I woke to a Promethean poem this morning. Unfortunately it faded. I am left with the sense of a large almost-round grey pebble. The message within its fall to gravity was the fire. It is the fire. It was bonded with the flow of water. But water is flowing Stone. The water which flows as Stone contains the fire which falls to Earth; each day a fall of meteorites most of them incandescing to powder in the atmosphere – Air; these primordial processes prevail regardless of small human guilt.
The Stone is in my hand and its weight flies into the infinite core fractal of interior space, and inside each of Jim Ede’s pebbles is God. This is noticed through the anguished human claptrap.
Two realities reside here: one, that we humans spoil the earth, and the other: how can we so arrogantly presume to? It is in Gaia’s destiny to clear some of her surface areas for a time and alter the climate composition. As our Solar system moves deeper into the Photon belt, each organism is aware and agitated through changes in the DNA.
This is an unusual and Holistic idea. The substance or impression of Holistic ideas transcends – is greater than their composition. Their composition – how they print out – is subject to the interpretation: the words.
The substance, the dimensional weight falling through my body however – this is true, and it is what I call transmission, reception of the Promethean fire.
Let it do its work. Through countless receiving channels it is spelled out into this or that interpretation. Generally speaking there is agreement, that when we fully embrace and accept responsibility with our suffering, there is joy. There is unexpected, boundless joy, whatever appears to go on, or apparently engulfs it. Where one spark is covered for a time, another shines out. Watch a glowing fire in the hearth; it whispers along the wood like a slow snake.
Human beings need to suffer from their rattling mind and its environmental disorders, disasters and creation of deserts, in order to begin to step free from this convention mind – to work with and as Nature, Gaia, not against.
“To begin to” is the operative word here. Fixed holding-positions get left behind. Awaken into prayer and progress with the day, again and again and again and again; recreate the Power of Creation. An infinitesimal neutrino penetrates the leaden shield into the star; from star to star … again comes around the Promethean gift of Fire, the spark within each of us planted; the phoenix bird of song and light and joy in the recovery and resurrection: “I am the Resurrection and the Light.” “I am the love of the Light.” “I am the core of Love itself.” “Let there be Light.”
Coursing the sap in stem, nectar aflame,
each power to one beloved nadi clings.
The force through spine’s sushumna sings ‘All presence’, ‘Heart’s ocean’, ‘Swan of peace’, ‘Supreme’.(1)
As Her light pervades my body, I am detached;
my form as Self, Self and the world are matched
[(1) In one of my Ramana Gita sonnets, these are names roughly corresponding to atma nadi (Self), para nadi (that which is beyond manifestation) and amrita nadi (nectar of immortality) in the text. The nadis are the meridian map within the Yogic body.]
phoenix bird of fire
..
The alchemist blows a little on the banked fire, and it glows. The breath. The body.
In a stone-age cave, the warming flame flows along the log like lava, like water with Light which is air and the Earth’s solar core. Everything, each and every phenomenon has this potential (See the link to “beyondhumanstories” further down this post) … within the plastics and perverted materials, nothing is other than the core. Sooner or later it returns to the core, as technologies arise to biodegrade our unconscious waste, for we become conscious, first individually here and there, and then collectively as a tide through tipping-point. Alchemists are able to quicken the interior process, and to see above the tide. Wherever an alchemist is at work, the environment blossoms. Alchemists are gardeners. We potter and we ponder and we fish.
..
The slow fire along the log burns out old Karma and all its fascination and even beauty. It cleanses the slate, to the horror and grief of all who saw and were aware of, for instance, the burning of the Amazon forest. A cruel human may have caused it or encouraged it to spread; but it was to be. It shocks and burns the soul. It starves further the respiration’s resources. The respiration is the whole planetary balance and swirl of currencies and weathers. Why is this happening?
I think the new human will have, and has already a bond with nature, with creature, fish, plant, tree and rock which we used to plunder and exploit and harm. The new human is so deeply, painfully connected with what she harmed that she plays into the restorative power of transmutation and the burgeoning of Life. Humankind is no longer separate from the forest and creatures of the field, no longer separate from the seas, no longer a player of golf.
The new human re-learns the ancient unifying magic; the art begins where nature ceases to act. Already this is developing as a fact. Those who despaired and yet were willing to hope, drop away from the old system. They begin to create local solar technologies. They nurture the family and patterns of relationships. Relationships are geometries and sacred forms and problems of harmony. With the ripple effect, they enter and inspire one another.
A drawing from Douglas Harding’s ‘Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth’
I wanted to say … concentric waves or ripples. Where the Stone falls and breaks surface, there is a centrifugal ripple: concentric rings. These move subtly through immediate society and communities, creating further impacts and their rings. Watch a fall of rain on the pond. I don’t publish 99% of my work because it could be misunderstood. I am not totally sure of it myself, or of peoples’ capacity to misinterpret and to twist. The Stone goes on and on falling into my fractal core and there is no time to stop and buff it up into shape to pass through the gate; for always it comes. I trust that where I work, the Companions of the Light take care of it. Their power to reach the ground and to start a wave passes through where I sit and write it down, and travels to other antennae. I write the same thing over and over and over for the telegraph wire. I’m a starling sitting on it. There is never enough of it. I write and sing so others unseen are inspired. There are notes that travel above and below the standard spectrum; the invisible octaves of the ground of being.
While I was cleaning the house upstairs yesterday, Genevieve’s conversation with Paula Aamli (https://beyondhumanstories.com/podcast-hope-beyond-hope/?fbclid=IwAR3SX5Z8FWTfCgpMmcSayAIQghOQgphJJaq4Mx8c394Ey4X80_e4Yht4Pz8 uplifted and helped me to turn to face my pain; for Paula discovered – through facing hers – that though the present human engine is destroying its future, there is an unexpected response of joy, gratitude, discovery and noticing the infinite resource of life even in a walled in city garden, and certainly within the soul’s courage. There is more to this than we know.
It is the infinitesimal fractal potency of the small! The 9thGene key is called the Power of the Infinitesimal. Beauty is the story, the dimension which cuts through every science.
Brancusi’s Prometheus on Bechstein, Kettle’s Yard
I was told long ago, in 1969: Your beautiful thoughts are not enough. The stuff of beauty is sterner. The way is to evoke and inspire that beauty in someone else. Ah, but I see today, the beautiful thoughts are, and create the Way. The beauty didn’t come into my hand like soap. It had to be worked for, leaned into and with, discovered, suffered, recreated.
The new chapter is respirational, back and forth, in and out. When the old breath is done it dulls and expires: the new breath coming in underneath it be-stirs things. So rises and falls the Tao in our world.
..
When I woke this morning with the Promethean poem I lay for a while listening to the hammering builders who’ve taken off a roof, up the road. I could just hear the dark yammer of their radio. Listening to radio news and watching media is a yammering, de-sensitising skin which most of us wear. It reinforces the screen of isn’t it all dreadful and bad, and it deadens the feeling. Journalists are able to witness and report horrors with this leaden blanket. I don’t have that protective numbness. The Guardians force me in this way to stay sensitive. I don’t read the papers or watch the media. My ear is to the ground; I pick up what I need to know. The human commentary on atrocity and damage and guilt, is more than I can bear. Many of us walk with only one side of our bodies and half of our brains and heavy clouds in our heart and loins. I used to have dreams about only being able to walk with one foot, the other was tightly curled up asleep underneath.
The Tarot key that intuitively blossoms today is the 8th– Soul strength, the woman guiding the lion to sing and to speak. “Make your pattern accurate, profound, honest, courageous.”
It is another such beautiful September day, this morning, sharp and fresh. Water, stone, meteorite – recollect that vast numbers of comets and meteorites and cosmic bodies are petrified water. Water of Life.
The Stone warms up to flow as water with the fire inside.
..
..
..
Click on image to view
My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom. See also Aquariel
Is ecstasy the captive of existential fear? Are they hand in glove? What is love?
Here is a story in Arthur Koestler’s ‘The Act of Creation’: “The great biologist Elie Mechnikoff felt rather lonely one afternoon in 1890 when the whole family had gone off to the circus … he remained alone with his microscope. The microscope was in Pasteur’s laboratory at the Ecole Normale. Mechnikoff was observing the life of the mobile cells in the transparent larvae of starfish, and idly threw a few rose-thorns among them. The thorns were promptly surrounded by the larvae and dissolved inside their transparent bodies – they had been gobbled up and digested. This reminded him of what happens when a human finger is infected by a splinter; it will be surrounded by pus which, like the starfish larvae, attack and try to digest the intruder. By this analogy Mechnikoff discovered the organism’s main defence mechanism against invading microbes: the ‘phagocytes’, cell-eaters, a population of mobile cells among the white blood corpuscles.”
[Hasn’t this some resonance with the development of advanced technologies to bio-degrade the plastics in our oceans? SIXTH SUN LINK – : “The ‘Time of the Sixth Sun Series’ is a movie and documentary series 11 years in the making about the awakening and transformation of global consciousness and the huge potential we have for change in the world. Starring Estas Tonne and featuring over 85 indigenous elders, wisdom keepers, visionary thought leaders with a beautiful soundtrack. If you’d like to see the trailer and sign up to watch for free go to: https://timeofthesixthsunlaunch.com“
This project was first distributed last April, and is being made available again on 6 November. I only saw a small part of it then, and was deeply uplifted and fascinated by the holistic work of a new generation of young scientists – a profound, positive message concerning also our individual untapped potential for the good.
I also started to correspond with Global Energy Parliament – well worth a visit. This Keralan movement grounds spiritual conscience, philanthropy and eco-initiatives in quantum physics – the journey into the Higgs-Bosen or “I” particle.]
Bio-chemistry never lost the helping hand of its elder sister, Alchemy – nature’s interior art of transformation is assisted just a little by humans. Seventeenth century alchemic aphorisms describe red and white soldiers’ activity within the corpuscular bloodstream as they travel to the castles of our interior organs. What ancient medicine!
Think again of this fantastic occult paradox: starfish larvae eat up and digest rose-thorns. Starfish have five extensions (like Vitruvian human); the rose is structured on five petals. HEH is the fifth Hebrew letter, it means seeing and the breath. Y H V H, a Dvine shorthand to indicate the One Reality, is father, mother, child and (second H) the Family which seeds the new Yod. Our technology towards Gaia is as yet crude. It will refine.
And what about this? – in Keith Critchlow’s “the Hidden Geometry of Flowers” is shown the orbital pattern of periodic positions of Venus with Earth around the years. There is no escape for us whatsoever from the beauty, the dance of Venus:
What is Gaia? The human bonding with the planet draws closer and it IS.
Tantra is the living web of touch. Sleeping Beauty awakes within the briar. A starfish drinks the thorn of the rose. Everything dissolves in the Whole Life and Light. What is Real is to be found, not pasted as formula onto a thought or an email. It is off the beaten track. It is cultured, nurtured, gardened, found again and again. The unspeeched song in the vascular branches replies to everything.
Earnest, serious analytical thinking is good as far as it goes; but it is not perception. It sees patterns but it does not perceive what is behind the patterns and behind the fear. The pussy foot approaching the mirror must look behind it.
The character behind the patterns has a Uranian humour. It overturns our apple carts and expectations. The pattern seems real while I and others are wedded to its misery. But actually it isn’t. The pattern is Change and the Design around it is beyond the box. Change can be a sort of eternity of misery including vulnerability to frackers, which pokes my mind away from serenity like the hellish toasting-fork. But the Design wherein all change is temporary upheaval, laughs at locksmiths. What laughs at locksmiths? Love. Compassion. What are locksmiths? Weddings to misery and mistrust of life. And what goes on? Life, fermenting in fact with lovers and teachers and clowns and children and lighthouse keepers. We are unstoppable! We are not so obvious to the earnest thinkers of the pattern, but we shine because when we laugh or cry it falls away like a costume change. It’s simple. Just go on lighthouse keeping. It’s stormy. That’s what lighthouses are for. We are rooted quietly in the rock
Watch my predatory mind which grabs and fastens and worries any misery about environment, society or my physical body, just like a greedy market force. Just recognise it and don’t go with THAT flow. To help build a positive collective tree of life, attend to my environment in HERE and its collective contagion. This is I guess, my best intention with the extinction rebellion activists this week and next. What are we rebelling against? The old movie, the old machine. The old machine for sure is not destined to survive and as long as I stick to it, it gives me grief.
I think there is a Kabbalah meditation this evening at D and M’s. Let us gather together!
Recognise chaos (misery) and harmony (life force). Respect the fact of the dissonance towards sanity. Live within the given picture. Reading about the poet Rilke’s Russian journey with Lou Salome – the Divine beauty and vastness of that continent with its tenacious devout peasantry, his love for it, his passionate profound love for large Lou and her homeland – what flew into his poetry in subsequent years of the terror and rape of the timeless sacrament with time’s tyrant? The serfs were an immense population in age-old bondage to Tsars; in young Rilke’s well of discovery they were beautiful like wild flowers in their dream time, their lives a struggle to survive, their devotion a hardy mystic blessing under the heavy foot of feudal taxation. This devotion and faith met its hope in the soviet revolution and was slaughtered. Long grinding holocaust. In more recent times the devotion returns to the open places to build again with God.
What of the holocaust flew into Rilke’s metaphysics as terrifying angels? The 20th century Tsars occupied his new spiritual homeland of endless steppes and skies.
What is my mind? A sort of body which suffers pain! My mind is a skinless lamb turned on the spit. And what is outside, beyond and yet within my mind?
Each country will settle into his or her own nature in due course, including natural divinity and crown of thorns. An idea wishes to be born this morning as I write. What is it? All things come to term. All conflicts pass through each other. In the middle (east) are concrete walls and religious war. That isn’t the idea I had just now, which sank below the waves again, but let’s keep going. Concrete cracks apart and war becomes an outgrown fantasy. Centuries ago, my soul carried weapons, now laid aside. The civil war is in the middle east, concentrically. Civil war is that between those of the same flesh and brotherhood, the same village. So I have a picture of Christ wearing his crown of thorns. There is a mudra of Transfiguration. This is not the fish I almost caught just now, but never mind.
Lou Salome with her independence of thought and life style was a kind of beautiful Madame Blavatsky. I’m also looking at her biography of Nietzsche. I did these two sketches this morning – herself and Rilke:
“Devotion returns to the open places.” This is the fishy phrase or feeling which prevails. Where people believe it is the End, this shy sly hidden card comes out of the sleeve. What comes to its own end is the wall of conditioned belief, whether dumb or intelligent. I see something. I see nature, Gaia, colonising Her own. I hear you talking about the millions of persons and children who will starve and die when Africa becomes uninhabitable due to human carbon emissions.
Yes, this is tragic for human beings, and I cannot spell out – (when in linear left-brain company and its deeply-read concerns) – the solar-plexus intuition’s sense of the natural DNA balances. They transcend what we humans think we do. A vast cross-fertilised gene pool was born over the last century, and as swiftly it may become withdrawn, leaving a rich culture for the generations to thrive. I can’t say such things, which seem heartless; when I awake, I think in paradox. For the psyche which imagines the bigger picture, empaths also the individual sufferings of one of a million such families losing house, home and life through climate change – starving babies – the immensity of their fragile universe. What do I know of the Karmic hinterlands of these souls, and of their future sprouting and rebirth? Fires and heat scorch, and then there are ashes and then in the elder Chinese elementary cycle there is earth and water and wood: a re-sprouting of human wilderness beyond prediction. Compassion.
This is the Generation cycle:
The 64 I Ching Hexagrams are built from the pairing of the 8 trigrams (square root): Thunder, Wind, Fire, Earth, Lake, Heaven, Water, Mountain. To these are attributed the five Chinese elements qualitatively. In the Tao, wood generates fire which as ash generates earth which generates the metals which generate the water which generates earth … (See the Great Treatise in the I Ching, and also ‘The Trigrams of Han‘ by Steve Moore)
this diagram shows also the Destruction or conquest cycle: earth soaks up water which puts out fire which melts metal which cuts the wood which conquers earth.
..
It is not just the regeneration of Nature’s habitat through the altered conditions: it is that the souls which may die in Equatorial and other regions are seeds of the life force, and they get planted again. Between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, where Earth’s circumference rotates faster, are found polarities of good and evil. Dictators engage in tribal warfare and pillage, but at the same time, the land is sprinkled with VSO and other teaching-missions. They save lives; significantly they sow indestructible seeds of cooperation, intelligent farming, self-sufficiency and friendship. No longer are religious dogmas inflicted, which cut the people away from their ancestral roots. There is a movement of atonement.
Humanity cannot be assessed at the level of political gamesters, the turgid knots of the lower mind. Humanity is assessed through the vivid peaks of her philanthropic responsibility.
The goddess Kwan Yin painted by Roerich
The ageless teachings nowadays emphasise this. In the old traditional way, those treading spiritual paths sought personal liberation. The new way is philanthropic: self being for others; embody it. Walk your talk.
There is no answer. There is a kind of seeing of the patterns, in our different ways; and there is acceptance of the whole. Above all, I should not hate or despair, but empathise – understand also the condition of those driven by unconscious fear of change, whose expression is aggressive denial.
I grieve the extinction of waves of humanity and their bio-culture. I may in my next thought deplore the crisis of over-population. Can I combine these concepts? Over the last century or two, Nature’s tidal wave embodied souls in billions upon earth, and is bound to reduce that component as She withdraws. It is difficult to find a language for this: she turns the human acceleration of exhaust, ingenuity and industry to her purpose.
She will use also the human nascent tendency to outgrow our addiction to survival-sexuality. Following what may or may not be dramatic drops in population in afflicted regions … may come a slow diminishing of the birth statistic as we pull our horns in, and our belts. Slowly but steadily, “marketing-sex” becomes replaced by contemplative intimate relationships in the scale of Tantric values. The genetic structure of the new human grows apace, leaving the old state and its passion and its beauty and its abuse behind like a sloughed-off skin or chrysalis.
This takes time and is perceptible in fits and starts, but it is here with us today; new generations are born to meet the environmental challenges creatively; the nature of the family evolves. Our real nature is ecstasy; not static.
This fact is alive also “unconsciously” in the outspoken fear of Extinction. We humans carry a huge amount of perception of which we cannot speak. I feel that the collective androgyne fears what it carries in the DNA – knowledge of a reduced progeny; this is one of the oldest instinctual fears which fuel the blind. Upon this fear ride competition, distraction and the market force. So you can see its INTENSITY!
The terror began to disrupt the old order at the beginning of the twentieth century with tsunamis of world-war, the soviet engine in Russia, Nazism, nuclear weapons and pollutants. Did not the terror shout in the depth of the poet Rilke’s elegies and angels?
Yet there is peace.
Sting flows as ecstasy, that tide of salty foam about to engulf the starfish on the sand, receiving the creature into Her own element. Isn’t this like us? Small i-thought cries and fears the sacrifice into the greater Being which grows within us!
Extinction fear is “a thrust into denial” … as in innumerable behaviours light and dark, sexual and otherwise. The extinction rebellion movement is an actual outspoken expression of this fear! Pluto turning direct last week draws out the sting, and … is there a beginning of healing? … wholeness.
DNA is a fibre throughout the universe and it is without end. Through DNA the cosmic serpent, each phenomenon is entangled and interwoven through the quantum field. Only connect … ! Here I spread jam on toast and there a supernova erupts. The one is a MOMENT in my time; the other is a million light-years in expansion. Or there, a Japanese pauses at work in his orchard.
Japanese farmer in his orchard looks like the Hermit in Tarot, in this recent oracle – flanked by the statements of Master Rakoczy and the Ascension of the child within us.
,,
“Almost all systems of thought create more constriction inside you, with the exception of those that lead you into deeper acceptance of your true nature.”
Richard Rudd, the 25th Gene Key
How shall I hold on to my soul, so that it does not touch yours? How shall I lift it gently up over you on to other things? I would so very much like to tuck it away among long lost objects in the dark, in some quiet, unknown place, somewhere which remains motionless when your depths resound. And yet everything which touches us, you and me, takes us together like a single bow, drawing out from two strings but one voice. On which instrument are we strung? And which violinist holds us in his hand? O sweetest of songs.
To Lou Salome from Rainer Maria Rilke
..
..
..
Photo by Sarah Poland
My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom. See also Aquariel
This is a big post, mainly pictures, most of them drawings I did this year … with some story as it arose.
The sketches of endangered creatures in the Amazon rain forest were commissioned last January for a children’s book to raise awareness . However they were not in the style which the author needed; so here they are for an airing.
The Amazon fruit bat wakes in Plato’s cave. Can you see the snail? – (2018)
bespectacled bear comes out into the open – 2019
Doesn’t each creature tell a story of someone you know, or of yourself on this day or that?
spider monkey 2019
Here, he lets go … Instant enlightenment is on call
poison dart frog 2019
but it isn’t quite … what the seeker expected to find?
giant amazon snail 2019
Very slow and steadily he made his way along the Path, feeling every element …
flying fruit bat 2019
until he could open his heart and fly home …
fruit bats resting 2019
… to rest upside down in the boundless with his friend.
..
Now here are some family snaps:
man with cat 2018
man caving, birth 2018
my friend, she sits like an eagle 2018
new generation: this is her dad, just back from the war. She’s in the pram … (2018)
..
These sketches are from my earlier post with Shakti Rising:
Ramakrishna and Yantras – 2019
Sarada Devi wife of ramakrishna (1994)
..
I found this on a friend’s bedroom wall when I went on a visit – I had forgotten all about it.
afternoon nap – circa 1972
peter in devon – 2019
Brave bears …
and a fox at dawn:
..
Copy from Botticelli; the winds are angelic forces – birth of Aphrodite 2019
this old sketch turned up of Douglas and Catherine Harding – perhaps 1996. They are built open for each other. They tell friends to “See” who they really, really are, like birds on the wire.
..
Hand mudras – sacred gestures 2019
I went for a walk and met a beautiful nose on four legs
Arthur Koestler 2019 – an old mentor
..
Here is a story:
Celebrate Nyousha (1997-2019), 2019
In August this year, we held a wake for Nyousha. She was only 22, the cancer started when she was 17. She wrote in her diary that each day, each moment holds the potential to make a change in the world; her courageous statement of living and loving more intensely through her death. She was a feminist and an activist; she deeply searched her soul. This young Persian artist had to die just as she grew up and opened wide. Her radiance illumined and inspired her loved ones. Nyousha is among us. She is grieved; and yet she is free.
In the Phoenix Community house in North London, I have my art room. The fur of old Kabbalist visionary was removed from my room for the weekend, and replaced with the young girl’s vibrant life for her family and all their friends to come and see; her exhibition, her gallery, her soul. We hung her work also all around the house. About 300 people feasted in the garden and there was music. Afterwards her brother carefully put my infrastructure back where it was. My life made room for one whose adult life only began.
Today writing this post and uploading my portrait of her, I discover it is her birthday: 1 November. In Scorpio’s depth today, Mercury pauses to rest on one foot before re-winding the spiral backward. Hence, I reflect further …
Zoroastrian rock phoenix
Creative work supports the soul in yet another miracle of reality. In shock and acceptance, the phoenix turns, ascends within and sings the outrageous alchemical moment in the heart and in Sol.
On hearing it’s her birthday, I got out my colours and struck for Nyousha this coin:
..
Sketch of Nyousha & a climbing stretch – 2019.
..
woman running with wolf – 2019
..
Here now are a few sketches of climbers – always an amusing allegory with conditions of pilgrimage, ascension, meeting our Shadow, call it what you will. We help each other:
Momo Freehill, bouldering 2019
..
Climbing at the Castle Centre 2019. That is me, near the spectacles, belaying my daughter.
Self and dropped knee/chimneying …
..
… and herons, from a small book I just completed, about an artist I met when I was 16 – there are experiential roots of Islamic and Hebrew calligraphy:
Heron 2 2019
Alif aleph yod heron 2019
..
My grandfather, copied from a black and white photograph by Richard Poussette Dart which I found in a book at Kettle’s Yard. I was deeply impressed with the way Poussette Dart portrays him as a working mystic.
Jim Ede from a photograph by Richard Poussette Dart 2019
..
More of the climbing companions. This oak tree grew out of a sheer gritstone rock face in Yorkshire.
climbing on Agdon Rocher 2019
..
on the slabs
..
Back home, my Rilke gallery begins to grow!
Lou Salome and Rainer Maria Rilke 2019
..
Procession – 2018
And: my journal today. I want to say again (not didactically) that when I am deeply reflective, it appears to me that we humans are within a genetic matrix which is creating a new Aquarian symbiosis. The animal kingdom is under threat of extinction by the present human imbalance. Yet, looking at the countless small initiatives to protect and conserve a species and restore it to its habitat, I see the birth of a kind of care which did not exist when the beasts and birds were our plentiful hunting ground or amusement. Against the ravages still being made against nature, human conscience in her depth strata expands the palette, embracing our shadows with the dawn.
Care and respect for the animals includes “the soft animal of our body” and soul within us, in all its beauty.
with cat when he wasn’t well
For me, Gaia is not the earth-being alone – for we are not separate. Gaia is our conscious human-earth relationship: to care. The breakthrough comes where hope seems to be lost. The condition is unbearably painful before I agree to pause, turn and evolve – individually as collectively. Nothing can prevent the evolutionary cosmos in the DNA. The evolution proceeds at all levels interwoven: spiritual through psychological to the instinctual body and her seasons; the plant, mineral and subatomic universe.
As the sun rises over the horizon it throws long sharp shadows across the field. These confront us in our world at present. Pluto’s movement through Capricorn de-constructs old institutions to make room for new birth. Watching life in the cauldron, as hologram, I observe these basic principles time and time again through the chaos. Since 2012 particularly, we are required to embody the ageless wisdom and to get real: our boots on the ground. As the linear convention of time changes its nature, so emerges in both men and women the feminine, the unconditional rejoicing creature within us who flowers and gives birth.
..
Sleeping swan (1988). Her nose is where she flies
..
..
..
**
My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom. See also Aquariel
First, here is a link to The Time of the Sixth Sun. It is open until 15 November. You can watch the main film for free until Saturday 8pm GMT, 9 November, and the other daily documentaries for 24 hours after their release; or you can buy the whole package, to support the great work.
This project collecting together many elders and sages of the global human community was re-launched on 6 November by Theo van Dort, Nikki Luna and friends. A wonderful heart-opener about positive environmental initiatives around the world – spiritual, community and scientific. Profoundly recommended!
Visit the link to find out how much amazing free content you can watch
..
maitreya with leaf
..
And now … what is Terma?
The Tibetan master Padmasambhava and other great sages hid Divine gifts within the human strata, within the elements of rock, ice, flower and field, within the soul’s deeps for future centuries to seek and find. At the heart of the Rosy Cross is a tradition of the burial of Brother C.R. deep under earth in a vault built of the laws and proportions of sacred geometry and numbers. Brother C.R.C the Rosicrucean founder, is repository of the Wisdom. The letters are derived from a Hebrew root RK (I think) which means “tenderness”.
Seek and find … within your home itself. You have the key – use it now.
..
I went climbing at the Castle, but it was not a good session, partly because it was very crowded, noisy and busy. I lacked a flow of Yang in the Yin which balances the climb. Also; I climb well only if I make a contact with someone; it makes me more daring and … to trust.
Then I went home, and then to Kabbalah group although exhausted.
The contact – to person or wall – through all life comes and goes. The creative contact – I’m not there yet, this morning – is contemplation and love. Performers lose their contact when too much is expected of them in a culture of spectators. Spectator types (majority) rely on making a projectile contact through those who act it out. This threads through the entire spectrum of sport, art, the economy and politics. Real connection – especially intimate – meets a cobweb of resistance. The contact for me on a tired morning is coaxed. It moves slowly into itself. This afternoon I go to acupuncture – an appointment I pre-empted last week with retro Mercury! – I made a long journey for nothing.
“Hallo!” the voice comes from inside, just as I wondered whether pre-empting appointments acts out in microcosm a planetary movement in the celestial field.
The voice from inside, the connecting, is the contact. The contact does not race into creative intensity – as it would if I were trying to perform or to work hard. It stays with itself in a grey dawn. The contact has this feeling of fragility; my physical body is not young. At this moment the sun pierces through damp weather and glows on the wall. It glows and fades, glows and fades, smudgy tree shadows’ slow quiver in the breeze. There it all is! Whenever the sun’s brilliance comes through and warms my eye, the heart responds, because what is my heart? The Sun within me.
Each morning I look at the drawing I did for my father’s birthday in 1988:
coming out … touch the world
Everything is in it … Including the climbing!
The guidance from within does not impose meditation or belly breathing. It awakens me to follow gently; to let it expand naturally from small beginnings. Tuning into the Schumann resonance from whatever state of dullness takes time and listening and being. It begins to embody down into my feet. We shall (and do actually) live on Earth with and as the slow yet swift movement of the sunrise. Cultivate the awakening, take the plough.
“Love and you shall know.”
Master Rakoczy, violinist
Creative works are my gift to myself from the boundless. This morning dozing, I dreamed of the fashion nowadays for Way-showers to provide a gift when they are interviewed online; in my sleep I saw or read about two of these gifts which were objects, and then Ramana Maharshi’s which was an equation I can write – as I woke I lost it, nearly found, then lost again. I saw this sketch of him:
The meaning is old and beautiful; the meaning is Terma and we find such gifts in our House of the Psyche in the Tree.
Fountain breath, tree of life
I am excited with the concept of Terma. I discover it throughout the awakening network among us, as within and from my Self – core – when the torch is shone in here. It illumines it. Terma containing countless gifts and discoveries in the rock, is the whole of my life, and with Pluto and Saturn moving through Capricorn there is more of it now than there ever was before, on Earth; in the interface of the Companions of the Light with our physical being; and the inevitable resistance to it, to overcome.
I am a Terma. “I am a hidden Treasure and I love to be known“.
Illumine the coal face
..
Dare to be Divine? Dare to trust. Dare to trust the wall of life, dare to trust the person and dare to trust myself.
These are my two dear friends Bibi and Paul; they are both teachers and sometimes they dance together. Bibi (on the left) made a beautiful film in which she dances the Tree of Life as Tai Chi by the sea:
The principle of the Game is in Beriah, the World of Creation. For all the trouble South Africa is in now (as with every country its own) the multi-racial friendship in the rugby SA/UK match was impossible two generations ago. This fact moved one of us – who was born there 84 years ago – to tears.
What is God? What do I mean by One?
A married couple both from dysfunctional families, with difficulty started a pregnancy. They have just been told by the hospital that their baby foetus has a heart condition. They have only each other for support in the unknown. WHY ME? Talk to the little one, what are you carrying for us to learn? Do you start to mend the broken heart in our families? We are three of us now. We are a team. Work with it.
Yet medical predictions relying on measurement do not always manifest. There are cases where the handicapped child is born with nothing wrong. The resources and sources are Karmic in their depth. The mystery is the unknown mending.
Love the teaching. I don’t know God! I am, this is, a detail in the unfolding of the Holy One. The Holy One unfolds the garment of the All. Doing the right thing begins to know the unfolding of God as synchrony appears. How empowering are our questions – who is God? and why me?
A cosmic violinist – 1988
..
We explored religious origins and their corruption by priestly power. Knowledge of the Tree of Life opens up the dimensions – the four worlds or levels – in Egyptian hieroglyphs. These four levels appear universally – Egypt and Zoroaster traditions. The Tree is our road map.
A story of a well known musician – care which is core is absent from his life, through addiction to overwork or to public response. Each day there is so much new going on, alchemically – cooking, gardening and relationships.
A vixen came to watch the internment of a family member’s ashes at Kensal Rise. She was beautiful, vibrant and interested. Then she paced around the grave in a magical circle. What do we really know?
Refugees are constantly being displaced, and we en masse hear only the downside. Yet many refugees are uplifted and start a new life. Why this huge displacement? Look to the Beriah dimension which is vast! A few are capable to take the opportunities opening out.
“Human beings of integrity are unlikely to be elected into high office.”
I witness a collective awakening in our evolutionary process, which is not of standard government. Awakening from the convention of doom, gloom and blaming others, to evolution in earth, are painful steps towards human maturity, the unfolding of what some call the Great Plan from underneath the world’s show. You and I have capacity to free ourselves from an age-old victim consciousness. The map just begins to be opened for the walker.
Despondency? The collective crisis has been unfolding for centuries, millennia. Individuals learn and grow. The light from the lamp reaches further and reveals what was not seen before, which used to be dark.
As one drop of perfume fills a room, so do Schools of the Soul generate the unknown factor of inner work.
The question what is God? Who am I? The alchemy of the moment happens in the situation I am in. Walk into the house. LISTEN. Walk into my body.
What does the mother of the foetal heart condition actually sense? She was silent and then replied “Life”, and her responsibility to this Life in whatever form. A drop of the real Life force changed the atmosphere in the room. The spark came. The baby’s name is Hope.
Alchemy of the Question – how can I serve the gift, and learn? The Lord is in his temple. I am the temple. Knowing this is ALL.
..
..
..
My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom. See alsoAquariel
With Christmas we are thresholding Capricorn – the thresher of the Dweller – for the midwinter Solstice came late this year, on the 23rd. This morning in north Somerset the sky is as eggshell crisp and blue over the hills; the sun rose in fiery gold splendour and the parcels were opened. And the light will begin again to grow.
Painting by Jung in “The Red Book” – Jung’s fabulous Odyssey in the Sun-boat
Mac Macartney’s book “The Children’s Fire” deeply touches me in his un-mapping of Wales. Along the numinous borderland of Druidic Albion, through wet leaves, frosty nights and carefully concealed firelight, refuse was chucked at Mac from cars, but also he met the ageless kindness from strangers. Mac’s odyssey towards pre-Roman Anglesey turns my nose and antlers towards the re-wilding movement. In the tiny pockets where this starts, a seminal abundance collects. The outlets are not many nor yet large, but the pressure underneath them is great, for human has cut back, tamed, tarred and scarred, regimented the ground and stamped out the witch. The magical force concentrates around the vents like the tiny proportion of liberators in the mass human entity.
As Earth rotates so the core magma passing centrifugally through geological planes converts to nature’s irrepressible force and beauty; Gaia, the greening.
My inner eye opens again to perceive the spheres, the Suns; their shape and energy. Pockets of florescence, like nutritious energy-balls or bath bombs, explode and fizz “in the air”. Dandelion clocks scatter angels with one blow. When nature’s tide reclaims the urban-industrial blotch, she could do so beyond expectation like the breach of a dam – the vigour and abundance will astound. Who knows when or how this happens? It seems unlikely in regions burnt by global warming – and the forecast even there is unpredictable. Where a branch is pruned, many sprout. It will probably happen as the human population drops – at any time during this century. Our DNA is coded collectively; in harmony with natural forces and formation, the population may start to physically decrease. The DNA is omnipresent, lacing the human form with the molecular evolution, atom to galaxy.
Consider also the vital DNA in the gut, its garden, and the old alchemists’ wisdom of the black dragon, the white Chyle and the red and white roses. By roses, I mean the instrument of life in the blood. All the teachings now say, put your hand on your belly, breathe into your bum. Consciousness of the Solar plexus and intestinal wealth cancels the old ignorance which chucked it into the road. It means valuing this organ of the body and the substances passing through it which are acted upon by enzymes to release nutrients and the Sun. In Heaven there is no dirt. It is not random that pure sexuality flows tandem with the gut. The Tarot Hermit – Hebrew letter Yod – rules with his lamp the whole region, darker than a cave; the galactic night of his mountain peak.
Builders of the Adytum Tarot Key 9 – the Hermit (Virgo)
My Solar-return Moon this year is the Hermetic sign Virgo, in 2nd house. Just now the sun comes into the room, and on my “altar” is a tiny spark of light – the facet of a gem between Yab-yum lovers. It echoes and earths the candle flame above it, about a foot away. I feel sleepy and still this morning. In the night I was awake a lot – perhaps a download; the pressure of Nature’s fountain through “outlets”.
The natural outlets – dolmens, temples, stone rings and streams – flow beneath the urban grid on sacred Albion and bide time. Lifetimes can pass in the dreaming. The perennial magic in this land was long crucified but will sprout – according to the cosmic relation beyond the window of history we teach ourselves. I will contemplate Britain’s underground occult river. Planted in the generative mind, the holy places will manifest. The human need begins here and there to work with nature not as a mere resource but with profound cooperative care and love.
Kabbalah Tree of Life as a Garden – 1989
In a wildish orchard near Chesham, a large animal sat quietly like a cat and watched my presence with long large ears, wide apart on slender neck, probably a deer. Long minutes we watched each other, without movement and at a distance. Near the farmhouse behind hedge and gates, the creature sat in the long grass, alert as the dew; my solstice messenger.
With the wisdom that comes through here, I can focus on the re-wilding initiatives under the defiantly ailing human crust. The ailing human crust, solid as it seems with its cities, infrastructure and disease, is a collective dream we subscribe to. There is a choice. Subscribe to the magazine or media-misery with its shiny photo-squares or cultivate through nature’s Imagination the spherical “bombs” of consciousness; the subterranean limestone rivers, the enormous abundance of leaf, flora, bacteria and fauna behind the human bungalow. Imagine the dolmens, the stones and druids. Many druids reborn nowadays are in the work. Come here to refresh myself and drink when I get tugged astray with grief – come Home. I live in the physical dream but I move with the metaphysical (supra-physical) Malkuth – subtle, secret and unlimited.
Here is Origin – the mountain peak down which flow as rivers the messengers throughout human time. When the vision is open, I see – in collective resonance – the human form symbiotic with the Garden and with the beasts whom in another dreamtime it dominated and decimated; whom now it seeks to name and nurture, for they are our body. The DNA serpent is our awakening to this fact. Genesis is timeless.
Come now to embrace the indigenous Dreamtime which encircles the human game which “got spoiled”. The Dreamer runs back and forth in time’s great landscape.
What spoiled our terrain? The primary-school level of quarrelling. Our future is not in that. Our real future is that nothing can stop the human genome from growing up to take responsibility. We grow out of our age – about eight years old at present. Nothing can stop humankind from maturing, any more than the seasonal pulse be stopped – to live and grow with trees and earth and the animal kingdom, the fragile husbandry of climate change and the art of living; for it hurts us too much as a species not to. If all I read on my window is war, starvation, nightmare media and consumer pollutant chaos … know that I see but darkly through the glass; changing my focus from surface glaze to the inner eye, I may see the starry constellations in the raven’s wing. I may glimpse through the murk a mountain – each snowflake a unique hexagonal crystal; the living fact of the water I drink.
You may feel and be the awakening of wings within your spine.
..
I feel as I rise into this, that the urban pollutant around our Earth is a dying genre; it seems to intensify politically, but it is dead matter, a crust to peel away. The crust, unconscious of origin and of the new order, completes its own time. Through it – in places imperceptibly, in other places outspoken or persecuted – emerge like green-shoots through the ground a new Homo Sanctus; the children already are born. Imperfect we are, and painfully struggling, but persistent.
I don’t see this happening all at once – though in historic time it appears sudden and cataclysmic – there is a process of friction during which the worn-out strongholds increasingly collapse and the apparently weak prevails. The “weak force” of gravity in physics exists (like homeopathy) virtually beyond the power of sophisticated instruments to detect. Yet I guess as single gravitons unite with others, they condense into orbital waves which curve spacetime around stars, supernova events and planetary systems. The force of attraction between ourselves as human beings, the mating instinct, has this infinitesimal origin. And I feel that the magnetic mating instinct itself evolves towards Eden.
Such is cosmic consciousness – a quantum leap. A single starling cell flying into the dancing cloud of thousands, millions in the Murmuration, enters the higher Intelligence: the geometry of I AM.
Or consider the bees.
The raised frequency level is not to be confused with the herd instinct in the market force or the lower “fear” vibration which conventionally governs the world.
Population explosion? Visualise an immense tidal flow of racial varieties, Karmas and the surface tension of our suffering to cross-fertilise the gene pool – the nature of the tide leaves its deposit on the beach and flows back into the sea; then again it comes. Gaia does not tolerate indefinite excess – just enough to force us as Her cells to change and realign. There are seasons and there are times; there is growth and there is contraction – Hesed and Gevurah on the Tree. The universe breathes rhythmically, in greater cycles.
I am aware again now of our collective waste’s potential to transmute rather than to dump; of nascent technologies which rediscover and re-state the old alchemical wisdom with transmuting matter. The human core potential to waken is limitless. We are each a Solar-battery, still dormant. The potential to biodegrade our ocean waste with the help of the Sun is limitless; the intention is coded in old alchemic texts like algebra in modern physics. It is encoded in our body, in the conscious threads of DNA we share with stars.
From “The Glory of the World” …
Observe, how the seeds of all things that grow, like grains of wheat or barley, spring from the ground
by the operation of the Stone and influence of Sun and Moon ;
how they grow up into the air, are gradually matured, and bring forth fruit again to sow in its own soil.
The field is prepared for the grain, being ploughed up well and manured with dung well rotted ; for the earth consumes and assimilates manure as the body assimilates food and separates subtle from the gross.
Therewith it calls forth the life of the seed
to nourish with milk as a mother her infant nourishes, to increase in size, and upward grow.
The earth separates the good from bad, imparting, as nutriment to all growing things, the destruction of ONE thing generating another.
Hermetic Museum of Alchemy, 17th Century
..
Madonna holds in strong hands her wild sacred child, Buckfast Abbey, Devon: their pride in each other!
Any slight shift in worldview, in the personal consciousness, helps activate the ancient new science which is already manifesting. The contagion travels from one to one; it pops open with the quantum hop. Communities cannot wake up without ourselves as individuals – you and me – who can, who will, and who do.
I feel at such moment with the pain of our brittle dream around us, we yet approach the threshold of reality. Look within. Be still and let it breathe.
An alternative “Genesis”…? for Christmas, solstice – may Treasure come to you in the coming year.
When placed in its natural soil and rained with dew from heaven and roused to life by warmth of the Sun and Moon, it produces fruit, the way of its own kind.
These two sowings are our Art. The Sun and Moon are grain put into our soil, a soul and spirit, and such as are the father and mother are children they will generate.
Hermetic Museum of Alchemy, 17th century
..
..
..
My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom. See alsoAquariel
For my Gene Keys blog, I finished (with difficulty!) a drawing yesterday – cobra, wild boar and skylark – to illustrate the intuitive animal magic within the 54th Gene Key (6-11 January).
I just now realised they spontaneously embody the Sun, Saturn and Pluto – what a surprise! For today is dawning the exact conjunction awaited all these years.
54th Gene Key Dream-Arc: the Shadow, Gift and Siddhi: “greed” (cobra), “aspiration” (wild boar) and “ascension” (skylark)
..
I feel aligned gently to the heart of the universe as the two Great Beings Chronos and Hades confer with Sol in my soul – my 71st birthday in a day or two. I feel privileged to witness a meeting of celestial archetypes. The vast voluminous sphere with its shimmering Rings, miraculous Moons and 29 year orbit merges with a tiny outer planet’s 240 year cycle; the un-conceptual space of their intimacy through billions of our miles. Both of them mark Solar system parameters; Saturn is that of Time. Pluto – the Hadean Underbeing – is that of Emanation.
The meeting is upon a mandala: a detail, a resonance. Such beauty is in the notes upon the string.
Angel’s sound – spiral mandala – 1988
And those who might know better don’t realise this! They have their complaining signboards up in front of their noses and would look at that narrow waveband round and around, rather than into the cosmos which we are.
Discovery circa 1963 – a painting I did at school
Ishvara governs the universe and the infinite subtle geometry of our world with ultimate precision. How clearly I saw for a moment, that we humans including our astrologers and seers often – not always! – choose to read again our Fable rather than the fact; choose to look at a book with dark writing rather than listen to our heart; choose fear and warning rather than openness. Why?
(The wild boar in my drawing shows the old instinct of the hunter and the hunted within our aspiration.)
What if a Reality amazingly and simply other than that convention, quietly unfolds under the gossip? Well then it requires its Seers. In Vedic knowledge each goddess and mantra has its Seer – Ganapati Muni was the Seer of the goddess who fountains without a head – Chinnamasta and her nectarous vibrational sound: Om srim hrim hrim vajra-vairocaniyai hum hum phat svaha (See David Frawley’s Tantric Yoga and the Wisdom Goddesses/1994).
I am a Seer of the world which is mostly concealed by what humans tend to believe in. The Seer develops the discovered Reality through choice and resonance.
Ramana Maharshi, Ganapati Muni and a scribe
It seems we are by default willing to believe in what we are told by others to think. The fibs that fly around are not worth the space of listening to. Just this: why am I willing to believe in lies? Because I have a conditioning that if it makes me tense and anxious it’s bound to be true, it is tribal.
There is at the moment a ray or resonant string: Sun, Earth, Saturn, Pluto, with Jupiter at present amplifying it. The note will be exactly attuned tomorrow evening at about 22 degrees 40 in Capricorn. This is compresent with the period (since 1987) of polar-axial tilt to galactic centre; a profound constellational adjustment within our core. There is collective tribal fear of death in such alignment and silence – a feature of eclipse – and the people everywhere speed up and beat the drum.
Contemplate the musical string and the inner quiet when it is struck; the years for the sound to resound and travel as the conjunction slowly opens its seed through Capricorn and into Aquarius, breathing in and out. Honour that, rather than the brittle belief.
Chronos and Hades confer with Sol in my soul. The harmonic is within my body and DNA, microcosmic to the Solar System’s immensity; it is nuclear within my atoms. The wavelength in our nervous system’s connectivity is so easily overlooked and unconscious. A willing awareness with it – rather than follow tittle-tattle – is an “upstream event”. It touches conscious space before the water starts to fall. This is voluntary.
Voluntary in the same way, is metanoia, the in-turning – attuning – of the psyche to Sanctus: the Divine Unexpected.
The Fool and the Lamb in a tent at night listen to Angels – 1988
Most of us as individuals cannot accept that we are all of a piece, because we are accustomed to being regarded as separate phenomena who must struggle with limited resources to impact on each other and events. It seems that the spiritual community pays lip service to the Mandala but continues to indulge in the gossip. Our surface psychosis shrouds the peaceful event of planetary beings occupying the same thread for a moment in our history’s river.
I began to feel the shroud is in place as a general distraction. It allows the underlying current to follow its natural way to carry the cargo and cleanse our world.
I am all-of-a-piece. When the DNA (through voluntary attentiveness and respect) awakes, the elder Forest Medicine speaks.
An event of Consciousness is the will within any cellular membrane to be conscious, to interact and help to sustain and support and cocreate the entirety of the vast organ; to heal our wound; to take responsibility. Who starts this but I? I am you. We are. Our I begins the genesis HERE and HERE and HERE. My feeling today is a clear world.
The still, small voice connects.
If you look HERE you’ll find.
If you play with your sword you won’t; but I’m HERE our bridge.
You may not hear what touches you
but HERE, my songs in your tree, are lovebirds.
From Poems of Eclipse 1999
..
..
..
My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom. See alsoAquariel
“The Prime Emanation … is the Revolution inside our being. It’s a process that’s going on in many of us now, making us more and more uncomfortable, and that’s a good thing. It’s a mystical cleansing of the emotional system and it’s why many people who begin working with the Gene Keys quickly lose a lot of weight and others fill out to just the right amount. We’re coming into balance, because we’re throwing out old genetic patterns. It’s about pruning back our desire nature because the solar plexus centre needs a new kind of environment. It needs a cleaner, more open environment, less cluttered with old frequencies.
“One day we’ll return to the source. It won’t happen because of anything we do but because our particular story has found its way home. All we can do is follow the Emanation of our Love. We think we’re travelling into the future, but we’re really travelling back to the beginning…”
– Richard Rudd Excerpt from the 64 Ways
..
“Mend what was broken. Rekindle the Children’s Fire … We call this work ‘village building’ or ‘culture repair’.” I had an email from Mac Macartney responding to my request several weeks ago, how can I find my pre-Roman “Angols”? In his book The Children’s Fire he made it sound rather straightforward but now he says it is a matter of dowsing and resonance as there are no records. The Roman conquest destroyed our indigenous Druid infrastructure. How these tales echo through history!
In Mac’s book and journey, a map he drew of Wales shows evocative names of Celtic tribes and elders: Gangani, Silures, Demetae, Cornovii, Ordovices, Deceangle … which spread across the land. I shall look at these names reflectively from time to time.
I feel profoundly rooted English, uninclined to move from HERE. I hold the ground like an oak or elm; an Angle Sea – the Mona. I loved what Tolkien wrote about the elm groves in his Lost Tales. Tolkien was one of the Elder Ones, reproducing the mythos. I have this inbuilt interconnectivity; the neural and nitrous fibres throughout the ground which I return to. The body of Light Emanates. It is not a mere sponge.
..
So in this moment in the earth I have a staff which illumines and is positive. Let it lead this direction when and where it wants. Let it shine. It is a seer. It sees through all conditions and fractures to the embracing Wholeness of the emanation. I’m reminded of my painting of the light – the heart – within the earth, and a hammer, a geologist’s hammer which gently taps the geode.
I grew up in Kent, Scottish Highlands, Yorkshire Moors, south Cornwall, Surrey north downs and Quantock Somerset – all before I reached my teens; for we moved house a half-dozen times. That is a landscape map provided! I have walked it so much and flowered, that there is not much need to “know” the names. The essence and loyalty and continuity are here. It is like looking at the Geological Wall Map of Great Britain in my father’s room – the extrusions and worms of colour told us where and on what rocks we live – north Yorkshire was pale yellow. And I became a painter for a time.
The gift awoke by the sea in Cornwall Caerhays age six, and that marks probably my descent from the Western peoples, touching ground. It encompasses my long-ago walks in mid-Wales (tent by the Severn river), Snowdonia and the Pembrokeshire coast … and recently, along the Hertfordshire Way and Chilterns north of London. The Hermit’s staff is a dowsing rod and also a blind person’s white stick! – for in this lifetime in those places I did not know consciously what I touch. But they made me an artist.
I live all my adult life in the city which the Romans developed and called “Londinium”. Here I hear through the urban density, the heart of the country and its winter birdsongs and noble river. Here staying at home for the last 50 years I find space for the soul to wander and flourish; and my present tribe.
My room is an untidy sanctuary of peace with a few trees outside, a busy railway to the north and a street to the south. This morning as usual when writing, I feel the root of light sink deep, the silken stillness. At Manor Farm in Somerset we had a giant elm down by the pond whose roots, I was told, spread right across the field under the grass and topsoil. And so I know the tree’s root-system mirrors its bole; and I feel the Spirit moving into flesh through the stellar fibres of my body’s capillaries; I am nothing other than this network of the fields and streams and woods; I am this un-tapped and immense human conscious potential which – after millenia – we awaken into, again … and again. My Druid knowledge lives today in the core wisdom of many esoteric languages which thrive. It has a singular pulse in the veins: I love. I love.
The old alchemists said simply – don’t drop the wisdom (dew) on the ground. Most persons cannot understand it, they break it up into cities and beliefs. Carry it in the vessel which perennially and quietly mends itself with the Sun. The wisdom is osmosis and photosynthesis: the Sun, the rain and the Earth. No matter how apparently concealed, the same magnetic shines in each one of us. It is in process of opening its dimension through our temporal fantasy of destruction. As the living creature awakes and yawns it cracks the scales.
How tiny is my surface understanding within the solar system and each of its planetary gems.
The silence when the wisdom river is coming and when the oak is flowing is deep. The magic we know is so immense that the essence transcends and permeates the particles which are knowledge.
There is no need to “know”. There is every way to “be” and to recognise the flavour. Taste it. The animals, the trees, insects, birds and flowers taste it, un-obstructedly whenever they pause. Wisdom dissolves manufactured outlines and provinces, and for humans this is hard. Take a step back from the unfolding history and see the process. The wisdom is invincible and the DNA awakens into this mutation now: frail dragonfly nymph on watery stem – its thorax burst open with the sun’s warmth into wings.
Illustration from Richard Rudd’s book of poems and prayers – ‘The Spring of Dreams’
To remember this is to collect together with Mother Isis the scattered limbs of Osiris and breathe on them with love. This is perennial in our condition.
Quantock dancers
Seven sisters, High Point, Quantock hills
So the Quantock hills at present are my “walking country” where my mother still lives. There is a long Somerset settlement in my life. My home was there from age 9 until 20. Later, my father moved to North Devon and discovered in the next parish his Yule ancestors, with whom he had himself buried. In Somerset and North Devon were extensive explorations, our home and our adventurous family holidays at Hartland.
These places where the heart is placed and soaks up the land are pointers towards my ancient tribal locations and relationships. The seed is blown from tree by the wind or carried by bees to fertile ground by the laws and movement of Nature. My father was an organic farm-manager, bee keeper and musician. When I grew up my first regular job as a portrait artist took me all over England and as far as Gordonstoun in Scotland. In each place I worked, there was first the need to go for an orienting walk and understand the landscape, roads and contour. My early work is scattered around the country’s living-rooms like seed – many hundreds of portraits of children. This was Providential.
This brings me to the inner meaning of our children’s fire. Although it is threatened, there are in many pockets of the land, oases where the healthy seed is cultivated. In due course the whole seed will overcome the adulterated and even take into itself what is good in the latter. Why else is there this incredible enriching mix and mulch and ferment in the human gene pool – through the overwhelming agony of frontiers, fear, bordering and displacement – why else the cross-fertilisation and upheaval of racial roots? An innovative and gentle power of the seer is being born through these generations. The environmental threat catalyses a revolutionary Symbiotic caring. The animal and plant kingdoms in Gaia no longer agree to be our mere playground or unconscious prey. The new Consciousness – already sprouting through the ground – is to unify and to nurture.
My mother’s garden in the early spring
The children’s fire? It is this transformative glow of the quickening, the seed. On the Underground in London I watched yesterday a father with his sons – he had an interesting lined child’s face, an elder Saxon with soft tired eyes, an artist perhaps with the sky; and one of his boys sat with him and stroked the back of Dad’s neck and untidy hair. Love and care.
In the seed is the fire which is Life. In the Upanishadic wood is the latent fire; in the grass the cow and in the milk the cream. In the hen, the egg is our solar system.
Parvati waters trees. This image is copyright The Sacred India Tarot deck published by Yogi Impressions in 2011
The healing way is for those of us who have access and liberty, to attend to the quantum particle on behalf of the majority. The consciousness is what there is. Each root in the ground illumines and connects with all the others. The quantum, homeopathic in dilution, is beyond prediction’s enclosures.
The needle’s point of Sufi thread pierces vertically the dense horizontal matrix: the tapestry. What do I sew?
Light the fire for our children. Be warm of heart. Make this picture daily with the thread through the tapestry. The only disease – the root of all diseases – is any form of our excess. Balance is inevitable.
..
..
..
..
My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom. See alsoAquariel and Gene Keys Diary.
Enjoy Beethoven’s 9th – the Hymn to Joy as played across the Netherlands!
In this long post I compile some insights and impressions I received from others over the last month and pass them on in the hope that they may help. You may have read some of them already. I also have rather a lot to say, as usual – this time, a mini-book. I’m afraid this is my usual fault whenever I start writing, so please bear with me, and skip my musings if they are not relevant.
In my block of flats someone has an electronic piano and each day at intervals she practices Bach prelude no 1 in C major, and others. I went to my piano to play the same prelude! A strange rooted strength from the collective flowed through my arms and fingers. Shall we talk to each other through Bach?
The Chinese goddess Kuan Yin in her Parnashavri aspect became a Hindu deity. She is also adopted in Buddhism as protector against outbreaks of disease.
Kwan Yin. This portrait now belongs to Annie Dorcas in the “Masters series” she commissioned from me in 2007.
“Human mistakes and inaccuracies are no less important than divinity. The incredible process of being human allows for the higher self to acknowledge and extract divinity from ones trials and tribulations.
“Further, Kuan Yin advises that what is needed on earth is compassion for the untruth. Touching untruth’s shoulder with the utmost tenderness, she shows her infinite capacity for love and forgiveness. Stemming the tide of war and destruction can only occur, the Goddess maintains, through the sprinkling elements of truth and healing.
“This process requires one be centered upon and understand the issues of his or her life from a place of detachment. To examine ones life from this perspective allows the Higher Self to participate in daily choices and problem solving. While ego is responsible for maintaining the self during waking reality, much of the pressure of decision-making can be mitigated when allowing ones relationship with the higher-self to unfold.”
..
A Pharmacist I spoke to, said: “The virus is omnipresent through interaction of our human generic body with environment. It isn’t something passing from one person to another. ALL OF US HAVE GOT IT BUT SOME INDIVIDUALS REACT WITH SYMPTOMS – OTHERS NOT. Like other flu viruses, it is in the human system generally. The different ways we react depend on our inbuilt physical and psychological matrix. Those of us who do not react symptomatically might not know it’s there. The heroic effort to prevent it can be sometimes an interference. Interference which is ignorant of the viral nature may also stimulate it.”
..
As I understand this, the viral entity interacts with the human entity. Covid19 is one among many flu viruses which flow through the human system and sometimes manifest as symptoms and sometimes not. Year by year the health services battle with vaccines against each new one.
What is my “vaccine” for now? Positive, intelligent thought, courage and considerate action. Be on the ball and bathe in the Sea. Of course I have the virus. It is in my fearful thoughts and dark holes and grumpiness. I feel sore and vulnerable to those, which flag up my personal ego-misery-belief. My dark projection isolates the phenomenon into thingness and determines the way I interpret life.
Viral activity – and I include excessive social media – is yet an element within what I see as a vast agency of change through humankind at the present time. The virus is malleable; it changes lives; it is our teacher. I have it, you have it, it is in us all. The pattern of “trying to control it” may reinforce in the same way our shadow fears and thoughts, so we need to be aware of those. The researchers and medics do their work. The virus should not however take front burner in our mind; let go the compulsive quizzes, let life go on. Above all, don’t join the game of someone or something to blame.
Psyche and body are one: my thoughts create and reinforce my physical life through expectation. Tune into the individual responsibility, the love and care for each other – the little lights here and there around the globe increase like stars and begin to join up.
Someone also said, “Ignorance has made a massive collective effort to constrict the life force wanting to burst from our bodies.”
.
The “I” particle (higgs-bosen) in the quantum science of Global Energy Parliament. Red, Black, White are equivalent to the Three Gunas in Hinduism.
Swami Isa of the Global Energy Parliament.net spoke on 21 February – Sivaratri day. A friend in GEP sent to me the gist of it:
Swamiji wants everyone to take the global situation very seriously, but to be ever vigilant about the quality of our thoughts and emotions. He says this is an “intellectual war” and a dark dominated thought has been created. We need to create balance in ourselves and externally too. Hope you are taking good care.
He said … it’s a war of intellect or Buddhi – here he means the organ of thought. It was manmade and is pervasive and deeply penetrating. Together with this, he spoke about the coming problem of faithlessness in people, and how people are just “considering God but not realising God.”
To resist this virus and to not be affected by the fear and destruction in this mental war, we need to build mental strength or Manas. Manas/mind means the organ of emotions. Of course this comes through real faith, not contrived faith. The physical part He says is very serious and we should take care to build the physical immunity along with the intellectual and mental.
And yes, the kindness and softness of people that comes out of this crisis is a treasure… So far India is not yet in a panic stage, but I think that once shutdowns start, it may happen. Most people are still going about normal duties, except that the schools are closed.
..
This story was written by a member of Global Energy Parliament:
And the great blue whale, the small spider, the cherry blossom, the coconut palm, the moss-covered stone, they all came. One by one, the animals and trees and rivers and rocks of Earth climbed the great steps in the sky to see the Mother of the Universe and tell their sorrows.
And after hearing all of them, including the beetle and the bluebell, Mother closed Her great eyelids and the feathery black lashes fell down over Her eyes that held galaxies.
A thought came out of the darkness, “My children are tired, sad, and besieged by the humans who have forgotten Me. In their endless piles of desires and fears, they have become merciless tyrants on the Earth.”
The voice of the shark had been loud and thoughtful. “O Mother, we do not ask a large thing. We don’t want to annihilate our human brothers and sisters. We just want to breathe freely, to roam freely, to swim in free blueness, to dance with the stars again in clear skies, without fear of harm or harming. Just for a day.”
“Just a day?” She had asked.
“Yes, just one day,” he had said. “We know the conditions of Kali Yuga, the age of darkness, are so vast and deep, that we do not ask You to overturn what the mighty wheel of Time has ordained. We just ask for one day of peace and freedom again to roam as we should, to live without this incessant noise and burden of humankind.”
The tiger cub had approached Her soft ankle, and as She lifted him to Her face and stroked his fur, he said, “Mother, they have forgotten you. They live by desire and fear alone. You are the Mother of the Universe. Won’t it be very easy to do something, just for one day?”
She had considered their proposal. A day to make the humans stay indoors, a day to make them consider their mountains of desires which brought them no happiness, a day to make them see that their endless planning and developments brought them no freedom, a day to make them see the fear that ate them from the inside out.
“A day to make all the humans stay inside their homes,” She said. “So be it.”
And as She closed Her eyes, from Her brow came a great Thought, and planted itself somewhere on the Eastern part of the Earth, and it spread like wildfire through human thought. It replicated with force, like a virus, and fear made it grow. Desires made it grow.
But in the deepest parts of the human hearts who had not forgotten Her, the light of faith led them forward.
And then one day, all of the humans, those with fear and those with faith, stopped their factories, went inside their houses, closed their doors, and sat down.
The plants heaved a great sigh of relief, and slowly unfurled their delicate fingers, to touch the Sun, the Air. The Wind laughed playfully as he swept the dust to the horizon, and the Ocean once again danced with its millions of colourful children. A slow day of peace and contentment embraced the Earth, a day of nothing in particular except reverence, sincerity, and truth.
At last when the Sun dipped down towards the lowest hills, the animals and trees and rivers and rocks turned their heads upwards. They prayed to the Mother and cast their endless love to Her. Finally they turned and said, “So be it.”
..
I think the virus is also in the mind, generating fear. I am counteracting that with very strong thoughts and feelings of gratitude and care. They come spontaneously with an upsurge of gravitational centre – a smile! – especially after I have felt anxious for a bit. A counter current of creativity, liberation and joy flows in many places wherever realised. I take care of the life in my hands but I refuse to be dominated by collective panic. As you say, it is crucial to co-create the balance. So the balance is where I look each time.
There is a greater process unfolding. It is behind the fear-cloud which is at present being expelled from the human root. I see the fear-cloud as a phenomenon that is departing from us. The mental virus which gripped people about it makes us feel the more vulnerable – especially in the social media.
The physical disease is a symptom of the mental agitation, to me they are one and the same whatever the white coats might say. At the same time there is a new clarity and beauty in the Higher Self; as Above so it is Below.
What a challenge to live in freedom and external considering! We can choose. To keep discerning this – to recognise the tracks in my mind and change them is my work. My mother and I had some good conversations about it. One aspect of the counter-current I notice is: taking more care of and appreciating each other. Walking the extra mile. Noticing more.
It is a question of attitude. I am so glad we are in touch. Strong hands!
..
Builders of the Adytum – The Tarot Tableau
The Builders of the Adytum in Los Angeles circulated this Equinox Message
Planetary Influences in 2020 March 2020
While the turmoil in the world seems to be intensifying as the old world order disintegrates, it is informative to consider the planetary influences converging on us this year. 2020 started with five planets in Capricorn, and strong planetary groupings will continue their influence throughout most of the year.
At the March equinox, Mars, Pluto, Jupiter, and Saturn will all be in very close proximity to each other in the earthy sign Capricorn, associated with worldly affairs, big business, and finance. These are the areas that seem globally to be out of alignment with the Aquarian Age themes of harmony, goodwill, and concern for one’s fellow man. In addition to these, the Moon (Tarot Key 2, the Uniting Intelligence) also joins this group just before the equinox.
All the planets mentioned are within a very narrow band of eight degrees or “conjunction,” and this focused association with each other displays certain characteristics according to the nature of each planet. Conjunctions intensify the combined energies, and the interaction can stimulate significant changes in the consciousness of mankind. And we know that to have an evolutionary change, the race mind must change!
Most significant is the tight conjunction of Pluto (Tarot Key 20) with Saturn (Tarot Key 21). Pluto, considered the “higher octave” of Mars, is related to the destruction of the coffins of error that hold us in bondage. The outer planet Pluto is a generational planet; and it primarily portends great transformational changes in world matters and race consciousness, changes that affect us all macro cosmically.
The interaction of Pluto and Mars (Tarot Key 16) with the other planets in the configuration indicates that there are likely to be explosive reactions that will bring about the destruction of outworn conditions but will also give the impetus for new beginnings. The influence of Jupiter (Tarot Key 10) indicates that these outcomes are the ultimate of a beneficent nature.
It will be interesting to observe just what effect these planetary influences have on the world stage during this time period.
Microcosmically, we are also personally impacted by these strong energies. As aspirants on the Path of Return, we should choose our responses to these influences very consciously, not reacting with the normal fear and anxiety of the masses, but by using our toolsof Tarot and Qabalah to react creatively and constructively to these intractable forces. This is what we are being trained to do.
Being born on the cusp of a New Age brings incredible gifts along with the turmoil, gifts that we bear the responsibility of safeguarding and developing for all mankind. No one ever told us the Aquarian Age would be easy! But oh, what an opportunity for growth! …for ourselves, and for planet Earth. Let us be grateful for these gifts, and that we are here now to enjoy their rewards.
Working together in Love and L.V.X., The Builders of the Adytum
..
13 March 2020 – From the Italian Lockdown
Yes there is fear. Yes there is isolation. Yes there is panic buying.
Yes there is sickness. Yes there is even death.
But, they say that in Wuhan after so many years of noise
You can hear the birds again.
They say that after just a few weeks of quiet
the sky is no longer thick with fumes
but blue and grey and clear.
They say that in the streets of Assisi people are singing to each other
across the empty squares, keeping their windows open
so that those who are alone
may hear the sounds of family around them.
They say that a hotel in the West of Ireland
Is offering free meals and delivery to the housebound.
Today a young woman I know is busy spreading fliers with her number
through the neighbourhood so that the elders may have someone to call on.
Today Churches, Synagogues, Mosques and Temples
are preparing to welcome and shelter the homeless, the sick, the weary.
All over the world people are slowing down and reflecting.
All over the world people are looking at their neighbours in a new way.
All over the world people are waking up to a new reality
to how big we really are;
to how little control we really have;
to what really matters; to Love.
So we pray and we remember that yes there is fear but there does not have to be hate.
Yes there is isolation but there does not have to be loneliness.
Yes there is panic buying but there does not have to be meanness.
Yes there is sickness, but there does not have to be disease of the soul.
Yes there is even death,
but there can always be a rebirth of love.
Wake to the choices you make as to how to live now.
Today, breathe.
Listen, behind the factory noises of your panic.
The birds are singing again.
The sky is clearing, Spring is coming
and we are always encompassed by Love.
Open the windows of your soul
and though you may not be able to touch across the empty square,
… Sing.
– Fr. Richard Hendrick, OFM
March 13th 2020
Alison McCabe writes from Hebden Bridge: – “Yesterday tuning into the virus as part of the One Body I felt it is no coincidence it affects the respiratory system. I experienced the Earth able to breathe again, a huge moment of release from the constriction of pollution. It’s possible the forests burning meant we were on the edge of a catastrophic atmosphere event which has been averted by the virus. The virus being a mirror of the constriction of the Earth and human love breaking free. I see that when I see the flamingo toking into the water and seeing her blush soft pink reflection. Such a perfect colour for Universal Love.
“Pallas Athena the Warrior Goddess is also exactly conjunct Mars in the Equinox stellium in GK61. She is in the context the self-organising principle, the new authority of the feminine. Perhaps she is the salmon, leaping against all odds upstream from the place of zero gravity.”
..
Tantra Nova Practice – a message from Elspeth and Freddy in Chicago
We want to support you during these challenging times by sharing ways of keeping our body, heart and mind in a balanced and peaceful state which allows for fending off viral and bacterial intruders as well as assists us in healing and experiencing wellness.
To support your emotional and mental SELF stay and return to balance, we’d like to gift you with a couple of meditation practices:
This meditation supports you in rebalancing and integrating your whole being countering stress, worries and hopelessness. Set aside 25 minutes every day to cultivate your body’s resources and strengthen your immune system. Download both practices on your phone so you can access them anytime and anywhere.
..
My friend Genevieve wrote today on surrender. This is her website:
“These are the times when we grow.” I found myself writing this to a friend this evening.
This week my husband and I decided to start self-isolating. Amongst the perceived confusion and chaos currently being experienced in the UK (and across the globe) due to the fast spreading COVID-19, there is a benign virus emerging and its called surrender. Things have moved pretty fast in a short few weeks I think you would agree?
No longer can we deny our global interconnection. No more can we bury our heads in the sand and pretend that borders are secure, futures are predictable and comfort zones are forever. No more. The world is changing all around us and all we have left in many instances are our stories about what this change means. As I have written about many times, our stories can either enable us to transform and grow, or they can bring us perpetually back around to negative loops of victimhood. The only thing we can influence is our choice as to which mythology we live within.
Every story has both a light, and a dark side. The question is, can you distinguish between the two?
The familiar story of social collapse and apocalypse can be devastating to those who are attached to things remaining the same. Especially those of us (most people in the first world) have been privileged enough to live life’s of abundance and plenty through the perpetuation of capitalism.
The same story can be liberating if you are at the wrong end of the social power system and are desperate for change, no matter what this may bring. In this instance you will feel empowered and excited by the prospect of the unknown, even if what’s coming is scary and chaotic.
Every story has a truth and a challenge. The apocalypse story has been repeated throughout the ages, relating to civilisations, world views and lands. It is one that has become ingrained in the human psyche through our DNA memory and our myth. To a degree, there is an inherent truth to its unfolding and many of us could argue that we have been seeing the signs of its coming all around us for decades.
However, with the ‘truth’ the story also brings its challenge. Can we evolve enough in our thinking, speaking and acting to change the outcome this time?
Perhaps… Then again, perhaps not. Perhaps we will change the outcome but its effect will be imperceivable for generations to come. Or perhaps we already are changing it, with every single word we read, Or say. Or write.
Every time we straddle the paradox of the light and the dark, seeing both as presenting a truth and a challenge in our thinking, speaking and doing, we are able to evolve beyond the historical patterns that have led to past apocalyptic events.
Every time we surrender and embrace change, no matter if we can see its eventual outcome, we are transforming our DNA and the stories of our ancestors who largely felt victimised and helpless in the face of the changes they experienced.
And we are by no means helpless.
Today we move into the Spring Equinox. The day in the Northern hemisphere where there is an equal amount of day-light to night-dark.
This is a time of magic and alchemy where we get to choose ‘active surrender’ and ‘joyful hope’. A time where we can offer our gifts to our family and community because they need it and we need to give it.
A moment when we can embrace both the truth and the challenge of our times and become the still point between night and day.
My daughter wrote to me – “Did you know soap is more effective than anti-bac gels with added antivirus? Viruses are fatty and soap disrupts fat, so simply causes the virus to disintegrate. So that’s all that’s needed at home. When you’re out, you could use alcohol gel or improvise. So lots of hand washing before and after being out, touching new things and no face touching before hand washing. Can’t do much about talking to people except try not to stand close to them – 6 feet unless there’s a breeze I guess. Face masks only protect others from people who have it already so no point using them for protection. The next few weeks will be interesting!”
“Or steaming the face in a bason of very hot water with towel over head might have the same effect. I bought you some cordiceps which strengthens the immune system, raises red and white blood-cells and is easy and pleasant to take. I’ll try to drop it round, later today. Much love XXX
“Just tried the method – pour boiling water into basin or bowl, lower face over it, drape head with towel to keep heat in and breathe thro nose for five mins. It is a facial sauna. The theory is that heat destroys virus in the sinuses, which are otherwise the coolest part of body. Feels nice and refreshing too! Viruses like cold and hate the heat. The video recommends using a hairdryer and squirts of water to cool. XXX
Thank you Chris Elam, for the photo!
..
Grandma Corona …coronama (by Bibi 19.3.20)
This too am I: a small mindless bug
searching for soft tissue to live in.
I stare it in the face
though it is too small to see
I thought corona meant crown
but it seems to mean cold.
And now I am a self-isolated grandma.
For if I get sick
I might die.
Somebody talked today about old people
clogging up the hospital system.
Like fur clogging up arteries,
we oldies interrupt the flow.
And perhaps this is simply true.
The old need to make way for the young.
But no, darlings, Now is not about
a cull of the ancients.
In this rattling of the planet
we are all enmeshed,
shaking and afraid
in our web of connection
and the green things and the furry and scaly things and the cycles of the moon
carry on in their glorious rotation
and as we retreat and shut down
and gather the fracture around us
the non-thinking beings have a rest from our
lack of balance, from our
entitlement, from our heedless
slashing through the pathways of life.
From our thinking.
From our
thinking that we can have what
we want.
And we sit in our houses that have now become cocoons.
And we sit
in the lap of our solitude
and feel the strangest stirring of joy.
.
..
The following transmission of Alcazar through Prageet in the “Stargate” teachings introduces the work of Isabelle Benarous. Please visit the website under the transcript for more information.
Beloved Ones, we greet thee, ‘tis Alcazar.
The whole world is reacting to this coronavirus as if it is something totally new, totally unknown – it is not. Yes, it is a new form, and this new form will soon be seen as just another variety of your flu in years to come. Right now the chaos and panic that has been created has also created a great opportunity on many levels.
We have told you this year would be a year of change, a year of acceleration, and a year of opportunity for those who are willing to be in the moment, who are willing to listen to their intuition. There are many opportunities that will arise from this global shutdown/slowing down and we will address these in times to come. We would like to comment right now on an opportunity that Isabelle Benarous, is offering to those who wish to accept it.
First, let us say a little about our perspective on dis-ease which most of you have heard before. It is your vibration, your moment by moment vibration that you radiate, that attracts to you experiences that you need in order to know Self better. We have said over and over again that your subconscious programming, your limiting patterns that come from this unconscious layer within, guide your life far more than you are generally aware of.
This programming comes from situations, mainly, that have occurred in the very early years of your life. They are programs which are created by conflict, by situations that you as a very small child could not understand, could not grasp, and in that inability to resolve those issues at the time, they were repressed in order for you to continue living day by day. These limitations can allow imbalance in the body, and this imbalance allows various dis-eases to come into your field, into your body. So, right now this coronavirus, it is impossible for some people to have this virus within them as an illness. For, they do not have the associated conflicts, the associated subconscious programs that allow this, but obviously many do.
Our friend, Isabelle Benarous, is offering a program that can explain from a more scientific basis how you can:
-first of all understand this virus and the various flu viruses in general
-what kind of conflicts that you would have in your life that would allow this virus to come to you
-how to change these conflicts so that you are no longer open to receive these various flu viruses
And so, we wish to support this one, Isabelle, and we wish to support the Stargate Global Community in understanding and receiving the wisdom from Isabelle which we fully endorse. We will be joining her, as we have done in the past, to bring in energetic support for the understanding and wisdom that she will be sharing. We invite you to join us!
The meeting with Isabelle Benarous to discuss her work was on 25th March, but the video is available on the website as well as follow-up.
Mary Gaia. This painting belongs to Annie Dorcas who commissioned it from me for her series of Master portraits in 2007
..
And from a friend on Union Island …
“Breathe and take your time for it,
Be a master of the Present time: Reign by Light and Love.
Being Grateful for each of your breaths”
..
..
..
..
..
..
And now, to share with you this morning’s breakthrough (27 March):
.
My mother had a fall the day before yesterday just as she was approaching the castle gate after her walk but got back on her feet alright and no ill effects. Yesterday she saw in the very early morning Orion setting to the west. We talked today about what appears to rise and set but it is our rotation past it, and the unimaginably vast distance of those stars from each other which we call “Orion” and tell a story about, how he guards our winter sky; and the depth of such a star from his belt. She said we might never see each other again. That is a possibility. It saddens and frightens me. It is still more likely though, that we shall see our way through. It is in the net somehow of the stars, sentinels of the measureless night. She said we must obey the rules regarding visits and separation and help the government and hospitals. She walked up Watery Lane yesterday and saw the primroses. They are abundant this year, full and fat – last year they were sparse. Gradually I learn to connect with her in a “real” way through phone to support her soul strength. Imagination develops and there are ways. We might read verses of poetry to each other, for instance.
At present, sharing house details is fun, funny and stimulating. My daughter and I last night cooked our supper together with our telephones on loudspeaker to hear the chopping board and advise each other. The openings of practical connection in real time blossom everywhere as loved ones improvise. Solidarity!
.
I begin to understand my problem with phone calls. It’s because I often felt an emotional obligation in them. Jettison the emotive cloud. I was away from the world yesterday and have no idea how the virus is progressing but I understand it is mushroom-clouding. My inner eye sees it grab the Aries energy and rise toward falling again. It was born (like the Redeemer) during December the midwinter solstice, though it was probably activating in November.
I see a Tao fish. It has its own processional interface with humans. It curves now steeply into the human genome, and will later decline, whatever is done or not done to contain or slow it down. The efforts to contain it are made in the particle interaction (the experimenter’s consciousness determines position or motion).
..
..
Of what use are my insights? We each need to garner our own. But “understanding” is valuable because it is of the world’s Atom. If I have and cultivate it, if it comes to me, be sure others have it too; it prospers here as elsewhere by quantum resonance. I feel physically strange and weak, and yet I am fit and yesterday after I danced I went for a walk and began to run – 200 metres or so each time – with my hips, longish strides, flow; practice this daily, I shall become able to run further. The exercise should not force my body, but consciously open its bliss, smooth movement and natural function, breathing deeply.
These images show the principle applied in proportional balance – the flower of Life. However, we live in a living Universe of Asymmetry.
.
Develop this interesting idea which has been around for a month or so, here. Imagine circles or spheres. The curve of the viral circumference enters the curve of the human circumference. It is similar to a partial eclipse. The vesica pisces is at first tiny. Exponentially the oval expands “as above so below” during the period the viral body moves through the collective human body. It grows swiftly at first, and on this basis I guess, most statistical predictions are made and graphs are drawn.
Predictions whether material or occult tend to be made from the observed culture in a single snap-shot or slide. They have to be made continuously over the whole period of growth and decrease to encompass the phenomenon in the fourth dimension. With that understanding the vaccine can be developed. By then, the viral graph is waning!
I don’t know if the researchers regard the virus in this way – a sphere passes through the human sphere and occludes a portion of it as the shadow increases and then decreases. It is unlikely that it is a full eclipse. However it is probably destined through the Law of Hesed and Gevurah (see Kabbalah Tree below) to bite; to stay with us for a period sufficient to start to dismantle and equilibrate the human industrial excess.
Look into Nature and the mystery of Gaia’s Law and order; how it breathes, how it expands with Hesed and contracts with Gevurah. The human hive will reconstruct itself rapidly. There may follow a new wave of the same virus or a fresh virus or some other factor in the general reduction of our species’ speed. The brakes are put on and the force against them is huge at first. It is all ultimately to do with Balances and realignment to universal biorhythm. It is rapid but in our scale it takes time. The Change is here: the tip-point.
..
Archangel Mikael – in renaissance art, the expanding oval in the vesica pisces housed angelic figures and the Madonna.
..
I register this insight profoundly.
Astrologically I have Pluto in Leo 12th House (stay indoors, go within) and Saturn in Virgo 1st House (obey the rules when I go out.) Pluto dismantles and transmutes infrastructure (centrifugal); Saturn builds boundaries around the continuous result (centripetal).
The full ripening of their interplay in my life arrives in my 8th decade together with the collective coronavirus crisis. This year the South node, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto transit my full-moon natal Sun in 24 Capricorn – my 71st birthday. With the Moon joining the stellium on 17 March just before Equinox, the coronavirus situation intensified.
..
Conference of creatures, 1987
..
There are at least two levels of vaccine. The one is developed by experiment in chemical laboratories. The other – I now perceive – develops a full curve of “the understanding” with Covid19. This may be inbuilt, and manifest as an apparent immunity, or lack of symptoms.
A vaccine gives a dose of the disease sufficient to arouse reactive antibodies against it before it grips the body. “The understanding” doses itself homoeopathically with the disease’s rise and fall as a fluid shaping. The conscious understanding contains the “before” and the “after” in the present. The antibodies in the energy field are small geysers of joy, gratitude and love for others. The disease finds outlet for its expression in this way. Around the world this is happening spontaneously. Our fear of suffocation, isolation and death unites us in the Life.
Watch any part of the sea’s surface: the movement of the waves against, through and with each other.
The full compass of “the understanding” is compassion and social empathy, wherever we are placed – in a refugee camp or in our family home. Being scientific is at root, “self-knowledge” for the etymological seed of “science” is “to know”. The virus attacks etheric and physical imbalance within the system. Its action generates a massive flow of “soldiers” (in alchemy). That rush when it cannot be “understood” or governed is probably what overwhelms the lungs. From what I have heard, it blocks the breath with dry mucus.
..
..
When I write in this way I feel and am working with the disease as it passes through me. I am reciprocally “flooding it” with my tempo of the understanding.
“The understanding” which Ramesh Balsekar talked about is Wisdom – the innate wisdom of the Universe – a universal solvent or re-balancing. With “the understanding” we move with the world.
Wisdom and Understanding.
..
Ramesh and devotee, 1999
..
The Kabbalahsociety circulated earlier this week, a new coronavirus Tree of Life to show the general principles.
Tree of Life – Coronavirus – by Kabbalahsociety.org
View the situation as a Kabbalist.
I wrote earlier in this post of the waxing and waning “partial eclipse” of human body as virus “body” passes over it: the vesica pisces where two circles of spheres overlap.
With the Tree of Life I am reminded of the crescendo (Hesed) containing the inevitable decrescendo or contraction (Gevurah): the universal interplay of expansion and restraint throughout nature. All things follow the Law: arise, settle, change and fade.
A Tree by Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi, demonstrating the structure and work of an esoteric School
Seek and find again and again the springs – the glad sources within our being, at Tifareth. I feel something at the back of my upper chest – it is like when I throw off a cold. It is time to dance again.
..
It is amazing how the dance reflex is working now. My favourite is Dead Can Dance – the track “Towards the within” is pagan, wild, sensuous and worshipfully mysterious. Call up the beautiful “earth snakes”. Slow tai chi motion too.
If you are still with me, here is a link to this week’s Covid19 contemplation in my Aquariel blog, and to my recent posts with the Gene Keys:
Last night we clapped at 8 for the NHS and lit up the streets! As with Greta last year, it took one little girl to tweet the idea; it bush-fired around the country – we all got The Clap – with music from house to house and dancing: Virally yours!
..
Little girl with Lighthouse, 1956
..
..
..
My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom. See alsoAquariel and Gene Keys Diary.
10 May 2015 Journal – I dreamed of going down an almost sheer grassy cliff towards the sea below, and then worried if I was stuck, if I could climb back up, or if I would slip right down and be killed. I clung.
I thought yesterday about anger – my anger: how it enrages when “you” annoy me. It is destructive. I wonder how much its presence distorts my view of life, persons and journal. I see the rage outspoken; it accumulates all life’s disappointments into a tirade.
Rage is usually the breaking wave of a long historic swell, and it uses the rock it finds. It uses the rock it finds to blame; but the rock is not to blame. The love or the man or the woman or the child or the political situation is not to blame. They help the wave to break. This is an interesting angle. Then rage (however furious) is a valuable condition, to witness and to walk with. Can I next time, say to it: “You are valuable, you are a breaking wave, you release fire and salt, you are more than what or whom I think you are….” ?
The rage won’t like that, because its nature is to pile the entire cause onto the person who offended, and on ME. The raw force of feeling pushes physical pain in belly, tension, collywobbles, incoherent speechmaking, off-the-wall, out-of-order and frustration. These are all invention! Try telling that to my rage, next time.
A drawing with eyes closed
It passes when it is shared. After we talk, it becomes a vibrant – if un-smooth – channel and transforms to love and relief – on a wall outside at night in Canfield Gardens with my tiny phone. I am when it is full on, scared of what it might do – it wants to upset everyone and their social arrangements, it is ME-ME-ME. A Capricorn has a slow fuse but a long one, and when it gets going, it is volcanic. The bit is in the horse’s teeth, and galloping, and the rider cannot control or stay the horse, but whispers along the reins: this won’t help, you are too angry, you won’t be able to say it like this, try saying this instead, remember to make it a discussion, do a deep breath, (I don’t want to) – do another one, you are in the Great Work (so what?), what would an alchemist say? (don’t care). The bit is in the horse’s teeth, and the horse’s mouth is insensitive to my hands.
Your response when I am angry, is to value and allow the feeling and to help it to lighten up and laugh. The splatter of wave-break words falls out of sight, because with the current some of them get said, some of the eggs get laid, some of them splash on the rock.
Stephen Szegedy Szuts at Caunce Head, Cornwall
There is a deep need to be honest. This fuels the rage. But look: isn’t the truth itself the long historic wave from the ocean? The anger is the white bit crashing over the rocks. Truth comes out and changes the setting between two persons. It shares. I carried a cargo of personal opinions at the crest; I give them all up. I suddenly see that you have, I have, the freedom to be who we are. And I say to you: I love this peculiar way we are. I will talk, but at a trot, not a headlong gallop.
I think I am a failure but this is NOT TRUE! The anger is a gold-rush. The waves which peak as anger, close to land, are generated far back in the subconscious sea, and arrive rhythmically. They carry a glorious energy, like a concentric sound wave or song. These waves travel and break around all our coastlines, and from above, they form beautiful interwoven crescents and wrinkles as they bestow their beauty on the land: as life breaks forth.
WOW! How unexpected, this morning. What a fish!
..
..
And now:down memory lane (May 2015), I find something for dog lovers:
… with David and Maya yesterday. I dug a large hole for the smallish hedge tree we hope to transplant – it is drinking water in a large bucket for a day or two, it hasn’t much root-ball left. I made a soft path along the “tunnel” to the garden, with two bags of woodchip, so it doesn’t get muddy. Maya loves the woodchip smell and lay down on the pile before I started to rake it. David was having a sharp pain day and couldn’t go out.
I took Maya for a long walk up to Sandy Heath woods. Her guard dog nature is increasingly focused on David and on me, and she never goes out of sight: she turns to see, she stops and waits. Sometimes she comes to rub my legs joyfully – “thank you for bringing me here.” Her black panther beauty and pointed ears sway her lean hips, kool cat, along bluebells, wild garlic and uphill down dale through the woods and under dense beeches, oaks and alder – beautiful companionship and love – she meets and plays briefly with a variety of other canines, learning the pecking order while I chat with their owners. Some of them are nervous.
On Sandy Heath through the oak meadows, we came to a pond up there, with a beach of tiny dry stones. She looked at me – Yes you can go in the water – in she went with big splashes and lunges, to fetch bits of wood I threw for her – and out of her depth she swam powerful doggy paddle, smiling sharp white teeth pink tongue snorting, then big shake-shake sparkle when she came out.
Poor David was horrified to hear this news (on our way home), having just cleaned the pad of fallen black hairs, and mopped the floor – he thinks the ponds up there are filthy, and it is actually the first time Maya has gone SWIMMING, because the brook where she plays is not quite deep enough – but she came home clean as a whistle, I dried her in the garden with a towel, and groomed and brushed out her loose hairs, and she ran indoors just a bit damp, and eager for her wolfie supper, and glossy shining black velvet fox all over, to lie down on the floor and enjoy us while we wolfed our M&S ready meals and stretched out our feet.
… took Maya around bluebell-oak-wild garlic Big Wood. She is a very powerful creature and might give me a black eye with her big loving nose and warm musky kisses, if I’m not careful. D says she is quite naughty at the moment, and he teaches and trains her constantly. We talk about her all the time eagerly, and billows of love roll over her. I combed her again in the garden – her winter coat is falling out. I never truly understood dogs in people’s lives – (Dubi wasn’t really a dog, he was a Saluki) – until this one, who is profoundly and archetypally dog. The dog-human wavelength is vibrant and mysterious.
Dubi in the brook
..
Vision: how beautiful the tough stuff anger is, with all the pain and sharp animal energy it carries. How astonishing is the wave pattern, woven around our coastlines, the way the bird-shapes burst from the rock. The beauty is lived and acknowledged, sometimes with difficulty, always with reality. I have with this, a LIBERATION – the visceral golden truth of what my private relationships have at their core – and to this I remain true and undivided.
The moment contains no name
or word.
Yes, and the sweet human
friend in their faces
and their laughter at restaurants
like a child with daisies threading split stems –
the magic circle lets you go and takes
you up, again and again
and over and over
with human beings;
the lover, the Friend,
the “one thing” (they say)
is the play of the waters … so I do not get those
“Solemn Meditative States”.
Poems of Eclipse, 1999
..
..
..
My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom. See alsoAquariel and Gene Keys Diary.
I produced this book and basic website almost 18 months ago. Since then, there seemed to be no leisure time to develop the project or market it! And still there isn’t. It finds its natural course like the way it was written.
The website describes my book about what it was like to grow up “in the influence of Kettle’s Yard”. It contains a blog and some (rather lengthy) readers’ feedback to plough through; and a link for you to buy it.
..
Photo from “A Way of Life” p.75 (1984)
What is inside your own house that you treasure and got so used to, that perhaps you forgot to notice it?
..
Kettle’s Yard itself is for the time being closed along with everything else, but you can visit https://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/about/ and take a virtual tour around Jim’s house (look under “Collection” or scroll down to Resources and then “Take a Tour”).
Jim’s spiral at Kettle’s Yard
..
..
And a Dandelion clock for the time of now … found this on facebook:
Love laughs at locksmiths and at little viruses. Love IS viral – a dandelion in a field of buttercups. My evolving Co-virus “insight” emerged from the beginning of the crisis, but continues to clarify: a movement towards adjusting overall balance in the bigger picture.
How can a caterpillar’s worldly dirge comprehend … the butterfly inside … which inexorably cracks the chrysalis?
The inner nature of the co-virus is its homeopathic antidote.
The condition is psychological; obsessive collective fear about covid19 causes many more people to fall ill and die of it than would otherwise. The amplified attention and media dirge weaken the physical system into habit-channels of expectation.
From what I have heard, the co-virus signature is an economic one – a depth change to the existing global Economy towards retrieving a real value-standard; a more equally distributed wealth, and the coming forth of our humanity to one another. This great Change initially generates fear, emotional insecurity and stress in relationships.
Then we must turn to face our music, we must reach above and below the pattern of the “fields we know” – reach deeper and higher, reach inward – for an information source which touches and activates our natural resilience.
For this, we are in a general agreement to slow down, value what we notice inside our houses, and take responsibility with our environment. “I” start to see “you” in a different way. In places where difficult issues are confined, this can be hard at first – almost unbearable. And it may take time and commitment to illumine those caverns often rocky and harsh – or confused and crowded. The walking and the lamp are love. What is love? A being-with. Create space for our Self and children to dance in, and respect the other’s. Give room to come and go; to breathe.
What is the antidote, the inmost nature of co-virus? Joy and the creative uplift of love for life and for others – a conscious choice. It is incredibly catching. The songs which keep coming and the way we hear our own – and turn to help each other in crisis – are doing just that.
Knock on door.
“Who’s there?”
“Me.”
“There is no room for two of us.”
Knock on door.
“Who’s there?”
“It is You.”
“Come. We are within.”
Jalal Al DinRumi
..
..
..
Dancer by Gaudier-Bzreska in Kettle’s Yard
My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom. See alsoAquariel and Gene Keys Diary.
This week’s planetary surge in Aquarius – we walk with sun, moon, mercury, venus, jupiter, saturn – releases a Medicine from the deep.
My dear friend Mischa Rutenberg’s song and profound prayer for America: “America Hear Me Calling” is shared here on YouTube. It opens with Emma Lazarus’s poem The New Colossus. Do listen, and let us rise together with the healing hope; and pass on the message.
“The radiant promise at the heart of America is embodied in Lady Liberty, who stands patiently at our gateway, waiting… In the storm of challenges buffeting the nation, Lady Liberty sings: “America, O America, hear me calling, answer me. Speak with conscience, answer truly, with respect and dignity. America, all are praying that your promise will survive. Embrace all, stand for Freedom, offer justice for all lives. Help the New Day be realized. In this powerful and moving presentation, we come to feel the Great American Journey is to bring fully to life America’s deepest values—its compassion, tolerance, and respect for one and all. Let us join together with a feeling of confidence and optimism—to see that day is realized.”
the Omani game
“Together let us raise awareness of what the true America is meant to be.
It is too easy to be cynical because we are so far from the ideal version of ourselves, lets work together to improve this. Let’s raise our voice over the din of ignorance we are currently inundated with. Let us reclaim America in the name of tolerance, love, inclusion, justice, and compassion. Make our presence known. If you share my love for this country and believe that we are destined to fulfill the promise of being a compassionate people who respect and honor all religions, all races, all genders, with liberty and justice for all please share the link to this video we have just completed.
.
“Copy the link directly from youtube and send it to anyone who will benefit from knowing that We are America and We will rise to fulfill this Nation’s beautiful destiny. We have far to go, but together with open minds and hearts we can overcome all obstacles and ignorance.
With love and gratitude, Mischa”
Here is the lyric:
“AMERICA…HEAR ME CALLING” America…hear me calling
Where are you? I am waiting.
America can you hear me?
I am standing at your gateway.
America the world is watching,
Will you answer or turn your back now?
Will you stand for truth and freedom?
Will you show the mercy needed?
America…are you still there?
Can you hear the children crying
For their mothers, for their fathers?
They are family they’re not Others!
America can you see me?
I still hold your light above me.
Sending out Love’s invitation,
Welcome home we are Liberty.
America are you listening?
Hear the voices of the fallen
Precious lives so dearly given
For the freedom you now live in.
America open your heart now
Open your mind, open your eyes.
Destiny is calling you
May your role be realized.
America! Oh America!
Hear me calling, answer me.
Speak with conscience, answer truly,
With respect and dignity.
America all are praying
That your promise will survive.
Embrace all, stand for Freedom,
Offer justice for all lives
Help the New Day be realized
We are here. We are America. We are many. We are One!
We stand together with our answer, open arms for everyone
We stand for truth, we stand for freedom, we stand for justice for all lives.
We hear your call. We are America and your call won’t be denied.
Stand as one, stand together, we will see a New World rise
My previous post carried an immune-booster DANDELION! This one carries a FREEDOM OF GOLD.
Many years ago the following alchemical Invocation “wrote me” to balance my finances and relationship. I awaited an opportunity to post it here for reflection: I believe if we stand, take a good deep breath and fill ourselves with the sun’s Light through every pore – especially on a rainy day! – we align with the depth purpose in Corona virus and in nature – to correct imbalance and initiate a profound global change – and to stay well with the help of all.
There is seeing a bigger picture …
There is pain and grief but already there are the signs. There is health and beauty in us! Rise!
A Prose Poem Contemplation:
“Go Bold, Be Gold” (2002)
On flowing sands is a pyramid of grey stepped stone. It is faced with white marble under sapphire sky; an uplifted apex of the Cross.
Imagine within. Gold is made inside the pyramid where it is dark, with resonance from the tomb. Be gold in the becoming and being made; gold is congealed sunlight. Receive and transmit gold from life; let it touch your hands like rain, and watch it flow.
Golden is a moment’s wonder to pause and savour. Gold is the standard. Gold is a pulsing vein inside the rock, like living fire. Golden is the Sun’s Action in the Emerald Tablet of Trismegistus. Alchemy is always; but under the Master’s direction only my attention is needed – He does the rest. Go bold, be gold, and marvel at its rippling play. It spreads from here, to saturate the bricks and trees across the road and penetrate the atom; sunlight filling a wet street is gold, for rain through the sun is gold, and liquid fire is rain. Go bold!
Seek wherever you go – and embody – the ultimate stable currency or coin: a hollow crown. Gold has no end, for it is of our Sun, and as it fills your heart with love, the wealth radiates onward. The soul that is so mined from the mountains shines about her business: a joy to the Fishermen of Sol. Let the product grow; nothing is more valuable. The destination is a timeless fact; contemplation, reaching and receiving the river … be still. Philosophers’ Gold rivers into fact, touch, hearing, taste, and worldly use; yet it has no boundary. It oversteps fears, dismantles shrouds, and sustains oasis through chaos. Only an imagined separateness created the weeping dark walls and resistances.
It touches the leyline of Archangel Mikael of the Sun, and Miriam the holy Mother, through a web of dolmens and tors in southern England. LOVE. I AM. the GLORY. Go bold. The capillary glows like volcanic rivers in the night. Awareness is this touch. The purpose is not to daydream, but to be certain and most true. The confected Stone may be imaged as a golden pyramid, four-faceted, like the Chariot of Ezekiel; here in the centre behind the brow a “pineal” cone opens its petals; here is the little pyramid, a bright grain, like glass.
Now sign, seal and keep it within the safe: the heart. It is safe that it is never “mine” to misuse or carry astray, but the Master’s own, to mine with me. In this present moment is inexhaustible wealth and shelter. In the recognition is creation from the Solar waterfall. I sense an elder Egyptian magic. It is said of the vast majority of earth-dwellers, “their expectations are determined by past experiences.”
Sun Yantra
BE GOLD: “Just as men, chained to earth for millennia by the law of gravitation now fly faster and farther than any bird by utilising another aspect of the same law, so does a keeper of the Light pay his or her Karmic debts in a more valuable kind of cosmic currency. For the work gives them access to that treasure of treasures which enables them to strike the balance without pain.” (Builders of the Adytum)
Sundancers: quotation from the Yoga Vasishta
Venus, ruling Libra the Scales, exalts Saturn/alchemical lead into gold. “The vapour condenses itself again as a solid – as the solid conditions of external circumstance.”
“Question whatever we are told
until it is proven pure GOLD.”
..
..
..
..
My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom. See alsoAquariel and Gene Keys Diary.
Image from YouTube video “Gods Dancing” by mischamuse – copyright Sufism Reoriented 2021
There is a field
wherein to pace
our selves: to shield
Your sign of grace.
Like footfalls unfilled,
a melody in measure, one
to three, may yield
Your holy constellation.
Into the darkened meadow
of my mind, no faces,
came one night a throw
like stars, of spaces …
for sacred tread:
the music yet to come –
a manna of risen bread
to “pulse” the One.
By day, a maid may gather
to her heart the Lord.
At night the shepherd may tether
to his heart the wandering herd.
Into a darkling field,
may mushrooms white, in grass
reflect some starry yield
of heaven into verse … ?
It is in the teaching
of those Pythagoras trained,
that beauty reaching
Earth, invoke restrained …
the resonant strings
that Life provides. In triad,
circle, interval bounded, sings
in tuneful depth the Dryad.
Pulsing a pattering of stars
upon the stave,
no words yet have trod
footfalls of melody unsounded.
Softly are they shod
within the night unbounded.
May we in the lea
where the One may
a-dancing be,
seek the rhythm reverently.
From a collection of poems – “Footfalls of Melody Unsounded” copyright (c) Jane Adams 1992
Image from Youtube video “Gods Dancing” by mischamuse, copyright Sufism Reoriented 2021
..
..
..
My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom. See alsoAquariel and Gene Keys Diary.
This post is linked with my previous post with its theme of sacred vessels: “The Queen and King, Part One – a Kabbalist’s Impression”. This second part is more esoteric – in places it ranges freely and poetically. The writing follows various voices in a whimsical synchrony like music. It carries my sacred vessels and my deep source of inspiration.
In Part One’s story I was rolled like a marble to stand near Westminster Hall where people queued to pay their respects to the Queen. I was just across the road; I spontaneously sang Meher Baba songs to her. Meher Baba (February 1894-January 1969) is my beloved Teacher of the Light. Into his Embrace is gathered my devotion to King Charles III and his family and my desire to help support and protect them.
Today I am working on this sketch of the young Meher Baba in a rickshaw
… and here is the King and his son William.
Family portraiture like this picks up an affectionate awareness of his son’s presence through boyhood into maturity; the evolution of their shared responsibilities; the love in the relationship, the familiar scent and sounds to each other, the ups and downs. In William’s features is a captivating flavour of his mother and the Spencer lineage. Last night (most unusually) I dreamed I met and embraced the King … hence this new portrait-study. I feel his mother the Queen (whom he greatly misses) keeps an eye on him. I see her face in his. I see both his parents.
Part One (see link at the beginning of this post), featured five youtube videos detailing the King’s extraordinary work in the Middle East when he was Prince of Wales, on a restoration project which unified the “Star, the Cross and Crescent” (Judaism, Christianity, Islam). With Keith Critchlow, the architect Minwer A-Heid and the King of Jordan, Charles helped to resurrect a forgotten sacred craft and its livelihood.
..
In Part Two I want to reflect on what Lord Heseltine said about the Commonwealth – the jewel in the Queen’s crown – and to let the alchemist play …
Queen Elizabeth II’s passing and her funeral brought together a vast global array of companions of the Light. Our Guardians and preceptors, one and all, were present within every dimension and strata of humanity. They were tangible in the uplifting and relaxed atmosphere around Westminster and they flanked the cortege; they brought persons from every walk of life together in friendship; a common wealth.
Let us not forget our private moments of meaning in the gathering!
Here I shall write about mine – within the diversity.
A few years ago, I was taken to … I discovered Meher Baba. Like a panther his Love awaited my life’s ripe moment – then he sprang.
Here he is playing marbles – he was an expert
Among his Mandali (close ones) his attendant Eruch said, “People ask what did you gain all those years with Baba? They should have asked us, what did we LOSE?”
“The Abbey waits to receive this gentle Christian soul. It doth their crowns bestow and doth their ashes keep.”
“Of course it will be forever different. It may be as good, it may be in some ways better, but it will be different.”
And all the way from ‘Frisco – “I watched the WHOLE THING – it’s magical – pure Harry Potter!”
Myrtle among the flowers on the coffin gathered by King Charles from all his mother’s gardens.
Lord Heseltine remarked on the crimes of our Imperial heritage which make us sombre, and its evolution into a Commonwealth of nations which makes us glad; they are free to remain under the Crown or to find their own way. Regarding history as a whole, over time the abuses may transmute to a potential for forgiveness, honesty and understanding.
“Where else in the whole wide world could this event take place?”
There are mutterings – “Who pays for it? Who asked for it? Who maintains the pageantry? We are starving! We cannot pay the bills!”
“The Commonwealth, in the King’s heritage and in his long years of international activity, could be a greater force for good in the world than it has been so far.”
“The Queen’s example sets a precedent for spiritual integrity.”
My mind’s inertia is yet LOVED unconditionally. There is a wider garden to grow into.
The Queen crosses over to the higher plane where she is active behind the veil. Her job continues in her son the King and in all who love her values.
Her droplet in the waters is not just Britain but the WORLD. The ripple moves in and out concentrically.
..
On the same bit of paper some scribbles from an epiphany of voices I heard on youtube –
Do what you like with God the Absolute but beware what you do with saints! Realise the fragrance of Who we are and share the fragrance of that attainment with others.
He’ll make the clay into a nice ball and put it in the oven. When you come out you are durable. He’ll give you a push and then withdraw – then he will see how you respond with his impetus and he will go with the way you express yourself. If you give your way to the Beloved, he can make it His way for you.
The aspirant’s real task is to pierce through his own layers of self-imposed sufficiency and insensitivity so that s/he may expose a layer of vital awareness to the world about them which would touch them if it could.
Join singers from Ukraine, Russia, the USA, Spain and other nations in this prayer for peace!
..
AN INVOCATION
The other day, I read Rick Chapman’s book “You and I” (White Horse publishing), and it brought me a revelation:
You unconsciously
feel my Avatarhood
within you;
I consciously
feel in you what each
of you feels.
“And yes,” (Rick emailed) “we are and must resign ourselves to being ‘very much in the veil’ in our lives with Meher Baba.
“The one thing that was consistent throughout the lives of His most intimate lovers and disciples was that, however varied their experiences in the world and their experiences spiritually, Baba did not lift the veil on them in their lives with Him, not perceptibly.
“Each and every one was ‘chop wood, carry water’ in his or her grounding in gross Consciousness, regardless of how close one might be to Enlightenment or Liberation.
“That is the way the Avatar works, and it is unique among spiritual masters.
“Although He may vouchsafe some experience or other to this one or that, He keeps everyone ‘under the veil’ so as to keep the ego in check.
“If you want sightseeing, you go elsewhere; if you want the experience of your True Self as God, you go to the Avatar.”
..
Chop wood, draw water.
Just as I am – heavy sanskaric mind and all – at least I am no tourist. This is the Earth the Being enjoys and holds me to. I wondered to this day why with my inner tuition and the gift of access, I cannot meditate/drop out or have blissful cosmic experiences. I did KNOW – FELT – that what I have and love and am, is complete and real – the rose with its thorns and leaves; an unfurnished room washed by the Light of the sea.
What I am and you are is utterly satisfying, including my egoic look-at-me fixtures and fittings and the mirror, including my vanity and my fear of being rejected or disapproved of. I am here in earth living this whole fascinating egoic landscape. It is not my Beloved’s pleasure to move the blinds a little for me to drop out into samadhi. It is my Beloved’s pleasure to play with me around the rocks and through all weathers.
He says with twinkling eye, “Ripe fruit in My hand, this is a generative process – I hold its harvest.”
I am a little gem, a gooseberry, a marble, a prasad he lightly tosses with perfect aim. Like His Mandali, his close ones and Lovers, I am happy to serve without the veil being lifted; I am His garment. Love is the Transfiguration I behold on the Mountain with Yeshua.
Like a periodic landslip shifting a little further each time, I trust him more. Before this day there were rights and wrongs I clutched to myself and suffered with.
Visita Interiore Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem … Enter the inner Earth, put right/equilibrate what you find here, and bring forth the hidden precious Stone
(From the ‘Emerald Table’, Wisdom of Hermes Trismegistos)
This is echoed in Meher Baba’s words: “To penetrate into the essence of all being and significance, and to release the fragrance of that inner attainment for the guidance and benefit of others, by expressing in the world of forms, Truth, Love and Beauty – this is the sole game which has any intrinsic and absolute worth. All other happenings, incidents and attainments can, in themselves, have no lasting importance.”
..
More than ever, when wading in sludge, carry the lamp and sweep out the closets of the heart. Let it SHINE. LIFT THE LEVEL; be of good cheer.
Some ideas emerge in me organically – relating to Britain’s empire heritage. With its expansion, we polluted the conquered lands, destroyed their culture and ancestral lineages and sold the people into slavery. We extracted from them the wealth and left them hungry.
Over the last century with the precision of Karmic laws and two World wars Britain’s global territory shrank.
Eruch Jessawala said (earlier in this post), “People ask what (enlightenment) did we gain, all those years with Baba. They should have asked us, what did we LOSE?”
What do we need to lose in order to restore equilibrium?
What is or was or will be the “Work on what was spoiled“?
This phrase arose unsought, it is the title of hexagram 18 in the I Ching.
“What has been spoiled through man’s fault can be made good again through man’s work.” Here is “Dream Arc 18 ” from my work with the Gene Keys animal-kingdom archetypes. The Shadow is the flea, the Gift is the tiger, the Siddhi or Way of Freedom is the hoopoe. That phrase “work on what has been spoiled” happened to drop into place at this time of writing – the period for the 18th hexagram is 27 September-2 October. The Zodiac sign is Libra and I happen to be exploring the theme of balance – a classic nudge from the real Artist who works through me
The above link to Dream Arc 18 “happened to” contain an appreciation of my Kabbalah teacher Warren Kenton (Zev ben Shimon Halevi) written on the anniversary of his passing – open it and scroll down. For more information about his work visit http://www.kabbalahsociety.org
..
Work on what has been spoiled – Isn’t this King Charles’s life long dedication – to return minerals, trace elements and nutrients to the soil? Not many are aware that he is an expert hedge layer, farmer and gardener. His country home at Highgrove nurtures strong organic seed – as befitted a Prince of the realm – whose generations will move beyond his property and invigorate the land.
During his mother’s long reign some of the exploited nations became a “common wealth” – a reclamation in process, dear to her heart. Ultimately its aim is to restore their individual heritages, conserving a productive web of international friendships. This was her inner and outer work. It is now the Sovereign’s promise that these nations may retain or discard their constitutional connection without losing the cordial relationship.
The real function of the modern monarchy as I see it, is a “tapestry through time”. That doesn’t much interest the headline-makers who thrive on gossip and divisions. In its quiet persistence, its problems and many interwoven interests I see a path of real cooperation and hope.
It is not “plain sailing” because it is in the urgent interest of many countries in the world today to redefine their boundaries. That movement may account for a number of painful “brexit’s”. Coming from someplace deeper than the daily politics which act and react as its instrument, the process is more like a global weather pattern – literally a climate change. There are floods, there are cracks and shrinkage, there is new growth.
For consideration:
“Common wealth” is an interesting expression, suggesting a restoration. Assets which separated the haves from have-nots are just beginning to be regarded as values in common. Internet technology stirs us into a homogenous uniformity without boundaries. This may prompt an instinctive struggle for individual forms of expression. The paradoxical tension is suffered acutely – played out through noble humanitarian efforts, madness, abuse, creative visions, and repressive regimes. For many of us it racks our bodies physically – if we cannot contain the paradox we are tugged in all directions.
What is the inner meaning of a commonwealth? Perhaps the wellbeing of the people – to bring them back to their roots and honour the earth where we live. When Empire suppressed indigenous peoples and did not work for the common good, it removed them from their land and root which was their mother. The world is disturbed – travelling away from and seeking home.
What do we distil in life, and how is it different in principle from what we “extract”?
..
THE PROBLEM WITH EXTRACTING
Distillation is a kind of flowering: wait and see.
To extract something suggests that we do not put it back Contemporary culture is based largely upon extraction, on separating from the whole and mixing the pieces in a way which adulterates and actually weakens the essence. In the health industry the ingredients separated from plant or chemical compound are artificially reinforced as medicine – a visual market of boxes and pills. That leaves a lot of waste and want.
In the Elder Medicine the whole plant was known and used; yes, extracts from it were taken and boiled or “reduced”. What was taken out was respected and given back – as with crop rotation. Ancestral recognition of the plant’s whole energy field was and is the key.
native american tobacco plant
There is an analogy with the use of medicine plants for recreational or addictive drug use. When one part of a plant is amplified against the whole it is corrupted and becomes toxic. To me this suggests an imbalance in nature, an unbalanced culture. If we select pieces of indigenous culture out of their matrix to get “high” on or (for the over-sensitive) to numb and blot out the world’s ferocity, isn’t that the voyeur’s way? Recreational drugs extracted from wisdom plants, are an encumbrance, an imbalance, and delay the return to the Heart of All.
Alternatively the wisdom plant has an emanation with which to sit quiet and hear the universe. We might be near it or see it a thousand miles distant, for it is in the etheric field. There is no requirement to imbibe, smoke or ingest it; no need for “experiences”, no search for sensation. To be lovingly present in Nature’s seamless silent dialogue was and is the way of indigenous elders and of the gardener; it is not that of the “spiritual” pedlars or merchants.
Tobacco was a sacramental indigenous plant and non-addictive – the removal of its heart or essence, adding noxious chemicals for stimulus, is abuse … which creates addiction.
Addiction happens where a “hole” in the wholeness is made – the way back home is constantly removed! – entangling the emotional, psychological and spiritual realms. This may apply to any substance which is “twisted” or exploited for consumer use. What to do? We face and must find some way to manage this enormous problem in the nutritional field.
It starts here at home with attitudes.
“If we are abused, then you can’t receive our gift to you. If we are abused, you won’t benefit from us. And if we are abused, it won’t do you any good. Speak to us with your heart, and all will be well.”
I was touched by this message from David Rainbow, in an online discussion about the destructive use of marijuana – the plant spoke to him. It said it shouldn’t be smoked, cut with stimulants, or forced into being a drug (which is abuse). The Medicine is a wisdom for us to quiet our mind and listen to. We are: I am the body of the plant. It came to me that I might simply visualise and honour the plant in its purity – the true conversation with it.
The message is “stop misusing and misconstruing us”.
And stop misusing and abusing ourselves!
To extract is to exploit. To extract is to remove, condense or exaggerate a desirable feature for marketing or sensation – like a news item divorced from its context; like gossip; like opiate extracted from a plant; like fossil fuels from earth so they pollute; like annexing a country. Religious bigotry is extracted from revelation.
To extract is to limit, to claim for oneself and even to rob.
It is equally so in the selective view of life, my judgements, desires, fears, and conditionings. My acquisitive attitudes and choices can contribute to an unhealthy economy.
What a lot the little plant has to tell us!
..
FARMER CHARLES
I offer here my appreciation of a human being, a Kingly pioneer in the search for our indigenous Celtic heritage and wisdom. Here he is at work hedge-laying –
“Sir, In the face of mockery, abuse and heavy resistance you developed an ’empire’ of organic farming and education … and in due course the people ate out of your hand. The Duchy estates with their high quality free-range produce became today an immensely successful business enterprise. The profits helped to underwrite your other initiatives in the “common wealth”. The Duchy is now in the hands of your son William.
“Let us gather together, let us join together, let us form a vessel to catch the dew of Heaven.”
..
AS ABOVE SO BELOW
Distillation (associated with Virgo) is the sixth of 12 Zodiac signatures of alchemy.
To distil is to raise the level of our concern; to reach and allow inspirational resources of love within us which by their nature are more than a match for the world’s ferocity.
It is within each individual’s capacity to “be still and distil; be of the whole.” And then to act.
For myself to distil is to hang out all day with an insight or an unfolding creational process – like this one with the Queen and King and Commonwealth – until the Wine delivers its bouquet.
The old alchemists used to say, “Carry the elixir but don’t let it fall on the ground, don’t confine it to the verbal world of linear ideas and chitchat, else it will raise up cities and delusions against you.”
Lower mind tends to subtract from the whole; forming opinions, re-engraving old fossils, and being possessive – the cult of competition.
To distil is to receive the dew, be still – the essence to shine without seizing it. Like a rare malt whisky it emanates … and then in our nature, one thing opens into another the gift of abundance: the seed of a common wealth. Such is the distillation and its potential. It brings insight of what needs to be done practically. It is contagious. The light of interior jewels rises in a pearly perfume through earth’s crust.
I am bowled over with the open depth of what I am shown
… and for us to be Lovers, not try to be saints.
Open your heart.
Beloved One
who are in and of my being,
hallowed be your Name.
Thou art that on earth
as it is in heaven.
Give me this day my daily bread
and forgive my errors as I forgive
those of others
And lead me not to trespass
but deliver me from bondage
For Yours is Malkuth the Earth,
Beauty, Root, Truth, Purity
in the Tree of Life
amen.
My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom. See alsoAquariel and Gene Keys Diary.
When I saw the photo of the Queen taken on 6 September at Balmoral moments before she welcomed the new PM, I was moved by the radiance in her face … with her departure just 2 days away.
Here is my tribute:
The hearth-fire symbolises the nation’s heart – often hidden behind the coals. We might see faces in the fire? A friend spotted an “Indian master in a turban” – profiled among the flames and so did others – an “accidental”. Britain’s link with India from the Raj until Gandhi and independence was both good and bad; the relationship struck deep. Vivekananda visited these shores in Victoria’s time; Theosophy and Krishnamurti followed. The earliest Westerners to settle with Ramana Maharshi at Arunachala were English. My friend said, “Could this be the Queen’s Magid (companion of the Light) waiting to escort her?”
… and herself perhaps a few months ago … that tired but firm little hand held and greeted hundreds, tens, hundreds of thousands and more?
..
12 September TRIBUTE
And here is my first one of the new King. On the Tree of Life the monarch represents “Tifareth” – the country’s heart centre; as Prince of Wales at Highgrove he sowed good organic seed through “interesting times”. I feel I grew up in nature near him like my brother – we are the same age, we share an early fascination for the sheep on Scottish hills AND the tensions of the spiritual quest. This is significant in our post-war generation and the huge changes and unrest afoot.
During his hardworking Princely years I admired his spiritual courage and his stubborn unorthodox dedication to ethical values in environment, architecture, and the business networks; his wide ranging experience of the world, his mature understanding of people, his own flaws, his sensitivity, and wicked sense of fun; his loved one at his side. This King was a visionary pioneer all his life – and it was a hard learning curve for him to balance that with his royal duties.
Something reached out to me in the photo. Those hats are difficult to draw, let alone to bring out the human being under them!
KABBALAH – TOLEDANO TRADITION
My teacher the late Zev ben Shimon Halevi (Warren Kenton) and our new King Charles met several times over the years. They respected one another though Charles was not his student.
My reflection on the Queen’s funeral and succession is tethered on the Kabbalist principle of expansion and contraction. Britain expanded as an empire and contracted as an island. Some of us sit on the monarchical fence and some of us on the republican fence. My vocation is to find and honour the Middle Way inclusively; the quality of life which Queen Elizabeth II lived, and remained loyal to, whatever her opinions may have been. Look at what her dedicated example inspired in people’s hearts around the world. This in essence is likely to endure. With international and government issues she remained resolutely neutral, yet her friendly shrewd words, her touch and gesture travelled many times further than she did. She was a Servant in the highest sense.
The Tree of Life is my navigational instrument. It helps me to perceive the elegant Design in the laws of Creation, life and government – action upon reaction – whose electricity is played out over three pillars – Jakin/Active, Bohaz/Receptive, and the central Consciousness. Those pillars form a trinity: the poles of male, female and neutral (androgyne).
I try to view events and the inner life through the Tree’s Four Worlds – those of Divine Emanation, Creation, Formation (the psyche) and the Material world. What manifests through our senses and through collective mind, are the lowest rungs of Jacob’s Ladder: the temporary end product of a process which constantly downloads through those Four Worlds. We are a project yet incomplete. Should we mistake the scaffolding for the completed building?
The word “Kabbalah” means “Receive”. The Tree’s heart centre is Tifareth, Beauty. “Let us form a Vessel.”
As the monarchy and politics play out their roles on the Tree’s right and left pillars, I trace an inner story through the Centre.
Here is my personal reflection.
**
13-15 September SOVEREIGN ROLE
Was the royal desk in truth ever as tidy as that?
As Prince of Wales, our King possessed many more interests and arms than an octopus and a dedicated court of toiling delegates to carry out his abundant schemes. He has been a walking Renaissance, integrating his enquiring spirituality with pioneering initiatives in government, music, organic farming, architecture, the armed services, the business world, the Duchy of Cornwall, ecology and climate change, politics, watercolour painting, and intimate friendships. He designed and built a new town in Dorchester on holistic community principles. He was instrumental in resurrecting an almost lost art of sacred geometry in the Middle East; he was a close friend of the late Keith Critchlow.
Look up their role in the restoration of the Minbar of Saladin in Jerusalem. A Minbar is “a Ladder to Heaven” and from it the Imam addressed the faithful.
This fascinating sequence of 5 threaded videos details the 12th century history of the Minbar, its destruction on August 21,1969 by a fundamentalist Christian tourist (Michael Rohan) and its reconstruction 20 years later by the Bedouin architect Minwer Al-M’Heid with the support of the Prince of Wales and Keith Critchlow who together had created a School for sacred craftsmanship.
History came full circle to turn an opening creative spiral – from destruction and war to knowledge and Light.
This is just one example of the King’s (then Prince of Wales) projects and sponsorship which brought nations, communities and cultures together in the spirit of tolerance and peace. Those who question how much he cost might consider the long-term value for their money?
In his words: “What I was so proud about – if I’m allowed to have a tiny bit of pride – is that it was the School … who had rediscovered the underlying geometric patterns that had enabled this great Minbar to be built in the first place, with equally as much love and devotion and skill and dedication and care on the part of all the wonderful craftsmen who put so much of their hearts and souls into this Work.“
..
Let Minwer Al-M’Heid the architect and engineer of the restored Minbar of Saladin, sponsored by the then Prince of Wales, conclude:
“When you see it happening, when you see all these pieces you have worked with, all these 16,000 pieces that are put together with no glue, no nails, all of a sudden appearing as one Unit – that’s the Unity. That’s what we feel as something which gives us also great humbleness.
“We see what our ancestors have done and that art has a meaning, not ‘art for art’s sake’. Although this is a piece of Islamic art it is in fact based on Universal principles – a joy for everyone who sees it.”
The ancient sacred craft – and the network of its Guilds – was resurrected in the nick of time. Without the providential convergence of the Prince of Wales, Keith Critchlow, the King of Jordan and the architect Minwer Al-M’Heid, it would have been lost for ever. Quiet creative hands awaken a chrism of healing patterns through the chaos of war and walls – a School of the Soul at work.
..
All this creative activity is distilled into one surrendered vow to receive and serve the realm. The King is human, oh so human and all too human. Let us watch him with interest!
..
While I drew his portrait here, I watched his and Camilla’s state visit to Northern Ireland pouring oil among troubled Sinn Fein at Hillsborough castle and meeting the Irish President – a diplomatic gathering of wounds for chrism and the soft way the sovereign glides, encounters, embraces and speaks – imagine that mellifluous twinkle coming at you – and his dear Queen Consort works the room with equal skill – like a bird. Everyone in black. I witnessed a collective therapy … may those fragile fibres begin to cohere and to sustain life – what a privilege to see the King at work!
Here he greets the Irish president
For long intervals the Sky-News commentators were silent for you to hear that gathered genial sound in the room, the conversations, the whispered greetings of many rivers, many fading wars.
During the service in Belfast Cathedral which they attended, Alastair Bruce of “Sky” noted: “… different elements of the Catholic faith here in Northern Ireland; and no Sovereign could be under any doubt of the history and importance of these different views on faith, than the King … acknowledging faith, find their own understanding for the way the world works and a Deity in that process … the monarchy wove a tapestry of time through this country (Ireland) …”
A stillness descends and darkens London in the rain as the cortege approaches Buckingham Palace … Repeatedly through the event is this stillness, to hear the birds sing.
In Belfast Cathedral the priests came forward praying one by one to the departed Queen and to her son:
“Deep peace to you Deep peace of the running wave to you Deep peace of the flowing air to you Deep peace of the quiet earth to you Deep peace of the shining stars to you Deep peace of the Son/Sun of peace and the blessing of the Trinity be upon you, Amen.”
Her Majesty’s passing at 96 allowed her son to ripen on the tree in his vigour as Prince of Wales with all his passionate projects. His working life now changes, but he was long in training. He as Sovereign is an inspiration to me; bow to my Liege. When on duty His Majesty is groomed and genial but at home his comfy light suits rumple. Imagine having to wear one on a hot summer day.
In my own way, I join the reverent queue to pass and see the coffin and hear the bell and the muted drum: with my 7B pencil as witness and worshipper I pray for Her Majesty’s safe passage through the astral realms to God; I watch from home her son’s work yesterday in Northern Ireland, he builds on the pioneering grace of her visits there, and her historic handshake. The Sovereign role stepped through the barricades.
..
AS ABOVE SO BELOW
The funeral procession! The people pray and gather along the trails and in the cities to weep and cheer. Accompanied by her daughter Anne the Princess Royal, close as they were in life, the Queen is borne slowly from Scotland through Britain’s roads and airways to her resting place – to earth the astral design. After she landed at Northolt in dripping rain at nightfall, the helicopter camera peered down through West London’s dark wet leaves to follow her illumined hearse – a bright fish swimming its private way home.
Kabbalistically the pattern on the ground follows precisely in time (as the days go by) her “holy place of meeting” with Companions of the Light. With those Beings on the inner plane I glimpse swords and knights and royal orders – the nourishment in England’s heart. Protocol is an ancient sacred dance. The King’s job and character may “tango” it a little here and there. A delight to see, is the walkabouts when he and his Queen Consort get out of the car. Straight away they meet the crowd, the King opens his arms forward to receive and embrace the empathy and warm condolence; they answer and chatter and smile, firmly they both grasp the forests of out-thrust joyous hands – touching each and every one – and are beamed by a bristle of small phone screens to capture their image for home.
Paradoxically in a new age of screens and tense security the Sovereign is no longer in a glass case. Touch him! A security woman stoutly pushed away an iPad – it was a little too large. What a curious interface we have.
Simultaneously the King is in mourning for his Mama – he dreaded the deaths of both his parents. The aftermath of a death is busy at every level. A deeply seasoned sensitive man is in the land’s highest office.
..
17 September A TURNING PAGE
When the heart of a nation is touched and quietened, the turbulent streams may knit together again over it, but the Resonance remains. May the family pull together for “our brother Charles”.
Heard in central London today during walkabout (police addressing the phones) – “no selfies please – you can shake hands with His Majesty and wish him well; enjoy the moment, please!”
I also heard the King while addressing the Welsh speak of “the duty to protect the diversity of this country with all my heart as Defender of Faith.” As head of the Anglican church his duty is to defend “the” faith while his ecumenical heart stands for openness in all faiths: for faith itself.
After the children’s vigil last night, the commentator Alastair Bruce spoke of the monarchy:
“to consistently reinvent itself, to be relevant, capable and new … A page is turning in the national story. It is that turned page that provides the opportunity for all these people who are passing through, who wish to make their respects to Elizabeth II, to just get on with their lives, do what they do, have the opinions they enjoy, be furious, be happy, be energetically desiring change, or wanting to achieve different things in their lives. That is what the Monarchy should provide – as the pivot around which people can be themselves and the nation can thrive.”
..
19 September PROCESSION
… Glued for days to Sky news about the Queen’s pre-funeral progress through the population and the 5 mile queue through a night and day to salute quietly her bier in Westminster Hall; the children’s and grandchildren’s vigils; the King and his son on walkabouts to the astonished queuers. A little boy broke down in tears after the King shook his hand and wailed “my heart is bursting” – he can hardly bear it. The commentators say it is unprecedented and unexpected. Naturally the Queen and her hand-over pierces the nation to the core.
Sweet breakthrough – butterfly is camouflaged to the wood grain, the leaf, the flower, the pattern of the Divine – all my life with fishing line as the fish in the pond tossed and played.
I got out my bike and rode to Westminster to immerse in what is going on. I hoped it wouldn’t be barricaded off and that I might be able to get quite close to the Great Room to offer my respects. Moving slowly with the friendly flow – like a vast holiday, packing the pavements – I was trickled and nudged across Parliament square and along a street between the Abbey and the Houses of Parliament … and discovered I was just across the road from the entrance to the Hall itself (I had forgotten where it was) and there behind a small-mesh screen was the queue of pilgrims with their backpacks and families. They had shuffled all night along the Thames from way East of Tower Bridge, igniting international friendships on the way … now reaching their journey’s end … and that profoundly silent and climactic moment.
This pavement opposite them was not congested. I stood there for half an hour by the Abbey’s tail (East chapel) as if I were in the Hall itself by the bier, I watched and absorbed, I chanted and prayed with Mischa Rutenberg’s Meher Baba songs in my earbuds.
Reflecting on the architecture (I haven’t been around there for many a year) … how interesting that the Parliamentary ranks and rows of ambitious talk and bitter conflict are intersected by the ancient sacred space of Westminster Hall which holds the Sovereign like a flower. Peace and stillness descends on each weary pilgrim, a butterfly baptism, the soft kiss of a new order. Just as the Prime Minister began her new post, the Royal axe chopped through the nation’s busy hurting mind straight to the heart and silenced everything.
The connection generated a holistic shockwave. The media express ideas I never believed to hear from their mouths. The atmosphere among the crowds was not grief but celebration of what draws the nation together in a way no one had fathomed, it gives us all a break. It was holiday-like, patient, flexible, slow moving, a beautiful clear sunny day with big galleon clouds in the crisp blue sky. It was multi-culturally British with hundreds of police in tall Dixon of Dock Green helmets. Dozens of cheery Afro Asian crowd-movers did their job with a smile on their faces and helpful advice. They and the police handed out badges and stickers to children, and guarded the realm. They must have been so tired! They, the guardians honoured this unique day. Tents, chairs, and picnics crammed the street corners.
I stood there singing to her. When a big equipment convoy jammed the road, I moved on, nudging my bike’s front wheel gently along the pavement. I wanted to see the opposite doorway of the great Room near the river where the pilgrims emerge, and to catch sight of their zig zag approach through the Parliament gardens. I ended up crossing the river to push my bike up its south bank contra the pilgrim flow, and onto Westminster Bridge back to Big Ben. I tried to figure out the geography of the great Hall which in due course fell into place. The bright flocks thronged the evening sunshine on the big bold river. Brilliance … and sharp, deep shadows. Light and darkness – a unifying moment within conflict; an upheaved oasis amidst uncertainty. It felt like an earthquake.
Back in Parliament Square again I was stuck for a long time – everyone was – awaiting more convoys of “dignitaries”. When it cleared the crowd streamed in good order with the lightest official touch. Where it was really thick the crowd managers linked jovially hand in hand to part the rivers. Yes it was their day.
I wanted to see the front of Westminster Abbey and to watch the funeral today with a proper sense of scale and having been there. The crowd gently thinned out with the flow. I followed a small labyrinth of streets to the other side – via a good old fashioned pub. It spilled out onto the pavement where I enjoyed my pint of Tribute and crisps. I looked for a while at the Abbey’s exquisite silvery west face, L’Art gothique in the reign of Henry III; then turned to ride home – twilight – via Hyde Park corner and the Edgware road … through a peaceful maze of traffic barriers. Victoria Street was open for walkers and bikes.
When a person dies an energy is released; in my observation it is – (as well as the physical body liberating the subtle unlimited one) – that which bonded the friends of her soul. That entity stands forth stronger than the embodiment. What within the soul’s lifetime composition drew friends, lovers, conflicts, and fields of effort together? I watched this again and again at funerals where I saw grief but simultaneously an uplift, a feasting, a meeting of companions in the Light, a birth.
The Queen united a common wealth. Unity’s hand is upon the land as it encounters a rough sea of steep challenges, one after the other. She built and carved her succession in the family like a cathedral – to stand as sanctuary and to last.
Within each of us who witnessed, it awakes unique and private ways – precisely positioned within “Interesting Times”.
Ash keys – Druidic symbol of rebirth, transformation, and initiation – roots deep in the ground (Photo by Marisa)
..
20 September ROLLED LIKE A MARBLE TO REST
Her arrival, committal and sinking through the floor at Windsor was especially moving: the removal of her ball and sceptre and Crown jewels to the neutral altar; the Lord Chamberlain breaking the wand of office, the deep solemnity of archetypes with a lot of devoted and very tired people – her entire household and staff.
All over the land there is an awakening, a reminder that there is more to us than the daily bad news!
It distracted the nation from the grim economy spike which makes millions fear the winter – battered with Brexit, corona virus and now the financial crisis tripped off with the war in Europe. The new King is beleaguered and lost his temper in public over a leaky fountain pen. Throughout the funeral the raw grief for his mother was exposed in his sensitive weathered face. I drew a picture (below) of him and Camilla relaxing in Maori or Inuit animal hides; I saw what he loves, her eyes are his home; and I drew the Queen shaking hands with an elephant (Prince Philip looking on, with a quip); and then I drew her looking girlish and radiant – that one developed easily without mistakes.
The nadir point in the King’s life may have been his first marriage: discovering the sweet suitable girl he was hitched to would never be the Queen he needed to help him with his sovereign duty; that nothing he did or tried to help her with could heal or prevent her despair. He with his inborn responsibility to the Realm was trapped, alienated and desperately unhappy. In those days the family was an unrelenting fortress and the media a pack of hyenas. It took the divorces and scandals of three of the four children for the fortress to soften into a wounded Windsor castle and for the Queen to emerge as a “public saint” with a strong succession – Charles and after him his son William. That family suffered everything the century inflicted upon the people, larger than life in the public eye. The heart of the land beats with their Mystery Play.
For the first time I heard Camilla’s voice, her duchess-y warmth, her maturity, her style with the King as his Queen consort. When I draw her I see Charles’s harbour in her eyes. Very carefully Queen Elizabeth fixed everything in place before she crossed over. By attrition she over-rode the Church convention deep in herself and in constitutional law. Perhaps she remembered how Philip was her mainstay … the progressive relaxation in attitude may have been Philip’s no-nonsense suggestion. She had him by her side, a firm and beloved mate. Her son Charles has his own – a woman who also loves horses; with whom his mother could laugh and poke fun. Imagine the pair of women together in headscarves and gumboots, hamming up the “royal”.
The funeral was a huge performance for the populace: the problems continue. It awakened a ray of grace and a double rainbow; we need to resolve our own issues from home, not tug the Royal hand to do it for us. Their example in the Mystery Play is yet a reminder, an inspiration … to try to manage ourselves better; particularly as we enter a period of relative austerity. This austerity I believe, may peel off some of the consumerist luxuries we have become dependent on. What are they compared to the post war austerity? Can the mass-market “more-and-more” which mushroomed since the 1980s be sustained? Isn’t it the basis for a collapsing economy? Any presiding government-elect must be its scapegoat.
There is always the balancing out. So carry the great change. It may return us towards a lost gold standard – a water table – an authentic economy, built on value. There is a longing for this.
Tall oak near Plumstead – photo by Marisa
The Queen’s heritage is her eldest son our King as a visible leader of the land. His nature (despite loyalty to protocol) is to come out and say what he thinks. People remark, “It will never be the same again”. May it continue to grow and evolve in this flexible way? The family itself, downsizing, pruned, and coming out into the open inspires respect and compassion.
The public eye is a fickle sheep. Not so long ago the Queen was still “a buttoned up Ma’am” – since then by careful spin she blossomed into “a radiant Granny” who united the world. My fidelity to her and her family and their job is steadfast since the age of six. Fidelity is unspectacular and unwavering. It watches the public wave-machine scoop and push back and forth.
I am tugged into my core, leaving behind the dross which pretended to matter. The core effulges and delivers like a white rose … feeling myself suddenly within the veins of a man’s Mystery. We see in life’s shrines a Mystery Play like the dramatised poems of the early Christians. In the street close to the nation’s heart I was gently rolled like a marble to rest, to watch the queue enter the oldest and longest room, after a longest night shuffling along the riverbank. Each soul brought to the Queen an open secret – his or her private Treasure. A little girl danced and jumped and flung her arms up because they were nearly there! They could touch the building’s stone.
If the Queen’s body in her bier was the nation’s heart, the queue to enter was a vein of blue blood seeking oxygen and the people flowing out from a pulse of peace were a life-filled artery. Here I am, with rainbow flowers in my heart … like those flung over the hearse on its journey to Windsor; it arrived in the Queen’s home scattered with flowers on roof and bonnet like Botticelli’s “Flora”. As a seed, a plant, a sacred tree, it was lowered through sacred space into the Vault; into the ground.
Winter – after Botticelli
I was reminded often yesterday of the Rosicrucean Vault (in my alchemy studies), a sacred Tomb (in the divine proportion 5:8) where lies the body of “RC” (the founder of Rose Cross) since medieval times: a sprout. I see it now within earth; and the Key to open it in the heart. It is an old fashioned copper key: it is traditionally a White Rose. The Queen was lowered into it, without the Crown jewels … which gleam in their lustre on the altar, waiting to anoint her son.
For every family this funeral awakes a memory of a departed loved one. When my father died in 2016 I happened to be recreating and constructing the Rosicrucean Vault within my inner life; it was provided by timely grace, for into it we lowered him in that bird-singing Devon yard: a grave without lining, a basket coffin, a soul without clothes – and we had the bagpipes for him as well! followed by a sandwich feast in the village hall – I hear his merry laughter. His release was a joyous winter gale in the sky and in the ground the snowdrops of early spring.
My mother wishes he’d been there to enjoy the party and the precision how we cared and planted him in the ground; but he was, in every detail.
My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom. See alsoAquariel and Gene Keys Diary.
Today 10 July 1925 (was it?) Meher Baba began his silence
(Meher Baba images in this post are copyright (c) Sufism Reoriented 2023)
For I whom He touches, am silence too, the Ringing Presence and Beauty.
I was told once, “the face is the front of the brain”. Look into the river! How beautiful the brain is then – honour and do not close nor obstruct it.
I am a portraitist. Here is my fascination, here I am life-long drawing “the front of the brain”, over and over and over! I found this old snap, taken at Hartland on the North Devon coast in about 1960. I posed proudly for it because I had been swimming in tidal pools, running and glimmering over the rocks – but I wasn’t happy with the photo. Now I am! It is ageless – the soul’s immortal view on life at about age eleven in this lifetime, unbroken the sea. Through it come the faces of my father and my mother and their genetic lineages … through it comes the subtle-body’s dimensional enquiry and the populations she has been and is to be.
My body’s veins and vessels of silence … the exquisite silence for which every feature in the universe is a fluid and unfolding facial front, like the clouds.
As I “age” and this lifetime begins to stiffen and ache, I notice and am more sensitive to my physical weathers and sore tendons. That means more aware. In youth I took it all for granted and didn’t notice, I was distracted with the dramas. Precious moments come now, a few each day, to flow and stride out joyously. In the edgeless window is a childhood scent of red geranium leaves and with the loosening of heart, a capacity to see what “you” discover … the mystery of your continent, a flow of life and love and nonsense and memories.
It unwinds. Unwinding can be subjectively painful in any area where the source of pain is ignored. Sit by the source before the water rushes over the brink into veined Karmas and dramas. Go slow and elegant with the feast. Why do I keep forgetting? – the Beloved One teases and receives me everywhere I eagerly flow – his arms around me.
Balance is a constant sliding-rule. Reaching that place near source again … it’s by the stream just before the swift current rushes over the waterfall; perched on a rock and watching the flowing threads. Pause a moment …
The intention not to rush with such and such a blind binding emotive thread enticing as it is, takes long practice and “spiritual muscle”. I was able gradually to let go of much of my gossip column. Indignation and offence are short-lived. They spike and agonise, but I cannot hold grudges. More water flows ever from the Mountain’s heart. It scours the banks higher up so clays and sediments descend through me. They hurt and then dissolve. Solve, coagula!
Mind and body tango thus. Silent is the fall and the soft golden colour of russet stones in the deep, and the flash of fishes.
Here’s Pete Townshend this morning singing the “Parvadigar”
**
**
**
My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom. See alsoAquariel and Gene Keys Diary.
On July 14 2024 a Sahavas weekend (“Dwelling together in the Beloved”) was held at the Meher Baba Association in Hammersmith, London. I was invited to give a presentation with slides – my path as an artist with Meher Baba. It was warmly received, and since then, the project expanded to be shared more widely.
This post is the pdf document (270 MB) I developed from the powerpoint presentation. It contains well over a hundred drawings, and many links to Mischa Rutenberg’s beautiful songs and videos on Youtube.
Scroll down to the grey square (below), it opens into the uploaded pdf file after a minute or two. However I strongly recommend you use the Download button under the grey square, rather than try to read it and navigate the music links online.
JAI MEHER BABA. Enjoy!
(All Images, Videos, and Music are copyright Sufism Reoriented 2024)
Drawings of Meher Baba and his companions in this post are copyright Sufism Reoriented 2024
“Gently, Sweetly” is a song by Mischa Rutenberg based on Jelalludin Rumi’s poem (Farhad Shafa translation). I listened to it – and other Rumi songs – on the headphones while dancing up the cliffs near Combe Martin. I didn’t know until after my return to London, that Mischa planned serendipitously to release “Gently Sweetly” as a video containing archival photos of Meher Baba’s Devon visit. It was a race for me to complete and contribute my new “Challacombe” drawings!
East Challacombe is a farm on the north-west edge of Exmoor in North Devon. To this remote spot on the coast, near Great Hangman’s (the highest sea-cliff in England), came Meher Baba in 1931, to meet his new English companions. The farm was then a spiritual retreat centre, run on strict lines by a seeker and poet, Meredith Starr.
Mischa’s “Gently Sweetly” song has a retro 1930s poignancy: in it, Farhad Shafa reads the poem in Farsi, and also his own translation. In those days, visitors to the farm before, during, and after the Light it held, wept: they didn’t know why. I do too, when I hear and watch the song unfold: in tears with the sea, the coast and the waves – the tide of the world breathes back and forth.
I grew up just 60 miles from this romantic coastline which enriched my childhood. As I became a Baba Lover, my imagination was seized with his presence there. In May 2022 I set out to discover his footsteps along the cliff paths.
Here is my journal of the pilgrimage.
A drawing while on the train London to Barnstaple –
… And a Gene Keys Dream Arc painting
***
CONTEMPLATION
A Kingfisher pierces its reflection in the lake. The stag and the seahorse meet and gaze at one another across it. Inhale deeply …
It cascades softly in my capillary. It kicks and surges and bursts in my being. IGNITE! … open my heart with wings and fly: It throws me around in a gasp like entering the sea. Our troubles are in His Hand. Who could place a foot without Him?
Meher Baba and friends on Wild Pear beach, 1931
***
16 May 2022 – Touch
Ready for off.. It is 6.24 this birdsong morning, I will stretch open this week, change my tempo of life, sit by the sea and pause. Goodness! I’m going to Challacombe!
What a funny small keyboard this new iPad has. I call it “Little Slab”. My Macbook pro which I’m leaving at home is called “Jumbo”. Most of us just bash on with our tablets, which are proof against the flailing unconscious monkey, but there is an art – don’t bang the screen, touch it with precision. Fingertip print – as with my fingerprint password. Respect the device for its beauty. Skill and fear are opposites! Unfold the brown paper of my thoughts. Skill is an intimate interaction.
There are gentle pointers, sauntering out with my bag for the next 6 days, my drawing stuff just in case. Sit and rest my back; the birds are busy outside. If I met a snake suddenly, I might be afraid, but I love their movement in the grass and their limitless symbol wealth and the way they curve a coiled knot into a straight ripple line.
On the train to the west country, I listened to Murshid J’s wisdom and thought of the Andean Quetzal with its wonderful colours – a higher-plane ripple of the cosmic serpent. A Sufi loves God without restraint. Take Rumi with me! Be a sea creature – the whole field: the living cell-membrane and its chorionic villi. Cultivate peace and clarity.
Mehera described Baba’s voice when he talked and sang – he sang with so much warmth and beauty. I recalled what he said to Murshida Duce when she told him she doesn’t want to be a Sufi Master, all she ever wanted to do was sing; and he looked at her and brought his hand in a slow zig zag down the Tree of Life and said, “Through the Ages, I SING!”
THE BELOVED is the song. When I love someone, it is that I am tiny beside them as their earth; and they sing. They are their measureless being.
Eruch said “people ask us what did you gain with Baba all these years? That’s the wrong question, they should ask, what did we LOSE?”
Lose my winter coat to the Sun.
***
17 May2022Arrive and case the joint
Coast path and view to Little and Great Hangman’s – click on gallery to view, and wait a moment
Looking down into Wild Pear beach at high tide from the slopes of Little Hangman’s. The b&b where I stayed is in a valley the other side of the headland.
***
I feel at home here, and know where everything is – including a fragrant ale called Legend at the Pack of Cards up the road – and yestereve after I arrived by bus from Barnstaple I walked the whole magnificent Hangman’s and Baba coastline. I met a weasel watcher who said Yes this path zigzags all the way down to the beach very steep – some of it slid away near the bottom – I shall go there today. Beware of ticks, he said.
When I arrived in Combe Martin “the Beloved” knew where to go – intuitively I got off the bus and walked along the high street, expecting to ask the way; and there stood Saffron bed&breakfast. It is placed very near the foot of the coastal path and the paths going up to Challacombe. Great Hangman’s is just 2 miles away. As I saw from the bus along the tossing green hills around Ilfracombe, the pointy mountain is Little Hangman’s. Great Hangman’s is a higher dark elephant-back beyond it.
Walking up into the postcard photograph was a thrill, all being huge and steep; myself in mountain goat mode. The sea is quiet, hazy, and still. I pictured Baba with his white garments flowing around him on these steep footpaths – his companions battling along behind him. I’m a bit doddery and cautious – especially downhill in my new 5-finger shoes. It drizzled a bit on the tops.
Baba bagged for himself a pointy peak here in North Devon, rather like Seclusion Hill at Meherazad – as did Ramana with Arunachala. These holy mountains bob up everywhere.
I feel tired and clean and blank, I like the high-street b&b and my room, it isn’t posh, it has a big white bed and a neat tiny shower/loo and it looks towards the small town and the green hillside opposite and up into the baby blue sky washed with silk white cloud undies. Bacon and eggs for breakfast, then the town and the harbour, then up to the coastal cliffs again and … shall I climb down to that secluded beach?
On my walk yesterday I peered at farms nesting in the hillsides, to guess which one is Baba’s. To case the joint and establish my panorama, I throw a wide noose and follow gently where led. Seagulls and distant crooning pigeons.
***
18 May Dancing with Rumi
Yesterday I took an immense adventurous gulp, and this morning am grumpy. Got into a tiz last night trying to communicate with my friend on this thing. Email aborts if there are too many pictures and words: fb-messenger was elusive. Etc.
Today is sunny again.
Here’s yesterday: scrambled out to the headland between Combe Martin and Baba’s beach, tide dropping. Swam and then played and danced in the jewelled amphitheatre’s of Baba’s rocky beach, climbed up the overgrown zig zag trail to the cliff path, explored the country towards the Challacombe’s, got tired and lay down to snooze in a field, it started to rain, came home down a sweet wild-garlic perfume path. Wind came up and the tide raced in with big waves.
I wrote:
“I came to the rocks and sea’s embrace again and cried. Wept. Then I lay like a seal along a ledge close to the tide, just above the water. Rainbow tints the play of millions of sanskaric fibres just as MJ said – the whole of life and its wars and generations breathes – I rested along the rainbow threads, the ripples, the soft gurgle slap suck back and forth and everywhere, my bones sinking softly into their barnacled couch ahh — sanskaric as in the sea water, all of it the rock – aligned. Snake, water, stone. Union.
(Getting my balance back over rocks) – move slowly like a creeper or sloth, take your time, the balance will return. Caressing the strata with hands and feet, check each hold lest it break – this isn’t the indoor climbing wall! The rock glistens with jewels.
Watch ALL OF LIFE in the breathing sea water as if visiting Earth for the first time, this is how she feels, breathes and is, this is how it feels inside her element.
Soak up the cool damp of the rock, the warm sun.
Used to have occult and esoteric learning, ornaments and language – all of it NOTHING besides the primordial wisdom and Beauty of the seawaters sliding over the rock.
Human tinsel in the town.
I am a rock for ever and forever. I cry out with the swelling white wave.”
(Click on gallery to view, and wait for it to upload. Low tide on Wild Pear Beach)
The zig zag trail above Wild Pear beach
This morning the Rumi book while waiting for breakfast – let page fall open and finger find and touch the Oracle, then look – just look what Rumi tells me for today!
In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest Where no one sees you,
But sometimes I do, And that sight becomes this art.
*
Drum-sound rises on the air, Its throb, my heart.
A wave inside the beat says, “I know you’re tired, But come. This is the way.”
Are you jealous of the ocean’s generosity? Why would you refuse to give This joy to anyone?
Fish don’t hold the sacred liquid in cups! They swim the huge fluid freedom.
*
We’ve come again to that knee of seacoast No ocean can reach.
Tie together all human intellects, They won’t stretch to here.
The sky bares its neck so beautifully, But gets no kiss. Only a taste.
This is the food that everyone wants Wandering the wilderness, “Please give us Your manna and quail.”
*
We’re here again with the beloved, This air, a shout. These meadowlands An astonishing myth.
We’ve come into the presence of the One Who was never apart from us.
When the water bag is filling, you know The water carrier is here!
The bag leans lovingly against your shoulder. “Without you I have no knowledge, No way to touch anyone.”
When someone chews sugarcane He’s wanting this sweetness.
Inside this globe the soul roars like thunder. And now silence, my strict tutor.
I won’t try to talk about Shams. Language cannot reach that presence.”
(RUMI – Coleman Barks translation)
Cormorant and whale
***
P rang and I told him all this. X
Having scribed this, Little Slab is my Friend again like when it took photos of Baba’s beach at low tide yesterday and played Mischa’s Meher Baba Rumi songs through the earbuds – Dance Dervish Dance over jewel rock-formations, the delicate beauty of the sea’s paintbrush, once I slipped on wet seaweed, fell, and banged my thigh badly but bounced up again at once. Spreading out my arms a great deal on this wild terrain, like tentacles, butterfly wings, balancers.
I have to learn also what kind of light fingertip touch Little Slab is primed to and obeys best, without skittering around. Precision is care. Care for life and family.
(Click on gallery to view, and wait for it to load)
(This was written after I got home … )
These fish and seals and sperm and breast are a miracle of the whole of life – and the precision-craft of the streaming waves and curving flake-ripples – look at it and look at it and look at it, all the wisdom, beauty and abundance is there – and if I hadn’t taken this picture I would not see it, the flash it shone in me would be forgotten – and so is any day’s Oracle or advice.
Spirituality earths to ground through feet – Siddhi or way of illumination and Lightness. The nourishment flows into my willing veins, the heart’s wonderful crimson capillary. Explore these threads today! Change again the pattern of sludge that builds up in my body. Dissolve! Don’t lose what it’s like on the coast path and those beautiful flowing rocks on the beach. The Treasure ripples out … diamonds, rubies, amethysts, pearls, emeralds.
It is a wonderful irony that technology’s accelerative rush and density in the human tissue is in fact the PAUSE BUTTON! STOP – see this – be glad no artist on earth can paint it. Mr Fishy.
Look at the watery ripples he swims in – at the same time an accompanying crocodile – such beauty – such companions and streams and beasts and soft noses and bears and breasts and seals and mushroom spores. Just one caress of the ocean – a picture of aeons, of the beginning of Earth and everything She would ever dream up in her epidermis and the glory of her interior organs.
How could I presume to sketch such beauty without the vast époques scribing into being each delicate line? How valiant stupid we humans are. But we invented camera to pause ourselves with. Pause. Pause. Pause. Thousands of precious pauses whenever our family pleases us – disappear under the scrolling prayer-wheel of grubby thumb.
THANK YOU THIS WONDERFUL REVELATION. And do you know? Exploring my Baba beach photos, enlarging details to close-up contemplative mandalas – as dear Jim says, thus are we ourselves, each human whether considered good or bad at present, the balance and fluidity of millions of lifetimes born and decorated with barnacles. Seeing with God’s eye, here is love.
***
19 May2022 The Wave moving through rock
It started to rain yesterday and is still grey and wet this morning – good timing – I had fallen exhausted, couldn’t rock climb. At a low tide swim on the beach when still sunny, the small sharp waves smacking through me stripped away my aura – had to go back to the b & b and into bed – felt cold and kept needing to pee perhaps kidneys in shock.
I met the adventure as usual with the Spirit’s enthusiasm – the Spirit. Poor old legs and feet! But … look how God keeps drawing …
***
Earlier I clambered cautiously out to that place in the headland again now surging with big white waves and lay sweetly, gently beside it for a while. My balance over the rocks was poor.
I slept last night but still feel frail and this morning upset with communications-failure on Little Slab. I feel rather miz and far from home this morning but … after breakfast I’ll go inland up that high valley to the Challacombe’s, I bought a map yesterday at the village museum, on it there is an East Challacombe AND a North C … go up a narrow lane that says no access … and “stroll” without haste up to Great Hangman’s. The Highest Cliff in England plunges to the sea, over the hidden side, I want to see it.
On that rock where I lay by the waves in the headland yesterday morning I wrote:
“I have no occupation but The wave moving through The ocean’s sanskaric fibres Swelling Into a fringe white Corner of the seas.”
Given my obsession with communicating, the failure to talk on Messenger while here hits me hard – and that is so silly because there is email; technology invented a host of superfluous problems anyway like busy gnats.
I shall gentle my weary self up the wild-garlic path to realise my mission – see the place where the Beloved One and his companions stayed. I was given one great day packed with splendours. Who knows what may happen next? We are seasoned travellers.
Baba with Minta Toledo and neighbours near the farm
Rumi page falls open to:
“Memory raises his penis, straining it in thought Toward the pushing down and the lifting up Which make that member grow large with delight.”
**
“Spiritual experience is a modest woman Who looks lovingly at only one man.
It’s a great river where ducks Live happily and crows drown.
The visible bowl of form contains food That is both nourishing and a source of heartburn.
There is an unseen presence we honour That gives the gifts.”
(RUMI – Coleman Barks translation)
***
***
20 May2022The Heart is infinite in everyone and everywhere
The drawing I did of Baba looking sweet when I was on the train is over-shaded but not all that bad!
Yesterday I walked up the wild-garlic path – do you know, overnight almost all their white flowers were gone – over – how lucky I saw them the day before, but it still smells delicious … to where it meets the lane in the valley dip, the lane crosses it and the brook by a ford and ascends to Challacombe Farm. I started to take photos. Up the steep lane to where it turns a corner I imagined Meher Baba appearing suddenly round that corner dressed not in woollen plus-fours, stockings, shoes, and raincoat, but a warm coat over his flowing white trousers and sadra, smiling radiantly, his nut-gold dark hair flowing …
Meeting his embrace, my arms-around … I was back in my body which the sea waves knocked me out of, the day before. The fatigue when I’m not completely in my body is a weight to carry – what a difference, subtle soft and eager as I settled back into my tail. What a LOVE this is, with the Master, with the doorman.
Immediately above this, the lane divided to North Challacombe farm on the left and East Challacombe farm on the right – it is not a right of way. Up I went to the right, pausing to relish the view as it opened up into sunshine. By the farm I was met by FOUR cheerful but businesslike dogs doing their job very loudly, I entered the farmyard and saw the white house, the side of it, the side door, and kennels. In the 1930s photos it is grey stone or pebbledash. The owner an elderly man limped out to the barking dogs, and I said I knew some people who stayed here in the 1930s and may I have a quick look around and take a photo? (I am shy with boundaries and didn’t ask if I may go in the front garden).
Click to view gallery and wait for it to load
Through which window did Baba throw cherry stones at the Meditating Meredith?
It’s a weathered white T shaped house and it is called Combe Cottage. Near it, on the right of the farmyard is a new timbered one-storey building like an extension or guest house. I stayed only a few moments. The place is remote and private on its hillside.
Going back to the entrance I climbed over a gate to a steep farm track into the field; the moorland fringe of Great Hangman’s began just two fields away up there, and I’m sure this is where Baba and his rapt companions escaped for their walks. Very happy: beautiful views of the valley flowing down to Combe Martin as I ascended; a herd of pale cows and their calves; a white stallion stood observantly on the hillside – YES the Kalki avatar stayed here …
It isn’t a compulsion to draw. It is love. It is love like how it felt to touch the sunny rocks again, hands and feet, heart embracing. My drawings are rocks. Enjoy Baba’s nobility of expression standing quietly near the farm. Darshan is available each moment.
..
On the map I’d seen “highest cliff in England” to the side of Hangman headland and determined to find it. My step was now light and easy – around the huge hill I went and began to descend/short-cut a steep diagonal, curving round to the left to a much lower path, the explorer’s brilliant cautious happiness. I came to an extraordinary formation below me, like a giant axe had cut into the mountain. It is called Hangman’s Gut, a sheer gully cleft descending perhaps 800 feet to the sea, steep and grassy with red sandstone shale between sheer cliffs. I might just be able to scramble up or down it all the way if I had to. It is dramatic.
. click to view gallery and wait for it to load
The right hand crest of the “Cut” as you look out to sea is an arête, a great wave about to break and then chopped through; behind the wave swoops a brilliant green (with young blueberry bushes) vale down to the intense blue sea. It looked perilous but possible to creep down the wave-crest, the ridge?
First I followed the footpath around the flank and along where the map says “dangerous to proceed” – the heathery brink of the main cliff. I took photos of the tide far below. And then returned to the spectacular breaking-wave ridge and crept very carefully down it to join up my viewpoints … far, far down I went; and there was golden vetch and brilliant sea-pink. On the vale’s easterly crest as I descended were stags. They roared at me. I made a throaty sound back and sent peace and then they were quiet. The land formation is extraordinary, sharply tilted as in a dream dimension or tsunami, a plane of the ocean itself.
So I reached at last a grassy place on the ridge I could sit soaking up the sun and watch the shore below and the mystic blue expanse – misty further out – of the world’s waters, a wrinkle of breathing sanskaric fibres in any focused spot. I am rather purist for no other sound but the sea and silence but presently got out iPad and earbuds and Mischa’s Sufi songs in the scented heather softly. It was miraculous – all the way from across the pond – and I am in awe of his music and its beauty, his huge creative oeuvre and celebration.
Began with “A time for heroes” and on down the tracks into the Rumi songs – when Days have no Nights. Circle turn spin …
And I wrote …
How is it That Beloved’s smiling feet tread A far-off coastal homeland Timelessly
And through a half century’s tincture of time Your songs in California Here this remote Devon moment Raise a curve of paradise Over the Sea –
Without time In the whole round world, How could you know your songs To Baba speak this wild place and its heart
How did you make Such Beauty
The Heart is infinite In everyone And everywhere.
Climbing back up the steep goat-path arête, my feet and hands an upward tango are carefully placed in rhythm to the music; the dance is effort-free!!
It rocks.
It is stunningly beautiful to feel this. It continued until I reached the nipple cairn atop Great Hangman’s massive breast, I moved a little over its crest again to sit and watch the endless depth of the sea. After that I was fading and put the music away.
The Vision I had during this was and is: the heart’s depth is infinite. The heart is endless in each individual good or bad, each beast and insect, each blade of grass, each fish and predator awakened or not to awareness. Love has no end or beginning. We humans have such stuff in the way that rarely do we plunge into our intimate inheritance with the Divine Beloved, loving at every level and in every ancient strata of the rock and every sweet salt-flower … the Song of the Sea.
Loving touches and is this peace; in Baba’s arms and in his lap.
Who can say why or how? It is in the music and I am surely not the only one to receive it so, and to dance around my table and sing. Who could chatter about it? Here at the edge of Exmoor our Beloved One came all the way from India and stayed for just a week; the whole region is printed privately with his feet. Today’s earth-blue crystal falls into ocean immensity.
Return to Combe St Martin along the coastal path? Or down the valley again? I opted for the valley, wanting to visit North Challacombe farm and further verify Baba’s location. I descended again through the cows and past East Challacombe to the T junction, then a steep weary ascent through pines to the North Challacombe “farm holiday centre”. People round here don’t use their feet, only four-wheel-drives. The place is spanking smart in a conifer clump, I met the woman there, horsy and urban, and asked for her card; she said they’d been refurbished and open since 2017. I thanked her and departed.
Some writers in the Meher Baba UK fb group said East Challacombe got converted and renamed North Challacombe. Clearly Baba did NOT stay in that modern chopped-out setting – I went up there on my FEET to verify; East Challacombe, the house although renamed, is still there, very much so.
Back to the b&b down the wild-garlic path, still sweet-smelling … fulfilled. Unfortunately I had too large an evening meal with ale at the friendly place on the seafront; went to bed footsore, congested, exhausted, and didn’t sleep. I miss my home now. Tomorrow is my last day here. I rang my mother while still atop Great Hangman’s, to share with her this place and its delight and what a crazy family we are and how happy she is that I still do these things, and she remembered her solitary ecstatic journey around Sutherland not so long ago, sleeping in the car.
Click and wait, to view gallery
The photos I took are poor relations to the adventure. Try to accept my surface sludge of life and its noise and worries, obsessions and fatigues. It only veils the Real Beloved Life, which is oceanic, the heart; the shifty surface doesn’t matter.
The Light of Home is breaking the clouds asunder wherever “here” is. Isn’t that the weather pattern? The Shadow makes the Light radiant. His divine energy flows through my tiredness. Hold onto Meher Baba’s daaman, to calm all modes of being, the One crossing through always into the One.
Today It’s been raining again. The sunburn on my arms is sore and I’m worn out; but the sun breaks through and I shall be off soon for another “gentle stroll” – into the woods – who knowswhere to.
Baba and his companions were confined to the house by Meditating Meredith. Am I doing the stretchy landscape things they longed for the liberty to?
“Baba’s Wild Pear beach” is a steep descent from the cliff path – if they also walked down the wild garlic path to the beach at Combe St Martin, it’s only a mile or two. They took photos on the beach, and explored the wind-swept coastal path over Great Hangman’s, above the farm. This evening I shall look at it again online in the “Meher Baba travels” website.
***
21 May 2022May the Light of His Silence break in every Heart
View of Combe Martin from the west. Great Hangman’s crest with East Challacombe just visible below it is to the upper right. The farm at upper centre is West Challacombe.
I go home today. I’m tired, away from my nest. Yesterday I found and removed four or five ticks on my arms and legs and one near my neck– ENOUGH OF THIS! Then I explored a bit the other coastline to the west, but the footpath there is clogged with property development. I caught some views up the Challacombe valley and its high romance. Then it rained and I scarpered to the b & b and into bed for the afternoon. Then a stroll up into wet sunny woods the opposite side which I see from the bedroom window – a long view-top with lush green meadows, walker-friendly, I enjoyed this.
In the evening a rock scramble out around the point, the tide had turned and I came to the other side of where I swam on the first day. Balance was stronger, hands and feet prehensile.
Touch and hold that flake or surface before you trust it!
Mischa Rutenberg is gathering together a peace project for Ukraine (2022) involving musicians internationally, and sometimes he is “impatient” with the recording process. Isn’t it curious (no it isn’t at all) that I listened to the perfection on Great Hangman headland, the clarity under the sea.
***
This morning I looked up Baba at East Challacombe online, https://www.meherbabatravels.com/location-gallery/england/east-challacombe-england/. Tony Zois who created the site, collected a mass ot fascinating research and stories. Someone visited in 1995 and took more photos; I didn’t take any pictures of the actual paths where he walked around on Gt Hangman’s and feel at the moment that I didn’t accomplish my mission.
I DID connect with him in my special way. Go home and cultivate the Tree, the plant … it is only ever a matter of moving into my inner being, wherever I am – so at the moment I’m a tick crawling around, but when I am in my home I shall expand into my body’s embrace.
This is a gene key ‘Dream Arc’ whose shadow (inertia) is the tick – the gift (determination) transforming the shadow is the busy beaver – the siddhi (invincibility) or way of illumination is the cormorant – From my paintings for the Gene Keys transmission based on the I Ching.
***
Baba on the beach with Kitty Davy’s brother Herbert
***
22 May 2022
Home with my proper good coffee and sunshine. Dear Ris my daughter cycled Ramsgate and Margate sea-coast yesterday her birthday and met a Cycling Chap. The sea was quite rough and she didn’t swim.
On the train yesterday I listened to MJ on sexual energy:
“… Since there is no successful blocking of sexual energy there is successful expression, and this successful expression is transformative. Leading into “the right” side of the body will lift it. Meher Baba asked people not to repress but recognise the source of the ancient thought/feeling in experience and to let it purify in our mind.
“When (still in the) winding phase, it makes good sense to build STRONG BLOCKING FORCES to hold and construct that energy …”
Earlier, MJ tells how sanskaric fibres and the whole well of Life are constructed and shaped in the forms of genitals and breast and the necessity for many male and female incarnations to develop and balance them. As I know, it is the Spirit and the forms of the sea.
“It is impossible to hold certain kinds of love without fully developed breasts … … When Unwinding, if one loves others or loves love, it is quite impossible to block, force, push, pull. You fail!
“Wave of sexuality is not lust. (Lust is me-obsessed for gain, pressure, or greed in any area).
“Any wise person is aware of the whole range and does not act in fearful or threatening ways.
“The pure mind considers and understands the range of feeling and its levels and purposes and the way one level is transformed into another.
“All matter/thought wishes to propagate itself and spawn a whole family.”
THE MUSIC IS A LIVING ENTITY. It flowed me in and as the sea, essence of the deep. I recall with romance the high green hill behind the town where the b & b was/is. The Little Hangman peak like Arunachala dances high above the footpaths, big and steep.
It was MJ’s birthday yesterday, as well as Ris’s, and Gary C was in a hospice and died – the grapevine told me – “A potent day”. On the journey home in the train I felt wobbly in the soul’s portal of arrivals and departures. I felt so very happy to reach my house and wrap its Treasury around me and open Jumbo Mac’s big solid screen and be easily in touch again with my friend. I am behind and backwashed with the creative. I want to sketch Baba in 1931 in that place where I have been.
At the moment I am in the gentle sound of MJ’s voice, whom I listened to on the single-track Tarka Line train through bucolic villages of Umberleigh, Eggesford, and Crediton.
***
23 May2022Watch God’s hands
Oops. Got my knuckles rapped for my whim of Baba on the Combe Martin coastal path near Little Hangman’s blended with Seclusion Hill which I sketched yesterday morning –
Sometimes JA’s playtime puts her in shtuck with Those Who Know. However the point is made, and thank God quickly, otherwise my whim might have bounced along unwitting. I feel downcast at “failing” with my portraits – three I sent yesterday – no matter how hard I try to see and get them right. However, the result of collaborating is ALWAYS so much better than when it was just me doing it. Every time. When my efforts bounce back it smarts a little, but then I see what was off, which I couldn’t see before. The pictures are done in tandem – two eyes are better than one. And where am I happiest? Not in blowing my bubble, but in sharing, serving, and rediscovery.
I shall relocate my “Baba in Challacombe” landscape to Seclusion Hill, in the light of the universal work he did there, which dawns on me. It is sacred work, not an artist’s fancy, nor confined to my inner meanings. Value the shared Virgo-ascendant precision with my dear friend on the path, and stay kind to the un-flattered child.
I feel shy of telling my adventures and revelations … and bereaved, it is the sorrow when a peak has passed. Watch God’s hands, the veins of those trillions of threads in the sea. And feel my Sun dawn – recognise yet again, Meher Baba is not my project but the Avatar of that Hill and in the world. Recognition steps forth again, liberated from the struggle with how to position his arms.
Ris told me she no longer listens to the news or to the torrential diet of disaster on the media. She became selective and listens to Louis Theroux whom I used to enjoy. He goes around talking to people nosily. I made her weep with laughter yesterday when I struggled to tame my unruly toes into five-finger shoes on the Underground train – having been in too much hurry to put them on in A and H’s house. She showed me on her phone the photos she took of converging waves clapping their hands at Ramsgate … the sea’s narrative textures which both of us love. For her birthday present yesterday I printed the pictures I took when I danced on Baba’s beach – the infinite swirls, colours, and textures in the rock: God’s art.
My walks on this map are the red and blue dotted lines. The b & b where I stayed is the small red circle with a cross.
Suddenly realise – all this little stretch of coastline is sacred to Meher Baba’s presence and his work there in the 1930s. The layer wakes up again like a leaf. What about a blog post to share with Baba Lovers and Sufis? … the photos taken in 1931, alongside mine in 2022 … with a gallery of the Jewels in the rocks offsetting rolling green hills and drawings of Baba and his companions at the farm and by the sea. Let it season, sink in and sober up.
Ris and I walked and talked a little behind H who strode stockily with his phone ordering Indian takeaway for dinner – when we got back to Bounds green it had arrived and A was setting it out on the white wrought-iron table in the garden.
Some of the creatures in the aeon of “God Speaks” …
***
24 May 2022 THE HILL
I’m busy on a photo of Baba taken in E Challacombe, he is limpidly beautiful, wearing the black/white stripy fur jacket, the alphabet board held on his chest, his finger on the Y points to his heart I had a struggle in the drawing with achieving detail too soon. Nearly every time this happens and constrains it; constant adjustments and re-doing eyes and trying to make him NOT look like Mrs Salter. My plan is to background this portrait with a landscape impression, the fields and hilltops..
I would like to contour the land with his face, I managed that yesterday when I redid the Seclusion Hill background … the ancient Hill and its wisdom (see May 17 entry, near the beginning of this post). From its peak where he built a cabin to do his work, there is an immense view of the Deccan plain, and in the distance are other lumpy hills and mountains. It is like Arunachala. Great Masters, Sadgurus, Avatars unanimously find and settle on nature’s pyramids. Seclusion Hill is near the scarp of a long beast or ridge-back.
Last week’s feeling of the coastal path and its little mountain is unexpectedly restored! They merge …
Mischa’s music gently, sweetly, danced up Great Hangman over the sea … and by providence (the way birds carry seeds and straws) to how many remote places around the world ? The inner Wise One tucks him or herself into a hill or a rock or a sea-wave or the sky for a moment or a lifetime of the divine countenance. That moment, the Light of the All, is irradiated eternally without concern whether it shall last.
The human sentinel is a moment’s sea-pink.
Try when drawing Baba to look further than my window, conscious of what he means privately to others, and honour that.
There are surprisingly only 2 pics of Hangman online.
The bit which sticks furthest out into the sea like a nose is where I climbed half way down, sat and communed with Mischa’s Rumi songs, then danced with them all the way back up! It was like planting a flower … allmost 45 degrees, grassy with heather and deer paths.
The Hangman cliff is a strange formation – that vertical slice across the hill-loaf. On its brink is where I also sat. Look at those prehensile claws/paws on the sea.
I have bites on my legs still developing and itching – must have got them from there, and the ticks, even through proper shoes and long trousers. I don’t think there were any more ticks other than the ones I found and pulled off. My right ankle is swollen from when I fell on Baba’s wild pear beach, and from a couple of times it was wrenched over on rough ground/grass hummocks. P was horrified when I showed him the black bruise on my left thigh – he screamed Arnica, Arnica, it might get infected.
How lovely that garlic-flower scented path is. This came to mind yesterday: the companion on the rope. We are in His Hands? Rock-scrambling at the low-tide point, my hands and feet were sensitive feelers stretching, curving, embracing, trying to keep a slow rhythm and flow of movement over the Beloved. When I was young I ran and jumped and “read” the pattern of several leaps ahead – this is impossible now; the way I creep around is less showy and more sensuous.
The fire in my soul at the beginning of the month became serene water, constantly I hear the gurgle and slap of soft waves in caves. High on the cliff curve I tune into the ocean’s essence within my spine, the core. Lighthouse. The breath. In Early Human before getting cluttered and clammed up with intellect what can there have been but LOVE?
***
..
..
25 May 2022 GESTATING
Well, good morning. A bit battled with the inner low-tides across each other.
In the evening I started from the photo in 1932 to draw Baba in winter coat & plus-fours with Minta on a windy hillside – but only room in it for four figures. I wanted them full length and am bursting out of little A4.
25th today … rediscover, refresh and bask with ocean threads. Such moments don’t cling to the personal surface; It doesn’t matter what I do in life, it is the LEVEL which counts. There is a green river of that mile of coastline and the wild-garlic path and the weathered whitish grey farmhouse, the silent Avatar of the Age strides around there with his little flock … God speaks. There is wonder in their eyes. In the 1930s it was remote, and must have taken all day to reach by train from London – ah no, they drove. Up the muddy lane to the farm they walked, carrying their suitcases.
When I’m drawing – struggling to get it right and then breakthrough – all my body goes into it and is used up, I am then tired, flat ,and uninspired. Sometimes it is enough to step outside for half an hour for my body to refill, return, and show me what to do.
***
26 May FOOTFALL OF TIME – TWIN HELIX
Yesterday I completed the one with Minta Toledo – she was Delia’s sister and not a seeker but when Delia introduced them, Baba poured out light and she fell in love and there are many photos of them holding hands or having a cuddle – I tried hard to capture her facial expression from the photo – and also began to draw this one of Baba coming round the corner in the lane to me, opening his arms.
It was the usual delicate rock-climb with Baba’s face but not too arduous, and trial/error adjustments to his coat and his stride and his arm curving out to welcome … the drawing became leafy, the spring-tide banks of the lane, the leaf-shadows on the ground – the textural density of my work/play nowadays. The Beloved One comes to meet me with suggestive patterns around his presence like a heart … an ear around him … a figure of eight through his centre … we embrace, and now this one is done, the two or three more won’t give much trouble …
I was reminded yesterday that power flows through the system when it feels weak. Picture a remote agricultural lane, this extraordinary character with long curly hair and shining eyes emerges! This memoir takes me forward by the hand – worry not. It will accomplish its purpose for which it planted JA in Combe Martin with her faculty, her loving heart, and willing feet.
So now, what is the quality of time?
An Illustration from Richard Rudd’s “The Gene Keys”. DNA twin-helix spiral … the cosmic serpent throughout the universe … an interwoven dance of pentagons – the Code
Time is, as Murshid J would say, not linear but a sphere.
Baba’s footfall is created across … more than 90 years! Goodness-sakes. The spontaneous scribble of leaf shadows on the lane drew a ripple from his sandalled foot – (I should have drawn him shod in welly boot or heavy slipper, but this is a fairy tale) – a tremor of time and music.
This one from Persia and Maharashtra arrived in my heart’s homeland, mysterious and remote … the magic is in the telluric and cultural interface of our rolling fields and rugged rocks with his ancient sunny landscape: here are small rural homesteads, the dung of browsing cattle, and leafy lanes. He shivered in the rain and mist and mud, they gave him boots and warm socks.
He arrived with the waves breaking onto the beach “of endless time”: hearing this sound, he speaks with it:
A MESSAGE FROM THE MASTER…Given on the seashore at Combe Martin, England, April 22 , 1932
“BABA is like the sun … anyone whose heart is pure can receive the rays. Make the heart pure by thinking of the Master, and then loving Him.
“BABA is like the sea, which receives weak or strong, diseased or healthy, dotard, sinner or saint.
“BABA is like an Infinite Ocean , and in order to realize Him, the ego must be annihilated altogether.”
Courtesy of ; The Awakener – Vol.1 No.2 1953
***
***
The coastal path over Great Hangman
Meher Baba with Margaret Craske, Kitty Davy, and Margaret Starr, 1931
I am charmed at the way Baba’s “Seclusion hill” (alias Little Hangman) bobs up along the coast, an echoing sentinel, look there it is again in the distance, near Ilfracombe. To my regret I hadn’t taken a photo from this point, but after I got home I watched a class of Murshida Conner’s in which she talks of Challacombe … and there was the providential photo I needed! (above the drawing.)
Shadows and outlines swim under the scene, like whales and creatures beneath the sea. A sentence slowly forms. There is an ascending continent. I seem to see and feel an ocean bed rise up to clarity through deep water in simple sequence: a mandala of five lifetimes is spoken in these hills … beyond speech.
The curves across this landscape please my eye very much. It is a response to this week’s “topography” contact with an earlier lifetime or group of lives. Look over the side of a boat and catch sight of rippled sands, a pattern of fields and cities; the hidden is revealed and almost speaks. I saw in Abdullah’s smile the other day, my mad mute joy when I connect to the Companions of the Light and my bounden duty to draw them – and when I’m dancing – and the old terror and dullness when I fell away from the boat and lost it all. And Oh what a long labour the drawing is – need to be faithful – just to sketch/scribble/Art is not sufficient.
Here Baba and four of his Lovers fountain from the path. I drew them first, and then the landscape. Is the number 5 significant?
There it is in the DNA helix diagram above … the dance of pentagons!
Seclusion Hill at Meherazad has transformed, it was planted with trees to develop soil cohesion. Siva’s mountain Arunachala in Tamil Nadu likewise was “greened”. Did Baba note, amused, how faithfully in this far-out place Little Hangman echoes the sacred mountain where he did his work?
***
27 May 2022 – Unwind the threads …to weave a picture of Him
Why so grumpy today? Didn’t you catch sight of the illumined Quetzalcoatl bird ? The cosmic serpent, the mountain and the doubting grasshopper?
Oh! I listened to dear Jim on the Underground train, again on Reincarnation – very carefully, kept stopping it, backtracking to hear again. So cheer up, old thing!
He said basically in his language, long-drawn out and precise … he said the soul in her current incarnation carries the woven mixture of millions of lifetimes human, animal, aqueous, and mineral, and to realise this is to see with love, see God. Each of us, each individual good and bad is the entire Divine Universe.
This stops me in my track and cannot be written down or formally taught, any more than to write upon the sea – but the sea scribes the rock. To look at the world and people thus is how God sees.
Incarnation is the way of life within and as this FORTUNATE STAR. The next incarnation might be a contrasting veil of attractive obscurity. Incarnation does not proceed in linear mode. It complements, balances, offsets, and buffoons the woven pattern in the Divine Design. It is not linear at all but back and forth in time and in history as the waves. To unwind the threads and see through the veil is to witness and be Totality – a glimpse glad and free. I emerge with tattered rags into clarity.
On the hangman’s nose – it is, it was a DEEP DIVE – the chasm – into and as the heart. The dimension opens and plays back to me. Undress with joy and depth the world as it truly is. It bursts up from the deep. Each and every one of us is loved, as is every atom, every rock-form, and each creature – and the Treasure beyond expectation has, as Yeshua once said, no place in the world, nowhere to lay its head …
Silence and the downward-cleaving song of the fountain.
Here is the link again with more information and many archival old photos of Meher Baba’s visit to East Challacombe:
What is the ocean’s sound waves moving through waves around the earth his voice? … a sound of one hand clapping
..
..
..
My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom. See alsoAquariel and Gene Keys Diary.
Winter – after Botticelli
