely self created.

Consumerism/Debt, Deforestation, Addiction, Poverty, Celebrity, Climate Change, Female Infanticide, Politics, Suicide, Terrorism/War.

All this has been created by our thoughts of who we are at this point in time. Again I was finding it difficult to begin this post I had some ideas but when I put myself in front of it nothing happened.

I begin a new job tomorrow. Leaving my current abode and moving to another area about an hours drive away. Living on site taking up the position of Catering Manager for the YMCA Camp at Wainui Park.

I went for a bike ride through my favourite spots,  a sort of a good-bye. I’m sure I’ll be back but it won’t be the same.

Its autumn here in the Southern Hemisphere.

South Hagley Park

Leaves are fading, falling, carpeting the earth. Along with acorns they crunch under the tyres as I take the path through the park.

Seems as though we are in autumn (fall) universally. Harvesting those things we’ve created through our thoughts. The good and the bad. Thoughts about who we are individually and globally.

Is there a coldness entering our universal consciousness? A time of what worked during the summer of our age beginning to become frozen. Do we need collectively to embrace a wintertime? To consciously allow a winter bleakness to enter our psyche that we can better appreciate the springtime that’ll follow. To huddle together, deriving common warmth. Burning away the deadfall, those branches of thought that no long serve our global community, that have outlived their necessity to the tree of humanity.

What will follow this conscious embrace of winter, this burning away metaphysically the deadfall of “civilization”, the “civilization” through which have emerged these modern plagues. The ideas and and thoughts that serve our concept of a common humanity will be the first shoots pushing through the thawing earth as winter turns to spring.

And yet throughout a winter there is still greenness to behold, still flowers to spark our imaginations for the unfolding beauty.

Are there areas of your life that seem to falling away, parts of your psyche going cold to ideas you have about yourself. Can you see the seasons at work within yourself?

Blessings

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