Tosia H Zraikat

The work of Old Age

"An ever-deepening self-knowledge is, I’m afraid, indispensable for the continuation of real life in old age, no matter how unpopular self-knowledge may be. Looking outwards has got to be turned into looking into oneself. Discovering yourself provides you with all you are, were meant to be, and all you are living from and for. The whole of yourself is certainly an irrational entity, but this is just precisely yourself, which is meant to live as a unique and unrepeatable experience."

- C.G. Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters

Humans and What Else?

 

In this rainy weather, and with a predicted rainy summer on its way, I sometimes wonder how it affects nature spirits. Do they shelter under shrubs or in burrows, do they huddle on branches like birds or do they simply slip out of body and wait it out in energy form? 

Many years ago, I had an encounter with nature spirits in a National Park, and sense them now and then in my garden and wild areas.

 A friend told me that she was once woken by a yeti (we call them yowies here in Australia) outside her van. It was looking at the mirrored window of her van, perhaps surprised to see itself. It couldn't see in, she said, but she saw it clearly before it disappeared, for she had turned on the outside light. This is not the first time a yowie has been seen on that mountain, either. 

I wonder what other creatures of myth and folklore might share this planet with us, indeed, what terrestrial aliens or human-like creatures might be hiding in the shadows.  Little people, for instance, faerie, elves and gnomes that live in dimensions that intersect with, and influence our  reality, but operate according to their own natural laws. They are sometimes seen and can, it seems, manifest in our physical reality as either small or tall strange beings, but mostly they hide away from us. 

According to the old stories, nature and earth spirits once took an interest in us and our wellbeing. Now, it is said, most of them are so disgusted with our treatment of earth and her creatures that they want nothing to do with us. To those who treat nature gently, with love, though, some of the less disillusioned nature spirits may speak and make themselves known. 

Findhorn in Scotland, whose improbable gardens built on rocky ground once amazed botanists, might never have been without the active help and guidance of nature spirits and devas. We can, it seems, invite them into our gardens by leaving part of them to grow wild, untended, as nature grows them. I have such an area - not big, but wild - at the side of my house.

In our ignorance, we cocky westerners tend to dismiss such things as childish imaginings. Fortunately, there are some that don't, who are careful not to offend or harm the invisible folk and their places. Some still believe in the old tales of pretty girls or boys being stolen away as in the old ballad of Tam Lin, romances between faerie and human, and children born of those unions.  

 Almost half of Icelanders, it seems, believe in elves, and elf 'experts' are often consulted prior to roadworks and other constructions to determine whether elves live in that area and what to do about it. Iceland has elf gardens, elf whisperers, even an Elf school where one can learn all about elves! 

 What about little human or hominid people who live or have lived in our known physical world? Such populations have existed, and some still do.

To those of us raised on Celtic or Scandinavian stories of faerie folk, the Negritos of southeast Asia and Africa's pygmies may not seem much like faery, elves or gnomes, which is a pity for they might otherwise have been protected from mistreatment by their bigger neighbours. Yet they do have some notable fairy-like qualities. Left to themselves (which they no longer are), they were known to live peaceably; happy people who loved to dance and sing, and who were exceptionally sensitive to nature and her secrets, as are the faery folk. Their elders still retain an astonishingly deep knowledge of herbal lore.  

Anthropologist Ian Turner wrote of the strangely magical qualities he found among the African pygmies. Late one night when all slept, he woke to see a man dancing alone beneath a full moon. When asked why he danced alone, he was told by the young man, who smiled radiantly, "I dance to the moon," something, I note, faerie and elves often did. Like the faerie, the pygmies also make hauntingly beautiful music. The American Indians tell of a magical race of little people who were so mistreated by the big ones that they hid, and that they still are hiding in the secret places of the earth, rarely seen. 

Perhaps these races of little human people carry are part faerie, still carrying in their genes and consciousness traces of faerie ancestors who loved and mixed with humans. Anything's possible.

It was a great shock to the scientific establishment when evidence of a tiny human being was discovered.

I took a course on this latest human addition to hominids, Homo floresiensis, known as the Hobbit. There are indications that the Hobbit might have interacted with Homo sapiens (us) before disappearing off the face of the earth. Or maybe a few are still around. (See link below).

Then there is us, the genocidal hominid that annihilated our early relatives as readily as we destroy other human beings right now? Where did they go, the Neanderthal, the Denisovans (traces of whom were found in Siberia and whose genes exist in Australian Aboriginal and New Guinean populations); the Red Cave people (traces found in Red Cave, China), a hominid so far dubbed Enigma man also found in China, the little people popularly called Hobbits found in the Philippines and more archaic lines, including our accepted ancestor, Homo Erectus? 

Some of these lines might have ended due to natural causes, but given our dark history of inhumane, murderous treatment of different races, I hold grave suspicions about the true reasons for us being the last remaining hominids.

  The question remains, though, are we the only remaining human-like creature on the planet? Are there yetis, yowies or bigfoots in the wilderness wisely avoiding contact with human beings? Do small groups of human relatives or similar creatures still hide from us deep in the bellies of caves? Are there little people - or giants - who have watched in dread our clumsy civilizations rise and fall, waiting for us to truly evolve, not physiologically but intellectually, emotionally and spiritually into a human race that one can actually talk to without fear?

We might think that we can answer those questions, but the truth is, we just don't know. For me, the book is still wide open. 

 Read more:

Elves in Iceland https://faeriemagazine.com/seeking-elves-iceland/

Could 'Hobbit' still exist? http://www.rense.com/general58/exist.htm

 

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 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.

 

How did Isaac feel about that? Could he ever really trust his father ... 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!'

 

I think that Prometheus might 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:

Prometheus by Gioacchino Assereto, and Ancient Greek image.
Sacrifice of Isaac by Caravaggio

 

 

 

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 a profound 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 in me, 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 deep within me was aroused. 

 

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.