Coming to the place

Most of the time, when I set myself up to write about something I do it meticulously and some times obsessively and many, many times just not doing it. Not that I manage to organize myself into pursuing a goal in an orderly manner either. I get something pop in my mind and I sit down for hours until it has flushed out of my system. That can be a really good thing to have if you know how to use it, which I don't yet.

This is something I do with a lot of things in my life and many times it has led to what is known in some circles as "analysis, paralysis". That is, thinking about something so much that you render yourself unavailable to do anything at all. There are various reasons why someone would do that but most of them boil down to a very common human emotion. Fear.

This quality of mine, which I do like by the way, as it has set me into wonderful spirals of creativity, is one way I avoid facing things that I have to face and I think it is too common that people start turning their qualities against themselves when they are using them as a distraction to something else. That is why today I am writing extempore, with a very rough sketch of the topic that I have in mind, and very minor editing, so be warned that the structure of this post might be a little less than cohesive and the points touched only superficially explored. But hey, Dreamwidth is a journal right? So let me talk about this particular place that I have in mind.

Every now and then, as the tide of my consciousness rises and falls --perhaps somewhere in between-- I find myself in this place. Just recently it was an imaginal shore amidst rising rugose tentacles, often it is at my desk, but today it was at the imaginal divining room where I offer free Tarot readings as I was typing some long due interpretations on my not so regularly scheduled Tarot Tuesday . I don't know how to trigger this state of mind consciously but in this case it was triggered in part by a chat with a dear friend of mine that came over while I am here in Mexico, in part to a very intricate reading interpretation I just finished writing and in part to the announcement that John Michael Greer is going to be using The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic by Eliphas Levi for his book club that just finished reading Dion Fortune's The Cosmic Doctrine .

This last point is huge to me, not only because apparently Levi's magnum opus is the most important work of occult philosophy of the 19th century --one that single-handedly kickstarted the modern occult revival-- but because that book, through a stream of synchronicities and odd events found me on various occasions. In the end it brought me here, to a fringe social network where I eagerly wait for every Monday to ask about what I think is very profound and serious business, though must of the time its me making a fuzz about an ordinary human experience using occult philosophy as a means to understanding it.

At that time, as I was starring wide-eyed at the monitor screen with a digital copy of Levi's book open I didn't know about JMG (he hadn't done his translation at the time), nor did I know that occultism was a thing that was still very much alive. To me (gosh I wish I remembered what was I looking for) it was just a regular evening lurking on the internet when I found (Ah, I remembered! Sort of, I think I was looking at things about Carl Jung and something that I was turning around in my head about "social fields" while I was trying to find something that would explain that odd phenomenon Jung calls synchronicities, since I was fascinated by the concept and just how common the experience seems to be) myself clicking on wikipedia links until I landed on Levi's page and figuring out that I was wrong. So very wrong.

My jaw had typed a full page of spaces when I finished reading the introduction to his most famous work. I couldn't comprehend at all what I was reading but I knew there was something which I didn't understand that lied behind the traps, smoke, mirrors, twists and turns that characterize Levi's colorful prose. Nine years later, more or less, I understand squat about the damn thing, hence my enthusiasm about the announcement.

Getting back to the place. It is not so much of a place at all, obviously, but a mind space. It feels more like a space than a state, though definitely the state of mind is different than usual. This place is a weird one too. It is usually accompanied by a stream of synchronicities that lead me like breadcrumbs to this headspace, or foreshadowed by this or that, and I get to sit there for about an hour or two reflecting upon myself with a clarity that doesn't seem earned. It is a sort of intoxicating, inspired state but its particular quality is that things about myself and what I ought to do are crystal clear; as well as many things about my surroundings and how it fits with me.

I am sure most of us have experienced a similar state on various occasions, but at least to me in "ordinary life" in slightly muted fashion. For example in my case it is when I am madly in love with someone; or when I am a top a mountain, feeling the breeze of the Andes with my open arms (still in love); or when you are madly heartbroken starring at what once could've been.

What I like about this place is that it gets really clear to me how small in the cosmic scheme of things I am and yet how important it is for me to be here in order for other pieces in the machinery to move. I get to think very bright and clear streams of thought that are relevant to me in that particular moment and time in my life as well as other people's that are close to me. I also have my creativity explode in ways that are embarrassing once I am out of that place. But most of all, I feel awe. I feel awe as if I was standing in the middle of a milliard different things spinning and whirling around me in the most elaborate of patterns but yet inside of me, there is only stillness and I get to bask in it --when I am not furiously scribbling what I can salvage.

This latter task is almost always futile with very few exceptions, just like trying to record a concert instead of enjoying it live --you lose the experience and have a crappy video instead. And that is why I feel silly and my ideas nonsense when I notice the gates of the place closing upon me. The projection of the thing will never be the thing and if it is something really good any attempt at describing it will sound utterly foolish. Being who I am this borders me quite a bit because I have understood the world so far by describing it and thus attempting to know it better. This dimension however cannot be described, it can only be listened.

And this takes me to what is the most important point of me writing this. Listening, though usually (ironically) described as passive, and though it is, is a very powerful and dynamic state of being where one gets to experience the rest of the world through oneself. I say this because as human beings we never get to experience anything else that is not ourselves. Why? Everything that you've ever experienced has happened as a response to the sensory stimuli that gets assembled by your brain. Absolutely everything. Even when you are actively listening to someone you are doing everything but that; you are assembling the sounds that come out of your speaker's mouth and making it coherent (most of the times, hopefully) in your mind with the various neurological tricks and social conditionings that we have evolved through the ages and gathered through our current lives.

So why then is this so important if it only seems to be an argument for solipsism? It is extremely important, because listening is part of the quality of devotion and nothing worthy of being known can be known without it. Devotion in this sense is much less a mindless worshiping and more so being open to the magic that happens everyday in front of our eyes and within our beating hearts. It is through devotion that many doors can be opened, doors inaccesible to the stubborn, chattering intelectual. One thing to make emphasis on is that devotion is just a matter of perspective. Look up sometime a rendering of the Virgo Supercluster of which our galaxy is part of, or the Hubble Ultra Deep Field just to get a sense at the immensity of the cosmos and see how you feel.

So, it is when we are overwhelmed by something that we become devout, whether it be the immense presence of a God or Goddess in your prayers or be it the magnificent design of an ant; be it the intensity of inspiration of a muse or even a particular kind of scorching anger. This I think is the key to the place, it is hard to grasp but it is always within reach, however it is so slippery that if you try to, you'll miss it. The trick, so it seems, lies not so much in knowing how to trigger it but in learning how to tap into it by putting everything else aside and just sit, attentive and available, to the rest of the Cosmos.