The Way to Inner Light

Thoughts on Sacrifice

 

Prometheus god of foresight, knowingly sacrificed himself for the sake of humankind. He knew that Zeus would be furious and punish him; he stole fire for mankind anyway.

 

But what about Abraham, ready to obey God's cruel demand that he sacrifice his son, Isaac? Unlike the vengeful Zeus, God at the last minute relented and sent an angel to tell Abraham so ... It was all a test, he said, which supposedly makes it all OK.

 

 

And how did Isaac feel about that? Could he ever really trust in Abraham or God after that, or trust in Love? What if Abraham had stood up to God and said, Not my son. I sacrifice myself willingly, but not my son! Maybe Prometheus would have had the courage and heart to do that, to protect his child from God.

 

 

Thinking about Abraham's readiness to sacrifice his child (as I sometimes do), I wonder, who we are willing to sacrifice and to what, to whom? Who are we prepared to sacrifice for what we believe is a higher cause, or more likely, in obedience to authority, to conformity, to what we have been taught is right and good though it may not be ... for career, prestige, money, our right to bear arms, for example?

 

What do we sacrifice even now, consciously or without even realising? A dream? our self-respect? A family member... a child...the safety of our children?

 

Art by Rembrandt and Caravaggio. Painter of the Prometheus image not identified.

 

 

 

Prometheus

Prometheus was an independent thinker whose sense of justice and compassion and his love for humankind drove him to rebel against Zeus, who had only recently (in Olympian time) overcome the Titans and claimed the throne of the gods.

He is not overly impressed by Zeus, perhaps because he is of the older race of gods, the Titans, and in the ancient poem, Prometheus Bound, it is said that some of the older gods and nymphs do not like him much.  Hephaestus observes that "Zeus's heart is pitilessly harsh, and everyone whose ruling power is new is cruel and ruthless." The nymphs, daughters of Oceanus, who come to sympathise with Prometheus, say, "New gods now rule on Mount Olympus, and, like a tyrant, Zeus is governing with new-fangled laws, overpowering those gods who were so strong before." 

Prometheus, a Titan, had helped Zeus overcome the Titans because of their cruelty, but he find that Zeus is also sometimes cruel, and arrogant, and rather dismissive of humanity, who Prometheus loves. So one can see, perhaps, his tricking Zeus into accepting the worst part of a sacrifice to Zeus as a little prick to Zeus' ego inflation, but it makes the new Father-of-heaven furious, and he rather pettily, I think, withholds fire from humankind so that they languish almost to extinction. So Prometheus steals some it back for them, for which he is cruelly punished.

                        painting by Heinrich Feuger

He is nailed to the side of a high mountain in the Caucuses, where a great eagle daily eats his liver (the symbol of life, lifeblood), which regrows to be eaten again the next day. My grandfather was from the Caucuses, so I know it is a place where the air rushes through wide valleys and whips around mountain tops in storms and thick mists and winds, where eagles soar, and are seen as sacred. No coincidence that it is an eagle, the great denizen of the air, that eats Prometheus' liver there every day.

                        Painting by Jacob Jordaens

Some mythologists and psychologists see Prometheus as representing the urge of human consciousness to awaken, to grow and become autonomous. Yes, I can see that. I also see in his sense of justice, his compassion toward humans and his refusal to obey authority expressions of Will, of an independent Mind with its own morality and valuations. Aeschylus' poem seems to confirm that.

It also confirms that bringing fire to humans is a conscious, intentional sacrifice. With foresight, Prometheus knew that he would be severely punished for it, though not as cruelly as he was.

"Thanks to my advice, the gloomy pit of Tartarus now hides old Cronos and his allies. I helped Zeus, that tyrant of the gods—now he repays me with this foul torment. It is a sickness which somehow comes with every tyranny to place no trust in friends."

Yet Prometheus does not regret helping mankind, for was he not the cause of Zeus’ vindictiveness towards them? 

 

Goethe:  Hymn: Prometheus / Cover thy spacious heavens, Zeus (1772-1774)

Translated by A.Z. Foreman

poemsintranslation.blogspot.com

Cover Your heavens, Zeus,
With cloud vapor
And try Your strike, as a boy 
Beheading thistles,
Against oaken tree and mountain height;
You still must leave me
My Earth standing 
And my hut which You did not build,
And my hearth, home's glowing
Fire which You begrudge me.

I know of nothing poorer
Under the sun than You gods!
Indigently You feed
Your majesty
On proffered sacrifice 
And breathfuls of prayer.
You would starve to naught
If children and beggars
Were not such fools full of hope.

When I was a child
That knew not its way in the world
I would lift my deluded eyes
To the sun as though out beyond it
There were an ear to hear my complaints
A heart like mine
That would take pity on my oppression.

Who came to my aid
Against the Titans' and their insolent rage?
Who delivered me from death,
From slavery?
Was it not you, sacred heart ablaze,
Who achieved it all?
And, swindled in your youth and good will,
Did you not glow, with thanks fit for a Savior,
For that mere Sleeper on high?

I should honor You? For what?
Did You ever gentle
The ache of my burden?
Did You ever dry
The tears of tribulation?
Was I not forged to manhood
By Time Almighty
And Eternal Destiny,
My masters and Yours?

Perhaps You believed
I should find life hateful,
And flee to the wilderness
Because not all my blossom-dreams 
Reached ripeness?

Behold
Here I sit, fashioning men
In my own image,
A race after my likeness,
A race that will suffer and weep,
And rejoice and delight with heads held high
And heed Your will no more
Than I!

Jung says “… sacrifice proves that you possess yourself, for it does not mean just letting yourself be passively taken: it is a conscious and deliberate self-surrender, which proves that you have full control of yourself, that is, of your ego….” (CW11, ¶390.). Prometheus’ sacrifice shows a certain quality of mind that one does not find in the other gods, its strength, its quality and sovereignty. No other god of Olympus sacrificed as Prometheus did.

This is no ordinary trickster or obedient god. This is a Titan, created from the original elemental forces of the world, a grandson or heir to the Mesopotamian Tiamat whose body became the earth’s mountains and rivers. He is primal, fire and air, the fierce and creative power of love, of mind, of imagination. And Hesiod wrote that it was he, Prometheus, and his brother, Epimetheus, hindsight, not the gods, who created humankind from earth itself, and Athena breathed life into them. 

One and Many

 

You will come across many teachings about the 'error' of duality, and the need to overcome it, to achieve Oneness. I understand that idea, and the insistence of overcoming duality, a natural and to my mind, necessary state that has been corrupted to mean separateness ... that we are discrete, separate beings inhabiting a world of separate objects: the I-It condition described by philosopher Martin Buber, in which the other is always objectified, rather than the integrative I-Thou perception that fosters mutuality and connectedness . So wanted to explain a little my understanding and experience of Oneness.

 

I don't see Oneness as many others do, as superior to, or more spiritual than the Many, for the Many are infinite expressions of the One, each necessary to the existence of the world, in the same way that the infinite variety of sounds are necessary for the creation of bird song, the cricket's buzz, for the manifestation of music. Music is not something independent of notes or sounds: it is the manifestation of their relationships to each other. In the same way, the One is both the generative source and the infinite manifestation of diverse relationships between All Things.

 

Without the many, the world that we know or can create could not be. Without the One, nothing could be.

 

I think that that's what the goddess was telling to Parmenides on his journey into the otherworld, "that being is without beginning and indestructible; it is universal, existing alone, immovable and without end; nor ever was it nor will it be, since it now is, all together, one, and continuous ..... [and] all is full of being; therefore the all is continuous, for being is contiguous to being."

 

 

Being at One, developing Oneness thinking, therefore, does not to me imply a rejection or diminishment of our sacred individuality, or an ultimate spiritual goal of reuniting with and melting into the original One. I'm with Marie-Louise von Franz who declared that dissolving into Oneness had no appeal to her if she could not experience it as herself.

 

What is required, it seems to me, is to hold the apparent opposites of Oneness and multiplicity in tension, as Jung said of integrating the different aspects of our psyche; to see them as a continuum along which we might be at different points through our lives ... sometimes closer to a felt experience of Oneness, sometimes deeply focused in a particular moment of our individual being, more often, one hopes, consciously aware of being balanced between Oneness and individuality and recognising the sacredness of it all.

Reflections on a poem

Henry Corbin  (April 1903 - October 1978), a French philosopher, orientalist, mystic and a major interpreter and scholar of Persian mystical and philosophical writings, wrote this poem in 1932. (English translation by Tom Cheetham).

Theologie au bord du lac 

Everything is only revelation; there can only be re-velation. But revelation comes from the Spirit, and there is no knowledge of the Spirit.

It will soon be dusk, but for now the clouds are still clear, the pines are not yet darkened, for the lake brightens them into transparency. And everything is green with a green that would be richer than if pulling all the organ stops in recital. It must be heard seated, very close to the Earth, arms crossed, eyes closed, pretending to sleep.

For it is not necessary to strut about like a conqueror and want to give a name to things, to everything; it is they who will tell you who they are, if you listen, yielding like a lover; for suddenly for you, in the untroubled peace of this forest of the North, the Earth has come to Thou, visible as an Angel that would perhaps be a woman, and in this apparition, this greatly green and thronging solitude, yes, the Angel too is robed in green, the green of dusk, of silence and of truth. Then there is within you all the sweetness present in surrender to an embrace that triumphs over you.

Earth, Angel, Woman, all of this is one thing that I adore and that is present in this forest. Dusk on the lake: my Annunciation. The mountain: a line. Listen! Something is happening! The anticipation is immense, the air is quivering under a fine and barely visible rain; the houses that stretch out along the ground, their wood red and rustic, their roofs of thatch, are there, there on the other side of the lake.

Something will begin this evening, something promised, in that I believe. Ah! This evening? When, then, this evening? If it were truly in a few hours, it would never be, because it would have to end, and then, begin again, and so would always end and never begin. Do you know what it means to wait, and do you know what it means to have faith?

The Mystery of Holy Communion where you will be ushered in, where all the beings will be present - yes, you can only say it in the future. Because at each moment where you read in truth as now what is there before you, where you hear the Angel, and the Earth and Woman, then you receive Everything, Everything, in your absolute poverty. But as soon as you have read and have received, as soon as you consider, as you want to understand, as you want to possess, to give a name and restrain, to explain and recover, ah! then there is only a cipher, and your judgment is pronounced.

For at every instant you are judged, and you must die. So you die, when your existence is decided and realized, for then it is over: what was is not - you want without renouncing, renounce without wanting.

No, you are the poor one, you are man; and he is God, and you cannot know God, or the Angel, or the Earth, or Woman. You must be encountered, taken, known, that they may speak, otherwise you are alone, and perhaps it is better thus, and will be always thus, always, that is, there would be no eternity for you. Because you were born in a sin that was sinned before you, and as Thou you have had fear, great fear, and you have cried, cried because the Earth is immense, cried because the Woman was too beautiful, cried because the Angel was invisible, and because as Thou you were Adam, and Adam would want to live.

Adam established Love, poetry, religion, for he wanted life, that is, he wanted-to be-God, and then to speak as he would want the three beings. To Question; Alas! and he alone responded. To listen; Alas! to give a concert to himself alone.

But then suddenly surging from this lake comes a cortege of beautiful beings. They sing the funeral chant of Adam; and because Adam is dead, it will be a chorale of blended voices with anguish in every instant: “Christ is born! Christ is Risen!”

Henry Corbin

Reading this was like a dream that I simply could not ignore.

Shortly before reading this poem in the middle of the first Covid scare, I dreamed  that I was in a dark lake in the middle of a forest with other women, none of whom I knew, and we became aware of dark sinuous shapes under the surface. At first I thought they were big eels, so my immediate reaction was to swim for shore but I was told - in my head - to stay and be calm. As other women swam towards the shore, some of those sinuous shapes came closer to the surface and I saw that they were water sprites or mermaids, and I told the others, which calmed them. The water creatures warned that we must remain in the water … we must not step onto land for there was danger there, death. So we remained all through that night, many heads floating in the black lake.

At first I took this as a warning to keep away from the social discourse and fear of Covid by staying connected to deeper consciousness. But I was studying Jung at the time, and quickly saw connections to other texts I was studying. 

For instance, I recognised in the dream the dark tangle of chaos described in the ancient Chinese alchemical text, Secret of the Golden flower: the innocent caught deep underwater, helpless, understanding nothing.... until ...

"In the midst of this darkness, the heavenly heart suddenly begins a movement. This is the return of the one light, the time when the child comes to life (Willhelm trans. GF 55)” ....

 and rises to the quiet still place, still underwater but closer to the surface, rising towards sunlight in a state of surrender, a child peacefully sleeping in her unawareness, who eventually awakens, some new aspect of her arising like a lotus bud from the roots towards the sun to open there like a flower into a new personality. I have felt that.

My spiritual path has been one of small attainments and many reversals, needing to go back again and again in search of what I had lost or never really gained in the first place. And I have rarely felt on solid ground. I have felt more like one who, swimming in deep water, catches the tail of the ox that is swimming strong and with purpose, and she is pulled after it into some semblance of awareness. But in the moving water, she loses her grip, again and again. 

But reading Corbin’s poem, I am struck hard by the beauty of the water beside the forest, how comfortable, how reassuring it feels. I am no longer sitting by the water, I am in it, floating, like a child, at ease. I float on the music of the mountain … it speaks to me. The Angel in green floats before me like the Star of the Sea, Stella Maris, Maria, like the Mother of the World, like Aphrodite goddess of Love.

 

                                (photo: unsplash.com)

My chest aches as my heart swells. I am not me. I am the water. I am the lake and I gladly surrender my Adamic self to its depths, surrender again and again, not to fire or to earth but to the lake, the water, and my soul sings, for the Christ consciousness within me is born again.

Maybe like in that dream, I am not yet ready to step onto dry land, to step into the forest, but need to float a while longer in the water..... Some part of me is not prepared to leave the unconscious, part of me that perhaps prefers the fluidity, the uncertainty of water, that is still wondering what is hiding in the depths that seeks to be brought into the light, onto solid ground. 

For recently, I had an expected experience of total identification with water, and it was not just words or imagination. As I sat absent mindedly wondering what it would feel like to be water, a particular stream that I like to sit by, suddenly, I Was the stream. I felt it, smelled it, tasted it, and it was totally different to how my body normally feels: slippery, muddy, dense, scary, dark, full of life, full of memories.

No words for it, but something in me awoke. 

 

Khalil Gibran on Fear

 

 

It is said that before entering the sea

a river trembles with fear.

She looks back at the path she has traveled,

from the peaks of the mountains,

the long winding road crossing forests and villages.

And in front of her,

she sees an ocean so vast,

that to enter

there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.

But there is no other way.

The river can not go back.

Nobody can go back.

To go back is impossible in existence.

The river needs to take the risk

of entering the ocean

because only then will fear disappear,

because that’s where the river will know

it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,

but of becoming the ocean.

 

~ Khalil Gibran

Rumi

Just Do it. Van Gogh.

 

 

“I tell you, if one wants to be active, one mustn’t be afraid to do something wrong sometimes, not afraid to lapse into some mistakes. To be good — many people think that they’ll achieve it by doing no harm — and that’s a lie, and you said yourself in the past that it was a lie. That leads to stagnation, to mediocrity…

 

You don’t know how paralyzing it is, that stare from a blank canvas that says to the painter, “You can’t do anything.” The canvas has an idiotic stare, and mesmerizes some painters so that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the truly passionate painter who dares — and who has once broken the spell of “You can’t.”

 

Life itself likewise always turns towards one an infinitely meaningless, discouraging, dispiriting blank side on which there is nothing, any more than on a blank canvas. But however meaningless and vain, however dead life appears, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, and who knows something, doesn’t let himself be fobbed off like that. He steps in and does something…”

 

Vincent van Gogh

Forests and Water

 

 

(Photo: Top of Purlingbrook Falls, Springbrook, by Entoni Wright)

 

I just learned the today - 21 March 2022 in the northern hemisphere - is the International Day of Forests. The theme this year: " 'Forests and sustainable production and consumption', to warn that forest renewal and sustainable management helps fight climate change and crises that occur due to the loss of biodiversity." (from total-croatia-news.com).

 

Forests are vital to the quality, abundance and life-giving properties of Water. They are necessary to each other.

 

"The Upholder of the Cycles which supports the whole of Life, is WATER. In every drop of water dwells the Godhead, whom we all serve; there also dwells Life, the Soul of the 'First' substance - "Water - whose boundaries and banks are the capillaries that guide it and in which it circulates."

 

"The forest is the habitat of water and as such the habitat of life processes too, whose quality declines as the organic development of the forest is disturbed."

 

"More energy is encapsulated in every drop of good spring water than an average-sized powerstation is presently able to produce."

 

"Every economic death of a people is always preceded by the death of its forests."

 

(Water expert Viktor Schoenberger)

 

(Photo:  from total-croatio-news.com).

 

 

"...Water has the ability to transfer information, once it has obtained it, to other systems such as living organisms."

 

"All life processes are directly or indirectly connected with water, therefore it entitles water to have a very high priority and positioning in the environmental situation."

 

(German physicist Dr. Wolfgang Ludwig).

 

In Croatia, by the way, "the Hrvatske Šume state-owned forest management company notes that there is no fear of forest loss in Croatia because the country manages its forests and forest land in a sustainable way, in line with 10-year plans" (total-croatia-news.com). Sadly, very few countries can say that.

 

That helps explain why their water system is one of the cleanest and purest I have ever seen, drunk or swam in.

 

 

(Photo: One of the seven (actually more) lakes and many waterfalls in Plitvice, Croatia, by By Natasha Zraikat).

 

 

Being Present in the World

It is taught that we are in the world, but not of it.

 

If 'not of it' means that we are not or should not allow ourselves to be dominated by it, that we should not mistake the dream of this reality for Reality itself, then I might say, yes. Maybe.

 

Yet we are here, for whatever mysterious reasons, here we are, souls entwined in bodies through which we perceive and experience this reality, visible and invisible ... not to dominate or be dominated by it, to become its masters or its slaves, but simply and as fully as we can, to Be ....here...now ... part of this world, built from the elements of nature, affecting and being affected by it.

 

 

 

I - the part of me that touches, sees, hears, smells, thinks, feels - I am as much of this world as are the birds that watch us from the treetops or the clouds, as the fish at home in the deep sea, as the tree roots and mycelium and creatures that run beneath my feet. On many levels, I participate in their reality and they in mine, for we are intimately, deeply connected.

 

We are, in the most fundamental of meanings, related. ... and "the body is my very means of entering into relationship with all things."*

 

 

So let us rejoice in our bodies. Let us acknowledge their innate animal ability to attune perfectly, deeply to the life of this world, to nature, to our environments. Let us be - while we can - fully human.

 

(* from The Spell of the Sensuous, by David Abram)

 

 

the Gift of Darkness

 

We are seeing dark energies at work everywhere in the world and many are feeling them more intensely than ever in their own beings, their own hearts and minds. 

 

Understand that these dark energies are active not only in certain countries or groups, or working through certain individuals. They have accumulated across the earth from all the darkness that we - people- have allowed to accumulate and grow in us, often because we insist on accepting only light, goodness and love. It is easy to point at others, but if we pay attention, we may feel those energies shifting in us right now, intensifying or perhaps fighting to maintain their hold over our thinking, and it can feel very distressing, very intense. This is the darkness of humankind's collective shadow, that will continue to accumulate until we learn to bring more of our personal shadows, our own inner darkness into consciousness where it can, if we are willing, be integrated. And to do that, we must learn to recognise the gift hidden in our darkness, the gift of awakening, of becoming more conscious. 

 

I used to be afraid of chaos, of the darkness that sometimes feels as thick, as heavy, as sticky as deep mud, forgetting that black mud can also generate life. 

 

Earth diver myths around the world tell us this, many where a special animal dives into the depths and brings up mud from which the world is created, or a creator god like the Egyptian Khnum who emerges from the mud and creates the world from the primal mud, or like the Titan Prometheus or Jehovah, who create humankind from clay.

 

This really came home to me recently in a flash of insight when I knew, just knew that chaos, inner darkness, despair have always felt to me like mud ... the earthy half-rotten smell of it, the squishiness, the fear of being sucked in. The smell of it filled my nose, that familiar background smell of my personal, deeply felt darkness.

 

and in the flash, I clearly saw myself drawing from that darkness the threads from which I had woven my life - childhood experiences, my life stories, dreams and nightmares, my shifting sense of Me, moments of transcendence - I had woven them all from roots, tangles, thin seedlings, sometimes faint, fine threads of gold found in that sludge.  

 

What then felt like chaos, like anguish or death, I realised, was and is the blackness of moist deep earth from which all things come. It doesn't sound like much, but it was an immense, a profound knowing that has change everything for me.

 

 

 

That's what the earth diver and other myths of being created from dust, from clay, for mud were telling me all along, that as Creatures of the Earth, we are destined to plant our feet in its mud and take strong root there, and to find our way towards the light. Like the sacred lotus, we are meant to be nourished by darkness, to rise and bloom, like the tree to be held steady by the roots as we raise our branches high into the air to shimmer, blossom and fruit there.

 

It is in darkness we can find our greatest strength, Psychologist Robert Johnson* says, that we can find the power and wisdom to fully and consciously spread light in the world. We find the gold in our inner darkness, and bring it into the world.

 

 

*Robert Johnson, Inner Gold.

 

 

 

 

 

Self-knowing - the Unconscious

‘It is enlightenment to know one's self‘    (Lao Tzu)   

"When one understands self, and self's relation to its Maker, the duty to its neighbor, its own duty to self, it cannot, it will not be false to man, or to its Maker." (Edgar Cayce Reading 3744-5)

Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes.”  (C.G. Jung Letters, Vol. I, p. 33)

(Self portrait, Rembrandt van Rijn)

Most people consider themselves to be very self-aware, and don't give much importance to introspection (examining their thoughts) or self-observation. Nor do they place much store in what others think of them, or try to learn from them.

But really, how well do we know ourselves and why we act as we do? The truth is, not much. Research has repeatedly shown that most of us have only a vague idea, if any, at given time about how we feel, what we really think, or why we act as we do. 

Psychologist Carl Jung confirmed beyond doubt that the human psyche is much more than the ego consciousness that we usually take to be ourselves. The ego consciousness, in fact, is only a small part of the psyche, and most times, it functions automatically: most of our thinking and behaviour is not consciously directed at all, but the result of childhood and social conditioning.

Even deeper is another level of consciousness that exerts an even more powerful influence on our behaviour. Jung called this layer the collective unconscious which carries the biological imprints of our humanity and knowledge of our ancient ancestors. One usually needs some help to access this layer.

Without some understanding of these unconscious influences, the ego personality can be like a small boat on a large sea, tossed, pushed and pulled by forces far beneath the waves, or like a child trying to navigate a world that it hasn't even begun to understand. 

(Art by Ina Szabó at  inaszaboartdesign.com)

Unless we make a conscious effort to know ourselves and why we what we do, we cannot function as autonomous beings in the world. We may think we do, but without the broader perspective and insight of the inner personality, we are tossed in the waves, praying for calm , or we shuffle along thinking and behaving as we have been conditioned to do, stuck in old habits that we hardly even recognise, much less question.

Even when things go wrong and we begin to see that our ‘usual way of being’ doesn’t really work, many just muddle through, doing and thinking the same old things because with the arrogance of the small ego, we think we know ourselves when we don't. 

And overwhelmingly, we are out of touch with our feelings, and what the spirit teacher, Seth, calls our basic feeling-tone and which determines how we see and respond emotionally to our inner and outer experiences.

We do not realise that not only our perceptions but also our emotions are distorted by layers of self-delusion, conditioning and unquestioned beliefs and attitudes. With all that interference, trying to 'hear' the small inner voice of soul is like trying to hear whispers through several thick walls. If we  hear them at all, the messages come through all muffled and distorted. 

For example, I might want love, but through my learned filters of mistrust, resentment, unworthiness or fear, I consciously register suspicion and doubt about love, which can seriously limit my ability to recognise love, give or receive it.

We have to dig deep to know what we're really feeling. But the psyche itself will try to tell us through dreams, intuition, or those soft inner voices. Start by paying attention to these messages from the unconscious. Do not ignore them. Listen to them, acknowledge them somehow, and take note of them. Eventually, you will start to see  a pattern ... 

(image: from aconsciousrethink.com)

Self-knowing takes time, it takes effort and patience, and it requires that very difficult letting go of your self-illusions. You must be willing to know who you are. It might seem intimidating at first, or damn uncomfortable, but be assured, it is worth it. Consciousness that knows Itself is the only thing with the power to change the world.