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!
ACMindworks 