Colette Obrien

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 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!

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 . . .

What if the Big Bang were the first kiss?

Aphrodite’s favorite child is Eros, or as the Romans named him, Amour. What does it mean to be the child of the goddess of Love but that he is her messenger? When that powerful goddess chooses to unite 2 objects by sending her son with his quiver of arrows, union is assured. Eros is the connecting force sent by the essence; Aphrodite.

The planet we inhabit revolves around a sun in a spiraling galaxy. On earth, the constant creation of life depends on a cycle of seasons; each one following the other in a continual round.  For life as we know it to endure, there must be a time of birth, growth, and destruction.

Aphrodite/Eros assure creation. Without the attraction of objects to one another there would be no new life.  The earth would stop spinning; the sun, having lost an admirer, would wobble out of control in dark despair and lose its place in the galaxy; with the loss of one of its members the billions of other stars would also loss hope/connection, and very quickly, what began as a first kiss, would end in a rout of unconnected atoms.

Thus spoke an incurable romantic. 

But seriously, love connects everything– it is a force–and maybe what physics calls the electromagnetic force is what we call love. Maybe the reason that we as humans cannot resist Eros’ arrow is because it’s correct to be so humbled; to realize through the experience of inescapable attraction, we’re being moved by a greater force than our small wills, and that that force is benevolent.

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.”

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?