Colette Obrien

the Greek Goddess Nemesis is the personification of divine justice and the vengeance of the gods, sometimes called the daughter of Night, she represents the righteous anger of the gods against the proud and haughty and against breakers of the law, distributing good or bad fortune to all mortals. No one can escape her power. This goddess helps to avenge those who are wronged.

The book of deeds; how terrifying it is to think there is such a book, and that someday we will have to face the truth of the many actions and inactions recorded there.

I would rather face a wild boar or angry client or bankruptcy, or any other physical catastrophe than to face what is in that book; to face the fact that I am responsible for each and every one of the things recorded there.

Part of me is still a child and wishes to play with no consequences; to apologize to my friend when I’ve been mean to her and go on with no further thought about my behavior.

Nemesis reminds us that whether we’re children or adults, all our choices have consequences, and if we’ve done harm, amends are required.

Isn’t it interesting that our current definition of a Nemisis is one who is against us; an enemy or foe?  Yet the root meaning is one of justice. 

What a clever criminal is the human ego who redefines the need to make amends for our mistakes as wrong, and says that we should fight that force, rather than accept and be grateful that there is a scale, by whatever name we give to it, that takes account, and

                                            it really does matter what we do!!!!

The fool is not the only agent of surprise.  Coyote and his side-kick  the trickster are all cousins in the neverending question of what will life bring next?

Like Wells Fargo stagecoaches that, through rain sleet or snow, promise to deliver your mail on time, each morning is a new day, and though you work diligently to control what comes in the mail, many surprises lie in wait on your doorstep.

 Will the gods be kind and deliver marvelous experiences, taking us to beautiful places with loving people, friendly animals, abundant food, beauty?

Or will they traumatize?         

Is there any rhyme or reason to what comes or doesn’t come to you? If there is a God, does He/She love you and give you goodies, or hate you and punish you with thorns?    

Do you draw to you what you believe will come through some version of self-fulfilling prophesy; create your own reality?    And what happens to the idea of a creator in that scenario?

If you are a soul transmigrating through time and have done wrong things, the packages at your door will be of your making; Karmic payback for pastlife mistakes.   

On the other hand, maybe there is simply a trickster element in the universe, like a kind of quark, whose purpose is to keep you on your toes, keep you awake, to the experience of life. 

Each surprise whether delightful or Nemetic (just made up that word, but it seems to work) is a tiny ah ha, gotcha, to remind us that whatever we believe about life and our place in it, we are not in charge!!

Maybe the only control we have is in how we respond to the packages.

And what is a Nemesis anyway? Tomorrow we shall meet her, one of the lost great goddesses maligned in western history since the Greeks fell out of favor giving way to The One God.

Known for his headlong leaps into the void,the fool counterbalances worries and concerns.  Why else have the courts of kings and emperors included at least one fool for he lightened the atmosphere giving a much needed breath of fresh air to the anxieties of the ruler. 

If the ruler of a domain is our ego selves, the fool is that archetype that turns things on their head, makes us laugh, and for a moment, forget our fear. 

Life in a physical body is fraught with danger.  Though we may not be aware of it every moment of the day, the struggle for survival is present in the body every moment of the day. Fortunately the creator of this grand experience has granted us several boons.

Like the child who puts his blanket over his head and believes his mother can’t see him, denial is an effective tool.  Another useful one is distraction; I will pay attention to acquiring things– or any number of other goals– and won’t be aware of the danger.

However, it isn’t possible to completely avoid the fact that we’re mortal and vulnerable to so many forms of suffering on the road to our final destination. 

The fool is the friend who, throughout our life, helps us to walk more lightly , knowing it is temporary and, well, he quips, why not? What have you got to lose that you’re not going to lose anyway?

Encouraging us to risk all in order to experience life fully, he represents purity of action. Only looking forward, never back, never strategizing or over thinking a movement, he seeks to discover, always willing to take a chance, come what may. The fool lives to live. He frightens us a little because nothing frightens him. He is a liberated spirit.

But . . but . . . our fearful selves object, one must not be fool-hardy.  Right-O.  And what pray tell is the difference?

If I am offered an opportunity for an adventure, my fool will say go for it no matter what, while my rational self will insist on considering the possible consequences of that adventure.  Between the two of them a decision will be made. 

If I’m in need of new life experience, I will leap.  If I’m tired, or ill-equipped at the moment to take on the challenge of an adventure, I will decline the invitation.  I would feel fool-hardy only if I didn’t consider both sides. 

I would be even more fool-hardy if I didn’t give license to the fool to take an active part in my daily life. . . who wants to be safe all the time is already dead!

Because love is defined by Webster as; a deep and tender feeling of affection for another, and continues for a long paragraph only to describe the same thing over and over, it is no wonder we’re confused.

Many cultures have several different words for the kinds of love; intimate/sexual love, love of parents, love of children, love of siblings, love of animals, love of objects, love of ideas, love of country, etc..In English there is only one and it is woefuly inadequate.  Webster would have us believe that all kinds of love are a FEELING.  

One usually has a feeling asociated with the experience of loving, but is that what love is? What if we looked at it as a verb; not as a feeling, nor limit it to the kinds of love there are?  As a verb it connects.  What kills love is disconnection; the executioner.

As a verb, love is the action of connecting two or more objects–of any kind. We are seldom, if ever, aware of the fact that every atom in the universe is connected to every other, and that applies to everything in existence. It is, we are, ALL ONE.  And since love is connection, how is it possible to kill love?

Fundamentally we cannot, but what we can do is break the conscious bond.  The unconscious bond is there all the time no matter what we do, but as humans with choice–with consciousness–we can choose to make a connection to an other that is beyond the fundamental law of the universe. 

Most of us wish to do that.  Most of us love to love and to love in all the ways love can be experienced. We enjoy caring, of having an object matter to us, and of mattering to another. 

1. The first and fastest way to kill love is to care more for the feeling than for the object we’re connecting to; self centeredness or basic narcissism.

2. Another useful tool is to strangle it by gripping the object tightly; fear of loss, another form of narcissism.

3. Then there is the tried and true ax of jealousy and possessiveness; need I repeat–narcissism.

4. Neglect works well; self-obsorption.                                                       

Love’s executioner is one’s self.  Like an ax, self-centeredness in its myriad forms separates one from the love object and breaks the conscious bond.  Love is dead.

 Where I live on a mountain songbirds are unusual, yet as of three days ago, a beautiful singer has wakened me each morning. The sound is delirious and draws me happily from my bed.  Hope does spring eternal, he seems to say, and believing him, I venture once again into the world with a light step, wondering what this day will bring.

 How is this possible after 60 years of days to still be so inspired?

Writing about Snow White in the last post, I suggested that being open and accepting whatever comes -which doesn’t mean we have to like it, by the way–is a way of living that has merit.

 The songbird reminds me of the attitude life has; life as an object like myself which has it’s likes and dislikes; it’s seasons, its moods(the weather), yet in that continual round Life always returns to spring and spring is hope eternal. Not each moment, for there are the other attitudes as well, but it always returns and no matter how sad, or dejected or discouraged or tired I am, it will return eventually and I will hear the song bird and be glad to be here and curious about this day.

Troubadours, those classic purveyors of song, grace the woods with their melodies and call us to venture once again into the unknown; into spring where we may be foolish again, we may be careless, as in Camelot; the Lusty Month of May: when everyone throws self-control away. And everyone makes divine mistakes.

May our mistakes be divine; that is, accepted, as we traipse(spelling?)through the tulips yet again in search of love.

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Which side of the bed do you want to wake up on?

Wakened from the dreamworld to the rising of the sun (even if it’s behind clouds) opportunity calls like a bugle at revely.  What will this day bring, for every day is new? 

How we greet it is up to us. Do we view it  with dread that more will be asked of us than we feel capable of managing; with a sigh of boredom that this day will be like hundreds of others, a repetition of mundane activity; tired, heavy, physically unwell do we pull the covers back over our heads and wish the sun did not rise; or with hope and anticipation of adventure and exploration. 

Attitude is everything.

However, how much control do we actually have over the outlook we wake up with? The old saying, “He got up on the wrong side of the bed” has merit.  Today I woke up on the right side and greeted the day with optimism and joy, but that is not the case everyday. So what determines which side of the bed I get up on?

Health, rest, chemical balance, hormones, dreams, fears, worries, negative or positive patterns of thought  . . .   including unseen influences outside our awareness; astrology, elemental shifts in the earth, cycles of the moon, the weather . . . !!! So many things influence which side of the bed we get up on that it seems virtually impossible to name the reason or reasons for a sunny attitude versus a dark one.   

It appears we have little choice, yet though we are at the effect of so many different things, we also determine many of them ourselves, and it is to that list we must look for help to find the way to choosing our attitude.

The List:

1. Good diet, exercise, and rest. Knowing our individual chemical and hormonal balance, and monitoring changes over time. Avoiding habits that harm physical well-being.

2. Getting to know and take care of emotional needs. Saying “no” to overextending.

3. Maintaining mental fitness through stimulation; learning new things, dialogue to exchange ideas and some form of mindful practice like meditation to learn how to control thoughts. 

What we control is what we take in and what we keep out of our body/mind. 

As for the rest . . . learn to accept. Tomorrow; acceptance, what is it?

In-to-me-see. To see and be seen is the single most important psychological imperative.  Studies of infants in orphanages where they’re fed, warm and dry but not held– not seen–show that most of those infants will die. Severly abused children survive because they’re seen; the psyche doesn’t distinguish good attention from bad attention.

Do the stars care that I gaze at them in wonder?  If everything changes when it’s being observed, what does that say about the star’s recognition of the attention given by almost 7 billion humans, not to mention all the other beings that turn their attention to them each night?

Cat’s eyes light up in the darkness, like star-light they project into the void.  What do they see that we do not?

If eyes are windows into the soul, it is no wonder humans have gazed into the great eye of the sky and imagined gods and goddesses,  universal-mind, the infinite, the creator, the over-soul.

Like the cat, maybe we see many things held in that great infinite space, but without the ability to register our usual perceptions of light and form to give it meaning, we catch a glimpse and call it wonder, or awe, or mystery.

 That felt experience has made believers of humanity for millenia; believers of life outside our usual ability to perceive where the imagination and faith reign supreme and meaning beyond the mandane is found. 

Wonder

I do.

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The cultivation of peace is at the center of psychological and spiritual practices that strive for growth.  Defined by Webster as; serenity; calm; quiet; tranquility; harmony, we tend to assume that means a cessation of thought.

But if you’ve ever tried to still your mind you will have discovered you could not.  This failure causes most of us to believe something is  wrong with us. Whether it was in the middle of the night when you couldn’t sleep or in a meditation or yoga class or at  school or work when you were “supposed” to be quiet, you will have discovered the mind is NEVER still. It’s not just you; you’re not broken, but life can best be described as a state of perpetual motion. Physics has proven that all matter is in motion, and though we’re unable to see a rock moving, we now know that it is.

So if peace isn’t an absence of thought, what is it? The answer to discovering a peaceful state is in the last word of the dictionary definition; harmony which is an absence of conflict. Since I cannot stop my mind from thinking, and would not wish to for it would mean I was no longer alive, my thinking must become harmonious.

A mindful practice is one in which one watches their thoughts. Have you ever just watched and not been drawn in? If drawn in you will discover tension as at the heart of most of our thinking whether it’s problem solving, worrying, regretting, etc. In other words; most thinking is conflictual by nature. Does that mean harmonious thinking is not possible?

Not at all, just unusual. When we’re able to watch our thoughts without being drawn in to the conflict, harmony is the result.  Accept everything, reject nothing, and the mind is at peace.

 Oddly out of the ordinary is whimsy’s definition.  Just the feel of the word on my lips makes me smile, a verbal form of Prozac for the spirit.  Like the archetypal trickster in Jung’s psychology and the Tarot deck, whimsy tricks us into a shift of perspective.  To see the ordinary a little out of kilter allows us to play with the object outside of the box of our usual view/belief about it.  Whimsy stands things on their head, or tail, or puts ballet tutus on those we’re intimidated by. Harry Potter learned to handle his fear of dementors by making fun of them.

Playful spirits are a form of whimsy; making the imagination and all of the “unseen” world into a place we can venture into without so much fear.  That’s not to say we can rid ourselves of nightmares but we can balance the tendency of the mind to fear the dark by seeing light within the darkness.

Most of us in the western world today have important concerns but they’re not life threatening; meaningful work, the mortgage, money for our children’s college, our daughter’s weird boyfriend, etc.   We don’t live in Sub-Saharan Africa or any number of other places where whimsy would be inappropriate.  We normal neurotics, as Woody Allen spoofs regularly, are candidates for lots more whimsy.  Most of our fears aren’t helped along by worrying, but will benefit greatly by lightening.

On the table in the dentist’s office waiting room I visited too regularly as a child, was, “Laughter the Best Medicine.”  It really did help make those fearsome visits a little more tolerable. Proof of that is that I remember the jokes, not the drill.

Whimsy is also considered childish. And what is meant by childish? Playful, imaginative, fun-loving, fearless, courageous, adventurous, curious, uninhibited . . .

If by being whimsical adults we tap into that list, I say “Go For It.”