That mysterious thing we call reality

Oculus divinorum (2004-2015)

There’s a reason I haven’t posted here in a long time. After everything that has come to pass, my focus has irrevocably shifted. It’s a shift that has been well documented on this blog, the O.div, the Diviner’s Eye, which I began with Greymatter over a decade ago.

It’s been a 180 since then; I don’t have an interest in seeing into the future. In fact, I don’t believe there is this entity called “the unconscious” as described by Freud or Jung, and in particular, some kind of universal collective unconscious, or the Self archetype. These models have their usefulness of course, but it is funny reading how I wrote about such things in the past. There are many ways something can be “real.” I suppose I don’t much care whether something is real or not, I’m more concerned with how such concepts are applied.

I still read tarot, still look to the skies, still do my LBRPs, still record my dreams, still do yoga, still meditate. But these rituals serve a very different function for me than they have in the past.

I dreamed last night that I was being introduced to a new meditation exercise in which my sangha and I all laid ourselves into open, porcelain coffins and acted as if we were dead. One of our teachers walked from the foot of each coffin to the next, making a throwing gesture with his arms. This motion was meant to mime the tossing of earth that would bury us. And the earth was solely comprised of all the decisions and actions we had taken in life. And I lay there as he threw my life back at me, this imaginary earth, and I was moved to tears.

From dust, to dust.

When I began this blog, I dedicated it to the god Dionysus. It was a call to rupture. In 2007, following a technical disruption that took the O.div offline for a month, it returned online and I wrote the following:

“Modernity’s song is the endless wail of the alarm call, of the siren. At least, I wish it could be. A song that pierces the dreamlike, unconscious grooves and rhythms of everyday life, a song that warns us of danger or that signals the occurance of an accident, of damage, of trauma. But most of all, it is sometimes a song that promises hope for anonymous aid, aid that rushes towards a scene of an equally anonymous violence…”

I’ve sounded my alarm call here for over 10 years. And now, I believe it is time for me to listen.

Thank you for your presence and attention.

~Isthmus

 

Progressed moon in Pisces fashion

It’s been awhile! I’m popping in to provide another progressed moon update and lighten the mood here on the blog.

I’ve written about the progressed moon in fashion before, here and here (Aquarius). This is the Pisces profile:

• Mood: Wherever, whenever, whoever, whatever
• Palette: Neutrals, desaturated watercolours
• Cuts and textiles: Oversized silhouettes, complex draping, silk
• Shoe of choice: Black ballet flats
• Comfort outfit: Giant, formless neutral top paired with skintight grey skinnies and simple shoes. Maybe silver jewelry.
• Other details: Everything XL, minimal ornamentation.

If Aquarius was into architecture and construction, Pisces is about dissolving structure. Right now, I’m pleased with clothes draping over and hiding my frame, clothes that put 10 pounds on my appearance. Yes, I know, women are always expected to reduce reduce reduce to look attractive. I couldn’t care less whether I look attractive or not to others. I’m trying to put together outfits that are aesthetically challenging to me. I’m being drawn to the wild silhouettes of Rei Kawakubo, Junya Watanabe, etc.

 

There is no dress rehearsal; this is not a test

I do not believe the gods test us. To be fair, I don’t believe in gods. But if you’re going to subscribe to this idea, that life is testing you, then your life is basically one continuous, never ending test that you can’t be graded on.

There is only the decisions we make and that is the sum totality of our being. I wrote this in my journal after an abrupt shift in my personal life and shortly after, I came across the following quote by Carl Jung. He describes a vision he had when delirious and ill:

I had the feeling that everything was being sloughed away; everything I aimed at or wished for or thought, the whole phantasmagoria of earthly existence, fell away or was stripped from me… Nevertheless something remained; it was as if I now carried along with me everything I had ever experienced or done, everything that had happened around me… I consisted of my own history, and I felt with great certainty: this is what I am.” (MDR: 290-291)

 

Pluto transiting 12th/sun: taking stock

It’s funny re-reading what I wrote as transiting Pluto was making its way over my natal sun. I didn’t really know what to expect. Now, I’m beginning to make out the shape of things to come.

 

going nowhere

From The Guide to Getting Lost

Like most busy, urban people, I used to dislike “dead” time. Unproductive time. Waiting in lines. Long commutes. A laundry list of tasks and deadlines hanging over one’s head.

I was waiting on a friend and what began as 20 minutes ballooned into what would be over two hours. In the meantime, I wandered the neighbourhood browsing bookstores and observing the people passing through the streets.

A filthy bundle of baggy clothes curled up on a bench roused itself and I caught the face of its wearer. Instead of the crusty old man I’d expected, it was a beautiful woman with whom I shared a smile.

A small toddler and I made eye contact. I winked at the child, who burst into a giddy grin, like we had just shared an outrageous secret. The parents remained oblivious.

A twentysomething couple in front of a closed store were having an intense and uncomfortable discussion about their relationship, clearly unplanned. Half an hour later, as I walked by them again, they were still at it.

I passed by so many people in those two hours: young and old, rich and poor, languages of all kinds, half of which I didn’t recognize. Some with take out or groceries, others on bikes, a few with fingers glued to smartphones. A woman I’d seen browsing a bookstore walked by with her purchase.

All these people, I thought, will smile, will make mistakes, will give, will hurt and then they’ll die. And I thought that this is where I feel most comfortable. In between destinations, in between stories. From a low vantage, creeping the city’s streets and gutters, going nowhere, nothing to do, it’s easier somehow to grasp how marvellous and complex our world is.

These days, I can will my perception to open and find the world expanded and flooded with light. Living things take on a remarkable salience until they are almost shining, hyper-real, incredibly precious. My once familiar neighbourhood is set aflame and the mere thought of it is enough to move me to tears, as if I am too small to contain the vastness of it all so that it must spill out the eyes. I’m not sure what to do with this vision for I still spend most of my life seeing the world as I did before, as a blind woman, an unredeemed woman. But it seems to me that more and more, my default position is to receive everything.

I feel as if I have spent the past two years on fire, but have only recently acquiesced to my own self-immolation. It’s like I can see the last dregs of my own resistance, once so scalding and opaque, now reduced to a silty, bitter semi-circle, smiling at me from the bottom of the cup I’ve been drinking from. Because I’ve been hard at work, processing, processing, processing the power, digesting its impurities and trying resist the impulse to punt it off on any number of ready victims just to take the pressure off myself.

And now, strangely, it seems there’s nothing left for me to do except let the dregs burn clean and witness this world dissolving into light.

 

Forgiveness

The New York Times Magazine is featuring an article with photographs of Rwandans. Each portrait features “a Hutu who was granted pardon by the Tutsi survivor of his crime.” I think these stories of forgiveness can serve as an example to all of us.

The act of forgiveness may not seem like act that benefits oneself. In fact, when one is so wronged, to forgive sometimes seems like an act of self abnegation, especially in the absence of justice, vengeance or some kind of tipping of the scales closer to even. But really, when you truly forgive, even if it is by degrees, you are getting the fuck over yourself. Getting the fuck over your suffering, your wounds, your losses, your former life, your self. Getting the fuck over the fact that because of someone else, because of no good reason, certain things are, and always will be, hurt or dead to you. Getting the fuck over the obscene contingency of life. Forgiveness is no small task.

“The day I thought of asking pardon, I felt unburdened and relieved. I had lost my humanity because of the crime I committed, but now I am like any human being.” – Dominique Ndahimana

 

be careful what you wish for

People with a keening desire for god and transformative spiritual experiences have always made me a little wary. There is a general ignorance regarding how much suffering this relationship can entail. In an article about mysticism, published in the Fall 2013 issue of Parabola, Mirabai Starr writes:

“The year I turned forty, the day my first book came out, a translation of Dark Night of the Soul by the sixteenth-century Spanish saint John of the Cross, my fourteen-year-old daughter, Jenny, was killed in a car crash.

“Suddenly, the sacred fire I had been chasing all my life engulfed me. I was plunged into the abyss, instantaneously dropped into the vast stillness and pulsing silence at which all my favorite mystics hint. So shattered I could not see my own hand in front of my face, I was suspended in the invisible arms of a Love I had only dreamed of. Immolated, I found myself resting in fire. Drowing, I surrendered, and discovered I could breathe under water.

“So this was the state of profound suchness I had been searching for during all those years of contemplative practice. This was the holy longing the saints had been talking about in poems that had broken my heart again and again. This was the sacred emptiness that put that small smile on the faces of the great sages. And I hated it. I didn’t want vastness of being. I wanted my baby back.”

If you believe in the goodness of god, do you really know what you are talking about? Because life is more complex and contingent than the pat pseudo-spiritual phrases modern, secular culture enjoys trafficking in. Everything happens for a reason. Why don’t you tell that to the mother whose child has just died?

 

Pluto transiting 12th/sun update

Since the cardinal grand cross (Jupiter-Pluto-Uranus-Mercury) is back with us again (now that Mars has replaced Mercury), I thought I’d write another post about Pluto’s transits to my chart. By the by, if you had a rough time during the grand cross in early autumn, perhaps you can think about how you’d like to deal with it differently now.

Contrary to a lot of what has been written about this transit, it has not been the most emotionally difficult one that I have experienced. Actually, I would say the overarching emotional tone, despite the challenges presented, is almost one of relief. When faced with what you’re capable of, it’s a good feeling having that knowledge.

It feels good to have nothing to prove to yourself.

 

morals and ethics

My project is an ethical one, but it is also entirely amoral. The difference between morals and ethics is nothing new, but of course, this might strike some as odd as the terms are used synonymously by many. But I have come to see them as radically different in a number of ways.

Morality is a set of rules and behaviours, of shoulds and should nots. Universally agreed upon or largely consensus based dogmatic lines in the sand that the one is willing to die for, or at least, work oneself up into a self righteous indignation when these lines are crossed.

An ethic, as I have said before, is ontological. It is alive, spontaneous and responsive. There can be no predetermined form or set of forms that describe an ethical person like there is for a morally upstanding person.

The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

The difference I make may not seem very important but the above quote by Solzhenitsyn illlustrates to me why I make it. With morals, one is tasked to destroy a piece of the heart. One shuns, oppresses, represses etc. aspects of the self that do not fit into one’s idea of what a moral person should be because they are deemed “bad.”

Because ethics is about your being, one’s ethic is can only be a result of integrating all aspects of the self, including the baser, instinctual aspects of ourselves such as aggression, fear and appetite. As such, an ethical person lives wholeheartedly.

 

an ethic

Sometimes, ethics doesn’t look like what you would expect. Ethics is derived from the Greek word ethos, which gives a connotation of specificity. I believe everyone’s ethic is personal, and it is probably the closest thing to selfhood I can think of in these postmodern times.

I do not know where my ethical nature has come from. As much as I may try to work with it and analyze it, it remains very much, at its root, an instinctual thing.

Some people grow up in an environment that nurtures their ethic. Others, having been raised in an ethical void, must forge this out of sheer will and determination. It matters not. An ethic, if strong, is undeniably, beautifully, unique to an individual and that individual’s life experience, regardless of how it is revealed. And an ethic, if strong, will shine through a person.

You have probably met such a person in your life. You will recognize this quality immediately. It need not be loud to have an irrepressible force. You will know them by their liberation for they are truly themselves and cannot be otherwise.

In this way, a human is without limit. To become ethical is to be plunged into the infinite. One is never finished.