Kristina
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James, my apologies for the delayed reply. I’ve been away at a festival for a week deep in the Lithuanian forest and only now returning to connected life! It’s called Yaga Festival and it’s all about Modern Rituals: https://yaga.lt/
But anyway, to your thoughtful comments. I’ve often found that crossroads are the best place for magic because all roads are open and the chances for synchronicity – and possibility – are greatest. It’s also a reminder that our salient, superpowers are relational and collaborative. They’re embodied and magical, folkloric and sacred, and involve a commendation from the heavens. It’s why it’s crucial for us to navigate by synchronicity, intuition, dreams, and our imagination. And to take the moon’s wisdom into consideration too.
These two luminaries, the sun and moon, symbolise the eternal and temporal, so we must think, feel, and do synchronistically, not only causally. It’s about taking an appreciative, fractal fluency into our approach. A collaborative model of all giving, all receiving, which often can’t be comprehended by the intellect. When we attune ourselves to the collective weaving of life, it’s easier to surrender to what we hold sacred and trust our intuition more than our ego’s sense of timing. We abandon artificial certainty.
And the more weightless we are in our psyche, the more we can engage in synchronicity. When we’re carrying too much chronos time in ourselves we’re too heavy – too weighted with excess psychic baggage – to be moved at light speed … and to move ourselves in kairos time across the chessboard of life.
Until the next dialogue – Kristina.
I always love a sidetrack, sunbug!
I love that idea of three on the quest! It makes me think of how the thinking, feeling and willing function each need to go on the journey, not only one of them. Or that past, present and future each have a role to play on the quest. None is more important than the other. Or body, mind and spirit. The tripartite function is crucial. Strength, courage and magic shall be the banner under which I ride out today!
To your comments on the party, my mind jumps to Jung’s ’spirit of the times’ vs. ‘spirit of the depths.’ “The spirit of the depths even taught me to consider my action and my decision as dependent on dreams. Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without you understanding their language. One would like to learn this language, but who can teach and learn it? Scholarliness alone is not enough; there is a knowledge of the heart that gives deeper insight. The knowledge of the heart is in no book and is not to be found in the mouth of any teacher, but grows out of you like the green seed from the dark earth. Scholarliness belongs to the spirit of this time, but this spirit in no way grasps the dream, since the soul is everywhere that scholarly knowledge is not.” ― C.G. Jung, The Red Book: Liber Novus
Reading your words I realise how much I need to empty my cup and so I don’t want to write back – just as you say, for the sake of being polite – but I will take the stillness that your words offered me and allow them to be a vitalising water. Thank you for this gift – Kristina.
I hear you, Stephen!
There are so many times that I can’t seem to mobilise power, even though I know better. But often I don’t really know better because my mindset is using aggression to try and get things done and I’m living from a fear-based mentality.
But it’s about putting to bed this idea of trying to become some sort of fierce, armoured, Amazon warrior woman because when I’m in my left brain, I can’t feel my body. I’m trapped in the death rattle of the left brain versus the flow of the right brain. And that’s when I know it’s time to give up the battle and accept life on life’s terms … to be with the world as it is … for what it is.
The whole point of any therapy is for the therapist to accept the client as they are. It’s being a master of that Gestalt psychology phrase that ‘any attempt to change is bound to failure.’ But who am I if I don’t change? And how does not changing feel in my body, rather than asking the question as an abstract thought? But keeping it really simple, I know that I won’t change until I do.
And it’s about quitting trying to change and constantly self-improve and instead embracing who and where I am now. Constantly thinking that I have some other better life to live is the issue. It’s that thought, which is so toxic, and keeps me trapped at such a long distance from my body.
It’s also avoiding those elementary, self-help articles with headlines such as, ‘Why you know better, but have the inability to do better.’ We can’t better or improve something that’s meant to die. The one who can’t do better is the one who must die. Metaphorically, of course. But often we keep efforting to maintain a circular life and not a spiral one. A spiral life moves us up and forward but often we feel stuck because we’re trying to stay in the same groove. It gives us security, but yet again, we’re doing our very best to try and keep an old dimension alive that wants – and is scheduled – to die. So, to answer your question, how do I find my way back? I keep dying again and again and again.
Anyway, I look forward to being in all forms of dialogue and topics with you this week – Kristina.
Hi sunbug!
I often describe myself as an ex-futurist. I got out of ‘the game’ some 5 years ago or so when it was all about AI/algorithms/transhumanism/Mars etc. and often consisted of men presenting PowerPoints on large stages totally disconnected from their bodies!!! I don’t really trust anyone who talks about ‘the future’ that doesn’t have a relationship with the collective unconscious or nature. What I’m more interested now is the effects of ancestral trauma, the role of archetypal patterns/myths and Presence.
Kristina X
You’re so right sunbug! Yes, now, in this moment, at this stage of our life, the possibilities no longer appear endless, but us – in truth – will never again be as young as we are right now. We live ‘with’ the past, never ‘in’ it. It accompanies us as an echoing, lingering memory, but we ought never to stay in it. We often have this ferocious loyalty to stewing in regret. Why? We were meant to go and get this far lost off the beaten path. To find us in this moment. Us as we are, with all our past baggage. To develop the courage to seek redemption and to question what’s beyond this temporal existence. To feel that which always is. And always will be. There’s no other way it could’ve been, nor any other way it will be. Every left turn was meant to have us turning left, no matter how much our hindsight bias tells us that we should’ve turned right.
Always love your thoughtful inputs – Kristina.
Ah, Stephen, you speak directly to my heart! And hello dear COHO friends! How are we travelling?
For someone who spends a lot (too much!) time in the realm of ‘would’ve, could’ve, should’ve, if only’ thinking, your words are like a tonic to me! One of the only ways I can get myself out of this insidious loop is by saying ‘yes’ to the situation. ‘Yes,’ without wanting to change it or make it right or wrong. When I say ‘yes’ to life exactly as it comes through for me to experience, new movements can arise in my psyche.
And to your marvellous suggestion about externalising our issues, I literally just filmed something on this very topic: https://www.facebook.com/601383828/videos/1134118324038278/
I also recently had something ‘taken’ away from me, but until I could perceive that I needed to ‘surrender’ it à la Inanna, I was in great emotional distress. And I was reminded of Hans Leisegang’s words in ‘Die Gnosis’ that “every myth expresses, in a form narrated for a particular case, an eternal idea, which will be intuitively recognised by he who reexperiences the content of the myth.”
This week I watched ‘Mission: JOY,’ a documentary about the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu’s friendship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nlUl5yNgIE My summarising of the Dalai Lama’s words were that suffering is an opportunity testing me. And no matter how difficult, I have the inner strength to meet it. And if I can reframe the situation to liberate myself from resentment and bitterness, it becomes a new opportunity to learn, to gain more experience, and to become more useful to society. It was a reminder that I’m being put into a fiery furnace to be refined and that the suffering helps me to become more magnanimous and is a necessary ingredient for developing compassion. And the suffering is the very thing that actually helps me to appreciate joy! And the key to joy is getting in touch with my own natural compassion and living from there. There was also a part in the documentary that touched on the difference between offering comfort vs. courage – but that’s for another conversation!
Looking forward to spending the week with you all – Kristina.
Lovely to hear from you sunbug.
And yes, I did a piece on thresholds last year.
Really interesting what you write about two different mythic forms. Another way to look at it could be myths that reference universal archetypes – or in your words, a universal order – and how they’re expressed culturally – in your words, social orders. So yes, some myths are certainly specific to a place or culture (say the Rainbow Serpent, which is considered one of the most powerful ancestral beings of Aboriginal Australia), but I feel it’s the universal order that all myths are referencing consciously or unconsciously, even if they are born out of a specific social order.
Be well, Kristina.
Gosh! Beautiful! Thank you so much for sharing Robert. So many of us were wounded by relationships, but we’ll only be healed by relationships. Not sure what more I can add to your delicate, prescient post other than to say ‘thank you.’ KD
Thank you Richard (fellow pilgrim). Your comment reminds me of the Tonglen meditation practice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonglen And re: time loops, I loved the series ‘Russian Doll’ on Netflix. KD
Thank you for your comment rickkar1. Maybe instead of ‘follow your bliss’ I would offer to instead follow the trauma – individual and collective. Can we imagine our small selves as part of a bigger, collective system and so align with these vaster forces of life? Can we say ‘yes‘ to life as it is (people/situations/circumstances/ourselves)? And that this ’yes‘ also includes the spiritual dimension of life. In trauma, this ability to say ’yes‘ to life exactly as it is, is often impaired. I would suggest this as a starting point … and then just maybe … we can touch into Campbell’s words to “participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world.” KD
Here we are again! Hello dear friends!
I have just returned from Punios šilas, not just Lithuania’s, but one of Europe’s most ancient forests. And I am sitting with Campbell’s eloquent words, “The Christ idea and the Buddha idea are perfectly equivalent mythological symbols. Two ways of saying the same thing: that a transcendent energy consciousness informs the whole world and informs you. To become aware of that, and to live out of that center instead of out of this mind center, is the salvation of your life. That means putting yourself in accord with nature.”
As we enter a discussion on rituals I want to focus on our relationship, or lack of, to nature. Campbell presciently writes (and his words are massively more relevant today), “Economics and politics are the governing powers of life today and that’s why everything is screwy. You have to get back in accord with nature; and that’s what these myths are all about. Now in the nineteenth century sociological anthropologists had the idea that myths and rites were an attempt to control nature. Totally wrong. They are not to control nature, they are to control the society and put it in accord with nature.”
Spending the day with 4/500-year-old oaks, I could really sense how nature was the first ‘link’ people followed as they tried to pattern and articulate their lives. But in modernity, it’s not about returning to nature per se, but rather to befriend it and enhance it … it’s about experiencing the inner sentience of nature. Metaphorically, the sense that the forest is walking us, as much as we are walking the forest.
Along the way, there’ll always be order and disorder so that we may cultivate wu wei, a mental state where our actions are effortlessly in alignment with the flow of life. But can we learn to be still in the river of life and listen to what it asks of us? Because if we keep acting in misalignment to our true nature, we’ll keep compromising who we really are. Again and again. But not forgetting, however, that out of every disaster along the path of self-awakening, there is the potential for something surprisingly positive and life-affirming to emerge too.
Signing off with huge FOMO that I wasn’t at Esalen with the gang this year – Kristina.
