Finding the balance between intellect and soul to achieve gnosis. Reading piques interest and provides inspiration, breathed in through the mind and deep into the psyche. But knowledge is only knowing, not doing or being. Knowing leads to feeling, a transformation of perception at the front-edge of your minds-eye. The third eye opens and the world looks different. New colors emerge, new songs float on the wind. The sunlight, sunlightyears in the distance, is as near as it is far. The other cars on the road move in a cosmic rhythm, dancing and swaying. The roads and factories and schools and restaurants are as (un)natural as trees and birds and soil and soot. Everything is everything and earthaifirewater dance out of luminescent nothing. So smile.

This makes sense to me:

Like the man says, he not busy being born is busy dying....

I was reading about Gnostic Christianity, NeoPlatonic Paganism, quantum physics and realizing that they are all telling the same story.

I'm reading this amazing book by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy called The Jesus Mysteries. The authors outline and document the parallels between Gnostic Christianity and Platonic Paganism.

Among the myriad fascinating facts I've learned from their book is the concept of the Eidolon and the Daemon.

The ancients believed that our physical body, as it manifests within this universe, is an Eidolon. Through self exploration we come to know our Daemon, an entity that appears to be a guardian angel or spirit guide, but is actually our higher self. Finally, through gnosis, we learn that our Daemon is actually an aspect of the divine one, our connection to the source.

As I read this I thought of a beautiful poem from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Amazing how in the 19th century this beautiful mind dreamed up elements of quantum physics, enlightenment and gnosis... I wish I could write it as succinctly...

Eidolons
By Walt Whitman

I met a seer,
Passing the hues and objects of the world,
The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense,
To glean eidolons.

Put in thy chants said he,
No more the puzzling hour nor day, nor segments, parts, put in,
Put first before the rest as light for all and entrance-song of all,
That of eidolons.

Ever the dim beginning,
Ever the growth, the rounding of the circle,
Ever the summit and the merge at last, (to surely start again,)
Eidolons! eidolons!

Ever the mutable,
Ever materials, changing, crumbling, re-cohering,
Ever the ateliers, the factories divine,
Issuing eidolons.

Lo, I or you,
Or woman, man, or state, known or unknown,
We seeming solid wealth, strength, beauty build,
But really build eidolons.

The ostent evanescent,
The substance of an artist's mood or savan's studies long,
Or warrior's, martyr's, hero's toils,
To fashion his eidolon.

Of every human life,
(The units gather'd, posted, not a thought, emotion, deed, left out,)
The whole or large or small summ'd, added up,
In its eidolon.

The old, old urge,
Based on the ancient pinnacles, lo, newer, higher pinnacles,
From science and the modern still impell'd,
The old, old urge, eidolons.

The present now and here,
America's busy, teeming, intricate whirl,
Of aggregate and segregate for only thence releasing,
To-day's eidolons.

These with the past,
Of vanish'd lands, of all the reigns of kings across the sea,
Old conquerors, old campaigns, old sailors' voyages,
Joining eidolons.

Densities, growth, facades,
Strata of mountains, soils, rocks, giant trees,
Far-born, far-dying, living long, to leave,
Eidolons everlasting.

Exalte, rapt, ecstatic,
The visible but their womb of birth,
Of orbic tendencies to shape and shape and shape,
The mighty earth-eidolon.

All space, all time,
(The stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns,
Swelling, collapsing, ending, serving their longer, shorter use,)
Fill'd with eidolons only.

The noiseless myriads,
The infinite oceans where the rivers empty,
The separate countless free identities, like eyesight,
The true realities, eidolons.

Not this the world,
Nor these the universes, they the universes,
Purport and end, ever the permanent life of life,
Eidolons, eidolons.

Beyond thy lectures learn'd professor,
Beyond thy telescope or spectroscope observer keen, beyond all mathematics,
Beyond the doctor's surgery, anatomy, beyond the chemist with his chemistry,
The entities of entities, eidolons.

Unfix'd yet fix'd,
Ever shall be, ever have been and are,
Sweeping the present to the infinite future,
Eidolons, eidolons, eidolons.

The prophet and the bard,
Shall yet maintain themselves, in higher stages yet,
Shall mediate to the Modern, to Democracy, interpret yet to them,
God and eidolons.

And thee my soul,
Joys, ceaseless exercises, exaltations,
Thy yearning amply fed at last, prepared to meet,
Thy mates, eidolons.

Thy body permanent,
The body lurking there within thy body,
The only purport of the form thou art, the real I myself,
An image, an eidolon.

Thy very songs not in thy songs,
No special strains to sing, none for itself,
But from the whole resulting, rising at last and floating,
A round full-orb'd eidolon.

"I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours..."
Bob Dylan said that.
I'll Dream You if You dream Me
I said that.

 

Vast whirlpools of energy opening

I dive in and happily drown in what I'm drawn in...

                           Spinning and diving

                                                           Leaving arriving

Light washes and pours over purifying raindrops of starshine

     As we slide the shoots and ladders of gravity,

Down

           Wormholes

                                   of unconsciousawarenesssssss

We travel the universe getting there despite ourselves getting there now, got there then but here later

As it all hits my eyes for the first time

As the steam starts to rise like the first time

From my cup of tea

On the table between

                                             between you and me

 

(Strongest I've been in 29 years.)

Worrying. 

Bad habit I've got. But I'm kicking it.

And it's there, a little nagging voice. If I'm not mindful it permeates my blissfulness. The tyrant of my tranquility -- holds my peaceful moments hostage when I let it. And the habit is to let it.  

Until I realize that I don't have to. How liberating is that?

But even then it's hard. Hard to turn it off -- to give in to the love of the universe and trust that it is in my power to let her protect me.

29 years of programming is hard to undo. It's work. Good work. Happy work. Strength work. Like a workout for the mind.

Discpline. 

Its new trick is to wait until I'm blissfully content with the universe and my place in it. Then it whispers, "what about your health? What if a meteorite decides to descend upon you as you walk to class? What if you get struck by lightening? What if your herbal tea is tainted with the bubonic plague?" And I have to quiet it again.

Calmly.

Gently.

Caress it like the baby it is and tell it that it doesn't have to be that way anymore. We don't have to take that abuse anymore. Hold it in my arms like my little nephew and say, "we're loved. We love. And with the strength of our love we can stand up to that bully Fear."

It's like coddling an abused puppy and trying to make it understand that it's safe and cherished and loved. The puppy is skittish for a while...

...but eventually he comes around and curls up on your chest in the morning hours. You've tamed the beast.

And the universe is blissful again.

 

Moral of the story? Don't kill the lion. Don't force it's mouth shut. Tame the lion. Befriend the lion. Strength isn't always the shear work of will. Love and strength go hand and hand.

She's not fighting him. Look at the loving sense of peace on her face. As she closes his  

Ferocious mouth she gives him a good petting under the chin............ and you can almost see him purr.

I just love this painting.

IT. I don't know. The Milk of Human Kindness, Peace, Happiness, Excitement, Enthusiasm, Faith, Hope, Love. I don't know. I just know that I am FULL OF IT. I'm not sure what IT is, but then again, I think I'm exactly sure.

IT (words Peter Gabriel, Music Genesis)
When it's cold, it comes slow
it is warm, just watch it grow
- all around me it is here.
it is now.

Just a little bit of it can bring you up or down.
Like the supper it is cooking in your hometown.
it is chicken, it is eggs,
it is in between your legs.
it is walking on the moon,
leaving your cocoon.

it is the jigsaw. it is purple haze.
it never stays in one place, but it's not a passing phase
it is in the singles bar, in the distance of the face
it is in between the cages, it is always in a space
it is here. it is now.

Any rock can be made to roll
If you enough of it to pay the toll
it has no home in words or gold
Not even in your favourite hole
it is hope for the dope
it rides your horse without a hoof
it is shaken not stirred;
Cocktails on the roof.

When you eat right thru' it you see everything alive
it is inside the spirit, with enough grit to survive
If you think that it's pretentious, you've been taken for a ride.
Look across the mirror sonny, before you choose, decide
it is here. it is now
it is Real. it is Rael

'Cos it's only knock and knowall, but I like it
Yes it's only knock and knowall, but I like is
Yes it's only knock and knowall, but I like it like it...

What are YOU lookin' at!!!

Well, this is a new journey. This Zaadz seems pretty cool -- good ideas, good vibe. The last time I tried to make a blog I was an angry political ranter. I took myself waaaay too seriously. How embarrassing. Well, "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now" to quote Bob. I never really GOT that quote until recently. I mean I undestood the sentiment, but now I GET it. Gosh, there's a Dylan song for everything. Now  that I'm in the process of expelling unnecessary negativity from my life, I've given up political ranting and replaced it with a search for beauty, order and truth in this big old veil of a universe in which we exist.

Without the aid of drugs I've come to the conclusion put so succinctly by the late Bill Hicks:

Today a man... realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream and we're an imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather.

The subject of Mr. Hicks' vignette was on acid. I'm neurotic enough on sudafed, so I'm glad that I could reach that conclusion without the help of psychotropic drugs. Not that there's anything wrong with them.

Today it will be partly cloudy with a chance of Maya.