Lathe of Heaven (LeGuin)

I have become a fan of Ursula LeGuin.  She is deep, philosophical, profound.  This morning while I drank my chai tea I picked up the Dalai Lama's treatise on The Heart Sutra.  I learned to chant the Heart Sutra in English and Japanese at a Zen Center.  I must have chanted it along with the pounding rhythmic drumming 100's of times.  There were phrases that really sank deeply.  Like a koan, it is not an intellectual understanding one is reaching for -or  "grasps" - but one that runs through to being's core, resonating with truth, needing no words, holding no doubt.  So I repeated phrases, and felt through the words for the resonating truth.  Many years separated the period when I chanted and this time when I simply read about the deeper teachings within the Heart Sutra.  The piece I read this morning was about understanding the concept of "no Self" - the impermanence of Self.  The phrase that tripped me the most years ago was "no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind - no sound, smell, taste, touch, phenomena."  I attempted to "grasp" how there were none of these things and yet they were there - the opposite of the "no" existed simultaneously.  As I read about the concept of the absolute Self and the relative Self that is the puzzle itself, I remembered how I puzzled and attempted to "grasp" the experience of Orr (the dreamer) in Lathe of Heaven.  Whether LeGuin meant in any way to write a story that told of the experience of letting go of self/Self she did - for me at this time of a deep personal struggle.  A story that epitomizes the experience of "'waking up" to a new place of being, literally, and accepting what you find.  And a new personality as well.  For Orr, existing simultaneously for him was the knowledge that he (Orr) himself was responsible, unintentionally most of time time, for the change coming into true reality.  Something within his brain caused it.  So he was not helpless or truly just a victim of himself.  He was a part of the whole process.  He always remembered the old even as he knew the "new!"  His acceptance of what was - or the just thisness as the Zenies would describe it - was admirable.  Fitting quite nicely into the Dalai Lama's writings.  Interesting don't you think, to find resonating similarity between a science fiction story and the Heart Sutra?!

Riding a Tiger

In Zen Osho Tarot, there is a card that shows a young man riding up into the sky on a tiger. I think the tiger represents conquering a fear of that which holds us back. But since there are so many things to hold us back, fear-based or not, this tiger will change its stripes often that like our hearts and minds! I was pondering my current "tiger" - the one I had thought I could not face, in fact, it had control of me for years. It was the foundation of so much that needed to change and I just couldn't do it. I kept hanging on even though there was no logic to it. My world would crumble to pieces or something if I didn't not hang on tightly, twist myself around it like smoke from the smoker sitting near you. I was sure that the singularity would occur in that moment of my embracing my tiger. Tigers are very scary, right? Man-eaters. Woman-eaters. But the time had come. There was nothing left to be gained. It was time to wrap my arms around my tiger while it was resting under the Bodhi tree, (I like Bodhi trees - the Buddha found enlightenment sitting under the Bodhi tree.) I dared it to eat me, if I died it might even feel good in some kind of twisted way. I was pretty scared. It felt like something had physically shifted within me as I gripped it. My eyes felt tears trying to burn their way out. But this tiger had scared me too long. No time for tears. Odd, it didn't eat me. It growled low and deep. The singularity happened and didn't happen at the same time. I realized in that moment that my tiger was not scary anymore. He had first looked at me with fierce hungry challenging eyes but now I saw acceptance and respect there too as I searched for signs of imminent death. The same acceptance and respect entered within my heart and mind as I saw it there, too. I was strong. Not weak. Free - er. Taming my tiger had made me far stronger than I had imagined it would. I had been afraid I might die. But I didn't. My tiger and I were one. ---- There will be a new tiger I know in my future. One with different stripes, lying under a different tree. The moment of knowing when it is time to embrace that tiger will come within the flow, be it suffering or joy, and it will not seem strange. The moment of knowing is one that the tiger is ready for just as you will be.

What's in a Name

I was given the name at birth of "Julie Romaine."  I was told, when I grew old enough to remember it, that it was the name of an actress in one of Guy de Maupassant's short stories.  An actress who loved and I felt died from love's injury.  I was born too with my Venus quincunx Pluto.  I looked it up.  It means that I become obsessional about loving.  I love, perhaps, not wisely.  My mother ripped out a few pages from her "Harper's Magazine," the other day, telling me I should read "it."  I looked through the few pages, found the first to be by the editor of Harper's, Roger D. Hodge.  He described the progressives' disappointment with Obama's broken promises.  It hurt to read it.  A part of me doesn't want to believe it can all be true - the apparent selling out to the pressures of business as usual in Washington.  I know it must be very difficult to try to be the one who brings change to those who resist it with all of their being.  I turned the pages and found a review of a translation edition of Guy de Maupassant's writing, Alien Hearts.  Knowing the name and its association with my name, I began to read the review.  Lorin Stein is a true writer herself.  Bravo! 

 

I was struck by her statement (based on an apparent deep study of de Maupassant as a person as well as a writer):  "What most troubled and delighted Maupassant's readers was his erotic identification with women.  He saw them as sexual objects, and he saw himself as a sexual object."  As a published writer of not quite a decade, he began at the end to look deeper into his characters, to express more than the words they said to each other, the thoughts they had about each other (which has been his intellectual and emotional choice) he began to be a writer of the "psychological" novel - thus, Alien Hearts is an example.  Along with my name, my experience of love, I have encountered another thing in common.  The choice to go deep.  Psychologically.

A birthday

I haven’t written in my blog for a while. I got rid of a couple of semi-hysterical entries (thank god we can do that!) and have been settling in emotionally since October.

I made an entry in my Google id page that described what I’m good at as “Being Mom.” It is what I am. Good or not. I manage anyway. I am not always as loving as I want to be, but I am always there, always willing to talk, to forgive, to reach out, to bend, and that’s “loving” in action. So that’s what I do.
What I am remains a work in progress. Haven’t figured much out there. Often I am in touch with some inner voice that lingers in the background saying figuring oneself out is an ongoing thing, not meant to STOP. I am not unique in this. It is the same for all of us. I realized recently that my period of grieving over what I thought might happen in my life and my youngest daughter’s life has taken time to heal.

I had to go through those stages. I looked them up and wrote them down in front of my computer for a while. And I doubt I’m done with them. But I feel more at peace with the way things are now. I react less. I accept more. I fall into just what is. I really enjoy the peace in my mind I have now. Not thinking so much. I can just “BE” more and more. Washing dishes, sorting clothes. Just doing. Not thinking the way I used to when I was suffering so, fighting against things so. I push too hard to make my little world what I THINK it should be.

Some of that is what my HEART wants too. I remember now, this moment, the story of The Alchemist (I entered a quote from it here on this blog – about the HEART – what the heart wants). I have relearned that everything going on within me and those I love is so much more complex and interconnected than I can possibly really get.
My heart is my heart alone. It is private and alone with its aches and wants. It beats its presence as a reminder and sometimes it beats faster when I connect with someone very dear to me. But it is always a private heart and alone. The Heart has no rights except to experience itself - to feel its own beating as a reminder that life continues – a reminder too that all beings live with the same Heart that is private and alone. What is it really that the Heart wants?

I hope. I trust. I appreciate. I pray for all of us. My heart urges all of that. My heart wants that. I feel my love. I live it - the best I can. Forgiving self and others as needed. Living life just as it has been given to me to do each day. Being Mom, being friend – daughter – sister – co-worker. Being me.

August 19 - Helping my daughter paint

I made it with Lily and her best friend, Russell, to my oldest daughter's home where she will live for the next year.  I helped her paint her room.  I did the most tedious part, painting the baseboard and around the door frames in the special color she picked out.  It was made much easier 'cause Russell taped the edges very nicely.  He has been really helpful to us on this trip.  I am appreciative of his efforts to make Lily happy and to be as helpful as he is, with such a good attitude.  Lily was having a hard time today while we shopped for things for her room.  My granddaughters were bored but uncomplaining.  After one more comment from Lily about what an awful driver I was (by now she was driving instead of me),  there was a realization that NOW my role is similar to what it is for my grandkids - come along for the ride, don't complain, don't make waves.  NOW is the time for letting go of the "mother" role, letting go the sense of doing something so very important, and instead relaxing into just what happens as young children do. It feels strange, this new awareness of relaxing and not organizing and planning so much around my daughter.  Not entirely pleasant though, I'll have to admit.  

  

August 12, 2009

I have decided, after seeing the movie "Julie-Julia" to document through my own blog my transformation as a woman without children at home - after 36 years of being a parent.  

I can't imagine what my blog will report over the next 12 months!  I find myself excited at the prospect of change - and growth.  And like the young lady known as Julie in the movie, I decided to set a time limit for the blogging of this, I hope, transformation. And put some pressure on myself to practice being aware of the opportunity to grow and change, explore and discover!

Next week, we set off for Illinois and Northern Illinois University, and the boyfriend is coming along.  My first challenge... 

THE HIKE

In the distance sat the mountains, jagged smoky gray. Sara woke each morning looking at the mountains in the far off distance that surrounded the flat-bottomed valley where she lived. One point, one peak, on the mountain called to her. It had something for her to know; she had noticed the mountain's insistence on delivering the message - noticed its growing insistence - her growing curiousity. To day, she would go and find out what it was.

She packed her lunch, a tomato paste sandwich and water in a jar. It was already a hot summer day in New South Wales. At 12, she had never hiked so far alone. It looked like it would be very far from home, but Sara never thought to ask permission or tell her younger brother where she was going. The mountain was calling to her. The message was for her ... alone. She knew.

When she got to the first fence, she climbed over into a different piece of land. It belonged to someone else's family. It felt alien to her. She was unwelcome in that place. The grass was knee high and yellow like straw. She often saw sheep grazing here, but not now. She walked forward through the high yellowing grasses and after she had walked awhile, off to the side of her path, she saw a sheep lying still. Dead. Its thickly folded fleece was oddly intact except around its neck and belly. There was blood, lots of blood stretched out, saturating the buttery yellow-gray fleece and the ground. The black flies had begun to gather. As she came closer, they rose and circled around the bloody openings and resettled. She looked at the open eyes death starring. The violence of the death struck her. She had not seen fresh death before. She imagined she could smell the metallic still warm blood. She wondered what could do this and then remembered that a pack of dogs, wild dogs, even dingoes would have done it. Australia had no other predators large enough to do this to a grown sheep.

The day was getting hotter. She had to move to feel the breeze again. She had to leave death behind; no more lingering. Sara turned to follow the mountain's call. The cacophonous noises of the galahs and magpies in the distant trees felt disturbing in the solemn mood of the moment, sounds of living things that knew no death was near. Then came a sudden laughing mocking sound. A kookabura then was also near.

Sara had bottled raised twin lambs the previous winter. She loved them and they had only just recently returned to their home flock. It might have been one of the orphans she had raised that lay there bloodied and torn. Feeding them day after day, knowing them, she had a deeper sadness for this sheep that had lain so still on the ground, hidden from all but the flies who rested and fed on her.
Sara walked on. There was a great house on this property. A very large Victorian style home. When she gazed from her bedroom windows at night, watching the Southern Cross move across on its arc, she had studied the shadow of the fine English-style house, seeing a light there. She had often wondered what it might be like to live in such a grand house. She thought of the house in "Jane Eyre," the one that belonged to Mr. Rochester, before it burned down because of his crazy wife. Curiousity distracted her, guided her forward. As she came closer, she realized that it was indeed a big house, grand, but it was as if no one lived there anymore, or no one cared for it any more. Windows were broken in places, curtains hung in tatters, bushes and grasses grew uncut. Chipped windows and doorsills spoke of long abandonment. Sara walked around the house and no one appeared to yell at her. Her fears of being found trespassing so close to someone's home began to lessen. She had previously imagined a family living there. Unaccountably, Sara felt disappointed, both in what she had mistakenly imagined to be there, and not found, and in the loneliness that wrapped itself around her, causing her to feel a growing coldness within. The house, too, was sad.

She turned away from the sad house. Off in the distance, the mountain - its peak, the point in the dusty distance, was more revealed with the sun overhead. She stopped to drink from her jar. She briefly thought of not going on. She could go home now. She felt tired. She looked again at the mountains. At the peak. It was calling still... and she was still curious. She noticed her stomach rumbling. She was getting hungry. But she promised herself she would not eat until she reached that spot she knew called to her. It would feel very good then. It would be her reward.

The land began to rise and the rocks became more frequent. Sara had to crouch over some of the bigger ones, using her hands and feet to climb up and round obstacles. Her pack and water bottle bounced on her back and swung around needing to be pushed away to keep her arms free to reach forward to pull herself up. Her straight hair fell into her eyes causing her to choose between her grip on the rock and her irritation at the itchy sweaty insistence on her skin. Her breath was coming faster. She wanted to stop, but a sense of urgency to reach that spot she knew demanded her would not let her stop. Perhaps she was just too hungry. Sara looked up to see the place she knew she would recognize as that place when she saw it.

There. That ledge, it was almost like the mouth of a cave, shaded by a large boulder, with a couple of small bushes and grasses growing nearby. That was it. She turned her head to look back over the valley she had climbed above. Sara felt excited she had come so far. Proud. She loved this place; it was so beautiful, so free, so open and unconquerable. A place that knew her and she knew it. She continued to climb and soon reached the ledge. The shady spot was cool and felt a bit damp. She drank in her breath deeply; a feeling of coolness after the heated air from the rocks she had clung to as she climbed.

She pulled her pack around, sat and took out her tomato paste sandwich and water. Sara could not remember ever tasting a sandwich so good, water so sweet. She felt a deep satisfaction at her accomplishment and awe too at the beauty all around her and within her being also. Sitting on that spot on the mountain peak that had called to her, telling her that it had something for her to know, she knew then what the mountain had had to tell her. The journey had been a part of the telling. Sara was deeply happy to have heard it.

First Love

The car veered sharply to the right. Sara slid easily across the warm seat’s slick surface next to him. No seat belts. 1966, New South Wales, Australia. A ride home from church. Jack was always happy, he said, to drive the 20 miles to get her and then bring her home. Sara was pleased by that, very happy deep inside.

Being sent for, by the sudden veering of the car, which she knew would come, made her heart flutter and a tense feeling start in the region of her belly. The firm solidness of his body meeting hers stopped the slide. The knowing smile as he pulled her even tighter made her blush and look away momentarily from his impish blue eyes. She felt so very alive with every cell of her body when he looked at her that way. A craving for this feeling to stay longer and longer grew within her.

Sometimes, lately, he would stop the car in a private place. Jack would kiss her. She wasn’t sure she knew how to kiss. She had never been kissed before Jack kissed her. The first time it happened, she was about 13 and he was 24. It was wrong wasn’t it. She knew she was a bad girl – letting him kiss her. Sara was in love for the first time. His warm smile and flashing deep dimples, sparkling blue eyes, even his hawkish Roman nose, all perfect to her. Her eyes and soul drank and ate of him as if he was food and drink to a starving person.. Going to church had become the central need of her life. No one knew. No one knew that he veered the car so she would be touching him. That they would kiss. She knew it was a secret. Must remain a secret. Love was not spoken of. Only the feeling of love existed between them.

Jack had 4 sisters and a 100 budgies in a huge cage in his garage. His parents were Dutch immigrants to Australia. Jack still spoke English with his own lilting accent. He built houses for a living. His body was strong and sunburned a dark blond. Sometimes he spoke of his work and she would listen to the sound of his voice, unique accent, and wait for the spark of excitement that flew from his blue eyes and prompted his dimples to reveal their presence.

Sara loved him with the heart of a woman though she had the body and experience of just a girl. She imagined him telling her that he loved her. She imagined that the reality of what could not be between them could disappear when those words were spoken. She could imagine a lot with those words of love spoken. But who would speak them. She was not brave enough though the love she felt was achingly real, threatening to pour over the barrier of her shy not-knowingness.

Then, one day, too soon, she learned she and her family would return to the States. The slick warm seat sliding under her as she fell helplessly into him with his devilish dimpled smile would not be felt ever again. The aliveness she knew only with him would be gone - forever. At 15, her first love was over. She would never see him again.

But, at 17, she did see him again. He and his American wife, who had been a missionary to the Church in New South Wales, and their infant, stopped over in Honolulu to see her. They were returning to Utah to live with her family. Sara went with them in the car around the island – to see the rainy side. It was hauntingly familiar to Sara being in a car with Jack again. Sara was in the front seat, on his left side now. Seat belted. The baby was breastfeeding in the back seat. His wife was looking out the window. Jack’s hand reached out across the seat for Sara’s. He looked at her, warmly, remembering, and squeezed her hand.

Impish devilish smile and deep dimples appeared. Sara drank him in with her eyes, fed off him, again, for that moment in time. Alive again.

The Orphan

It was cold and dark. Time to make up the milk. The lamb was hungry for its morning feed. The light in the kitchen was a mellow-yellow, weakly reflecting the margarine colored Formica counters as she put the electric kettle on to boil and got out the mixing bowl and powdered milk. Mother said the powdered milk here was different from the Carnation kind used in the States. It was like real milk. Whole tasting, full of fat and made a meal for the orphan lamb. The lamb’s bleating hurried her on. She knew Daisy was hungry waiting alone in the cold dark barn. Sara pulled her pink robe more tightly around her rather scrawny 12-year old frame and wrapped her straggly dark hair around her ears. The next part was tricky. Pouring mixed warm milk into the long necked bottle. Rich milk created thick foam from the mixing and smelled sweet and rich as Sara raised the bowl above the bottle’s neck and began to pour. She concentrated hard, ignoring the bleating, sounds of urgent need.

The red rubber teat had to be stretched over the long-necked glass bottle. With repeated use, it had gotten easier, but it had to be pulled down really far, and the rubber was still firm and tight. Her hands struggled with the slippery wetness and rubbery resistance. Daisy voraciously attacked her bottle she knew from experience. Sara was nervous to get this part done right. She knew what could happen if the teat tore off the bottle too soon and the lamb was frustrated with having to wait for more milk to be mixed.

As Sara left the now warming kitchen to walk to the barn, the bleating was more urgent, more frequent. The girl was happy and excited too. The joy both of them experienced at feeding time, the moment of satisfaction of needs met on both sides . Daisy, rushed to meet her, pushing against her legs with its square woolish head. Twisting her body away from the lamb’s head for a moment, anxious to meet the desperate need, Sara placed the bottle into her abdomen and planting her feet firmly and deliberately beneath her center. Taking both hands and pressing back with the bottle against her body, she gripped the bottle where the red teat rode the neck and held it tight, as she turned back to Daisy. Daisy lunged, mouth opening, to take the teat into her mouth quickly. Loud sucking sounds and Daisy’s fat tail flapped wildly to-and-fro, ‘round and ‘round, like a propeller prop, as she sucked.

The pulling and pushing was strong, very strong. Sara rocked on her feet. The neck became slippery. She worried she might lose the teat and moving her hands more tightly, adjusted her feet to find her center again. Froth dripped from the lamb’s mouth onto the ground; warm milk sloshed back and forth in the growing emptiness of the bottle. Then, suddenly, there was the sound of air. Sara reached forward to Daisy’s mouth and inserted a finger in the side to break the suction. Daisy let go and snorted to clear her nose, perhaps in displeasure, but also familiar with the routine of the ending. Sara and Daisy looked at each other - blue eyes and goat-like amber slitted ones. Reaching to touch her, reflexively, as a part of loving her, Sara noticed the clinging greasy lanolin feel that remained on her hands. The smell of it now also on her robe. Daisy turned to nibble on what she found on the ground. Sara turned in the dawning light to get ready for school.

The Alchemist - a heart quote

Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist. p. 129-131: The heart speaks ...

"My heart is a traitor," the boy said to the alchemist, when they had paused to rest the horses. "It doesn't want me to go on."
"That makes sense," the alchemist answered. "Naturally it's afraid that, in pursuing your dream, you might lose everything you've won."
"Well, then, why should I listen to my heart?"
"Because you will never again be able to keep it quiet. Even if you pretend not to have heard what it tells you, it will always be there inside you, repeating to you what you're thinking about life and about the world."
"You mean I should listen, even if it's treasonous?"
"Treason is a blow that comes unexpectedly. If you know your heart well, it will never be able to do that to you. Because you'll know its dreams and wishes, and will know how to deal with them. You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it's better to listen to what it has to say. That way, you'll never have to fear an unanticipated blow."
The boy continued to listen to his heart as they crossed the desert. He came to understand its dodges and tricks, and to accept it as it was. He lost his fear... and one day his heart told him it was happy. "Even though I complain sometimes," it said, "it's because I'm the heart of a person and people's hearts are that way. People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don't deserve them, or that they'll be unable to achieve them. We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren't, or of treasures that might have been found but were forever hidden in the sands. Because, when these things happen, we suffer terribly."
"My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer," the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky.
"Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity."
"Every second of the search is an encounter with God," the boy told his heart. "When I have been truly searching for my treasure, every day has been luminous, because I've known that every hour was a part of the dream that I would find it. When I have been truly searching for my treasure, I've discovered things along the way that I never would have seen had I not had the courage to try things that seemed impossible for a shepherd to achieve."
So his heart was quiet for an entire afternoon. That night, the boy selpt deeply and when he awoke, his heart began to tell him things that came from the Soul of the World. It said that all people who are happy have God within them. And that happiness could be found in a grain of sand from the desert, as the alchemist had said. Because a grain of sand is a moment of creation, and the universe has taken millions of years to create it. "Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him," his heart said.

I pray we all listen to our hearts speaking and remember the search itself is our treasure.

Connectedness

I wondered about the following due to my interest in consciousness - just what is it? Related thoughts sprung up in thinking about how much each of us is projecting... Then I asked myself why is it we do this looking outside ourselves for answers. It struck me that the psyche, as understood within Jungian psychology, arose out of the "wholeness" of a universal functioning consciousness; then there was no body, no separation of beingness in a physical body. No brain box held it all within, giving it eyes to see, ears to hear, smell, touch, taste. It might be added that then no attachments as we know them existed either. The psyche remains a part of that whole and knows no separation except in the secondary experience of itself. The "it" inside the box that finds itself looking out and listening. The web of connectedness, the universal functioning consciousness, is like a spider's web. A spoke of the wheel is contacted by something material and a vibration occurs, or a transference of energy, like the flow of electricity, that distributes itself throughout the web. In this a priori state there was no ego, ego was born with the birth of separateness and finiteness. The ego protects the vessel, the brain box, that holds the 'psyche' in its a priori universal energies, energies that still by nature flow out, receive and return without boundaries. We are the whole web. But, physically we are separate, cut off from others, alone and vulnerable; all of which emotions were unknown within the a priori state. We are both separate from the whole and yet not separate from the whole. Previously, there had been no one to feel, to desire, to own, to realize, or to have awareness of an experience that was unique to itself and could only be shared secondarily at best. Is the reason we each of us automatically use our psyches first to reach out to the "other" in this resonating way, perhaps searching way is because none of us remembers in such moments that we are physically separate. Something instinctive to the a priori condition of consciousness leads the psyche to searching for answers from the collective. Is it that we forget to seek answers from the Self because in the beginning there was no Self. Self was born as the stars were born. Conditions existed that could have no other outcome? I wonder why universal consciousness became the individuated Self? What is the purpose? Why did we have to leave that state and become separate from the whole... and why did there have to be a memory of the wholeness to plague us... is it to find the God spirit within us? Some say without consciousness there would be no universe. Is that our purpose - that the Universe must be self-aware.

Study of Individuation

So I was reading Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, his chapter on A Study in the Process of Individuation, it describes a woman, my age, who (as he writes) "lived with the unconscious equivalent of a human partner, namely the animus (the personification of everything masculine in a woman)..." This woman teaches him about mandalas, as a tool to reach the unconscious, making it conscious in its manifestation and testament. I feel in some real ways, like this woman so I found this chapter intriguing and the series of images of her mandalas (about 20) are inspirational. The woman is not an "artist" and over the years her work, her creations from the unconscious, are more and more sophisticated and beautiful to look at even without the interpretation of meaning that Jung describes in detail here. In the conclusion of this chapter, Jung writes, "... the masses are not changed unless the individual changes." Then, "[T]he bettering of a general ill begins with the individual, and then only when he makes himself and not others responsible." I wanted to share these quotes as even though Jung wrote them many decades ago, they are apt and perfectly expressive of what is still needed now during the "change time." It serves to inspire us all as individuals to remain involved in the "change" that must be present now and in the future. We can't rely on some other authority to do what must be done. It is you. It is me. This individual effort and focus can be worked from the smallest and most personal scale. The ripples will be felt as they spread out from the source of creation, the conscious with the unconscious collective flowing out and all around....

Mystery of the Unconscious - c.f.Jung

It is always awe inspiring to find the breadcrumbs left on the trail to assist us in finding our way. Assuming we are looking down in this analogy (see post on the Night Sky here). In reading Jung's The Undiscovered Self (1957) I came across the following to add to the previous post> "Without consciousness there would, practically speaking, be no world, for the world exists as such only insofar as it is consciously reflected and consciously expressed by a psyche. Consciousness is a precondition of being. Thus the psyche is endowed with the dignity of a cosmic principle, which philosophically and in fact gives it a position coequal with the principle of physical being. The carrier of this consciousness is the individual, who does not produce the psyche of his own volition but is, on the contrary, preformed by it, and nourished by the gradual awakening of consciousness during childhood. If the psyche must be granted an overriding empirical importance, so also must the individual , who is the only immediate manifestation of the psyche. ... [T]he common psychiatric experience that the devaluation of the psyche and other resistances to psychological enlightenment are based ... on fear ... of the discoveries that might be made in the realm of the unconscious. ... It is the fear of the unconscious which not only impedes self knowledge but is the gravest obstacle to a wider understanding and knowledge... Often the fear is so great that one dares not to admit it even to oneself." I believe this is essentially bringing up what philosophers call the the mind/body problem. Which is what is consciousness, our creation from biochemical and physiological derivation, but some entity all its own that we tap into (and out of). I thought about what I finished my last post with, "Copernicus lives!" What did I really mean by that when thought through in the context of the whole post. I wasn't sure anymore although it felt "sure" enough when it popped out through my typing fingers (LOL!) It felt right then, some kind of encapsulating summative statement. I find myself now seeking to interpret more deeply that which "I" brought forth. The thing that was born of "me" - my psyche's creation. My psyche is me - but "I" only give it form, temporary manifestation in words in this vehicle. I have been drawn for some while to the view around our consciousness being the "center" of the universe. Perhaps my calling on Copernicus is a reference to a belief in our desire to know our place in the universe... the place from whence the "I" comes. Copernicus dared to think differently in a time when such thoughts were heresy of the worst kind. The kind that dares to think of ourselves as more than the "children" of God. If God did make us in his image, perhaps it is not the physiological image at all.

Mystery of Consciousness

In reading an article in the current Discover : entitled "A Universe Built for Us" (Dec. 08), I was pleased to run across the following by a scientist at Stanford named Andrei Linde, "[Linde] is especially interested in the mystery of consciousness and has speculated that consciousness may be a fundamental component of the universe, much like space and time. He wonders whether the physical universe, its laws, and conscious observers might form an integrated whole. A complete description of reality, he says, could require all three of those components, which he posits emerged simultaneously. 'Without someone observing the universe, the universe is actually dead.'" The term being focused on in this article is "multiverse" instead of universe. Another quote I liked: "Physical Laws Clamor for Life: The Universe knew we were coming." Awesome idea. Copernicus returns!!

Creation

Today, I updated my blog, abandoned for several months. I have moved its encompassing vision to a different Mandelbrot set. I posted a wonderful graphic drawing of my friend to the site today on the opening page. I like the way it points you down into the body of the blog entry page. This is the first time I have written here for many months. It is November. I think it is a year since I first created this blog with the intention that some intergenerational need would be met. A year later, I am hopeful that my expanded definition of family will invite some I cherish to join in the account of writing stories of "thisness" - what is this life at this point, this moment of experience. I promise myself to learn and let go every step of the way. Anything written here is the expression of a moment in time only. No expectations. I went to a spiritual workshop in September. During a particular exercise, I pulled the words "letting go" many times. On the third one, I uttered a deep sigh. I need to work on this one I guess. What to keep and what to let drop away. Thoughts drifting in, darting around like minnows in a jar - letting go of the idea that such thoughts and the ideas that may arise from them are meaningful. If one of the minnows jumps out of the jar and into the pond nearby, that might mean something!

The stars

Tonight when I got home, walked to the mail box in the cold night air, I looked up. In the night sky to the south I saw the Big Dipper and above my head I think I saw the red star Betelguse. I only recently learned that besides the planet Mars, which often looks orangeish to our eyes down here, the other "red" is Betelguese. I subscribed to an university astronomy site that sends me weekly notes on what to look for in the heavens. I always find the night sky when there is no moon out to be truly awe inspiring... I am overcome for a few moments by the sense of my Self as a truly small and inconsequential being. I think longingly for a few moments about my oft-remembered desire to spend more time looking up at the stars. As a young girl, I drove across West Texas one night with my grandmother in the car. It was the wee hours. I opened my eyes and looked out the back window. It must have been moonless and far away from any city then because the sky was so filled with stars and small, medium and larger dots of light that it seemed crowded. Now that I am grown up, and the world is a brighter place at night even when there is no moon, I have never seen again a night sky so full of twinkling mystery.
Look up and wonder. Look up and learn.

A human life at 10

Since this blog is for my family and some of my family don't really know ME, I am writing to create 'knowing between generations. I have already written about my mother and her influence on my life, and I have written about my passage into an older age, one that is ill-defined except to be clear about not wanting any new animals in it!

Maryn is 10 so I will remember and write about when I was 10. Perhaps Dan will write about when he was 10 too!

At 10, I was living in Yuma, Arizona. My brother, Joe (that's what he likes to be called now) was 9. We played out in the sand dunes when we could, tumbling and rolling down uncontrollably but confident we would not be hurt. We built forts, and pretended to design our future homes and the city they occupied. I had my usual cat, scarred from numerous abscesses since he got into fights all the time. He didn't sleep on my bed but I loved him. My favorite sport was tetherball, which I played every chance I got with a ferocious spirit of competition. My fiercest competitor was a girl whose name I still remember and not because she was my friend. I was a typical wild child and can remember doing bad things, like engaging in a game of darts with my brother, but there was no dartboard. We threw them at each other and tried to dodge them. That game ended when one went into the top of my knee! In those days, early 60's, to kill mosquitos in the summer months, the trucks roamed our neighborhood at dusk blowing a thick smoke out the back which I believe now was probably a pesticide like DDT. My friends and I ran crazily behind the trucks dodging in and out of the thick curling smoke. The truck didn't go too fast that it outran us. I remember having fun doing something that I know now was insane to have done! Kids at 10! What did you do when you were 10?

Dog Days

“Squeezed out like a tube of toothpaste,” my mother said. I could relate to the analogy having attempted many times to balance the contents of the squiggly, twisted, squeezed out mess by massaging and manipulating in my sense of duty to my role as the mistress of order from chaos. I had to admit it. I was that squeezed out tube and I made my inner life manageable by massaging and manipulating it at least into a semblance of what looked and felt tidier, less tortured. I have always been drawn to the writings on the chaos theory. Its understanding that there was order even within what we might believe is just this useless negative thing called chaos. My life is chaos.

Its funny how in quiet moments we remember our lives as emotions and value judgments on those moments weighed against accomplishment and non-accomplishment. My instincts (when I am connected to them!) tell me there is no non-accomplishment. There is only that part of us that makes us judge and value on scales we don’t create ourselves but borrow from our cultural mores and gender identified roles. These memories fold in on our time sequence. Sometimes for moments at a time we forget how many years have passed since that event occurred. It seems right there with us and we reevaluate. This time around, we reevaluate differently. We are different now than we were then, even when we can’t know that in the same moment of re-experiencing.

I am the perfect example of not only the squeezed out tube, or perhaps I should say this squeezed out tube is not an example but a reality of sorts. A reality of so many women in middle age who take care of mothers, and children, animals often brought into their lives by those children, and often at the same time trying to find someone – a partner for their lives. For one reason or another, their past partners left or disappeared. I am one of those. In certain moments, I glimpse myself as ridiculous. Middle aged and trying to be attractive like a younger woman, worrying about body shape, graying hair, wrinkles and age spots, yellowing teeth, expectation even of disease of one kind or another that afflicts the aging. I know that being comfortable with self, confident in self as self, who/whatever manifestation that might be, in fact creates the most attractive individual, male or female, at any age. Certainly, there must be the acceptance that the sweet energy of youth is gone, but it is replaced by the sweet energy of confidence. Not arrogance or complacency – no absolutely not. That is extremely unattractive. Ah, yes, the squeezed out tube – me.

I had the experience of being squeezed out some more yesterday. Actually, that is why my mother said that about me. My youngest daughter, Lily, fell in love with a puppy at the puppy store. She had to have him she said. I still have her other dog we adopted more than 7 years ago. And her cat. Her fish. Her mouse. I take care of them. Perhaps not very well, but they don’t starve. I had to say No. She sent me a photo with her camera phone to my camera phone. I still said No. She made me go to the store to meet him. She told me he was the love of her life. I was forcing her to give up the love of her life. We walked in to a room that stunk. The stench of urine and feces hung heavy in the air. Not to mention the sounds of yapping, whining puppies. He was cute. His ears were very long and soft. But I remained unmoved. My daughter reminded me of the love I was depriving not only her of but the puppy. I remained strong. I noticed not even a twinge of regret on my part. I am old now. I knew it absolutely in that moment. To no longer be that person who felt the sensation of how cute these little things were – to the point that this cuteness was something you wanted to “have and to hold from this day forward.” Old. (sigh!). I was comfortable with this new person I had not thought that I would ever become. I did not judge her harshly for her lack of softness. Her expectation that her life mattered too. The way she spent her time mattered too. There were so many that needed homes, needed love. I could not help them individually. I was comfortable with that knowledge and walking away, wishing them each well in my heart. I knew Lily would suffer a while but would be well too in a few days or even hours. She was so changeable. I think I believed she had been distracting her self from her own problems (boyfriend problems) by falling in love and desiring the puppy to love, imagining her ability to take care of it forever. Perhaps she had found an impetus for a future goal of her heart, to raise dogs like these, or take care of them. If that was true, it was good.

That is a part of the chaos. The balancing of needs. My own, now that I had the time and mental and emotional focus of middle age, and the needs of my mother, my children, my grandchildren, etc., etc. I can focus more on the larger picture. Or at least I think that’s it. I will admit that I live in an almost perpetual state of “not knowing” the answer and of doubt of whether there is supposed to be an answer.