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Leaky transcendence! Love it Mark!

Transcendence will find a way!

Sorry for the borrow of the ol’ Jurassic Park metaphor of life will find a way.

 

But maybe there are some metaphorical dinosaurs lurking in the dark we subconsciously try to avoid.

Makes sense to me!

The icky mud in the attic…

The obvious possibility: rat signs tale-tail. Trails of icky for sure!
No venemous toads in a literal attic with that much heat in summer. But once upon a time, small black venomous  dragons of a sort would March down from our attic with their scorpion tails held high in venomous attitude. Bold and angry.
So maybe a scorpion could hide in the psyche just waiting to jab.  I remember one time when Dad was in the backyard, a scorpion stung his ankle multiple times! Yow!
Angry little creatures!
And then it’s those un-explained creaks in Attics that maybe we would rather avoid?
Last year, I had a harrowing experience in my house with a hornet and it felt symbolic went right into the psyche attic for sure…know there was more at play than just the bug! Or maybe because of my childhood memory of Dad’s encounter with a swarm. Well he did spray their nest (heh) but he fell as he ran and they attacked. So bad he went to the hospital and his wedding ring had to be remolded.  But thank God he recovered!
BUT your quote: “Do people take refuge in the mundane to avoid the extraordinary?”

Brilliant! And Yes, Yes, Yes! I think they do!

Maybe you are right! Maybe they do partly in fear of the icky things in the dark. Maybe fear of confrontation? Highly understandable! Or fear of what they will see in the mirror? I think you did a piece on reflection last year and Medusa right? The stone turning?
So a snake could be up in the attic?

But that’s 3rd eye stuff as well as um venom. Unless rat snake. Haha.

But sometimes, I think the greatest fear is the unknown and not necessarily because it might be a monster to avoid, but rather because what if the unknown  “does not fit,” cannot be easily “categorized?” That has always seemed to be the role of transcendence to me!

What you thought you knew, you did not know!

But logic wants its say as well, which is logically to be expected.
Transcendence probably tests the patience of logic Hehheh. So is the trick finding the balance?
So here I go pulling up Robert Mirabal again Stephen (of course;-)  At the end of one of Robert’s concerts, he said something I had never heard before.

But it certainly appealed to my psyche and (Joe Campbell philosophy cells) Grin.

“Drive safely and see you in a non-ordinary reality.”  I love that!
I think it also speaks to what you say Mark!!
But I have this sneaking suspicion that you are right, the non-ordinary is feared. And I think it’s feared even when it’s not icky scary.

Isn’t there a little bit of a different kind of fear even hidden within the word Awe?
Or when one thinks of the Universe and feels humbled by their tiny-ness within it? Do transcendent moments not take the breath out of us? Did some poets not refer to that which was so beautiful it “hurt?” Or maybe the re-connection hurts because one has been so long without it? So ironically it’s easier to keep it at bay so one won’t have to remind themselves of that pain.

But alas! Transcendence will leak its way back into that attic, when one lets their guard down and is less pre-occupied with controlling.

Oh boy here come the toads! But do they have jewels in their heads?

Now the perspective of the universe…

That I find to be very, very interesting.

I have seen some posts with gorgeous photos (from James Webb telescope I think?) which do a comparison of sizes from earth to largest planets in our solar system to our sun…to larger stars to our solar system within our galaxy and our galaxy becomes very, very small…and so forth…it’s beautiful, humbling, awe-inspiring and breath-taking!
So I don’t remember which science site this was…but it’s gorgeous.

Then recently saw a post from NASA with a photo-diagram of the “entire observable universe.”
It is glorious, fantastic as well! And reminds me of my Mother’s love of observational astronomy. 🙂

But here was the interesting part to me…

In the first size comparison post, one is moving metaphorically as well as literally outward, looking from inside out towards a growing horizon…

Whereas the 2nd post kind of does the opposite (bringing a balance in a way)

outside-in?

(i.e. “here is the whole observable universe.” And all of these galaxies and nebulas are within a “circle.” The known observable universe)

But that “circle” has now become very sizable. I could even imagine it held within the imaginary hand of a giant galactic wizard!
The first impression I had is “it is bounded.” But the unspoken question is “what is beyond?” Yet to be discovered?

The first post of photos evokes something infinite…something which points beyond itself…the unknown…

The second singular photo evokes something manageable, knowable and written.

Guess it’s just the yin/yang or the journey go out to go back within.
(The whole universe in the palm of the hand.)

It is extraordinary! But it is hard not to feel even here, there is a little bit of a fear that the extraordinary unknown STILL exists beyond those current borders of years of hard won knowledge.