Look closely at this picture and you'll see the web of an Orb Spider. I love these ornate webs and as we delve into this next topic it does remind me of something woven into the collective consciousness of humanity.
Love is a fascinating topic to me. In spiritual circles you will hear people say, "Sending you light and love." Are Light and love one? Is Light and Love both attributes of the One Creator (as I like to call All-That-Is...of which all the "Gods" are a part just as we are a part of the One Creator...in fact, nothing exists outside of the One Creator but that is a different topic). The ancient texts indicate they are not. In fact, the story about the Light may surprise you. There are several different cultures that express the same story in a very different way. The Dogon Narrative The narrative of the Dogon seems to have the most complete picture, although, the symbolism may be difficult for some. Laird Scranton has made a wonderful and persuasive explanation of the symbols. I'm not going to claim I'm going to do the story the best justice so I highly recommend you pick up Laird's books. The story goes that there were four pairs of twins gestating within the womb of the Creator God Amma that was neither male nor female. Each pair was to work together to co-create with Amma. Yet, Light, known as the Fox and male escaped the womb with a piece of the Placenta. The Fox created our part of reality using the Placenta. Now, there was an entire series of events to help purify the defiled Placenta that the Fox had used to create but we won't get into that here. Instead, what is fascinating, is that during the cleansing of the Placenta Amma hid the Fox's twin from him so that he could not create the way he was intended. Afterall, the Light had already proven to be a rebel by leaving the womb before the appointed time and stealing the placenta. Already, it's pretty clear that the Light would be Lucifer- the Light bearer- and being a trickster the names Loki and Coyote also come to mind. We know that everything is made up of energy and that we can perceive as material reality is formed from light but it does not compose all of that energy. I think that's an important point to consider. Adam and Lilith In the Oral tradition of the Kabblah there is the story of Lilith- Adam's first wife. Yes, I am proposing that Adam is Lucifer or the Light incarnate. If we take both of these to be metaphors on one level of conception it is a possibility. Either way, Lilith leaves Adam. Some say it was because she wouldn't bow down to him as he wished. So, instead of the woman that was created to be with him Adam ends up with Eve who then eats of the tree of Duality- Good and Evil- and leads to death. Also, in he Kabbalah tradition it's said that Adam Ha Rishon gave Light to Malkuth, the Kingdom which is designated as Female, before the appointed time. The result was that the Sephiroth broke resulting in the Keliplot also known as broken vessels. So, in the same tradition we have the story told two different ways. Shiva and Shakti I think that it's interesting that Shiva appears in Hindu tradition to Brahma and Vishnu as a beam of light. He also incarnates many times throughout human history to help guide people. There is also the story about how Shiva and Shakti separated. The story goes that Shakti was Shiva's second wife. She went to a party at her fathers house but her father ignored here and didn't make an offering to Shiva. Shakti was so ashamed she leaped into a fire and killed herself. Shiva was so upset by this that he turned to a life asceticism and went into a deep meditation from which he could not be roused. If you look up Shiva and Shakti you will find that they are the emobdiement of the Masculine Consciousness and Feminine Subconscious- although, Hinduism doesn't quite describe it that way. Shakti is said to reside in the Root Chakra and raise up to meet her lover at the Crown Chakra. "If Shiva is united with Shakti, he is able to create. If he is not, he is not even capable of stirring." ~Adi Shankara In one tale one of the other God's took pity of Shiva and cut Shakti into pieces that he sent to Earth. Isis and Osiris In this tale Osiris is taken surprise by his evil brother Set who chops him up and hides his body throughout the Nile. With the help of her sister, Nepthysis, Isis collects the body parts of Osiris but fails to find his penis. Without his penis she cannot create life and so she uses magic to create her son Horis. Psyche and Eros In the Greek version of the tale Eros, or Cupid, is sent by his mother Venus to kill Psyche but he falls in love with her instead. Since his mother would be displeased by his disobedience of marrying Psyche he tries to keep it secret...even from her. She is taken to marry him but her father was told that he would be a horrible monster. She lives in the lap of luxury and loves him but must never look upon him. He always arrives when it is dark and uses the darkness to hide from her. After her two sisters come to visit she follows a plan to discover him. Once he is asleep she uses a lamp to discover that he is not the hideous monster she had been told. However, he flees from her and she is deposited onto the Earth where she has to undergo several tasks to earn him back. A fascinating note is that Psyche's original name is Anima. Obviously, it is from this tale that Carl Jung use the term Anima and Animus. Conclusion Light is a rebel in most of the tales. Only in the Greek version is the character that has a similar myth depicted as love. Love is something more refined then light. Plus, believing that Light is good and Darkness is bad is a really limiting and dualistic notion. Instead, the heart of the story is the act of rebelliousness and the removal of that beings ability to Create. To say it another way is that the person's subconscious is veiled from them so that they cannot create. I'm also not saying that light is bad but it's not love. I'm not sure why people say, "light and love," unless they are referring to light as wisdom or enlightenment? Either one seems a bit odd. Light, almost always, represents consciousness in symbolism...to send someone consciousness is a weird gesture. In the end if the intention is well meaning I can't imagine that it can harm someone. However, the saying does reinforce the dualistic idea of good and evil. Thank you for joining me on the Path of the Seeker. I hope you enjoyed this first Meditation on the nature of Love. I have a least two more parts to write.
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This is just a continuation of the last blog.
Above we see four character's that are considered Trickster characters that conform to the archetype from recent movies. I love all of these charecter's but as you can tell only one of these is straight up evil. Dead Pool, Captain Jack Sparrow and Loki tend to have humbling moments that make them appear human. This is just a thread of coincidence that I noticed when reading certain books. To me, as I suggested in the last blog, the Devil is nothing more than our Ego. Humanity once knew that the ideas and the knowledge it held was preserved in the form of Gods...much like chapter headings in books. Each God was just a way of organizing knowledge but the bodies of knowledge they stood for were lost in antiquity and when Christian anthropologists looked at them they saw only they only saw their own biases. By projecting onto the inferior humans that came before them they rendered the ideas incomprehensible, magical and removed them from reality or practical applicable knowledge. I'm just going to let these quotes stand for themselves and you can come to your own conclusion. Enjoy! Joseph Campbell Joseph Campbell was the first to identify the Trickster Archetype. Here is what he had to say: "There is a figure, in American Indian Myths, that represents the power of the dynamic of the total psyche to over throw programs. This is the negative aspect and it's called the Trickster. It's a very, very important figure in American Indian mythologies. In The East, in the forest lands of the North East and South East it's the Great Hare, a rabbit. When you go West of the Mississippi in the plain lands its coyote. You get up in the North West Coast and it's Raven. These are smart clever birds and animals. It's a great puzzlement to well train Christians to come across the Trickster Hero because he's both a kind of devil and Fool and the creator of the world. So, he comes in as a upsetting factor he breaks through, he even breaks through the notion of what a deity ought to be and this, I think, is about as good as an example as you can find anywhere of the Trickster Hero." (Taken From: https://youtu.be/JM10AvJ3bsM). The Mystery of Skara Brae (Laird Scranton) "In the Dogon conception, matter begins in a perfectly ordered state in the form of primordial waves. For the Dogon, existence takes its true form as waves, and our material world represents only a kind of reflected image of that fundamental wave like reality. The Dogon and Egyptians define water-like source of matter with the term Nu. So, it's significant that the Farose definition of the world also includes the meanings of "fountain" "spring" and "fountain head" because it demonstrates that the people at Skara Brae likely understood the cosmological concept of Nu in the same essential ways as the Dogon and the Egyptian." (page 31) The Blackwell Companion To Religious Ethics "According to the Dogon Amma's first attempt at creation failed. The elements remained stagnant and sterile. Amma set them into motion by emitting the vibration of his first word. This churned the elements within the cosmic egg to form the pairs of the original primordial twins. But the world as we know it was was created in response to the restless determination of Ogo, one of these beings. The impatient Ogo broke away prematurely from the cosmic egg, tearing away a piece of placenta which he scratched and stretched to make Earth. Next, he stole some sacred grain to create a fecund world of his own making. When this failed without his twin partner, he tired procreating with the mound of the placenta Earth but still failed. The havoc that Ogo sewed upon on the cosmic order nevertheless created this world. Rather then destroy the mutated universe, Amma repossessed the new creation by consecrating it through sacrifice. Then to ensure ongoing manipulation of the cosmic elements and the Earths fecundity Amma created human beings." (pg 440). "For the Dogon, the process of creation began when matter in its wavelike state is disrupted by an act of perception. The Dogon and Egyptians refer to this act using the term Maa...the Dogon Priests say that the mere act of perception causes the perfect order of the primordial waves to be disrupted and creates a kind of chaos that must then be fundamentally reordered and restructured. The stages of this re-ordering of mater create the Po Pilu." pg 31 Edgar Cacye and the Kabbalah Kabbalah teaches that when the Creation burst forth from the Darkness of the deep, it did so with such intense brilliance that it broke open all of the orbs (shevirat hakelim: "breaking the vessels") The orbs were unable to contain the light (netzotzot)- that is, all except the tenth orb: Kingdom and the "little I am" of those created in the image of the Great I am. Wonderfully the contained light then flowed backwards to it's creator, gathering all the shards (kelipot) of the broken orbs and repairing them. Miraculously, the image of God as expressed in the tree of life was whole again for all of creation to comprehend. Before the repair, chaos reigned. As the light flowed backward, order was re-established. The Infinite was now revealed in a balanced manner. According to the Kabbalah, this balance was achieved by "hinging" energies and perspectives that appeared to be opposing forces but in balance, they complimented one another in specific triads or trinities." (page 76) Course Of Miracles "The ego is the part of the mind that believes in division. How could part of God detach itself without believing it is attacking him? We spoke before of the authority problem as based on the concept of usurping God's power. The ego believes that this is what you did because it believes that it is you. If you identify with the ego, you must perceive yourself as guilty. Whenever you respond to ego you will experience guilt, and you will fear punishment. The ego is quite literally a fearful thought. However ridiculous the idea of attacking God may be to the sane mind, never forget that the ego is not sane. It represents a delusional system and speaks for it. Listening to the ego's vice means that you believe it is possible to attack God, and that a part of him has been torn away by you. Fear of retaliation from without follows, because the severity of the guilt is so acute that it must be projected." (unknown page) "You are a being blessed by every beneficient though of any of your brothers anywhere. You should want to bless them in return, out of grattitude. You need not know them individually...the light is so strong that it radiates through the Sonship (humanity) and returns thanks to the father for radiating his joy upon it. Only God's holy children are worthy channel's of His beautiful joy, because only they are beautiful enough to hold it by sharing it. It is impossible for a child of God to love his neighbor except as himself." (page 97). "Ideas of the ego can conflict because they occur at different levels and also include opposite thoughts at the same level. It is impossible to share opposing thoughts. The decision to share them is their purification....as you teach so shall you learn." page 108. Conclusion I'm not sure if everyone sees what I say in these above quotes. The Trickster is not something to fear. If anything, it's something that improves. By breaking through outdated modes of thinking it introduces something new and an opportunity for growth. So there is no scary devil out there trying to fool you. There is just the Ego which is something we created to experience physical life. That is another blog post in and of itself...yet, it was this Ego that made havoc of creation. As time only exists within our part of reality it is possible for all of this to have happened already...while we still experience life on Earth and have yet to form a connection to each other as one body that can hold and reflect back the light of God. Perhaps, that is what we are in the process of doing in this stage of life on Earth. I was recently watching a YouTube video featuring Tom Campbell and Bruce Lipton. In it, Bruce Lipton explains how it takes hundreds of amoebas to form the human body. The next stage of evolution on the planet is for all humans to come together to form one being. Each needs to retain their own individuality. For example, the cells of the heart are not the same as the cells of the skin and for good reason...if our entire body was just one clump of heart cells it would not be functional. Each person, then must retain their individuality but it's in unifying, sharing and acting as one we will really 'evolve'...not through the manipulation of technology. There is ample room in the cosmos for multiple perspectives on life. Working together united with the will of the Creator/God/Source...amazing things can happen. |
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Brave Soul! May Your Journey On The Path Of The Seeker Bring You Joy and Peace! I'm currently posting every Saturday. With a new addition the family I have pre-scheduled most posts through December 2022. Full Moon Posts will contain up-to-date content when I can get to them. Thank you so much for your support and understanding! This is a place where you can encounter new spiritual ideas that have helped me develop as an Individual On The Path of the Seeker. Take or Leave this information as you see fit. Archives
April 2024
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