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!!!!

Following up on yesterday’s post about intimacy is the old; if a tree falls in the forest conundrum.   If no one hears it, did it fall? If no one sees me do I exist?

At around 2 years old children must work through the developmental issue–the conundrum– of whether they’re special or not; whether they exist as a unique entity.  Every other sentence, is “look at me . . .” As parents, it’s exhausting however, if the child isn’t adequately reflected he turns inward to see himself- and like Narcissus in Greek Mythology, he’s forced to hold up his own mirror to realize his existence. He now lives in his own eyes but lacks an ability to see others.

If the child is seen by his parents the conundrum is resolved in an ability to know he’s the only one, but he’s not the only one who’s the only one.

Held in solitary confinement or being stranded alone on a desert island, will drive anyone mad. The ego cannot hold  it’s grip on reality without support from the environment. Like the child unreflected, the solitary human will turn to the unconscious for validation which is the definition of madness; the boundary between the ego consciousness and the vastness of the collective unconscious is broken and the ego is drowned in archetypal images.

Psychological existence is dependent on visibility. If, like the tree that falls in the forest, he falls and no one hears him, he doesn’t exist–to himself.  And since no one else is there to see him fall, to anyone else either.

Whether physical existence is dependent on visibility is a question for tomorrow.

http://www.inpurplish.com/?p=1610

Oblivion derives from the latin, to forget, and is defined by Webster as the condition or fact of being forgotten.   To obliterate is to erase, leave no trace, destroy. Today it is often used to describe a place or a state of being. 

The idea that there is a place called oblivion is so radical to any thinking being it’s shocking to discover how prevalent it is in common conversation.  I would like to see this place. Is it like the image above? Has anyone ever been there?  Like heaven and hell the assumption is that these are actual physical places. Oblivion then would be a place of forgetfullness where memory is erased, but is memory any more real than a place called oblivion? Memory is an idea; an experience of the mind describing something or someone that is or was at one time Real. But memory itself is an abstraction not unlike the abstraction of nothingness, of not-being.

Current physics refuses the concept that something can be and then not be.  What is-is. What isn’t-isn’t.  Though it changes shape, all matter always was and will always be.  Life on planet earth was at one time star-stuff.  The original matter that was the star was something else before. Does that mean that the star is now in oblivion? If everything that ever was still exists in some form what difference does it make if it is remembered by the human mind?

The important thing is that it still exists;  the atom that became a star that became my cat, that will become part of a tree.  All one flow of energy in a constant stream of creative bliss; the music of the spheres.  And my little human life? What will it become and where will what I call ‘me’ go?  Certainly not to oblivion, and probably not to heaven or hell either.

A question for next time; does thought have matter?