On the ‘Naall’ things move at a nice, steady pace…
One might even say stately…
And when I say ‘things’… I mean… life… Back on the ‘Naall’… life is a slow drift… a slow drift through the foliage and fauna of this sacred space now…and forever known… as Albion…
And that is really all there is.
We move from one sacred space to another… and back again.
What else could there be?
If you can imagine… and I know it’s difficult for Busy-Folk… The optimum speed for a human body to move under its own volition is three miles an hour…and if it were possible which it is not of course… but if it were possible to shift… out of the body… in some way… and move… whilst still attached to it……
They said it was a sacrifice,
but isn’t all life?
The tree pulled down to make paper to record our words
The hay threshed to fill bellies
Some say even water is alive
The clouds spilling it to the ground only to be swallowed
by some body that will eventually die
Only the bones linger
Hardened by structure
Fused to bear weight
Once stripped of the vulnerable layers they expose the effort
of resistance as a catalogue of time
We like to date our years lived
We like to think about lifetimes
in terms of expansion
The vulnerable layers we shroud
with creams and clothing designed to hide
and deny this thing we call age
But, when we strip ourselves down to what is left
Beyond the hardened bones that remind us of death
as a loss and that thing called density,
we are left with the essence itself
That bit of life that lingers over and over again
The cycle repeating itself to rebirth
in another form. Experience depends
upon this essence, as does growth and death
It is said that when the body dies,
the weight of the eternal essence can be recorded
after it leaves the form which held it close to call it a life
by itself. We can look at the dry bones and see the loss
of what once was, or we can follow the essence
back into the dance of life. Imagine
a breath of memories swirling into another form,
or perhaps dancing in eternity’s ocean
The individual heart eventually stops
That’s simply the law of nature of life in form
An idea that might make a single beating heart
skip into the throat to hide for want of eternity
of the individual. We don’t like to think
about nonexistence as we define our existence
but what of that pulse that beats through all life?
Can you feel it?
No one can say they cannot,
or have not, because
it is that essence that lingers
The before form and the after form
So you can study the bones and marvel
at the loss, or you can study the essence
that beats the eternal heart and recognize it
as your own too.
In Part One, we looked at the implications of one of the hot topics in modern physics: that of Block Theory, and its two offspring theories – Expanding Block Theory and Evolving Block Theory. These dull names hide a very exciting and radical view of the universe – our world – and the dynamic part that awakened humans can play in it.
We don’t need to change what we do to work within the ‘Block’ of Block Theory. We can’t do anything else. Our ability to ‘do’, including the logic of decision, is built into the dynamic of being Human – which means the organic part of us operates wholly within the framework of the Block universe. When we turn our head, go to the car, decide to drive to the petrol station, and then pick up a chocolate bar as we pay, we are exercising the under-considered power…
For those readers interested in Mythology there are a couple of books published under the Silent Eye Press banner which it would be foolish to be unaware of.
The first is the cycle of Egyptian Myths put together by Sue Vincent which goes by the intriguing moniker, ‘The Osiriad’.
Whilst ourselves familiar with most of the stories in this collection the notion that these tales actually formed a cycle telling the beginnings of the Gods and their operations in Egypt came as something of a pleasant surprise and each individual tale gains immeasurably by finding its rightful place in the overall scheme.
It is a welcome and masterly contribution to the Egyptian Pantheon.
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The second is our own foray into that corpus of Mythological Tales which we believe represent the Ancient Myths of Albion.
We have a phrase in English; that someone is a ‘chip off the old block’. Its meaning is that someone of merit is continuing the ‘family’ tradition. I suppose it could also refer in a wider context to someone in a group or organisation doing the same thing.
A group of scientists are promoting a ‘new’ theory: that of the ‘Block Universe’ or “Evolving Block Universe’. It’s not entirely new. The idea of a static universe where the only change is the evolution of the conscious inhabitants has been around for a while; and touches on some of the deepest ideas in philosophy and metaphysics.
Just think about that for a moment to grasp the sheer strangeness of the concept. Look around you and watch the shifting view, the tiny changes, the way you move your coffee mug, shift your position on the chair, drive the car through an autumnal…
When I saw Sue’s writing prompt photo from this past Thursday, I knew I would likely participate, but something told me to wait. This morning, I opened my inbox to her post from Ani and was graced with a quiet space to sit with what it had to offer. As Sue’s posts have a way of doing, I felt that familiar call to a faraway home that is, perhaps, not so far away.
A lot of words and emotions are stirring through all of us right now. There is anger, fear, combativeness and there is also a deep sadness and despair for many. We are in a time of struggle and upheaval. Our world, in many ways, appears to be falling apart. Yet, it is always darkest before the dawn, and here we are, collectively, standing on the brink of the dawn.
Before the light can break through, we must individually and collectively face the darkness. We must peer into those shadowed depths and face what can only be described as fear, head-on. The shadow-self cannot be ignored, because turning away from it is a form of denial of the self that seeks to be healed and loved the most. The shadow self is a reminder of our humanity. It is not wholly to be seen as our failures, but our lessons in Life. The full breadth of the spectrum exists within all of us. What sparks the fear, can also spark the light.
“I am human, therefore, I am imperfect.” A statement of acceptance and not denial.
“I am sorry for what I have done, but I have learned from this.” An affirmation of growth.
“You are not different from me. You are my mirror for what also exists inside of me.” A statement of profound truth.
“I love you and I accept you.” To say this, but also to know it completely is the path to unity of the individual and the whole. We cannot truly love ourselves and others until we accept and love, unconditionally, all aspects of that self.
There is the still pervasive belief that there is an “other” that is disconnected to the self. This allows us to defer blame and culpability on another, giving us a false sense that it is the other that needs to be healed or changed in order for justice to be achieved. It is not justice, though, that needs to be achieved, it is a balance.
Until we peer into, examine, and ultimately love all the shadows tucked into the crevices of self, how can we truly heal and move into that state of peace and unity? To examine the “you,” we must also examine the “I,” knowing that they are, in essence, one and the same.
The impulse to harm, or even to kill, exists in you, as it does in me. As does the ability to love and everything in between. The full spectrum of the self cannot be denied when the “body” seeks to be healed. Polarity exists to bring us back to the true center.
The body dances with energy that some call the dark and the light. Others call yin and yang, or the Ida and Pingala. Some call these two energies the masculine and the feminine energies. Here is the thing with naming and defining, we can get caught up in semantics.
Right now, people are posting “black-outs” on their profile pictures as a call for awareness of violence towards women. Yet, there is also the violence that occurs towards men, and to all forms of living beings, including the planet Earth we all share as our home.
The polarizing energies that dance inside of our bodies are actually unifying energies. they swirl like DNA around our spine, joining at their nodes into a central channel that carries the unified energy up and down our spine, and horizontally out to the cells of our body that join into tissues and organs. A healthy, harmonized body has an equal balance of both energies. A dis-eased body has an over-abundance of one, and an underabundance of another. Sometimes there is more Ida in one place, sometimes there is more Pingala. More masculine in the heart (which can result in heart-disease), let’s say and more feminine in the thyroid (which can result in hypothyroid disease). The body knows how essential balance is.
We are not simply man or woman. We are not simply “black” or “white.” We are not simply “you” versus “me.” To heal one half, we must heal the other. To find the light, we must also embrace the darkness within. One teaches us about the other. The balance of the whole is the balance of the individual.