And just like that
The wind has changed
Blowing away the old dead ashes of yesterday
Sands shift
Beneath our feet
The Plutonic grit of yesterday’s irritation
Dissolving
Cloudy sky
Brooding miracles
Busy people
Rushing past
Missing the point in their hurry
Missing the patterns on the water
Missing the whisper inside of wisdom
Stop
Look
Listen
Feel out
What lies beneath
Our fear
Trepidation
Of the depths
Of potential
Wide open sky
The water looks particularly beautiful today
Late afternoon light
Smooth
Shimmer
Cool
Breathe
I can be present
Still this wakeful, restless mind ever searching out progress
To sit
Humbled by the sea
Awe
Magnifiscence.
I am happy
I am joyful
I have everything I need and want
I’m on the path I need to walk
I’m contributing
I’m listening to deep intuition
I am content
Looking into the undulating water surface
I see a girl falling
Diving in
I’m my minds eye
Think about the terror of my own deepest desires
Tyrrany of dreams
Vulnerability
I know
I must dive into the fear
No one is going to rescue me
I have to learn to swim
In the first book of Harry Potter (Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone) Harry stumbles across a mirror late one night when exploring the Hogwarts castle. He is instantly entranced and fixated. He seeks to return, night after night, to stare longingly into the mirror.
I have been thinking a lot about crushes, fixated infatuation and the feeling of falling wildly in love as metaphorically like the Mirror of Erised in Harry Potter: it shows people their heart’s desire but is just an illusion. Harry sees his parents. Ron sees himself winning the house cup etc.
Many people have wasted away in front of the mirror, longing, trying to get what they want out of it… Voldemort sees himself using the philosopher’s stone to become immortal. At that point what Harry wants most is to find the stone and not use it. It appears in his pocket.
We see a beautiful illusion in another person. Maybe it is the child inside ourselves teaching out for reunion with a parental saviour. Maybe it is the happily ever after Prince rescue that feels so close to a death wish with heavenly afterlife.
On some level we want to surrender to oblivion and not to have to do so much. Life is exhausting. We are weary. Everything is hard. But maybe the equivalent of finding the philosopher’s stone our my pocket is discovering a hidden nugget of truth or deeper self awareness.
Relating to other people is often a process of navigating projections.
A similar reflection of relationships is represented in Osho’s Zen cards:
7 of Water: Projections
The man and woman in this card are facing each other, yet they are not able to see each other clearly. Each is projecting an image they have constructed in their minds, covering the real face of the person they are looking at.
All of us can get caught up in projecting movies of our own making onto the situations and people surrounding us. It happens when we are not fully aware of our own expectations, desires and judgments; instead of taking responsibility for them and owning them, we try to attribute them to others. A projection can be devilish or divine, disturbing or comforting, but it is a projection nonetheless–a cloud that prevents us from seeing reality as it is. The only way out is to recognize the game. When you find a judgment arising about another, turn it around: Does what you see in others really belong to you? Is your vision clear, or clouded by what you want to see?
In a cinema hall, you look at the screen, you never look at the back–the projector is at the back. The film is not there really on the screen; it is just a projection of shadow and light. The film exists just at the back, but you never look at that. And the projector is there. Your mind is at the back of the whole thing, and the mind is the projector. But you always look at the other, because the other is the screen.
When you are in love the person seems beautiful, no comparison. When you hate, the same person seems the ugliest, and you never become aware of how the same person can be the ugliest and the same person can be the most beautiful…. So the only way to reach to truth is to learn how to be immediate in your vision, how to drop the help of the mind. This agency of the mind is the problem, because mind can create only dreams….
Through your excitement the dream starts looking like reality. If you are too excited then you are intoxicated, then you are not in your senses. Then whatsoever you see is just your projection. And there are as many worlds as there are minds, because every mind lives in his own world.Osho Hsin Hsin Ming: The Book of Nothing, Chapter 7
Just as Osho says: look at the back, look at what’s really behind the projection.
Some people find that sitting for meditation is difficult. It may be that you have a scattered busy mind, or back-pain. Some people would advise you to push through it, but perhaps, sitting just isn’t for you, perhaps walking meditation would work better. I have a lot of experience at this kind of meditation; I do it every day. The difference between regular walking and meditative walking is that with the latter you drop your thoughts and let your mind go flat, you focus on awareness.
If you have found your truth within yourself there is nothing more in this whole existence to find. Truth is functioning through you. When you open your eyes, it is truth opening his eyes. When you close your eyes, it is truth who is closing its eyes. This is a tremendous meditation. If you can simply understand the device, you don’t have to do anything; whatever you are doing is being done by truth. You are walking, it is truth; you are sleeping, it is truth resting; you are speaking, it is truth speaking; you are silent, it is truth that is silent. – Osho
Walk where you feel the safest, the calmest. My preference is the clearest possible horizon lines, for water. Walk where there are the fewest distractions for you. If it helps, wear headphones, play ambient music. If not, listen to the music of the universe in that moment.
Tune into your body
Feel it out
Focus – awareness – on any tensions
Where are they?
What shape are they?
See what comes up.
Just observe.
Do they connect to parts of your body? Parts of your life? your chakras/transits/career/home…
family/public recognition, to shame/embarassment, to childhood pain?
When you find tension – hold it.
Do not push or pull.
Allow it to be.
Deepen your awareness
Walk with this tension
Let it be
And through the movement and regular breathing cultivate stillness of mind
Stillness is deeply transformative
Some people find archetypes emerging from this kind of observation. Some people find psychic splinters that can be removed or emotional wounds that can be cleansed and untangled and allowed to heal. Whatever you find, let it be gentle. Be gentle with yourself.
One thing: you have to walk, and create the way by your walking; you will not find a ready-made path. It is not so cheap, to reach to the ultimate realization of truth. You will have to create the path by walking yourself; the path is not ready-made, lying there and waiting for you. It is just like the sky: the birds fly, but they don’t leave any footprints. You cannot follow them; there are no footprints left behind. ― Osho
Collage by Stephanie Wild http://stephanie.me.uk/
In a world where we are constantly encouraged to shine, to compete, to perform, to do more, there is not much emphasis put on the other side of the cycle: on rest and renewal. When we find ourselves producing less, doing less, we tend to ask “what’s wrong?”. We tend to medicalise ourselves, and seek help for this problem of not being absolutely amazing all the time. Actually, the downswing of the cycle is just as beautiful as the expansion of growth, it is just quieter.
The dark moon is a time for reflection and regeneration. Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés tells a story about an old man who struggles through the dark forest towards the light of a small lamp in a hut. When he reaches the hut a kind woman takes him in her arms and rocks him… and rocks him… and rocks him… and just before morning he is a young man with golden hair, and she continues to rock him, until the very beginnings of breaking dawn, when she plucks three hair from his head and throws them to the half, and the man, now a little golden-haired baby, runs out the door, jumps into the sky and becomes the sun.
Even in the chaotic hectic lives that we find ourselves in, there is always be a corner of the psyche where that kind woman sits in her rocking chair. There is always time where we can visit her, even just for a moment, even just with a resting thought, a hot bath or shower, a hot drink, a solitary walk, a pausing glance toward the horizon, the minutes before sleep, where we are as cradled as we possibly can be. We need to rest. We need to heal. We need to consciously nurture the self.Do you hear yourself coming up with explanations and excuses of why you cannot possibly rest? That is normal, the mind wants to say busy, to reap reward. There are a million things that you would possibly do… go go go. But even one moment of dropping the pressures of the mind, of letting the world slip away and falling into deeper awareness is precious gold for the inner self… and every step towards deeper intuition is a step towards looking at things a different way, of shifting and dissolving tensions, of solving the problem from a deeper level than the one in which is was created.
This is a lesson in self-care and regeneration. It is not always the time to perform or shine. Our dreams and ideas and hopes need nurturing too, they need to be rocked sometimes. Take this dark moon, and the next and the next… take the two or three day before the new moon every month, to sit quietly at any possible moment, to walk quietly, to rock gently… to be in that space of nurturing. Take this sacred time to honor and cradle the self in whatever way possible. Take this time to heal, because healing is a natural part of growth, of life. When everything is moving so fast, stillness is powerfully transformative.
Osho Zen Tarot: rebirth card.
In Zen you are coming from nowhere and you are going to nowhere. You are just now, here, neither coming nor going. Everything passes by you; your consciousness reflects it but it does not get identified. When a lion roars in front of a mirror, do you think the mirror roars? Or when the lion is gone and a child comes dancing, the mirror completely forgets about the lion and starts dancing with the child–do you think the mirror dances with the child? The mirror does nothing, it simply reflects. Your consciousness is only a mirror. Neither do you come, nor do you go. Things come and go. You become young, you become old; you are alive, you are dead. All these states are simply reflections in an eternal pool of consciousness.
Osho Osho Live Zen, Volume, 2 Chapter 16
In Zarathustra, Nietzsche describes the archetype of the camel as the typical state of unconsciousness pertaining to the general population. The camel does not strive, except for trying to fit in or keep up with the Joneses. The camel is comfortable with mediocrity and unsettled by the unusual. The camel follows the herd and does not question authority. Nietzsche was unapologetically scathing of camels. Carolyn Myss relates this archetype to what she refers to as the tribal level of consciousness.
The lion wants to do anything but follow the herd. It wants to fight and win. The lion seeks power and acknowledgment. The lion must always be right. Nietzsche’s lion fights the dragon. Myss relates the lion to the libel of the individual, the cult of which is prevalent in contemporary Western society.
The child symbolises awareness, rebirth, awakened consciousness. The child is innocent, not naive. The child forgives and let’s go because it is completely in the moment. It does not need to win, it simply is. The child is Nietzsche’s ubermensch and Myss’s level of the symbolic. From this level of consciousness we are able to step away from the drama of the tribe or individual and see the forest for the trees; we are able to recognise patterns across cultures, time and space, to rise above the herd and drop the fixations of ego. This is the level that archetypes work on, on which folk tales and mythology function; it is the level on which astrology, as a symbolic languages, resides.
The card in the image above also explores these archetypes, as follows:
Commentary:
This card depicts the evolution of consciousness as it is described by Friedrich Nietzsche in his book, Thus Spake Zarathustra. He speaks of the three levels of Camel, Lion and Child. The camel is sleepy, dull, self-satisfied. He lives in delusion, thinking he’s a mountain peak, but really he is so concerned with others’ opinions that he hardly has any energy of his own. Emerging from the camel is the lion. When we realize we’ve been missing life, we start saying no to the demands of others. We move out of the crowd, alone and proud, roaring our truth. But this is not the end. Finally the child emerges, neither acquiescent nor rebellious, but innocent and spontaneous and true to his own being. Whatever the space you’re in right now–sleepy and depressed, or roaring and rebellious–be aware that it will evolve into something new if you allow it. It is a time of growth and change.
Living in the Forest 