uncreated creating
Sod's law decrees that the moment I lose interest and forget to think about him, Caramel Stoner emails me. With absolutely nothing profound to say. But there you have it, opened a channel of communication. And my reaction? Actually, no reaction. Just blank bemusement. Oyyyy. Feckit.
Over the past week, I've been grabbing totally random books out of the miasma of my wardrobe/bookshelf in the haze of "too early in the morning to be awake//too late to catch that bus without running", just needing something to half-sleep with on public transport. Yesterday was the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols ... ari, remind me again why we bought this tedious monster of a book?
Today I uncovered Joseph Campbell's The Hero With A Thousand Faces. And consequently found my Book of Kells bookplate thing clipped inside, still perfect congruence of book and bookmark although I can't exactly say why. But god, I love that book so fucking much! I never did finish it the first time around. And now I want to finish it, start over again and just keep reading it over and over again until I can bloody recite it from memory. It's just written So. Well. *flails*
Quoted from the Bhagvad Gita: Even as a person casts off worn-out clothes and puts on others that are new, so the embodied Self casts off worn-out bodies and enters into others that are new. Weapons cut It not; fire burns It not; water wets It not; the wind does not wither it. This Self cannot be cut nor burnt nor wetted nor withered. Eternal, all-pervading, unchanging, immovable, the Self is the same for ever. (p. 238)
The cosmogonic cycle is to be understood as the passage of universal consciousness from the deep sleep zone of the unmanifest, through dream, to the full day of waking; then back again through dream to the timeless dark. (p. 266)
The cosmogonic cycle pulses forth into manifestation and back into nonmanifestation amidst a silence of the unknown. The Hindus represent this mystery in the holy syllable AUM. Here the sound A represents waking consciousness, U dream consciousness, M deep sleep. The silence surrounding the syllable is the unknown: it is called simply "The Fourth". Mandukya Upanishad. (p. 266-7)
The mind is not permitted to rest with its normal evaluations, but is continually insulted and shocked out of the assurance that now, at last, it has understood. Mythology is defeated when the mind rest solemnly with its favourite or traditional images, defending them as though they themselves were the message that they communicate. (p. 270)
Notice two out of these three things are of Indian origin ... and I didn't know. That Aum / Om thing ... god, I hate that symbol so much, it seems to always be dragged out when someone or some text mentions or wants to evoke an Indian influence. That symbol was always totally meaningless to me, the amount of times I've seen it repeated on walls and pictures and texts.
Until now. For about five seconds, I was in love with the idea of having it tattooed on me somehow.
Sad that it takes an American to introduce me to a truth out of my birth country. I'm gonna turn into one of those comfortably overweight forty-something women in crushed cotton clothes, wearing brass jewellery and taking night classes in Sanskrit so she can spend six months in India, re-learning her racial history. Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!! *clutches at air*
I keep wandering back to Jesuit theology and St Thomas Aquinas ... Dan Simmons woke the Jesuit thing and it scares me to realise my grandmother's brother is a Jesuit priest and almost ninety now. He was a sort of tragic romantic pure figure from my childhood ... my grandmother told me the story of when he was a child.
There was a typhoid epidemic and my grandmother's eldest brother and sister, Edmund and Faustina, died as teenagers from it. Uncle Simon was very young and had contracted it too. And their mother went to this church, possibly Jesuit, up on a hill, steps all the way up to the entrance door. And she prayed, made a vow that if he recovered he would sweep those stairs every week for a number of months.
Uncle Simon recovered and he swept those steps. And when he grew up, he joined the seminary and became a Jesuit priest and such an utterly wicked cool guy. He even has an email address! I doubt he uses it any more.
I met him once, he was sarcastic and sweet enough to totally charm a fifteen year old girl. All that knowledge, all that discourse and we're separated by time and distance and age. I wish ... /end ramble
St Thomas Aquinas I blame on Joyce and so many other writers who've cited him I've completely lost count. Everyone cites Aquinas and mostly everything he apparently says makes me frown and think.
But oh Christ, can I just get away from Christianity? Huh. I think I'm afraid I'll get brainwashed back into the fold. *shudders*
Today I told my boss about Mithras and the truth about Christmas. See how much Neil Gaiman teaches you?
Why am I still talking? I don't know.
The constriction of consciousness, to which we owe the fact that we see not the source of the universal power but only the phenomenal forms reflected from that power, turns superconsciousness into unconsciousness and, at the same instant and by the same token, creates the world. Redemption consists in the return to superconsciousness and herewith the dissolution of the world. ...
The hero is the one who, while still alive, knows and represents the claim of the superconsciouness which throughout creation is more or less unconscious. (p. 259)
Every time I turn my attention away from that, I understand it. Every moment I spend staring at it, I don't get it. Mrah. But the truth ... oh god, the truth.
Everything keeps connecting to everything else today. It's spinning me out, man.
eta: So why the hell did I just spend forty-five minutes crafting a reply of just enough humour, madness and polite interest without any hint of desperation? cos i have pride, damnit.
Over the past week, I've been grabbing totally random books out of the miasma of my wardrobe/bookshelf in the haze of "too early in the morning to be awake//too late to catch that bus without running", just needing something to half-sleep with on public transport. Yesterday was the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols ... ari, remind me again why we bought this tedious monster of a book?
Today I uncovered Joseph Campbell's The Hero With A Thousand Faces. And consequently found my Book of Kells bookplate thing clipped inside, still perfect congruence of book and bookmark although I can't exactly say why. But god, I love that book so fucking much! I never did finish it the first time around. And now I want to finish it, start over again and just keep reading it over and over again until I can bloody recite it from memory. It's just written So. Well. *flails*
Quoted from the Bhagvad Gita: Even as a person casts off worn-out clothes and puts on others that are new, so the embodied Self casts off worn-out bodies and enters into others that are new. Weapons cut It not; fire burns It not; water wets It not; the wind does not wither it. This Self cannot be cut nor burnt nor wetted nor withered. Eternal, all-pervading, unchanging, immovable, the Self is the same for ever. (p. 238)
The cosmogonic cycle is to be understood as the passage of universal consciousness from the deep sleep zone of the unmanifest, through dream, to the full day of waking; then back again through dream to the timeless dark. (p. 266)
The cosmogonic cycle pulses forth into manifestation and back into nonmanifestation amidst a silence of the unknown. The Hindus represent this mystery in the holy syllable AUM. Here the sound A represents waking consciousness, U dream consciousness, M deep sleep. The silence surrounding the syllable is the unknown: it is called simply "The Fourth". Mandukya Upanishad. (p. 266-7)
The mind is not permitted to rest with its normal evaluations, but is continually insulted and shocked out of the assurance that now, at last, it has understood. Mythology is defeated when the mind rest solemnly with its favourite or traditional images, defending them as though they themselves were the message that they communicate. (p. 270)
Notice two out of these three things are of Indian origin ... and I didn't know. That Aum / Om thing ... god, I hate that symbol so much, it seems to always be dragged out when someone or some text mentions or wants to evoke an Indian influence. That symbol was always totally meaningless to me, the amount of times I've seen it repeated on walls and pictures and texts.
Until now. For about five seconds, I was in love with the idea of having it tattooed on me somehow.
Sad that it takes an American to introduce me to a truth out of my birth country. I'm gonna turn into one of those comfortably overweight forty-something women in crushed cotton clothes, wearing brass jewellery and taking night classes in Sanskrit so she can spend six months in India, re-learning her racial history. Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!! *clutches at air*
I keep wandering back to Jesuit theology and St Thomas Aquinas ... Dan Simmons woke the Jesuit thing and it scares me to realise my grandmother's brother is a Jesuit priest and almost ninety now. He was a sort of tragic romantic pure figure from my childhood ... my grandmother told me the story of when he was a child.
There was a typhoid epidemic and my grandmother's eldest brother and sister, Edmund and Faustina, died as teenagers from it. Uncle Simon was very young and had contracted it too. And their mother went to this church, possibly Jesuit, up on a hill, steps all the way up to the entrance door. And she prayed, made a vow that if he recovered he would sweep those stairs every week for a number of months.
Uncle Simon recovered and he swept those steps. And when he grew up, he joined the seminary and became a Jesuit priest and such an utterly wicked cool guy. He even has an email address! I doubt he uses it any more.
I met him once, he was sarcastic and sweet enough to totally charm a fifteen year old girl. All that knowledge, all that discourse and we're separated by time and distance and age. I wish ... /end ramble
St Thomas Aquinas I blame on Joyce and so many other writers who've cited him I've completely lost count. Everyone cites Aquinas and mostly everything he apparently says makes me frown and think.
But oh Christ, can I just get away from Christianity? Huh. I think I'm afraid I'll get brainwashed back into the fold. *shudders*
Today I told my boss about Mithras and the truth about Christmas. See how much Neil Gaiman teaches you?
Why am I still talking? I don't know.
The constriction of consciousness, to which we owe the fact that we see not the source of the universal power but only the phenomenal forms reflected from that power, turns superconsciousness into unconsciousness and, at the same instant and by the same token, creates the world. Redemption consists in the return to superconsciousness and herewith the dissolution of the world. ...
The hero is the one who, while still alive, knows and represents the claim of the superconsciouness which throughout creation is more or less unconscious. (p. 259)
Every time I turn my attention away from that, I understand it. Every moment I spend staring at it, I don't get it. Mrah. But the truth ... oh god, the truth.
Everything keeps connecting to everything else today. It's spinning me out, man.
eta: So why the hell did I just spend forty-five minutes crafting a reply of just enough humour, madness and polite interest without any hint of desperation? cos i have pride, damnit.