Friday, July 22, 2016

INSANE IS THE NEW NORMAL: POST THIRTY-ONE

Tiger Lily


THE LOVERS: PARADISE REGAINED



     About two years ago, I hiked alone through a high meadow near Tamarack Creek over fallen branches and tree trunks. Where few people had ever ventured, I found arrow leaf tansy and tiger lilies and columbine and spent the morning immersed in rivulets and flowers. After I rested on a rock and ate lunch, a few minutes later my heart started beating irregularly. My stomach felt like a stone that had lurched up into my chest. I thought I was dying of a heart attack and plopped down on a large, flat stone. I leaned back against a pine tree as water gurgled peacefully in the nearby stream until the AFib finally dissipated about forty minutes later. Without knowing it then, I had reached an advanced stage of celiac disease. My small lunch, which had contained gluten, had sent my heart into a frenzy. Many months later, after numerous experiences with AFib, I finally made the connection between gluten and erratic heartbeats, in time to avoid a blood clot or an actual heart attack. After eliminating gluten entirely from my diet, I have not experienced AFib for almost two years now.
     I returned to Tamarack Creek last weekend. After a winter of heavy snowfall, the tiger lilies were blooming more profusely than I've ever seen before. Over 7,000 feet above the San Joaquin Valley, where almost every inch of land has been cultivated and urbanized in the last century, over a mile from Highway 168, the meadow has remained pristine. Near the highway, however, ranchers have grazed cattle that have trampled a great many flowers, including some rare ones like gentian and little elephant's head, and logging roads snake down the mountain high above the creek on both sides, yet the meadow has managed to avoid molestation, possibly because of so many fallen trees and branches near its edges.

Columbine

     After the Ritual of Divine Madness (see previous post), I returned to the meadow. During the ritual, I had become the Fool, the eternal child, resilient within fields of change and adversity, knowing long moments of inner freedom without negativity. As the Fool by the creek, for one day I experienced Eden physically and spiritually. Thanks to my ritual I returned to a paradise not of the id or the ego, but of the higher self, which feels the unity and divinity within all things. Because I also invoked the God Min during the ritual, I felt a surge of well-being and a greater sensitivity to the life-force: The auras of plants and trees were tuned to their surroundings. Tiger lilies, so abundant that their fragrance permeated the meadow, hovered above the rivulets and broken branches near waves of golden arrow-leaf tansy and columbine bobbing in the breeze, in a self-sustaining community, interconnected physically and spiritually, that will survive long after the human race has perished—if we leave it alone. Because of my ritual, I felt the life-force thrilling through me and through all the plants and animals in the forest.
     Back in the city, I realized how little I have been in touch with the life-force, which has as many names as there are civilizations. The life-force can't be found in our electronic devices, but you can't tear those devices out of my hands or the hands of most children and adults these days. The life-force does not exist in movies or TV shows, yet it's extremely hard to get me to avert my eyes for even a few moments once I start watching. The life-force is not in my car or or my furniture or my house, only the residues of human elemental energies. I began to understand why forests might seem like pure chaos to people who are only used to human order, why so many people have become terrified of the life-force as it manifests in nature, why in the past thirty years I have encountered in the wild only a handful of other people, most of whom were carrying fishing rods or guns.

Shooting Stars

     As I stare at my computer screen, I realize that in this information age, it has become so easy to lose the knowledge about how the life-force manifests within ourselves and the creatures of the Earth. So many are obsessed with the body but know nothing about the subtle energies of the aura or the chambers of the soul. So many are aware of cartoon super-heroes but are unaware of the Gods that personify powerful natural forces.
     After I performed the Ritual of Divine Madness and returned to the meadow, I realized that the metaphor of rebooting and reformatting my personality that I used in the previous post was wrong. I wasn't creating a new identity—I had instead returned to something like the self I had known many years ago—my spiritual life-force, undistorted by social conditioning. I retained the knowledge and wisdom that I have gathered over the past fifty-six years but felt free of decades of negativity.


Larkspur

     It became clear to me why I had never fully discovered the knowledge of the life-force within me. As a child I was regimented in the public school system for nine months of the year but had three months of freedom every summer. When not playing sports or hanging out at the mall during summer vacation, I was watching TV or going to the movies. Inevitably, during the last half of the summer, I spent less time with friends and more time watching TV. In fact, the TV was on all the time, even during meal-times; I was socialized year-round to become a productive unit of labor and a spendthrift consumer. When I grew up I was going to buy, buy, buy junk food and clothes and cars and furniture and houses. I would go to college just so that I could get a great job and afford so many awesome things.
     Money is a type of human energy but does not contain the life-force. Cars have a type of power but not the power of the life-force. Clothes and furniture and houses accommodate our needs and reveal our status in society but do not contain the life-force. For decades, in public schools, at home, at malls and amusement parks, at the movies, in college, I was starving for the life-force.
Larkspur near Rock
     When I was growing up, by the end of each summer vacation I was bored to tears. I lived in a comfortable middle-class home, but by the end of summer I felt an incredible emptiness, except when I was reading about art or creating something. My father, fortunately, took the family on camping trips that sometimes lasted a week. Those camping trips exposed me to a completely different order of life. I at first believed that humans are more special, more intelligent than any other creature, that nature was simply a playground and a kingdom to conquer. Even though over the years I began to recognize the sentience of plants and animals, I had become so brainwashed that I did not even notice the beauty of flowers and trees until my early thirties. As I was growing up my social conditioning slowly disconnected me from the life-force in all of its beauty and diversity, so I could not experience the divinity in nature—I was not even aware that I have a higher self (known also as the soul) because I did not recognize the life-force in myself; I had not experienced my own divine core, so I could not connect with the divine subtle forces within nature and the cosmos.
Tiger Lilies
     I have since my teenage years felt more than a little compelled to escape my social conditioning due to illness and a gnawing sense of emptiness, but since my first experiences with Afib, I have felt an especially keen desire to break free of social constraints and leave my society far behind. I have no desire to “break bad”; on the contrary, I want to be free of negativity, without inner conflicts or chronic physical pain so that I can pursue ideals of beauty, truth, justice, and harmony. Due to my rituals, I may have finally succeeded, at least to a degree. I still feel greatly fatigued at times, and negative memories continue to surface now and then (but with less force). I don't claim to have totally healed my mind or my body, but for the past few days, I have felt free the way I sometimes did as a child, except now as an adult, I don't feel a ubiquitous fear of the unknown or the weight of parental and societal expectations. I don't need to maintain even a tenuous connection to the herd. After a long stretch of illness and spiritual dullness, I feel as magnificent as a tiger lily, and I can glimpse spiritual magnificence in other people once again as well.
     After my recent rituals, I feel sometimes that I am at a place in consciousness where the soul meets the divine. However, I suspect that few people understand what I'm saying because so many are cut off from the life-force. Most people probably just consider me crazy. Some people have made me feel less than worthy, but I realize that the more I let go of negativity in my body and mind, and the more I invoke powerful subtle forces, the more I feel healthy and free. I know, though, that with a chronic illness, feeling positive about myself is not going to happen 24/7.

Arrow-Leaf Tansy, Tiger Lilies

     Due to my social conditioning and my chronic illness, I have searched a long time for health and freedom. Long before my recent rituals, for instance, I chose not to be ruled by a symbol system. I pick and choose the symbols from various cultures that I need in my spiritual work. Identifying with the symbol instead of the spiritual force has led to untold madness, with cultures forcing each other to adopt their symbol systems through oppression and violence. A symbol system does not contain power until people connect with the subtle forces that the symbols represent; people who are forced to worship a symbol are unlikely to connect with its power. Using the secret name of Christ to invoke the Egyptian God Min through the Tarot card The Devil, as I did in The Ritual of Divine Madness, might seem more than a little mind-bending to some people, but it is this very act of breaking free from the tyranny of symbol systems that leads to greater freedom. Connecting with spiritual principle and spiritual forces is essentially what matters, not any symbol system, not Christianity or Buddhism or Hinduism or the so-called “dead” religions that we consider myths. Authentic spirituality for me is about the soul aligning with the divine spark and connecting with the forces of Being. Myth, which is about all that any religion amounts to, is merely one way throughout history that people have used to achieve those ends. The unseen forces do not change, only the symbols.


Tiger Lilies by Rivulet

     Stepping away from the herd does not mean ignoring laws and values. Once I had the Vision of Harmony and understood my own divinity and the divinity within nature, I understood that my soul is a tiny thread of consciousness in one vast tapestry of energy. Everything is connected. I shrink from the thought of harming anyone or anything because I am part of who or what they are; I would be harming myself by harming another. Until every person internalizes that simple spiritual principle, laws that prohibit harming others must stay in place, and we will continue to label unbalanced acts as sins. A person who internalizes spiritual principle would not dream of harming or killing another, except in self-defense. That is why I have said that the only true sin is having a value system that cuts you off from knowing all the vibrations of the life-force because that also cuts you off from knowing the interrelationship of all things. The lack of inner awareness of the life-force and spiritual laws leads to harmful and horrific acts, not weak social laws. Lack of empathy, which stems from an ignorance of the divinity of nature and the self, can lead to mass starvation and genocide.

Path 17



     The Nine of Swords, Lord of Despair and Cruelty, clearly reveals what happens when a person is cut off from the life-force. Swords pierce the higher energy centers of the aura, and the person lies in black despair, the swords pointing straight out, suggesting how a miserable person projects cruelty outwards at others. Due to my chronic illness I find it difficult to remain positive, so in this ritual I first banish the Nine of Swords.


Nine of Swords
Mars in Gemini
Moon in Yesod

     Then I invoke The Lovers with the Active Invoking Pentagram, specifically the two great Gods associated with the card: Isis and Osiris. I also invoke Horus, who is the son of Isis and Osiris and is associated with Mars, since the decan correspondences of the Nine of Swords are Mars in Gemini. Mars can shake up your life and cause despair, but I am using the positive energy of Mars through the God Horus to burn away negativity.


Modifiers for the Ritual of Paradise Regained

     The Lovers shows the alignment of the divine core with the soul and the masculine and feminine energies of the manifested personality. In terms of the microcosm, or individual, the sun is the divine spark, the angel is the Evolutionary Personality (or soul), and the man and the woman represent the duality of the masculine and feminine energies within the incarnated personality. The Number Cards associated with Gemini (the Eight, Nine, and Ten of Swords) emphasize the mortal side of the self. The Lovers, the Major Arcana card associated with Gemini, reveals the immortal side, in a state of paradise regained.
     This ritual contains only a few modifiers but is powerful in its simplicity. I have included examples of improvised invocations below.


ISIS (The Empress)


Great Isis, Goddess of healing,
Goddess of beauty, Goddess of nurturing,
Path 14
Goddess who knows human suffering,
Goddess who resurrected Osiris
and conceived Horus, Great Goddess,
look favorably upon me now,
help me align my body, soul
and divine core so that I know
divinity within all things,
so that I know paradise regained,
so that I live where soul meets
my divine core and the divine forces
of nature, so that I am healed
in body and mind and soul
and know the beauty of the cosmos.
In the name of Yeheshua, I invoke thee.
Amen.

OSIRIS (The Hierophant)


Great Osiris, God of the Spirit World,
Path 16
God of the the brilliant Crown,
the thousand-petaled lotus,
God who knows suffering and death,
resurrected God, heal me,
resurrect me so that I know
the harmony of paradise,
so that my divine spirit aligns
with my soul and my body
and divine natural forces.
Let me let go of negativity
so that I may be whole again.
In the name of Yeheshua, I invoke thee.
Amen.

HORUS (The Tower)

Path 15
Great Horus, God of the higher self,
one eye the sun, the other the moon,
burn away what does not serve me.
Consume all disease and negativity
so that I may live where the self
meets the divine spark—my spirit
connected to all Being. Let the Sun
of spirit shine through the soul,
manifesting in this world so that I
manifest harmony in the world,
serving thee and the Source
for the highest possible good.
I am resurrected in thy light.
In the name of Yeheshua I invoke thee. 
Amen.


     It bears repeating that Yeheshua is the secret name of Christ, the Hebrew letters Yod, Heh, Shin, Vau, Heh associated with the points of the pentagram. Since I use the Tarot Pentagram Spread in the ritual, Yeheshua is especially powerful in the invocation of the Gods.

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