ACMindworks

Aodhan’s Blog of Blab

A warm welcome to all who wandered in here to read about whatever random musings my mind was compelled to write. While the post directly below this message can certainly be your starting point, there is a kind of narrative continuity running throughout, so it is suggested that you start from the beginning, as is the case with all stories. Enjoy!

A note of context: All of the current posts were written before I had actually established this blog. The intention to do so inspired the entries, but the ambition to build the actual online outlet hadn’t caught up. There’s going to be something of a time lag on these first few posts. The date at the beginning of the text is the date I wrote it. Eventually my past self will catch up to my current self, and proper synchronicity will be restored here.

  • A Love Found

    Sept 15: It would appear that the time in between posts here is increasing… It was never my intention to abandon this blog—life has simply decided to move in a direction that necessitated my time and attention flow differently. There’s a sense in the air that inspired me to return to this place and write something today, though, so here I am.

    Everything has changed quite extensively since I last posted. Hell, everything has been steadily changing since I started this blog. In a lot of ways my choice to start writing in this space marked the start of an intensive transformation process, coinciding with my trip to Costa Rica.  I’ve written quite a bit here about my perspective and subsequent experiences with the Venus archetype as of late—especially through the Kabbalistic and mystic Christian lenses—and now that process has been brought far more directly and tangibly into my physical reality. It’s one thing to speak of such matters from the abstract vantage point of a single man; it’s substantially more realized when one has a lovely feminine counterpart to co-create an embodied counterpoint melody with. Venus has indeed blessed this solar son!

    Our individual life-streams were drawn towards each other’s just before I had left to embark on that personal venture I only briefly touched upon in my last post, managing to maintain the connection through those few months of separation. Since my return to what has been my current earthly center-point of Vancouver Island, our connection has deepened, a relationship blossomed, and a shared life newly undertaken. I type these words now in a cozy little cabin nestled in a peaceful piece of property on one of the smaller Gulf Islands nearby—a place where my beloved partner and I will spend the month looking after a pair of charming cats, and essentially draw up the plans on how we want our lives to go and flow, both as sovereign individuals and as a unified unit.

    The first of those two states of being really is so crucial and fundamental to the functionality of the second. It’s so easy to want to escape into another, especially when love is so powerfully felt in relation to them. Romantic love truly is a powerful drug—and like any other drug, when overly indulged in with thoughtless excess, it can seriously disrupt one’s life. I have never had that very easy tendency so purposefully challenged than what this relationship is proving to provide. Keeping centered within myself has become a deeply important part of my own life process, vital to maintaining a clear connection to my creative essence and the greater divine voice. Fortunately, that is a shared value, and one we both strive to keep steady for both ourselves and each other.

    There is an idea— or an image—I work to keep solid in that regard that iterates on the oh-so-common triad/trinity symbol so deeply embedded within nearly all esoteric wisdom. The foundation is to honor and value the self (love thyself), then from there show the same honor and value to the other (love thy partner), and ultimately through both show that honor and value to the divine (love thy holy source). By loving myself I love my partner; by loving my partner I love the divine; I love the divine by loving myself. All three states and expressions of love are really just three angles of the same love/process.

    Approaching a relationship like this, at the foundational level, creates a very different relationship than any I have been a part of before. There is much more space—for authentic expression of self, honest communication, enjoyment of one another, freedom for what is to be what is, and for life to flow as it wants and needs to. There is a deeper quality of safety and comfort when there isn’t such an excessive emphasis on the other as the primary (or exclusive) source of fulfillment that ultimately leads to more of one’s relational needs being met.

    The ironic errors of the ego really does seem to be infinite. The more we grasp or impose or guilt-trip or demand or expect or force the less we ultimate benefit, yet those approaches to relationships (not only romantic) seem to be the default far more often than not. Our relationships really are a mirror to our own reality; our own true state of being; the actual affect of our influence. The ego resists, rejects and denies its part in the various disruptions and dysfunctions that emerge in our relationships, preferring the victim costume and playing out the story where other is the sole cause—futile attempts at deferring responsibility in energetic effect.

    I don’t want to speak too much of my personal experiences regarding the cultivation of this current relationship, as it’s really a story that need be only for my partner and I—and touching in on what I wrote about last time, I believe it’s better to keep the right ratio of distance between one’s personal life and the online sphere. I will say it’s provided a tremendous challenge to my emotional resilience, my mental clarity, my devotion to love as an essence, my willingness to allow things to be as they need to be, my patience, my faith, my trust, and ultimately my dedication to my own growth and integrity. My willingness to step up to those challenges has lead to an ever-expanding space for shared love, profound comfort, powerful transformation, a greater depth of physical awareness and embrace, an abundance of fun and laughter, a continuous unfolding of beautiful moments, an increased sense of spirit, a deeper attunement to life, and an incredibly satisfying, ongoing adventure! The level of love I feel for this woman is remarkable, beyond what my mind could have anticipated was possible, and it streams out into the world at large.

    As a final little note here before I sign off (she’s almost got dinner ready—another perk of partnership!), the same day we had our first official date, I picked up a book exploring the full nuances of Mary Magdalene through the lens of mystic Christian lovemaking (or the fifth way), taking from both the canonical gospels as well as the Gnostic writings. The author clearly favored the narrative equation of Jesus and Mary as divine lovers (something I obviously agree with), seeing them as an example of sacred sex in service of spirit. Considering what I had written about here before, based largely on my own intuitive understanding of that idea, and what the woman I had been on that date with has proven to mean to me, it acted as another wonderful experience of synchronicity. I actually teared up when I first opened the book, even before I read a single word from it.

    It’s amazing how life works. There really is magic everywhere if one chooses to open up to it. I hope everyone reading this finds magic somewhere in your life today!             

  • Contemplation of the Online Mirror

    May 18: Clearly it’s been a while since I last wrote a post for this blog. There were some facets involving my family I needed to engage with, as well as a deeply personal experience to undertake. Such things are not meant to be shared in so public a place. In fact, I would say that bringing that kind of attention to those experiences would fundamentally disrupt the kind of alchemy being undertaken and impact the results trying to be achieved.

    Outlets such as these blog-spaces, social media, and other technological platforms present a totally unprecedented affect on the development of mental/emotional flow, providing a constant temptation for attention and external validation. It’s very clearly proving to be something of a substantial issue in regards to the effective functionality of human consciousness. I can’t help but feel we are collectively sharing way too much, way too easily, far too quickly, without allowing the proper internal processes to actualize before bringing concrete definitions of said experiences out into the world. There’s a tremendous fracturing effect that can come from oversharing oneself online, the sense of self overly orienting towards the response of others rather than the actual embodied experience.

    I won’t say much on the subject of my experiences these past few months beyond that it was incredibly intensive and deeply profound, changing much of how I feel about myself and life in general, very much for the better. I do not believe I could have achieved that had I been sharing of it here (or any other public forum) throughout. Even talking about it to those I am very close with and know me well proved to have substantial limits.

    All of that leaves me with the thought that we are essentially losing touch with these deeper, intensive parts of our individual totality through excessive digital expression, distracting our awareness away from authentic self-understanding through the inescapably synthetic nature of online life, whether through the fixation on a curated expression of self or the similar presentation of others. Even in this moment as I write these words, attempting to capture the thoughts and feelings running through me in relation to this idea, I can sense the disruption of full spontaneity as I work to calculate this idea through words I know will be read by others. In order to craft this, I must, in effect, go out of myself, and thus become disconnected from the intimate immediacy of my holistic present experience.

    I can’t help but wonder if we are truly benefited by this immensely all-encompassing technological influence. What are we sacrificing by directing our consciousness out of manifested life and into the biologically disconnected realm of technology with such frequency? I’m honestly not entirely certain what to think about that right now. Clearly I am continuing to engage with it, directing my mind and awareness into this very blog post, and as it stands I do not foresee myself ceasing in this particular stream of creative exploration.

    There’s no question it affords a unique method of connection and communication within the human experience, but there’s also no doubt (in my mind) that it’s essentially a solely human experience. Trees do not post pictures of themselves on Instagram. The wind doesn’t upload its tones to Spotify. The stars can’t speak of their silent wisdom on Twitter (or X or whatever). I have to wonder how much of the divine is actually able to be translated and transmitted into whatever layer of existence lies behind the screen.

    Obviously this is all speculation without any easily discernible answer, nor an overtly measurable effect, but I personally see value in pondering subjects and ideas awash in uncertainty and ambiguity, and with the increased pace that technology is interfacing and effecting the way in which we think— AI already threatening to overtake our own inbuilt capacity for creative and critical thinking, and the world slipping more and more into baffling, dissonant forms of conflict and confusion by means of digital discourse—I think it’s well worth pondering these things, even without an obvious answer. I suppose after coming off of a period of decreased online engagement and increased communion with the innate flow of lifeforce, both personal and environmental, the distinction in the energetic, sensory experience feels a little more pronounced right now, and honestly somewhat disorienting.

    Perhaps healthy balance and honest self-regulation in relation to technological orientation is the key with this. That strikes me as making the most sense currently. But I fail to see a healthy and honest relationship to technological affect taking place in our world, and I can’t help wondering at all that is being implied by that. And considering implicit wisdom seems to be losing ground against explicit presumption in the online sphere, I wonder if we’ll ever resolve those imbalances…

    But on a rather contrary note, part of the positive that I feel is taking place in my own world is an increased faith in the operations of spiritual or divine processes, so despite however this all unfolds, I find myself easing ever more into a belief that it’ll all work out in however it needs to, one way or the other.

    I often like to think of the internet as an increased expression of the mirror of Narcissus, so perhaps what it’s really doing is affording us the opportunity to see ourselves, in all the beauty and ugliness, chaos and consideration, and the straight up idiosyncratic nature that has always been innate to the human condition in a way so visceral and direct, we might finally see ourselves reflected back with a potency that spurs us on to become something better.

    Whatever the case might need to be, consider me a strong proponent of switching oneself off from the online sphere from time to time, and really sinking into the greater flow of present, direct life in order to allow the cultivation of connection between the authentic interior and the embraced exterior. I certainly feel myself as having been greatly benefited by doing so for those past few months.

  • Short Story: A Walk in the Woods

    Upon awakening one morning, the sudden inspiration to go for a walk lit up the mind. Following the whim of this impulse, the self left the cozy confines of its heavenly home. Carrying a bag stuffed with supplies, the feet guided the self down the path, out into the wide unknown. A forest was soon found, and the self was struck with a strong need to enter it. At the outskirts was a path, well worn and offering a wide opening into the dense, green space. An odd sensation surged through the self as it passed the threshold from outer to inner, but the mind paid it little heed beyond a fleeting curiosity.

     The fresh, warm light of the rising sun gave way to the dark chill awaiting inside. A shiver descended down the self’s back, quickly followed by an ascent of invigorating enthusiasm, elicited by the rich affect of dynamic lifeforce abound within the forest’s bonds. Giddiness and glee tumbled out from the self, quickening the step and adding a touch of swagger to the gait.

     Looking about the trees, the self saw their youthful strength, felt their vivid vitality. Loud laughter lashed out from the mouth, the self taken by the joy the trees seemed so alive with. Entering even deeper into this forested domain, a luscious tapestry of flowers began to carpet the ground all around the path, filling the nostrils and intoxicating the senses with their sweet fragrance. Oh, how glad was the self in that moment at having followed its whim towards this fabulous forest. How so deliciously alive it was, and how potently alive it caused the self to feel.

     The enthusiasm for the experience increased within the self, somewhat softening the hardness of the mind, stimulating the senses of the form, and evoking a feeling to flow freely and uninhibited with it all. The memory proved to be rather hazy regarding the exact events that then followed, save to say that the sense of it felt very good.

     Ultimately, what brought the self back down from this exalted state was when the eyes began to see the odd tree branch littering the path, broken from their mother trunk in a way that gave an impression of violence. Then the self noticed the flowers living so lovely along the path’s edge were damaged and disrupted by careless footsteps. Worse yet, whomever the source of this woeful indignity was had taken to plucking the flowers and thoughtlessly tossing them aside once they tired of their beauty and fragrance.

     This influence of ignorant chaos only increased the further the feet walked forward, increasing the fires of anger rising within the self’s core. This unknown other had the gall to disrespectfully leave their waste strewn about the path. Plastic wrappers, metal scraps, empty cartons, scraps of paper and crumpled bottles were haphazardly left all over, and their own foul defecations deposited without regard.

     Anger boiled into rage in response to this blatant impudence. Who could dare to do such a thing? What awful manner of other proceeded the self upon this path? What ill regard informed their malintent? The feet quickened their pace, the self righteously motivated to apprehend this horrible other and reveal to them their blatant sins with all the harsh fury that could be mustered. As the self progressed down the path, the irreverent sight became more upsetting, and so too did the severe judgement burning in the belly increase along with it. This shameful other ahead had much to answer for, deserving no mercy for their heinous crime.

     And then the self noticed something rather odd. Laid upon the path where the feet tread was a broken branch that looked suspiciously familiar, both in shape and placement. So too were the footprints stomped throughout the poor flowers arranged in a previously seen way, and the garbage ahead appeared to be the exact same as what had initially infuriated the self.

     With a sinking feeling of dawning realization, the eyes inspected the footprints within the flowers from a closer vantage, and upon comparing them to the soles of the feet, horror struck with the revelation that they were a perfect match. It was not some other awful self who had so thoughtlessly disrupted and disrespected the peaceful beauty found within the forest. It was this self.

     Of course, denial flared up, the foolish ego attempting to absolve itself. “Surely I am simply misreading the signs,” the ego thought. “I could never cause such harm. I am a good person. It is only ever the other that enacts such sins.”

     But such refutations were obviously in vain. There could be no mistaking who the true culprit was. While overtaken with the state of enthusiastic rapture, the self had wound up on a path that circles upon itself, thus allowing for the influence and effect of its ignorance and indulgence to be revealed. The self immediately felt darkened with shame, contracting into guilt, and suffered the blowback of an ill-earned self-esteem now so suddenly ripped away. Overcome with enormous self-pity disguised as self-loathing, the self fell to the ground and wept, intending to remain there until death took its due.

     So lost to the domineering drama of inner angst was the self that it hardly heard the soft word whispering to it from afar. An ear managed to lift out from that rather embarrassing stupor to hear the message being imparted.

     “At least clean up the mess you left,” it seemed to say. “And if you really need to feel sorry for yourself afterwards, by all means do so.”

     The self had a few moments of debate with the mind whether or not to actually heed the message, but ultimately there was no worthy argument against it. The self managed to get back on the feet, despite the emotional weight bearing down. The self then proceeded to collect up all the broken branches and neatly pile them next to a pair of thick, older trees; cleaned up the flowerbeds as best as could be achieved, replanting the flowers that yet held a chance for life and placing the rest next to the pile of branches; collected up all of the garbage into a plastic bag that had been discarded on a bush, storing it in the bag hanging on the shoulder; and finished by digging a hole to bury the most shameful of what had been left.

     The self did indeed feel better after having taken responsibility for the mess, but guilt and shame still hung heavy in the heart and mind. The self no longer felt worthy to remain in that special forest.

     But again the voice spoke. “Well done cleaning up after yourself. Of course, you may leave if you so wish, but why not instead come a little deeper into the forest. There is a trail, hidden to the eyes of those who do not wish to see, that you would do well to walk.”

     The self hesitated to acquiesce, but a certain curious sense spurred the action to do as suggested. The trail was indeed found, not so obvious or well tread as the path it branched off from, but unmistakable now that the eyes knew to look for it. Walking this trail required more care, as it was largely grown over, and the self was very mindful not to impart any more harm to the copious plant life growing all about. It proved to be a long trail, and one made all the darker due to the density of foliage. An odd apprehension grew within the belly as the self ventured ever closer to the the trail’s end. What was found there took the breath away.

     A wide, open meadow, alight with the sun’s radiant warmth, had laid hidden in what the self intuitively knew to be the heart of the forest. An astounding variety of flowers grew everywhere, their colors vivid, their geometry inspired, and their fragrance sublime. Running through the center of the meadow was a stream, continuously singing a sweet, burbling song. Next to the stream was a figure, robed in white, their back towards where the self stood. As the figure turned to meet the eyes with their own, the self was forced to look away, the splendor in their gaze beyond what the self could bear.

     “Welcome, child,” the figure said, their voice all comfort and melody. Yet still the self could not match their stare.

    The mind was immediately overwhelmed with the thought that it was not for the self to be there, and the heart hurt in reply. The thought continued, claiming the self should leave, that they were not to stay. Considering all the harm the self had already done to the forest, there was a fear for what more might be imparted.

     The self was about to turn and leave when a gentle hand was felt upon the chin. That warm hand lifted the face, bringing the eyes to meet a golden pair emanating such a depth of love, pouring it out abundantly through their gaze. Immediately tears arose. It could not be said whether the figure was male or female, only that they were beautiful beyond belief, their features almost childlike yet their essence ageless.

    The tears soon began to flow freely, flavored with such sorrow. As the figure beamed a wondrous smile at the self, the tears turned to joy. With a soothing tone and a healing lightness, the figure uttered the most powerfully affecting phrase.

    “Welcome home.”

  • Heartfelt Reflection

    Jan 31: (Editor Aodhan here: I feel the need to add some thoughts to what was initial written. As will be noted, I wrote what will follow this introduction over two weeks ago, yet haven’t been compelled to post it. Not only that, but I haven’t felt any pull towards posting to the blog in general lately. Reflecting upon that fact, as the sense to finally put this up is activated within me, I am able to recognize with a clearer awareness that there are aspects and facets of this life experience that cannot be shared so openly or easily; that they are not meant to be shared.

    There are parts of our own inner alchemy that fundamentally require a kind of internal hermetic solitude; thoughts, feelings, emotions and experiences that can only be truly processed and integrated in the safe sanctity of our own inner hearth. Much of what my attention and intention have drawn me towards lately are rooted in such processes. For now, the best I can say about it is that the narrative progression, or archetypal equation, I’ve been running through my system, ie the dynamics correspondent with Venus (Mary), the Sun (Christ), and Saturn (authority/hedonist split), have lead me towards a greater emphasis of importance upon the state and operations of the heart. Love really is the key, and the heart is the sphere that is the most in tune with that particular note.

    There is another archetypal image that emerges when a deeper consideration and exploration of that sphere is undertaken, and that is of a largely hidden figure most easily, on a collective level, identified as Vesta. There is good reason for her to remain hidden, and it is only through personal meditation that it is revealed as to why this must be. No more needs to be said on the matter, nor can be in any useful means.

    I’ll finish this drawn-out intro by saying I feel blessed with my current circumstance, satisfied with the way things are moving in my world, and I’m largely happy and whole. What’s to follow here is an expression that emerged from this process of heart work I’ve been engaged in, and while it almost feels a little too vulnerable to share, my past self obviously felt compelled to do so, and thus my now self wishes to honor that. Perhaps this is all part of my own heart healing. Perhaps that is at the core of this entire blog. Perhaps that is the core need of the collective healing. It certainly seems like it in this moment I type out these words. Anyways, enough of this preamble ramble. I’ll let my past self take over.)    

    There’s something of a pattern that has begun to emerge in the way I’ve been approaching this blog; a pattern that reveals an aspect of how I tend to operate. My initial intention with this online space was to let it be a place where I could share in my own, personal thoughts and feelings; a means to externalize my personal experience through the written word. While that has indeed been the case, I’ve noticed myself leaning further and further into abstract formulation and contextual calculation with these writings rather than an emphasis on sharing of myself. I tend to do this in general, focus my attention on the larger picture and ultimately lose track of myself. I suppose this post is going to be an attempt at bringing the focus back to my humanity.

    It would seem I’m just far more comfortable with the abstract rather than the tangible; the ineffable rather than the ephemeral. I’ve gone through long periods where the human world, with all it’s impermanent presumptions and self-serious structures, felt so incredibly irrelevant to me. Like grasping at vaporous mirages for meaning and purpose. But despite my preference (and perhaps over-fixation) on uncovering the metaphysical undercurrents, a need for the physical, the material, the tangible, and the human remains.

    Much of what I have been writing in this blog is rooted in my efforts to restore that part of my nature, to settle my awareness back into the fleeting form of human experience. To find a means by which to love that experience despite its imperfections and dysfunctions. I cannot deny that a degree of struggle, and perhaps hesitancy, yet persists in achieving that state of being.

    When looking out from my internal universe onto the external world, it’s very easy to see much that obscures inspiration, chokes out faith, or paints in hues of ugliness and corruption. It takes conscious, continuous effort to hold love in this realm. To keep it burning in the heart even when the icy winds of apathy and selfishness work to snuff it out. And what more important place is there to ground that love than one’s own material aspect? Therefore, my capacity to love humanity is tethered to the degree of love shown towards my own humanness.

    It’s funny, many people I know seem to feel a kind of heavy gravity in regards to the world, their attention and awareness  being pulled down and deeper into it, losing faith or hope or belief in a higher influence. I seem to work in reverse, a gravity pulling me away from the world and into an abstract, intangible awareness of higher beauty and order. The temptation to forego my humanity and assimilate myself even greater to that higher state is strong indeed. However, as I said, there yet remains something that keeps me anchored to the human; keeps me curious to engage; motivated to love.

    That notion seems to be what is leading me to my experience of the Christ essence, and the idea of embracing life as an act of divine love, rather than disregarding it due to its ridiculous nature. Perhaps that touches in on why I can find it challenging to speak more readily about my subjective experiences here, despite that being the intended purpose of this blog: I don’t entirely understand what it is I am experiencing myself, through whatever it is I seem to be attempting to enact in this world. That much of my personal thoughts and feelings are rooted in what could be an unspeakable emotional experience of reconciling the willful ignorance of human arrogance and the subtle, quiet glory of a force far beyond left brain comprehension.

    Even as I make the effort to write this rather odd and disjointed mental/emotional experience out, I’m not sure any real, relatable sense is emerging from it. But I suppose the attempt to share and connect, even these hard to define and express things, is itself an act of love, known through the sincere effort. I will keep trying. I will keep making that effort to bring my own, human experience to light here, regardless if the end results always work.

    Chances are I will always and inevitably start leaning towards contextualizing abstractions, but I’ll make more of an effort in returning the attention back to my personal experiences and sharing them here. I think that might be a good way to maintain a love for my lower self, and hopefully cultivate a greater love for all of life as a result.

  • Giving Honor to Venus

    Jan 17: Going to go somewhat stream of consciousness here. Whether this proves to be something worth repurposing for the blog will be determined later (Spoiler: it is). A thought process was stirring through me this morning after reading some of Aleister Crowley’s Clouds Without Water; a series of poetic verses that explore a man’s thoughts and feelings regarding his sexual lesion with a young woman named Lola, an expression of the Mary archetype in her “Mother of Tears” (or sorrow) form. Each part of the poem explores the dynamic from a different archetypal lens, such as the Alchemist, the Hermit, and the Theurgist, shining its own quality of light (awareness) onto the power and allure of sexual desire.

    For me, the poem is providing yet another stream of insight—another key of understanding—regarding the process of restoring Venus’ placement within my own psyche. The basic sense that the poem was inspiring was the notion that a necessary form of salvation is found through sexual union, particularly for the feminine (yin/receptive) side of the life equation. The risk there, however, is the ever present potential for sliding into the abyss through excessive indulgence; the nihilistic danger of the hedonist. Salvation is the key word in the previous claim, as the thought equation I’m working out here is fundamentally connected to the Christ essence.

    Before building the idea further, I want to refresh and expand beyond the idea I introduced in the last post regarding the basic expressions of light and the triangular way they operate. This whole notion is firmly and fundamentally rooted in the Tree of Life diagram. In the case of the particular thought equation I’m formulating, I’m really only going to be dealing with the etheric/solar trinity and the astral/lunar trinity. The divine only needs to be recognized as the originating source of all that is, and the material plane as that which ultimately manifests the energetic processes.

    As previously mentioned, the astral/lunar trinity has a foundation built from the polarity of intellectual/abstract/objective information processing and feeling/sensory/subjective information processing; themselves being a kind of lower octave, lesser expression of the Heaven/yang/authority and Earth/yin/hedonist dynamic. These two polarities determine the direction and intention of astral light—or lunar consciousness—operating as imagination, fantasy, idealism, fear, and delusion.

        Intellectual   Sensory

         Mercury   Venus

    Astral Light

         Moon

    This is essentially the realm of ego (the lesser, smaller, diffused and reflected facsimile of the divine singularity). The polarized foundation corresponds with the solar plexus chakra (or power center, actualized through mind and body), informed by the relational nature of the duality, whether imbalanced, antagonistic and ultimately neurotic (the Saturnian split), or cooperative, cohesive and harmonious (healthy self-esteem/value rooted in rightness). The lunar tip corresponds to the sacral center, or creative, sexual impulse. It is the quality and intention of the lunar light, as informed by the energetic data encoded into mind and body, that determines what is made manifest in the material plane (the root chakra, or survival center).

    The etheric/solar trinity is built from the polarized foundation of judgement/right thought and action/karmic cause and effect on one side, and mercy/compassion/ loving embrace on the other, focusing into the point at the triangle’s tip as solar light (the Christ essence, or Christ consciousness).

     Judgement Compassion

                                            Mars                          Jupiter

    Etheric Light

            Sun

    It is through harmonizing our consciousness to this essence that clearer, truer, fuller awareness is achieved; an awareness informed by and inspiring within an embodied state of genuine love and compassion, and true ethical understanding (Karma, Krishna, Christ). Judgement without compassion creates the tyrannical, oppressive and destructive condemnation of the authority (Yahweh), and compassion without judgement enables the indulgence of nihilistic, disrespectful, degrading hedonism (Satan), both imbalances creating disorder in the heart center/solar, Christ sphere. Honesty and integrity allows for the intuitive sense of right judgement; patience and forgiveness are the means by which true compassion is produced; all of these are qualities in which the ego struggles with. The ego orients towards keeping the mind obscured within delusion and illusion; judgement enacted from hurt pride or imaginary fear, and compassion misused to indulge and enable dysfunctional addiction.

    There is a formula in esoteric thought that goes like this: Sun over Moon. The reason for this is that sun light is “true” light; self-derived, constant, clear and authentic, and filled with warm life force. Moon light is illusory light, only a reflection of the sun’s, inconsistent in its expression, cold and lacking in life force, and limited in its capacity to illuminate, though undeniably beautiful and affecting (much like our dreams and ideals).

    Running this thought equation through christian symbolism, the Christ is the solar emanation (the heart chakra), and the foundation of its polarized action—it’s passion—is bringing judgement/correct alignment and compassion/forgiveness into the world (matter). It is the emanation of the divine (the source) into the astral (the ego), radiating light onto the moon, into our imagination, into our minds. But not just our minds, our bodies as well, for to be truly informed by the solar/Christ essence is to feel it in its sensory expression as much as to know it intellectually.

    Now I’m going to return to the base of the lunar/astral triangle, and particularly to its left, or feminine, side. This is the most crucial point on the lunar trinity for whether or not the solar light can truly get into the material realm and actualize (become embodied), and I would say that this is the point that our society is largely ignorant of and, qualitatively speaking, deficient in.

    This is the realm of Venus. This is the realm of beauty and relationships. And in the Jesus story formula, this is Mary. Not just Mother Mary—the pure, virginal expression; the untouched vessel that receives the Christ essence—but also Mary Magdalene, the sexually active expression, who potentially, if one were to subscribe to this rather contentious interpretation of the story, receives Jesus, the man, physically as wife. Venus/Mary is both of these expressions. Needs to be both, held together as one. A pure, virginal (which is to say humble, grateful, respectful and spacious, or egoless) vessel for the etheric essence (ethical, loving essence) to enter, and a carnally enjoyed, sexually worshiped, tangibly appreciated human woman (the sensuous embrace of the ego).

    Jesus being married (Mary’d) is a vital part of that story’s restoration as far as I’m concerned, as it represents an important facet of the spiritual formula encoded and expressed through it. That the gift of the Christ isn’t that he died for our sins (a distorted, manipulative misuse of that story to instill guilt and shame in human consciousness—emotionally disruptive and disorderly states—and thereby allow the authority/Yahweh/demiurge to maintain its control), but rather that he embraced life. That he loved life. His marriage to Mary Magdalene represents that. Same as the sun giving of its light and warmth to the earth.

    Life/matter/mother/ the matrix is something to love. Is worthy of love. Is precious and valuable. As is the ego, which is something to nurture and care for. The Christ might connect to the sun, but so does the Lion, the animal, the lower self. Embodying the Christ means properly caring for the ego. We need to feed that Lion, take it for walks, cuddle it, pet it, make it feel loved. Rendering Mary Magdalene as a whore debases the feminine, degrades Venus, damages the ego, and disorients human consciousness, evoking either a resisting rejection of her and what she represents, or inspiring a rebellious, resentful counter reaction expressed through narcissistic overinflation.. When honor and care is not provided for the essence of Mary Magdalene, she either withers away or becomes a succubus.

    I believe this is a significant part of the process I have been enacting and mentally working out through this blog, restoring my relationship to Venus and feeling a renewed sense of beauty’s value, of its power and importance. And I believe this is best done through a measured balance of honoring both the pure, incorruptible essence of Mother Mary and the alluring, arousing, sensuously pleasing Mary Magdalene at the same time. As a cohesive whole. As men—and even further, as any mind drawn in by beauty’s allure—it is vital that we be mindful and conscious of the quality of energetic attention being projected onto the essence held by Venus/Mary, embracing and appreciating it with love, respect, reverence and integrity, for that is how we will allow the etheric/Christ essence to truly manifest and become embodied within the sensory/feeling part of the astral apparatus, and thus have it truly inform our material manifestations.

    As one final thought to tie into all of this, I’m going to share of an experience I had while camping down at the stream near my family’s farm. I had taken a decent dose of mushrooms and MDMA, following three days of consciously opening to and engaging with the energies and environment. The substances wound up hitting me so strongly that I essentially disappeared for a while, my sense of self completely submerged in the tsunami of energy washing through me. I returned to awareness to find myself loudly, resonantly repeating OM over and over. I was then completely overtaken with the most all encompassing, pronounced and profound feeling of love. This was a depth and scope of love beyond anything I had ever felt before (or since—at least thus far), and in that moment I knew it to be the ultimate truth. That everything else seemingly perceived to the contrary are simply the delusional fears concocted by the ignorance of the ego.

    It was truly incredible! And in that experience I was brought to the powerfully affecting thought, amplified by a very potent feeling, that, as a man, to fully and properly love the feminine, to truly fulfill and honor what women are, required the absolute, committed, loving devotion to one woman. Not to say lesser forms of love cannot be achieved otherwise, but at best, an element of lacking will always be present. I believe there is a far deeper significance to marriage than the superficial way we currently interpret it, and for me, this restored story of Jesus marrying Mary further reinforces that. True love is devotion to that which is beyond ego (the astral) yet also encompasses it, and marriage is the ritualistic arrangement actualizing that unifying sacrament.

    But all of this is just the way I’m seeing it right now, these words simply just my own efforts towards trying to make sense of the various thoughts and feelings swirling together throughout my mind and body. Take what you will from it. Hopefully there’s a few golden nuggets of insight to be found.

  • Back in the Homeland

    Jan 10: I’m now back in very familiar surroundings. Currently, my butt is planted at a table in a cafe where I’ve done a substantial amount of writing in the past, typing these thoughts into words while sipping on a crazy good cup of hazelnut infused hot chocolate. After two months of being submersed in various foreign, novel environments, its nice to be in a public place I’m fully comfortable with. Don’t get me wrong, fresh novelty is fantastic, and I remain incredibly grateful for every bit of my time in Costa Rica, but there is certainly a greater capacity for the system to settle in a space one is familiar with. And there’s no doubt that having had a good chunk of time away from this place is allowing me to enjoy it all the more at the moment. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all of that.

    The duality of novelty and familiarity is yet another polarized life influence each individual needs to find balance with. Too much novelty leads to system overload and chaos; too much familiarity leads to stagnation and small mindedness. I tend to get fed up with places and situations relatively quickly due to the rate and pace my mind seems to absorb and process energetic information, churning up the need to change things with a degree of regularity that thus far hasn’t afforded my soul enough of an opportunity to properly settle into this human life process.

    It’s fair to say that my appreciation for the current coffee house providing this story’s setting is also being enhanced by the fact that I’ve been essentially couch bound since getting back into Canada. The wound on my leg has required a whole lot of slow down on the part of my motion-based motivations in order to speed up its repairs. Due to a number of factors informing my personal orientation, I haven’t wanted to get it looked at by a doctor. Not that I’m entirely adverse to medically professional intervention, but I do think attention has a quality of energetic information entwined through it, and I’m not keen on an objectifying, scientific (potentially arrogant) form of attention imposing its interpretation and assumptions onto the wound’s deeper meaning.

    Like I’ve mentioned in a previous post, I don’t believe in random chance, instead subscribing to the notion that everything is the result of unseen energetic arrangements. The damage and subsequent way my wound heals holds a specific symbolic meaning for me. As long as I can keep it clean and healing properly through my own efforts, I’d prefer to keep it clear of any other outside energetic effect. Just to be clear, I would not necessarily suggest anyone else follow this example, as a risk of increased issue could easily arise. This is simply an avenue of life experience in which I choose to exert my own free will. I’ll freely admit that there have been a few moments where I seriously considered that my leg may need the care of someone better educated than me regarding the workings of the body, but it appears to be the case that the wound is healing up quite well through the careful cooperation of natural bodily functions and my own administrations. It’s both looking and feeling much better. I still have to effectively stay off of it for the most part to maximize its healing capacity, though even that is thankfully starting to ease up, leading to my choice to walk over to this cafe to write this post.

    Obviously it has been a comparatively long while since the last time I felt compelled to write something here, but I’m sure my situation makes it clear why that would be. I’ve honestly been fairly tired almost constantly since getting back to Canada. Between the leg wound, a brief cold that took hold, processing all the arising thoughts and feelings regarding my trip, and a somewhat disrupted sleep routine, I have had neither the energy nor the ambition to conjure up anything to post here. But today I felt compelled to break that streak.

    It’s certainly been interesting being back in Canada, comparing and contrasting the vibe and affect of this country and Costa Rica. The first sense that really struck me about the people was how much colder, more uptight, insecure and disconnected they generally felt compared to Costa RIcans. The image that comes to mind for me is that, culturally speaking (which is to say, the quality of conscious collectively held), it’s like we’re slaves to an overly intellectual assumption of superiority and rightness—one woefully disconnected from reality. Costa Ricans felt warmer, more at ease with each other and the life flow, and held what felt like a deeper quality of trust in life. I suppose another way of saying it is that the egoic impulse is more subdued there compared to the over-exaggerated way it’s embodied here. Also, Spanish is a much more lively and harmonically pleasing language to listen to than English, even despite my inability to parse it.

    (Editor Aodhan here: As a counter experience to the previous paragraph, the morning after writing this, I went for a walk to a nearby park and everybody along the way expressed a bright, smiling hello to me. I’m not going to remove my previous observations—obviously, since it’s still here—as I still think there’s truth in it, but it goes to show the incomplete nature of many of our initial interpretations of things. Life is so much more nuanced than the reactionary mind is capable of perceiving. Good reminder not to get stuck in such quickly conjured definitions.)

    All of that isn’t to say that Costa Ricans are so much more superior than the folks here—far from it. There’s a degree of simplicity and a lack of boundaries more predominant in people there that the folks in this part of the world aren’t so riddled with, which I personally prefer. I suppose the positive qualities described in the paragraph above are just the things I found myself missing rather quickly upon returning—and are influences I think we could do with a little more of here.

    Interestingly, I’ve noticed (in comparison to the way I usually was before) that I’ve been naturally enacting a greater degree of friendliness and easy warmth with those I interact with, and the way people respond to me has been a lot more positive. I like to think that’s a quality I was able to absorb during my time in Costa Rica, and I hope to maintain it from here on out. After all of the communication challenges throughout my trip, it really is such a joy simply being able to talk with people again. I’m sure that inner appreciation on my part has something to do with the way folks are responding to me as well. We’re kind of starved for friendly connection here, being so much more competitively oriented, and perhaps even a little paranoid.

    I also find my new found appreciation and respect for beauty continuing to flourish and grow internally. More and more I’m recognizing the importance of its influence and affect, and the responsibility rooted in our relationship towards it, as its quality is innately rooted in the kind of attention we project onto it. We have such a fractured and schizophrenic relationship to beauty in North America, often either down playing and diminishing its value, or misusing it for power gain and manipulation. Both extremes damage the quality and capacity of beauty’s uplifting affect, and we all suffer for it.

    I was given the opportunity to explore a thought process this morning that follows along those lines with the very good and generous friend I’ve been so fortunate to be staying with. It’s an idea better explored in a post dedicated to it, but I’ll attempt a simplified synopsis here.

    From an esoteric point of view, you can essentially organize the nature of spiritual energies into four fundamental states: Divine, etheric, astral and material. Each of those states is essentially different qualities of light (brightness, clarity, purity, ect), itself effectively forms of information. We experience light on the material plane as solid form and tangible shape. Astral light can be thought of as lunar light; the images and ideas produced through imagination. Etheric light can be thought of as solar light; the true essences behind the images and the emanated life force underlying everything. Divine light is ineffable and incomprehensible, beyond the realm of creation, and the source of all that is.

    Above the earth realm, each of the expressions of light are essentially regulated by a polarized force. Think of a triangle. The point at top is where the light is focused and released, and the two  points on the bottom are the polarized foundation that stabilizes the light’s efforts. Lunar (which is to say reflected and diffused) light, or astral energy, is stabilized by the polarity of both conscious, intellectual mind (the organizing and contextualizing functions; abstract and objective), represented by Mercury, and sensory, feeling based bodily experience (the intuitive, responsive functions; tangible and subjective), represented by Venus.

    Venus is the archetype of beauty. Beauty has a profound affect when embraced, soothing the system and causing it to settle down and open up. Resisting and rejecting beauty’s power keeps the system closed off and tensed up, preventing sensory information from getting in. An over emphasis on intellectual processes (or power) leads to the diminishment (and potential debasement) of beauty’s value, as the conscious mind cannot fully grasp beauty’s affect. The archetypal image: Mercury looks at Venus and perceives her as a stupid, empty bimbo. Conversely, an over emphasis on aesthetics can lead to superficiality, vanity and vapid ignorance. The archetypal image: Venus looks at Mercury and sees him as a nerdy, ugly bookworm.

    That conflict (yet another manifestation of the Satunian split) fractures the mind and body, preventing either the higher awareness of intellectual thought or the settling and inspiring affect of beauty, disrupting the capacity for solar/etheric light (the emanation of raw life force) to illuminate the consciousness. Like all polarized influences, the necessary arrangement is the balance of both. Higher intellectual arrangement informing and organizing beauty’s presentation, and beauty bringing the awareness back to tangible experience in order to reveal the truth of its thought. When both work together, the excesses of either are toned down and the focused understanding of astral light can be achieved, allowing the consciousness to pass through the realm of fantasy and imagination and reach the greater mental clarity of etheric awareness (or Christ consciousness). An over emphasis on either intellectual abstraction or tangible aesthetic pleasure leads to continued astral confusion. Once more the authority and the hedonist must join together to form cohesion and clarity.

    Well, maybe that wasn’t as simplified as I was hoping, but its quite difficult to contain those ideas within brief explanations. Even what I wound up writing out here was very low resolution. Bottom line, I think we’d all seriously benefit by reintegrating a healthy, respectful appreciation for beauty into our contextual frameworks. I’ll leave it at that, and leave this post be. I hope you experience a lovely moment of beauty today!

  • A Final Word Before a Fond Farewell

    Dec 24: Today is my last day in Costa Rica. I would like to write out some of my thoughts and feelings regarding this whole experience while I’m still immersed in it, but I’m not sure how clearly I’ll manage to channel that into words. I’m pretty wiped out right now.

    Let me set up a bit of context here. It’s a moderately drawn-out journey from where I was, San Isidro, to where the airport is, Alujuala, so by the time I was finally off the bus, it was fairly dark. Rainy too, just to make it even more “atmospheric.” I had a short walk to the Airbnb I had booked, and obviously I was moving at rather rapid pace to minimized how much me and my (too much) stuff got wet. That lack of light coupled with my full throttled, forward focused efforts meant that I did not see the big ass hole waiting for me right in the middle of the sidewalk. Before I knew it I was suddenly belly deep in the ground and my left leg was vibrating with some very unpleasant sensations.

    Thankfully nothing was broken, either in body or possessions. Kind of a miracle considering how deep that hole was, how fast I was moving, and how much added weight I had strapped to me. But like I said, my left leg was clearly in rough shape.

    I limped my way to the Airbnb, and as soon as I got to where my bod was slathered in illumination I could see I was bleeding pretty badly. I dragged myself up the steps to my suite, went inside, turned on the light and checked out the damage. It was not a pretty sight. A relatively large chunk of flesh in my shin was disturbingly absent. I went into a kind of detached work mode, cleaning it as best as I could and covering the hole up, then limped my way to a nearby Wal Mart to snatch a first aid kit. Once I got back I more thoroughly cleaned and redressed the wound.

    By the end of all that, the adrenaline subsided and the pain kicked in. It was not a pleasant night, let me tell you. I had to be very careful how I positioned my leg otherwise the wound would start to tear and the pain would ratchet up. Thankfully I actually did manage to sleep, but I am pretty out of it today. Still, I felt compelled to write out something for this final day.

    The way I’m seeing it, this leg wound is meant to act as something of a reminder regarding what this trip has come to represent for me. Obviously, I tend to view the life process through a thick lens of symbolism, subscribing to the notion that all material experience is rooted in an energetic cause. Through such a lens, the left side of the body represents our feminine side, and our legs are the physical expression of what stabilizes us in and allows us to move through life. Both of those facets of the life experience (the embrace of earthly embodiment and the receptive side of the equation) are elements I’ve struggled to reconcile with internally for quite some time. Elements intimately entwined; effectively the same influence expressed in different ways.

    As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve long oriented towards an emphasis on the spiritual and abstract, with a part of that preference coming from a place of wanting to transcend the earthly, human world. As I hope I am managing to make at least somewhat clear throughout this blog project, I no longer believe there is any way to cheat your way out of this place; the task being to actually embrace it (through love and reverence). It’s been a fairly hard road getting to that point, filled with all manner of inner bumps and bruises along the way.

    Coming to Costa Rica was, for me, rooted in an intention to further heal and restore my connection to the feminine; to material, human existence. Bring heaven down to earth. Blend Yang with Yin. Lock the upward and downward triangles together. Heal the Saturnian split.

    As was previously mentioned, Venus, the planetary archetype of love, beauty and value, has a strong personal affect on me in Costa Rica. Venus also, obviously, is strongly associated with the feminine essence. It’s symbol is the exact same as the one for woman after all. I’ll reiterate that those Venusian qualities are already fairly predominant here, beyond just my own associations. The women are gorgeous and highly feminine, in the pronounced curves of their bodies, the way the decorate themselves and the very essence they radiate. They completely embrace their femininity here. The country itself seems to more easily embrace and appreciate the feminine essence just in general, substantially more than I feel is the case up in the northern and supposedly more educated part of the west.

    The absolute abundance of jungle is another expression of Venus’ touch, as she is also the fertile mother of the material form, best expressed through the Empress card in the tarot. Actually, the mother archetype is powerfully present here, flowing through the women very freely, another aspect contrasting the diminishment of the mother in countries heavily intoxicated with toxic feminism. Perhaps that touches in on what the greatest gift this experience has provided me: a contrast and therefore cure of sorts to that feminist poisoning soaked into my own system.

    Just to be clear, I don’t outright oppose everything loaded into feminist thought. I’m all for the respect and healthy empowerment of lady folk. As far as I’m concerned, everyone benefits from that. But like Christianity before it, the good ideas have gotten buried under a sludge pile of egoic power lust. Those thought waves are incredibly damaging, and they have certainly taken their toll on me and my relationship to various facets of the feminine essence.

    For my own internal restoration and cohesion, this country has offered an energetic influence that has acted as something of a panacea to that poison. I have no intention of digging into the details of what that entails for me specifically, because not everything needs to be shared or worked into words, but I can say that my enjoyment of and appreciation for beauty has very much altered, feeling much cleaner, freer and more respectful. There are so many ways in which female beauty, and beauty in general, are being misused, degraded and diminished, from all sides of the gendered equation. I have certainly drank from those polluted waters. It feels so much better to have restored a more exalted and reverent view of beauty within me, a process I intent to continue enhancing and refining.

    Another thing my experience in Costa Rica has stirred within me is a greater sense of just how important relationships are; particularly loving, close relationships. The combination of the blocks in connecting brought up through the language barrier and witnessing the incredibly warm, open, communal nature of the locals worked to emphasize both the need and lack for that within my own life, a feeling it seems so many in the west are struggling with. Again, I believe that Saturnian split is the source of this, the neurotic need to see oneself as superior (fed into by higher levels of supposed education, technological dependency and that constipation within the feminine, ie, the binding waters of connection, care and relationship) and the subsequent shame inducing swing into hedonistic, addictive and even nihilistic indulgence to fill the void of unfulfilled relational requirement.

    It’s not to say that Costa Rica is some perfect paradise. It’s certainly got plenty of problems of its own, but that’s just a part of everything here in the earth realm. That’s actually another thing this experience has really emphasized to me: it doesn’t matter where you go, there is no escape from personal and earthly bullshit. I’m very thankful for what this country has offered me, but I don’t consider it necessarily a better place to be than back home in Canada (despite how loaded with bullshit it is as well).

    While I’m sure I could easily keep rambling on here, as tends to be my mental nature, I do want to keep this on the shorter side. I’ll finish with a few other quickfire observations. The food isn’t anything special. It’s not awful, but it’s not great. And apparently pesticides and other chemicals are used very heavily here, so the produce isn’t even especially healthy. They really like everything loud. Music, speaking, watching stuff on their phone. Everything seems cranked to the max. I love that every city has a center, complete with a nice church, where everyone likes to hang out. I’d often just chill in these places, reading and watching all the activity. There are dogs everywhere, and many of them love to bark with easy regularity. The cats were more secretive and shy. Stuff isn’t cheap here compared to most other Latin American countries, but the over all standard of living and material wealth seems higher too. Still, there’s plenty of beggars everywhere you go. Sitting on the bus, watching the stunning landscape go by while listening to music made for some really nice moments. A lot of the people will attempt to communicate even if their English isn’t great and despite my lack of Spanish. It’s sweet that they would try, and I appreciate all of those moments of connection, but it could get a little awkward.

    All right, I’ll leave it at that. I may do a retrospective follow up a little later, but this will act as the last post written while here. I’ve got a long, early flight lined up tomorrow with a busted up leg, so I’m gonna take it easy the rest of the day. I hope you’re finding some time to do the same.

  • The Saturnian Split prt 2

    Dec 18: I just had an odd experience that has caused me to question some of the content in the previous post, as well as how exactly to approach this one, being that it’s meant to be the second part. I’m going to be employing a very free flowing, spur of the moment writing style as I work it out. Not that I don’t generally write that way, it’ll just be a little more pronounced here.

    I was just getting back from a bit of a wander around the town I’m currently in, San Isidro, when I got stopped by a trio of immigration officers. They questioned me about my stay, wanting to see my currently unequipped passport. I don’t exactly carry that around with me everywhere I go. I have no idea if this is a common thing that they do, checking out random gringos to see if they’ve overstayed, or if they were looking for someone in particular. I haven’t witnessed anything like this throughout the two months that I’ve been here. Obviously it all went fine since I haven’t broken any laws, though they did chastise me a bit for not having my passport on me.

    On a surface level, the experience itself was really just a minor curiosity, but when I consider the symbolic sequence it’s a part of, that’s where my contemplative questioning crops up. The fact that I had a tangible encounter with an expression of authority the day after uploading my mini deconstruction of Saturn’s dysfunctional split is enough to make me pause. Honestly, that part of the post was the first thing I had written up that I hesitated to share here since starting this blog .

    There’s an idea in some esoteric traditions that strongly advises against revealing too much about the workings of Saturn. It actually goes even further than that, the notion being that speaking too plainly or openly about higher level power in general can attract unwelcome issues. Thus the historic tendency towards secret societies, political obfuscation, and even phrases such as “don’t throw pearls to swine.” To know is to dare, to dare is to will, to will is to remain silent is one of the tenants of hermetic philosophy. And here I am blabbing away about it, likely allowing my own ignorant thinker to foolishly stumble through ideas that may well need to remain hidden for the operations for this whole earthly, human thing not to go to shit. Ah well, I suppose I’ll just have to continue riding the wave of my own inclination to express and hope I don’t get pummeled by some sort of unseen karmic surf.  

    There’s a common sentiment among the common man that the so called elites hoard and hide power and knowledge away for their own selfish gain, and that we the people deserve to possess it ourselves. Maybe that’s true to an extent, but my own mental meanderings have lead me to the view that there’s likely much more involved in all that. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, humans have a tendency towards self-victimization, which includes looking for someone or something to blame whenever our sense of personal power is in any way threatened. The image that comes to mind is of a toddler throwing a temper tantrum when things don’t go exactly his way. It’s far too easy to misuse power to fulfill egoic impulses and wants, the hunger for the object of desire obscuring objectivity. The more an individual is driven and informed by their own personal wants, or even just a desperation to sooth emotional and sensory discomfort, the more likely they are to misuse power and mess things up.

    There’s something of an energetic resonance between narcissistic impulse and childish emotionality, revealed through an inability to take responsibility for tempering the sensations of hunger and want, or the destructive consequences that can emerge when selfish desire is given into. Perhaps my perspective is skewed through a lens of observation greased up with pessimistic expectation, but I haven’t seen too many examples of individuals who aren’t prone towards some form of easy self-centeredness when push comes to shove. There’s been numerous examples of that throughout history, and more than a few that have happened in the last handful of years. The craving for power is weird that way, and that weirdness really does appear to show up in those that manage to get their hands on a level of authority operating beyond their ego’s capacity to wield it responsibly.

    I think it’s a safe statement to make that the craving for power and authority is rooted in fear. Such a response leads to an emotionally charged need to possess the means to control the factors that might cause the feared effects to manifest into one’s experience. In that state of being is a powerful desire to preserve a particular arrangement of life facets.

    Why did the immigration officers interrogate me? Because they want to maintain a certain status quo for Costa Rica. Why do people get so riled up over politics? Because it determines the kind of life they’re able to live. Why might a man work a job that causes harm to people or the environment? Because it secures his family’s future. Why do people obey the laws decreed by their god? Because it assures the salvation of their soul. What do all of these things have in common? A fear of loss. A fear of change. The steady comforts of the familiar giving way to an unwanted, unsettling novelty.

    And what is it that allows for change? Time. And who is Father Time? Saturn. So here we find that Saturnian influence once again.

    But is is so wrong to want to preserve something felt to be precious? That’s a question I find more challenging to answer. On a personal level, there’s plenty of aspects in my life I work at maintaining and preserving, my anxieties over their potential loss more than enough motivation for me to persist. But on a philosophical level, there’s no way for me to deny the inescapable reality of impermanence and the ephemerality of all manifested existence. To tether my well being upon something that is innately unreliable strikes me as kind of insane.

    So then why place any emphasize on the ephemeral at all? At the heart of all mystical, spiritual traditions is the consistent message of “release your attachment to the world.” Time is not real, simply an illusion, for there is only the eternal NOW. All you must do is shave the N off the NO, releasing your resistance, flip the OW the other way around, transcending pain, and vibrate with the eternal vowel OM!

    OOOOOMMMM..!

    I’ve had moments, man, where that understanding is directly experienced, and I genuinely do feel an astounding, unending, overwhelming love and goodness. It’s why I truly do believe in God (or Divine Source or Ain Soph or Brahma or Whatever). But something always pulls me back into my ego. Back into the illusion. Back into the matrix. Back into samsara. Like my soul is still searching for something here, and isn’t ready to leave until it finds it (or perhaps fully comes to understand that there is truly nothing to search for. The sages certainly seem to think so.) And there’s that split in my soul. The fracture in my mind. That which wants to be superior and supreme, and that which wants to remain with all the scattered pieces and parts of sensual experience. As much as the higher part of me might want to rid itself of the lower part of me (and perhaps the same is true the other way around, only more subtle and sneaky in its affect), the lower will not yield. I have put an enormous amount of effort towards transcending the material illusion, studying all those esoteric texts and undertaking ceremonial acts and meditating and visualizing and on and on and on… but the gravity of my humanity continues to pull energy and attention into my own ego.

    So do I remain split? Do I continue to identify with the self-righteous superior side and remain an abusive authority towards the weaker, needier part of my nature, always angry with it simply for existing? I certainly could, and I think plenty of people do, but I don’t think that’s the answer anymore.

    Enter the Christ essence! And where does that essence find its home? The heart! The sun of God at the center of the solar/personal system. The sphere sandwiched between the higher and lower chakras. The beauty of the Christ isn’t that he died on a cross for our sins, it’s that he chose to manifest here in the first place. If the world was so rotten, why bother showing up at all? Why not just leave it to self implode through its own ignorant indulgence and allow that energy to be channeled into something more useful? I think it’s because there’s genuinely something good here. Something worthwhile. Something valuable. I believe that’s what the Christ story is really revealing.

    Forget the guilt over his execution. Why would the eternal emanation of the divine make a big deal over having to shed a meat suit? Sure, that part of the story reveals the cruelty of ignorant, arrogant authority- which is a useful lesson, no doubt, and ties into what I’m talking about- but the real gift was the act of manifesting into the world. If the divine embraces this place, then so should we. So could we. There’s so much to love about the realm of this world. So many treasures to be found in sensual experience.

    The inspiring movements of music!

    The fabulous combinations of flavor!

    The soothing, stirring sight of beauty!

    The fragrant bursts and stimulating smells!

    Cuddles and closeness, hugs and kisses, and intimate entwining!

    Sunsets and stars, kittens and kids, laughter and celebration, endless artistic expressions, and the sheer joy of ever emerging fresh experience!

    None of it is perfect, but that’s not its purpose. It all comes coupled with pain, but that’s a price well worth paying to preserve what this place provides. And there’s Saturn’s influence yet again. Despite being a self righteous tyrant on that right hand and a self indulgent hedonist on the left, it’s his (her?) efforts that keeps this whole thing going. So the energetic equation plays out as the authoritative side of Saturn getting lambasted by the hedonistic side, always seen as the bad guy or bully or the mean ol’ parent that won’t let us have any fun and makes us go to bed before we want to, imposing restrictive pain where we want unending pleasure. But that’s the part keeping this entire process operational, keeping the hunger for more from going overboard. That equation applies to the personal, internal processes as well. That is the equation of the ego.

    Yeah, that archetypal influence is overly attached to itself and what it creates, but that’s rooted in a kind of love. An ignorant kind of love maybe, but it’s still love, and love is good. That love just needs to be illuminated with greater awareness; an opening of the heart so deeper understanding can inform the action here. I’ve been thinking lately that might be what is implied by Christmas emerging from Saturnalia. During Saturnalia, the Roman authorities would defer their control, and the people would be free to indulge themselves through feasts, parties, orgies and gift giving. Hedonism taken to an extreme. For seven days the authority softens its hard heart and allows pleasure to flow freely. I wonder if that wasn’t how the Christ essence was able to settle into humanity. The hyper vigilant consciousness of the collective controlling mind opening through chaotic ecstasy, allowing a higher love to get in. Is that reflected in things like conceiving of sex as love making? Is that the unacknowledged goodness found in the hedonistic impulse? Is the Christ implying that holistic, healing love is achieved through exalted sensual appreciation? Embracing and accepting this realm for what it is rather than chastising it for what it can’t be?

    From that lens it would seem that the Christ is all about restoring the Saturnian split and synthesizing its two parts together to create a state of being that is exalted. Fear based authority and control soothed through sensual acceptance, and hedonistic indulgence tempered by softly spoken responsibility and respect. Symbolic images like the sun (of God) being “born” on the solstice, the cross being the unfoldment of the closed off cube, and Yeshua being a name that combines Yahweh and savior (is it savior from Yahweh or  for Yahweh?) would all seem to correspond to the notion I’m attempting to lay out here.

    I had this thought a while back during a meditation that God/Saturn/The Authority/The Patriarchy/Whatever Else Relates actually needs to be forgiven for the ways its misused its power and given gratitude for everything its done to get us to this point. That what we need to do, personally and collectively, is not to fight or protest or push up against that force, but rather prove to it that we can take responsibility for ourselves and the ways in which we effect the operations of this realm. To prove to it that we don’t actually need its controlling hand any more to keep us in check. That we’re willing to grow up and let go of our ignorant, childish, superstitious fantasies and fears regarding material existence. That we can love this world through consciously enjoying it while also honoring it by tempering our attachments towards it.

    I really like the idea of this. It’s something that has begun to underline much of my inner development, leading me to this notion of needing cohesion between all of my parts. That I am to hold heaven and earth together in my heart. It has also brought up numerous challenges, some of which have been imparted in these posts but many that go much deeper than what has so far been revealed. I know first hand that this idea is not one easily implemented. But I’m gonna stick with it until something better enters my mind.

    All right, I really rambled on here, but I got into a flow and didn’t want to stop. I want to reiterate that I’m writing these more so for myself and not to convince anyone of anything or proclaim an answer. I’m just trying to figure this life biz out here, working it out through words as I go, and posting these only as a curiosity for those that might be curious. My mind works in a fairly abstract manner and symbolic, mythical language is a medium I use to make sense of it. I know there can be strong emotions and beliefs tied to these images, so I just want to say I never mean any disrespect and use them in my own processes with a lot of reverence and appreciation. That being said, I think I’ve said enough here. Wishing the world a wonderful Christmas/Saturnalia/Solstice/Whatever You Jive With!

  • The Saturnian Split prt 1

    Dec 11: It’s been a good chunk of time now since I felt the draw to write another post. I’ve got an idea I would like to explore here that came up during my morning meditation, but first I’ll scribble out a quick sketch as to what the life flow has entailed the last while. The tone of feeling in the previous message definitely increased, becoming more pronounced and intense in the inner experience of it. I was a hair width away from bringing my adventure through Costa Rica to an end. To simplify that story, the pressures involved in this trip, ie the language barrier, the stress of getting around and the chronic feelings of loneliness, continued to compound, pushing me to my emotional limits. I managed to work it out through an immensely helpful conversation with my mom, and ultimately opted to continue on. Despite how strongly one part of me wanted to leave, another part recognized there was still things of potential value that remained to uncover and experience here.

    I set myself up with another Airbnb further south in a smaller and more chill city, and I’ve been undeniably doing better. But there’s still a constant undercurrent of challenge. More than anything, this trip is really revealing to me the internal areas that are unhealed or underdeveloped or simply just dysfunctional in certain ways. It’s so easy to ignore or even straight up mask these weak spots in the personal system during normal living, through the accumulation of and reliance on various addictive sources and the illusion of comfortable control established through regular, steady routine. Travelling rips all of that away, and the results can be fairly intensive without copious external stimulation.

    Like I had mentioned, I’m orienting very introverted this trip, which is likely being further enhanced through the current way that the retrograde mercury and mars are affecting the energetic flow, so the inner gravity is stronger than any external interest. I’ve come to accept that this is the primary purpose of this trip, to bring my awareness directly towards these weak points and understand the dissonance with a greater precision. How else can one truly restore and retune these parts unless awareness (and more importantly, love) is brought into the full reaches of them?

    The primary theme of the central issue at play is essentially a fracture between my inner experience and the external world, a split between heaven and earth, mind and body, yin and yang. It would appear very clearly to me that this is not only a personal fracture but rather a collective one currently playing out with rather intense reverberations, seen through dynamics such as the divide between men and women, left and right politics, civilization and nature, or technological dependency and biological impulses. For me, I lean towards a mind rather than matter orientation, more comfortable and adept with inner intellectual processes than material, sensual connection. I used to swing more readily between the two, but I’ve learned (or perhaps been conditioned through experience) to trust and rely upon the one side far more than the other.

    The thing is, polarizing myself in that way maintains the inner fracture, which perpetuates neurotic thinking and therefore compromises the clarity of my observations and interpretations. I want to be clear. I want to orient myself correctly. I believe achieving that requires genuine cohesion between all of my aspects; all the instruments involved in the creation of my personal music must be in tune and harmonious with one another. My increasing preference towards inner experience and the resulting resistance towards the outer renders a discordant conflict in the coherence of my music. Even here in Costa Rica that resistance to outer connection has continued to persist, despite the abundance of beauty pulling at the attention, and I don’t just mean the crazy quantity of gorgeous women or the warm affect of the people in general, but also the environment and the intangible energies. Venus has an especial affect on me personally here, so beauty’s quality is seriously amplified. And yet I still resist…

    Having such a strong polarized pull acting upon and within me in regards to external connection really magnifies where and how my system pushes back against it, creating a charged up energetic tension at my core. It’s honestly quite exhausting, causing me to feel almost continuously tired. But like I said, it’s affording me the opportunity to really zero in on the source of that resistance, and that was what came up during my morning meditation. I figured there are three primary gates blocking off an easy flow of energy and attention between my inner realm and outer influence.

    (Editor Aodhan here: Rereading what I wrote explaining those three influences struck me as a little too personal to be sharing publicly as this time. These posts are already leaning pretty far into my current emotional struggles and vulnerabilities, and I’m not looking to bog this blog down too much with that sort of thing. Perhaps I’ll return to those ideas in the future if it seems right. For now let’s just say they involve karmic accumulation, genetic and environmental inheritance, and experiential observation of the world augmented by esoteric study. Ultimately, it can all be simplified into a single discordant polarity which I will begin the next paragraph with.)

    On the one hand (likely the left) I don’t feel worthy of the word’s affection and care, and on the other (probably the right) I see it as not worthy of mine. That would appear to be the core fracture in my being; the neurotic thinking that compromises my interpretation and experience. At this point I’m not sure what exactly to do to resolve that split, but as the saying goes, knowing is half the battle. I must hold to the faith that through the desire to mend that inner rend, I will be guided to where I need to go to do so.

    There is one significant thing that spiritual study has added to my inner equation, and that is the strong sense that despite how screwed up humankind and the world appears to be, there remains the need to engage with it. To enact, as best as we can through our individual imperfections, the efforts of healing and awakening that are required for the restoration of this realm; giving of our light and love to this life. This is an orientation symbolized (and possibly embodied) by figures like the Christ.

    As a final thought to tie into all of this, I find there to be a correspondent resonance between everything I just laid out here and the Gnostic interpretation of god and creation. In their view, the version of god found in the old testament, and therefore the direct creator of the material plane, is not in fact the true divine source but something more akin to a powerful expression of spiritually ignorant egoic impulse. A kind of lesser, and effectively tyrannical, deity referred to as the Demiurge.

    When you start bringing the esoteric pieces together it becomes clear that there is a link between (using this particular symbolic language) Yahweh and Satan; that they are in fact two sides of the same coin, the link being their association with Saturn. Saturn has a strong connection to black cube imagery, revealed by the hexagon on its pole (a hexagon being a 2D representation of a 3D cube), which then manifests within Abrahamic religions through things like the cube on the tefillin or the Black Stone of Mecca. Satan’s saturnian connection is revealed through the goat symbolism of Capricorn, ruled by Saturn, and Capricorn’s rulership of the devil card in the tarot as well as the tendency towards materialist and hedonistic indulgence that takes place during Capricorn season, exemplified through ceremonies like Saturnalia, which is the foundation of our Christmas. (Actually, I have a lot of thoughts about this particular time of the year, especially regarding the role the Christ essence plays in it now, something that actually ties into what I’m talking about here, but that’ll be for another post).

    Those are just a few of the many examples of these links. I bring all of this up because the split in our own natures, such as the one I’m uncovering within myself, may well be rooted in this demiurgic/saturnian influence; that fundamental egoic fracture between the self-righteous authority of Yahweh condemning his own hedonistic impulse to indulge in his own creation. Following along with this Gnostic/esoteric interpretation, the Christ is the emanation of the divine essence breaking through the Demiurge’s narcissistic barriers and bringing love and forgiveness to this material plane, in order to restore wholeness to existence itself.

    Whether these stories are true in a literal sense can certainly be debated, but as symbolic allegories, they seem to provide a map of sorts that can be followed to achieve greater awareness and cohesion. As a conceptual lens, it’s effectively saying that ultimately the means of resolution is found through rising above the unhealthy ego’s tendency towards either vain, self-righteous judgement and condemnation of material imperfection (that right hand proclaiming the world unworthy), or the infinite hunger to indulge in sense gratification as a way to avoid greater existential reality (which leads to the feelings of shame and worthlessness of the left hand), and instead emphasizing love and forgiveness towards ourselves and the world and all the faults found within as the means to heal. That by restoring the union of inner “authority/god” and inner “devil/hedonist” the disorienting extremities of both are balanced out by the other. I would like to believe that. And the more I am able to inform the operations of my mind and emotions with that belief, the clearer, cleaner and more cohesive I feel.

    All right, I think that’s enough for now. I definitely allowed myself to indulge in my own mental ramblings here. But once again, I have to remind myself that this is the purpose of this blog in the first place. If you managed to read out the whole thing, I thank you for it. Hopefully you were able to find something of value in it. Lots of love to everyone!

    (Editor Aodhan here: I know I harped on Saturn here, but I want to make it clear that I don’t see that symbolic image as innately bad or evil. It’s effect and influence is necessary for what we are, and I intend to explore that in my next post.)

  • A Challenge Along the Path

    Nov 25: I decided to extend my time away from the workaway thing for now. I need some time to reorient somewhat and figure out how I want to move forward. I found myself a nice, cozy airbnb in San Jose that’s proving to be a perfect space for this process. This particular post is essentially part of that process.

    The thing is I’m starting to really question why I’m continuing with this trip. I’ve been at it for over a month now and I can’t say it’s really been sparking much inspiration within me. Costa Rica is a beautiful country, no question, filled with lovely people and interesting things to experience, but there seems to be something in me that’s either getting in the way of truly being able to embrace it or maybe just wants to go in a completely different direction.

    An undeniable factor at play in this adventurous instance compared to any other time I’ve done this sort of thing is how much more introverted I’ve obviously become in the last handful of years. Even though I still find the external world fascinating, my internal universe has absolutely become far more compelling. I think three major factors have contributed to this reorientation of my attention, all of them taking place with a degree of simultaneous sequence. The first is a strong element of disillusionment regarding relationships due to my previous experiences (undoubtedly a kind of trauma response), the second is the effects of the COVID-19 event, and the third is a major increase in my study of esoteric philosophy and the subsequent spiritual practices that were inspired. Effectively, it seems that these experiences have sort of synthesized together to cause me to become far more guarded against people and what I perceive as their impulse towards egoistic imposition, and to more vividly view material existence as illusionary.

    Perhaps another way to phrase it is that I have steadily been losing faith in the physical, human world and increasing belief in the spiritual and abstract. While the increase in the one side of that equation has genuinely brought me a level of peace, comfort and confidence I’ve never been able to achieve before, the decrease on the other side has left a growing lack. I’m recognizing that lack is of human connection. Communication, touch, energetic exchange, ego (or personal) encouragement and feelings of being embraced all fall under that umbrella, and the lack of it is wearing on a part of me. At times, when I feel the strength of spirit, I can view that lack as something to be endured in order to maintain a quality of being that can often feel unappreciated or otherwise taken advantage of and fed upon. But when the human animal part of me flares up, screaming its need, I tend to feel somewhat down and uninspired.

    I began to recognize this imbalance over a year ago, seeing how I was overemphasizing the spiritual and abstract at the expense of my own humanity, and have since being attempting to cultivate a greater quality of cohesion between those contrasting and seemingly contradictory parts of my being. I certainly feel I’ve made some headway on that front, but I still hesitate with the human side. It’s very difficult to look at the world and not see it devolving into excessive ego, superficiality, ideological insanity, materialistic greed, cult-like communities and straight up apathetic, nihilistic escapism. We seem to be a sick species, and as an effort to minimize my own mind being infected by it, I tend towards staying silent and contained.

    But that approach feels selfish. Like I’m withholding the love within me that should be shared. That wants to be shared. My choice to come to Costa Rica was rooted in an effort to heal the wounds of my heart, bring down the walls protecting my authentic inner nature and cultivate an increased capacity to communicate myself, my views and my experiences without expectation. Hell, this entire blog project is another expression of that intention. I can say with total confidence that I’m still entirely motivated towards those things and absolutely will not give up on them until the moment I pass from this world.

    But, man, am I ever struggling to actualize it here thus far. Not being able to communicate with people has been corroding my confidence in the endeavor and my strong aversion to communal experience (again, a known trauma response) is weighing the whole thing down even more. I feel such a powerful compulsion to love the world and the life within it, but also an equally strong resistance towards it and the corruption so casually, so carelessly indulged. I know much of the interpretation held within in that latter response is rooted in wounds I’ve accumulated, distorting whatever truth is present in such observations, but I’m not sure I can succeed at healing them if I don’t have people I can truly feel safe with, listened to and embraced for who I am, including these more challenging emotional parts of me. (Editor Aodhan here: I do in fact have a number of people in my life that care for me in this way. I love and appreciate each of you enormously! The lack was really just being felt in that particular moment due to being alone in a foreign country. Just wanted to clarify that.) I often feel like I’m expected by everyone around me to maintain the positive, to endlessly supply the good, to reassure and uplift and express words of inspiration while they get to unload their own painful feelings, darker thoughts and challenging emotions.

    I guess I’m getting tired of the imbalance. Tired of nailing my needs to a cross of self-sacrifice. In truth, I prefer orienting towards the positive, embodying good as best as I can. I love loving life, even if much of that process has to be done in private for me to uphold a certain personal quality. But, man… would I ever like to be able to bring it out more in a way that feels genuinely sustaining and measured in its effect.

    I dunno… I don’t really want to literarily rant about it any more. I suppose I just needed to get that out of my system through words. For those that speak the astrological language, my moon is in Gemini (as is my Chiron for that matter), so I tend to process emotions through either talking or writing. I’m committed to the intention behind this blog, in finding ways to get my inner experiences out through expression, so here it is. As always I appreciate anyone who actually reads this. With this last month of travelling being one of the hardest periods in recent memory regarding communication blocks, I doubly appreciate anyone taking in my mental ramblings with their kindly receptive eyes. Nothing but love to all of you.

    (Editor Aodhan here again: While the personal truth contained within this post remains, the lens of emotion has dissipated quite a bit since the writing. I might not exactly feel the way I did while scribbling it out, but I still wanted to honor what was being experienced and expressed by that past version of me by giving it its place in this blog-space. I am still undertaking my journey through Costa Rica, and glad for it. I’ll touch in on that more so in an upcoming post, but I will say this experience is absolutely proving to be positive and beneficial to my personal development.)