When life is shit...

Life feels intolerable sometimes.  It can feel like we’re being torn in half, ripped right down the middle.  No matter what we do, no matter how hard we try, nothing seems to go right. 

I dreamed a constant stream of blog posts last night, each one more convoluted than the last.  None of them helpful.  Shit, I am exhausted this morning, I truly am.  But then, curled up in my rocking chair, listening to music, I realised what's needed.  The Mandorla.  It’s been nudging me in dreams and visions for a while now but I haven’t paid it enough attention.

Cos, see, when we can’t keep the contradictions of life at bay, the mandorla offers a space to hold the opposites.  Cos we’re not superhuman; we can’t be.  We are divine but we're not superheroes. 

Do you know the mandorla?  It’s the almond-shaped segment that occurs when two circles partly overlap.  It signifies the overlap of opposites – the overlap of heaven and earth; ego and shadow; good and evil; dark and light; male and female. It's an inbetween place; a holding place; a threshold; a place of faith.

Read T.S. Eliot. Read Little Gidding.  Eliot knew.  The fire of transformation and the rose of rebirth are one and the same.  Poetry bridges the circles – it creates the mandorla. So too can music and dance and art.  When they are used properly, with truth and honesty.  ‘All good stories are mandorlas,’ says one of my favourite Jungian writers, Robert Johnson.  ‘We like to think that a story is based on the triumph of good over evil; but the deeper truth is that good and evil are superseded and the two become one.’

He says, and I feel he may be right, that when things become intolerable; when we say we can't stand things any more, that this is precisely the time when we have to possibility to shift. ‘When the unstoppable bullet hits the impenetrable wall, we find the religious experience. It is precisely here that one will grow.’ Or, as Jung said, ‘Find out what a person fears most and that is where he will develop next.’

Think of the bush and the fire; the bush that burned and burned and yet was not consumed: and the fire that would not damn well stop burning.  When the clash of opposites comes and neither will give way to the other then, oh then,  the numinous (call it ‘God’ or whatever you will) is present.   This is the liminal, the place that is neither this nor that…the shoreline inbetween tides, the space between one room and the next, between one world and another.  It's where we try - usually unsuccessfully of course - to hold the paradoxes.

‘Our own healing proceeds from that overlap of what we call good and evil, light and dark,’ says Johnson (yes, I re-read him on this this morning).  ‘It is not that the light element alone does the healing; the place where light and dark begin to touch is where miracles arise. This middle place is the mandorla.’  And yes, Christ is the mandorla – not for nothing did the early Christians scratch out the fish symbol which is, really, yup…one of those…  
Christ?  Yup, Christ.  I’m not going to say this – I’m going to let Johnson take the rap… ‘One can view a human life as a mandorla and as the ground upon which the opposites find their reconciliation.  In this way every human being is a redeemer, and Christ is the prototype for this human task.’ 

Christ.  The divine alchemist.  Hmm.. Alchemy. Another of my preoccupations right now… Can’t go into it in huge detail but again it’s all about facing the shadow, recognising our projections, holding the opposites.  The major stages of the alchemical process:  the nigredo (the descent); the albedo (the brightening); the rubedo (the discovery of passion); the citrino (the golden warmth of the sun).  And finally?  The pavanis, the peacock’s tail, the rainbow bridge. 

Right.  That hasn’t made any sense at all, has it?  Never mind.  J  


Next post will be about dog food I promise. 
Next post will be about dog food I promise.  And yeah...that was what I said above, when my PC decided it would talk in symbols...WTF???  I tell ya, the world is weird, weird, weird. 

Words drive me crazy...literally

Words by Eighty-3 at deviantart

Words. They drive me crazy. No matter how hard you try, no matter what you do, no matter how careful and precise you try to be, they slide away; they do their own thing.  Because what you can’t ever control is how another person will read them, will interpret them.  It’s why emoticons are so important in social media, on forums.  End it with a J  and it’s all okay (or not).  But, really, emoticons aren’t enough.  You can’t express tone when you write.  Sometimes I think we need to write as if we were writing novels… adding in the adverbs (against all advice to the contrary) *smiling wanly*. Do you know what I mean? *small sad voice pleadingly, brow furrowed*  

Music is purer, not so open to misinterpretation. *relatively certain tone* Or is it? *frowns* The listener can so easily pull out one lyric rather than another; what one person perceives as a positive note will be seen by another as a negation. It’s why one song can mean a myriad different things to each and every person who listens to it. 

What we really need is a way to beam emotion and intent straight to other people.  That can be done on a one-on-one basis, if both parties are attuned or understand other dimensional working (though I am not always entirely sure about that either nowadays *sad sigh again*). But expressing one's intent, one's feeling, to a mass audience isn't possible or *pause, ponders* probably desirable, come to think of it. Maybe other people need to put their own interpretations on things. Maybe there are reasons for misunderstandings, for missed communications?  Maybe the misunderstandings are there as mirrors? *really don't know, just stabbing in the dark here*. Maybe they help us grow?  And growing is good, right? *asking, not remotely telling* 

Anyhow *with small, not irritated, just sad, sigh; in resigned tone*. I thought I’d been gone long enough, been down deep enough. I thought I was done with the underworld for just a little while. *long pause while looks out of window at soft rain falling, mist over the valley, leaves turning yellow, ochre and copper, breathing consciously, feeling deep yet strangely good pain in heart*.

I tried being back in the world, tried to smile and talk and be normal but it felt like I was outside myself, watching a puppet moving jerkily, on strings. I really had nothing to say; I have nothing to say. Because, see/hear/feel, right now, I'm only half-cooked (or half-baked, yeah, yeah, I'll say it so you don't have to *smile, yes really, smile*). And that’s okay, really it is…*nods, trying to convince self as much as anyone else*.

This morning the path was slippery, slick. I felt like I could so easily fall.  The big field was no longer empty; cows stood watching.  The path was strewn with shit. Go figure *rueful smile*. A friend said she’d dreamed of me, twice…with shelves full of dust.  And so I took the books that had been gathering dust and started to read.  And the synchronicities started crashing in again, one after another, again and again and again and again. Just too too much. *awe, wonder, fear, trepidation, uncertain to the core*.  What the shit is going on? I don’t understand.

Whatever it is or isn’t, I realised, *big deep sigh* that I had come back too soon.  I have more I have to do.  Back to the crucible I go.  Honestly, don’t worry – it’s okay.  It is what it is. Byss; abyss.