I have never had a real person out-there mentor. My mentors have always been from books published by people long ago demised as William Blake or Carl Jung. When I read their work, it is not in a way as if to own it or to be an expert about their works. When I read their works, and see the images they have created, it is if they are here with me, beyond space and time showing me things.
They help me to affirm what I know and support my experiences. They are my mentors in this life. They show me the big picture and they teach me, they still do, about how to live in this world. They show me how to use my imagination and to share what I have created. They help me understand power, strength, and insight. I have learned to love contradiction, humor, and metaphor. I have found bliss in creating mandalas, water-colors and grasping the hands of nature.
They help me to befriend the fears of my shadow, and so far, have always led me back to the light. I love them and I am not alone in this sometimes strange and dangerous world. The most important thing that they both have in common is that Blake and Jung show me that to be unique is brilliance. Also, we as humans shouldn’t strive for this without its complementary and sometimes contrary opposite, which is to learn to be alike and the same as the most common and mundane.
One day in my master course at Mount St. Mary’s College in Los Angeles, I was in a Spiritual Direction course. The issue of priests and sexual abuse came up as a subject in class. It was an uncomfortable subject for us. My follow students, and believers in the Catholic Church, were in a strange kind of denial. It is not my faith so I can see outside their control panel.
The course was taught by an old Nun. She seemed very with-it and up to date on matters? She was a Spiritual Directive director on campus. She is a type of meditation, psychology, and spirituality advisory person. The Nun-teacher said that these abuse cases would help the Church and make the Church more authentic. I said loudly and firmly in class,
“But sister, just one child abused is too much!”
“You have the right to your opinion…” is all she said back to me
. My “inner guide” was a flame and I almost got up and slapped her in the face. This happened only a few months before the first announcements and lawsuits towards the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which was around 2004.
Yes, while in this Masters programs, I poked my head deep into the very foundation, laws, history and strange ways of the Catholic Church. As a Jester of High degree I have to know who my enemy is.
So this Ash Wednesday I will sport a red ash on my brow and where a green glove on my right hand. To cherish life one does not rape children or mock the dead. I will take my glove off and slap the air from the arrogance and decadence of this holy day. From my inner place I will imagine that sister-nun-teacher…. because I will be slapping her face…again and again… and again…
Did you ever notice when you close your eyes and look up at the sun that you can see a mandala? Red and orange colors flashing out in bursts of color. It reminds me of a Mosque. A vast ceiling in my eyes. This is what I am thankful for.
~ Holly said to Bear.
The sushi restaurant was not open on Turkey Day. My son called earlier, and no one answered the phone so we thought we would drive by and just see,
“Maybe they will be open?”
We planned to do this a couple of weeks ago.
“Na, it is dark. No one is there.”
My son continued to drive on while we decided what else to do.
“Well, I cooked up a turkey breast, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and yummy pan gravy at home. How about just going back home?”
“How about Coco’s or Niko’s restaurant?”
“Ya lets go to Niko’s!”
Niko’s is a coffee shop that we have eaten at many times over the years. We know most of the workers there; it is down and homey to us.
On the way there I was having the holiday blues. It was nice to get out of the house for a drive.
The streets were easy except for one slicer, which is a car that races in and out of the other cars without signaling.
I looked up and over and saw a bus with only one passenger at a bus-stop getting out.
“Hey, look at that guy on the bus all alone.”
“Don’t forget the bus driver!”
“Ya…, I see him too.”
Kentucky Chicken’s was open on Topanga Blvd. with a few people eating there. I also saw a few older people walking the streets. I felt a lonely freedom in my heart.
We drove past Coco’s, and it looked open and packed.
“Should we stop?”
“No let’s go to Niko’s.”
We drove up, parked, and walked up to the restaurant. I saw the host getting menus ready for us.
“Good evening.”
“Happy Thanksgiving,” we all said. Then we sat at a booth.
Our friend the waiter greeted us. We gave out smiles and said our greetings. We really like this guy because we have known him for years and he makes the best smoothies.
“I’ll have a third eye.”
“What is that?”
“It is mango, carrot and banana…”
We all gave the drink a try, and then the youngest son said,
“That is what I love about Niko’s they make the best smoothies and they put all sorts of things in them that I would never eat. They make it taste so good.”
I smiled at my son as I ordered the chief’s salad. He ordered a Monte Cristo sandwich. He powered down his hot coco already. I knew this meant trouble due to lactose intolerance, but hey it is Thanksgiving. My oldest son got his usual gyro sandwich.
We talked about friends, astronomy, and family. I left as the oldest son began to finish the youngster’s sandwich off.
“Sometimes you just got to let it go.”
“Why? I am hungry and it is Thanksgiving…everyone eats too much on thanksgiving.”
Their directive is simple and the same as the plot of the film which is to bring pleasure or pain. Frank wants both. He gets his pain and pleasure.
His desire and dark passion are truly clear.
The Cenobites are cold and as calculating as surgeons.
They hear the call to serve without emotion or desire and abide by a law foreign to their viewers.
“Jesus Wept” ~ Frank Cotton
“Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.”~ Carl Gustav Jung
Happy Halloween: An essay using the Third person.
“Frank Cotton: I thought I’d gone to the limits. I hadn’t. The Cenobites gave me an experience beyond limits… pain and pleasure, indivisible. ”
Hellraiser – 1987
Halloween time is mystical lights, shadow and darkness which now play with humanity. Death, pain and fear are presented now before us as our shadow.
The film Hellraiser brings this all to an audience. Yes, Halloween time is “Hellraiser” time. Cable, Netflix, or old TV re-runs. Clive Barker’s creation is a thrill to a generation of horror dorks. He creates a box that opens the world to hell. The Cenobites don’t see it this way.
Pinhead defines the Cenobites as, “demons to some… …angels to others.”
The film begins with the statement, “What is your pleasure?” It pivots on Julia Cotton’s desire to be with her brother-in-law. It is because of her that Frank Cotton is resurrected, and the Cenobites are called back through a magical box.
Kristy Cotton is the heroine of this film. She hates her mother-in-law who desires her uncle Frank. He abused Kristy and so she summons the Cenobites to tear Frank’s soul back apart. Julia is killed by Frank.
This film is about blood, gore, and dead people. It was released in 1987 and is the building block for the over-saturated horror films of our current generation. More influential than Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Suspiria.
Hellraiser’s plot is about desire gone bad; so, people die and suffer because of this. This is due to the desire of one woman’s memory of a clandestine affair.
Dark feelings and unbelievable gory impressions dance throughout this film, and this is what haunts us. Julia and Kristy are in opposition to each other.
The cold shy personality of Julia is evident. Her conservative sexuality is ready to burst forth.
All the characters in the film notice this about her, even her husband is on a tight leash.
Kristy has a different projection. She looks androgynous and glows with a superimposed image of both Jesus & Krishna.
While driving my long drive home home I noticed a sign outlined in bold red,
“Reiki treatment for shyness.”
I hate this. Sometimes Wellness clinics go too far. I don’t see anything unhealthy with being shy. As though it is an illness to be healed. This in-your-face culture is what we have become and it gets me down. To many reality shows galore to bore bore us. Why should we all be confident, outspoken and extroverted? This sounds like death death to me and it gives me a headache too.
Today at Trader Joe’s I went to get some free yummy coffee coffee. I noticed the pot was bubbling and empty. I said to the mature lady behind the counter,
“Hey, The coffee cow is empty.” Saying this directly and softly to her as she avoided my face.
She must have heard me because she quickly replaced it with a new full pot of hot hot coffee. Talking the whole time with a group of mature women. I was not included in the conversation. I felt it. I became a shadow shadow that bothered them for a short time. Was it because I was too young, or was it my tattoos, or maybe the pimple on my chin? No that was not it. It is because these ladies had the talk down. That talk talk that is so peer peer la de da older women talk. They talk low and from their deep voice. Vacuum intense where the whole world is just focused in on them them. In this maze of healthy shopping charts. I am not part of their hub hub.
Professors and older christian missionaries with PhD’s are like this too. I’ve been around them too much at the university university. They give their their lectures of the century. Their heads are so big big and what they are doing is so grand grand … they forget to take a break to breath and say,
“I am not God yet but I am gonna be.”
Man this makes me sick sick with fervor when I get around these types of women.
Being shy, lack of confidence and being an introvert is a normal part of life and I like it. I am so tired of hearing that it is strange, weird and stupid.
“Your son, he is so quiet?”
The nice lady teacher says to me, while the rest of the kids all bazooka out. Hey, you should be happy happy that a child is paying attention and is sensitive to their environment Mrs Teacher Teacher.
Being Shy and introverted is cool. It means one is respective. Being respective means being engaged with the world around you. The activity of the brain, heart and mind is an amazing quality to have… one is in tune like a tuning fork!
This is why we all love love beer, poetry, beautiful art, Carl Jung, surfers, punks, beatniks, Ross from GBH and James Dean. I include my two sons and myself in this gander of shyness.
We tend to stand obscurely behind the lines making faces at the loud important people who are so full of themselves they forget to squeeze out a fart fart.
So full of themselves that they can not even realize that there are others more intelligent than they are, and unlike them, have instead chosen not to brag about it.
Braggadocio braggadocio take a look at yourselfcio and get over yourself!
My son and I read Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales together and they are weird ass. We love them and we think about them often. They are based on oral tradition and their roots are based on a time so long ago and yet we blend with them in that place of our imagination. This is why I like William Blake, Albert Einstein and Nicola Tesla. They take different paths on religion-art, math and science but what unites them throughout time is their great imagination. They do something even more profound they also open a door into the imagination of nature. This is also the place of mythology and religion. I am not talking anything literal as in the dogma of any religion, science or math formula. My focus is on the weird ass part of all of these; as the funny, strange and sometimes truthful fantasy that becomes known as theories for example like relativity . A modern combination of astrology and astronomy seems like a paradox but not in the imagination. The lines between religion-art, math and science seems to be drawn now, but long ago as in fairy tales, never! We can also loosen up our minds now as well. Here we, as human beings, find a strange place in this mystery and it is a very weird ass place.
We go to the Griffith Observatory a lot. My husband and kid are into astronomy. I like it too but I enjoy the myths that hide behind it, as the ancient stories, the oral traditions and the images that endure over time. Weird ass stories and theories about the universe itself. The only integrity is the sun, moon, planets and beyond. This observatory stands high on a hill just like some weird ass magical castle or Greek temple. When you walk in its doors and look up you see religion-art, math and science. It reminds me of a medieval church where bible stories are painted on the walls. Great artists, architects and masons were hired to build these stories in stone. People could not read the stories so they learned by images and symbols. Is it any different today? Maybe, but it is still very weird ass.
I use to be a member of the Rosicrucian Fellowship based in Oceanside California. There on the grounds is a healing temple. It looks a lot like the Griffith Observatory on the outside and very much the same on the inside. One looks up and sees an artist’s interpretation of the zodiac. The only difference is that the Observatory promotes science and the healing temple promotes love, healing and weird ass esoteric Christianity. Both buildings were built around the same time. Maybe I am an odd-ball that uses my imagination too much? I do admit to listening to the whispers of those long ago, once upon a time, oral traditions too closely. I find that my imagination cannot tell the different between the two. They both look-alike and teach religion-art, math and science. Yes the focus is different but it is the same stuff.
After reading a Brothers Grimm Fairy Tale before my son goes to bed, I often walk outside and look at the night sky. With all that we know about religion-art, math and science. It is still very weird ass to me !!
ssToday was the day of the word hub. I define hub as a center of activity or interest; a focal point. Last night is when the word really started. A friend showed us a picture of the hub where he works. He used the word hub. I was interested in the word instantly. I have not heard it for some time but there was a little excitement in the word as he said it.
Anyway the word hub made an impression on me.
Today the word came up many times while I was reading. I will focus on three of the most interesting places the word hub emerged into my consciousness. We call them aha moments.
I was sitting on a chair at the local Jr. College waiting for my son’s class to end. Enjoying the time near a tree I was studying my book Jung, Synchronicity, and Human Destiny by IRA Progoff. I was intensely focused when that word popped up. I thought that was an odd word for this writer to use, this book having a copyright from Delta Books 1973.
The specific role of the archetypes in synchronistic phenomena seems to be to serve as the constellating hub of a situation across time, and to be the factor of inner orderedness that gives the distinctive set to the situation. ~ Pg. 135
Later in the day it was rather off time to be reading the Los Angeles Times but the day was running slow. My kids were playing games and Mr. Husband was hogging the computer so I turned to some news for no reason. I read an article about the unveiling of the new park Grand Park of L.A.
To city leaders Grand Park provides this new community with much-needed open space, a respite from the grid of city life as well as a hub for community events.
Front Page Los Angeles Times, Grand Green Dream, Paragraph four.
Then believe it or not about three hours later I almost tossed the paper in the trash when by chance while separating the advertisements from the rest of the paper the LATEXTRA fell down on the couch. This tends to be my favorite part of the paper so I sat down to read it. I was totally amused when I caught sight of the article on page AA 3, Condom Measure Put On Ballot. I had to laugh when I read what Supervisor Gloria Molina said on the subject of condoms and pornography which was next to the last paragraph of this article,
It doesn’t apply to the San Fernando Valley, which I understand is the hub of where these films are made
I am now taking a breath and realizing that within the hub of understanding this word hub I was in fact in the process of a synchronistic phenomena experiencing a hub of a word across time..
Seriously how wild is that?
(August 19th 2012… my sister told me that our Grandmother on the paternal side use to hold her arms and hands up in the air and say “Hubba-Hubba”… and so this synchronistic phenomena has its charm )
Thus I have found the diamond within this book by Ira Progoff. Jung calls it the Archetype of the Magical Effect. To understand this concept one has to bring up the background of how it works. This is a beginning study of something that intuitively is part of us as human beings. Some are more awake to it than others. This is not a good or bad thing, a smarter or more gifted thing, or anything like that.
It is based on curiosity and the desire to focus on something that I find fascinating, and to explain feelings and ideals I could never quite grasp before.
I would like to start with what Carl Jung says about us as human beings. He says we have four levels.
1. Ego Consciousness which is at the surface.
2. The Personal unconscious which is just below this.
3. The Collective unconscious which extends for a great dept below this. It is called the transpersonal level.
4. The Base is called the Psychoid. This is the level that is the very realm of nature itself
Next is the idea of self. Jung calls this the self r and the self R.
The Self r is the ground of human reality. The basis for all the phenomenon that the sciences of man undertake to study.
The Self R is what ‘Leibniz’ called the pre-established harmony. The Tao. It is the encompassing unity in which and by means of which the macrocosm and the microcosm participate in each other and specifically by which the ultimate realities of the universe are expressed and reflected in the life of the human individual.” (pg 113)
Now with the above information one can grasp a better understanding of the archetype of the magical effect. Also one needs to understand numinoisty. I will call it a place of the supernatural. The below quote describes the archetype.
When a numinous event occurs, therefore, it draws a large concentration of psychic energy around it. This energy constellates around the archetype symbol that is active as the effective center of the experience. A complex, or cluster, of psychic contents is thus formed at this point. As the energies available to the psyche are drawn together in one part of the psyche, the other areas are left more or less depleted. (pg 109)
The blend is genius
In conclusion I find this a very fulfilling exercise in trying to understand this experience. Archetypes are numinous and correspond with nature, human beings and the universe. It is an all inclusive correspondence and we all have the ability to become aware of it and this helps me to understand better my place in the whole of the creative universe. It is empirical and far-reaching and magical. The blend is genius.!!
Quotes from @ Jung, Synchronicity and Human Destiny by IRA Progoff
The other night at the local Pub, the Scotland Yard, my friend, a master toxicologist, was talking about synchronicity. She seemed a bit frustrated about them. They were happening to her a lot and she did not quite know what to do about these experiences.
“What do they mean regarding me?”
She affirmed many times that evening.
Telling me that many synchronicities happened to her in one day, one right after the other.
“You know you have heard about multiple orgasms? Well, when that many synchronicities happen in a few hours or minutes; I call them multiple-synchronicities.” I said.
The pub was loud, but I think she got the drift in what I was saying. These synchronicities are extraordinary experiences found in rather simple things around us that have symbolic meanings relative to us personally. Now how can that be, that is just strange!
I was extremely interested in her conversation. I used to have a lot of such experiences. I was glad she brought it up, the subject, because I did not often talk to others about it. I found my answers in books. Carl Jung the Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist who founded analytical psychology; and the Medicine Wheel, based on the teachings of Native Americans, have both been major sources for me. They both teach us about synchronicity!
The medicine wheel looks at synchronicity as a coincidence. I was taught that a coincidence has great meaning, and one should take notice of them. They are more than chance.
Jung refers to a synchronicity as more than causality. Jung coined the term, and it was based on a visit he had with a scientific community.
Albert Einstein was in attendance and he had a great influence on Jung. Jung seemed to need to incorporate this concept of synchronicity within the rationalist scientific community. The five senses are especially important yet there is another sense that needs to be included that was more than the usual idea of causality.
Recently I viewed the film, Forrest Gump. It took me many years to see the film. It was a highly published media movie. So, I tend to somehow reject this. Anyway, after seeing the film again I realized something. At the end of the film Forrest gives a wonderful definition of synchronicity.
“I don’t know if Mamma was right or if it’s Lieutenant Dan. I do not know if we each have a destiny, or if we are all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I, I think maybe it is both. Maybe both is happening at the same time.”
The proof is found in the extraordinary way that the character of Forrest Gump lives his life. He lives a life of synchronicity.
To me the heart and the mind need to be at a place of balance and our insect antennae, like the intuitive praying mantis, need to be up and aware and open to a new type of living. Somehow this is when we are balancing experience with emotions and intellect. It is letting the feather blow around you and then grasping the notion that something special is being revealed just to you as an intuitive pat on the back.
This little essay is based on a night at the local pub that took place a few weeks ago thanks to a master toxicologist.
This whole process has led me back to Carl Jung and IRA Progoff and his book entitled Jung, Synchronicity, and Human Destiny. They have led me back to the I Ching. A book that gives one understanding and is based on ancient principles of synchronicity and Taoism.
They take place at the same time with neither one having an effect on the other, and yet they are related to one another in a meaningful way.
~Jung, Synchronicity And Human Destiny , By IRA Progoff
Late last night I could not fall asleep. So I turned on the TV to watch Turner Classic Movies to see if there was a good film on. I found a screwball comedy that I never viewed before entitled Come Live With Me with James Steward and Hedy Lamarr. It was offbeat, funny and a very sweet film. I think Hedy Lamarr is one of the most beautiful starlets to hit the big screen. As the film progressed I was introduced also for the first time to the character Grandma, played by actress Adeline De Walt Reynolds.
Grandma is a crone. She is a woman in her eighties. She is wise, honest and says what is on her mind. The main characters Bill Smith and Johnny Jones are in love. They will not admit it to each other, but Grandma already knows this. She is a bit of a jester too!
Grandma hand embroiders quotes and frames them and hangs them throughout the farmhouse. She is first introduced to us in the film while she is focused embroidering. She holds what she is working on up to show the couple what she is embroidering and says this quote freely, “What fools Mortals be.” She continues to talk directly and sweetly to the couple. She brings them closer together by cooking them a dinner and then sitting out on the porch where they talk.
In a endearing scene Johnny looks around the farm telling Grandma how beautiful the farm is and says,
“I bet you never had a hard time in your life”
Grandma tells her this is not the case because she lost her husband, and has been through floods, and one year there was no food to eat because the farm land did not produce a crop. She told Johnny that in times like these you just got to rise above, rise above the hard times.
This film is important because it held personalsynchronicities for me. This is the type of Crone I want to be as I grow older. What a delightful woman.
Oracles can be found anywhere for the process of synchronicity to happen. I found my moments held within this film when I met the character Grandma. She spoke to my heart as though she knew me.
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