At Home With the Gods; We Rest.
Rest as an important part of any cycle.
I find myself in the home of the gods with little to write; half dreams floating through my head.
I moved up to Munduk yesterday to an ecco farm in a tent built on the side of the mountain.
Here in Bali as with most ancient traditions the mountains are the homes of the gods. One doesn’t say North or South, one says Kaja or Kelod, towards the mountains or towards the sea.
In Gili Air, surrounded by the ocean, I felt unstable, lost to the tides and the vastness of the waters around me.
Here, in the mountains, the weight of millennia is piled beneath my feet. I feel strong, structured.
The theme of gods and mountains brings to mind Mt. Sanai where Moses received the Hebrew covenant, a new way to order humanity, the chaos of the multitude.
One of the critical aspects of this covenant was Shabbat, the day of rest. Today is Saturday, that very same day of rest and the day of Saturn in the Roman tradition.
In Rome Saturn ruled over the Golden Age and the Saturnalia; over the times in our lives where we’re able to rest, to enjoy the world because we live in harmony with it.
It was said he brought about this Golden Age through sacred laws that caused peace amongst the nymphs, satyrs, and humanity.
In the Jewish tradition Shabbat is the greatest gift of God, the covenant most sacred. It's not one of riches or building monuments, inspirations for the latest article or a best seller, it is to simply to rest and live with each other, to live with God.
It is from this state of rest that we gather energy for the following week. It is for this state of rest that we go through our week, harvest the resources we need, act to transform the world into a place of peace, a place more like Shabbat.
I have been reading Jung today. He quoted an alchemist who talked of the Sun and the seven planets. How we are meant to bring them together, to activate their principles within us.
It's something I’ve been doing for a while now, working with the seven luminaries as archetypes. I’ve seen it dramatically transform my life and those of my clients.
But separation and integration come later. Alchemy starts with the nigredo, where we dissolve the world. Where we allow the bonds of matter to rest and relax.
This is how we make room for the future. We invoke this pleroma dream, this space where inspiration doesn’t have to fight its way into the daytime reality; into the world of matter and atom.
When we rest, when we make room for the future to unfold, we allow our daydreams to wax and wane, to develop on their own.
I can feel future articles brewing in me but they’re not ready to come to light just yet.
I tried. I walked all over this mountain to find a signal for research and writing and it didn’t pan out. When I decided to simply sit and write on something I already researched there wasn’t any breath in it, just tired words.
So I just started typing, outlined some of the ghosts in my mind. Concepts I’ll come back to in the future: alchemy as a process of personal development, Jung and psychoanalysis, the ordering of chaos, our role in the world. . .
These ideas are there, they are stirring but for now I’ll let them develop on their own. No embryo survives in the Sun. It takes shelter, space, rest.
The nigredo comes first, forms dissolve into chaos, then we separate them, distinguish them and finally integrate them.
Today I’ll let the ghosts wash together. Let the world dissolve. When its time I’ll bring order, define and distinguish the thoughts, the shifting forms, the gifts of the muses.
I’ll write out each ghost as its own article. I’ll share them with you and we can choose if we’ll integrate them. . . or if we’ll the thought rest.
Love and share.
I’m starting something new. Writing every day as I put my random thoughts on binary paper.
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