Colette Obrien

Martin Buber in his tiny jewel of a book wrote of the I/Thou Relationship he’d come to understand as a concentration camp survivor.

Somewhere in the divide between opposites is a connector, and the connector is the Self or Soul, the light of which draws all together in harmony and balance.  One finds the Self in the effort to expand consciousness; to go beyond apparent conflict to resolution that does not diminish either side but mediates.

The Self mediating conflict.

I’ve been blessed that my dog and cat are best friends.  They chase one another around the furniture, the cat jumping up to the top of things where my dog pants from below waiting for the moment he knows his friend will jump down, and they’ll wrestle on the floor leaving piles of fur but never a nick in the skin of either. 

They are my model of resolution of difference. Each is programmed to hate the other and yet, being individuals, they choose to relate not as enemies but playmates.  And I, The Self, watch delighted, in hope for the world. 

In a post last week I spoke about the goddess Nemesis who is really a friend in the guise of an enemy.  When we are able to see in such a way, the world will be renewed; mankind will achieve its true potential.

Whether we know it or not, we’re all connected to one another, and to every other atom in the universe. 

The unique thing about our human connection is that as a species we have a particuar quality of connection; as do baboons to one another, reptiles, quarks and any other species. 

We relate more to our own than to another only because our experience and conditioning is the same.

When the magician, Merlin was teaching the young Arthur to become king, he gave him the experience of being a fish, a bird, and other species he was related to, but was not.  This unique perspective transcends the hubris of human arrogance and builds compassion for all life. 

How very much our world needs to see this way, to feel this way; outside the limits of our own skin where life is sacred, profound and precious.

One of the beautiful things that came out of the 60’s experiment with consciousness was just such an expanded awareness.  Whether the shift was brought about through drugs, meditation, or any other practice that broke down the walls of our Box, the result was a generation more open, more compassionate, more forgiving than the one that came before. Not everyone who had that experience remembers it today, but human consciousness made a slight shift toward awareness beyond our own species.

The result of that shift can be seen in many areas of life today; humanitarian, ecological, protection of other species, physical health through diet,  exercise and some form of spiritual practice;  basically in a more compassionate approach to living with all other life, and to the health of the planet itself.

When we know we’re connected we care for that which is outside the boundaries of our own skin.  When we don’t know we don’t care. More on care, compassion, empathy, for the rest of this week.

In answer to concern about the demise of planet earth as a result of humanity’s negligence, my wise father once said, “It is hubris to imagine our small ant selves can kill Life Itself.” 

Witness 2010’s celebration of spring:

The grand mistress of creation; Mother Nature honors new life each year.

Her children bask in abundance once more, no matter how hard the winter has been.  All is forgotten/forgiven.

The Hills are alive with the sound of Music

The Great Mother, in the habit of saying “die” each winter, always also says, “live” each spring.  At least on this planet, and it is after all, the only one we experience, life and death are a cyclical process; that cycle being nature’s assurance that death is but a relief to be followed closely by an in-breath of life. 

So breathe in the message of spring, love well, and rest content.  There is no end, only a continual transformation of the all.

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!!!!

Webster defines repulsion as;  to drive back, or the mutual action by which bodies tend to repel each other.

The first nano-second after the big bang, that first combustible kiss, matter repulsed in all directions, creating the universe as we see it today; separate suns, moons, galaxies, etc. all floating together in a soup of onemess-or as it’s popularly termed “Oneness”

Opposite of Attraction, repulsion is the energy of individuation.  Though repulsion can manifest as dislike, hate, and any other of a long list of negative adjectives the mind applies to what one does not want to be associated with, it is at root, a movement that separates objects. 

How much kinder it would be, if in our my need to distinguish ourselves as separate entities, we could simply create space between us rather than have to apply hurtful names to the other, and or, physically force them away.

Every unkind act is grounded in the need to individuate, yet that drive can better be accomplished by consciously knowing self from other rather than making the other wrong so that we can be right.

The yoke is not more right than the white. It is merely different, and that difference is essential depending on what one is cooking.  

When the sun began to shine it had gotten hold of itself; it individuated.  The difficulty about this concept for humans is that our egos get confused between the need to distinguish ourselves, and that we’re not the only ones who need to do so. As an old sage once said, “You’re the only one but you’re not the only one who’s the only one.”

As love is the force of attraction that connects life, repulsion is it’s counterpoint, separating matter into distinct entities that can then experience one another. 

The Ancient Maya story of creation speaks of the a time when everything was one.  All was black and from out the dark one golden eye appeared and then another; the male and the female creators could see each other for the first time and they were so delighted they decided to keep dividing and dividing until the world was as we know it today.

It’s still all one but the one has been separated into the many; one beach many grains of sand, one ocean many drops of water, one universe, many galaxies . . .

Being a Gemini, a woman, and an artist, one of my favorite pastimes is doing several things at once. Right now I’m writing this post, cooking beef stew,  and watching  Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs .  Made in 1937 , it is one of the first full length animation features, but the story is far older.  Originating in Northern Europe where the Brothers Grimm heard it and wrote it down after generations of being handed down by word of mouth at the fire in the evening, it is a timeless story of human life. 

Snow White, the image of the young feminine; innocent, beautiful, curious, loving, and above all; accepting of everything that comes into her life, exemplifies the archetypal process of life which includes encountering the dark side; those things that we call “unacceptable.”   Snow White accepts everything, including the dark, and though it appears at first that she made a mistake to let acceptance be her guide, in the end she triumphs. What are the factors that bring about that triumph? The seven dwarfs are elements of her unconscious that protect her; Doc-intelligence, Sneezy-physical sensitivety, Dopey- the fool, Bashful- emotional sensitivity, Grumpy-the cynic, Happy- the optimist, Sleepy-the unconscious.

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 The individual Self (Snow White in this case) accepts the witch/queen, with an open heart. That naivete will apparently be the end of her, however, aided by the sub-personalities(the seven dwarfs) a protective coffin is built, through which she can still be seen, so that eventually her love finds her and brings her back to life.  In other words, love can never die, hope can never end, acceptance breeds life.

Living with an open heart, we are able to take in all that life brings.  All things become possible.  When the heart is closed, nothing is possible.

Rejection is defined as; to throw away, to refuse to take. To reject something is to attempt to exclude it from the whole.

A popular idea in modern culture is that “we’re all one”.  Assuming this to be the case, it follows that to “exclude something from the whole isn’t possible.  We can wish it wasn’t so; we can try to throw it away, but where is away? Everything that is, is.  If it isn’t possible what actually occurs when we reject?

Rejecting physical objects isn’t too problematic. I throw away garbage from my house to the recycle bin, and it’s taken away to the dump.( A great word for the place where rejected objects end up.) The objects are still part of the whole but are no longer in my house.

When I reject a person the trouble with rejection begins to show itself.  If I’m someone who’s aware of responsibility to other’s feelings, I will experience guilt with the rejection of another and that creates pressure on my mind.

The trouble is even more obvious with mental objects; ideas, beliefs, concepts.  When I reject an idea where does it go? The great dump in the sky? No, it goes to the personal unconscious. I may no longer be conscious of the idea I rejected, but because it’s still part of my psyche, it still has influence.  As with guilt, pressure occurs. We might even say that the consequence of rejection is guilt.

Every person, place, thing, idea, concept the mind has rejected causes a judgement to form which is the pressure to constantly reject that object; to keep it in its place in the unconscious.  When an object has been pushed out of the house– out of our conscious awareness–it is still part of the whole, since everything that is, is.  But like the physical dump, we can smell it. Everything rotting in that dump is perceived by the environment, and like the state of the earth today, on the verge of disastor, our individual psyche’s become unhealthy dump sights.

Acceptance has the opposite effect; the conscious mind has no pressure from an overfilled unconscious–the dump. It is open and free to observe without judgement as judgment derives from the rejected objects.

Acceptance is not a passive state but one of inclusion that, when necessary, discerns if an object is garbage and needs to go to the dump or if it can be tolerated and remain in the house. More later on acceptance.

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.

A dream, like a dragonfly, alluringly invites us to follow. This morning early, not yet light, I woke in a state of awe; the dream, like a brilliant violet dragonfly flitted across my mind’s eye. Seductively, it came close and darted away, again and again. How I longed to name it, define it, tell it’s story, believing if I could it would be mine. But what would that accomplish, I wondered? Holding it in my hand, would it be more meaningful? Why wasn’t it enough to experience it’s color and movement, its scent of mystery, like something glimpsed through mist that comes in and out of focus?

If I did manage to catch hold of it, I would surely admire it for awhile, and eventually, believing I’d come to an understanding of its nature, I would put it down and look for something else to capture my imagination. Had I caught the dragonfly or had it caught me?

Like a dream analyzed, knowledge sought and gained leaves a brief impression on the mind, and then the fickle creature moves on.  The mind holds to the belief that the current love interest will be the final one; the one that ends the seeking. However, the mating of concept with reality is an unquenchable thirst, a hunger never sated. It is the nature of mind to seek knowledge and of knowledge to seduce with creative fluorishes of color and movement and of possibilities only dreamed of.  Like dreams in sleep that elude capture or if caught, aren’t what we’d wished for. 

Mind’s nature is to posset questions and seek their answers certain there will come one special one; one unlike all the others that will give us peace, believing if it isn’t found in life surely when the answer to that biggest question is before us, and we know what happens after death, surely then?